Okay, so I already know that my title is quite the oxymoron as what "free time" does a mother of 3 teenage boys and a toddler have, I ask you?!?
Exactly, NONE!!!
But, I have managed over the past couple days/weeks to sneak minutes here or there to spend some "mommy-time" reading some really incredible books. I don't remember where I saw the titles posted as "have read and loved it", nonetheless I finished one and jumped right into the other. These are not your 'easy summer-time reads' books. No mystery, no love story ~ well of a different kind I should say. From tears, to joy, to sadness, to grieving, to anger, to laughter, to understanding ~ are what I experienced during my time between the pages.
My first book is called "China Ghosts ~ My daughter's journey to America, My passage to fatherhood" by Jeff Gammage. Such a great informative, heartfelt book about adoption, specifically Chinese adoption and all that surrounds it. The one consistent feeling/thought/emotion I felt throughout reading his memoirs was this: the joy I experience every single day with my beautiful daughter is not free! Someone had to pay a price, someone very far away whose face I will never see, whose voice I will never hear. Someone who is grieving, mourning a loss she had to make. Two people experiencing a complete set of opposite emotions over the same thing ~ a little girl, MY little girl. As I got to the end of the book I was surprised just a bit that the author, Jeff Gammage, puts words to exactly how I have been feeling the whole book; take a look: "There is never a day I don't think about them [the birthparents]. Never a day I don't consider the paradox of our situations, don't ponder the cold truth that my life's happiness springs from their life's anguish. A Chinese acquaintance calls it 'the burden of good fortune' ~ the price that must be paid for having benefited so greatly from the misfortune of another."
My second book, which I only just started, is also another book on Chinese children, a little on adoption, and mainly on orphanages or rather one orphange is called: "Silent Tears ~ A journey of Hope in a Chinese Orphanage" by Kay Bratt. Most of the time I am closing this book with a sickening pit in my stomach, mainly over the "what if" factor in my daughter's story. Did she receive the kind of treatment as I am reading about?? Basically Kay, her husband and 7 year old daughter relocate to China from 2003-2007 for hubby's work. During her time there she decided to get involved with a local orphanage, volunteering 1 - 3 times per week for a few hours. The book is written in a journal entry format where she is telling you about her experiences each day. I realize that there may be orphanages in China where abuse and neglect isn't happening. Where the ayis [nannies] really genuinely care for the infants, toddlers, children in their orphanage. Nonetheless, I am heart-broken. I am angry. I am saddened. I hug my daughter with more tenderness than every before. I stroke her forhead while she sleeps knowing she never had that before. I love my daughter with the most love that God can bestow on me for her!
I suppose my contemplativeness is natural coming up on our one year of having Abigail a part of our lives. I will always wonder about months 0 - 11.5 ~ who touched her, how did they touch her, when she was sick did anyone tend to her small helpless little body? How about her birthmother - what was her story? In the first book, Jeff finds out a few years after her adoption [through research] that his first daugther was left with a note stating girl, exact time and date of birth. What about Abigail? Did her mother leave a note with her? I struggle with the consumption factor of all this information. I WAnt to know more, I NEEd to know more and yet I may NEVER know anything!
But I do know this: I LOVE my daughter! I LOVE her sweet tiny voice. I LOVE the way she dances when she's happy. I LOVE how she loves to hug her brothers. I LOVE her amazing smile, her infectuous laugh. I LOVE to touch my skin next to hers. I LOVE to cuddle her. I LOVE to sing to her and hear her sing.
I just plain LOVE her!
6 comments:
Thanks for sharing Ruth. What a sad reality it is for so many in orphanages.I am thankful and grateful that God placed Abigail in your life to tell the stories of so many and let these thoughts and feelings stir in me through you.
Thanks for sharing the book titles with us. We will have to read them too. We often wonder how Savannah was treated during her life without us. We will never know, but we do know this. She is loved as much as anyone can be loved and always will be.
Enjoy your FREE time.
Wow Ruth. Amazing words. We love Abigail so much, too. How fortunate she is to be a part of your family and to be so completely loved.
Aren't we so blessed to have our daughter! It just brings out the tears reading your words.
If you are looking for another book to add to the two you have already read, try China Run by David Ball. That was a scary book too, partly based on a true story. I have it and will mail/give it to you if you wish.
Alyzabeth's Mommy
Those two books impacted me greatly as well. I also felt quite impacted by "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang, which does not in any way talk about the one-child policy or orphanages, but does cover the history of China from about 1895 to 1970. I was totally ignorant about much of it - it taught me a lot about Chinese culture.
I've read both books - they're both very moving and thought provoking.
We will never understand just how living in an institution affects our children in the long run, but for darling children like Abigail, Katie and Ella, there is HOPE for the future I'm sure even greater than their birth families prayed for. Those days when I feel overwhelmed at the thought of what our girls have gone through, the questions they will ask that we will never be able to give them answers for, I remind myself that we (adoptive parents) are an answer to prayer for the birth mothers who gave our children lives. I have to believe that, whatever religion one practices, a woman going through the immensely difficult decision to place her child for adoption has likely pleaded with her God/god/higher being/whatever to make her child safe and loved. It's not much, in the face of what our children have gone through, but it helps me get through the tough times.
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