Gasser Family Story
Impressions of China: Our Second Home
The two weeks we spent touring China has left us processing all that happened in such a short amount of time, and triggered a yearning to go back to the country of our second daughter’s birth. The connection I feel to China is as strong as the red thread in the ancient Chinese saying that currently graces the footer of my husband’s email:
“An invisible red thread connects those destined to meet, regardless of time,
place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but never break."
Author Unknown
While our trip to China ended within two short weeks, our journey to find our daughter took much longer. In August of 2003, my husband and I met with some friends who adopted from China. I don’t remember how or why we ended up at their house, but we left determined to follow our hearts. In the weeks following our visit, we tried to rush the process as if we were the first to ever attempt to do so. The application process was grueling, and only later after completing the entire process did I come to realize that the initial paperwork was in fact the worst of it.
In September of 2003 we shared our news with our families, who were excited to hear we were adopting. I was determined to capture their excitement as well as my own, so that one day I could share the memories with my daughter. I started a journal September 29, 2003, with the understanding that we probably wouldn’t get our referral for over a year. That meant that our daughter wouldn’t even be born yet. However, God has a way of surprising us, even in the most regimented and governed processes like adoption. We would later find out that our daughter was already born on September 22, 2003, in the city of ChangDe.
“To my little child I have yet to meet: I know that someday you will have questions you will want answers to. Some things I won’t know. Some things I’ll be able to guess. Other things I will have written down, so that you will have everything I have to offer. As I write this journal and begin telling you of our journey to find you, I know that you are not even born yet…I find myself getting excited because I know your life has probably just begun…I don’t know how much we’ll be able to find out about your birth mother, but please know that far away in a place called Minnesota your other mommy will be so happy that she’ll cry the day you are born.” Journal to Adria, September 29, 2003
After being cleared of any heinous crimes and coming up clean in the FBI fingerprint banks, our paperwork (called a dossier) was finally completed and sent to the CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs) in China February 27, 2004. Dates become the building block of sanity for waiting adoptive parents. Ask anyone waiting for their international referral, and they’ll be able to rattle off all the cornerstone dates. There’s even special abbreviations created by those waiting for a referral from China. “DTC” stands for Dossier to China. “LID” stands for Log In Date, for which we anxiously waited. Our paperwork was logged in on March 3, 2004. That date was so critical, as it signified the “official start” to our waiting period.
Somewhere along the way, we learned that the waiting time was reduced from a year to about 8-9 months, and then reduced further to about only 6 months! You would have thought we won the lottery. We grabbed for and held onto every piece of information we could get our hands on.
While sitting at my computer at work on September 8, 2004, our social worker called to give me the good news. We have a daughter! She’s almost a year old and is living in the Changde Social Welfare Institute in the Hunan Province of China. We learned her name was Chang Shuang Yi. The rest of the day was spent calling family and friends, filling them in on limited information we were given. Our daughter’s pictures and medical information was being overnighted from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Minnesota. We would see our precious baby’s pictures the following day.
The next day is best described by my exact words taken from my journal, immediately following our visit to the adoption agency: “You are absolutely beautiful. Daddy and I are just in awe of your pictures, eating up every detail and expression. We are so lucky to have five pictures of you, three at five months of age and two at eleven months of age. We know so much about you now, yet not enough…What a glorious day…(Referral) Less than one year since starting this journal!” Journal to Adria September 9, 2004
Unfortunately, as soon as we received and accepted our referral, we began another long wait. We needed to be invited to travel to China by the CCAA, China’s welfare department. We completed our China Visas and other paperwork that we needed to take with us. We packed and repacked. We bided our time in ways that I don’t even remember now. It helped that we had our five year old daughter to keep us busy. We made plans for her to stay home with grandparents while we were gone.
When we learned that we wouldn’t have our Guangzhou appointment until November 15th we were certainly disappointed that we would have to wait a few more weeks to see our daughter. Elation finally arrived when we had our travel date of November 4th.
Fast forward to the plane ride, which was uneventful and long. Given my distaste for crashing, I was pleased we made it safely. I still find it funny that our pilot insisted on specifying our flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo, Japan would be twelve hours and three minutes long. Within a half hour we boarded a second plane to Beijing, China.
While China was incredibly different than America, there were enough similarities and modern day conveniences, that we truly avoided feeling culture shock. It’s difficult to put my finger on why I didn’t feel overwhelmed in a place where I was a minority and didn’t speak the language. The sights and sounds were a vast disparity from those found in rural Minnesota. We couldn’t have been more involved with the Chinese politics and government constraints, than we were with adopting one of their children. Yet, the process was easy, the trip was fantastic, the people were friendly, and the country was welcoming. We made plans to return before we even left China, which is clearly not a telltale sign of culture shock or expectations gone awry.
We expected to observe everyday life in China, which couldn’t be done from our hotel room. There was plenty of time spent on buses looking out the windows, wondering about the lives of the people and children we saw. What a sight we must of have been, a whole bus full of white people with cameras aimed at their next victim. The most interaction we had with the Chinese public was with merchants on the streets.
The story of our daughter joining our family is her story and hers alone. I will respect her and leave the details of her story for her to tell one day if she chooses. International adoption is a miraculous and extraordinary experience, exasperated by an unfamiliar country, language, customs, ceremonies, expectations and bureaucracy. Therefore, each family and adoptee invariably experience the joy of adoption and Gotcha Day differently. How wonderful that no two stories are the same.
I am happy to share my observations and the interactions we had with the Chinese people, after our daughter joined us. No amount of preparation from the self-help section of Barnes and Noble or our Chinese tour guides readied us for sharing our baby with the Chinese people. We quickly learned that to adopt a Chinese baby is to allow every Chinese man and woman to intervene with our parental decisions. She was our daughter, and we could have easily resisted the advise from strangers. However, to repute a Chinese person would have been insulting to them, as well as a missed opportunity for us to learn how much the Chinese love and cherish their children. In America, it is rare to witness the affection and public support for children and their parents by pure strangers with good intensions. Whether sweet, rude, endearing, condescending, or helpful, walk out of the privacy of your hotel room in China with a Chinese baby, and prepare to embark on a childrearing journey like no other.
One sunny day right before we left China, I was standing on the streets of Guangzhou with my husband and daughter. I was desperately trying to take in every detail so I wouldn’t forget a thing, when I was struck by the feeling I would be back. I smiled, relaxed, and shared my thoughts with my husband. I remember saying, “I could do this all again.” I know he knew what I meant. We were totally absorbed in the moment. It was then I knew I would one day have three daughters, two of them Chinese.
We returned to the United States on November 17, 2004 to begin life as a family of four. A year later (December 2005), we completed our paperwork for our third daughter. We are excited about our impending trip to China, to reunite with some friends, shop for a few missed items, and treat our taste buds again with some charming food finds. We are looking forward to some familiar sights and sounds, as well as a totally new adoption experience. Little Mei Mei’s (little sister) story will be unique. I often dream of what her face will look like and pray the same prayer I did for her Jie Jie (big sister): “Dear Lord, Please keep her safe, healthy, and happy until she’s in our arms. Amen”