The Future Arrives

When I write these blog posts, I never have the [wonderful, fantastic, amazing, loyal] donors to Packages of Hope far from my mind.  Without them, these posts would not be possible.  They give for the children of the orphanage, and I want to provide feedback.

 

However, I realize now that I have a different, and increasing audience – adult adoptees from Bengbu.  As of this writing, there are only a handful of them over 18.  But in the next few years, that number will be exploding.  They will be having some of the same questions as one brave young woman did, as she journeyed with me, or should I say more accurately - “I journeyed with her”, to Bengbu.

 

I wanted to take a few moments to take these children back in time, and allow me to do some reflection on discussions that were taking place nearly 2 decades ago in the late 1990’s.  While some may want to actually sift through over 380,000 posts made on Yahoo message boards such as A-Parents-China (known by many of us simply as “APC”), Post-Adopt-China (“PAC”), and the Bengbu Adopt group, let me share with you my trip down memory lane, and some commentary on the actual posts.

 

The 90’s were heady times!  With the newly found power of the internet, we all jumped on message boards, bound to find our answers to all our questions on all topics related to our impending adoption, and we were only too eager to offer our incredible knowledge, surely convinced that everyone would listen, and praise in agreement, to our rock solid convictions and our irrefutable facts.

 

Ha!

 

The truth was, we were clueless…. and we had a WHOLE LOT of spare time on our hands with nothing to do but wait until we could be united with our children.

 

It was on these boards that I first discovered what a “flame war” was, and that any discussion eventually mentioning God, the one-child policy, “Gotcha Day”, Co-sleeping, or deciphering those health reports from the orphanage, ended pointlessly, and with a lot of anger.  The anger was either written in carefully written non-finger-pointing-so-as-to-not-anger-the-moderator tirades, or in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS WITH LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!  Usually the moderators would censor the latter group, forcing parents to refrain from posting for a while, up until someone posted about the next controversial topic, such as which milk formula was best.

 

We talked about RAD, TB, giardia, Finding Ads, and baby trafficking.  We were quick to share with the group our baby’s health report, and picked apart every single symbol on every page.  We looked for any clues which would shed more light on our children, and just went crazy with anticipation.  As I read through these particular posts, I smile.  The questions regarding these health reports, including my own, seem silly now.  Upon receiving the report from the orphanage which showed the weight of their child, one Bengbu parent asked the group, “are Bengbu babies big?”

 

Priorities quickly shifted away from looking at internet bulletin boards, once the babies came home.  The computers were turned off.  Ours gathered dust in the corner and the computer table became crowded with baby toys.  We watched “The Little Mermaid” about 15 bazillion times until the VCR tapes just plain wore out.  We knew the joy and bliss of wading through puddles of baby formula spilled in every possible location of the house, and grew to love the smell of 30 day old French fries stuck in every crevasse of the car upholstery.  A trip to the grocery store was equivalent to climbing Mount Everest, as a Sherpa was needed to carry the huge bag of supplies that was required to travel more than 50 yards from the front door.

 

Man I miss those days.

 

I remember still checking the message boards now and then, and picked up on some interesting discussions on birthparents. 

 

Here are some of the interesting quotes I found, prior to 1999 –

 

You can feel the mounting heat of this discussion thread, and the conviction of the author  – “Shoot me if you must, but I think it is completely unrealistic to expect that we will be able to help our children find their birth parents.  It is not as though they were brought directly to the welfare homes by their birth mothers – the vast majority were abandoned (illegally).  Even if the welfare homes maintain records of our children for the next 20 years, their own records will not contain any identifying information on the birth parents.  It would be most unfair to encourage a child to believe in the possibility of finding his/her Chinese mother and father when in fact it will be virtually impossible”

 

I enjoyed reading the introspective posts on the topic of birthparents,

“i think this discussion is good .... but i have some real concerns .... not only about fostering expectations within our daughters that might not be able to be fulfilled .... but what about the fact that while i am certain our daughters' birthfamilies do think about them and wonder what has happened to them, and hope they have been adopted by international families and have good lives, etcetera ..... but what about any repercussions that might befall them should they be found to have abandoned a child ?? isn't it very dangerous, which is why it is done surreptitiously??? or am i just projecting?”

 

We often read articles posted by Korean adult adoptees, who were, in the late 90’s, already in their 20’s.  The posts I read about their experiences were very passionate and fraught with pain and questions.  Many board posters obviously had the same impression:

 

“It is very hard to read such an article by a person who was adopted and obviously did not bond well with her adoptive parents.  It is really hard to say what the future will be for us and the difficulties our children will have- maybe none- but some kids will struggle with loss of identity and grief over these issues.  We can only do our best – try to give them as much cultural exposure as possible.  But, above all, I think they really need to know that life for them would not have been great had they been left to live in an orphanage.  If we over-glorify the birthparents & China we may be putting unrealistic expectations of how wonderful the life would had they remained in their natural settings.”

 

Many posters grappled with what they should, or could search for, what they should hold on to, and how to gather and report the information, for their then infant children.  I know I felt very helpless and guilty.  After all, we knew nothing of China or Chinese culture, and we were only holding tiny babies in our hands, whose only need at that time was to be given food and have their diaper changed.  We all knew what being a teenager was like, what being a 20-something was like, of the pains and questions that were possible.  But what were we supposed to do, AT THAT TIME?  How could we possibly know what our fully conscious children would want, 17 years hence??

 

One concerned mother wrote in 1999, “Yes, I am very interested in this topic, even though our [daughter] is only 21 months old. She already seems to be a very bright, curious child who is also extremely sensitive and who has suffered more than one "abandonment" in her short life, so I don't know if we can ever be entirely truthful and disclose the little we know without causing her great pain. Don't most people try to sugarcoat the real story if it's sure to distress the child (or even adolescent)?”

 

Several opinions and solutions were offered, some from certified professionals, other from experienced parents, and some from adult adoptees, and a LOT from people with passionate opinions.  I don’t remember much agreement among the posts.

 

The commonality seemed to me to be love, guilt, and passion.  The phenomenon of “Finding Ads” seemed to be a big deal.  More than one person made a lot of money procuring those for adopted families.  It seemed to be one of the few solid pieces of the puzzle that people could hold on to. Although, I am curious as to what adoptees think of them now, or will think of them when they have their own children.  Then there was Baby Trafficking, which everyone seemed to weigh in on, one way or the other, almost as a necessity to assuage our own guilt on the topic.  I remember the term “Gotcha Day” also being very hotly contested.  There were vehement protesters that equated the phrase to “The N word” and demanded that the phrase never be used, and instead “forever family day”, or “Homecoming Day”, so as to properly contextualize the meaning.  And most recently, the relief of the one-child policy brought forth a lot of commentary by the adoptive community.

 

I realized I had a different perspective than many Americans, in that I traveled to China often, and with each trip gained a deeper understanding of the country and the culture, and witnessed the mind-boggling changes that I bear witness to in my blog posts from 2005 to now.

 

I saw the truth in what many had predicted, in how the China of many adoptees' birth, was not merely fading away, but was being wholly erased by the sweeping changes and advance of China into the 21^st century. Capturing physical clues as to the facts and truths surrounding the birth of these adoptees are being erased completely, and many are gone forever.

 

Such is the case of the Bengbu I have known, as I often wondered what a returning adoptee would find, or would NOT find, upon their return.  How much colder would the trail of their origin be, due to the passage of time?  Would their sadness be greater, or would their anger at us (their parents) be greater for us not having worked harder to gather clues in these passing years?

 

In the fall of 2015, my wondering came to an abrupt end, in the form of an email from a college student named Emma.

 

She stated, “I want to go back now”. 

 

I was about to find some answers to my questions.