7

Mylin's Day
February 18

"My" Little
Lessons

I am calling today Mylin's Day because much of what we did
this day was emotionally hard on us but we believe that it is
important for her. Today we will visit the orphanage that
Mylin comes from. We will also see the exact location where
our precious little girl was left by her mother. I can only
imagine how all of this will be hard for Mylin to comprehend
as the years go by. So as I write this my eyes are welling up
with sadness for what we don't know about her past. At this
moment I am sitting in the beautiful White Swan hotel. From
this desk where I type I look to my right and see the Yangtze
river immediately out of my huge window. The hotel sits at
the very edge of the Shamien Island in the city of Guangzhou.
Classic Chinese boats and Ferry boats pass by night and day
Across the river a city that lights up like Las Vegas at night
now looks interesting in the light of day. A long blue tugboat
is carrying sand or something sand like up the river.   Mylin is
laying next to me in her little crib sleeping with her thumb in
her mouth. She is a thumb sucker like I was when I was a
child.   At home it is early in the morning and all my friends
are asleep. Peter is out shopping. He is off buying a new
suitcase to carry things home. He can move around much
faster through the busy streets of shopping on his own. The
feeling I get when I feel on fire to write is here. This is a
lovely moment.

8:20 The three of us had buffet breakfast at the Best
Western Wuhan. We are running a bit behind so we are
hurrying to eat. Pete needs to get some money changed to
Yuan again. Living away from home is very spendy. I am
feeling nervous about today. We have been told we will not
meet Mylin's foster mother. Our tour guide, Shirley told us it
is not allowed. I am a little sad about this because I wanted
to thank her in person. I wanted her to see how much I
already love and adore Mylin and that she is safe with us.
There is another part of me that knows I would have had a lot
trouble seeing and remembering her pain if I had met her.
One of the Asian women who had brought the babies on
February 14th had burst into tears and left the room after the
babies were given to us. We Americans could understand the
extreme sadness she felt if she had been close to that baby.
It seemed to be a particular baby (not ours) that she had
trouble saying goodbye to. Babies have a special way of
tugging at our hearts and making us feel needed.

9:10 The people that wanted to go to the orphanage had
signed up to go a couple days ago. Today the fee to go there
became higher for us because some people decided not to go
but the costs (gas and bus driver, etc) remain the same. The
trip is $50 a person. One of the deterrents for some people
is that the orphanage is a two hour trip away and then another
two hours back on a bus. I think for some it was emotionally
too difficult. Pete and I felt it was important for both of us
to go. It felt a little scary taking Mylin there. What if her
biological mother ran up to us, burst into tears and wanted her
back? Would her mother be watching us at the orphanage?
We have heard stories about mothers and foster mothers
hiding outside orphanages and watching from a distance. I
couldn't help but worry as any adoptive mother worries. Pete
had a wonderful answer. He said, "If that happened would you
love her enough to let her go?" I answered, "I don't know."
Pete said "If that happened today and you truly loved her and
believed it was the best thing for her, I think you would let
her go!"   I didn't answer him but inside I knew he was right.
The other hard part for me was rhat I kept putting myself in
Mylin's place and I was looking through "her eyes" when I was
at the orphanage. I had a lot of the questions that I think she
will have and I felt responsible to get as many answers and
absorb as much information as I could.   Loving her the way we
do, we went for her. The possibility of our "losing her" and
knowing how important she already is to us, made us
understand how important her loses will be to her. At some
point in her life she will have questions about her past. As we
drove on the bus, Mylin settled in for a good nap. The bumpy
roads and the humming of the bus always seem to put her to
sleep. Today a Chinese government adoption supervisor also
named Shirley, accompanied us for the orphanage tour. As we
rode on the bus she gave us information about living in China
and about the places we were going. She told us that Hubei
Province has 1,000 lakes in it. She also talked about the price
of living in this part of China and how much rental units
typically cost per square meter. The cost is about 17 dollars
per square meter. We are traveling to Huanggang which has a
population of 400,000 people. This is where our baby was
abandoned and where she got the first part of her Chinese
name, "Huang." The China countryside is beautiful. We passed
many interesting things as we took in the images along the
roadside. We passed many farm fields which look somewhat
different than the farms at home. These farms looked much
more "hand worked" than our farms. Hand dug trenches run in
parallel rows next to their planted crops. Water retention is
needed for rice farmers to have good crops so many farms are
very near to water sources and look very wet. Crops appear to
be planted in smaller sections than back home. The landscape
is free of "machinery." Shorter and more slight people than
us appear to be working often alone; looking like solitary
forms in the middle of thier farm plots. We passed along a
hilly roadside area where we could see heavy stone markers
pushed into the hillside. It became clear that we were passing
cemetery plots. They appeared much more randomly placed
than ours at home. Out my window I saw a small group of
people gathered around on a hilly area. As we drove by I saw
someone throwing something into the ground. Ah, someone
has died, I realized. Right there in the country on the top of
the hill, loved ones were saying their goodbyes. I shook my
head as I thought about how odd life is at times. How people
live and pass and how daily living hardly skips a beat except
for the few who grieve. Thoughts of life stages or "seasons"
swim through my mind and I am awed by how our journeys as
people often cross one another's journeys. I hope I am living
my purpose and God's purpose for me. Our lives intermingle in
this world with so many others, if only for a brief time. Here
we were riding a bus to learn about the beginning of our
daughter's life and suddenly I am thinking about the end of
my own life...seasons! Shirley went on to tell us about our
daughters from Hubei. She said the babies from this area are
known for their good abilities. She told us to have high
ambitions for our daughters as they often excel in math and
science when they come from this area. She told us that they
hear a lot of information coming back from parents about the
successes of these girls. Their accolades include sucess in
the academic areas as well as in gymnastics, business, and
industry. It felt really good to hear these things and of
course we will keep our goals for her high.

11:00 We arrived at the Huanggang Social Welfare Institute
(orphanage) and were met outside by the director, the
assistant director, and other staff people. My first
impression of the building was that it was large, typically
institutional, and cold. From the outside of the building the
handful of children inside looked at us through windows that
seemed to slide sideways easily to open. We toured the
building and visited several of the rooms inside. The building
was typical of older concrete buildings in China. They look as
though they have become increasingly difficult to maintain
over time. The stairwells were under the rooftop but very ope
to the outside air. The narrow, concrete steps showed years
of use most likely couldn't appear clean anymore. I actually
tripped walking down a level at one point and was so relieved I
didn't fall with Mylin in my arms. We passed what looked to
be small, stark rooms for medical check-ups or faster family
counseling. The inside rooms we viewed all looked very clean
and organized. There were a small number of things in each
room. In one room there were wood box like beds in the
center of the room that were very much like built-in bunk
beds. The bedding matched and was quite simple. The room
lacked the feeling of a home and the warmth a family's
personality that is put into a bedroom. I imagined sleeping in
this cold, pale, turquoise blue room. I was immediately
grateful for my childhood comforts.   I noticed that some
rooms had space heaters for cold weather, no central heating.
In fact, the rooms were in the center of two outdoor hallways
that were all concrete. There was a slightly muddy courtyard
behind the inner hallway with land that slopped upward and
away from the building. This yard area was closed in by other
buildings on all sides. A tall apartment or multi-unit building
was directly across the courtyard.    We saw about seven
children when we were there. Four girls around nine years of
age were playing together in an interior,concrete hallway. I
couldn't help but wonder why these girls were fated to be in
the orphanage at their ages. They were all beautiful girls. I
couldn't help but wonder why in a world full of wealthy people
and excesses were there children living in such meager
conditions, without heat and with so few things..but most of all
without a family to belong to? In another room matching blue
cribs sat in the middle of the room. Around the inner edge of
the room thirty or so plastic riding toys sat neatly parked. I
didn't see any other toys and didn't see many other places to
keep them. I wondered what they used to stimulate the small
babies minds?   The doorways had cute animal characters on
the glass sections that would be welcoming for children. Pete
snapped a picture of them. Maybe Mylin would remember
them. We went up a flight of stairs to a larger room with
tables in it much like those at a McDonald's restaurant This
room must be the location where the children are fed. They
had covered all the tables grouped with four connected chairs
with plastic for us and they were treating us to lunch made by
a chef they hired to cook American food for us. We were
very touched by their generosity and their consideration of us
but we felt somewhat guilty that they spent any money at all
on us.

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