Somewhere, a woman has just conceived a child. Nothing too remarkable about this really, as woman conceive, or don’t, every day. It’s part of nature. How we live on as a species. The result of sex whether love or violence is involved. It is a way of life.
We don’t know much about this woman. Whether she loves her husband and he loves her, or whether she laid down with him as obligation and duty, whether she gained any pleasure from this union, or gritted her teeth until he was done with her. Did she choose to be with him or was it arranged. Was it for affection or because he offered her a chance. Maybe he was the only one, maybe he was one of many that she choose. These things we will never know.
We assume her life is hard. Much harder than anything we, in America, can ever imagine. We know she works long hours, and does not have much. We know the conditions from which she makes her life are so meager, that we would be horrified by even living her existence for just one day. We don’t know if she accepts her lot, or prays for easier times, or dreams of something better, or just is thankful for life every day. What goes on inside her mind, her heart, we might never know. She is faceless. She is nameless. She is no one. She is every one. She is a mother in China and the child she has conceived is a girl.
China, with more people than they know what to do with. Rural China battling nature for food to get though the Winter months or harsh factory life making low priced products for the consumer driven markets overseas. China, where they have made laws to control their population and based on century’s old tradition, a culture that desires and honors males over females. China, an world, and maybe, just a heartbeat away, new life begins to stir.
Maybe she planned, hoped and prayed for this conception, or maybe it was an accident, an opps, ill timed, unprepared, maybe it was an affair, or she is too young or suppose to marry another. We don’t know. She does, but she cannot tell her story. She has no voice even an ocean away. Even if you sat in the same room with her, she is conditioned, taught, modeled to accept her reality, her fate, and do what she must. But here, in comparison, our lush decadent excess, there is no way for her to tell us and so we can only imagine her thoughts, her feelings, her heart and accept what she has to give.
Like any woman, the first signs are common. A missed period, swollen breasts, increased appetite, nausea. She begins to see and feel, to know, the changes in her body. She begins to wonder, whether with happiness or horror, if it could be true . And soon, knows that indeed it is. She is pregnant, with child and about to become a mother.
Even in the most horrific of circumstances, there is something amazing about the ability to reproduce life. Your body becomes not your own, but a machine with a purpose. You eat what the embryo needs for nutrition. It drains the calcium from your bones. Your energy is sucked out as all your cells have only one primal need, to feed and create a new version of yourself. But not only just the physical body becomes solely focused on the life inside you, but your mind, you heart. You are aware that you are not alone. Not an island. Not living just for yourself anymore, but another. And this life within becomes your secret friend, part of you , but an individual too. This state of being part of you, but not , will continue though out space and time.
Maybe, this mother to be, in China, must steal food to feed her increasing hunger. Maybe she risks punishment by sneaking illegal breaks or sitting down when no one is looking. Maybe she hides her swelling midsection and prays no one notices or maybe she flaunts her fertility like a Buddha in the sun. By instinct, she cradles her stomach if she should fall. Her hands run along her stretched skin. She feels hiccups and movement like a fish swimming, tickling her insides right below her heart. She learns the pattern of kicks and punches . Wonders and worries when she is quiet, laughs, perhaps, when a particularly strong thrusts forth and jars the tea cup she had resting on her belly. She feels her settle down when she walks, lulled to fetal sleep by the rocking movements of her steps and plays a quiet poke and kick game, late at night, when all is quiet and baby wakes up. Is this the head? She thinks, was that a foot? As time goes on, movements become clear. She gasps for breath when baby stretches out and contracts her diaphragm. The sudden kick in the bladder, causes the equally sudden need to urinate. And they exist, these two, in their own little world for the nine months that it takes.
Did they ever have a chance together, we will never know. Perhaps this mother prayed for the son she could keep and allowed herself the chance to love this life inside her. Perhaps, penis or not, she was doomed from the start. If she was a mother already, this second child threatened the existence of her first. Maybe she knew that no matter what, there was no way she could continue to do what was expected of her and be a mother too. Not enough food, not enough money, not enough time, not enough support. Would she lose her home, her job, her family for this child? Did she have that choice? Perhaps it was the father who expected a boy and she feared the disappointment. Maybe she feared a beating or her life. Maybe she prayed that even a small girl would melt his heart and forget his ambitions and desires. Maybe they prayed together for a healthy birth and a child with the item between his legs that would allow them to stay together. More than miles, a vast culture a mindset separates us from ever knowing it all. What was she thinking as she laid there late at night? On a hard pallet, coarse blankets, cold air or stifling heat. Kicks keeping her awake, labor looming, was there some hope in her heart or was she just resigned for the worst.
No matter what she hoped or prayed or dreaded, the time came. We know she bled, maybe she cried out in pain, maybe she was assisted, or maybe she labored alone. We know it hurt like no pain she has ever felt before and at times she felt defeated and scared, that she could not go on. But she fought and pushed and felt the relief as life force gave way and, with a shudder, they were now two instead of one. Did she have time to cradle her baby and drink in her tiny perfection? Or was the cry of female enough to cause such remorse and dejection? Was this babe swept away from her mother by another woman, who feared the chance for affection with a doomed girl? Did our mother cry and beg, or did tears just run down her face in defeat and exhaustion? Did she feel her heart harden and her soul go cold as she turned away, not willing to look? . Maybe none of these things happened, maybe them all. Again, we will probably never know.
We don’t know who took the child to the side of the road or to the orphanage steps in the dark of the night. Father, mother, grandmother, grandfather, sister, cousin, friend. Did they kiss her good bye and say a prayer of safe passage? Or did they refuse to look at the tiny rosebud face as they walked away a drove the act out of their mind. Was this child never to be spoken of again, or only in the dark with hushed and hurried nervous voices, or remembered at special occasions with wonder and good fortune.
So many questions and only one answer. We know that this child has found her way to you. This is the story of your child and her other mother. A story of imagination and unanswered questions. A story where you may write the middle and shape the ending, but the beginning is not to be told.
I know she exists, this mother in China, because her legacy lives on in your home now, in your heart. Maybe mild, maybe sweet, maybe wild, and free, in your daughter you can see her mother. Her smile, the way she tilts her head, her laugh, the way she folds her fingers. What her mother could have been if free, if unencumbered, if cherished, if honored as a mother, if honored as a woman, if honored as a girl.
I know that far away in China, sometimes, in the dark of night, alone on a had pallet with coarse blankets, this mothers thoughts may drift across the sea and into the heart of your daughter now. Maybe she does not indulge them often, maybe just a birthday prayer, maybe she pushes them away, maybe she forces herself to lock these weak thoughts down deep inside again, but they exist just as surly your daughter does. No matter how hard you try, you don’t forget your baby. You don’t forget the feeling of kicking inside you. You don’t forget giving forth new life no matter where that life might go, what unknown oceans are crossed, what unheard of cities become home, what unfamiliar arms become love. Believe me, mothers just don’t forget. Even if they have no choice, even if they have no options, even if they know that the very act that gives them great pain is the only chance for this new life. Even if they are told they must forget, they only learn to keep it closer to their hearts, wait for the darkest most quiet part of the night to look inside their hearts and let the silent tears fall.
Believe me, I know. I don’t know you, I don’t know your daughter. I don’t even know much about China. But I know your daughter’s mother. She is a mother without her child and so am I. An ocean may separate our lives, a language might be an insurmountable rift, we might never look each other in the eye, but I know what lives inside her heart. I know her grief, I know her loss, I know her pain. You cannot hear her story, but you can hear mine and our other American mothers of adoption loss. And it is all the same, for a mother’s love is universal.
You know what is inside her heart too, for inside her heart is your daughter. She cannot speak to you, but we can. Learn to love the Western moms and you learn to love your daughter’s Eastern mom too. Plus you also learn to love your daughter more…for it is part of her, it is her story too. It is part of her heart, her history, the other side of the womb.
There are so many things we will never know. Somewhere in China a woman has no voice. Her voice is here now, if you will listen.
