Why Bitsy?

I have a granddaughter Elizabeth whom I call Bitsy. Bitsy has been my granddaughter since birth but it took fifteen months for us, her real family, to get over to China and take her out of the orphanage she was living in. We, of course are her real family. I cannot imagine having a more perfect grandchild than Bitsy or one that fits into our family better than she does.

Personally I feel her and my foreheads have a strong family resemblance and wonder at the people who are always asking me if she is adopted. I always answer no, we are her real family it just took us awhile to get to China and pick her up. Yes, she is adopted but I will never admit that to her, she is my own granddaughter whether she likes it or not.

Bitsy was fifteen months old when we picked her up. Her mom, my daughter and her dad, her brother and her grandmother, my wife all went to China to get her. There was no way I would miss the moment she officially joined our family.

Before we made the journey and while we waited for Bitsy to be good and ready for us we all read many books on China and Chinese adoption. One book was China Ghosts by Jeff Gammage. My daughter and wife completed the book and I admit I could not but I did hear an interview of the author on NPR about the book and his experience in China.

Unlike Mr. Gammage while we were in China we were encouraged and even sort of forced to visit the orphanage where Bitsy had lived. Mr. Gammage had to get some special permission but we needed none. The title of his book China Ghosts comes from him being haunted by the children he saw at the orphanage that were not being adopted. During the interview I listened to him almost break into tears when talking about these children.

I stopped reading his book when he appeared, to me, to have crossed the line between telling the story of his daughters and feeling remorse and sorrow for adopting a child from another culture. Then he mixed this remorse with the feeling of being haunted by the faces of the children left behind. These questions have come up and I do remember the faces of the waiting children in the orphanage. However, my orphanage tale is different and my main question is as well. Why Bitsy?

The orphanage that Bitsy is from is in Wuxi, China. Half of the facility is for children beginning their lives and the other half is for seniors at the end of their lives. When I first heard this, my idea was that these two groups had a wonderful and warm mixture helping each other in their stages of life. The truth is that the two never mix, which is sad.

The facility was very modern and had a nice open green space with benches and art work separating the old from the young. Clean and sterile. Polished and sterile. Neat and sterile. Modern and sterile. Those words describe the orphanage. The administrator and his staff met us at the entrance. We were given a few instructions about our visit mostly relating to taking pictures of the children who were living at the orphanage.

Other than respecting this privacy there were no expressed restrictions on our visit. Although, we were taken around as a group and never left alone. I had been in China for more than two weeks now and still had not gotten used to the idea of freedom on the surface but tight control underneath.

All of the children were napping. None of the children were at their usual activities for this hour of the day, so what we toured were empty classrooms and playrooms. There was artwork displayed on the bulletin boards and it all belonged to the children who were adopted by a person in our group. There was school work left on a chalk board which also belonged to a child now adopted by a parent in our group.

On the surface this orphanage could have passed for any daycare center or preschool in the U.S. Only when I squinted at the empty row of child seats against the wall in the playroom did I see the babies lined up with no opportunity to learn play. Bitsy's first photo to us was in one of those seats.

Then we passed the room where the children were napping. I stepped in and took a peak. Lined up on each side of the wall in this narrow room were about twenty children lying on mats on the floor, heads to the wall, feet to each other, almost touching one another. All of them were awake and if you don't think Chinese children can be wide eyed think again.

Our next stop was the nursery. Bitsy was the only "baby" in our group from the nursery. This is where she had lived for her first fifteen months. When the caretakers saw us, they immediately came out to see Bitsy. They showed us her crib which was still empty, the only empty crib in the room.

From the other cribs I saw babies staring back at us. The caretakers were loving and very sad to see Bitsy leave but happy she was getting a new home. This was a bittersweet moment for these women who had cared for her since she was born. I have since learned that most of these caretakers are orphans themselves and had grown up in a place such as this.

I am not haunted by the image of those children left behind like Mr. Gammage in China Ghosts. But I do hold the image of those wide-eyed children staring at me. I do keep wondering, why Bitsy? Would another one of those little girls have been as perfect a match to our family as Bitsy is?

Who does the choosing? Who does the matching? My daughter claims that every parent in our group got exactly the right child. I cannot disagree with her. True, I can get into an argument over nature versus nurture and never come to a conclusion but there is a chemical bond between family members and that bond exists between us and Bitsy, how?

Would there have been the same bond with another child? I will never know. I also will never know what happened to those many wide eyes left back in China. Will they grow up to be caretakers in that orphanage or is there the perfect family waiting to come and get them like there was for Bitsy?