Born in China, Loved in America

We are upon the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001. I am a trauma therapist, and this week has been a rough one. I’ve been feeling the effects of that day in my bones, my muscles, and in my heart.

“Larry, did you change the channel to a disaster movie?”

“No, Gayle. This is real time. A plane just crashed into a tower in New York.”

I was still coming out of the shower, still trying to take in what he’d just said, when a second plane hit the other tower. That was the moment I understood the world had changed.

That morning had started like any other. We’d dropped our four year old daughter, Jennifer, at preschool and come home to start our day, a day we hoped would bring news of our adopted daughter waiting for us in China. I’d already been packing. Every afternoon I watched for the UPS truck, waiting for the official paperwork to arrive.

Now our baby girl was in an orphanage on the other side of the world, and travel had just shut down everywhere. Airlines weren’t flying anywhere.

The Jewish holidays were coming, too. I’d baked a honey cake from my mother’s recipe, planning to celebrate before we left for China. Instead, we gathered as a family and tried to understand what came next.

The days that followed were a blur of phone calls. We spoke with our adoption agency’s liaison, changed airline tickets, went to family court so Larry could complete the adoption on his own. On November 1, 2001, he flew to China alone, carrying a small bag of baby clothes and a stack of documents. When he landed in Shanghai, Chabad of Shanghai was there to greet him and invite him to Friday night dinner.

On November 14th, Larry came home. So did our daughter.

Melanie Julia Rose Xiu came straight into my arms, and it was the best day of my life.

September of that year was dark. It was full of loss, fear, tears, and a whole country trying to wrap its head around a tragedy none of us could fully hold. And in the middle of it, our family grew.

Larry brought home a haiku from China that I still think about:

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.”

Twenty-five years on, I understand that haiku differently than I did then. The grief of that September never fully leaves you, not for anyone who lived through it. But neither does what got us through it. That’s the part I carry with me into every room I sit in with my clients now.