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Guest Post by Martha Gillis: Adoption From Nanchang, China

This guest post by Martha Gillis is a part of January’s Adoption Celebration at MomMostTraveled.com.
Martha Gillis remembers meeting her daughter for the first time in Nanchang, China:

August, 2003

Sure, I did the photo albums, filled in the blanks of the “Yes, You’re Adopted,” book and compiled the greatest how-we-got-you-from-China photo album replete with witty, bold-faced captions. But it kills me that I did not write something for her, or do something more that for a writer in lawyer’s clothing would have been suitable natural or appropriately assuaging the working mother guilt that perniciously rears its ugly head from day to day, a wicked Melrose Place character rising from the dead in his poorly excavated grave.

I wished I had a martini, I said in the company of my old spirits, sans the Guilt Godzilla, because she had yet to arrive. But minibars were non-existent in our cozy hotel in Nanchang, China, and besides, it occurred to me that the social worker, translator, welfare institute director and our child’s caregiver might not feel the love of my party-type vibe. So, I yearned for the 20-ounce bottle of local beer tactically procured while on an earlier one-mile/100 degree walk until its allure was tackled by a more imposing distraction.

I took it over to my husband, a man content to sit tight in a happily nervous smiley state in the chair by the silent TV. I arose from the crossword puzzle that fell short of diverting my tornadic intensity, abandoned my extra dosage of dark chocolate, picked up the object of my new focus and held it above his twitching-leg.

“I know if I start to read this, we’ll get the knock on the door,” he uttered.

“Do me a favor,” I asked, uncharacteristically unwilling to accept no for an answer.

He did, and she came, and I realized that it was possible complete strangeness and utter bliss at the same time.

The sheer force of self-admiration at the fact that I simultaneously weeble-wobbled to the door and remained vertical compelled me to gracefully open the door, all the while overanalyzing the pace at which I did so.

My heart sank, although admittedly with a bit of relief.

“Are you ready?” the social worker queried as the vision of my daughter on the other side of the door dissipated in the manner of a dream to wakefulness. I can’t remember the affirmation I used in response, but I think Gerry nodded his head as he set his book on the table and waited on the other side of the hall.

I saw her smiling face first. Her being my daughter’s caregiver. A genuine but concerned smile taxed by the welfare institute director’s intent that these “placements” be light and joyous.

The first thing I saw of my little one was the back of her long and still little body, clad in vibrant butterscotch PJs with hot pink trim.

“Where’s the rest of her?” I thought as my mind cross-referenced our visit with her corn-fed Midwestern cousins nicknamed, at one time or another, “you sack of potatoes.” The Miss America-smiling caregiver averted her body 180 degrees in an effort to show us our daughter’s frightened face.

However, that was no match for my baby.

She snapped her head away from the door and then back over her shoulder as the social worker gestured the caregiver into the room with the institute director and translator to follow.

The still smiling welfare institute worker placed her on the bed, at my direction, for various reasons. For one, I wanted her to feel my loving arms at a later time, less associated with her obvious sorrow.

The best day of my life, I bet she thought, in toddler Mandarin. I got my own outfit, I got my own bottle, I got my own caregiver for three whole hours and best of all, I moved through all this outside space and saw so many different things and loved every bit of it. But now she was being handed over to us.

It seemed as though the caregiver told her that I was her Mama and Gerry was her Dad as I discovered her use of the word Mama which means Mama in both our tongues.

At the sound of these words, our child was none too pleased, her legs still as stiff as a seated baby doll and her arms outstretched in similar fashion. At the end of her dominant arm, her hand clamped onto her plastic covered picture id, apparently once clipped to the crib of what we would now call “her first home.”

“Is that your i.d.,” I asked as I moved to sit on the bed beside her. After pulling all she carried with her away from my reach, she glared at me as she had at her caregiver, a fierce determined look suggesting, “lord, you’ve got to he kidding.”

Unbeknownst to her father and I at the time, our social worker had previously looked at the welfare institute director the wrong way, thus inspiring his offense and culminating in his decision to pack up each girl’s caregiver and take them home without any further discussion.

Without any discussion.

I thought I was doing so well. A good hour before aforesaid crossword puzzle, I listed the series of questions that any conscientious adoptive mother-to-be, who did not quite yet get a chance to pick-up a book or two to guide her on the path of being an adoptive mother-to-be, would write down, in the simple special bound book that would one day serve as the medium for the rough draft of the adoption journal she promised she would write. Oh there’s that Guilt Godzilla.

What is she called?

What does she like to eat?

How does she sleep? etc, etc, etc.

“Sorry,” the social worker lamented when she returned. “Sometimes this happens,” she explained without apology. Sometimes in a culture that relegates its female children to street curbs, sexism rears its ugly head. I wonder if it’s been introduced to the Guilt Godzilla.

And then we were alone, soon to realize that a pair of grownups purporting to be her parents would never walk in the door. Ever.

“Well hello,” her father said sweetly as his big Irish heart underwent a quick, vibrant mitosis and then tossed its newly cloned counterpart right into her clenched little hand.

I could have just delightedly stared at my beautiful family forever, and had completely forgotten about my malt beverage when Gerry decided to mix a bottle of formula. I eventually pulled on to the bed some colorful toys I bought for her courtesy of her older cousins.

Oh, but before that, she screamed. I can’t believe I forgot that part. She Screeeeamed, the stiff little thing. The second the door slammed in the wake of the teed off institute director and the verklempt caregiver.

We had given them gifts before they departed, as was the custom. I strung her a string of fresh water pearls and an identical one for myself that I was wearing at the time, and I hoped that she would get to keep them, in the midst of what may have been a vortex of scarcity.

“No wonder she did not drink her bottle,” I announced the next day. “We have to poke a hole in the nipple,” I said, careful to sidestep the fatal mistake of micromanaging my baby’s daddy. Fortunately, we filled her up with dry cereal, six pieces at first, two at a time, gently placed in her mouth, between her four little teeth. That’s what stopped the crying, that strong, targeted roar of a feisty Leo who had the wherewithal to survive on her own for the first year of her life. It stopped after three minutes of appreciation to her respi-laryngeal health and about the time that the little oat rounds fell to her stomach, and opened her heart, just a little bit, enough to allow me to pick her up, to feel that she was solid and not just stiff. At the time, she still clasping her i.d. card, as if to remind us that this is who she was.

I received a quick vote of no confidence from my better half when her diaper curiously leaked onto his casual trousers, the shadow of which haunted me until we returned to the land of superabsorbancy. She did not seem to mind when I replaced her orphanage-consigned bottoms with floral embroidered blue jeans from her aunt. She was resigned, and I was ecstatic.

As a result, I failed to draw forth any resistance to my quest to give her a little caress. Just a little bit of a wiggle to her torso, far from a vexing tickle-tickle.

“Look, she smiled,” I told Gerry, who glanced up from the digital camera screen. Giddy as we were, on some level we realized that our complete happiness was not shared by our scared little girl. We hoped she was perhaps somewhat happy. We were wrong.

“You can see it in her eyes,” the social worker informed us on one of her several, welcomed visits to the room. In the fog of my bliss, I tacitly disagreed.

Upon a review of the photos of our new family, I realized she was right. Almost every scarce ounce of strength she had was pulled within her, and behind her deeply bottomless saucer eyes, resulting in a limp-looking body, albeit marginally appreciative of her satisfying dinner.

The social worker advised us about a lot of things that eventually made perfect sense to us: the importance of keeping her Chinese name, as a first name preferably; the wisdom of keeping her in her welfare institute clothes–something of the past to hold onto. However, we did not know what to think when we were the only ones to follow her advice, other than perhaps that we enjoyed a certain “favorite parents” status underneath her MSW armored exterior.

“You must be so excited,” my on-the-job supervisor declared to me at least twice a day on the last weeks before my family leave. Well, I wasn’t. I was pissed at having to travel two floors to use a ladies’ room where I could avoid this question that rang obnoxious in the wake of my impending parenthood. A fury of feelings, warm cuddly maternal instincts, whatever they were, were well out-matched by concerns for her well-being, a wieldy and protective fury, my unique motherliness.

Even then, I foresaw that the worst day of her life would be the best day of ours.

Needless to say, my beer and I eventually realized out intertwined destinies as father and daughter assessed our globe-trotted toy collection for the most suitably obnoxious of the bunch. There was no place close for me to sit, so I propped my back against a pillow and the headboard of the queensize, but arose a minute later, this reality having been distant for too long.

“Nina, we have your referral,” the social worker joyfully sang during a surprise call to my cube at the law offices of Price & Devlin.

“I didn’t think it would happen so soon,” I quietly responded. Instead of querying the basis for my characterization of 15 months from dossier submission to today as “too soon,” she compassionately replied, “well, when did you think you would hear?”

“Oh, next month,” I said with certainty. After all, my best friend Riva said it was in my astrological chart.

“Well, that’s just around the corner,” she said and laughed. And so did I.

She gave me all the information she had, very important information that reminded me of an airline pilot’s version of an understandable weather report–visibility this, ceiling that. For God’s sake, just tell me if it’s cloudy!

“Her name is Li Meng Ni,” she said. “She was born in Fuzhou, Jianxi Province on August 20, 2002, and was taken to the welfare institute when she was two days old.” I wrote it down on a scrap of paper, otherwise indistinguishable from those related to an extensive series of back-and-forth exercises commonly known as commercial litigation.

“It’s not Lye Meng Nye,” my Mandarin-speaking college buddy fortuitously told me over champagne and hummus four days later. It’s Lee Meng Nee.” “It means beautiful first girl according to the adoption agency,” I told my old friend who made a mental note to double-check for alternative meanings.

There were several aspects attendant to the adoption process that we were not expecting. A take-your-breath-away beautiful girl, as she laid in her crib on our first night together, headed the list. Images of back seat-minded older boys and football players with access to finished basements ascended to my parental sanctuary with the strength of teen sexual fervor. But, alas, this was no match for a longing mother’s love; a mother with a sister with a masters in nursing and an intelligent sense of human sexuality. I moved on to the next challenge.

“Pity the man who marries her,” Gerry commented, anachronistically I initially thought. The source of her physical strength was revealed.

Crib aerobics. The advanced “challenge” version.

After scooting her little body down to and facing the end of the crib, she raised her bare feeties and rested them on two of the vertical slats, as far as they would go up.

And then took off.

Rolling and pivoting. Twisting and turning. An independent study program in orphanage physical survival and nocturnal get-outta-my-space just in case I wake up back in my old blue metal crib.

Sleep evaded me that night, and I cared not an unrealized wink. Too little beer and nary a tartini. Four days ago, I was living in an 11-hour time zone variance. Now the primary-colored rattle I packed at the last minute serenaded me, every minute or two, all night.

To which I responded the way I did when she first reached over her head for the noisy toy, adeptly coordinating her upper body with her sub-waist exercises.

“We are going to have a love affair with this child,” her father said, as our hands met and our hearts joined.

And as I did every time I tried to nap, sleep, or doze, I just smiled.

Martha Gillis was born on the South Side of Chicago, raised on the North Side. In her earlier life, she was a medical research scientist and biochemist. After realizing that she preferred to run the chemical company and not merely fuel its profits, she informed her father, a Chicago jurist, of her desire to attend law school.

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