Every year, on the first week of August, my husband, daughter and I attend a family reunion in the central California beach town of Cayucos.
All 12 families book into the same motel. We eat every meal together. We help the kids fly kites, build kelp-adorned sand castles and boogie board in the bone-chilling waters of the Pacific.
But here’s the thing: We are not related … at least not by blood.
We meet because on the very first weekend of August, six years ago, my husband and I boarded a flight from Los Angeles to Guangzhou, China. There were 26 other families traveling with us, all on our way to China to become parents.
If “globalization” is the buzz word of the 21st century, nowhere does the connection between nations seem smaller, more intimate or more hopeful than when an orphanage worker in a country half a world away puts a baby in your arms. In an instant, you are family.
And because our child was born in China, the three of us—my husband, my daughter and myself—suddenly find ourselves citizens of the world.
When China hosts an Olympics, we feel pride. When China goes through its growing pains, we feel alarm. When a poverty-stricken Chinese farmer comes to America seeking a lifesaving heart operation for his tiny daughter, we take them into our home, happily, for they too are family.
Every child adopted internationally is a part of a grand social experiment that says, “Borders do not matter. Governments do not matter. Love and time and bonding are what matter.”
And so, when my 7-year old describes herself as “100 percent American, 100 percent Chinese, 50 percent Jewish, 50 percent Quaker, a little bit Buddhist and some Adventist” (she attends Adventist schools), I tell her that her math is perfect.
But she is not your average American kid. She will have questions about herself, about her birth, and about her native country. Thankfully, so many children are now adopted both domestically and internationally that there are terrific support systems in place to help them navigate the answers.
But we want something more, and so do the families with whom we share our vacation every summer.
Almost all of our children knew each other before they knew us. They shared cribs and cries, first steps and first foods in the Chinese orphanage together. These children were there for each other before we could be.
And so, every August on the very first weekend, we fill our car with sand toys, towels, beach blankets, and umbrellas. Then we drive four hours north to be with her Chinese friends. Because when the time comes for our little citizen of the world to reach out to others who can answer her questions, we want her first family—those children with whom she shared her life in the orphanage—to be nearby. And it starts on the beach in Cayucos.
By Jamie Simons for PeterGreenberg.com.
Read more entries from the Grateful Traveler series:
Or read the post that started it all: An “Eskimo” Showed Me the Way.
