FIFTEEN YEARS HOME

 Wow... has it really been fifteen years?

The five-year anniversary of the trip to meet & bring the Pipsqueak home was A Big Deal on my blog... and the ten-year anniversary was in some ways even bigger. You'd think that fifteen years -- an actual lifetime for some people -- would warrant a whole series of posts of both the "On this day in China" and "looking back, looking forward" variety.

So here I am, finally posting about the 15th anniversary of the very reason for this blog's existence over a month late.

Funny thing is... I've been trying to write those posts since earlier this year, way back before the actual "on this date" dates. Despite that, I've never gotten more than a few lines in before abandoning what (little) I had written. There's something very different now, in a sort of bittersweet way.

Fifteen years after Miriam joined the family, she really isn't "my adopted niece" (and hasn't been for a long, long time) -- she's just Miriam, a massively important member (and the emotional centerpiece) of the family. China is much more an increasingly fuzzy memory than a reality now, and the difficult paperchase prior to that has finally lost most of its sharp edges and has devolved into "it was a tough time, but it's long over."

The world, of course, is a VERY different place now... in ways that frequently leave me flipping between deep sorrow and absolute rage on a daily, if not hourly, basis.  My sister's original plan to have a younger sibling for her daughter had evaporated by the time I was posting the 5-year anniversary memories, and to be honest the idea of a heritage trip back to China so Miriam could experience it for herself was slowly but steadily being shelved by the time the 10-year anniversary came & went.  (That idea now occasionally surfaces in conversation as something we would've liked to do but that is unlikely to ever happen.)

In some ways, I find that all very sad. There was so much more hope in our lives back then, so much newness and learning, so many more possibilities, so many experiences to share with loved ones. My sister has become a two-time cancer survivor, the 2nd time requiring 8-1/2 hours of surgery with two surgeons tag-teaming each other to remove and then rebuild part of her tongue, leaving all of us nervous & worried for days before each of her follow-up oncology visits (now reduced to just once per year). Miriam has lost her beloved Grandpa and her much-loved Great-Uncle Marty, and she now regularly reminds Mom that she absolutely requires her Grandma to attend her high school graduation in 2027.

There have been other losses as well... One of the families that was in China with us fractured a few years after our return, and since then the mom who shared the experience with us has passed away. Although Miriam's been in contact with the other girls a couple of times and a few holiday greetings have been exchanged, the family-style links we all hoped for never really came to be; now the girls are all in high school or college, beginning to create new lives on their own that are unlikely to include each other to any major degree.

And yet all is not sad, all is not loss. The very mundanity of much of what has happened in the past fifteen years shows how much Miriam ceased to be the adopted kid and became just family.  I'm privileged to have a close enough relationship with her to find myself frequently having deep discussions about relationships, love, growing up, how to deal with all the "stuff" that life tends to throw at teens, how to navigate the shoals of puberty, how to deal with both bullies and crushes. There have been times when she's cried against me until my shirt was wet, and times I've watched her laugh so hard that literal tears of joy ran down her face.

In short... life is normal (or whatever it is that passes for "normal" these days).  We have our disagreements and inside jokes, we share our victories and our pains, voice complaints about needing to walk the dog in bad weather and how some teachers seem to delight in assigning more homework than there are hours to complete it in, and scramble to figure out this whole "growing up" thing. (One thing has become absolutely clear to me: they cannot print enough money to convince me to relive that period of my life; just helping Miriam navigate all the need-to-be-learned lessons about relationships and love and body chemistry and all the feels has practically left me with PTSD!)

None of us is a Pollyanna about it; being adopted puts Miriam in a special category, a group of human beings who often have hidden and unmet needs & expectations. Things most people take for granted usually remain question marks for adoptees, and Miriam is no exception. I have a birth certificate that tells me exactly where I was born, including date and time of day; Miriam has an official birthday based on the estimate of doctors at the clinic where she was found, with zero indication of if she was born in that town or in one of the eleven small farming villages scattered around it, and certainly no idea of what time... She doesn't even have any way to know who her biological parents were, what they were like, what daily life was like for her birth family, if she has any siblings, the list goes on and on.

And yet... the kid's an absolute warrior. Yes. of course she's gotten guidance & advice from all of us, but she's the one who's had to navigate the questions, the odd looks, the first (and then second!) heartbreak over crushes collapsing or being snuffed out, bullying by The Popular Girls at dance for a year, betrayals by people she thought were friends, the horror of watching her beloved Grandpa descend into the abyss of advanced dementia, the deep sorrow of suddenly and unexpectedly losing the great-uncle she had built a special bond with in her first few days home. 

One of the first phrases she said regularly was "I hep!" when she'd see any of us trying to do something, insisting she would help lift, carry, move, or whatever else she thought would ease the burden for us. She has always driven herself to do her best in school, pushing even when repeatedly reminded she's there to learn, not to know everything in advance, and that straight A's are neither required nor expected.. all while dedicating 10-20 hours every week to her studio's dance team and her Chinese dance group. (Since the very first dance class, AJ has insisted that she'll support Miriam's dancing as long as it's something she truly wants to do -- and that she would be expected to stop as soon as she felt that was the right thing to do. It's Miriam's choice to continue putting in the effort, sometimes to the point where we have to remind her she really needs to reserve a few hours out of every 24 for things like sleeping, eating, and breathing.)

Miriam is one of the oldest and most experienced dancers on her studio's team, dancing competitively in large groups, small groups, and solos -- and winning awards & accolades in multiple national competitions. She's one of the dancers in a small group (now finally established as an independent studio) performing a variety of Chinese dances in multiple public forums. She's in the school band, the school pep band, was on the school newspaper, is an officer in the school's Wellness Committee (dedicated mainly to students' mental health), is a Student Ambassador, and is continually recognized outside the school for her talent as a dancer in both the school's annual musical production and the annual "Rock and Roll Revival" show.... and I'm leaving out literally half of all the stuff she does.

She's also reached some important milestones this year -- she got her learner's permit a couple of months ago, and expects to have earned her actual driver's license by the end of the year. (A certain number of road hours are required both day & night, so AJ and I are getting used to her driving us around. She's pretty good, but still hasn't experienced highway driving or night driving. I'm not worried.)  She's also begun helping with the youngest students at Chinese dance, and will be starting a paying job at the main dance studio teaching a class not long after I post this.... and this past Friday, at the first after-school meeting to prepare for the school's annual musical production, it was announced that she will be the student choreographer for the whole show!

We also just had a "wow, time's moving fast" moment this past weekend. The dance studio where Miriam had several of her birthday parties? Well, on Saturday she was paid to be the student helper at parties for two little girls turning 8 and 9. 

As for the future, Miriam has wanted to be a veterinarian since she was three -- with a short period of, "Maybe I should look at other careers...?" last year being the only time she wavered on that decision. She's been collecting information about schools, scholarships, job opportunities, and the realities of the field in earnest for the past year, and there will be some college visits in the spring & summer of 2026. She's run into a bit of a brick wall when looking for work experience in the field because literally every group, practice, and animal hospital she's checked with has said, "Come back when you're eighteen." Nevertheless, she's begun looking for opportunities volunteering or working with animal rescue groups & shelters in the area to make sure she's got some experience in the field long before she actually hits the campus of college, much less a veterinary school.

I still refer to my niece as "Pipsqueak" sometimes, but it's now just a term of endearment for use within the family. Fifteen years (plus) after completing the family, she's grown into a young lady who is more concerned about being a good friend, a caring person, and a conscientious student than about fashion and boys and "teenage stuff" -- although, believe me, there's a good measure of all that in her life as well. :-) 

There are aspects of her that we all joke about being able to tell which member of the family she got them from, but she is truly very much her own person. She dislikes being the center of attention if she's not dancing onstage, will go out of her way & inconvenience herself to be present for a friend who's hurting, is always working to improve her skills as a dancer without ever resting on her laurels, and is constantly the recipient of comments about how friendly, positive, caring, uplifting, helpful, trustworthy, and mature she is from teens & adults alike.

A little over fifteen years ago, I watched the Shadow Child of imagination vanish as a scrawny little girl who liked sticking out her tongue was placed in my sister's arms in a government office halfway across the planet. She was unsure of what to do with some of the toys we gave her, didn't know how to react when tickled, and had to adapt to literally having her entire world yanked out from under her every 24-48 hours for almost two weeks before ending up in a place that looked, sounded, tasted, and smelled alien to her.

These days I watch a young lady push & pull herself through difficulties while striving to improve her skills & grow her knowledge, all while actively working to use her empathy to make things better for everyone around her. Her yearbook from last year is filled with signatures from friends ranging from mid-teens to young adults all talking about how she's the friendliest, sweetest, most helpful, most trustworthy person they know and to never change.  AJ's job has turned into a bit of a mess with ridiculously long hours, so for the past couple of years Miriam has prepared her lunch for her every day, and usually cooks dinner as well -- not because she had to or was asked to, but because she wanted to. (She can actually get kinda ornery if someone has the temerity to suggest she does otherwise.)

I can't  carry Miriam on my shoulders anymore, there's a missing place at the table when we all get together for a meal, and her Grandma (now 91!) can't walk very far without help... but we are all very much a family, and Miriam is the absolute heart & soul of it all.

I can't wait to see what she accomplishes over the next 15 years, and the 15 after that.  (I may not be around for the full second block of 15 years, but I'm sure as hell gonna try for that and more.)

Fifteen years home, and more amazing by the day.

To the moon and back, Pipsqueak...  Always.