TanoBlog

Day of Firsts

Today is Gotcha Day. If you read back 2 years you'll find that on this date on the 11th floor of the Gloria Hotel in Nanchang, Shoshi officially joined our family. She came clutching a pink bear that she continues to grasp every night for bed (and whenever she's feeling a little uneasy... like on the plane too and from DC).

Of course, 2 years on she's a very different child. This picture with the dandelion crown is from this past weekend. We'd hoped to celebrate with a dinner out, but these past few days have been pretty hectic, so we celebrated with some cheesecake and chocolate chip cookies.

We also had another first: Alex and Ben rode two-wheelers for the first time! It's been a long time coming, and we had to fall back on a little healthy competition to move things along, but they're both good to go! And now I can have the father's day I want: a bike ride along the Charles along with a picnic lunch.

Peering into the future

Ellen has a necklace that we started when Alex was born. It has two white gold hoops and a bead for each child that we added right after the child came home.

A day or so after we returned from China we left the boys home with the grandparents and took Shoshi to the jeweler to add her bead. While there, with a very shy, tired and confused little girl, we met a couple who also happened to be getting something for the daughter they adopted from China: a piece of jewelry for her Bat Mitzvah.

They told us how they'd combined cultures calling it a "Buddha Mitzvah" and how they'd taken their daughter back to China a few years earlier. It was wonderful meeting them since they were among the first families to adopt once China opened its doors to foreign adoption.

Today the New York Times ran a wonderful piece about a recent Bat Mitzvah of a girl adopted from the same orphanage as Shoshi 13 years ago, when she was just 3 months old. It's worth a read, and the accompanying video is worth a view. Catch it now before it enters the archives the Times charges you to access it.

All of a Kind

What does it mean to be an Asian Jew? It something that Ellen and I think about frequently. The fact is, most Jews aren't Asian, though there is a growing population thanks to the influx of adopted children from places like Korea and China. In fact, our temple includes a number of families that are, in some way, Asian, whether that's a parent who is Chinese or with adopted children.

Over on Nextbook.org, the producers created a wonderful audio slideshow in which they interviewed three families (including one from my hometown of Suffern, N.Y.) who discuss the issues of raising a Jewish/Chinese daughter.

There is also an interview with a woman who grew up just west of our home in Massachusetts named Leah Bloom. Leah was adopted from Korea and raised in a Jewish home. She is in a slightly different position from Shoshi in that since she was on the forefront of this trend, she was, pretty much, the canary in the coal mine, finding her own identity as she was straddling two worlds.

Both pieces are worth a look and listen.

A Year Ago

Monday, May 15 marks one year since Shoshi landed in our arms. You can watch the video on a previous post or relive the whole trip. I'm not going to go through all the ways our lives have changed over the last year, for that you'll just have to dig through the archives, but it's been nothing if not a trip!

For a little comparison, below is a picture from the evening of Gotcha Day and one from a couple of weeks ago (I'm sure I have something more recent, but I can't find it right now).

Irony

Most of the time when I tell people about Shoshi, where she's from and the process of adopting her, I get positive responses. But lately those responses have been tempered a bit by people saying "isn't China trying to end foreign adoption?"

Some of this has been driven by a recent report on 60 Minutes about the dearth of girls in China and the long-term effects of a male-dominant society. The story is careful to note all the factors that have gone into this problem, notably the presence of ultrasound machines (despite laws discouraging this) which tell parents the sex of their babies in enough time for them to abort.

But she also brings up the international adoption issue.

A lot of Americans and Europeans come to China to adopt Chinese babies, almost all girls. Asked whether, given the shortage of girls, the program is a good thing to continue, Zhao says: "I think it good for children themselves. But it is not good for a country to solve your problem."

For example, a hotel in Jiangxi province is filled year-round with families who come here to adopt.  60 Minutes saw people from Spain, the Netherlands, all over Europe, in the hotel. 

This is a great irony: while China tries to increase its population of girls, they allow — albeit for humanitarian reasons — 12,000 to leave a year; 8,000 to the U.S. alone.

During an interview put on the CBS Web site, Stahl notes that the numbers of girls sent out of the country through the international adoption program are very low reiterated that she only noted it because of the irony of it all.

The story itself doesn't make this clear enough, leading many people to conclude that the international adoption program is an important part of the problem. I'm not convinced that it is. It's also worth noting that China has slowed down the program. Where our wait time from being DTC (Documents to China) was 6 months, most prospective parents are now told to expect 11 or 12 month waits.

Also, the story started out in Jiangxi, specifically in Linchuan, Fuzhou's next-door-neighbor. In fact, one of the pictures of men standing around that they showed in the piece looked remarkably similar to pictures I took while visiting. I'm trying to get the full video, but I think the hotel mentioned abovie is the Gloria Hotel, where a year ago Shoshi was put into our arms.

Shoshi Video

When we had Shoshi's baby naming I produced a small video and put it up on this blog, but not many people downloaded it. I think it was just too cumbersome. So I'm trying YouTube.com. Let me know what you think. The quality isn't the best on this, but that's mostly because of the compression engine. I'm too cheap to buy a good one.

 

One Year and a Lifetime Ago Today....

It was one year ago today that Ellen and I received a phone call from Cawli telling us that we had been referred a daughter.

It seems like a lifetime ago. That little girl who we knew only through a handful of pictures and from a description on a piece of paper, this morning was sitting happily at the table eating a bowl of Cheerios and singing "The Wheels on the Bus" with all the hand movements. She can also do the "Itsy Bitsy Spider."

Oh, and she loves to dance. It's why she likes to go with Ellen and Ben to a local bagel store, just to hear the "singing lady." This week she grabbed the hands of another little girl so they could dance together.

One year or a lifetime? I can't figure out which.

Adoption or Business?

An interesting story from this weekend's Boston Globe Magazine (free sub. req) takes a look at the world of international adoption and asks if it is, or should be, more of a business. The author is an associate a professor at Harvard Business School and has three children, one of whom was adopted from Russia. The tone is not like the usual pieces on adoption you read, which are filled with heart-wrenching tales and beautiful language. This one talks in terms of supply, demand, markets and producers.

It doesn't talk about China specifically, and after reading it I'm still not sure what I think, but it's worth taking reading for yourself. I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on it.

The Final Signature

That's it, it's done. The final document has been signed that makes Shoshi ours in every possible jurisdiction.

Thanks to a judge in the Middlesex County Probate Office, Shoshi has her very own Massachusetts birth certificate.

We all walked in around 8:30, said hi to the clerks behind the desk, then went to wait at some tables. The kids got bored, started to ask for food, Ben got a bit belligerent. A tone that only continued later, and then 20 minutes later got the document, reviewed and signed it, then were called into his office.

Shoshi took to the judge right away, showing the endearing side of her personality. He read the document, signed his signature and POOF... we're done! I video taped the whole thing, which probably has a lot of Benjamin on the soundtrack saying "I want to look at the video!" Then we tried to take a nice picture, but Ben kept hiding.

As we were leaving Ben through another tantrum over his coat. He fell asleep on the way home.

Despite the bureaucratic nature of it, and the attention grabbing (Alex did wonderfully, by the way, sitting quietly, smiling and being otherwise quite agreeable) this is a moment worth remembering.

One Final (really final) Step

With the exception of Gotcha Day, the adoption process has been one bureaucratic step after another. Most are somewhat anti-climactic.

The day after we first held Shoshi in our arms, we trooped off to a Chinese office to do most of our paperwork. Then waited around Nanchang until we got her passport so we could move on. Most of our time in Guangzhou was spent waiting for the US to process her paperwork so we could go home. Then, upon arrival in the US, we waited at immigration until they called our name and she became a citizen.

Tomorrow is our final step. We will go to a Massachusetts courtroom to make her ours in the eyes of the Commonwealth. She is already ours in the eyes of the US Government and the Chinese Government, but there are identifying papers that we can only get from the state, and to get those we must go before a judge.

And then we should be complete in the eyes of the law.