Saying Good-Bye

Wow! Today was quite a day – I’m not even sure where to start. We have David with us in our hotel room in Taipei – he is happily playing with stacking cups on the floor with Josh. I know he had toys at the orphanage but he still seems so entranced by even the simplest of toys. He was a real trooper today. He had a lot of good-byes and he knew something was up. He was not as happy to see us as he was yesterday and cried when his caretaker first left the room. But he warmed up to us over the 4 hours we were at the orphanage. When we left at 1:30 he was exhausted – he amazingly didn’t cry when we got in the taxi and he fell asleep in my lap looking out the window. He stayed sleeping through the train station, and through most of the train ride back to Taipei. When he woke up about 20 minutes from the end of the ride he was immediately entranced by all the other people on the train. He hasn’t cried yet since we left St. Lucy’s. It’s just amazing. We really thought he’d be sad when he woke up on the train, surrounded by strangers, in a new place, and without anyone from St. Lucy’s.

This photo is of Chien-Chien with the main caretaker. So, backing up. We got to St. Lucy’s at about 9:15. The translator came at 9:30, and we spent an hour or so asking questions and learning about his daily routine. At 11, the birth family arrived. The birthmother, grandmother, and great-grandmother were there. But they told us that the great-grandmother couldn’t come inside because she would be too emotional and it would be too upsetting. So, Chien-Chien was taken outside to say good bye to her without us there. Then the mother and grandmother came to meet us.

Miss Manners has not written the etiquette lesson about what to say to the 19 year old girl who is giving away her baby whom she clearly loves very much. She has visited him two times a month for the last 14 months. She had written us a letter which we had translated after she left – it asked us to look after Chien-Chien, love him lots, protect him from bullies, and make sure that he didn’t make friends with the wrong kind of people. She also said lots of this to us during the visit, and she wants us to tell him that there are lots of people in Taiwan who love him. We will be able to send her pictures and updates through St. Lucy’s and she asked us to do this every year on his birthday and on holidays.

We had brought her presents which we gave her (including a photobook of Indiana), but we had not thought to bring her a photo album of our family. So we gave her the ratty laminated photos that we had sent to Chien-Chien and a small wallet sized photo of all of us. She was really happy to get these. The grandmother didn’t say very much but just looked very sad. It was a really hard meeting – both the birthmother and I were crying. It’s just so sad that she will probably never be able to see her son again. She made the choice to have him adopted in America but the reality of that decision was obviously difficult. She gave Chien-Chien a very special diary in which she wrote him a very long letter. We will have to have this translated for him. He is a very lucky boy to come from such a loving family; she has given him a huge gift by writing him a letter to read when he’s older. (as an aside, while we’re very happy for Chien-Chien, this makes us so sad for Margaret who was adopted from China and has no knowledge of her birthfamily – the amount of info David has will not make her life any easier.)

Before we left St. Lucy’s, we were given a beautiful scrapbook with pictures from every month of his life and notes from the St. Lucy’s staff. We also got a CD with every photo they’ve ever taken of him, including lots of him with his birthmother and all the ones from today (along with ones of the great-grandmother who we didn’t get to meet).

As I wrote this, Josh was reading him a book and he was fascinated – for the first page or two anyway, after which he got bored and went back to playing with his other toys. He is such a happy child. We got to hear him laugh today for the first time when people were playing with him – he has a very sweet laugh.

As an aside, the St. Lucy’s staff dressed him in a shirt today with the number 68 on the back. He’s wearing it now. It’s an amazing coincidence, because for some reason that we still haven’t quite figured out the number 68 is currently Margaret’s favorite number. She’s always talking about how she’s going to eat 68 bites of something or play for 68 more minutes.

Tomorrow we have our visa appointment and then we’ll explore some more of Taipei and play with our baby boy.