Starting families: Happy Adoption Day

Twenty-three years ago today, (Sept. 19, 1997), 11 families from New England, New York and Florida were in a hotel in Hefei, China waiting for a chance of a lifetime: to become parents. We were all anxious as we contemplated starting our families by adopting girls ranging in age from 14 to 16 months.

Now, those toddlers are all grown up, college graduates and working in various fields; they’ve all done well and have made their parents extremely proud.
On the occasion of the 23^rd anniversary of those girls’ Adoption Day, I’d like to share this column that I wrote for my daughter --- and for all of her “sisters” --- on March 15, 2017. It was published in The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro:

The March 2017 column follows:

Twenty years ago, we got together in our “free” time over about two weeks in China to give the girls play dates.
Twenty years later, the girls are in college and will graduate with the Class of 2018.
In the years in between, the toddlers who became our daughters on Sept. 19, 1997 in Hefei, China, enjoyed seeing each other during regular reunions. Now, they keep up with each other on Facebook, and the get-togethers are as much for the parents as for the young women they’ve become.
In fact, at a recent gathering that many of the members of our original adoption group had in Sturbridge, only one of the four girls who attended was a member of our adoption group; the three others were younger siblings. Her “Shen cousins,” so named for the Chinese name that all were given while in the orphanage, were at college. That made their parents feel older, because the girls who had play dates in China will be turning 21 later this year.
That made this latest reunion for the parents, who after two decades, could enjoy each other as friends forever bonded thanks to adopting our girls at a time when international adoption still wasn’t quite so popular or routine as it eventually became.
China was just starting to become an industrial giant, and there was plenty of smog in the girls’ home city. My white Boston Marathon cap that I’d jog in would turn a dark gray. We were told to take plenty of toilet paper along with the snacks and formula for the girls, who were between 13 and 17 months.
Many of us first met in Hong Kong, where a flight to the girls’ home city awaited. When we landed, we boarded a bus to the hotel and were told that the adoption would be pushed back one day to Friday. No one was disappointed; the chance to rest for one more day was a gift from heaven, because we were as nervous as all first-time parents. The reality that we would be handed a life to take care of for the rest of our lives was pretty powerful – enough to make sleep rare that final night without a daughter.
The handover the next day went as smooth as possible for us; the snacks had come in handy, but the girls seemed to adapt to their new surroundings; the growing pains would come later, and fathers and mothers walking the hotel halls with their kids became a common sight.
The two weeks breezed by in China, and before we knew it, we were back in the States. I’ll never forget how animated my daughter, Ari, was when got into the car ride at the airport; sensing the excitement, she clapped her hands, as if to say: “Get me home already.”
We quickly became your typical parents, and got involved in our own communities and activities. But each year, the group – which included families from New York, Rhode Island and Florida as well as Massachusetts – would hold a reunion, something that we remarkably did every year through 2012, when we had many of the people over on a glorious, sunny July Sunday afternoon.
Reunions then became scarce; with the girls in high school they kept in touch online, but getting together was hard. Some of the girls graciously came to Ari’s high school graduation party in 2014, but it had been a while since the parents had gotten together.
That made our leisurely dinner at Sturbridge’s Publick House all the more delightful. We talked, we dined, we reminisced, we laughed. We had a grand time, and at one point, I turned to one of the mothers and said, “Janis, we’ve done good.”
Grammarians will no doubt scold me, because I should have said “we’ve done well,” but my point was this: Our perseverance and our tenacity 20 years ago led to our adopting girls whose lives would have been much different had they never left China.
We worked, we loved, we cried, we prayed – and we raised some amazing young women who will be turning 21.
We did very well, indeed.