Day 12: Leaving China

We're checking out from the hotel in an hour, at 5:00 p.m., so this is the last blog entry from China. All of last night and all of today has been about how to get 5 suitcases of stuff into three suitcases. We're also toting a car/airplane seat and a baby backpack/carrier (which I needn't have brought, as it turns out).

Now that we are leaving, and as excited as we are to be heading home, I'm suddenly feel a weird and uneasy about the fact that we are taking Keira away from her homeland. She was born in the south of China, to a Chinese mother and a Chinese father in a Chinese city. Yet, it will be a long, long time before she understands anything about her birth country. In a way I think I'm grieving for her - the loss of a family, loss of a culture, loss of a country. I've always known I am "American by birth." Keira can't say that. In the future, even "Chinese by birth" won't seem right either. Within a year of being born she was taken away and made American. All the books I've read about adoption talk about the conflicted feelings the child will have as she grows. I haven't read anything about the uncomfortable feelings the parents may have. I don't mean feelings of regret or guilt; that's not it at all. It's something different. It has to do with making the best out of a bad situation. Keira will have a wonderful life; certainly better than she could have ever dreamed had she stayed in the orphanage and never been adopted; probably better than even if her birth mother and family had been able to keep her. But no matter how joyous the adoption story, every single one begins with a tragedy. Perhaps what I am feeling is that underlying note that will always be there, the sadness of how the story began, why she needed us to come all the way from America to get her. In some way I'm feeling the loss of family, country, culture myself; I'm feeling it for her.