When Carrie Miner went to China, she took a friend along. She needed someone to hold the video camera and the diaper bag. She needed to keep her arms free for Jasmine.
Her friend had never used a video camera before. Luckily, the film turned out fine. Maybe a bit jerky, but compelling nonetheless. The video tells the story of the day Carrie Miner met the six-month-old girl she was about to adopt.
At first you see a hall, a wide hall, the kind you would find in a modern hotel anywhere in the world. On one side of the hall, near the elevators, are eight Chinese women, each holding a Chinese baby. Across the hall, a dozen Americans mill about.
Miner stands among the Americans. She looks anxious. She turns to the camera, gives instructions to her friend, makes sure the green light is on, then turns back to the group that just got off the elevator. She begins searching the faces of the babies. Quickly she spots Mei-Mei — the baby whose picture has been on her fridge for three months now, the baby soon to be hers, the baby she will rename as Jasmine and bring back to Utah and adore.
Miner starts to cry as she calls across the hall, "Are you my baby? Are you my Mei-Mei? Are you my baby?"
The Chinese orphanage workers smile at the Americans. But they do not cross the lobby. They hadn't expected to find these Americans waiting near the elevator doors. They had planned to meet the orphanage director and the translators here, in the hall, and then in an orderly fashion, with proper paperwork in hand, they had planned to proceed to the individual hotel rooms and present the children, one at a time, to their new parents.
This is the way things are done in China, which might not be the way things are done in the United States. The adoptive parents say the mistrust between the two governments is palpable. That's why, standing in a hotel hall, with no way to ask why they are waiting, the Americans are careful not to overstep the bounds. They just wait. And the Chinese wait, too. Waiting is what this video shows.
But it also shows something else. It shows the beginning of trust. It shows how people from two different worlds may reach each other.
The adults' faces are full of emotion. The babies, on the other hand, are solemn as stones. They stare at the women who are holding them. They stare at the people across the hall.
Eventually the woman who is holding Jasmine takes pity and walks over to Miner. Now the new mother can touch her baby's face. She says, "Mei-Mei, Mei-Mei," and hastily wipes her tears. Jasmine stares stoically into Miner's eyes.
Finally the officials find their way to the hall. The parents are allowed to hold their babies. Cameras blaze. The hall grows steadily noisier, more chaotic. Then the leave-taking begins. The parents give small gifts and Polaroid photos to the orphanage workers. The workers kiss the babies good-bye.
In the foreground of the video, Miner repeatedly tells Jasmine how beautiful she is. In the background, a different drama unfolds: An orphanage worker has explained, through a translator, that she's been like a foster mother to one of the older babies — cared for her for two years, taken the child home on weekends. The worker sobs as she says goodbye to this baby. The other Chinese workers ignore her unseemly display. It is left to the adoptive parents, who are crying themselves, to try to comfort her.
And through it all, through the noise and the cameras, the babies are impassive. None of them reaches out to an adult. They allow themselves to be hugged and kissed and cooed at and stroked, but none of them ever smiles.
Abruptly, the scene shifts. Now the video shows Jasmine having a sponge bath. It is the next morning. Here she is, on the counter in the hotel bathroom — naked, fat and perfect. Miner lifts her, turns her, babbles some baby talk.
And now, a defining moment, the first time it seems as if this adoption will be mutual. Miner squeezes water onto Jasmine's chest and, as it trickles down her neck, the baby smiles. She looks into Miner's eyes and her serious button of a mouth relaxes into curves. For an instant, Jasmine is as delighted with her mother as her mother is with her.
It used to be when Miner played this video, Jasmine would cry. Miner wonders if the sound of Chinese triggered some overwhelming emotion in her daughter. As it happens, Miner does want to give Jasmine an emotional connection with the country of her birth. She wants Jasmine to be proud to have been born in China.
Luckily, Miner does not have to create this connection alone. Miner is 40 years old, a sales rep and a single mother. She is also part of a growing community of Utahns who have adopted babies from China. It is important to most of these parents that their children stay connected to China and to each other. Today, in fact, Miner has invited seven Chinese-American girls — and their parents and siblings — to a play time in her backyard.
The children keep busy with balls and trucks and fruit juice while the parents sit in the shade and smile. The conversation turns, quite naturally, to the experience of adopting from China. Along with the clothes they were wearing and the videos and still photos that their parents took, these are the mementos the girls will grow up with, the stories that say, "You were wanted." And "When I met you, it was the most important day of my life."
Sue Laver recalls that Abby, now 2, didn't make a peep for the first 24 hours they were together. Laver, who teaches elementary school, had decided to adopt from China because she hoped for a healthy baby, a baby free from fetal alcohol syndrome. While she was delighted with Abby's health, Laver was unnerved by her silence on that first day.
Laver had no idea what the baby was feeling or what she needed. Then, as Laver started to give her a bath, the baby reached for a towel and clung to it desperately. "That was her big security thing," says Laver. "I had to buy some towels from the Holiday Inn before we left China."
In the midst of a foreign adoption, adults also feel insecure. Karen Martinson, whose baby Elizabeth came home in June, says her husband, Gary, started crying after he left the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou. Until it was over, they hadn't realized how anxious they'd been. "There is so much pressure to produce the right papers at the right time," says Martinson. What if they hadn't been able to bring their baby home?
And if anyone felt as though she were in a free fall, not knowing what to expect, it was Cheryl Hansen. For years, Hansen thought of herself as a career woman, independent and in control. She'd hoped to be a wife and mother, but it was not something she focused on — until a few years ago, when she began waking in the middle of the night, knowing there was something more she should do with her life. She didn't get a sense of peace, she says, until she started the process of adoption.
But Hansen's peace was short-lived. The process was frustrating. The U.S. immigration service lost her paperwork several times. An adoption that should have taken less than a year ended up taking more than two years. When she was finally matched with a child, she had only three weeks' notice to come to China to get Joylynn. And then, as she was frantically trying to arrange for a flight, she got a call from her adoption agency saying the Chinese had just discovered Hansen's baby was severely retarded and they didn't want her to come after all but said to wait for awhile and they would find her another child.
Hansen was sick with indecision. She had no idea how, as a single parent, she would raise a special needs child. She also had no idea what would happen to this little girl if she were left in China. Hansen and her mother spent several days praying for guidance. Then Hansen got on the plane.
As it turned out, Joylynn was not retarded, merely delayed. The baby didn't turn over because she'd been sharing a crib with five other babies. She hadn't heard anything, due to severe ear infections. She hadn't seen much either. Back in Utah, with glasses and the services of the state's agency for developmentally delayed infants, Joylynn began to catch up. The lingering effect of her time in the crowded crib, says her mother, is that Joylynn is sensitive to other children. When they cry, she wants to touch and comfort them.
As they raise their daughters, Utah parents get support from each other and from parents across the country through a loosely organized group called Families with Children from China. The group has a Web site, a magazine and even a book — which offers practical advice on how to honor a culture so different from our own.
One of the most difficult things for U.S. parents to explain is why, under China's one-child policy, parents abandon their daughter in order to try for a son. Gwen Andrus says her 6-year-old Maya recently asked if her Chinese parents would have kept her if they knew she would turn out smart and pretty.
"I told her it was not about who she is, but about who they are, and what their life is like," Andrus says. It's been decades since Mao Tse-tung declared, "Women hold up half the sky." Still, many Chinese parents view their sons as security for their old age.
While they are sad about the low value placed on baby girls, Utahns note that the Chinese have more respect for single parents and for older parents than other countries might. (Parents in their 40s are encouraged to adopt; so are parents in their 50s, who are given an older child.)
In a recent Families with Children from China publication, a Californian named Jane Brown wrote this about her daughter, "She must learn there is a balance of beautiful and ugly, joy and sorrow, ancient ways and new, in the land of her birth. The opportunity to learn about the richness, diversity, beauty and longevity of China's culture will ultimately be key to celebrating the wonder of herself."
When Sue Laver thinks about what to tell her daughter, as Abby grows older, she recalls the photo they had taken at a Chinese New Year's party. There they are: a huge group of happy-looking Utahns, about 40 Caucasian parents clutching black-haired babies.
Laver looks at the photo and is stunned by the magnitude of the gift China has given. She says, "Forever, I will be grateful."