Looking Back, One Year Later

We met our Wynn one year ago today.  Of course, in China, this anniversary happened already, yesterday, but I have never figured out if anniversaries and birthdays that occurred in China should be celebrated one day earlier this side of the date line.  We'll just stick to the date the calendar says, wherever we are.  We met Wynn September 18, 2011.

I remember waiting in the hotel lobby for the designated time.  We were early, but somehow, I missed exactly when she arrived.  As we waited, my attention was drawn to a group of Chinese people with a little boy, and then I saw the young lady with them, circling the large aquarium.  I knew it had to be our daughter before I even got a good look at her.  We did manage to get one picture of her by the fish tank.  (She says she saw us when we took a picture, but when asked, "Did you wonder if we were the ones who were adopting you?" she just says, "I don't know.")

We were too shy/nervous/anxious to approach this group until our guide/translator arrived.  We were supposed to have met her 9/19 or 9/20, but since we went to Kunming a couple days early to do tourist stuff, we were contacted and asked if we wanted to meet Pan Wen earlier.  Of course, I said yes!  Only recently did I think about it from her point of view:  Did we make her leaver her village earlier than she had planned?  Did we force her into unexpected early goodbyes?!  I was so relieved when I asked her about it the other day, and she said that they had taken her back to the orphanage "5 or 7 days" before they brought her to our hotel.  (She said some of the orphanage workers had known her from when she was little and said she grew up so fast!  I was kind of pleased to get the sense that there is some continuity in staff for the children who remain.)

I remember it so clearly, but I don't have adequate words to relate it.  I sat on the couch to Wynn's left; she clutched her backpack and refused to cry.  The orphanage director sat to Wynn's right, and the director and our guide had a lot to say to each other in Chinese which, obviously, meant nothing to us.  There was another very kind family there meeting their adorable little boy.  The ladies from the orphanage were encouraging (demanding) that Wynn acknowledge her new family and made her bring out a photo album to show us her private pictures.  I asked, "Ni yao kan kan ni de mei guo jia ren?"  (I started to put the tones in there, but then I thought "toneless" probably better represents what I said.)  This was supposed to mean, "Do you want to see your American family?"  I had a photo album too.  They "encouraged" her (meaning they gave her no choice) to say yes, so I began showing her De ge, Ge ge, Yi di di, Er di di, San di di, and Mei mei.  She couldn't keep all of the tears from betraying her, and a couple slipped out, so I did (thank God) back off.  We were all pushing her so much too fast.  Poor angel.  I probably scared her to death, and I certainly confirmed that our Chinese sucked, and she wasn't going to be able to communicate with us.  I felt nervous, and helpless, and inadequate, and I can't even imagine how she felt.  I asked the translators to tell her it was OK to be sad or scared or cry, but you cannot offer any such reassurance or any comfort without any level of intimacy.  Though there are things I wish I could do differently, we couldn't make it better.  (By the way, it was a very long time before she again showed me a picture from her little album, and even longer before she showed me the whole thing.)

A year later, these memories still break my heart.  This daughter, though, is so funny and smart and kind and wonderful.  Though I acknowledge that her story is not the same as mine, for me, this pulling Wynn into our family - it's all very, very good.  What an immeasurable blessing!

For Wynn . . . I asked her what her memories of this day are and if she'd like to contribute to this blog post. She was very thoughtful about it and put a lot of time into the translator.  She had begun to think about adoption 4 years before when her sister had been adopted, and she wondered would it be better for her to be adopted too?  (I have to ask at a different time how this came about - who initiated the compiling of an adoption file for her.  Did she ask?  Was it foisted upon her?  Her sister would have been adopted about a year before her referral pictures were taken.)  Wynn also said that she was very afraid to face us because she could not know if we were very mean.

As for the rest, this double-edged blessing that is adoption, especially "older child" adoption, I will let her words stand on their own:

(Via google translate) "Really was quick and after a year do not know if adoption is happy happy or sad sad, painful or destiny."