Just a quick note... We are aware that while "Gotcha Day" is a common name for the time when adopters and adoptees finally come together, there are folks who find the term inappropriate, or simplistic, or even insulting. This family does not look at "gotcha!" as an expression of rescuing a baby from somewhere, nor do we consider it a term of ownership, cultural superiority, or any of the other demeaning or denigrating things that I know some others do. It is the term we use, the term that Miri uses, and it is no more than an expression of "AT LAST!" after the multi-year emotional roller coaster we endured while waiting for the Pipsqueak's adoption to be acutalized & finalized. I use the term here because it is NOT a negative term in MY family; if it is in yours then please substitute whatever terminology you find preferable & most appropriate -- and allow us the right to do the same.
Second note: "SWI" refers to "Social Welfare Institute" -- the facility that operated as Miri's orphanage (among other purposes).
One thing I do remember was picking up my passport, which had been in the leg pocket of the cargo pants I was wearing the previous day, and finding it was still damp with my sweat (and the covers were beginning to delaminate). I grabbed my wallet... yep, still damp, along with all the money inside.
I just puttered aroudn the room while AJ reviewed her adoption paperwork (and reviewed her adoption paperwork and reviewed her adoption paperwork and reviewed her adoption paperwork and...), making sure I'd completed our daily entry in the website we were using to let people follow along on our adventure and so on, and I took a few photos out our window.
I had some questions about the very green swimming pool I saw on the patio below us, but enjoyed the panoramic view of downtown Nanning. One thing that struck us both was that there was literally no angle I could find out the window for any kind of photo that didn't involve a very long zoom lens that did not include at least one active construction crane. Everywhere we looked, the city was a-building, with some work even being done directly in the river to create berms for new land.
Time ticked on, and we all returned to our rooms for one more review of the paperwork. AJ & I had a Skype call with our folks, wishing Dad a happy 80th birthday (and mom a happy 76th a couple of days early) and joking that we were about to go pick up a heck of a birthday present for him. I also found an email from the PandaPhone folks, apologizing for not being able to keep up with me as I moved around (turns out they'd send the phone to the first hotel but the staff had looked under AJ's name and not mine)... and saying sorry but they were giving up and issuing me a full refund. (Dude, there's nothing like finding out the cell phone you were depending upon for emergencies wasn't going to be available just before you go meet the newest member of the family on the opposite side of the world from where you live...!)
But then it was nearly 3:00 and Lisa was waiting in the lobby so we all gathered our things, everyone did one last "do you have- oh, good" check, and we piled onto the bus to go to the Social Services office and meet the kiddos. We were surprised to find ourselves pulling into another hotel, but the government offices were indeed in the same building and after some confusion over how to cram everyone into the two tiny, un-air-conditioned elevators, made our way down a hall to a large room that had obviously once been two separate hotel rooms. There was a sort of play gym on one side of the room with a couple of hobbyhorses (which the S and B girls had some fun with, burning off more nervous energy) and a few couches that looked like they'd been there a while. Lisa went back downstairs to meet the orphange people and we were all on our own.
Everyone settled in and for a while there was a lot of conversation about camera angles, who'd take which pictures, what do we say, and a lot of nervous chit-chat as the last few minutes ticked by. I took pictures in the room, I took pictures out the window, paced back and forth... The nearly five years leading up to this point in time had been really, really tough -- but those last 20 minutes had every nerve ending buzzing.
There were a couple of times when I got curious about noises in the hall so I stuck my head out the door to see what was going on. The 3rd or 4th time I did that, I saw a group of people coming from the elevators, and Lisa was in the front of the group, and... hey, is that...?
I ran back into the room shouting, "I SEE BABIES!" and about 15 seconds later the group came in. The other two girls were a little older than Miri and were introduced to their new families first, and then at exactly 3:33pm Nanning time, after nearly five years of emotional roller-coaster rides, repeated billings for papers never meant to expire, multiple agency closings and realignments, multiple reviews of AJ's home and job and lifestyle and finances and relationships, and more desperate moments than I care to count... the 13-month-old little girl with the temporary name of Lu Ming Tong was placed in AJ's arms for the first time.
I finally got to hold my niece for the first time, just for a few moments, and as thrilled as I was I have to admit she kinda ignored me; I was just another knee to sit on while she watched all the interesting stuff going on around her. We wanted to be sure AJ & the Pipsqueak had a good chance to bond as early as possible so I (somewhat reluctantly) handed her back to my sister, just moments before the government photographer came in to take each family's official adoption portrait. (I was not included because I was an uncle and not a parent, not the first time that exclusion left me watching and/or waiting on the outside -- and I had no disagreement with that.)
While all this was going on, the first thing AJ and I noticed was Miri's tongue. It was like a separate life form moving around of its own volition... sticking straight out, moving back & forth, poking out of one side of her mouth, wiggling out the other side... We asked (with Lisa as translator) and one of the SWI staff laughingly replied, "It's her hobby!" Since she'd always done it, we figured we'd just roll with it and see what happened.
It was a few minutes after that, as the semi-organized chaos was winding down, that something happened. Miri had been observing everything going on around her, not paying attention to any one action or person, and even though she was in AJ's arms it was obvious that her new Mommy was just another person in the room. But then, as AJ stood off to one side and the SWI staff began to leave, I watched the Pipsqueak take a good... long... look at my sister. Not a glance, not a stare; she just took almost a full minute to carefully study AJ's face to the exclusion of everything else. With her tongue sticking out at a variety of angles, Miri seemed to carefully analyze what she was seeing, and seemed aware that she wasn't going to be leaving with the people who brought her in -- and I could almost see something click into place, almost hear her thinking, "So you're gonna be my mother? Okay... Yeah, you'll do," From that moment on, no matter who was holding her or cooing over her or trying to feed her or just paying attention to her, Miri would keep an eye out for AJ and always reach for her when she wanted comforting. We'd been expecting weeks of bond-building, but the Pipsqueak seemed to have decided to get it over with and see how this new Mommy thing worked right off the bat.With all the obvious distractions, none of us had remembered the elevators until we reached them -- this time with three more going down than had barely managed to squeeze into the two vertially mobile mini-saunas coming up. We managed to do it (somehow, I still don't really know how) and as soon as we got to the doors the two dads & I ran out onto the little grassy circle in front of the door to get a group photo of the new Mommy/Daughter/Sibling sets. The ladies all stood there blinking in the bright (hot) sunlight while the menfolk fired off several dozen photos each, and then it was back into the bus... and back into traffic.
After a few minutes of winding the bus through traffic that reminded me of attempting to herd cats, our driver pulled over and stopped at what looked like a typical strip mall -- except this one had an almost-empty parking lot blocked off by a gate with an armed guard. Lisa had a short talk with the guard & showed him some papers, the gate was opened, and we rolled up to a small supermarket so that we could pick up diapers, formula, and so on. There were a lot of familiar items, a lot more unfamiliar items, and a few minutes during which we all bemoaned the fact that none of us had bothered trying to learn the Chinese characters for "diaper" but it was actually fun to go shopping with the kiddos for the first time (made all the easier by us being almost the entire clientele of the store).
AJ eventually settled on a package of what looked like the right size of diaper (note for future posts: they weren't) and we all got back on the bus with bags of diapers, formula, candy, and bottled water. Miri seemed fascinated by the passing scene, both going to the supermarket and then to the hotel, and seemed to enjoy watching the world go by from the vantage point of her new Mommy's lap. (Seat belts? We don' need no steenkin' seat belts!) When we got back to the hotel, AJ put Miri down on one of the beds and to our shock she stood up -- something we'd been warned she might not yet be able to do. The entire time, Miri seemed to be studying the bedsheets, and then plopped down on them and ran her hands back and forth over the texture, just taking it all in while we began to realize just how much she had been deprived of sensory input in the SWI.
After a few minutes, Miri simply folded herself up into a small package, plonked herself down face-first on the sheet, and kind of just retreated into herself for a few minutes. AJ gently coaxed her to open back up, and then she became more interested in the rest of the hotel room. We put a few of the toys we'd brought from home on the bed with Miri, and she immediately rejected the small blanket with an embroidered Pooh face in the middle; it seemed to scare her, and she tossed it off the bed. The one thing she seemed most curious about was a set of big, brightly colored plastic keys, and she sort of played with those for a while we took turns cleaning up a little. Our first diaper change went better than expected -- Oops, these diapers are a size too big... Okay, we can make do -- and then it was time to go downstairs for dinner.
Things seemed to be going just a tad rougher for the other two families -- the girls were older and had more adjusting to do -- but everyone was glad to have food (and plenty of it) and we quickly discovered that Miri had no problems communicating what she wanted or when she wanted it. AJ would give her a spoonful of congee but if she got involved talking to someone, Miri would reach over and pull on her arm until another spoonful was made available. Eventually everyone had eaten their fill and we all just sort of sat back to take in how different things were from just a few hours earlier, and Miri seemed very content to cuddle up to Mommy and take a nice post-dinner rest right there. The cuddling continued back in our room, where the Pipsqueak was introduced to her thoroughly smittend grandparents via Skype.
AJ got her new daughter ready for bed while I did the usual evening computer-blog-camera upload routine, and we both kind of just stood there watching her as she slowly fell asleep. I was surprised at the level of comfort I felt with the situation. I was only six when AJ was born, so I had no real experience taking care of a very young child, but somehow everything felt like it was going to be alright. I think that maybe part of it was that we'd finally achieved a goal many years in the making, and that I'd come to really want this little girl in my family almost as much as my sister did, so I wasn't too nervous thinking ahead to diapers and feeding and crying and all that other fun stuff that comes along with new human beings.
It was getting late so AJ and I got ready for our first night with a baby in the room... but neither of us had been asleep very long when we were awakened by Miri whimpering in the crib. AJ very naturally reached over, picked her up, and just sat holding the Pipsqueak -- who had a surprised look on her face, and then quickly settled into Mommy's hug until slowly dozing off. (She also showed a tendency to assume positions that had little to do with which way was up, our first hint that she had a sometimes unique relationship with gravity... but more on that in another post.)
It wasn't too long before AJ was able to put Miri back into the crib, and the Pipsqueak actually slept through most of the night after that -- it was like she'd gotten the reassurance she needed and thus didn't need any more for a few hours. We quietly watched her sleep, whispering back & forth about how cute she looked and how good it was to finally have her with us until we remembered how soon the morning wake-up call would be coming. AJ fell back asleep quickly, but as usual I had some thoughts to sort through before getting down to the serious business of dreaming.
And now a quick present-day note... We all had been making plans for a very special 10th Gotcha Day anniversary to mark not only a full decade with the Pipsqueak home, but also Dad's 90th birthday, and to recognize all the amazing milestones (some unexpected) and changes (some not for the better) during that period. AJ & I were even thinking of finding a place where all three families could get together for a couple of days...
...and then 2020 pretty much turned into a low-budget disaster movie, and that was the end of that.
However, as part of our highly modified plans, earlier today there was a decorated, loud parade of cars with several of our MIT families wishing Dad a happy 90th, Miri a happy 10th Gotcha Day, and Mom a happy almost 86th (her birthday is the 14th). What we didn't know was that the four families participating in the caravan, plus another who joined in from North Carolina via Zoom, had put together a mini-party complete with home-baked cookies & cupcakes, birthday cards, and all kinds of other good stuff. The result was a CDC-compliant party out in Mom & Dad's front yard (complete with social distancing, masks, et al.) that proved to be a truly amazing and happy surprise. I'll do more of a post about it when I finish my "ten years ago" series in a couple of weeks, but until then...
Y'all know who you are, and THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart. You made what could've been 
a tough day into something really special for all of us. It's wonderful to have friends like you.
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