The biggest item on our agenda for the 19th was the required official medical exam for the three little ones... but the day didn't get off to an auspicious start. First, I woke up with a bruise on my hip from the extra-hard bed. Second, I had to wake up at 6:30am because I'd forgotten that the "luxurious" 8:30am start was for everything we were doing after breakfast. Third... well, the Pipsqueak woke up in a foul mood. The combined effect of all this was that despite waking up 2 hours ahead of time we had a whopping 25 minutes to eat breakfast... definitely not a "luxurious" start!
Luckily, the White Swan's breakfast buffet was ginormous, with an amazing selection of foods from both East and West -- so even in our rush it was easy to have a good feed. I was happy to find both watermelon juice and banana juice, and we discovered that the Pipsqueak liked tater tots (with the extra-crunchy parts carefully peeled off by Yours Truly). Things began to look up when we joined everyone else in the lobby only a couple of minutes behind schedule, leaving plenty of time for our walk to the medical clinic.
Along the way, we saw more fashion shoots -- and even ended up walking through a couple as we dodged the occasional car or construction site (obviously unappreciated, but the locals did it right alongside). We were all a bit relieved because, unlike what we had been warned about by adopting families who had visited Shamian Island when preparations for the Pan-Asian Games had just begun in 2009, there were just a few single-building construction sites scattered along our route.
Walking parallel to the river, we discovered the likely source of all the bridal fashion shoots: an upper-crust bridal shop so large that it seemed to occupy several of the old row houses (we all appreciated the cool air flowing out of the air-conditioned shop's open doors). Not far beyond was the medical clinic we were headed to.
The clinic's main lobby was a semi-organized chaos of wall-to-wall people in various states of disrepair and/or distress and/or emotional upset, complete with a couple of young kids rolling a ball back & forth across the floor. We got a few curious (and perhaps jealous) stares as we made our way through the crowd to a much emptier hallway lined with chairs & benches between closed doors bearing official-looking signs, with every available seat occupied by a woman holding a child in her lap. At the end of the hallway were some very welcome English words painted on a glass panel over a doorway.
On the other side of that door was an oasis of (short-lived) quiet, with seats & small tables and a series of small examination rooms/cubicles around its perimeter. While our group waited, I noticed a big Winnie the Pooh wall hanging in an adjacent room and hoped it was another good omen. After just a few minutes, several uniformed medical staff came in and began examining the girls one at a time.
Miri's turn came around and in moments everyone had learned that she did NOT like doctors. I don't mean not liking as in, "I don't like this, let's get it over with and leave" -- I mean "not liking" as in nonstop wailing... loud, nonstop wailing and screaming... loud, nonstop noise that could probably be heard on the opposite shore of the river not liking.[2]
The medical staff worked as quickly as they could, weighing Miri (kinda-sorta because she kept moving a lot), measured her (kinda-sorta because she kept twisting & bending), checked her vision (kinda-sorta because she kept trying to hide in Mommy's lap), checked her hearing (kinda-sorta because... well, you get the idea) and so on. She was eventually pronounced small but very healthy -- although AJ still doesn't know everything the doctor was trying to tell her even though they were leaning close to each other and he was shouting in her ear because she was holding her screaming daughter. To quote my travel blog etnry that night: "...length, 27 inches; weight, 7kg (up half a kilo in a week); vision, normal; hearing, very good; lungs... excellent!"
In our room upstairs, Miri made it abundantly clear that she remained displeased with all the medical poking and prodding; the instant either one of us put her down, the loud wailing would instantly resume. (It was around this time that I decided our hotel room had great acoustics.) We finally gave up and took turns holding her, then got her into the stroller as quickly as we could and set off for the meeting.
I refer to the next twenty-plus minutes as "The Grand Tour" -- no matter how hard we tried, we just could not find the playroom! Eventually, after encountering shops, dining rooms, and more assorted nooks & crannies than we thought could fit into a single building, we figured out which floor we needed and how to find the playroom once there. As usual, everyone else was already there & working, so I took possession of Little Miss Dontputmedown and AJ joined the paperwork party.
Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed (still do!) any chance to hold my niece but as any parent will tell you, hanging onto a crochety baby who does not want you to sit still, put her down, interact with other people, or reposition her to minimize back strain is NOT an enjoyable way to pass the time. I tried to distract her with toys but she fussed; I tried to sit down with her but she fussed; anything I tried... she fussed. Lisa took a break from the ongoing chorus of, "write your name in box six, check 'yes' in box seven, then write..." to give me a break but even she could keep the waters dammed up for just a few short minutes. I had just enough time to take one quick photo and get the one worst (of several) kinks out of my back before I was again holding a really, really fussy Pipsqueak.
I finally caught a break when all the wailing, screaming, yowling and crying caught up with Miri and she fell asleep. Unfortunately, I had just slouched down onto a couch, so I was trapped uncomfortably underneath her, terrified that I'd wake her if I moved. Eventually I was able to oh-so-slowly move into a more comfortable position and had a chance to enjoy watching the little one sleeping quietly on my belly until AJ was done with all the paperwwork (and thus presented her with a photo op she did not miss). Our consolation was that with the paperwork complete and being delivered to the Consulate, we had just passed another major milestone in the adoption process.
It turned out that I could've done jumping jacks without waking Miri; she barely stireed as we put her back into the stroller for the walk to a nearby restaurant for a celebratory lunch. Once there, we had another "welcome to China" moment (something I thought we were done with by then). Passing the tanks, buckets, and bins of live fish & turtles by the restaurant entrance, we moved through the crowded dining room (collecting a lot of curious stares) to a very large round table at the back. There was a big metal wok in the middle of the otherwise bare table, and as I wondered what they were going to cook for us a waitress filled the wok with steaming hot water from a large teapot and proceeded to wash all our plates and utensils! (I later learned this was the sign of a higher-quality restaurant in a country where public hygiene could be questionable.) The entertainment continued as she tried to move the bowl (still filled with steaming-hot water) and replace it with a very large, glass lazy Susan that she could barely lift, with disaster avoided only when several of us helped get it in place.
Lunch was good and featured a wide array of dishes. Even ith a bowl of congee and a plateful of Mommy's food available, the Pipsqueak remained sleepy (and very clingy) through most of the meal. The silver lining for us was that, despite several familiar figures nearby, she only wanted AJ to hold her -- a very good sign of the mother/child bonding we had spent years worrying about.
We came to another, much sadder, milestone after lunch; it was time for Lisa to return home. She had been the one constant for us since we landed in Nanning, our negotiator, translator, purchaser, arranger, helper, schlepper, baby holder, kid distracter, instructor, traveling companion, friend, and general helper-outer nearly every waking minute since. She told us that she had been away from home and her husband for two months, so the knowledge that they would be reunited helped take the edge off our losing her. She said he was an advanced math instructor at a regional university, and when I suggested she take his course to spend more time with him she laughed and said the material was so advanced that she couldn't understand it even with his help! We all took turns hugging goodbye & taking family photos, and then (with everyone ranging from choked up to outright crying) went our separate ways.
During a quiet moment, I took telephoto pictures of the few remaining blocks of old city across the river, struck by how different it was from the much newer buildings that had gone up around it in the past few years. (I didn't realize at the time that I would be walking there the next day.) I was distracted by a group of workmen constructing a walled rooftop patio on a nearby building; they seemed to be taking great pride in their work, repeatedly stepping back a few feet to make sure the brick columns were properly aligned. The only problem was that they were stepping back onto the very edge of the building's roof with no safety gear of any kind, and I finally stopped watching because it made me so nervous.
The Pipsqueak's mood eventually improved a bit and the whole group got together for another dinner at Lucy's. (All our emotional ends were a tad frayed so home-style comfort food was what we wanted.) After a short walk, the S and B families decided to go swimming again after dinner, but AJ & I were feeling beat and just went back to chilll in our room and take care of some laundry. We had a long Skype session with our folks (it even distracted Miri for a few minutes) and I took advantage of the quiet time to wring more water out of all my wet shirts & socks hanging in the shower.
The next day was especially important -- we would find out if the U.S. Consulate had accepted the paperwork to allow the adoption to be finalized -- so we called it a night relatively early. Miri and AJ dozed off together in their bed while I posted the day's adventures in our travel blog and then I gingerly climbed into my mine. I made a point of laying flat on my back, and fell asleep in just a few minutes.
PRESENT DAY: As usual, the images of the day played out in my mind as I typed this post. I remember it was the first day that, somehow, it felt like the beginning of the last chapter of our China trip. Maybe it was having Lisa leave us, maybe it was knowing the last of the volume upon volume of paperwork had been completed, or maybe it was how our shopping had shifted almost unnoticed from "souvenirs" to "for when we get home" or "for when she's older." I know I had reached a point where China felt equally familiar and alien; it was normal to not see non-Asian people, to be looked at (sometimes stared at) as a curiosity, to know I didn't know what about. Spending several years growing up overseas, AJ & I were familiar with not necessarily understanding the written or spoken language around us, so that also felt "normal" ...but then there were the flashes of different, like the crowds doing tai chi in the morning, the idea (not always joking) that someone's pet pooch might be a holiday meal they gave to a neighbor, a waitress making a show of washing dishes in hot water to reassure us it was safe to eat in her restaurant...
Looking back and sorting through my memories, ten years after the fact I've come to realize that I was more tired than I knew, more sore than I realized, and physically uncomfortable for more consecutive hours than any other time in my life... and that none of it slowed me down or got in the way of my trying to absorb it all with the knowledge that it was a truly life-changing experience that could never (would never) be repeated. I am so glad that I did, too... Miri has tiny flashes of memory that seem to match up with events during the trip but has been dependent upon Mommy and Uncle Brian to tell her about it, and it's only in the last year or so that she has shown real interest in the details of the story. She loves to watch the 22-minute video I made telling the story of her adoption (especially when Mommy starts to cry while watching with her) but it's the first-hand stories, descriptions of what's in a photograph, and general reminiscences that she is now showing more interest in than ever before. (Pipsqueak, if you're reading this, I hope you know that I'm always happy to share this with you on your schedule. You just have to ask.)
And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to run through the folder of photos from the 19th one more time, and then I need to get some sleep... 'til tomorrow! 
[1] A sign of how times have changed is the fact that images of Winnie the Pooh are now expressly forbidden by the Chinese government... ever since someone said their president looked like a certain yellow stuffed bear.
[2] We were lucky enough to have been "grandfathered in" under the old I-600 medical form, which merely required that a child being adopted be certified in good health and the adopting parent(s) pledged to get all necessary immunizations on schedule after returning to the U.S. The newer I-800 form that was already in use for newer adoptions required that the child get all missing innoculations right then & there -- resulting in hundreds of children getting as many as 8-10 injections in 6-8 minutes. This mindless bureaucratic barbarism was finally stopped late in 2010 when Congress passed an amendment to the Hague rules returning to the original, less cruel protocols.
[3] I have since found many such photos, impromptu or posed, taken by locals and travelers from around the world. Oh, well...
No comments:
Post a Comment