China Ghosts

by Jeff Gammage

  Not long ago, I attended a seminar where the speaker asked us to name a person who inspires us. Not someone we admire, or might wish to emulate. But someone who by the power of their living example encourages us to be more than we are, to do more than we can, to persist longer than we think we are able. In my life, that person is Jin Yu. In her short existence she has suffered more hardship and endured greater losses than most of us will experience in a lifetime. Yet she insists on living in the present, not the past, certain that wherever music is playing—on the radio or stereo, in the doorway of a store in a mega-mall—it’s best to take a moment to dance.

  I THOUGHT that when I became a father I would know things.

  Not everything. But some things.

  I thought that being placed in charge of a child would instill in me the knowledge that other parents—my own—seemed always to possess. That by becoming a father, the best choice, the logical selection, would now be obvious.

  Instead, those right, rational choices remain as elusive as ever.

  I have a whole new appreciation for my parents. Or rather, a new interpretation of them. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate them. I did. But as a boy I had no idea what they were up against, this business of making one’s way in the world, this endeavor of raising a child. Now I find myself looking at life’s challenges through their eyes. I look at my child and imagine how my parents looked at me.

  I think that being a parent is a little like being a chemist. Or maybe an engineer. Everybody brings similar tools to the table. But nobody has a guaranteed plan. So everybody is left to do what he thinks might work, to pay attention to what others are doing and try to build on that progress.

  But when I was growing up, my mother and father, I was sure, always knew exactly the right thing to do in every situation, whether it was a child slipping into the deep end of a pool or a washing machine overflowing in the kitchen. My mom and dad knew the answers to every question. They divided light from darkness. If, as a child, I asked my dad, “Right or left?” he said, “Left.” If I asked, “Now?” he said, “Not yet.” If I asked, “Is there a God?” he said, “Yes.”

  I remember once, when I was five or six, my dad was driving me to visit my grandmother, so I could show her my new dog. This was in the days before seat belts were widely used, and no one saw any danger in having a child ride standing up in the passenger seat. We were heading north on route 130, near Burlington, New Jersey, and had just passed a gas station where the sign on the pump read 39 CENTS/GALLON.

  “What’s that noise?” I asked.

  My dad didn’t know. But he heard it too.

  We’d gone maybe a half-mile farther when I looked out the passenger-side window to see the strangest sight—a lone car tire rolling beside us, almost even with my door. Even now, some forty years later, I remember being struck by how funny it seemed. A wheel on the loose, racing the traffic. I turned to tell my dad to look, that someone’s tire had come off the axle, but the words never left my mouth. At that moment the rear right side of our car crashed down into the road, jerking us from fifty miles per hour to twenty or ten. It was like we had dropped anchor on the highway.

  I remember falling forward as if I’d been shoved, the interior of the windshield filling my field of vision. And I remember my dad’s arm materializing in front of my chest, blocking my fall into the glass. I remember thinking, in the strange way that an emergency can bring tiny details into perfect focus, that he had the biggest hands.

  After pushing me back into the seat, my dad guided the car to the breakdown lane. He got out and flagged down a cop. Decided we would walk back to the gas station and locate a tow truck. And that we could use my belt as a leash for my dog.

  I remember thinking he must lose a tire off his car pretty often, because he knew exactly what to do when it happened.

  Now that I’m a father, now that I’m the age my parents were when they were raising me, I know: they were making it up. They were doing their best to apply their knowledge and experience in a way that seemed appropriate to the situation. Now I know how little anyone raising a child can be sure of.

  Because kids change, not just year to year but day to day and at times, it can seem, hour to hour. As a parent you struggle to keep pace. Parents get weary, or annoyed. They’re uncertain. They’re in the wrong mood at the wrong time, or they miss the moment entirely. Even if they’re sure where to draw the line, they might not be able to hold it once it’s drawn.

  The only thing I know about raising a child is that no amount of preparation can suffice.

  Not that I’d had any.

  By the time Jin Yu arrived, I had attended hundreds of Phillies baseball games, a score of Eagles football contests, and a dozen Bruce Springsteen concerts. But I’d never once babysat. Or changed a diaper. I’d never held a little girl’s hand as she walked, never buckled the straps of her patent leather party shoes or sat up all night taking her temperature when she was sick.

  I thought that raising a child would be like taking an ocean journey, sailing steadily from Port A to Port B aboard the sturdy ship of my knowledge and understanding. It’s not like that. It’s more like trying to body-surf on a giant wave. At moments you’re safely tucked in the curl, feeling the speed, the force of the water propelling you toward shore. You think you have mastered the art. Then, without warning, the wave pulls you under, drags you across the broken-shell bed of the shallows, and throws you to the surface, where you gulp air.

  I worry about disciplining Jin Yu. That I will be too harsh, because I’m fearful of leaving her spoiled. That I will be soft when what she needs is firm guidance. That she will see me, not as weak, or even stern, but as unfair. I worry that I will be the opposite example for my daughter. And that she will remember. That when Jin Yu is older, she will look back at how she was raised and silently swear that for her kids, things will be different.

  And of course, when I worry, about a high fever or her future estimation of my parenting skills, I can never let it show. When you’re a father, a portrayal of confidence is mandatory.

  Some days, sitting with Jin Yu at the breakfast table, I feel I can see the future stretching out. Sometimes I’m sure she is headed for the stage, where she can act out her fantasies and dramas before a broader audience. Other days I think she’s headed into politics, a natural leader, or maybe into a courtroom, an advocate for those in need.

  Before Jin Yu arrived, I would hear people talk about molding their children, as if the kids were brightly colored pieces of Play-Doh. And I would figure, well, that must be how it works. I thought raising my child would be an exercise in exactitude, her life order and direction set by me and her mom, like a slot car on a track: the pin and groove neatly fitted, the car unalterably locked on course, speeding toward the finish line.

  In real life, it’s much different. It’s like rolling a marble down a sliding board, the tiny, fragile piece of glass veering wildly from side to side. And as that delicate orb hurtles downward, you get to wait at the top, watching, hoping it will stay within the boundaries of the chute and not spin out into disaster.

  The lack of control is terrifying. Maybe that’s why parents reduce the experience to banalities. They grow up so fast. You turn around and they’re grown. Where does the time go? Then again, the clichés are clichés because they’re true.

  Already I can feel Jin Yu moving forward—and away. I hear the clock ticking. I notice the continuous, minute changes in her looks and size and demeanor. Some days I almost want to shout, Don’t go! Please, don’t go. Don’t leave. Stay here. Stay my little girl, my baby, my darling. Stay the child who adores me always, the one who on Monday mornings wraps her arms around my legs and shouts, “Da-ding no go work!” And who, eight hours later, jumps into my arms and kisses me as if I’d been gone for a month.

  My fatherhood will be too short. That I know. How long before she is off with her friends? Seven years? Eight? Ten at the most. Still, being a father has already delivered more laughter th
an anyone has a right to enjoy, and greater satisfaction than anyone has a right to expect. It has taught me—forced me—to become my better, stronger self. And left me in fear that, on too many days, I have not been the person I’d hoped to be, but the one who is too tired, irritable, and removed. The person who fails to understand that every day with Jin Yu is a gift, that these moments and days will pass like a summer wind. That too soon I’ll be waving good-bye to my grown-up girl and wondering how it all went so quickly.

  My dad must have felt the same as I grew. I can picture him now—the new father in his forties who lay beside me at night, so I could fall asleep on his arm, my favorite pillow. Who took time off from work to follow my soccer and hockey teams up and down the East Coast. Who swept me into his arms for hugs and kisses when I was eight and who, when I was eighteen, too grown and manly to kiss him, accepted my handshake without complaint.

  I miss him. Now most of all.

  I miss that I don’t get to talk to him, to tell him of all I’m experiencing, of this child who has changed my life, of the granddaughter he would adore. Because I don’t get to talk to him, I try to listen. Sometimes I think if I’m quiet, I might be able to hear him. If I can shut out the noises of the world, just for a little while, I might be able to hear his voice, telling me how I’m doing raising this girl, and how I might do it better.

  My father did so many things for me, took me so many places, sacrificed so much, asked so little. Yet even he could not be perfect. And that holds a lesson too.

  One time when I was a boy, maybe nine, the circus came to town. It was a traveling circus with wild animals in cages, and a canvas big top that was pulled into spire-castle majesty by the labor of man and beast. The moment the big top went up, on a field two blocks from my house, I desperately wanted to see the show. My mother promised to ask my dad to take me.

  That evening, after my dad got home from work, he and my mom were having drinks in the kitchen. My father was still dressed in his work clothes—dark pants, white shirt, striped tie. I stood outside in the driveway, trying to nonchalantly eavesdrop on the discussion that would determine whether or not I went to the circus. For whatever reason, a long day at the office or a lifetime of aversion to the mistreatment of animals, my dad didn’t want to go.

  The discussion escalated into an argument, the voices loud. A couple of minutes later, my dad walked outside.

  He said, “Let’s go.” And nothing more.

  Did I enjoy the circus that night? I don’t know. I can’t remember.

  My memories are snippets—a trapeze artist in a white-and-silver jumpsuit, bouncing into a net. A spotlight focused on a center ring. But what I remember vividly is how my dad complained to the ticket-seller about the entrance price. And then to the ticket-taker about the seat location. My dad’s anger practically radiated off him, a force so potent that during the show I hesitated even to applaud. As we sat there, high in the bleachers in our overpriced seats, I wished we had just stayed home.

  It is of course the smallest of paternal transgressions, insignificant in the course of a lifetime. Today, when I look back at that disappointed boy, his evening at the circus a bust, I want to tell him: Spare me. Just spare me your complaint. It was one bad day. No father deserves to be judged by that—not by one sour evening against decades of sweetness.

  At the same time, that episode has stuck in my mind for decades. It alerts me that children are always watching, that we teach them more with our actions than with our words. It reminds me that with my girl I must try to think before I act. Even if she doesn’t seem to be paying attention. Because some mistakes have a future all their own.

  MY CHALLENGES will be different from those faced by my father. More external, and potentially more confrontational. There’s a scene in Back to the Future, the Michael J. Fox movie, that has become a personal reminder.

  Nerdy George McFly is trying to profess his love to a girl. “I’m George,” he says, nervously glancing at the notes he’s scribbled on a pad. “I’m your density…I mean, destiny.”

  At a New Year’s dinner at a Chinese restaurant, a group of friends and family gathered close, a woman I’ve never met stops at our table, intrigued and insistent, wanting to know who among our kids are the “real” children.

  “All of them,” I say.

  “You know what I mean,” she says.

  Yes, I know what you mean.

  Because lady, you are my density.

  The ignorance can be cutting.

  The friend who, upon learning we plan to adopt, asks, “Is that like picking a puppy from the pound?” The young woman by the swings at the park, who says she’s surprised by Jin Yu’s good health because she knows that children in Chinese orphanages are abused. The older health-care worker who decries the “cruel methods” used by the Chinese to secure children to potties, apparently unaware that Americans strap their kids into high chairs and car seats as if they were tiny astronauts. The preschool worker who gives up trying to call us when Jin Yu gets sick, because in checking the class roster she becomes confused about our child’s name. She explains: “I thought that was the name of her mother—her real mother.”

  The litany of insults is lengthy, and for a long time I cataloged every one, storing them up as if they were coins or stamps, keeping them as proof of—of what I don’t know. I’ve stopped doing that. I’m saving my strength, in case the world into which Jin Yu emerges is not much changed from this one.

  Once I was the world’s personal tutor, responding to the most personal questions with a smile and a cheerful explanation. No, the Chinese don’t hate their girls, but there’s a birth-planning law called the one-child policy. No, we didn’t “buy” our daughter, we paid the fees for the documents and certifications demanded by both governments. And do doctors and nurses who deliver babies work for free?

  I stopped doing that too. For a while I went in the opposite direction.

  Faced with a prying question, I would throw up my hand like a stop sign and let out a loud “Ugh!” Then I’d walk away. I wanted the person to know that they had crossed a line, and that I was offended—and make them think about why that might be.

  Other parents of children from China told me to knock it off.

  They told me to remember that I, more than any ballplayer or ballerina, am my child’s role model. That I had to think about what I was teaching Jin Yu when I responded with scorn. I thought I was teaching her that she doesn’t have to put up with idiots. But Jin Yu watches so closely. I didn’t want her to think I was somehow embarrassed by her adoption, that it was something we couldn’t talk about, a secret. Responding to people so coarsely was a mistake. A big, parental mistake, made by me. A mistake much more serious than, say, being grouchy about taking your kid to the circus.

  So I stopped doing that too. I’ve fashioned a new response and a new behavior.

  Now when someone inquires about why Jin Yu and I look different from each other, I make an on-the-spot decision about whether to answer, groan, or simply turn away. Some of the people who approach me in the line at the grocery store have the best intentions. Some are getting ready to adopt from China themselves. Some are thinking about adopting. Some are just nosy. I almost welcome the rude ones. My girl, I’ll protect her against anything. Against all America. Against stupidity.

  Defending her is my pleasure and my pride.

  I’m less interested in defending myself.

  Sometimes, when parents gather off to the side at a birthday party, or stand watching the kids play on a jungle gym, the conversation turns to our love for our children. How we’re shocked by the intensity of our feelings, surprised by the depth of our devotion. How we never thought it possible that we would care so much for another human being.

  Sometimes, as we talk, people whose sons and daughters arrived through the birth canal will nod at me sympathetically. Sometimes they’ll even reach out and touch me on the arm, as if to offer some unspoken encouragement, their recognition that I’ve manage
d to craft a satisfying family life despite being denied the fulfillment of what they would describe as children of my own.

  I used to rush in with words, with rising declarations of love for my girl, advancing a point-by-point argument to try to make them understand that, honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Now I just stand there, silent. I’m already tired of trying to prove that my family is as authentic, as loving, and as permanent as families formed by birth. And I haven’t even been at it that long.

  Christine, my compass, reminds me that I can’t change the world.

  The truth is, I thank the heavens for our barrenness. The truth is that every day of my life I am grateful for our defective physicalities. What other people regard as misfortune or even tragedy—the inability to have biological children—I see as the luckiest break of my life. Without that grace, I would not have Jin Yu.

  I know how fortunate I am. I try to remember, even—especially—when I am not the father I want to be.

  Because I know that Jin Yu will remember those days, the times when I was less than my best self. When she is grown, when she looks at me, she will see my failures and my failings, too numerous to count. She will see my cynicism. My quick temper. My slim patience.

  She will see all that and more. But there will never be a day when she will not see my love.

  Jin Yu running on the Great Wall, on her return trip to China

  12 A MEETING IN CHINA

  IT’S DARK, the dawn still forty-five minutes away, and cool, the chill of spring a buffer against the coming heat of summer.

  No one else is here, so early on this first of June. Just our foursome, waiting beside the railroad track at the Elkins Park station, next to a small fortress of suitcases and duffel bags. The nearby houses are gloomy and still, their outlines visible in the glow of street lamps.

  Christine looks down the track, searching for the gray silhouette of a train in the distance, fretting that we will fall behind schedule before we even begin. Our friend Ellen stands beside us, lost in her own thoughts, in her plans or imaginings of the journey ahead.