Goldfish

I met my daughter when she was 10 months old and I traveled to China to pick her up. As beautiful and profound as everyone says it is, our relationship is tinged with a fundamental sadness that covers me from head to toe every single day of our magical lives together: on the day she was born the woman who gave birth to her, or someone close to that woman, picked up this baby, wrapped her in a blanket and left her outside on the ground in front of an orphanage.

Nothing I can say or do from that moment on can mitigate this basic human sadness.  Who or what would make a woman abandon her baby?  I cannot even begin to guess.  Well yes, I can.  I can and I do and I believe that as my beautiful daughter gets older and begins to understand she will ask me and I must be ready to give her answers.

I don’t feel like an heroic person who swooped into a backwards country and made some child’s life magic.  I cringe when people tell me how lucky she is.  It is I, in fact, who is the lucky one.  I feel like I stole something primal and important from a country that is just beginning to find its feet and understand itself.  Sometimes I must confess, I feel like a thief.

A friend and I were discussing adoption one day, she herself is adopted, and she said to me, you have started telling her, her story, haven’t you?

“Um, no,” I confess. “I have not.  I thought I would just wait until she asked.  I figure she will ask questions because we do not look alike.”  

“No,” the friend said, “you must begin to tell her now.  This is her story, you must have her hear it and know it before it becomes a big deal.”

The weight of this story and its import to my girl hangs low and heavy over us every night as we lay down to read. I know without careful consideration that my friend is right, and it is a story she must know as she grows, so that it becomes a kind of backbone story and she can gradually hang other details onto it to eventually create the full and rich story of her life.

So I say to her one night as we are lying in bed, would you like to hear the story of how we met?

“Yes,” she says and now you must know that my girl is not one to climb into bed and wait patiently for her story and then roll over and sleep.  My girl jumps and moves and tosses and turns.  She is motion, so I begin to tell the story to a moving target.  I say it low in an almost whisper so she will strain to hear it, but really I think, I am sad to tell it, sad for her to know the truth.  I almost hope she does not hear me.   

Flash forward two weeks and I’ve told her the story now many times. In fact, after the first time I told her she began to ask for it by name:  tell me the story of the time we met.  And so I begin every night…A long time ago in a far away place there was a little girl named Yi Xiao Jian.

It is at this point that she always interrupts me to tell me her favorite detail of the story.  It is not that we flew on a plane to get her, or the fact that we met in a big conference room, or that we were there with all her friends' mommies and daddies, or that she was first in the room carried in the arms of her nanny. No, the detail she always remembers and tells me herself, before I even get to the end of the story is that Mommy brought her goldfish crackers.

So the story becomes the time I brought goldfish crackers to a very faraway place, and I can see in her eyes that she is making a memory for herself. Years from now, long after I am gone, she will remember our meeting not because she remembers, but because she has told herself a story again and again, making the memory more and more vivid as the time wears on.  Her small fist filled with orange fish shaped crackers and the laughter that came easily as she ate every single one.

Amy for the Poplar Grove Muse

WWfaC Writers in Print

Every once in a while it is nice to take a look around and applaud the women and men of our circles who have published written work. Although this list is by no means all inclusive, we are excited when we see the name of someone we know in print. Often the poems and stories that make it into real magazines and chapbooks are part of the circles in which we all participate.

I love knowing that the poems I read in a circle last month or the story I discussed with a writer, are now part of the public eye. Being part of the great ebb and flow of the written word is satisfying in so many ways.

Last summer, perennial WWfaC writer and co-editor of Women with Wings, Lauren Bryant published her first chapbook of poetry. Now Comes the Petitioner arrived in my mailbox in the full heat of the summer. I pulled up a chair, got my glass of cabernet, and enjoyed discovering and sometimes rediscovering some fine poems. You can order it straight from the publisher at finishing line press or of course on Amazon.

This past month, Kim Evans, facilitator in the Young Women's program, and long time WWfaC writer had a piece published in the anthology, The Moment I knew: Reflections from Women on Life's Defining Moments. Kim's essay, What I Gave to the Fire, is a beautifully rendered account of grieving and loss. This book is available from Amazon or from Sugati Publications.

Stephanie Lemmons Wilson longtime WWfaC writer and original blogger for the PGM, who moved to the West Coast last year, recently had an essay about friendship published in A Tea Reader: Living Life One Cup at a Time, edited by Katrina Avila Munichiello. Steph's essay entitled A Teacup of Friends celebrates the friendships she has made over a cup of tea. I look forward to receiving my copy of the book very soon. It is officially in the bookstores on October 10th. You can find it on Amazon or at a tea shop near you.

Shane Haggard a sampler and workshop participant who some of you may know from his featured blog Ramblings of a Caffeinated Acupuncturist added an essay about quilts to Crazy-Quilted Memories, his brother's recent book about quilting. The essay called A Story of Creative Inspiration from the Imagination of My Brother lovingly introduces this beautiful book on quilt making.

Last but not least, my own short story, Tulip Trestle, will be published in December in Bloom Magazine. I was excited to win third prize in their first fiction contest. Pick up a free copy somewhere around Bloomington in December.

Women Writing for (a) Change celebrates all people who chose to write and share their stories whether through publication, or simply read aloud at a read-around, or shared quietly among friends in a small group. Please post a note below if you have recently published something and would like our readers to know about it.

Amy C for the Poplar Grove Muse

Everyone Has a Story

My husband and I have a dear friend, an older gentleman, who loves to tell stories and recount his many adventures. He tells stories with a boyish charm and a twinkle in his eye, and I love to sit across the table from him and hear him talk. He could go long into the night and I could listen. He served in WW II in the Pacific. He is a farmer, an elected official and a world traveler. Our friend had four daughters and now has many grand and great grandchildren.

We had him over a few nights ago because back in the 70's he made three trips to China with farmers on a kind of agricultural exchange trip. This was shortly after China opened it's doors to the west. Once, the trip with farmers did not fill up, so he took a group of food writers to China instead. He took many pictures which were made into slides and brought them by to show us. We had recently taken a trip to China as well, so we were eager to compare notes between 1975 China and 2010 China.

Our friend had many slides of the people of China: school children, farmers, housewives, jade carvers, bicycle riders, old faces, young faces. His slides brought to life the beautiful people of China which he had also come to know so well. Our friend was totally taken with his photos of the people. He would watch them flash by and shake his head and say, "Look at all those beautiful people and every one of them has a story."

The lights were low in our living room and his aging face was lit only by the light of the slide projector. He had such love and passion in his voice. Our friend, the aging raconteur, fully embraced these people from so long ago and so far away. He remembered them and honored them, recognizing they each had a story to tell. I will always remember that night and whenever I see one of the 1.3 billion people of China, I will wonder what story he or she has to tell.

--Amy for the Poplar Grove Muse