There's No Place Like Home

Nov 14, Wed


The focus on Ray coming home is right where it should be: balancing rejoicing in the moment, with celebrating his new future. The latter has some implications, of course, and Rose and I also consider what our son will consider years from now. I’m not comfortable with posing all his questions, if only because there is great awkwardness in knowing we don’t know the answers.

At all.

I recall our early discussions about adoption and the possibilities of taking a domestic path. It’s not clear whether it was anecdotal information or not, but it seemed as though “open adoptions” are fairly common nowadays, whereby there is a relationship of some kind, and to some degree, with the biological parents, generally though just with the mother. In these circumstances, a child can learn all about his circumstances when being lifted up for adoption. The second son of ours will never know his biological parents.

There is no record of Ray’s birth parents.

Rose and I still understood that something could be done for our boy. “No record" is quite a definitive description, and very few things are really shut-and-closed cases. The initial reports we had on Dang Fu He simply stated he “was found on 9/1/2004 outside a factory.” We wanted to know what factory.

On Tuesday at the Civil Affairs office I asked about the public announcement seeking Dang Fu He's biological parents, specifically requesting the documentation. It’s interesting to discover the elation I had from receiving a photocopy of a newspaper bulletin and seeing this tiny one-inch-high picture of Ray. It’s black and white, and while the details of his picture can’t be seen, it’s him all right. Not because his Chinese name is listed (which it is), but because the little child has a chubby face and the start of a belly that I know well today. My dear Rose, solid as he is, your son is round in the middle.



Mrs. Meng, the Civil Affairs Office Director, was very supportive when I asked about the location of where Ray was found. While she was unable to say “here is the spot,” she was confident in the general area. And Song, our driver, would take us there. So today Ray returned to that location from nearly three years and three months ago.

It was cold when we got out of the van. It’s that time of year in Harbin when the weather begins to turn to what we know of back home; fortunately, my father and I are not coming here in February when…it reaches minus 40-degrees Celsius which, as math goes with this one, is also minus 40-degrees Fahrenheit. Ray doesn’t like wearing gloves and, still in a honeymoon phase, I grant him a few things. Our time outside would be short.

The factory was the Harbin Linen Company, but we didn’t go there first. A block away was housing that the company owns and operates for the employees. And the thought was his biological mother possibly lived there. The buildings were seven stories high; they didn’t appear too old, nor did they appear too well maintained.

We were standing in sort of dead-end to the street, and there was no traffic, so it gave us unhurried time. Yet there wasn’t much to do, other than take some photographs – it’s not as though I was going to stop someone and ask them questions. These romantic if not predictable thoughts entered my head, however. Maybe she was peering down from on high, through a window, from behind a curtain. Were Ray and I standing in line of the very path he was carried on to the factory that early morning (or was it the late night?)? Maybe, but there was another road that could take one to the factory…should I go “stand there” with Ray?

We loaded back in the van, only to unload two minutes later. Here was the Harbin Linen Company. If Ray would have stayed in the van, I’d have been able to mull around longer; we are strapped at the hip nowadays, though. So I took in what I could, which wasn’t too much; standing outside the gate to the complex it was hard to see many details, with the sun teaming with the distance to the building. But thoughts were elsewhere anyhow. Who does this company make linen for? Where is it distributed to? What are their products? Can Rose and I buy something? Should we even?

And, like that, we were gone.

I rubbed warmth into Ray’s hands as he stared out the window, wondering what he was thinking. What does he make of all this? It’s fascinating that while he is unable to process where he is going, he does know he has left something behind. His world is different. Sure, he seems to realize I care for him deeply ("Love" can be inserted there, yet who is to say he even knows how to identify that depth?), but make no mistake, he manages through certain situations, giving me the same impish smiles he’d give anyone when he does something displeasing. Whatever, his hand was in mine and that’s what mattered then.

In exactly one week we head home, so he can meet Rose and learn what true love is. And then when he grows up maybe one day he can go back again, with his mother and father having provided him a head start in his search for answers.



Until then, he’ll just be our little boy.