From “Walk with Me: A Journey through the Landscape of Trauma” by Ellen Corcella
With a group of travelers also adopting, we flew from New York City to Beijing where we laid over for thirty-six hours. We then flew to Quanzhou, Guangdong Province and checked into the White Swan Hotel. At the same time, social workers from the Mao Ming Social Welfare Institute traveled six hours from Mao Ming CIty to deliver the babies to their awaiting families. The next day, February 13, 2000, our group director asked us to wait in our individual hotel rooms as each family would be called in turn to meet their new child. My father faced our small hotel room.
To my surprise, we were the first family to receive the telephone call. I raced into the hallway without answering the phone. I saw a little bundle in the arms of her caregiver who cautiously placed Mao Xiao Gui in my arms. As I returned to the hotel room, she began to cry. I held her close and whispered, “Of course, little one, go ahead and cry.” In an instant, I became a mother. And, as a mother, my heart ached for my child who, for the second time in less than a year, was abruptly torn from the life she had come to know and thrust into another life replete with strangers.
The next morning, we lined up our children in their strollers. The other parents looked at us and said, “You two look like you belong together.” We traveled to the government office where their adoptions would be finalized. A year after he abandonment, on February 14, 2000, Mao Xiao Gui was adopted as Kathleen Marie Gui Corcella.
She weighed sixteen pounds, had four baby teeth, and from that point forward, held a Cheerio between the forefingers of each hand in case she needed a snack. While we waited for the issuance of U.S. travel visas for the children, our Chinese travel guide took our group of five families with five babies to the zoo, Buddhist temples, and shopping malls. My dad and I introduced Kathleen to scrambled eggs, spaghetti, and shortbread cookies. Kathleen’s first birthday arrived on February 17, 2000, and we celebrated with pizza and cake.