Today we celebrated the six-year anniversary of Jiejie's homecoming. It was thrown together at the last minute when we realized that once again her Adoption Day would fall on or near Mother's Day and that it would be hard to venerate Grandma and Jiejie in the same short weekend.
So, once more unprepared, we had a too-late, makeshift observance of the day that, more than any other so far, changed us all.
Sometimes I can't believe that this leggy little wiseacre was once that tiny, timid beauty. I remember walking down the stairs of the office building in Nanning carrying her, numb with fear that I would drop her or break her, worried about her cough, and knowing that my best efforts and all my love would never completely heal her grief.
She was 14 months old and a 17-pound featherweight endowed with amazing lungs. Her wails pierced the hotel walls. Ever watchful, she slept with her eyes partly open, when she slept.
We took a little field trip the second day. I had only slept a few hours. I carefully packed a bottle of hot formula mixed from bottled water, which Jiejie, of course, refused, but although we had three adults in our party, no one thought to put some diapers in the bag. When we stopped for lunch, all the other moms rushed to change their babies in a corner of the restaurant (no changing areas in Nanning). I was a zombie. I sat there holding Jiejie, feeling like a neglectful parent (not to mention an idiot), yet I did not ask to borrow a diaper.
That hypnotized state did not lift immediately.
For days I was afraid that I would fail this lovely, willful little being, and my fear overpowered me and exhausted me, but it must have been insignificant in magnitude compared to Jiejie's own.
