Daddy, You’re My Girl

It took my wife and teenage daughter five long years (of unrelenting nagging) to convince me that we should adopt a baby. This all began, mysteriously, when they both had the same dream on the same night that we adopted a baby from China. They were convinced that God wanted us to do this thing. My response was that if this dream was divinely inspired, God would have given me the dream also. I was dreaming about having the other three children raised and becoming the center of my wife’s attention. I had seen the top of the mountain, there was no turning back, soon I would be pampered and catered to. Then, while at a conference by myself in Toronto, thousands of miles from the nagging, something weird happened. Every morning on TV there was a series on a Christian talk show hosted by James Robison about Chinese orphans. There was video of a little girl on a potty seat singing in Chinese, “where is my mother?” My emotional armor was now breached. That image would forever change my life. Everywhere I turned in Toronto I was faced with little Asian girls. On the elevators, at the conference, I couldn’t get away from it. Maybe God was trying to tell me something. My heart began to change and soon I got the “adoption bug.” I called home and shocked my wife by saying, “Honey, start the paperwork!”

We chose Christian World Adoption in Charleston, South Carolina as the facilitator. As we worked through the maze of paperwork, my wife was soon on a first name basis with the agency workers. There was a home study made by a lady with two adopted daughters from China. I told her we kept pit bulls in the house. She didn’t laugh.

After that was a long wait of over a year. Doubts flooded our mind. Maybe we were too old. Did China change their policy? Every night we would go on the agency website and look at the babies not adopted yet and the ones pictured with their new families. It became our ritual. We prayed for a cute one. It seemed it would never happen and then, just before Christmas, we received a photo of our future daughter compliments of the Chinese government. We teared up. We gave her picture a prominent place on our refrigerator. We made copies and gave to the grandparents.

Travel arrangements were made for March. A close friend from our church and my personal assistant at my business got excited about it and came with us along with our teenage daughter. The flight was long. The stewardesses were grouchy, even in “the friendly skies.” We flew from Florida to Chicago to Beijing, the capital of China. We were lodged in five star hotels. We ate Chinese food every meal except breakfast and it was on the breadfast buffet also. The first full day in China we visited the Forbidden City wher the ancient emperors lived. I broke the rules and gave away cash to crippled beggars. Soon we were surrounded. Some were missing limbs and all were missing teeth. The guide told me I couldn’t do that. I assured her I could.

We were there with eight other families. Two families were back for the second time. We would become life long friends.
The second day we all got on the bus and drove to a government social building next to a school. The children hung out the windows and waved at us. We went one floor up an elevator and waited. There were other groups in the large room getting their babies too. The social workers began calling out the Chinese names of the babies and no one could understand them. We all got our photos out and wandered around through a sea of crying babies being held by social workers comparing the babies to our photos. I yelled to my wife, “I think I found our baby!” We confirmed the name and the photo and it was her. They just handed her to us and she was clinging to me and screaming. There was a photo on the drab wall of Mickey Mouse and when I pointed at Mickey she would stop screaming for a minute or two and stare with her big dark eyes. The Chinese are in love with Mickey Mouse and anything Disney.

The agency had prepared us for the attachment issues in adoption. The babies attach emotionally to the new father first, then later to their new mother. These babies are raised to this point in their life with primarily female caretakers and they naturally crave a man’s influence in their lives. For the first week Hannah wouldn’t let me out of her site. She had a daddy for the first time in her life and she liked it. It started bothering my wife Pam. She had dreamed for so long of holding this child and she couldn’t for very long. Hannah came around a little more each day and now I’m the outsider. Even today, Hannah thinks everything needs a momma: stuffed animals, gold fish, etc.

We spent two weeks in China in three major cities. We took care of legalities and did more tourist stuff. The shopping was fun. We found McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, and KFC which made us feel a connection with home. The Chinese people are very polite. For most of the trip, “Peter” was our guide. When we would question some of their customs, he would answer, “It’s the Chinese way,” give a large smile, and then retreat into silence. That became our motto for the rest of the trip. We made Peter nervous because a few times we defected from the group and took a taxi to get American food. The Chinese food was great, but three times a day for two weeks is too much. We found out that the Chinese can now own their own apartments and can own their own businesses. The Chinese have mandatory retirement at 50 to make room for the young people to work. I expected a sea of bicycles, but I found a lot of motorcycles, small cars, and quite a few luxury cars. China is coming around to capitalism.

We ended at the White Swan Hotel where Richard Nixon and the Queen of England had stayed. It was very nice with a two story waterfall in the lobby. While there we went to the U.S. Embassy and our babies were sworn in as citizens. We were told they weren’t official citizens until their feet touched U.S. soil. We also had to get a physician’s exam for our babies there. It was a nice place to shop. Some of the shops offered free international internet calls. There was also a restaraunt there that offered American food.

We left China via Hong Kong. We regret that we did not have time in Hong Kong. That is a place I would like to visit someday, perhaps when we travel back to show Hannah her homeland. We left with a new perspective and appreciation for the Chinese people. They are hardworking, polite, and have a high level of excellence in everything they do. I would like to send some Americans there for politeness lessons. The airlines within China have the highest level of service and excellence that I’ve ever experienced in my life. It was a great trip, but we were ready to be home with our new daughter.

Hannah has been our daughter for almost two years and she will soon turn three. She was a lot of fun at Christmas and reminds us every day that she has a birthday party coming up. She has brought so much joy to our family. She feels like our own. She doesn’t feel adopted. I tell her all the time, “Hannah, you’re my girl.” The other day she told me, “Daddy, you’re my girl.” I knew exactly what she meant.

You can follow the diary of our adoption with photos of our time in China by clicking this link:    http://www.myadoptionwebsite.com/babyhannah/index.html

 

If you have any questions about adoptions please feel free to email me at JLBURKE57@HOTMAIL.COM and put “adoption blog” in the subject line.

I Want A New Name

It’s automatic. Women over forty start calling everybody “honey” or “hon.” For me it’s tantamount to using God’s name in vain. When you use it often enough it becomes a cheap teaser word to torture the recipient. You see, my wife calls me “honey” (sometimes “hon”). One day shortly after my wife’s fortieth, we drove through McDonald’s for a snack and the creature in the take out window with multiple piercing and tattoos handed her the food and she said, “Thanks, hon.” My mind started racing and something inside me screamed, “No that’s my name! You can’t have my name!” Then it seemed she started calling everyone “honey”. When she calls me “honey” now it’s not special anymore. It was our special pet name we called each other. Not a word to throw at common strangers.

I’ll go to a restaurant and a raspy throated waitress with a bass voice (probably from chain smoking) says, “What do you want HONEY?” Privately, I’m thinking she would make a great poster girl for the anti-smoking TV ads and I feel like I’ve been assaulted verbally by someone who wants to fantasize that she’s my honey. If she’s young and pretty, on the other hand, this middle aged bald man gets a tremendous boost to his ego.

And here is the danger in all this. If my wife is calling McDonald’s employees and any other strangers she chances to meet, “Hon,” in her forties, where will this progress to? Will she call them “sugarplum” in her fifties and “wild thing” in her sixties? By the time she is eighty will she throw caution to the wind and jump right through the drive-through window?

Personally, I believe I’ve suffered irreversible permanent psychological harm from all this. With my special name being marginalized to the title used for questionable strangers, my self worth and identity have been badly bruised. Now, when my wife calls me honey, she might as well say, “You’re a nobody, you’re nothing to me, you’re like all the rest.”

I want a new name and I want it now. This time I get to choose it. It will be my name and mine alone, I won’t share it. I’m toying with several names, “‘Your Magnificence’, ‘Exalted One’, or ‘Master and Ruler Of The Universe.’” If there is any hope for my marriage, my wife must cease and desist immediately the habit of calling me “honey” or “hon” while I choose my new name. If you have any name suggestions, it would be appreciated.

Great Nation, Goofy Election Process

“By the people, for the people” might be more accurately stated “by the party delegates, for the party delegates.” Why do we need to insulate or distort the popular vote with the electoral delegate process? Everyone I know is disgusted with this, Democrat and Republican alike. Get rid of the party delegates and let the people be heard. It is possible to win with delegate count and lose the popular vote. It’s not right and everyone knows it.

Then there is “Super Tuesday”, where the states that vote before it are power brokers. The states that vote afterward, in most situations, cast a meaningless vote. It’s goofy, it’s un-American, it’s a betrayal of each citizen and a gross violation of their constitutional rights. We wonder why so many Americans do not even bother to vote. The popular perception is that the process is rigged and the cards are stacked against them.

I propose that the national elections be held on specially created national holidays and that the entire nation votes simultaneously. This needs to be a popular vote, not a vote for a delegate who casts a vote on behalf of a large group of people. States who have had their influence in the election marginalized will once again be made full contributors to the process. The states that have been given an artificial advantage based on the early timing of their election days, would be put on equal footing with the rest of the nation.

Another problem that would be partially cured is the high cost of financing a national campaign for the presidency. Official national election days would cut campaigning costs significantly. Further steps need to be taken to lower costs and put each candidate on the same level.

The question is, where is that strong visionary leader who will carry this issue through to completion? Defining the problem is clearly much easier than solving it. It will take someone with the influence, charisma, and experience to motivate the entire nation and its elected officials to restructure the entire voting system.

Perhaps our next president will take up the cause while it is fresh in all our minds how unfair our system of electing a president is. In any case, the first step has to be a groundswell of grassroots activists who will write and email their legislators until they also catch the vision. We are too great of a nation to continue with a system that elects the most powerful man in the world in such a goofy way. – Jeff Burke