With some concerns about overwhelming the Pipsqueak (plus a few lingering concerns about bonding, based upon what a lot of smart & experienced people had been telling us about it for years), we kept the day to "just us" and I rejoined AJ & Miri at their house with Mom & Dad -- but we had asked friends & family to give us a day or two to settle back in and everyone understood. It was fun regaling our folks with all the stories that didn't share well over Skype and to watch them start to build a real relationship with their new granddaughter. (Who, by the way, seemed to think they were a pretty good catch as grandparents.)
The next few weeks were filled with meetings and baby gates and introductions and all that goes into establsihing a new "normal" that had been under construction for half a decade. Everyone was thrilled to meet the Pipsqueak -- the first time AJ walked down the block where she lives, she ended up with almost a dozen neighbors congregating around her to meet Miri -- and everything began to fall into place.
I dd have an unexpected but important lesson taught to me shortly after I returned to work. A number of the residents at the nursing home knew about the adoption and were asking me for updates and photos, and those who didn't know about it were curious about where I'd disappeared to for almost a month. I was explaining to one older woman that I had gone to China to meet my new adopted niece, and the GNA who was taking care of her stopped what she was doing, stood with her hands on her hips, and addressed me loudly and firmly the way a mother might lecture a wayward child.
"She is not your adopted niece -- she is your niece, and she is loved, and that is all that matters!"
It stopped me in my tracks, and I thanked her for the mini-lecture because she was dead center on-target... and from that moment forward Miri lost the title "adopted" any time I spoke about her. I never felt any kind of separation from her (from Day One I honestly felt she was as much my little girl as she was my sister's), the lack of direct genetic link meant nothing to me, and if anyone wanted to make an issue out of it they would encounter that part of my personality I refer to as The Beast In The Basement... but somehow I had been unaware of how often I was saying "adopted" while speaking about her even though it had such little meaning in the relationship.
(For anyone thinking, "But she's gonna know somehow, dufus!" my polite response is "DUH!" -- but that does not mean she needs to be addressed with a title that emphasizes the difference between our genomes and minimizes all the other very real links between us.)
Which, in an odd roundabout way, brings me back to the present day. My body includes several added creaks & groans that were absent in China, and I definitely move a little more slowly than back in 2010; AJ's hair is a lot grayer, and the less pleasant of daily life's realities long ago rubbed off the sense of euphoria that lasted from Gotcha Day well into 2011. Dad just turned 90, and Mom 86; for their ages, they're doing well -- but life at that age (and with parents that age) is decidedly different from what it was back when they picked us up that night at Dulles.
And the Pipsqueak... well, she really hasn't been a pipsqueak for a while, now (but still likes it when I use that pet name for her). Once easily identified as the smallest kid in any photo, she has grown like a weed, is an honors student and accomplished dancer (who is talking about becoming a veterinarian), plays the flute and wants to learn to play the guitar, is an artist with a good eye for design & color, retains all the lung power she first demonstrated in China, is learning to keep her very highly-developed sense of justice and right/wrong in check, and is very much a Tween -- and she has retained every bit of the empathy, desire to help, loving, and kindness that she demonstrated in her first couple of years home.
I expected this ten-year retrospective to be a pleasant stroll down memory lane, a nice way to strengthen the echoes of experience that may have faded over time while sharing them with my readers. What I did not expect was the combination of nostalgia, wonder, and melancholy that began with the first installment and kept growing with each subsequent post.
The nostalgia is rooted in the sense of hope for the future and euphoria at the succesful conclusion of a years-long adoption journey that I felt back in 2010. Nearly five years of anxious waiting, concerns over bad news out of China, of repeated expenditures for repeated renewals, of fear of something going wrong, and a sense of my family never being in control over our own futures all began to rapidly fade the morning of that last "just the four of us" breakfast in the main terminal at Dulles, and totally vanished when we walked out of that same terminal as a family with five "immediate" members. Between those two moments, I got to add thousands of miles to my travel logs, ticked off several items on my bucket list, and experienced a series of adventures unlike any before (or since)... a truly amazing time in my life.
The wonder comes from the almost immediate effect the Pipsqueak had on how I perceive the world, life, family, and my role in all three. Anyone who knows me well is likely to have heard me say, I may only be her uncle, but she's my little girl -- and the shared, mutual connection and sense of love between Miri and myself that has grown continuously since those hot, sweaty days of tyring to keep her stroller in motion is a constant sense of happiness and awe.
The melancholy... Well, some of what's causing that is probably obvious. I just spent hours typing essays about a time of almost limitless hope for a newly dawning future while having to worry about unemployment, pandemic, my parents' advancing age (and my own), societal upheaval, and a steady drumbeat of news about steadily deteriorating relations between the US and Chinese governments. I have an intimate sense of the desperatoin and sorrow the many families still trapped in The Wait are now feeling,. I've had to have in-depth discussions with Miri about how her feelings of isolation due to pandemic precautions are linked to her feelings of isolation due to abandonment a decade ago... along with conversations about how to deal with people who now want to avoid her (if not hate her outright) purely because of her genetics. AJ and I are both a lot grayer (and I'm a lot creakier) than we were, and our folks are in many ways much older than "just ten years" might sound like. It truly feels like I am living in an entirely different world from that of July 2010, one with far less hope for the future, far less sense of wonder, and very little chance of ever being the subject of nostalgia.
But all is not bleak, all is not dark, all is not lost. In viewing the events of July 2010 through the lens of the events of July 2020, it is easy to forget the difficulties, the challenges, the fears. The "shadow child" of unknown health and potential turned out to be a little girl full of empathy and caring and talent and intelligence, with a solid and realistic sense of her own self-worth and an awareness of the effect she can choose to have on others, all with an innate drive to Make Things Better. My father passed his love of history on to me (and to his granddaughter!), so I know the pendulum of time often swings outside the zone of comfort... but it then swings back again, and with a little care & patience I, AJ, and Miri will see that happen.
The little girl who once just looked at me quizically in a Chinese hotel room because she didn't know how to react to being tickled has grown into a young lady who makes me proud to be her uncle on a daily basis -- not because it is asked or demanded of her, but simply because that is who she is.
Ten years later, the adventure has changed... and the adventure continues.
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