Born from My Heart
By Barbara Horlbeck '75
Part I:
FAMILY DYNAMICS
Each day this past fall, as I met 3-year-old Ellie joyfully bouncing out of her preschool, I was struck by her enthusiastic desire to share her day's events. She was bursting with new words and new sentences. She would hop in the car and, in her own way, share all the excitement and joy of her day. Each day I would feel a warm ache of wonder in my heart as I thought of the long journey her short life had taken and how, through a profound path, she was now my beloved daughter.
All parents take pride in their children's development, but Ellie's has special meaning to me. Ellie was born in China. She is like nearly 50,000 other children born in China, largely girls, who have become part of families in the United States in the last decade. The Wheaton community is reflective of this trend, not only with children born in China but from many nations: Russia, Korea, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Brazil, Columbia and others.
My husband, John Norton, and I married in our mid-40s, knowing we wanted to expand our family. John's 8-year-old daughter, Caitie, spent half her time with us and the three of us adored being together. Despite our busy lives˜I work as a consultant and researcher and John is a community organizer working on issues of social justice˜our time with Caitie was full of life's best whether we were traveling, visiting with friends, canoeing in the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area where we have a little log cabin, or just hanging out.
Shortly after our marriage, Caitie's mother moved from our home community in St. Paul, Minn., to the state of Virginia, and took Caitie with her. The move devastated us, and the discussion of family expansion was put on hold for several years as we explored new ways of being with Caitie in spite of the great distance. When we felt ready, we turned to the Children's Home Society of Minnesota, renowned for its work with children for over a century.
A door closes, a window opens
Loss is often inherent in the journey toward adoption. Laura '75* felt this keenly. She and her husband, Bill, wanted children, but as they pursued a family, Laura's brother became terminally ill. His treatment took precedence over everything else. After his death, Laura and Bill revisited the idea of children, and at age 40, Laura focused on the path of international adoption. She believed that her brother's death reaffirmed this path, opening the door for another being who was meant to join the family.
At about the same time, Laura, a psychiatric nurse, attended a talk by Dr. Nancy Hendrie, a pediatrician and consultant for the Wide Horizons adoption agency. Hendrie spoke of her travels to China and her work at local orphanages. The discussion changed Laura's life. That evening, Laura saw photographs of hundreds of children from China and felt a yearning awaken inside of her. "It was just meant to be," she reflected. The year was 1996, when Americans adopted half the number of children from China annually that they do now, but Bill and Laura fit the adoption requirements perfectly; they were over 35 and they were childless.
"It was a match made in heaven," Laura recalled.
Even a match made in heaven can spend some time in limbo, Bill and Laura soon learned. After submitting the voluminous paperwork required by the Chinese Center for Adoptive Affairs (CCAA) in Beijing, the couple entered an agonizing 18-month period of waiting. Sixteen months passed before they learned that a baby girl was available for their adoption. At first they received a photo of an infant girl; two long weeks later the picture and the process came into sharp focus for Laura with the arrival of more photos. Now 14 months old, Laura's new daughter was in a garden, surrounded by chrysanthemums and dressed in pajamas covered in countless layers of clothing.
"I could not believe it," Laura said. "The excitement was so great that I only remember fragments from that day."
In November 1997˜just six weeks after learning that a child was available for them˜Laura, Bill and several other families traveled to China. There, in Hefei, Anhui Province, they met their new daughter, 16-month-old Isabelle. Laura learned that Isabelle also made a great journey to join her new family that day, traveling by ferry over the Yangtze River and then by van to Hefei. They spent much of their time together in the hotel to begin the important process of bonding. When they arrived back in Massachusetts, all three knew the journey was just beginning.
Isabelle is a healthy, feisty explorer, her mother reports. Initially, she was quiet. She watched her parents' lips closely for words and slowly but surely began to speak. "Once she started, she never stopped," Laura said. Today Isabelle is an 8-year old third-grader who loves math and science. The family keeps networked with other families with children from China and has incorporated Chinese New Year and the Autumn Moon Festival into their family holidays.
Laura is keenly aware that she is traveling in "such uncharted territory [that] it is important for me to know that my child is not alone in her experience. There are others who share her experience. We run into them everywhere."
Part II:
A SMALL WORLD
John and I initially considered both domestic and international adoption, but we knew international adoption was the path we would take. Domestic adoption has undergone a major change in the last generation as biological parents gain more options regarding selecting which adoptive parents they want to parent their birth child. During our planning process, we observed a panel of birth mothers who had developed adoption plans for their children. One woman in her late 30s selected adoptive parents because of their love of music and passion for education. Another birth mother selected adoptive parents for her infant because of their interest in NASCAR racing and their love of cats. While this direction works for many people, it affirmed our decision to move in the direction of international adoption. We wanted to be judged solely on our ability to parent well.
Every country has requirements for adoptive parents, and we qualified for four of them: China, Vietnam, Russia and India. We quickly settled on China. For us it was the right fit. I had been giving tours on China at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts for several years and the more I learned, the more I realized the depth of the rich and remarkable history of China. And, in my years of global travel, I had been to China surreptitiously in 1986, standing at the Kunjerab Pass˜nearly 16,000 feet˜at the Chinese-Pakistan border. So China it was. We embraced the culture and found ourselves excited about the challenges of becoming a multiracial family.
Bringing my daughter home
The decision to adopt internationally is very personal. Karen '83* found herself drawn to adoption as "the way I chose to form a family" and to China because of "the way that females are seen in the Chinese culture." Her partner, Tom, has two children from a previous marriage. Karen saw adoption as "a way to both enrich my life and to be a mom."
That drive to be a mom grew even stronger on Sept. 11, 2001, a year and a half into the process.
"I had my referral at this point and I found myself nestled in the New York City office of an pediatric adoption specialist," she explained. "As I looked at this little photograph of my daughter, outside all the events of that terrible day were happening and I thought to myself 'I have to go to China and bring my daughter home.'"
One month later, Karen and Tom traveled to Shanghai, where they met Elizabeth "Eliza," born in August 2000. Eliza was well-nourished, well-cared for and healthy, and Karen immediately fell in love with her new daughter.
Two years after joining a local chapter of the national network Families with Children from China (FCC), Karen watched as her young daughter transitioned to her new surroundings in their hotel in Shanghai. "She was fascinated with textures of things like the bedspread or the carpet or even frozen yogurt," Karen said. The return home to Princeton, N.J., went smoothly and Karen was struck by how quickly the children become "Americanized." But she wrestles with the kind of issues Eliza will face as she grows older and realizes that she and her mother look different.
"I use the adoption words all the time and I tell her that 'Mommy and Daddy came to get you.' I also try to talk about the things we have in common such as the fact that we are both left-handed and both have straight hair," Karen explained.
Eliza's Chinese heritage will play a central role in her life in America. Karen continues to be active in FCC and wants Eliza, now 4, to learn Mandarin.
