Adoption Journal (9)

By Ridley Pearson
 
And now we're here forever, Little One. We have the passport - the visa arrives at the hotel tomorrow, God willing. We have airline reservations. We have hope. In our hearts. On our faces. In our smiles. In your loving eyes. Hope. It's why we came here; and with it now firmly entrenched in us, we leave. Out of Guangzhou, bound for home.

Home and hope. We hum those words, and they mean more to us than ever before.

Our days in China draw to a close with the first unbroken blue sky since our arrival. Gray haze hangs over Guangzhou like a noose - this air will choke this city to death someday. The sampans, Chinese barges and freighters steam up and down the Pearl River loaded with everything imaginable, especially sand - bound for cement companies, no doubt, or glass smelters, for this is a country quickly made of concrete and glass, all other raw materials long since consumed. There is an article in the newspaper, edited by the communists, that mentions China's population as 22% of the world's human count; by contrast they have 10% of farmable earth on the planet. They see a small conflict in those numbers, and are quickly pouring money into irrigation projects to increase their food output. They are the New York Giants of developing countries: defense, defense, deeeeefense. All the articles are cast in this mold: "in order to protect our emerging socialist economy," "in order to protect our people,"  - the plowshares that made the guns of fifty years earlier are coming back as plowshares. Too many mouths. Too many mouths.

But on the street there is a churning energy of get-it-done. Infectious. Attractive. We would come back here to live for a few months if given the chance. It's the same fascination with an ant farm as a youngster: How do they DO that? We watch. Intrigued. Numbed.

And we smile. At three-thirty on this day, the 3rd of September, 1999, we received your entry visa into the US. We have that paper in hand. We can go home. You are not only a member of our family, but a guest of the United States until we can effect your citizenship - about 18 more months, if the stories are true.

The tension is still in our necks, still creeps into our voices at odd times. We've been living right on, right against the knife blade, and we have the emotional scars to prove it. Thanks to our friends and our faith, we - the three of us - have endured. I had a chop made - a stone stamp for signing my contracts. On it is my business logo (my initials with the R backward) and beneath this, the Chinese characters for prosperity. That is what we take away from here: one small bundle of human being and the hope of prosperity for a family now awakening.

Paige, who is with us in our thoughts each minute, and on the phone each morning here, pulls us toward home like a satellite toward earth: we stretch to reach there all the sooner.

(part 9 of 10, to be continued...)