Return of the Prodigal Father

We’re not dead, and everything’s great.

I’m sure all of you erudite word hounds are thinking to yourselves, “What does the title of this post mean? Doesn’t “prodigal” mean “profligate,” “wastefully extravagant,” or “spendthrift”? Is Matthew broke? Has he misused a metaphor? And just what exactly is it with Sarah Palin, anyway?”

All valid questions. In answer to the first, I’m evoking the story of the wayward son who vanished without a trace and wasted his time and money, only to return months later to be feted by family and friends with accolades and parties. So here I am. Ready for kegs and naked twister.

I’m sure the next question on your minds is, “Where the hell have you been the last 2.5 months?” As my brother-in-law put it over a month ago, I seem to have set a new land speed record for starting a blog and then letting it go mysteriously and utterly defunct.

Eli's World

Grass:  Not So Bad

I'm not going anywhere. The pace of these posts may slow down a bit now we are home and myriad projects and jobs and demands suck up my time. But I'll try to keep to a minimum of two of these a week for the foreseeable future.

I'm going to take a stab at describing Eli's personality. Many people have expressed surprise and even skepticism at all the pictures and descriptions of him as a happy, well-adjusted, dynamic kid with seemingly few issues resulting from his time in an institution. The truth is that while he really is quite happy to be with us, and tremendously affectionate and curious and mischievous and etc., of course he has typical two-year-old tantrums and gets angry and frustrated with us as well. I don't dwell on those things too much on this site, maybe because in the back of my mind I'm always wondering what he would think of these posts if he were able to read them. Which, in all likelihood, he will someday be. I'm not trying to sugarcoat the adoption experience, but I'm also sensitive to Eli's basic right to privacy, and to make his own decisions about what to share and what not to share.

The Good Land

There Will Be Cucumbers

Those of you who know us, might once or twice (or a hundred times) have heard us extol the virtues of Vermont. We try to keep it somewhat low-key, because we can imagine how terribly depressing it must be for all of you that God loves Vermont so much more than He loves wherever it is that you live. But sometimes it's difficult to hold back.


We are home now, the mountains are still green, the air is fresh and in the upper 70's, our garden is overflowing, and our beautiful neighbors have left things like coq au vin, anitpasto platters and fresh apple crisp waiting for us in our kitchen. Our cat still loves us.

And Eli likes it here very, very much.  Although the cat kind of freaks him out. 

Forever Friday

Yesterday lasted 36 hours.  Apparently even that wasn't enough to get us home. 

We left Hong Kong a bit late, but still comfortably within target range, perhaps 40 minutes late.  The flight was 12 hours, 10 minutes.  Suffice it to say that Eli does not understand airplanes.  He doesn't like books or movies, and he does like running around and getting into things and throwing them around.  He slept for all of 3 hours on the flight, so Allison and I had our hands full. 

We landed in San Francisco 2 hours before we left Hong Kong.  This time warp was about to become the least strange thing about our day.

Things I Love About China

Specifically, Guangzhou.

1.  Riverboat Cruise Clowns.  I mean, who doesn't love them?

2.  Secret Sites.  Guangzhou is literally the best kept secret in China travel.  It's got everything, and no one knows it.  From millenia-old unearthed tombs to caves to more parks per capita than just about any Chinese city, to waterparks to Buddhist temples to old growth banyan groves to mountains, to Sun Yat-sen memorials, to folk art museums to paintball battlegrounds.  It also has the best food in all of China, hands down.  It even looks eerily like Vermont if you manage to get anywhere outside the city.  You can have Beijing and Shanghai, give me Guangzhou any day.    

3.  Shamian Island.  Hey, I don't like living there, but it's great place to spend a few hours knocking around.

All Right, All Right

My post yesterday generated some responses, both in the comments and outside of them. Sandra pointed out, rightly, that others have different experiences in China than we've had. Allison pointed out that my issues derive more from the adoption process than from the particular location we're in -- that is to say, wherever we might have planted ourselves in Guangzhou in August, we'd still have to deal with a busy slate of bureaucratic appointments, a new two-year-old, and blazing heat and humidity. None of those are particularly conducive to a cultural travel bonanza.

Someone else pointed out that maybe I should just get over myself already and tone down the whining about how my trip to China isn't perfect, since a lot of readers won't ever come here at all. Fair point.

I can't change the fact that I've been to China a lot and that I'm not over fond of this particular speck-part of it. That's just the way it is, and hey, after all, you're here reading my blog, not the other way round, so the author gets some perks. Indulging himself is one of them.

But in deference to the brighter side of things, and in deference especially to my wife, who really wishes I would just smile a lot more and cut everything some slack, tomorrow's post will be all sweetness and light, raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, laughter and pixie dust and long walks on the beach. Gosh, it'll be grand.

Tune in then for the surefire hit All My Favorite Things About China (The Extended "This Trip Especially" Remix). I guarantee you'll be walking lighter, tapping your toes, turning your frown upside-down, and applying some fresh elbow grease to life's little snags.

Really. For realz.

By the way, we leave for Hong Kong tomorrow too. Two more days and we'll be home in Vermont! Much as I truly do love China, I love Vermont even more. Can't wait to be back. We had our "swearing in" ceremony at the U.S. Consulate today with dozens of other new adoptive families, a kind of pro forma affair where they tell you that you'll get your child's visa tomorrow and you have to raise your right hand and swear that everything you've ever said to anybody was the truth, and everyone applauds because they're so anxious to get out of here and go home.

Good times.

Fortress of Solitude

Every adoption completed in China evenutally comes through Guangzhou. The U.S. Consulate here is responsible for overseeing visa and naturalization paperwork for adotpions from China, so all adoptive families must petition the Consulate, in person, for the magic visa that allows them to take their children home and make them U.S. citizens.

The vast majority of U.S. parents who come to Guangzhou to adopt stay at the White Swan Hotel on Shamian Island. While the island is a tourist destination in its own right, and the hotel is a well-known 5-star establishment, it's no understatement to say that a large fraction of the revenue of both depends on international adoptions, and specifically American adoptions. The place has been engineered to cater to the needs of new, nervous, harried U.S. parents; to provide them a safe haven, a Western oasis in the chaos of China that they need not leave and that will provide for their every need. All over the island, the buildings themselves date back to a colonial period when the Americans, British and French sought mastery over Chinese commerce -- so even architecturally speaking, the island is more Europe than China. Automobile traffic is limited, and the broad pedestrian walkways are beautifully crafted with cobblestones and flower beds and bronze statuary. The restaurants are high quality and all have English-speaking staff and high chairs and children-sized utensils. The stores sell diapers and formula and baby food and darling outfits for small people. The play room at the White Swan alone is worth its weight in gold -- you wouldn't find anything else like it at any other hotel in Guangzhou.

In short, Shamian and the White Swan provide a buffer against the stresses of travel in China, a kind of blessed home retreat you can rely on for Western creature comforts, and that you will only have to depart sporadically and then always in the company of an English-speaking guide and a personal driver, in air-conditioned style.

I kind of hate it.

Pix & Pricks

The now obligatory "happy with food" shot of the day

No, that's not the name of my new adult bookstore. Sickos.

Yesterday was Eli's medical exam and vaccinations. We spent a surreal hour and a half or so at a hot, cafeteria-style medical clinic positively overrun by adoptive families and their children. We entered the clininc and promptly sat down on some metal benches to wait for our guide to check us in. Ten minutes or so later, we got up and moved 15 feet into the waiting room proper, a big square joint with chairs around the outside edges and a Pixar movie playing on a big flat-screen plasma television. With no sound. And Chinese subtitles. I should note that this is a Chinese medical clinic, with all Chinese staff, nurses, and doctors. We got there early, first thing in the morning, so were moving pretty quickly. We had to hit four stations, and have Eli signed off at each one of them.

Evolution

First Peanut Butter

Bear with me a bit.  I’m going to digress, but I’ll bring it back around to this cute little picture on the right.
 
You would think that humans would possess every possible evolutionary advantage over viruses.  We are complex organisms comprised of trillions of cells that specialize in myriad different functions.  We have ridiculously sophisticated systems dedicated to the defense against, and destruction of, foreign entities that find their way into us.  As if that’s not enough, our higher brain function allows us to go further, inventing artificial preventative and palliative measures that significantly augment our natural defenses.


Yet a virus, which in many ways isn’t even technically alive, can still tear us apart with ease.  It’s the old “Fox and Hedgehog” metaphor.  We humans are the foxes – cunning, complicated, innovative, versatile.  The virus is the hedgehog – it’s found one thing that it does extremely well, and sticks to that one thing with ruthless, mindless, endless efficiency.  That one thing?  Invading our bodies and using them to reproduce itself.  Any symptoms we develop are purely incidental to that process, except insofar as they help the virus to replicate itself or transmit itself to new hosts.

So if you’re wondering why I haven’t posted for the last couple of days, it’s simply because a virus was busy using my body to do what it does best, despite all the medicines I could throw at it.  Still is, actually.  I could barely sit up yesterday, and couldn’t muster the energy to write something down.  I couldn’t stand to look at Eli when he was enjoying this peanut butter – I couldn’t even stand to hear the words “peanut butter” mentioned in my presence.  I was completely wiped out, incapacitated, pathetic.  Today I’m back about forty percent, though it ebbs and flows. 

This is not how I envisioned spending my time here.  I know it’s not how Allison envisioned spending her time here.  She’s exhausted too, from wrangling all three kids the last three days and carrying Eli everywhere and still finding opportunities to buy me ginger ale and water.
Luckily, things have a way of going well without me. 

Stricken

Bad virus. Only me so far. Back to our regularly scheduled programming soon.

Day One

Shrewd.  Cautious.  Happy.  Mischievous.  Surprising.  Quiet but warming up.  Undernourished.

These are a few of the words that come to mind about this peanut kid.  For the first twenty-four hours he barely uttered a sound.  But he drank in everything around him with a keen and penetrating gaze.  Finally, after a full day of assessment and contemplation, he is all smiles and babbling here and there, and playing clever tricks on his brother and sister, and deducing how his food containers can be opened, etc. 

He has yet to shed a tear.  Our assumption is that he learned early on that crying burns energy and wouldn’t get him what he wants anyway, so he just wouldn’t.   As a consequence he always seems content and resilient – even when he falls or is nervous or scared.  He’s also extremely curious and responsive, especially now that the first day is out of the way. 

He is scrawny.  At 31 months, he weighs 23 pounds (average for this age is 31 pounds).  His ribs show, and his arms and legs are thin and weak.  His age-appropriate clothes hang loosely off him.  His head seems ridiculously large for his body.  He walks well, but not with great steadiness. 

He eats everything we give him.  If we let him, he would never stop eating.  Already today we jettisoned our plan to ease him into a richer diet slowly, and have been feeding him chicken and curry and eggs and greens and fruit and snacks and even a couple bites of ice cream.  He shows no signs of having a limit and it all seems to be for the good.

Click on the link to turn back the clock to yesterday…

Bliss

This will be a cursory post with the promise of more tomorrow.  It's been an exhausting day for everyone.  But wonderful as Eli -- Lei Xin Xing -- Xingxing -- call him what you will, he's ours. 

And he's a champion.  He climbed in Allison's lap right from the start, weathered without difficulty the bedlam of a dozen simultaneous "gotcha" moments with about 100 people in the same room, and has been steadily growing more confident since.  He loves his toys, he loves his brother and sister, he smiles and laughs, he's curious and interactive as all get out.  It will be a challenge to get him to understand he can be more independent now that he's not tied to the regimen of an institution, but that will come in time. 

It is, without hyperbole, a miracle.  This morning we had two kids.  Tonight we have three. 

Without further ado, three brief photos as a downpayment on more tomorrow.

Our first glimpse of him

Chill.  I got this.

Nirvana

A Prayer for My Son

We will meet Lei XinXing in 16 hours.  I wrote a prayer for him today, so he would know what I hope for him.  I wrote it for myself too, so I would be clear about my thoughts and emotions heading into that moment tomorrow, and would be able to maintain the proper frame of spirit.

Allison and I debated whether to post this here on the blog -- whether it was too personal, or meant only for Eli.  But if this writing exercise is supposed to be a true record of this time in our lives, and of how we feel and are, then sharing this is necessary also.  It's only fitting that our friends and family join us in these hopes, and add their own as well.

A Prayer for My Son

May you remember those who gave you life.   May they shine through you as through a prism, their light vividly scattered in a gesture here, a feature there, an expression, this longing, that undercurrent of feeling, an instinct, an aptitude inborn.  May you cherish these telltale reverberations, treasure them as gifts that tie you forever to your birth parents, across space and time and beyond all memory.

May you make peace with not knowing them.  May you have compassion and understanding for their gift of you to the world.  May what you carry with you of them be sufficient to your needs.  May you find your way to being whole in their absence, sure in the knowledge of yourself and your place in the universe; or if you cannot, may you find it in yourself to forgive them, and us, for what is lost.

May you feel our love.  May it surround you and embrace you, lift you up and hold you to the light, give you respite and refuge, guide you and assuage you.  May it graft you, root and branch, into the living heart of our family.  May you always be certain of it.  May it sustain you, and provide an eternal home for your spirit. 

May you grow strong.  May you drink deeply of the air, the earth, the rain, the sun, and the magic that moves in all things.  May they knit your bones and sinews, calibrate your features, charge your limbs with valor.  May your eyes grow sharp and your ears keen, your mind deft, your fingers quick and able.  May the strength of your body be exceeded only by the strength of your character.  

May you know joy.  May you believe in love, believe in loveliness, believe in belief.  May wonder drive you.  May wisdom stay you from recklessness, and provide a last, best defense against sorrow.  May you learn what is right, and have the courage to follow it.  May your friends be true.    

   

May we, in our turn, have the wisdom to have you without possessing you; to act without expectations; to lead you without controlling you.  May we be a steady bow, from which the Archer may shoot your living arrow.  May Her aim be true, and may you travel swiftly and far as you fly.   

May we bless you and keep you, be gracious to you, and give you peace.

Amen

That's a Big-Ass Wall

For some reason, my Dad was a little chagrined by the photo I posted of him the other day.  I really should be a little more careful playing with people’s vanity.  Turnabout being fair play, Dad, here’s a less than flattering shot of me at The Great Wall today. 

This was taken at the tail end of a climb and descent of a section of the Wall at Ju Fong pass, on the far northern outskirts of Beijing municipality.  Although it was hardly an overwhelming climb, note that I am sweating like a menopausal woman in the middle of Death Valley on a hot summer’s day.  Partly due to the 90-degree heat and 3000% humidity, it could be more accurately attributed to my tendency to perspire at a ridiculous rate when I do anything physically more difficult than, say, picking up a doughnut.  Also note that with the way that t-shirt is clinging for dear life to my less than flattering physique, it looks like I might actually benefit from the use of a training bra (or “bro,” as Kramer would say).  Purely an optical illusion, of course.

We all have our moments.

Except my beatific and photogenic children, of course.  Ther’s a shot of them at the base of that section of the Wall after the jump. 

Jet Lag

Hi everyone.

This is not Matthew speaking.

It’s his daughter.
I’m Naomi lets pretty much say I’m awesome.

Were in Beijing its 2:00 in the morning and I think I’m screaming.

It’s like 2 an a half days until we get ELI…

Let’s just say I’M bouncing off the walls
The hotel is very Fancy with marble and stuff

I MISS YOU EVERY ONE!!


SEE YA!!!!!

The Flying Wallendas -- Pt. 2

A diehard pirate and buccaneer, The Financier made his money the old fashioned way -- by ransacking the pleasure yachts of the aristocracy from his renowned galleon, the "Parrot's Perch."  Able to access liquid assets at a moment's notice, The Financier is a big reason why The Flying Wallendas are able to fly at all.  No circus can operate for long without an underwriter.  He continues to serve as home base coordinator, advisor, and swashbuckler at large.  Should we miss our connection in Chicago on the way home, he will also serve as emergency chaffeur and hotelier.  Hopefully he will be wearing a shirt at the time (Sorry, Dad, only pic I could find of you while typing here at the airport.  Nice pecs.  Meowrrr.)

Which brings us to the most frightening member of this circus team, a shadowy figure who goes only by the name of "The Instructor."  She is pictured here mind melding with a newborn infant, implanting black ops military expertise in its susceptible little brain.  Posing as a pre-school teacher by day, the better to access impressionable young people and recruit them into her secret army, by night she throws law enforcement off her scent by making quilts and scrapbooking mementos from quaint family trips.  "She's quiet, keeps to herself mostly," say her neighbors and friends.  "No one would have suspected."  The Instructor also enjoys optimism, encouragement, and making wicked good lasagna. 

Again, putting aside the snidery for a moment -- Mom and Dad, I love you so much.  Your consummate talent and effortless grace under fire serve as endless inspiration to Allison and me.  A big part of the reason we feel up to the challenge of expanding our family in the first place. 

I've always thought that if I ever do write a book -- a big if -- I would like to dedicate it to my children, for whom; to Allison, with whom; and to my mother and father, without whom.  Thanks for making me possible, and then sticking around to see how I turned out.  See you on the other side. 

Travel - Live

3:20 a.m. EDT -- Up.  Moving.  Dad would be proud.  Mental function:  8.3%

5:06 a.m. EDT -- Beautiful Burlington airport. Through security. Looking forward to 75 action-packed minutes in the butt end of a commuter plane on the way to Dulles. The children are drinking caffeine. That can't be a good idea.

8:39 a.m. EDT -- Breakfast at Dulles. Airport is like a maze for bipedal mammals designed by sadistic aliens. Kids already restless. 3.5 hours until our next flight. Mood: hazy. Fellow ISC'ers -- we made it to Washington before you even got to the office. Slackers.

11:40 a.m. -- Safely boarded the 777. Naomi and Townes have died and gone to heaven. Free pillows, blankets, headphones, personal TV screens, meal service. Even if we never made it to Beijing, their lives would be complete. We're all ready to be in Beijing. Only 15 more hours to go. Communications blackout begins now - next update from the heart of the Middle Kingdom.

2:20 a.m. EDT, 2:20 p.m. local time in Beijing -- Touchdown.  As always, a long-ass flight.  I was a little concerned when the children started asking if we were almost there yet, only two hours into our fourteen hour flight.  But they were fantastic really, considering.  Allison somehow managed to sleep (or so it seemed to me) the entire fourteen hours, due most likely to a strong cocktail of tranquilizers, benadryl, and pseudofed.  She keeps asking us if we saw the silver elves and a man in a disturbingly bright chartreuse frock coat.  Charles and Gloria also appear to have weathered the trip surprisingly well given that this comes so close on the heels of their trip to France.  We're all just happy to be here at last.  There's a lot of wonder and anticipation mixed in with the bleariness.  Off to the city...

The Flying Wallendas

Allow me to introduce the first two members of our traveling circus.  First up:  The Professor.

The Professor enjoys smoking cigars, conducting statistical regression analyses, and traveling.  Having just returned from France two days ago, he is unfazed at the prospect of departing for two weeks in China tomorrow morning.  Hopefully his back and his disposition will prove just as prepared for the struggle.  Having retired from his days leading the A-Team, he no longer goes by "Hannibal," preferring his given name, "Charles."  He still loves it when a plan comes together, and remains familiar with building weaponry and small explosives out of items left lying around junkyards and old barns.  We expect this will come in handy.  He also doubles as Allison's father and sometime benefactor. 

This leads us to The Professor's lifelong companion and partner in crime:  The Social Worker

Hubris

Pretty tired today... I had plans to introduce the merry band of circus performers who will be going on the trip to China, and thus appearing in this diary over the next few weeks, for your reference and edification, but not today.  I do have plans to "live-blog" (did I really just use that word?) the travel to China itself as best I can, starting at around 3:30 a.m. EDT on Wednesday.  I know you'll all want to set your alarms for that one so you can sit close by your computers and wait for the updates as they come in. 

But today I don't have anything much to say.  I was ruminating this morning on the fact that I will meet my son in exactly a week, and remembering the same feeling I had before my first two children were born:  just who do I think I am, anyway?  I mean, doesn't it take some brass f***ing balls to think that you should be a parent?  What makes me think I should be entrusted with a little kid, who will then grow up imitating my bad habits, inheriting my pessimistic and jaded worldview, successfully copying my inability to throw a ball properly, and will probably end up someday thinking that somebody on the Internet (or Etherspheroid, or whatever they'll be calling it then) would be interested in his aimless thoughts randomly jotted down?  Why do I think I would be any good at parenting -- more to the point, what gives me the right to do it at all?

Hubris, maybe.  "Excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance" says the English dictionary.  And then there's the more interesting meaning of the original Greek hybris:  "Presumption against the gods."  That sounds about right.  Icarus, Arachne, Oedipus, Ajax, etc.  All proud, all cured of it with good old-fashioned divine comeuppance.  Odysseus is another one.  Got away from the Cyclops and couldn't resist crowing about it, taunting the blinded monster, telling it his name so it would know exactly who had got the best of it; so Poseidon says all right, you think you're so great, try wandering the ocean for 20 years while all your friends die and your wife and son grow old and you go half-crazy.  Still feeling cocky?  Would you rather plummet to your death, get turned into a spider, be blinded and unwittingly sleep with your mother, or just plain be smote with lightning?  All fitting ends for the overly proud, apparently.  I forgot Sisyphus.  There's a happy fellow too.   

We flirt with similar forces when we choose to be parents, meddling in cosmic affairs with a frightful, and perhaps even idiotic, lack of humility.  It seems breathtaking that we've got the guts to do it at all.

The mind takes weird turns when it's tired.  Back tomorrow with (hopefully) a lot more lucid thoughts and a lot less Greek mythology.  Peace.

Sweet & Sour

I have to start off this one with a little bit of the sweet stuff.  For those of you who are into that kind of thing. 

Allison and I work at the same place.  People often ask how we can manage to work at the same office all day, and live together, and not go insane.  A big reason is the people we work with.

Joan has been quite the world traveler, and has lived in Japan and England.  While in Japan some 25 years ago or so, she adopted two great Japanese kids.  They're in college now.  When she was living in England a short time later, she bought a book called "The Boy and His Kitten" at a local market, for 50 pence.  I know exactly how much it cost, because it's still got the price tag on the front cover.  It's a Chinese story by a Chinese author, translated into English.  Joan bought it because the kids in the book are Asian, and she thought it would be something her kids could relate to on a visual level.  It's a little worn from being read over and over and over again, but the book's still in great shape, and invested with a lot of family memories.

So of course she gave it to us.

Shopping for Irony

I'm sure those of you who know me, and how hyper organized I am, expect that we began prepping for this adoption trip a year ago.  Surely we started with a cloth-bound, multi-page color-coded Gaant chart with a week-by-week breakdown of tasks to accomplish, items to acquire, meditations to perform, and things to pack.  We then proceeded with characteristically military precision, rewarding ourselves for accomplishing tasks on time and punishing ourselves severely for lagging behind even by a few hours.  As such, we are now completely prepared for our trip, and need only be ready to drive ourselves to the airport next Wednesday.  Like Swiss clockwork. 

Yeah. 

It's a mad, random scramble punctuated by periodic failure and moments of abject panic.  We'll be lucky if we show up at the airport with our pants on frontward, let alone fully prepared. 

Don't Eat The Watermelon

Chinese nightmare fuel

Today we had our pre-travel briefing with the adoption agency.  As someone who travels to China pretty frequently for work, I found this to be somewhat amusing.  They want to be sure they cover all the little things you might not be aware of, I suppose -- you'll cross the dateline going over and lose a day, your hotels will have all the amenities you've come to expect as a spoiled American, western toilets are available and will be standing by, etc. 

And don't eat the watermelon.  Actually, this advice comes as part of a larger injunction not to eat any fruit you can't peel yourself, which sounds perfectly reasonable on its face.  You don't know what peseticides might have been used in growing the fruit, and you don't know how it's been handled or whether it's been washed before being served to you.  As background, it may help to know that most every traditional meal served in a Chinese restaurant ends with fresh fruit.  This can consist of apple or orange slices, pieces of dragonfruit, grapes, and almost invariably, sliced watermelon. 

Since watermelons aren't peeled, however, its inclusion in this part of the spiel was a bit confusing.

Why Adopt?

Shock. Incredulity. Blank stares. Quizzical eyebrows. Rueful headshakes. Murmurs of sympathy. Pointed questions about our mental health.

These are some of the common reactions we get from people -- people of all ages, backgrounds, and family situations -- when we tell them we are adopting a third child to go with the two biological children we already have. When we go on to tell them that we hope to adopt a fourth child as well at some point in the future, they occasionally lose control of their bodily functions.

So there seems to be a question on the minds of some: why adopt, when you already have children and things are getting easier as they get older?

Liquidity

Today, class, we re-learned the difference between "liquid" and "illiquid" assets. "Liquid" assets are funds that can be accesssed quickly and transferred from one party to another to complete a financial transaction. For example, let's say (hypothetically) that an agency with whom you have a longstanding relationship informs you quite suddenly that if you really want your son, you will need to provide them with a cashier's check in the amount of several thousand dollars within 3 days. If you can do that, you have liquid assets. Congratulations -- please move to the head of the class.

If you can't, you have illiquid assets (or maybe you are just plain broke and have no assets). Now you will need to pursue one of two options: 1) pleading with friends and family for a quick loan to float you until you can liquidate something or other that you own; or 2) old-fashioned $5 street-corner hooking.

Waiting for Eli

Imagine that you've been waiting not nine, but eighteen months for a new child. You've jumped through hoop after bureaucratic hoop, filled out numerous forms for the governments of two major world powers, disclosed every intimate detail of your personal and medical histories to bureaucrats around the globe, and spent more on this process than you would have spent on a brand new car.

Now imagine that you were matched with a living, breathing, waiting child nine months ago. For all that time you've known his name and age, what he looks like, the circumstances of his birth, his favorite toys and eating habits, the status of his physical and mental development, his exact location, the language he speaks, his medical condition, and the quality of the orphanage where he lives.

Imagine that by law, you are permitted no contact with him whatsoever over all that time. You can send him no letters, no pictures, no gifts. Despite the fact that your job requires you to travel to a location just 6 hours away from where he lives several times a year, you are not allowed to visit him. As the months tick by, you receive no additional updates regarding him. The information you do have falls more and more out of date. For all intents and purposes, as far as you are concerned he is arrested in time, receding into the distant past like a slowly fading memory. You found him, only to begin losing him immediately, by degrees. He is beyond your reach.

He has no idea that you even exist.

This, despite the fact that somwhere your boy -- your son -- is speaking his first words, growing by leaps and bounds, bonding with his caregivers, throwing tantrums and suffering sudden fits of joy and laughter, learning to share and play and create and engage, becoming his own unique self.

And you wait...

And wait...

And wait...

And wait...

And then one day, almost, but not quite thoroughly out of the blue (or so it seems), someone calls you and tells you that your entire family needs to be on a plane to China in 8 days; and that despite the fact that your son has no idea who you are or what is about to happen to him, in 2 weeks he will be handed over to you, to have and to hold and to love forever.

Now imagine that today was the day that call came. Have you caught your breath yet? Are you ready? Tickets and visas and clothes and medicine and thoughts and emotions and lives all in order? Do you know what the hell you are doing? Can you make this work? Can you afford it? Does it matter?

Hang onto your hats and suspenders, if you plan to come along for the ride.

Lei XinXing, we are coming to get you.