When I was young, I remember staying up late many nights tossing and turning in my bed. Unable to allow sleep to calm my questioning mind, I was creating masterpieces of fiction that transported me to an imagined existence. Though the stories were very different from the non-fiction stories of my life, they were undeniably intertwined. In my mind, I contemplated all the “what if’s” over and over again. What if I had not been adopted? What if I had grown up in the land of my birth? What kind of house would I have lived in? What if I had had siblings to grow up with? What kind of games would we have played? What if...what if… I couldn’t keep myself from pondering an imagined life, making up stories about how things would have been different if I had grown up in China.
It is a dilemma for anyone who experiences a life changing event that cannot be remembered or understood. My imagined stories were one way for me to cope with my unique dilemma. When I was eleven months old, the two people I came to know as my mother and father traveled 7,000 miles to Wuzhou, China to start their family. I was the daughter they had hoped for – once lost, but now chosen. The note read “Jian He, April 9, 1996.” Those two pieces of written information were all that was known. The note was pinned to the sweater of a small infant placed in a basket on the floor of a heavily trafficked jewelry shop. Unbeknownst to patrons of the store, a mother bid farewell to her baby girl for the first and last time. In my dramatic narrative, I imagined an emotional look of longing and pain…a decision made, now irrevocable.
The little information I had about my beginnings brought feelings of uncertainty, loss and rejection - uncertainty about my identity and my place in the world, along with a sense of loss and rejection by a person with whom I shared a special biological connection. As a counterweight to these feelings, my adoptive parents served as a beacon of certainty, love and acceptance. As I grew older, my feelings of uncertainty began to fade along with my childhood imaginings. I realized that I had adopted my parents just as much as they had adopted me. All the qualities and values I admired in them, I tried to mirror. Their unconditional love and support gave me roots to grow into the person I am today.
Through my stories - both real and imagined - my journey in life has uncovered some core truths. Because my birth mother took great care to ensure I was found, I can only conclude she gave me up so I would have a chance for a better life, and she did this because she loved me. Another core truth is that life is full of mysteries and one has to learn to cope with the fact that not every question will have an answer. I have also come to believe that a person’s character is defined by the sum total of their experiences. My unique beginnings, along with the opportunities I’ve been given, provided a foundation for success as a daughter, a student, a friend and as a citizen of my adoptive country.
