Daughter journeys to land of her birth

VANESSA WILLIS
Sydney Carpenter kneels on her living room floor, flipping through a photo album.

"Those children are all wearing the same outfits because they're going to school," she says, pointing. "And over here was when we went to the fish market."

The images are from her family's June trip to China. It's likely that she won't understand the significance of the journey until she's older. When you're 7, it's hard to comprehend that the only place you remember is not your original home.

`We just cried buckets'

Eric Carpenter, Sydney's dad, grew up in Gastonia. He worked for a textile company that sent him to live in China for two years. There he learned of the plight of abandoned infant girls through friends who adopted one.He returned to the United States and met his future wife, Marilyn, in 1995.

"When we started to get serious about our relationship, Eric brought up the idea of adopting from China, and I was impressed by the passion he expressed," she says.

They married in 1997. A few years later they began the adoption process through an international agency in Greensboro. After mountains of paperwork and several months of waiting, a packet arrived in the mail.

Eric and Marilyn remember sitting on the couch and pulling out the photo. It was the first time they saw Sydney.

"And we just cried buckets for an hour," Eric says, pulling Sydney, now 7, closer to him on the couch.

"It just felt so right," Marilyn, 46, adds, her eyes flooding with tears.

Sydney had been abandoned when she was a few days old at the post office of a small, rural mining town in mainland China. She was taken to an orphanage full of other baby girls.

Two months after Sydney was assigned to the Carpenters, Eric and Marilyn went to China to bring their daughter home to Charlotte. They traveled with 12 other couples who worked with the same agency. Sydney was 10 months old.

Eric, 39, opens a second photo album full of images from that trip six years ago. There's the hotel room crib, empty except for a few toys they'd brought.

And, finally, images of Marilyn and Eric each holding Sydney for the first time. They are wide-eyed and smiling through tears as they study her tiny, puzzled face.

"She was so wrapped up in this big coat because it was winter and the orphanage had no heat," Marilyn says. "... I just wanted to undress her and feel her little body."

She describes adoption as the "magic" through which families instantly form.

Bridging the divide

On the trip back to China this summer, the couple hoped to introduce Sydney to her roots. They didn't expect any big revelation, just to plant seeds of pride.

Over a couple of weeks they visited a tea plantation, the Beijing zoo, the Forbidden City, Buddhist temples, the Great Wall and other historic sites. They also visited Eric's friends and former coworkers.

Several of the cultural lessons were confusing, Sydney says, including using the stand-up, pedal-operated toilets and learning the art of haggling in markets. But by the end of the trip she was playing right along, helping her parents negotiate prices on souvenirs.

The Carpenters keep in touch with some of the families they traveled with when they adopted Sydney. Eric says he hopes a greater good will comes from the thousands of Chinese girls adopted by Americans every year.

"China is going to join the U.S. as a superpower, but the cultural divide is so great," he says. "I like to think that the girls who grow up here in America will go a long way toward forming better relationships."

Sydney, still flipping through photos, finds the images from the family's visit to a silk factory. She describes how silkworms produce the fibers to make the precious cloth. Then she stops suddenly and scoots up the stairs.

"Be right back," she calls over her shoulder.

She returns gingerly carrying a traditional Chinese silk dress on a hanger. It's a gorgeous pink with tiny embroidered flowers.

Buying the dress was a turning point during the trip, Eric says. "It was when Sydney decided it was cool to be Chinese, and really seemed to make a connection to the place where she came from."

"Well, it is cool, Daddy," she says, grinning.

VOICES Vanessa Willis
Charlotte Observer