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The Delivery Elevator

Yesterday I left you in a bit of a cliffhanger in the blog post Adoption In China: SARS Outbreak!
Naturally I had to bring back Christine (Cissy) to tell us more of her family’s story.

We met Kai on the 26th floor of the Dolton hotel in Changsha China. I recognized her immediately. Her head seemed to pop up over the pack of babies, translators, orphanage directors and caretakers as though the elevator was an enormous uterus delivering several babies simultaneously. The flock emerged but I saw only Kai. She peered out over the top of the group, as if propped up on her nanny’s shoulders and observing a parade, intrigued by the commotion but not knowing that her arrival was the event.
I fought the urge to rush towards her as I obediently waited for Chen Chen, our national guide, to call out to us one family at a time.
Shubie and I stood next to each other but we weren’t holding hands or hugging. He was filming Kai and I was tracking her with my eyes.
Her head looked like that of a ten-month old but it didn’t match the rest of her body. She was small, more like a newborn than a child of almost one year. Her legs dangled limply and seemed too long. The rolls of fat typically wrinkling the wrists, elbows, thighs and neck of a baby were non-existent. Even her bottom, with a diaper on, was completely flat. There was no noticeable belly, just a long torso and ribs.
She was dressed in red and white. When I say dressed, I mean barely. She wore a flimsy white onesie and a pair of oversized red socks that were slipping off of her feet. She wasn’t wrapped in a blanket or sweater, wasn’t carrying a doll or stuffed animal nor was she sucking on a bottle or a pacifier. She literally came to us with the shirt on her back and a pair of socks.
I followed her face and feeble frame from a few feet away until Chen Chen was ready.
Kai had an impish expression familiar from her referral photos. I was relieved to know which baby was ours. Babies can change appearance dramatically. Hair grows or is sometimes shaved off to prevent lice. Illness can cause weight loss or improved feedings, weight gain. Kai’s referral pictures were taken when she was only four months and we were meeting her six months later. Even without the passage of time a photograph is not always able to capture the essence of a child.
Not so with Kai. She had the captivating look caught in all of her referral photos. It was unique, not quite cute or even traditionally beautiful but intense with hints of a cautious, curiosity. She had an old soul look too. Not the severe look of a catatonic child who is completely shut down but she did have far away eyes and looked quite serious. If she could have talked I might have yelled, “What are you thinking?” and expected a response.
Kai was only a few feet away and yet I was still scared, skeptical that the adoption process would actually work. All of the tension that had accumulated during the long wait, the worries, and the unparalleled crisis that had been Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) which closed the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) was still with me. I was afraid a last-minute catastrophe or change of policy would send us back to our rooms and the United States without our children.
I wanted to stand in front of the elevator doors and say, “No one is leaving this place until I have my child.” I wanted to lasso Kai psychically, protecting her from a distance until she made it into my arms. I wanted our guide to facilitate the hand-offs immediately. Even before I held Kai in my arms I felt something rise up inside of me. Maybe it is something women who carry children feel in their bodies. I had not felt it before. Outside the elevators of the Dolton hotel this mother was born.
When Chen Chen finally called out Kai’s name we stepped forward. A woman with a luminous turquoise shirt approached us. She handed Kai over to me immediately. I held her in my arms like she was a wounded animal. I didn’t know if she was too afraid to be cuddled or too tiny not to be held close. I held her on my hip and looked at her. I spoke the few Chinese phrases I had memorized for this moment. “Yo Shi Ni Mama (I am your mother). Bu Pa (Don’t be afraid).”
Shubie held the camcorder as I held Kai but his filming was cut short as tears ran down his face. He put it on the floor. He leaned into me and looked at Kai as I held her. “Da Shi Ni Baba (This is your father),” I explained, and handed Kai to him with the same delicate tenderness, the same sense of wordless awe that I had seen in my sister-in-law after she gave birth to her son Kindred. Shubie took Kai in his arms and that hallway turned into a delivery room where he became a father.
We took a few quick photos and Kai’s caretaker kept ducking and averting the shots. Without a translator we used arm motions to convey that we wanted her to come closer and in the photos. Kai’s nanny and I were wearing the exact same shade of aqua as though we had called each other the night before with the intention of matching. However, she was petite, Chinese and had long black hair and eyes. I was a tall blue-eyed Caucasian at least fifty pounds heavier. Standing together with Kai between us was important. I wanted Kai to know that there was a thread of consistency in her care however brief.
Vicki, the local guide and translator, asked if we were ready to go to our hotel room and ask the nanny questions.
“Yes,” I said.
I don’t remember walking the hallway or how we got to our room or if I carried Kai or her nanny did or if Shubie was holding her. I remember heading straight for the table in our hotel room where I had left a list of questions.
Families who had traveled before insisted that we prepare a list in advance. They instructed us not to let the emotion of the meeting Kai keep us from gaining critical details during the only meeting we would have with someone who knew our daughter. Our adoption agency stressed that we should ask questions about Kai’s daily schedule and routines so we could mimic them in our early days to minimize her confusion during the transition.
I faced the nanny who sat on the end of the bed feeling more like a reporter than a new mother. She held Kai, Shubie held the camcorder and Vicki stood beside me.
I asked the nanny her name because I didn’t want her to be some anonymous caretaker but even with the translators help I couldn’t pronounce it. She wrote it for me in pinyin on my tablet.
I wanted to know, what she could tell me about Kai’s personality and development during the first six months of her life so I could share those tidbits with Kai as she got older. I was particularly interested in her first weeks at the orphanage.
She looked blank, then at Vicki who told me that there were many staff people caring for her and she was just one of them. I wondered if she even knew Kai when Kai was a newborn.
She kept placing Kai back into my arms and I would return Kai to hers when she fussed. I wanted Kai to see I was comfortable with her nanny. More importantly, I wanted Kai to know that her nanny was accepting of me.
I asked the nanny to show me exactly how she held Kai and she stood up and swayed her from side to side, almost wearing her across the chest and belly as opposed to propping her up over her shoulder.
“How does Kai like to be comforted?” I said.
She placed Kai down on the bed, grabbed a blanket and a pillow. She covered Kai’s mouth, rubbing the fabric across her chin, mouth and lips. She held the pillow up to Kai’s chest. To be honest, it looked like she was showing us how to smother Kai. Shubie, who was standing behind her, looked horrified. The first thing he said when they left the room is, “We’re not covering her mouth. They probably did that in the orphanage to keep the babies quiet at night.” I didn’t know what to say but knew I wouldn’t be covering Kai’s face either.
To this day though, when Kai is tired, she takes her shirt or a stuffed animal and rubs the soft cotton or terry cloth against her chin and her lips. This is her signal, the reliable one, that always alerts me to when she is tired enough for sleep.
We asked the nanny to make a sample bottle so we could see how she prepared it. She poured the precise amount in a bowl and pointed to the water heater in our room. She also showed us that the powdered rice cereal we had was also sometimes added.
Later, we saw that the amount of formula in each bowl was not even a quarter of the amount suggested on the package which explained why Kai was just thirteen pounds.
We found out about her daily routine, when she woke, ate breakfast, the length and number of naps, when she had lunch, dinner and baths and what time she went to sleep. We wrote and recorded all of the answers.
We learned that Kai’s nickname was “Mutz” and that she liked to drink water when she woke in the middle of the night. She said Kai was a “good” baby who didn’t cry much, a big eater and that she liked loud sounds and music.
Then we shared pictures. I gave the nanny pictures of me, Shubie and our extended family. I told her that Kai would have lots of first cousins close in age, that she would have an extended Chinese family who would help us honor and celebrate her Chinese culture.
She gave me a wallet-size photo of herself and wrote her name on the back. She told me she had a 17-year old son. I told her she looked too young for that and she laughed. I let her know I Kai had two cousins, Jenny and Katie, who spent time at our house. Jenny was seventeen and Katie thirteen.
I have been Katie’s horse mother for years, I explained, since we were both born in the Year of the Horse.
“Isn’t it wild that Kai, Katie and I are all horses?” I said.
“It’s lucky,” she said.
“It’s going to be a house full of female horses,” Shubie said.
“And Kai will have a horse sister,” I said.
She wanted to know if she could get pictures of Kai and that she would like to be updated on Kai’s development and well-being. I lost my composure. I felt sure she loved Kai and was overjoyed that she wanted to know how Kai was doing, that Kai wasn’t just another baby, a part of her job, but someone she cared about enough to keep in touch with. She was filling me in about Kai’s past and it would be up to us to update her on Kai’s future growth and development.
In all of the time I had waited to become a mother, I had thought about Kai and of her biological family. I had read about orphanages but viewed them as cold institutions, places unfit for languishing babies who need one-on-one care and constant interaction. And yet, I had never thought about the women who cared for these children. I felt overwhelmed to be sitting in our hotel room for a half hour with an adult who had fed, changed and comforted my daughter. I felt embarrassed that I had not recognized her significance before. I gushed, thanking her for her care of Kai and her time with us.
Then I stood up, searching for the bags of gifts that we had brought to China to give out to the various Chinese officials, national and local guides as well as to the orphanage staff. I gave her all of the gifts, pulling out one beaded bracelet and asking the translator to make sure she knew it was for her in particular and to please not pool it with all of the gifts going back to the orphanage. Later Shubie said, “I thought you were going to give her all of your jewelry and hand her the television in the hotel room too.”
By the time she stood to leave Kai was back in my arms. Vicky, the translator said it was time to meet more families and help with translations. Shubie held the door open.
I waved good-bye and Kai’s caretaker said, “Mama Zygen.” I knew from the little Chinese I had studied that it meant, “Mama Goodbye.”
“Zygen,” I said, perplexed wondering what Kai could think or feel calling me Mama when the one she had called Mama at the orphanage walked away.
I was eager and afraid for that door to shut, as Shubie and I would be on our own as new parents. Our first task was to teach Kai, as maybe she had known for a brief few days after her birth and before her abandonment, what it is like to be cared for by parents’ day in and day out. We knew we had flown to China to start a journey that would last the rest of our lives. Kai was the one we had to convince.
”Bu Pa,” we kept saying, to ourselves and each other in English and Chinese, “Don’t be afraid.”

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