Speechless

Yesterday my friend handed me a book entitled Messages from an Unknown Chinese Mother by a woman named Xinran.  Today, I read the last page.  I was completely engulfed in this tragic book.  Its not a novel.  It's a book based on interviews the author has done with birth mothers and  in China, and it includes many experiences she has had in that country that flesh out the question all adopted children ask:  "Why didn't my mummy want me?"

The answers are astonishingly varied, each story more heartbreaking than the last.  Reading all the stories at once will crush you.  If you are an adoptive parent, ALL of your worst fears will be confirmed as possibilities relating to your child's history.  Yet at the same time, some of your deepest questions will find explanations, if not answers.  In fact, while there is comfort in any kernel of knowledge, answers are beguilingly complex and incomprehensible.  I can't imagine how very precarious Xanthe's hold on life was from the time she was conceived until the time she was placed in our arms.  I am only now beginning to fathom the void that exists somewhere in China because Xanthe is here.  It is very humbling.

When at last I closed the book on the final tale of emptiness, despair, want and regret, I was filled with a complete awareness of the exquisite privilege that is mine, to raise my children without loss.  To raise them at all, I now realize, is a priceless luxury that, despite the seeming normalcy of it, is all too rare worldwide, and has been all through the ages, due to a broader variety of societal pressures, practices and tragedies than we can even quantify.

Many times today, I clutched my baby Tziporah tight, inhaling her heavenly scent, feeling her feathery hair, touching the warmth of her brow with my lips.  She is alive!  I get to keep her!  I cried for the countless, nameless masses of women who never had the chance to do that before they had to make an alternate choice.  Or who held their babies close for far too brief a time, only to live with a gaping hole in their soul forever after.

My babies are all here, they are all safe, they are all alive, and after reading this book, it is very difficult to imagine wanting anything more.