China
Russia
Vietnam
We met Annie - our daughter - on our second day in China.
We had arrived in Beijing on Monday night. The trip had been physically exhausting. We'd left home at 3 a.m. Sunday morning, having slept for only an hour or two after packing, weighing bags, checking packing lists and re-packing. With stops in Atlanta and San Francisco, we traveled for the next 25 hours.
This was a trip Dianna and I had planned for nearly two years. After 16 years of marriage, countless travels, rewarding jobs and the freedom that comes with being a childless couple, we had decided to start a family. We had chosen to adopt a little girl from China. And now, finally, we were on our way to meet our daughter.
We did not yet know that she had a secret to unveil.
We got up early on Tuesday to leave Beijing for Hefei, the capital of Anhui province in central China. Hefei is a sprawling gray city of about four million people. It is both ancient, with a history that reaches back 2000 years, and modern. Its skyline, like so many Chinese cities, is a competing mix of contradictions: dull, smoking factories; modern skyscrapers; and ash-colored apartment buildings with rusted window-grates, clothes hanging on lines outside the apartments and, occasionally, a flower box with a bit of green climbing defiantly over its edges.
Down on the streets, Hefei's sidewalks are crowded with Chinese merchants and shoppers buying and selling from a never-ending string of shops and stalls. People carrying laundry, building supplies, mattresses, livestock, bags of rice, and virtually anything else you can imagine, huff by on scuffed, creaking, well-traveled bicycles. Cars, trucks, and a sea of tiny maroon taxis flow past each other in the intricate motion of a slow, churning river that threatens but never rises past its banks.
Few if any Westerners are visible on these streets, yet a parade of Americans with Chinese babies draws limited attention. The people of Hefei have work to do and they continue on their way with little distraction.
The Hefei Holiday Inn is a relatively luxurious 29-story Western hotel in the heart of the city, near Xiao Yao Jin Park, Hefei's largest. The hotel lobby was decorated lavishly with red and gold Chinese New Year decorations when we arrived late Tuesday morning. Rowena, our Chinese coordinator (a tireless, dedicated hero to many of us), checked us in as a group. We were traveling with five couples and a single mother, all of us adopting children from Anhui province. We waited for instructions from Rowena, and then headed to our individual rooms to get settled.
When Dianna and I opened the door to our room, the tiny metal crib sitting at the foot of the bed caught us by surprise, oddly. For months, we had talked about the idea of adopting a child. We had consulted experts, read books, talked with other parents. We had completed volumes of paperwork. We had tirelessly explained the process to friends and family. Now, we were 90 minutes from the moment when we would meet our daughter - and she would meet us - for the first time. The tense balance of anxiety and anticipation was almost paralyzing.
We sat in the room, quiet, not certain what to say. We had heard so many stories about meeting these children. We knew from months of preparation what to expect, yet so much seemed uncertain at that moment. Would she be laughing, crying, or withdrawn? Would she be healthy and happy, or frail and sad? Would she trust us intuitively, or fear us as strangers? Would she even be the same child whose pictures had been sent to us? We could not know any of this, of course, but the countdown had begun and the one thing we did know was that, by the end of the afternoon, our lives would be irrevocably changed.
2:20 p.m. was the magic moment - the moment when we were to go to a conference room to wait for the girls to arrive. Most of them had been born in Tongling City, some three hours southeast of Hefei, on the banks of the Yangtze River. Together, the "Tongling girls" were being driven by bus to the capital city that morning to meet their new parents, along with two other girls from Hefei.
Dianna and I stepped off the elevator onto the fourth floor of the hotel, and turned the corner toward the conference room. Our stomachs were tossing. Our hands, clamped tightly in each other's, were clammy. Neither of us spoke.
We entered the room and were surprised. The babies were already there! We spotted Han Cui - soon to be Annie Liang - in an instant. We had memorized every detail of her from the photos the orphanage had sent two months before, and there was no question who she was: her big dark eyes and rosebud lips cried out to us the moment we laid eyes on her.
The room erupted into chaos. The girls began screaming as they were handed to their new parents. The nannies were trying to comfort them. The mothers were trying to cuddle them. And the dads, in shell shock, just kept themselves busy with cameras and videos.
We had been prepared - by our adoption agency, our pediatrician, other parents with children from China - for the difficulty of this first moment, but it was still painful to endure. We knew we loved this little girl. We knew we would care for her always and forever. But she knew none of this, and was frightened.
The experience lasted the entire afternoon, punctuated by fits of crying and smiles so subtle we may have imagined them. We completed yet more paperwork, met with Chinese officials, posed for photos and presented gifts wrapped in red paper and gold bows -- but then, finally, we returned to our room to be alone, for the first time, as a family.
It was an amazing moment. We were overcome by feelings of awe and exhaustion. We just sat in the room, passing this beautiful little girl back and forth, one holding her while the other stared at her, in disbelief that she was ours.
I pulled myself away to fix my first bottle of formula. I don't remember anything ever being more important. It was essential that I get this first bottle just right for daddy's little girl. She pronounced the effort "good" by sucking it down in about two minutes flat!
Then, just like that, she fell asleep. She was spent. Her face was flushed. Her skin and hair were sweaty. It had been an overwhelming day for her. Dianna carried her over to the crib and placed her on the mattress. I pulled the cover up to her chin, and we just stood there in silence. We were a family. She was our little girl. It was as perfect a moment as I think we'll ever experience.
She slept until about 4:30 the next morning, and awoke quietly. We heard only a faint whimper, and both bolted out of bed, racing each other across the still-dark room to get the first look at her. She stared up at us with big, deep eyes that seemed to ask, "Can I trust you to always be here when I need you?" As I looked down at her, a song stepped quietly from my memory, with lyrics so fitting they filled my own eyes with tears:
Lady, are you happy? Do you feel the way I do?
Are there meanings that you've never seen before?
Lady, my sweet lady, I just can't believe it's true,
And it's like I've never ever loved before.
Close your eyes and rest your weary mind.
I promise I will stay right here beside you.
Today our lives were joined, became entwined.
I wish that you could know how much I love you.
Lady, are you crying? Do the tears belong to me?
Did you think our time together was all gone?
Lady, my sweet lady, I'm as close as I can be.
And I swear to you our time has just begun.
That sense, that our time had just begun, surrounded us like a warm blanket. I've never known things to be so right, so full of promise, as I did that early dawn in China.
We remained there for nearly two more weeks, leaving Hefei six days later for Guangzhou where we shopped for clothes, bought souvenirs, took photos on the famous "red couch" at the White Swan Hotel, pledged at the U.S. consulate to love and care for our children and, finally, received travel visas to bring our children home. The time we spent together as a brand new family was priceless. There were no distractions. We focused only on Annie. By the time we left for home, her spirited toddler's personality had burst forth and we were having the single best time of our lives.
We've now been home for two weeks, and our sweet lady is doing amazingly well. She laughs, and makes us laugh even more. Her curiosity is insatiable. She grows in new ways literally every day.
Most remarkably, she has let us in on her carefully held secret. This little girl has filled our lives and our home in ways we never could have imagined when she was only an idea, a dream - because, as she has tenderly revealed to us, no dream compares to actually meeting Annie.
There is no other way to experience the wonder of who she is.
Cincinnati, Ohio - January 30, 2004
