"Waves Become Wings"

Like me, I think there are many people who can remember the point when they were first confronted with the reality that there are people in the world who are less fortunate than themselves. For some this discovery may have been as meaningless as a leaf falling off a tree. I believe for others the impact is much more significant and it may, in part, define the direction of a persons life, leading them into such things as philanthropy, social work, missionary work or perhaps even education, just to name a few. Although I am none of these things, I do believe, for me, that initial discovery has, in part, guided me to where I am today.

There have been a number of times that I have been told I am lucky. People have called me lucky because of where I live or because of the job I have or the car I drive. It confuses and irritates me because I don't feel luck has anything to do with any of those things. I don't really depend on luck for anything, I am not a gambler. I have been to Vegas several times and I think the dollars I've spent on gambling remain in the single digits. The amount I've spent on Cirque Du Soleil tickets is a different story, although, depending on what you are seeing, that in itself can be a gamble. Being called lucky irritates me because it diminishes or invalidates all of the hard work and dedication I know was required to achieve and accomplish all I have.

I will admit that luck or chance may be a determining factor when it comes to things like genetics or geography. I imagine that my life would be far different had I been born an Iraqi or if I lived in New Orleans. If either of these had been my destiny, I doubt anyone would consider using lucky and my name in the same sentence. But once such things have been determined, I am inclined to think that the person has a greater impact on determining what their life will be as opposed to luck or chance.

Because I have worked so hard to get where I am I think I have a much greater appreciation for everything around me. I have never expected to be given something I didn't think I earned or deserved and I have always tried to take nothing for granted. Everything has a value, a value which is measured by the amount of work required to get it.

As an adult, somewhere along the way you come to the realization that many of the thoughts, hopes, dreams, ideas and plans you had and made in your youth, are simply not going to happen, and you re-negotiate. It is just one of the challenges of life and being able to take on these challenges is something I am eternally grateful for. I don't know where that ability comes from but I know that some of the things life throws at you are violating, humiliating and degrading and can knock you down lower than you ever thought you could go but in spite of that I've always found a way to rise above it. My attitude has always been that, regardless of how bad things may seem, you usually don't have to look very far to find someone who is worse off than you.

These all may just sound like inane ramblings. A bunch of uncohesive thoughts or ideas. But for me, all of these things together culminated in a journey. A journey that involved a novel worthy sequence of events, months of paperwork and waiting, weathering the storm of a SARS epidemic. All leading up to the summer of 2003 when I found myself in the courtyard of the Lily Orphan Care Center in the town of Fuling in the Chongqing Municipality of China.

During the time that preceded my arrival I developed some expectations about how this whole endeavor would play out. What would I find there and what would be challenging or difficult. At that point my main concern was how a 9-month old would tolerate the 20 hours of air travel ahead of us to get back home. I was expecting that to be a big challenge, but to the contrary it went much smoother than I had anticipated and it was far from being the most difficult thing to deal with. In an orphanage there are rooms full of babies, all in walkers rolling around like bumper cars at an amusement park. There are other rooms filled with row after row of tiny cribs. There are rooms full of infants in baby chairs lined up, wall to wall covering the floor like cars parked in a lot. The technical and legal part of the whole adoption process seemed to be little more than a government sanctioned, clandestine monetary transaction. I was able to accept all of these things and look beyond them.

I don't imagine the stories differ all that much, a baby is abandoned on a doorstep, the police are called, reports are filed, the baby is placed in orphanage, the baby is adopted and begins a new life in a new home somewhere in the world. I guess I led myself to believe this was the whole story. I soon found out it was not and I was not prepared for the other part of the story, the part I confronted in Guangzhou.

After leaving the orphanage we flew to Guangzhou where the US consulate is located. Adoptions by US citizens are finalized with the consulate. Many, if not all, children being adopted from China, regardless of their final destination go through Guangzhou. The part of the city where we stayed is filled with babies and their adoptive parents. There are many shops, restaurants and hotels in this area that get most of their business from foreigners adopting babies.

What I never expected to see and what I found to be the most difficult thing to accept or deal with was the presence of children who were no longer babies, their story completely different. Within this sea of babies there were older children, many with apparent birth defects and physical handicaps and deformities. Things that I could only imagine rendered them un-adoptable for such a period of time that they had grown beyond the age of not comprehending or remembering what is happening to them. The dissemination is probably pointless, an abandoned child is a tragedy, regardless, but the thought of an abandoned handicapped child is so much more difficult for me to understand and accept. And yet, there they were, so many of them, in this ocean of healthy infants.

Every child needed to have a brief physical exam before leaving the country. We were taken to this assembly-line physician's office which existed for this purpose. While waiting, I spotted this little girl. She may have been as old as 8 or 9. She sat on a bench with her new parents. She was a skinny little girl, staring at the floor and appeared to be completely withdrawn and folded up into herself. Possibly that saddest looking child I had ever seen. Then I noticed the twisted and mangled appendage that should have been her foot. Her little ankle was contorted and her foot facing in the wrong direction. It was obviously the result of a damaging injury. An injury that happened not recently but some time ago and was not treated and healed on its own leaving her with this crippled limb, unable to walk. I averted my eyes, I was shocked at what I saw, it was unbearable to see.

It was one of those situations where you try to be subtle and act like everything is normal and try not to make the situation worse by doing anything that might attract attention. And you desperately try to think of something else to barter away everything you are feeling. What could have caused such an injury to a child and how could it just be ignored, left to heal however it would on its own? Could this have happened in an orphanage or was there some other horror she escaped or was released from. If she was in an orphanage, I thought about what it must have been like for her as her 4th, 5th or 6th birthday passed and she would watch day after day as dozens of babies leave, on their way to homes, while she was passed over and remained behind. I felt such disbelief and shame and pity that I honestly didn't know what to do or think.


I later found reconciliation in 2 thoughts. First I looked to the fact that she was leaving this place. She was going to a home and would be part of a family and it would be a place where her physical injuries would most likely be repaired, at first, and then possibly the other damages. In myself I realized that everything I felt, all of the emotion, outrage and anger is exactly what I should have felt. I would never want to become so complacent that the idea of a child being abandoned or being abused and abandoned would not have an emotional impact on me. Complacency is a dangerous thing and in this world it is far too prevalent.


In the years that have passed, occasionally someone will mention how lucky my daughter is. Perhaps you can say that is true but I am still unsure how I feel about it. I don't think at this point she would even understand the concept of luck. She probably does not think her life differs that much from most other 4 year old girls. But I know one day she will discover that it is different in many ways. I guess if I do my job right, when she reaches the point of making all of the inevitable discoveries of life and discoveries of reality, she will be as profoundly affected by them as I have been.

With regards to luck, perhaps I am bothered by the implication that this world we inhabit is a world where once you are born into it, chance and luck play a prominent role in whether or not you will survive and prosper in it.