Changes in Longitude

Thanksgiving

Many words will be written about the week’s holiday.  I guess I’ll add a few more.

Of all our annual holidays I like Thanksgiving the best.  It has always been the one with the largest family gathering and generally the best food.  It also meant a very long weekend that allowed for extended play when I was a kid and time to travel a bit when I got older.  Now it means a few days of downtime to gear up for the month of craziness that precedes Christmas.  The pressure of finding the perfect gift that hangs over Christmas does not cast a shadow over Thanksgiving.  I really like that. 

As luck would have it, our trip to bring Marit home happened over Thanksgiving.  A mere two days after we were given our new daughter it was time to give thanks for all our gifts in life.  The hotel staff at the Holiday Inn Riverside in Wuhan did their best to make us a traditional Thanksgiving meal but alas, something was lost in translation.  The turkey was hard to recognize and the stuffing had to be sliced.  But at least those folks gave it a good try.  If nothing else it provides me a fond memory.  It’s not every year that I get to have Thanksgiving dinner overlooking the Yangtze.

There’s much to be thankful for this year as every other.  My list is much like yours, I am sure. But for some reason, this year I feel especially thankful for the life I have the pleasure of living.  Nothing much has changed this year from the last but I just feel more appreciative of it.  I guess I must have crossed some invisible threshold or personal Rubicon in the last go around the sun.  That makes yet one more thing to be thankful for.

I wish you all much to be thankful for in your days to come.

The Yangtze River at Wuhan, November 2001

Eight Years

Eight years ago today we met our first child, Marit, along the banks of the Yangtze in Wuhan China.  There are no words to describe our feelings on that day.  We felt great joy in having her in our lives but knew that she had left a loving foster family who no doubt were missing her dearly at that same moment.  As with many moments in life there were two diametrically opposed sides to the metaphorical coin we were holding.

We’ve since met that loving foster family and re-established the ties that were broken that day.  As a family we’ve traveled many miles and passed many moments both good in the last eight years.  We’ve grown.  We’ve changed.  We’re looking forward.  Life is good.

Marit is now a very tall and sensitive child.  She loves art in its many forms: pictures, sculpture, dance and music.  She’s becoming quite a naturalist and impresses us a bit more everyday.  Most of the time she’s a good big sister.  She’s always our daughter.

In a few days she’ll turn nine and enter the last year of her age being written in single digits.  Eight years ago we knew this day would come.  We just didn’t realize it would be so soon.

Marit, October 2009, Memphis, TN

Six Years

Mattie displaying her natural flexibility November 2003

Six years ago today we met Mattie in Nanchang, Jiangxi.  We had flown into Nanchang from Beijing a few hours earlier and were still getting settled when there was a timid knock on the door.  It was our guide Helen telling us that we needed to head down to the hotel’s ballroom to meet our new daughter.  We grabbed our cameras, picked up Marit and headed to the elevators.

The room was dark but it was light enough to see Mattie.  She had no idea what was going on.  She had no idea that her life was about to change radically from anything and everything she had known for the first fifteen months of her life.  But she came to us just the same. 

Mattie has now been in our family for 83% of her time on earth.  That number grows each day but will never attain 100%.  It’s a fact she’ll always have to live with and every once in awhile she’ll have to decide how much that really matters to her.  Right now she seems to have decided it’s important only to the extent that her birth and wait in China were together a necessary step for her to find her home with us.  She may not be able to articulate this yet but her attitude and actions speak to this well enough.  She’s a happy child, a far cry from the scared and angry little girl we met 83% of her lifetime ago.  We look forward to seeing that number continue to grow over time but from that first moment six years ago, Mattie has been 100% our daughter.  That’s the number that matters to us.

Mattie and her pumpkin October 2009

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

View from our back porch 7:00 AM 11/01/09

We finally have an extended period of dry weather here and the mud is crusting over.  The cold front that sparked all the rain also brought us some clear, dry air with a bit of a fall bite to it.  We don't get much in the way of Fall colors here in East Texas.  Everything deciduous goes from green to brown in about a week with hardly a pause for yellow, orange or red in between.  The only exception seems to be our cypress trees which have briefly put on an orange hue in anticipation of dropping their needles.  These trees reflecting in our pond almost make it seem we've twice as many as we do.

As always, the girls chose their own costumes for this Halloween.  They decided to be characters with at least a passing resemblance to their personalities but also wanted to team up on a theme.  And so I bring you their choices...

Marit as Dorothy (and her little dog, too)

And...

Mattie as the Wicked Witch of the West.

I did tell you the resemblance was passing didn't I?

The Rain Is Holding Up Progress

Enough already.  Our drought is officially now so it would be nice if the rains could abate long enough for me to get a roof on the new addition we’re building. I guess we’ll need to wait another couple days for that.

A few months ago our extended family made the decision to try and move Wynter’s parents out to our place from their apartment in town.  There are a number of reasons for this but the strongest is that they’ll now get to be with the girls just about every day.  They’re great grandparents.  They help us out by taxiing the girls to and from whatever after school activity they have when we have schedule conflicts, which seems to be a couple times a week.  They really enjoy regularly taking the girls for a few hours and doing things with them.  The girls love it and everyone wins.  We realize not every family enjoys the full acceptance of their adopted children that we do.  Rest assured we do appreciate how lucky we are.  Unconditional love is a hard thing to find.

The best option we could see to affect the move was adding a full kitchen on to our little guesthouse.  In the end it will still be “little” but large enough to be comfortable.  It’s quite nice (if I do say so myself) and is rather energy efficient.  But its greatest asset is that it is literally right across the driveway (currently a muddy mire) from our house.  Hopefully by Christmas (which probably means Easter the way things are going) we’ll be ready for them to move in and then the girls can skip across the yard and visit with Wynter’s parents just about any time.  This may prove to be more proximity and access than is optimum at times but I expect we’ll find some basic ground rules to keep everyone’s privacy somewhat intact and not drive each other crazy with too much contact.  We’ll see.

Over the next couple months I’ll be posting the occasional progress report and photos regarding our little adventure in home construction.  We’ve got grand plans to add on to the main house next year as well but that’s going to have to wait.  One project at a time is more than enough.

Foundation work 9/09

Mudville to Mud Island

It’s getting a bit old.  We’re about to rename this place Mudville and enlist mighty Casey to play for the local nine next spring if this rain doesn’t stop soon.  The weather reports tell me not to get my hopes up for dry weather this week.

Last weekend was nice and sunny though.  Of course that wasn’t here but rather in Memphis.  As has happened in each of the last seven years (except for when we were in China) we had our annual get together with another family who we met on our first trip to China to bring Marit home.  Their eldest daughter, Lily, came home on the same trip.  Both were from the same town in Hubei and had actually known each other before we met them that first time nearly eight years ago.

Each time we arrive at our reunion spot the girls both jump out of the cars and literally run to get together.  That ongoing relationship has somehow transferred to each of our second daughters who do exactly the same thing.  No matter how long we are apart all four girls seem to pick up where they left off when they departed the year before.  It’s as if they were never apart.  It truly is an amazing and wonderful thing.

As you may know from some of my past posts, I have an affinity for crazy ideas.  Whether it is an orbiting telescope to peer into the far reaches of the universe, a giant Buddha carved out of a hillside in China or planting wildflowers along highways I like ideas that on their face are impractical.  One of my favorites crazy ideas is Mud Island in the Mississippi near Memphis.  Someone decided that this low island could become a really interesting park if you would only build a scale model of the entire Mississippi River drainage on it.  The model would be a couple miles long with water running from the source in Minnesota to the mouth emptying into the Gulf of Mexico.  It is way cool and big enough for kids to play in and float little rubber ducks the whole way.  Every bit of relief, each island and tributary, each city and its bridges across the river are there to be waded in, walked on and crossed over.  It’s yet another of those crazy ideas that I wish I had thought of but am entirely thankful that somebody else did.

Wading in the "Mississippi" with the real Mississippi in the distance.

 

Daily Life

Each day something small and interesting happens around here.  I try to catalog most of them so I can comment on them here but generally I don’t get that done.  Before I do, the next day comes along, something new happens and displaces what I wanted to write about and I never seem to actually sit down to write about anything.  I take that to be a good, if not truly productive, thing. 

Like anyone with young children we spend a significant portion of our day keeping up with childcare, laundry and housekeeping.  We taxi the kids from school to music lessons, ballet, gymnastics, Girl Scouts and anything else that demands their attention.  Occasionally we have a moment to sit down and read with them, get down on the floor to play or run around the yard for no other reason than it’s fun.  Even when we’re exhausted Wynter and I try to keep in mind that the days when our children will crave our time and attention are fleeting.  Soon their friends will be more interesting to them than we are.  It’s then we’ll find ourselves with time on our hands and wishing for their attention.

I’ve been seeing this distancing from parents in some of our daughters’ friends.  It’s no doubt coming our way and I fear it.  That’s why I inwardly smile each time a small hand reaches up to grasp mine as we’re walking along on some routine errand.  It is a special thing that will not always be mine.  Soon enough they’ll want to walk hand in hand with someone else.  But for now, it is my time.  I am still their prince and they are my princesses.

March 2009    

Cold and Rainy

There’s a cold rain falling here today.  It’s a welcome relief from the hot dry summer that seems now to be officially over.

Last night I heard on the news that Australia is suffering some serious dust storms right now and I also saw a short segment on CCTV-English about the dust storm problem that China has been having for the last decade or so.  It’s odd how those showed up just after my last post.

We just had another of those “small world” incidents that we have on a regular basis around here. If our experience is any indication, there might actually be some truth to the notion that each of us is connected to all others on earth through a short string of acquaintances.  I think it’s commonly called seven degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon or something like that.

Wynter teaches a course in Humane and Environmental Education and has funding for a graduate assistant to help her.  Each fall she goes through the process of hiring one and this fall was no exception.  She put the call for applications out and as usual among the applicants were several grad students from China.  One, it turned out, grew up only a few blocks from our home in Weifang.  It further came to light that her mother was a doctor and taught at Weifang Medical College where our friend from Australia, Ian, taught English after he left Weifang University where he and Wynter were colleagues.  And indeed the good doctor and Ian know each other.

Now, Ian and his wife Angie (from Weifang) are living in Australia and likely dealing with the dust storms.  Wynter also now has a new assistant from Weifang.  It’s a small and wonderful world we live in.

Angie and Ian at the Summer Palace, April 2007

Hubris

Dust storm approaching Stratford, Texas Dust bowl surveying in Texas,April 18, 1935

I’m more or less on vacation this month (sadly it’s been more “less” than “more” this week) and have been catching up on reading.  The book I’m most interested in right now is one called “The Worst Hard Times” by Timothy Egan.  It’s about the run up to and the actual survival of the Dust Bowl on the American Great Plains in the 1930’s.  It’s a good read that’s well researched.

The part I have found most interesting is the tale of hope, greed, ignorance and hubris that brought about this man made environmental, social and economic disaster.  It’s probably the first clearly man made environmental disaster ever documented although I suspect there are many others in man’s earlier history that haven’t been fully documented yet.  There certainly have been many since.

As with most such events it started as some folks simply trying to make a better life for themselves.  In the early part of this century the only really open and free land left for immigrants (we actually welcomed them back then) or folks in the east looking for a better life in the west was on the high plains, then known as the Great American Desert.  It was a sea of grasses that received little rain but was superbly adapted to surviving the regular droughts (hence the desert part of the name).  By the start of the 20^th century we’d already killed off most of the buffalo, an animal well adapted to the extremes of temperature there, and replaced them with cattle that were unable to survive the cold winters and hot summers of the region. 

The next step of domestication of the plains was to try to farm land that was fertile but often received scant rainfall.  Settlers were drawn to the region by railroads and other developers who downplayed the harsh realities and masked them with that great notion: opportunity.  In the end bad farming practices prompted by ignorance, misplaced government incentives and a marketplace ill prepared to deal with shifting commodity prices caused by falling demand for and over-production of wheat left the land naked of the grass cover that had always protected it.  Several dry years turned the exposed sandy loam to powder and wind carried it away in great cloud that deposited much of the topsoil of the Great Plains east of the Mississippi.

I expect we’ve all seen the pictures of the mess we created.  But, we also eventually cleaned it up with better farming practices and land reclamation mostly developed and implemented by our government.

I personally take this as an object lesson that we ignore our environment and what the changes in it tell us at our peril. It also makes it clear to me that even well intentioned acts of man can cause great harm to the world and ultimately, mankind.  Today, I believe there is ample evidence that the continued growth in the use of fossil fuels poses a threat to our environment.  In the future we may find that the evidence or the interpretation of it was wrong but I think it shortsighted to ignore it until we are absolutely certain that it’s correct.  By then it may be too late and certitude is the realm of politics and religion, not science. 

Before the Dust Bowl, there were many voices that proclaimed that the Great Plains was no place to farm and that the practices of the time would lead to disaster.  They were belittled and ignored by those who had a financial interest in the status quo.  The average farmer on the Plains could only make decisions based on limited knowledge and the immediate financial prospects for his family.  There are parallels in today’s situation but we’re now talking about an issue that may affect the whole planet and not just one region of it.

At the same time we can also take another lesson from the Dust Bowl.  If we simply alter some of our practices we can ultimately achieve what we hope to in the future.  The Great American Desert is being farmed intensively these days but in a different way.  It’s not a perfect system but it does not seem to endanger the entire region as farming there once did.  Similarly, I believe we can probably develop technologies and practices that will allow us to continue to enjoy our lifestyle, with some simple changes, and still allow a chance for those in developing countries to achieve the same.  We just need to make that commitment to ourselves, and our children. 

The question is: Will we?

Dust is too much for this farmer's son in Cimarron County, Oklahoma. Arthur Rothstein, photographer, 1936. (Library of Congress)

Simple Thoughts

One year ago today Mattie decided she could fly and found out the hard way that she’s not always right.  The net result was a badly broken arm that required surgery and pins to repair.  Fortunately the operation was a complete success and Mattie is back to her normal reckless self.  Later today I get to take her to gymnastics.  She still thinks she can fly.  We’ll see if she’s right this time.

For some unknown reason, this morning Mattie decided she wanted to crawl into bed with us and lay on my chest “like when I was a baby” she said.  She’s still small enough to without crushing me and I’m just glad that even at the ripe old age of seven, she still wants to from time to time.

Some time ago I wrote the following about our first night with Mattie, when indeed she was a baby.  The memory still makes me smile.

Bonding*

Bonding with your new child is a process made up of many small events.  This is just one that brought Mattie and I closer together.

We first received Mattie at around 7:00 PM in a rather dark hotel ballroom. That was not exactly what we expected but not unprecedented, so we’ve been told. She was tired and hungry, scared and excited and generally confused. Who wouldn’t be? Eventually we got her settled down a bit, got acquainted, fed her and then changed her into clean footie pajamas.  The next order of business was sleep for us all.

For some reason yet determined, Mattie chose me as the only human allowed to touch her that first night. I could happily live with that for a while so it fell to me to get her to sleep.  After several unsuccessful attempts I finally settled Mattie down by holding her and walking around the hotel hallway (fortunately it was circular) until she dropped off. But each time I tried to lay her down in her crib she bolted awake and screamed…really, really loudly. This kid has lungs like you would not believe.  Once Mattie was awake (along with everyone else within hearing) the entire process had to be repeated.

Eventually it became apparent that the only way anyone was going to get any sleep that night was for me to hold her the whole time. There was no way I could walk all night so I finally tried to just gently lay back on the bed (still fully clothed after a day of travel from Beijing to Nanchang mind you) and hold, the hopefully still sleeping, Mattie on my chest.  It worked and I too, nodded off.

Unknown to us at the time, Mattie is a climber, even when asleep. As the night wore on she would crawl upward on me a few inches at a time. I dared not disturb her to move her downward on me so I just laid back and after each of her little climbs upward we would both sleep a bit longer.

Eventually, Mattie had crawled her way to where she had her waist on my forehead. She didn’t weigh much and since most of her upper body was borne by my pillow I could stand it, as long as I turned my head sideways. I figured we both needed the sleep so I decided to just live with this until morning. All was going well until I heard this gurgling sound emanating from my new daughter’s nether regions, quite literally beside my head. Before I fully comprehended what this might portend Mattie delivered nearly the entire contents of her gastro-intestinal passage in one large, warm, semi-solid and oh so aromatic mass. Said mass was separated from my nose (and the side of my head for that matter) by a thin layer of flannel and the straining fibers of a disposable diaper. “Aromatic” barely begins to describe what, at some time in the recent past, had entered the other end of Mattie’s gastro-intestinal tract, presumably as food.

Lying there, as my eyes watered and I struggled for clear air, I silently went through a whole list of never before considered questions. Do I dare wake the noise machine now on my head and thereby everyone else within 100 yards? Should I trust the structural integrity of the burgeoning diaper?  How much will a Huggies hold and for how long? Will flannel pajamas contain the contents should diaper failure occur? How long can I really hold my breath? Do I chance getting an earful of something besides noise? There was so much to consider.

While I was contemplating all this Mattie decided things for me by waking on her own and of course, bellowing. The added strain of her now fully employed diaphragm forced what little remained in her bowel outward and it was then that the structural limits of her diaper were surpassed. For the uninitiated, flannel pajamas will hold far less than a disposable diaper.

Of such small events, lifetime bonds are made.

Mattie and I, Guangzhou November 2003

*A slightly edited version of this was featured in Love Without Boundaries’ 2004 book “Love’s Journey 2, The Red Thread”