“All we have to decide is

what to do with the time

that is given us”

- J.R.R. Tolkien

In 1991, a year into my marriage, I learned about the “one child policy” in China as a misguided attempt at population control, and the resulting forced, tortured abandonments of infant girls there.  It was a devastating reality that was hard to make sense of.  I knew a few American adoptive families who had brought an abandoned child into their family and I remember thinking what a nice way to grow a family, a win win.   Our sons were born in 1998 and 2001, so in 2004 I still found myself compelled to bring a child into our family this way.  I loved the idea of our boys experiencing this kind of magnanimity, and having a sister.  I loved the idea of Peter and I having a daughter and of sharing our remarkably joyful, loving and tight knit family with her. I simply could not think of a kinder more gratifying thing to do with my life.

It took five months to do all of the studies and clear all the paperwork and in April of 2005, the month she was born it turns out, our Dossier was logged and the wait began for our Dossier to come to the top of the stack in China, and to be matched with our child - A process I did and still find, to be mysterious and stunningly profound.

I talk with her nowadays, about the miracle of birth - the slim likelihood of any of us being here on earth is like winning the lottery. And that not only did that miracle happen to her also, but that our coming together is like her miracle of birth happened twice.  Once to be born, and once to find each other, among the billions, at precisely the right moment, the moment she needed me, and I needed her.

So, in February 2006, my boys and I, along with my parents and mother in law, boarded a plane for Hong Kong and Guangzhou, where we were brought together for the first time with our daughter, Anna Rose Xinmei Lush.  We spent about 18 days on this journey, the beginning of the most important journey of my life.

Her middle name is a tribute to her birth town, Xinyi. We are so lucky to know and maintain relationships with four of her Xinyi sisters, who were in our travel group of 11 families, and are growing up in Colorado also.  One is growing up in Chicago and her family has become family to us, and their daughter my niece.   She stayed with us for weeks at a time in the summer while they were growing up.  I love that Anna Rose knows these sweet people, who she knew even before us, who know and understand in a way we never can, the journey she was asked to travel.

We have returned to China only once, to Hong Kong, to visit good friends.  There is still so much to see there! We hope to return when she is older and would like to learn more about her country of birth.