Shenzhen Girls

We picked up the girls on a cold Monday night.  Frank was with me and was all keyed up and excited.  It was nice having him there to translate.  The girls were quite shy, and only Anqi had really good English.  Yoyo and Kiko's English was limited.  We never, in the ten days, pinned down exact names.  They had chosen English names, but I wanted to use their Chinese names.  Except every time we tried to pronounce them, the girls erupted in fits of giggles.  So Anqi was Lisa, Yoyo was Yoyo and Ye was Kiko.  Why did Ye choose a Japanese name for her American name?  I don't know, but it's a cute name for a cute girl.

Kiko had a little cold.  Lisa, my friend in charge, told us that the Chinese remedy is hot water and lots of rest.  Valid cures, but I so wanted to pump her full of antibiotics.  She had a smell that I remember from when we got Xanthe.  Xanthe was riddled with infection in her ears, nose and lungs, and we started her on antibiotics right away.  By the time we went home, she was better.  At any rate, we tried to keep the girls warm and let them rest.  They were tired!  Nonetheless, we squeezed in some fun activities during the ten days.  When we weren't doing fun things, the girls were easy.  They liked to look at their phones and chatter away with one another.  Yoyo would bring me her phone with its translation app, hold it up so I could see the text, and read it to me:  "Mom, can I help you with anything?"

It melted my heart how they called me Mom.  Being from a tonal mother tongue, they had the inflection just right.  Several times, I turned around expecting to see one of my own kids, and was surprised by Yoyo.  They also picked up other words from us.  One day, I said to Xanthe, "Thank you!"  The inflection of my voice went down, then up at the end.  A moment later, and throughout their stay, I heard the girls saying, "Thank you!"  In exactly the same way I had said it.  Hilarious!

We made potstickers a couple of times.  The girls gobbled them up, but Frank didn't like them as much.  He said they needed shrimp, but there is just no way I'm putting shrimp in my dumplings.  That is just too authentic.  Ew. Pork, loads of ginger, and green onions is all I add, fried/steamed in sesame oil and served with soy sauce.

I had lots of good helpers.

For some reason, the Asian market only had green wrappers that day.

On Saturday, the girls went to Park City with their group, so we had all day Sunday.  Frank and I had planned to take them to Arches and Canyonlands on one of our marathon road trips, but the girls were simply too tired.  I didn't want to push them, so we woke them up at 8, which was hard enough, and took them to Music and the Spoken word and Temple Square.

Of course, I thought of Golda in China, teaching about Jesus Christ.  When I put this on Instagram, I said, "Doesn't matter what you call Him, or if you know Him at all.  God loves YOU and nothing at all can ever change that." 

Nana probably thought she had three new great-grandchildren.

Primary: a cultural experience.

Kings came over and brought another cultural experience: pizza.  Big hit!  Yoyo took pictures of all the food.

On other nights, we had noodles.

We saw Grandma and Grandpa at Nikki's and planned a weeknight dinner when they could meet the girls, on their last night.  Dumplings again, and Panda chow mein.  Delicious!

I loved having the Mandarin banter in my back seat.  When I lived and went to school at the Violin Making School, many of my classmates/roommates were Chinese.  Mandarin sounds incredibly familiar to me, even if I only understand three words, one of which is a swear word sorely overused at the VMS. :)

Good-bye party at Classic Fun Center.  It was fun that my kids got to go, as we never do things in places that have this type of Vegas-on-acid carpet, or where you have to rent things to put on your feet.  Ha ha

Ruby left for Chicago on their last day, so I took a pic.  That night, the girls were looking for Ruby and saying, "We love Ruby!  We love Ruby!"

The last supper with the girls.  Marlene brought a pan of chocolate chip cookies.  My favorite!

More smiles

More helpers

Rare pics of me in my natural habitat.

A toast!

Station Park for shopping.  I turned the girls loose to shop and sat by the hot fire, then took them to see Santa.

They bought those awful jelly beans that have the bad flavors.  They gave me "dead fish."  Thanks, girls!

Xanthe, bless her heart, really made an effort to connect with the girls.  Despite the language barrier, they did pretty well.  It's overwhelming emotionally to see Xanthe with three girls her own age, from Mainland.  This could have been her life!  Although she probably came from a place and a family who didn't have the money to keep their child, let alone send their child to the states.  Anqi has a little sister, which means her family had the means to pay to have a second child, back before the one-child policy was eased.  I wonder what Xanthe thinks when she interacts with these girls.  The emotions are far too complex for a literal-minded kid like Xanthe.  Here's an example:  I said, "Are you going to be sad seeing them off tomorrow?"  Xanthe replied, "I won't see them off.  It will be too dark.  And I'll probably be asleep."  Her whole focus was on the exact words, "See them off."  I had to rephrase and say, "Will you be sad when they leave?"  She didn't know.  If she thinks about an open-ended question like that for too long, she forgets what the question was and starts laughing.  She's an interesting kid.  At some moments during the Shenzhen girls' stay, I felt this overwhelming gratitude that we had gotten Xanthe to safety.  Given her probable economic background, and the learning disabilities that she has, really, what would her future have been in China, especially if she was a second daughter?  We'll never know, and we can only speculate.  With a billion people in the country, it's impossible to make generalizations, anyway.

It's just fascinating to look at Xanthe and know that she was destined for our family.  Seeing her alongside the Chinese girls, I wondered, "What role does/should her ethnicity and her origin play in her life, and our family's life?"  A question for a lifetime of pondering.

The girls left at 6 am on a Thursday.  Did I tell you that they were form Shenzhen?  Lisa had told us they'd be from Shanghai, but they turned out to be from a city that's 17 kilometers from Golda, in her Hong Kong missionary apartment.  In fact, the girls flew into Hong Kong on their way home.  I imagined them taking a piece of our hearts with them and depositing it over HK as they flew, to be felt by our missionary.  The Shenzhen connection was a heavenly hug that whispered, "I know you.  I know Golda.  She is safe."  At least that's how I interpreted it.

I was sad to see the girls go.  Maybe we'll host again.  Until then, well, we still have Frank. ;)

Preparations for the Girls

The stage was set for three girls from Shenzhen, China, to stay with our family for ten days.  They were classmates, from what we heard, and delighted to be staying together with the same family.  My friend Lisa was in charge of the program, and asked the ladies from our Chinese playgroup if we would host.  Initially, I thought no because they arrived the day after Thanksgiving weekend, and with Nutcracker and everything we were going into, it would be a lot.

Then Scott said he wouldn't mind and I said yes.  The only cure for craziness is more craziness, I say.  It was a good excuse to get Xanthe and Tziporah's room all cleaned up.  We put an extra bed in there, too, so we could host three little friends from the same school.  We were ready!

The Sad Parts

 Yesterday because of Chinese New Year, I was going through some of Xanthe's photos.  This is the day we met Xanthe.  Scott and I were introduced to her at the city building in Changsha, where eight frightened and confused little girls were handed over to eight sets of emotional and ecstatic parents who looked and smelled nothing like anyone the babies had ever known.  Xanthe was sick.  She had a cough and probably an ear infection, from the way she kept tugging on her ear.  She reacted tot he trauma by not reacting.  This picture of her lying on the bad was what she did.  Her papers said she could sit up and move around, but her flaccid little body couldn't even roll over.  Now I realize that part of it was the shock of her new situation, but she was nothing like the muscular powerhouse she is now.

 We immediately administered antibiotics, cut her fingernails and gave her a bath.

 I have to admit, Scott and I were freaked out about the shape of Xanthe's head.  It seemed to have two bumps at the crown, one on each side, and as you can see, it was extremely flat.  Xanthe, as we know now, is an observer, reticent to jump in until she knows the lay of the land.  That trait doesn't serve one well in an institutional setting, where the squeaky wheel not only gets the grease, but has a better chance of survival.  Xanthe had, however, acquired the skill of drinking very quickly.  The orphanage was on a strict schedule, and feedings were 4 hours apart.  That's a long time for a baby to wait!  Xanthe at first wouldn't take the food we put in her bottle, a mixture of formula and rice cereal, until we served it literally scalding hot.  Then she sucked it down in 4 or 5 second, the whole bottle.  The orphanage cuts off the top of the nipple so the kids can eat faster, and Xanthe was a pro.

 The other thing we were shocked at were the little scars on her thighs.  Later, when we visited the orphanage, we saw that the crib sides were only about a foot high.  Then we understood the explanation that the babies' thighs were tied to the cribs so they wouldn't fall or climb out at night.  IT seems barbaric to us, where we have so many luxuries, but what is the alternative if you only have what you have?  The most shocking thing about our new little baby, even more so than all the crazy things we observed in the first hour, was that Xanthe seemed to have dark bruises all down her spine, on her tailbone and on her ankle.  As soon as we saw the bruises, we rushed out into the hall of the hotel to get someone to document that we had not inflicted these abuses.  Other parents were out too, looking for our facilitator.  Only then was it explained to us that most Asian children have birth marks known as "Mongolian spots," which look a lot like purple bruises, especially since Xanthe's pigment-rich skin was so pale at that age.  The spots are usually on the torso, mostly the back, and fade over time.  I wish I had taken a picture of Xanthe's impressive Mongolian spot on her tailbone that first day.  It completely boggles my mind that nobody in the adoption process mentioned to us that our babies would have these spots!  We couldn't have been the first parents who were unnerved by this discovery!

 This is the front entrance to the YiYang SWI.  Xanthe's finding place.  She was found on April 14, with a shirt, a hat and a bottle of sugar water.  Her birthday was decided as April 10.

 A few days later, Scott had figured out just how to get this beautiful smile out of our solemn little girl.  She loved to be thrown in the air.  And she loved it when Scott stuck his tongue out at her.  For the first couple of days, the only sign we had that she was "in there" was when Scott would stick his tongue out and Xanthe's little tongue would cautiously sneak out of the side of her mouth in imitation.  That was our only communication, until Scott got those smile out of her.

 After we gave her a bath that first day, pulling on her ear.  Honestly, she was pretty dirty.  The orphanage hallways are outdoors, so obviously there is no heat in the building.  It's cold.  I'm sure there are cultural opinions about not bathing babies when the weather is cold, since they could die of the cold.  They wear layers upon layers of clothing, out of necessity.

 Xanthe's friend Abigail, Tim and Courtney's baby.  The Atnips were our partners in crime in China, since we were the only two couples to fully venture out and see all the sights.  Some of the first-time parents had their hands full!

So these are some of the more sobering aspects of Xanthe's story.  Her Chinese history is rich and without end in its depth.  She will spend her whole life exploring what it means to be Chinese, Chinese-America, adopted, and everything that goes with that.  There are happy parts to her story, too, like the wonderful nanny who took care of her, the comparatively good conditions she lived in, and the fact that we were able to bring her home when she was so young.  Then there are all the other babies and children who are still there.  After we came home, I had this daydream I would play out in my mind, over and over.  "If we were able to bring home one hundred children from China, could I find families fora ll of them?"  I would play it out in my mind, time after time, going through all the people I knew who would throw open their doors for these imaginary children I would bring home from China.  I would also envision how many Scott and I could carry on the plane.  Maybe we could each carry two, three.  Maybe four each, and other people on the flight could help us hold them.

I guess I had those fantasies as a coping mechanism for knowing that we were leaving behind so many perfect little children, dressed in their layers and layers of clothing, tied to their cribs, the light fading from their bright little eyes day by day.  I couldn't stand the thought of it, and I still can't.  There's no way to spin it so it's OK.

I'm just thankful that Xanthe was chosen for us, and that we listened to the spirit that told us it was in the stars, and that we found her.  We found her and she's home.  That is something.  That is a miracle.