Three Years Ago

Three years ago, a beautiful baby was born in a Bouyei village in Guizhou, China. I don't know what tragedy made the parents leave this precious little bundle at the door of a tiny store, but she was found and eventually this baby made her way to our house. She is just what our family needed...named Luci (light) Vivian (alive). What a great description of what this little girl gives to us--she is light, certainly, and she energizes us!

Here is Luci today with the clothes that she was wearing when the orphanage director brought her to us in Guiyang, on August 15, 2005. The clothes swamped her then, at 15 lbs. They fit just right now--at nearly 30 lbs. See that pacifier in her mouth? That was tied around her neck (yes, really!). This little shirt was underneath the red outfit. She had on striped green socks, cute little red sandals, and a diaper tied around her waist with that yellow string she's holding in her right hand. There also were bits of brown paper toweling (the kind you sometimes see in bathrooms) stuck to her backside, used when they changed her diaper.


We talked a little about that "gotcha day" and looked at some pictures from our trip to China. Luci took off the orphanage clothes and put on her princess dress, bounced from the room, and proclaimed, "I got a mommy and daddy!"

Luci and I have several movies that we like to watch. Two current favorites are Rolie Polie Olie Baby Bot Chase and Annie. Both are about children finding their "forever families." We watched Rolie Polie Olie first. We talked about the twins, Cootchie and Coo, lost in space, and that they needed a family. Rolie Polie Olie's family eventually adopts them. It is a cute movie--the babies are taken care of on a "Mother Ship" shaped like a mommy robot, and the subject of adoption is throughout, using words like "forever family" and "find out where they belong." It is obvious even to Luci that they belong with Rolie Polie's family. The Mother Ship made it easy to talk to Luci about the orphanage she lived in, how someone took care of her and many others at the same time, and it is not a scary topic to her--of course, that would be so different if she were older when she was adopted. She was just 9 1/2 months when she left there and has no real memory of it. (When we got home from China, she used to shy away from the pictures of her from the orphanage, as if it were a bad memory she was trying to avoid, but she no longer does that. Time heals many wounds and fades some memories.)
After seeing Rolie Polie a few times (more like a million!) we watched Annie together. Without saying anything to Luci about Annie's situation in life, we watched. I saw some things unfold in Luci's mind that showed me so much about how she thinks--and how deeply she feels for others. Annie got to Daddy Warbuck's house and was shown all the perks of the house. When Daddy Warbucks finally acknowledged Annie's presence, Luci said, "she needs a forever family. She needs a Daddy."

We watched and loved that Daddy Warbucks took care of Annie in his own funny way. Luci was thrilled that Annie was getting a daddy. Luci's big on happy endings...although "being rescued" is not currently the recommended thing to be teaching young daughters. I don't have any problem with happy endings, growing up to be a princess. Every one of the heroines in the movies and stories we've seen have been strong young women who knew what was good and what was evil, and they were rewarded in the end. That seems pretty good to me. Luci has had one fairy tale ending already in her little life--only it was really a beginning. Who's to say there won't be a few more happy beginnings to come?