Greg and Jane traveled back to China in September of 2003 to adopt again, accompanied by their six-year-old daughter Maya whom they had adopted from China in 1998. In the following excerpts from his journal, Greg shares the first moments of their life with their new daughter Gracie.
Tired and excited, we were told we would meet our daughter at 6:30! Maya has been bouncing off the walls, and is now upside down in a love nest she made with her feet sticking in the air. Jane is nervously moving piles of things around, and I am trying to imagine us as four.
We heard the name, Fu Zhi Hua, (Gracie), and she was handed to Jane. I was at the ready with the cameras. It's hard to tell just how cute she really is, because she is not at the zenith of happiness. Jane is having trouble keeping her in her arms. Gracie is struggling and reaching back toward the door she came through, reaching back for the only life she has known so far. She was found the day she was born, or very near it, and did not spend time in the orphanage really. She spent her first year in foster care with a 56-year-old woman, in effect her mother, living at her home. Gracie is scared and grieving, and we take her to a corner of the carpet to try to console her. Maya is helping by bringing out the toy that we handed her at this moment five years ago, and Jane gives Gracie to me for a try.
It is quickly becoming apparent that Gracie has decided to stay in my arms. We head for our room to escape the noise of crying babies. On the way to the room, Maya realizes that this is more complicated than she had hoped, that we are very occupied with her little sister, and she begins to cry. We make it to our room. I am hot and sweaty, holding Gracie close. At the door, waiting for the key card to let us in, I realize I am more than sweaty. My shirt and shorts are soaked in pee. Gracie is wailing, Maya is crying and writhing on the floor, unhappy with our choice, and Jane is feeling very sad and disappointed. My guess is that the foster mother is crying tonight as well. I stand there, soaked in pee, trying to absorb the intensity of this sweet and sour mix that is family life and feeling a tiny little calm center deep inside.
I never imagined that Cheerios would play a pivotal role in a major shift in my emotional life. Jane had the presence of mind to get them out, hauled around the planet and still in little round shapes.
Maya brought the Cherrios over as a peace offering and suddenly things got quiet again. After having a couple, Gracie decided to put one in my mouth! I don't need to worry about another mouth to feed---she is already feeding me!She feeds some to Jane and Maya in-between feeding herself, and we are now laughing and smiling and taking in the incredible beauty in her deep dark eyes. We are now four!
Love may be a choice, but there are other reasons to choose. Gracie has chosen, but I think the choice was for survival. Suddenly alone and scared in this big world, she chose a moving object, grabbed it and decided it would have to do. It happened to be me. It seems I have to hold her or be in physical contact with her pretty much every waking minute. When holding her or with her attached to my lower leg, simple activities such as putting on one’s pants take on a new level of difficulty. I know Gracie is about to go to sleep, and my break is coming, when she lays halfway across me and rests her head sideways on my chest. I pull her up face down on top of me, her head under my chin. We are chest to chest, and within a minute she is asleep, her heart next to mine where it will have a place for all my born days. Some choices are really easy.