Tag Archives: PRC

16 September 2022

Twenty Years Today

By Rick Ladd
Me and Aimee
The First Day of the Rest of my Life

It has come to my attention that exactly 20 years have passed since the day our oldest daughter was placed into our loving arms. It was in the evening in a small conference room at the Majestic Hotel, located in the City of Nanning, People’s Republic of China.

One week before we had spent 15 hours in the air from LAX to Guangzhou, where we had a three hour layover before flying to Beijing. After six days of sight-seeing (and some interesting adventures) we flew back to Guangzhou where, after one day, we flew to Nanning. That evening there were about eleven families whose lives changed dramatically as their newly adopted children were handed over to them. We were the last to have that jarring, emotional, and life-changing experience.

As you might be able to tell from the photo, Aimee was none too happy to be ripped from her foster family, who clearly loved her, and given to these two strangers (one of whom—that would be me—had a face the likes of which she’d never seen before.) It would be several days before she would have anything to do with us.

At the time many of us referred to the day as “Gotcha Day”, but in the intervening years we have come to believe the term is parent-centric and ignores the real trauma our experience represents. We are actually our child’s third set of parents. We now refer to it as “Family Day”, as it is the day on which we became a family, one that has now lasted for two decades. Aimee has grown into a beautiful young woman and I am so proud of her and her achievements. She has made my life far richer than it otherwise might have been.

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12 May 2021

GoFundMe Update

By Rick Ladd
A Rare Family Photo

Yesterday I posted an update to my GoFundMe campaign to raise a little money while writing my first memoir. I’m expecting it to take at least six months of gathering info/memories/photos and writing, proofing, and editing it. I may have to make several trips to the Bay Area and Bend, Oregon to interview some of the families who traveled with us in 2002 and 2006. The money I’m seeking is primarily needed to help me with those costs. What follows is my update:

Just wanted to share a little update for all y’all (such as there are.) My current plan is to make this work around 50,000 words. I have found a file with at least a dozen heartfelt emails I sent back to the states from The China Hotel, in Guangzhou, PRC, when we adopted Aimee.

I have also discovered an essay I wrote, as part of a personal ethics journal I was required to write for a comparative religions class at Cal Lutheran Uni. It is about the ethical struggle I went through regarding being a much older parent and how I thought that might affect an adopted child. It was written prior to our first adoption and I will be elaborating on it. I’ve had almost two decades to be faced with, and contemplate, that reality.

I’ve begun contacting several parents with whom we traveled and became somewhat close. For the first 12 or so years we had reunions every year. Not all the families were able (or even wanted) to make it, but there were usually at least ten of us. It’s been a few years since that happened and, of course, all the girls Aimee’s age are now pretty much adults and are striking out on their own.

I have begun contacting some of those parents in order to interview them for this memoir. I’ve always felt parenting was similar to flying in an airplane. Long stretches of boredom, intermittently punctuated by moments of sheer terror and anxiety. I intend on finding out if others have felt the same.

My plan is to provide an update each month until the work is done, after which my final update will be the memoir itself.

My deepest thanks to those of you who have contributed. You have no idea what that does for my commitment to get this done … and done well. I’m adding a photo taken just this past Mothers’ Day. Alyssa had admonished me in the past not to post photos of her, or tag her in any way on FB. While we were driving to pick up our dinner for us to enjoy with Linda, she informed me she wanted me to post more photos, which she now sees as documentation of her family life. Hence, the photo, which I really like (though I wish I was actually looking into the lens.)

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12 April 2021

Sharing My Late-Life Adoption Journey

By Rick Ladd

Yesterday, 11 April 2021, I created a gofundme account in an effort to raise money for a memoir I am writing about my experiences with International—and interracial—adoption when I was 55-years-old and again at 59. As regular readers might know, my wife Linda and I adopted our oldest daughter, Aimee, in September of 2002, when she was 14 months old. We again adopted in September of 2006, when our younger daughter, Alyssa, was 33 months old.

Each of these adoptions took over two years to complete and were both nerve-wracking and fulfilling experiences. We were required to travel to the People’s Republic of China each time, staying at the China Hotel, in Guangzhou, which is in the Southeast of the country, not far from Hong Kong. Each time we went, we managed to get in a little sightseeing prior to our daughters being introduced to us.

Our first time we flew to Guangzhou (it took 15 hours) where we had a three-hour layover, after which we flew to Beijing, which was a three and a half hour flight. The second time we flew directly to Hong Kong. We stayed in Beijing for six days, visiting some of the things tourists are wont to see, e.g. The Great Wall, The Forbidden City, etc. We stayed in Hong Kong for only three nights, then took a train to Guangzhou. After our time in Beijing, we flew back to Guangzhou. Each time we arrived, we were met by a team of “assistants” from the organization that facilitated our stay, our travel arrangements, the interpretation and completion of numerous documents, and the transfer of money for the various services we used to complete our adoptions.

I have posted a few times regarding our adoptions, but I’ve been reluctant to share too much about our girls, as I felt it was their story to tell. However, the time has come for me to share my story as best I know how. I had a discussion with the girls yesterday, and they gave me permission to do this.

As a result, I opened the gofundme account I’m referring to where I am seeking a total of $6,000, which I believe will help me concentrate for the next six months on writing this memoir while continuing to assist my girls in achieving their independence. My youngest, Alyssa, is just finishing her Junior year in High School, and it has been exceptionally challenging. She has some issues, which I will write about in this memoir, that required an IEP (Individualized Education Program) and presented some not-so-unique problems that continue. My older daughter, Aimee, is attending (virtually) classes at Moorpark College, but is having difficulty deciding on what direction she wishes to go in.

I am offering copies of this memoir to anyone who donates, no matter how much they give. For donations of $50 or more, I will provide a digitally signed, personalized copy, and for donations of $100 or more, I’m offering a 30-minute telecon via the platform of their choice (Zoom, Facebook Rooms, etc.) I will make the book available in any one of several formats, including .mobi for Kindle.

This is a new experience for me and I’m not completely comfortable with asking for money. However, I need to supplement our limited income and, at nearly 74-years-old, especially during a pandemic, it’s difficult to find ways to earn money and still have the energy to write and edit my story. Whether or not you can afford to donate, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share the gofundme link, which is gf.me/u/zp7gaw. You can click here to get to it as well.

Thank you for reading and, I hope, at least sharing my campaign so I can share my story.

Rick

Although I’ve been blogging for over 15 years, I never wanted to use it to make money. For much of the time I was either working full-time at Rocketdyne or pursuing clients for my business providing social media marketing services to small businesses. Now that I’m approaching my 74th birthday, and have no intention of returning to a regular job, I’ve decided to seek ways to earn a little bit of supplemental income. If you find my writing interesting or useful, please consider a donation to help me continue writing, instead of becoming a Costco greeter. Thank you.

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28 November 2020

Thoughts on Adoption

By Rick Ladd
The Whole Fam Damily

I haven’t written much about my experiences with adoption, specifically International adoption, because I decided long ago that my daughters’ stories are theirs and to reveal specifics about them is not my place. However, there are some aspects of our journey I feel comfortable about sharing.

When my wife and I decided to adopt, after some research and communication with a couple of friends we knew who had gone through a similar experience, we decided to adopt from the People’s Republic of China. We were quite fortunate to be introduced to an organization that arranged Chinese adoptions, and that organized the entire trip, including working closely with us throughout the process, including translating documents and accompanying us through every necessary step.

When we began the process we also discovered there was a Yahoo group dedicated to those of us who were using this organization, which was called U.S. Asian Affairs. We used it to introduce ourselves to the group and, over time, to learn about the process and the lives, as well as the hopes and dreams, of the other families who had traveled or who we would be traveling with, as well as those who would be adopting subsequent to us.

When we were in China, at the China Hotel in Guangzhou, I spent nearly every free evening down in the sports bar, where they had a couple of computers set up and I could send emails to the group, apprising them of our progress and how were were feeling. I also continued to communicate with others for several years afterward, am still friends with many of those with whom we traveled, and also belong to a Facebook group that kind of took over for the Yahoo group.

Even though I’m no longer using the Yahoo group to communicate, at the beginning of each month approximately ten emails are sent to everyone who’s a member. Of those ten, three are from me. I’d like to share them (I may have shared one or more of them sometime in the past 14 years, but I can’t remember and don’t want to search) here. This first one is from October 12, 2005. Our oldest was a little over four years old and it would be another year before we adopted our second child.

The post was in response to a question another parent had posed, which was “Maybe some of the referrals come with information that stretches the truth, but I think that the act of being placed in our loving arms is not quite as wonderful for these girls as it is for us. Give them time.” Here is my response:

This has to be one of the most important, and profound, statements I have read on China33 in some time. We must, repeat must, remember what these children have experienced. Each of them has had to suffer two major, life-changing upheavals. The first was being separated from their birth mother (no matter the circumstances under which it took place); the second being taken from either a foster family or the only real home they have known.

We have to control the tendency to see our good fortune in finding them as the only interpretation of these events. We must fight against trying to impose our perception of reality on them. I believe the wisest thing we can do is try and understand their lives from their perspective. They may not be able to give voice to it, and their memories are almost always pre-verbal, but that doesn’t negate the powerful emotions these events evoked.

I have watched our Aimee nearly shut down in situations that were similar to the evening she was placed in our arms. A room full of children, adults, noise, and pandemonium. Even an open house at pre-school has greatly unnerved her. However, with every day she has grown a little more secure in our existence as a family and now, at over four years old, she is finding her place and blossoming like we hoped for her.

The most important thing we can give our children is the knowledge not only that they are loved, but also that they are respected. I can’t emphasize this enough. Remember the concept of “walking a mile in their shoes.” By all means, revel in the joy of finally having her in your arms; the ineffable depth of emotion you feel when holding or even just watching her (or him). Just keep in mind that you are the lucky ones. If our children were truly lucky, the conditions leading to their abandonment would not have existed, and they would still be with their birth family.

Remember, one day they will be all grown up, and they will almost certainly be at least curious about why they were separated from their birth family. You will be doing both them and yourselves a great service by keeping that day in mind – always.

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11 December 2017

I Hate Time Cliches, But They Fit!

By Rick Ladd

I have written previously about my feelings regarding the passage of time. In case you don’t feel like going back and reading, here’s the relevant portion:

Lest you think I’m being melancholy, I’m not . . . though I will admit to occasionally feeling as though time has slipped by far too fast. However, I have a trick I use to deal with that and I’ve been doing it so long I really don’t think about it much any more.

I’m of the opinion the feeling that time has slipped by far too fast is a low-level form of self-pity. That trick I mentioned is something I used to do many years ago when I sensed I was feeling sorry for myself. I would pick a day, perhaps six months or a year ago, and try to recreate all the things I had done or experienced in the intervening time. I never made it to “today” because I always got bored from “reliving” all those things I had already done. Nowadays, I don’t even have to go through the exercise. I only need to remind myself of its efficacy.

I bring this up to explain my feelings (somewhat) when I worked on — and now look at — this collage I made of pictures of me and Aimee, my oldest. I’ve been teaching myself Photoshop and one of the most valuable skills one can master, IMO, is that of layering; and not just using layers, but being able to manipulate pixels through selecting and masking very selectively. While there are plenty of technical issues one must master in order to be able to successfully create multi-layer pictures (in a timely manner), there is most definitely an art to doing it well.

So . . . I’ve been practicing with creating memes and sarcastic photos of the Groper-in-Chief, as well as touching up some personal photos and creating new ones from old ones. Here’s the picture I put together that’s now causing me some consternation:

Aimee and Daddy

Aimee and Daddy

I was most interested in the speed with which I could select and create layer masks for each one of these photos (there are 10 separate pics, plus one barely visible as background). Resizing, aligning them properly, and putting them in the right order is not terribly taxing or time consuming, but selecting and masking requires some patience. This is especially true when you have essential tremors and your hands shake, at times almost uncontrollably. I also experience occasional “jerks”, where my hand just jumps for no specific reason, at least none I can discern.

Now that I finished and posted it — actually, yesterday on Facebook — I’m taking some time to enjoy the photos. They are, after all, some of my favorite pictures of the two of us. It’s important to keep in mind, I was childless until my 56th year; long enough to be pretty convinced I would never be a parent. I was resigned to this fact and content with my situation. Little did I realize I would have a 14-month-old, 25 lb. bundle thrust into my arms halfway around the world in the People’s Republic of China, shortly after my 55th birthday. The story behind how my wife and I decided this would be a good thing to do is a long one, and I have no intention of going into it here.

I have now been a father for 15 years. In addition to adopting Aimee, we returned to the PRC to adopt our younger daughter, Alyssa, when I was 59. I’ll do a collage of me and Alyssa at some other time. I don’t know if I have enough pictures of the two of us; second child syndrome and all like that, but I’ll put together what I’ve got.

What’s bothering me now about this picture is, every time I look at it I’m reminded that she is now a full-blown teenager and, as such, I represent everything wrong, lame, and stupid about the world to her. I know our relationship will never be the same. Actually, I knew it the day we adopted Alyssa, who was a real handful — still is, and that’s not hyperbole in any way. This, however, is somewhat different. I’ve watched enough of my friends’ and family’s children grow up and go through this. It’s not like I’m surprised or taken aback by it. It’s just that experience tells me she may not appreciate me again for another five years or more.

I’m 70 years old and already over a decade older than my father was when he died. I’m healthy, take pretty good care of myself, and expect I’ve got a while to go. However, even if I live into my eighties, we won’t have a great deal of time together. I only got a couple of years to enjoy the relationship my father and I started building in my mid-thirties. I still miss him and occasionally lament not having had much time with him after we worked out our differences. I want more time with Aimee when we can once again relate to each other without her being embarrassed or confused.

I do want that relationship with her, though only the passage of the thing I’m not sure I have a lot of is going to allow it to happen. I guess I have no choice but to wait. Do I have to be patient too?

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5 July 2015

Another Letter Regarding Our China Adoption

By Rick Ladd

Had I been paying closer attention, I likely would have realized I sent this email the day before I sent the one I posted yesterday. Nevertheless, they are closely related in both time and content, so I want to share this one as well. I know I also have a file with the emails I sent from the sports bar in the China Hotel in Guangzhou, while we were there completing our adoption of Aimee and, eventually, I’ll post them here as well.

This particular email was in response to a post by another adoptive parent who, in seeking to understand adoption from her child’s POV, wrote “Maybe some of the referrals come with information that stretches the truth, but I think that the act of being placed in our loving arms is not quite as wonderful for these girls as it is for us. Give them time.” Here’s what I wrote:

This has to be one of the most important, and profound, statements I have read on China33* in some time. We must, repeat must, remember what these children have experienced. Each of them has had to suffer two major, life-changing upheavals. The first was being separated from their birth mother (no matter the circumstances under which it took place); the second being taken from either a foster family or the only real home they have known.

We have to control the tendency to see our good fortune in finding them as the only interpretation of these events. We must fight against trying to impose our perception of reality on them. I believe the wisest thing we can do is try and understand their lives from their perspective. They may not be able to give voice to it, and their memories are almost always pre-verbal, but that doesn’t negate the powerful emotions these events evoked.

I have watched our Aimee nearly shut down in situations that were similar to the evening she was placed in our arms. A room full of children, adults, noise, and pandemonium. Even an open house at pre-school has greatly unnerved her. However, with every day she has grown a little more secure in our existence as a family and now, at over four years old, she is finding her place and blossoming like we hoped for her.

The most important thing we can give our children is the knowledge not only that they are loved, but also that they are respected. I can’t emphasize this enough. Remember the concept of “walking a mile in their shoes”. By all means, revel in the joy of finally having her in your arms; the ineffable depth of emotion you feel when holding or even just watching her (or him). Just keep in mind that you are the lucky ones. If our children were truly lucky, the conditions leading to their abandonment would not have existed, and they would still be with their birth family.

Remember, one day they will be all grown up, and they will almost certainly be at least curious about why they were separated from their birth family. You will be doing both them and yourselves a great service by keeping that day in mind – always.

Rick Ladd

* China33 was the name of the Yahoo group we used to stay in touch during those times. When we adopted, the wait time was nearly two years and the time spent in China was three weeks. For some, the anxiety was overwhelming, though it was significant for even the most sanguine among us.

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4 July 2015

Some Thoughts From Our First Adoption

By Rick Ladd
I served as Best Man, and my daughters were flower girls, at a renewal of vows ceremony for friends. Photo is at St. Peter Claver in Simi Valley, CA

I became a first-time, adoptive father in August of 2002, when my wife and I traveled to the People’s Republic of China to meet our new daughter, Aimee. I have been loathe to write much about the experience as I didn’t feel it was my place to wave her life, and the circumstances (as I knew them) of our adoption, in public. I did, however, spend the first few years communicating a great deal with other parents of internationally, and transracially, adopted children. I’ve decided now is the time to start sharing my thoughts and recollections. This is an email, dated October 13, 2005, I sent to a Yahoo group used by most everyone who used the facilitator we did – U.S. Asian Affairs – to help us with all the issues our adoption from the PRC required addressing. Most of the people who adopted Chinese children are white, and the issue of racism was even more difficult for many to discuss back then than it is now. Anyway, here’s what I wrote in response to a statement by a fellow AP (adoptive parent):

Mimi:

As my father used to say, “you hit the head right on the nail”. While abandonment issues are the most obvious, they exist because of something that happened at a time certain. That isn’t to say they don’t continue to affect our kids in numerous ways as they grow; just that the fact of abandonment is something that happened in the past and must be dealt with in that context.

Race, on the other hand is (unfortunately) an issue our children will almost certainly continue to deal with all their lives. How we approach it is of paramount importance in how they will cope with it. My research tells me (as do my gut instincts) that parents who choose to believe they can ignore it, or that it really isn’t a major issue, are setting themselves and, tragically, their children up for some major problems.

Once again, I urge all adoptive parents and all prospective adoptive parents, especially families where both members are Caucasian, to learn as much as you can about the realities of racism. I am talking here not merely about the most obvious aspects (such as outright bigotry) but also about the institutionalized and insidious aspects of racism. Those of you who have not given it much thought (this is not an indictment, merely a recognition of reality) will be shocked at some of the things you learn.

Additionally, I can’t stress enough how important it will be to let your children lead the way with respect to their lives. I believe love consists of two major components; affection and respect. I know you will show great affection for your child. It’s important as well that you show them deep respect and you can do this by learning how to listen to them. Children should not be seen and never heard. They should be heard first and foremost. Trust them; listen to them; make sure they will always talk to you and you will become their allies in a battle they will have no choice but to fight.

Know also that you are not in this alone. There are numerous resources out there for you to learn or gain strength from. We should all be thankful for Rick, Karin, and all the folks who contribute to the discussions here on China33. Traveling to China to receive your child is just the beginning of a lifelong journey and you have the opportunity to take it with a large, supportive community. Take advantage of it. Your kids will thank you.

Rick Ladd

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