Lauren Elizabeth Wagner
Thank Heaven,
and China,
for little girls
Wait was worth it
By Peter Wagner
for proud father of Lauren
Star-BulletinALL we had was the name given by her orphanage -- Zhong Hong -- a sketchy medical report, and a two-inch color snapshot. The picture showed an alert two-month-old girl with chubby cheeks and a red dot painted on her forehead, for good luck. I've come to believe in red dots.
After a year of waiting and hoping, my wife Valerie and I were in a hotel room in Wuhan, a huge industrial city in central China, about to become parents. We had come halfway around the world with four other American couples to adopt Chinese babies.
It wasn't easy. A Honolulu-based agency, Hawaii International Child, helped us through a relentless bureaucracy to win Chinese approval.
Our little girl, then eight months old, came by train from an orphanage in nearby Hong Hu. We'd been herded to a government-run hotel for the transaction, despite requests to see the orphanage.
The moment had finally come. Maids were setting up portable cribs in our rooms. I put on my best shirt. We gathered downstairs.
The energy in that small room was excruciating as we stood with cameras, tape recorders, baby blankets and other gear. I held a little stuffed dog -- her first toy. The children were in the next room. We heard a baby cry.
Would we recognize her? Would she love us? Would we love her?
The door opened and anxieties vanished. There she was! A round little girl with ragged bangs, wrapped in five layers of clothes. She was even cuter than the photo we'd scrutinized for months.
She studied us calmly. She looked around the room, at the other babies, at our interpreter and the Chinese officials. Her little head swiveled from object to object. She grabbed my finger and we gathered in a loving clutch.
We named her Lauren Elizabeth.
Suddenly the room was full of new families -- Ting Ping and Nicky Yeh of Honolulu marveled over little Mary; Renee and Steven Saito cuddled Sage; Lori and Stacey Jio of Maui huddled with Lynsey and Jeff Paul and his son Jason of Ohio hugged Katie.
Bathed in glory, blessed and thunderstruck, we rode to our rooms on a cloud -- or was it an elevator? Nothing in the Spartan hotel was ordinary any more. Earlier disappointments over accommodations disappeared. We were home at last.
Father, mother and daughter. New concepts. We would learn together.
Where were those piles of diapers we'd lugged more than 5,000 miles? Our bags were bulging with baby supplies begging for a trial run.
I've since learned the lightning reflexes of an infant girl. I've had hair ripped from my chest, been burped, peed, and splattered upon, and more. But these things wipe clean. The mantle of fatherhood, I've found, is made of vinyl.
And I'll be wearing that robe proudly on Father's Day -- my first.
Two months after returning from China, we took Lauren to the beach. Another wondrous first -- of sand, warm water, and magical waves lapping at her toes. The look in her eyes brought back my earliest memories.
Like thousands of little girls in a country that favors boys, Lauren was left on the steps of an orphanage. She was just nine days old. But it wasn't such a terrible thing. Somebody we'll never know answered our prayers and left Lauren there for us.
