Blog's Up and running (for now)

November 5 2008
10 AM
On the bus Zunyi from Guiyang
Election Day in the US is coming to a close. I guess this is a time for significant changes: one writ large for the country and one writ small and personal for me.
Quin has been in our family for three days. Every day she comes out of her shell a bit more. It is a wonderful. But it can also be a little painful too.
My first impressions recall a child that carried her small compact body with a military calm and a quiet sadness. Her short hair with its unevenly butchered bangs lay above forlorn large brown puppy dog eyes. For our first 24-48 hours together she maintained a grim and virtually silent countenance. She did not know what to make of this sudden displacement from orphanage to us. And I can’t guess how many similar traumatic upheavals her short life already had.

Watching her, I noted that she was clearly a well trained little girl. So much order and restraint in a 4 year old is a sad thing to see. She had her rituals which seemed to reflect her strict adherence to order and neatness. Every item she handled, every gift we gave her was examined, used and then returned to the place she assigned it. Usually placed in her back pack, and sometimes squirreled under the bed pillow. Except for the raucous hissy fit she initially demonstrated when she was handed to us, Quin pretty much retreated to a quiet, non verbal world. It had me worried that she might have some trouble with hearing or speaking. But I no longer think so.

In just these few days she has started to smile a whole lot more. Emma is particularly good at entertaining her and Quin tracks her big sister’s location and actions with GPS precision. Emma can pretty much generate a smile in Quin at will.

Sheila showed how miraculous and transforming her strength and love can be. She and I were equally stunned witnesses to the screaming Banshee we got at “gotcha day.” But Sheila understands whatever it is that mothering is all about, and she is now the source of Quin’s refuge and reassurance. Both she and Quin glow with the interaction.

Clearly, Quin is a somewhat intelligent child in that she has kept her distance from me. She did show enough good sense to take a liking to my mom (she too has a certain skill with kids, & besides it is a mistake to go against my mom.)

We travelled to visit Quin’s orphanage today. Having visited Chinese orphanages before let me explain. Imagine as sad and gut wrenching an experience you can as regards your child’s living conditions, and then quadruple it. Next, make sure the setting is dank and dark with paint peeling from the walls. Two more things: think dirty and conjure up some foul odors. You do get one plus side, and it’s a big one, which is that the caretakers seem to show great interest and love for the children.

Most miraculous is that they let us see the place at all. The Chinese officials are not naïve and I suspect they know how much we appreciate all their efforts. Because, as bad as the orphanage was, seeing it gave us a sense of Quin’s past life and helped us to know our daughter. And for everything the orphanage lacked, it is still the place that gave us this pretty flower of child.

Soon after we got there, before we had gone very far down a hallway on the 1st floor, Quin somehow escaped us. (Look, it was a big crowd, a dark hallway with slippery floors and besides she knew the layout.) This turned out to be nothing to worry about. She was up the stairs in the room that constituted her former world, in the arms of one of her three nannies. She was clearly happy to be there. But, and this is the really good part, she was even happier to go back to her mom’s embrace and leave that place with us. She even smiled a few times on the way out.