Nancy DuVergne Smith
The Face Next to Mine
|
|
Nancy DuVergne Smith
The Face Next to Mine
|
|
A
|
As morning light reveals the room, my nearly three-year-old daughter sleeps next to me. As regular as dawn, she comes into the room and whispers: "Mama, can I come in your bed?" If it's light, or nearly so, the answer is yes. I scoop Mei up and swing her in between my husband and me. Sometimes she's excited by the day and can only wiggle and play. Most mornings, though, she hugs her dog-dog to her chest, nestles her bottom against one parent, her feet against the other, then sighs deeply back into sleep. Two years after she has settled into my heart, I still watch her sleep like the lover watching the beloved in Romantic poetry. The beauty of a sleeping child is profound. With Mei, the vision offers rosebud lips, a heart-shaped face, and perfect, creamy skin. Her eyebrows are a pencil sketch; her shiny, black hair is splashed over the pillow. Her closed eyes are gentle sine waves. Tiny lines encircle her neck. I've observed such lines on other women. They are not signatures of my genetic pool, but of her Chinese mother's mother and before: a gentle vestige of life given. During the process of adoption, I let go of genetic ownership, a deeply ingrained notion. Part of the birth miracle is expecting a child resembling you, your spouse, your ancestors. People joke comfortably about the traits of their children. "She came by it honestly" means inclinations are borne of blood. Yet my family was built by proximity. The clay of my family is daily life, the face lying next to me on the pillow, our growth intertwined. We create one another: while I shape my daughter, she shapes me as a mother. My husband/her father completes the dynamic of our lives.
This bed now holds my family in slumber, but for years it held hopes about family. Once upon a time (and I underscore the distant, fairly tale quality of this) making love included the possibility of conception. The emotional jar of not being pregnant month after month sent me into the high tech world of medical infertility where sex has no place, but artificial insemination and surgery are at home. Again, though, the thud, thud, thud of lost hope - six years of it. I nearly cried when I first mentioned adoption to a friend, an adoptive father; it was an announcement of failure and hopelessness. Because my husband was not enthusiastic about adoption and I was ambivalent, we waited - for years. We waited until we wore out our grief, until we could look at the rest of our lives and see the possibilities, rather than the loss. Then adoption was an incredible gift, a chance to transform our lives. |
|
We waited |
Still there were reasons to doubt. We were approaching 40 and healthy infants who looked like us were in short supply. The word everywhere was that pregnant women rarely choose parents as old as we were. We were disheartened by the adoption attempts of one couple we knew. The first young mother who chose them used cocaine; the second delivered a baby diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome. Both times they made the painful choice not to accept the child. International adoption became an intriguing option. A workshop on the medical needs of internationally-adopted children was reassuring. Compared to the drug-related risks in the U.S., children from many countries are in fair shape and their initial medical needs solvable. So there were babies in the world. The adoption agency we choose introduced their services in a large meeting that profiled programs in a dozen countries. When we heard about the program in China it seemed intriguing, exciting, and just right for us. Mark and I have long term interests in Chinese art and culture and we included Chinese rituals in our wedding ceremony 16 years ago. We love to travel so the trip to China was a plus. I have been fond of many of the Asian students I taught at Wellesley College and I particularly like the sense of humor and expansive hearts I often see in Chinese people. We mulled the consequences of having a multiracial family: we would be visibly different so our adoption would be a public fact. We needed to be sure we could love a child whose heritage was different from our own. We needed to be confident that we could handle prejudice and teach our daughter to be proud of both her Chinese and her American selves. We decided this commitment would, in fact, enrich our lives. |
|
The |
The lingering question was, does adoption really work? Do disparate people come together and really become a family? Seeing adoptive families at our agency and at workshops resolved that. While families like ours don't look exactly alike, we share the love, jokes, rituals, and daily work of family life. We live with one another and for one another. My daughter is to me what I was to my mother: the focus of love, pride, occasional exasperation, and mutual growth. But before my daughter was a reality, we had such doubts. Beyond the personal emotional journey of adoption, we had to make formidable legal commitments. Without meeting this tiny person, without knowing anything about her parents or potential, we agreed to love her and be financially responsible for her. We knew only the location of her orphanage in Hunan province; her estimated age &endash; five months at the referral; the name the orphanage gave her; and that she appeared to be healthy. Traveling to China with nine prospective families - four couples and five single women - was a collective leap of faith. About to become first-time parents, we chatted about the heat, the 24-hour plane trip, and Beijing sights as though we were merely travelers. Perhaps no one wanted to talk about the uncertainties since we were committed - but to what? I felt braced for anything - even not getting the baby. One part of me couldn't quite believe I was about to be a mother. Intellectually I had accepted the risks of adoption and, in the final moments, I pushed aside the spectres: my child could be sick, plain, dumb, inconsolable, or worse - may not like me. Or I may not like her! Or I may not like parenting. What was I thinking of? (My cautious Southern relatives raised this point.) I was thinking of that void in my life that only a child could fill. As the fateful moment approached, I held steady with this koan: 'No matter what, will the rest of my life be better with a child in it?' Yes? Yes!
The day we adopted Mei was trancelike. All the prospective parents dutifully testified before civil affairs and adoption officials that we truly wanted to adopt a child from China and would treat her as our own. Another couple, also adopting from our orphanage, had received photos of our daughters and passed on a tiny picture of a squinting Buddha swaddled in yellow. Our daughter? After lunch we returned to our hotel room for final preparations - like learning how to mix formula - but we suddenly heard a commotion in the hall. I stuck my head out the door and saw a phalanx of people bearing two babies. They stopped next door to deliver one, then my daughter appeared in the arms of an orphanage worker. I had worn a fushia dress (a known baby favorate) and I spoke gently to her and stroked her arm. Then I called her Chinese name, Fu Kang Ning, and she raised her arms to me. Suddenly I had a baby! |
|
We were |
My husband and I were surrounded with friends just leaving to pick up their daughters at a nearby orphanage. Our room was filled with orphanage personnel, a translator, our agency representative, the couple (rather the new family) next door. Through the translator, the orphanage director explained Fu Kang Ning had a few health problems - mostly a respiratory infection - and had been on antibiotics. We should call a doctor; the translator did. Within half an hour a doctor was examining our daughter and telling me through the translator how to give her the Chinese medicines she was providing. At the same time the translator was helping to negotiate the orphanage fee, now higher, with the husbands. Stacks of American one hundred dollar bills were spread over one bed while the doctor and I worked through Mei's treatment on the other bed. An hour and a half later, we were finally alone with our sick, hungry, exhausted daughter. I learned to make formula fast, and soon she dropped off to sleep in my arms. The next day (a million watchful moments later) when we encountered the orphanage officials in the hotel lobby, one reach out for Mei. She turned away and snuggled deeper into my husband's arms. We were a family. Now our bed is the site of our family's laughter and, sometimes, tears. We make up silly stories, and watch "Barney," and struggle over getting dressed in the morning. We plan our days and dream about future possibilities, which are larger now that Mei has made us a family. I drink in her giggles and affection and feel a deep joy in the morning when she whispers in my ear, "Mama, can I come in your bed?" |
|
|
Take me home! Copyright 1997 Nancy DuVergne Smith
|