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Wednesday, December 25, 2013

"from the sky we look so innocent and brave" - Jason Isabel


(this is J posting)

Its 1:30AM local time on Dec 24 here in Zangzhou China.  I write you from our hotel room - an American chain but far nicer than any hotel I would generaly spring for myself  Don't even get me started on the differences between this time and the last time I was in China back in 1996.  That was the trip where I snuck illegally into Tibet by myself, visited monasteries, slipped small photos of the Dalai Lama to monks who furtively slipped them in their robes and flashed me a grin, and unsuccessfully tried to avoid the Chinese police.  Laura was so releived when my arrest from that trip did not preclude my entry this time!!  Things are very different now.

So much has happened - a 33 hour travel "day" from Baltimore to DC to Newark to Beijing to Zangzhou.  Our older boys - 8 and 6 years old - were STELLAR.  Seriously - the 14 hour flight from Newark to Beijing produced not one peep of complaint.  What was there to complain about?  They had unlimited video games, TV, and movies in their seats and food was constantly being served to them.  Our oldest son (I will call him Gege which is "older brother" in Chinese) was in absolute heaven as he lingered over his airplane dinner for 2 hours, perused his kindle, and watched movies.  I was never a slow eater and envy that he is.  We are always rushing him at home to "Finish up!" and "Put that book down and eat!" due to life's hectic schedule.  When they came around to collect the meal trash on the plane, my first instinct was to hustle him along, but i caught myself and said "Buddy, you have damn near all the time in the world.  Enjoy it."  And Gege did.

Even our often needy and busy Didi ("little brother" in Chinese) did fine.  And they both slept the last 4 hours or so of the flight.  Aside from turning around to catch him swinging from the latch on the emergency exit door at 30K+ feet (WTF!!!), he did great.  

The Beijing airport was huge - we took a train from the international terminal to domestic  transfers and then a bus to our appropriate domestic terminal.  Huge.  It was night time and looked like we were in the middle of some pea-soup fog blown in from the coast.  But in Beijing I believe that is just how the air is - almost unbreathably polluted.  Even here in the relatively smaller (though still hosting 6 million + people) town of Zangzhou, the sun only shone yesterday through thick haze.  Our guide - Tina - said it had been cloudy recently but my friend Jack (who accompanied us on this trip with his partner, my mother in law) are betting that this is not weather but pollution.  Tell the anti-government types at home to come over here an see what it is like without an EPA ... but i digress.

So we got in here late - the boys' bodies told them it was morning and they were all fired up.  After rallying through some fatigue during our transfer to Zangzhou from Beijing, it caught up with me and I was in physical pain, fall apart tired.  We all got to sleep.

I went to bed feeling more anxious and fearful about what we were doing here than i had felt prior.  I figured the ridiculous fatigue was exacerbating my anxiety.  When i awoke i was still tired and some of the anxiety abated after coffee and breakfast.  

I practiced picking up cheerios at the table using chopsticks with Didi.  By the way - Chinese honey-nut Cheerios are THE BEST.  I don't know what they put in them but they beat the pants off the ones at home.

We saw other American families at breakfast who traveled in a group here to adopt.  In the elevator back up to our rooms, a friendly guy from Tennessee introduced himself and wished us luck.  For some reason his soothing southern accent made me feel better and i felt a little less alone.

Which is perhaps a good segway to explain why i chose to entitle this blog post with a line from the song "Flying over water" from the brilliant Jason Isabel album Southeastern.  The "we" in the song is all of us - humanity.  It all looks so orderly and neat from 30 some odd thousand feet.  Isabel goes on to describe the reality of civilization as "daddy's little empire built by hand and built by slaves" - which is as true of my beloved (yes i actually wrote that) home country of the United States as it is of China and frankly anywhere else that modern humans have touched.  The song's chorus is "take my hand, we're over land, i know flying over water makes you cry" ... what made Isabel's traveling companion so emotional?  Was it the "great oceanic" feeling Freud referenced in the face of the infinite?  Was it the same thing i felt that late summer day in northern Quebec 20 years ago when - after almost 3 weeks paddling down the remote Harricana River - upon entering the mouth of the Hannah Bay, I looked north to see nothing but open ocean sweeping through Hudson's Bay into the Arctic?  That feeling that automatically, unconsciously had me put in  a strong paddle stroke to shore?  Perhaps so.  Because we are small and finite, the ocean is vast and huge, the water is cold and all we really have is each other.  And faith that that might be enough.

So all of that to say that a friendly guy from Tennessee assuaged some of my anxiety about adopting our little boy from China.  

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