This journey is our first return to China since we brought PunditGirl home and made her part of our family in 2001.  I really can’t believe it’s been that long, yet I also feel like it’s been a lifetime  since we stepped off the plane at National Airport, our lives changed by a baby who spent the first year of her life in an orphanage with about 100 other children and about eight caregivers.  We’ve talked for many years, as our PunditBaby grew into a PunditGirl, about the amazing things we saw and experienced in January of 2001 when we brought our daughter home from Hunan Province.

I keep trying to come up with the usual PunditMom fare to write about in these days before we get on that 15-hour flight, but with the pressure of a book deadline fast approaching, as well as this trip of a lifetime almost upon us, it’s hard to focus on the health care summit, financial regulation or any of that other stuff that usually gets me all riled up!

So I’ve decided not to fight it, and to give in to the need to write about the trip.  PunditGirl can hardly contain herself as we are finishing up our preparations — getting our visas, buying a snazzy new polka-dot suitcase for her, and thinking about how much rice (her favorite food in the whole world) she’ll be able to eat while we’re there.

And I’ve promised myself, I am buying that Mao watch this time!

But there’s much more on everyone’s minds.  PunditGirl has confessed that one reason she’s excited about this trip is the fact that for the first time in her life she will be surrounded by people who look like her.

“Now you and Daddy will be the ones who look different,” she’s repeatedly told us, her chest puffing up with pride at the thought of a whole country full of people who share her skin tone and facial features.  We’ve made many efforts to make sure that her world has Asian friends and families in it, but our neighborhood is not the most diverse in the world, so for better or worse, she sees many more Caucasian people than Asian.

Aside from her apparent joy at being the one who will not look different from everyone else,  there’s also a good dose of anxiety that’s showing itself.

“What if China Mom and China Dad show up and decide they want me back?”  A question full of so many things — the longing for her birth parents to take back a decision they made ten years ago, the need to know that , as her parents, we would never allow anyone to take her from us, and the age-appropriate fantasy about what her life would be like if she had grown up in the country where she was born.

Yes, we’ll be doing the tourist highlights — the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Terra Cotta Warriors, and the panda preserve.  But we’ll also be spending a few days in the city where we met her.  We’ll visit the baby home, though it’s not in the same building as the one she lived in.  We’ll see the babies who are there now and waiting for parents, though today, almost a decade after we adopted PunditGirl, more Chinese families are being encouraged to adopt these children rather than Western families.  And, if all goes according to plan, we will be able to visit with the woman who was the head “ayi” (nanny) when she lived there, and who brought PunditGirl (then known by her Chinese name that translates as ‘eternal river’) to us, dressed in worn but clean clothes that we had to return so another child could get some use out of them.

I’m anxious, too.  As an adult, I’m logically able to understand the historical reasons that so many Chinese girls have been available for adoption.  When I look at PunditGirl’s face or watch her wake up in the morning all warm and snuggly from her sleep or watch her race across the soccer field determined not to let the boys outrun her, I can’t imagine being the mother of any other child.  But I know for her, no matter how much she nods and says she understands why China Mom and China Dad couldn’t keep her, I also know that the thought remains in her head, “But maybe they could have if they’d tried a little bit harder.  Maybe they would have kept me if I’d been a better baby.”

I’m bracing myself for the possible emotional fallout of these thoughts colliding with the reality she sees in China.  PunditGirl has struggled with questions about attachment and permanence — I’m not sure if this trip will help heal those issues or exacerbate them.  But in my heart and my gut I think this is the right time to make this first journey to where she was born — to see the baby home and possibly to visit her “finding place” (I think I’m going to need more tissues than I can carry with me for that moment).

Right now, we’re trying to keep it light — talking about whether she can play the games on my iPhone on the plane, wondering how far up the Great Wall we’ll be able to hike, what it’s going to feel like to hold a baby panda (yes, that WILL be our holiday card this year!).

But I feel the low level anxiety starting to creep in for all of us.  I have half of a Xanax left from a procedure I had last year.  That’s definitely going in my carry-on.  After that, I’ll have to find other ways to keep my emotions under control so I can help PunditGirl with hers.

Photos by PunditMom, copyright 2001, 2008, all rights reserved.

Photo of Mao watch courtesy of ChinaSprout.

Except when I remember that I have adult stepdaughters, too! One of them just gave birth to the newest member of our family, and I have to admit, I’m struggling a bit with what that means!

I’ve written more about this new internal struggle at 50-something Moms. Let me know if you’ve got any advice!

Photo by PunditMom

My older stepdaughter is now a mom to a daughter (and no, you may NOT call me Grandma)! While I often wonder what the world will be like when PunditGirl is a woman, I looked at this little face and had to wonder — how will things be different for her in 2027 when she starts college?

Will this little girl be past the worries that so many of us have now about equal pay and workplace discrimination? Will we have celebrated our first woman president by the time she takes her first steps as a college freshman? Will people laugh about the fact that we ever had to worry about employers being “family friendly?”

I know that’s a lot to project and that I am getting ahead of myself — she’s only four days old! And, yes, I promise I will live in the moment about having the opportunity again to buy cute little baby clothes! But with all the talk of Commissions and Councils about women, it’s hard not to try to see into the future and hope that my nine-year-old daughter and this brand new little feminist (fingers crossed!) will shake their heads and wonder how our country ever could have been so silly to think it was OK to pay women less than men or that women’s careers would have to suffer because they chose to have children.

I’m hoping I’ll be around to see that day. But in the meantime, I’ll also focus on enjoying PunditGirl and her new niece and see what I can learn from them about being a girl in the world.

Sounds like an easy task, right? To list five things you love about being a mother?

Maybe I think too much, but this has been a hard one for me. I can’t tell you how many times I started to write something and nothing seemed right because even though I love being a mother to PunditGirl, motherhood itself is hard. And to write honestly about that complicated mix, knowing that my nine-year-old would probably read it, was a huge challenge. So, I decided to try another approach.

I came across this idea from ShutterSister Irene who also blogs as Momster – using photos to express my feelings about being PunditGirl’s mother and why, even though parenting has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, I am the luckiest mom in the world.

PunditMom & PunditBaby, age 1

PunditGirl and pal, age 2 1/2

PUNDITGIRL!

PunditGirl in a quieter moment

How did she get to be a “tween?”

My version of motherhood is fulfilling, but it’s hardly all rosy and domestic perfection. But when I feel I’m wavering in confidence about my abilities as a mom, I look at PunditGirl’s face and hope things will be fine and keep my fingers crossed that I’m giving her what she needs, both as her mother and as a political mom.

As a Libra, I have a hard time with unfairness and injustice. As a lawyer, I learned to work on channeling that energy into a profession. As a mother, I only need to look at my daughter’s face to know there are still loads of reasons to speak up about fair pay, reproductive rights, and workplace discrimination, just to name a few issues, because it sure would be nice if I could leave the planet knowing that I’d done a little something to make it easier for PunditGirl when it comes to some of the political battles we’re still fighting.

Now, one of the deals with The World According to Mom, is to tag five other mothers who blog (hopefully in various global locations) and ask them to write about their thoughts. But I like this idea about saying it in pictures, so I’m going to ask five moms to post photos – Stephanie at Lawyer Mama, Jen Lemen, Glennia at The Silent I, Michelle at White Trash Mom, and American Girl in Japan (I don’t know her, but I hope she’ll say yes!) The ladies I know are great photographers, and so I’m asking them to set out their five reasons in photos!

Think she’ll have some pundit things to say? Maybe not, but if the hat is any clue, at least I’m in for some tasty cookies!

Photo by PunditMom

Friends have often commented that PunditGirl, being the opinionated daughter that she is (you’re REALLY surprised, right?!), should run for President when she grows up. During this campaign, she’s embraced that idea.

“Mommy, I make good decisions. Maybe I should be President some day.”

My usual reply is to tell her that she would make a great President. But unless we get an Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jennifer Granholm amendment to the Constitution, she’ll never be allowed to run because she was born in China.

Even though she became an American citizen the moment our flight from Beijing landed in the United States on that frigid winter afternoon in January 2001, President of the United States is the one job she can never have since she is not a “natural born citizen.” Maybe Her Bad Mother can put in a good word and PunditGirl could be Prime Minister of Canada, instead!

Our British friends have a daughter who was born in the United States — SHE could be President someday even though she will most likely live most of her life in London. But unless there are some significant Constitutional changes in the coming decades, PunditGirl will never be able to put her art on the big desk in the Oval Office or invite me to have tea in the Rose Garden.

At the moment, I don’t have the heart to tell her any of that. I figure she’ll learn soon enough and by then she’ll be over her desire to let me live with her in the White House. But I DO have the heart to tell John McCain that he shouldn’t be eligible to be elected POTUS for the exact same reason — he isn’t a natural born U.S. citizen.

There have been a few passing reports about the fact that McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone to U.S. citizen parents. McCain and others claim that’s good enough. To aid his cause, Congress passed a resolution saying just that, allowing McCain to pass ‘Go’ and collect his presidential campaign contributions.

While it’s been a few years since I practiced law, I’m pretty sure that a Congressional resolution doesn’t trump the Constitution which plainly says:

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President …

“Natural born” means a citizen at birth. And the authors of a recent article seem convinced that John McCain is not covered. The Panama Canal Zone was an unincorporated territory at the time of his birth. Even though Congress passed a law not long after little John was born to bestow citizenship on those born in the Canal Zone, it doesn’t make him natural born.

Of course, some legal minds — Theodore Olson and Laurence Tribe (a Barack Obama supporter) — claim there is nothing for McCain to worry about.

In reality, I don’t have a really strong opinion about whether someone born to American parents on a military base at the Panama Canal should be prevented from running for President of the United States (though it would be a handy loophole this year to cause more havoc for the Republicans!).

But if that loophole is good enough for McCain, then it’s time to re-examine whether, in a country of immigrants, we should hang on to this requirement. Of course it was important to the Founding Fathers — they didn’t want any of the King’s subjects sneaking in and taking over their new country. But things have changed and it’s time to challenge whether it’s really important for an American citizen to have been born on American soil as a qualification to be President.

You know if the facts were the same, but the name was changed to the Democratic candidate, the Supreme Court would come back into a summer session faster than they could say, “President John McCain” to ensure that such a candidate didn’t make it on the ballot in November.

So while I wouldn’t mind if a technicality worked to the Democrats’ benefit in 2008, what I’d really like to see is a bipartisan effort to amend the Constitution so that if she wanted to, PunditGirl really could run for President some day. After all, I’ve already got some decorating plans in mind for the Lincoln Bedroom!

You can also find PunditMom getting all political and wonky at BlogHer, where she is a Contributing Editor for Politics & News, as well as MOMocrats and D.C. Metro Moms.

My PunditGirl has worries in her little eight-year-old head, and I don’t know how to help. Not your run-of-the-mill second-grade traumas of love/hate relationships with the boys who chase girls on the playground or not getting the latest Hannah Montana CD. She manages those like a champ.

She’s struggling with more grown-up problems, ones that those of us who claim to be adults have a rough time managing.

We play games. We try to talk about them. I invented the ‘worry-nator’ last night to suck the troubling thoughts out of her head before bedtime. But nothing is working. She clings to her tsuris like a chimp on a vine.

After a couple of tragedies in our family in recent months (which I won’t go into for a lot of different reasons), suffice it to say that PunditGirl is learning about loss and the fragility of life.

It’s not going so well.

Mix in the looming end of the school year, separation from a teacher she equates with Roald Dahl’s fantastically beatific Miss Honey, stir in the departure last year of one of her best friends from school and add another one in the wings, and you’ve got a girl who is having a hard time containing the crazy, worry thoughts in her head about permanency.

Which is not good, since she still wonders about and can’t understand why her China Mom (and Dad) didn’t keep her.

We’ve worked really hard to patch the emotional hole in her heart – the one where we pour in the love and attention and assurances that we won’t leave her, but it drips out, leaving her empty and troubled again.

The point of all this? I guess there isn’t a point other than the fact that I’m fumbling to come up with a way to re-route the well-worn paths of concern in her brain and make the worries stop, at least the ones that make her believe that she’s not worthy of love.

I know a Xanax is out of the question, but how do I give her brain some quiet moments to recharge and let a little forever love seep in?

Photo by PunditMom

Good thing I had a lot of tissues with me!

I was a bit busy upon our arrival back in the U.S. with instant motherhood and night terrors (hers, not mine) and the unexpected end of a career that I had assumed would be there when we returned from China, but wasn’t.

I was preoccupied with all the things new mothers get bogged down with like nap and feeding schedules, assessments by the pedatrician’s office of PunditGirl’s general physical health after a year in an orphanage, and how to deal with being cut-off almost instantaneously from the professional and social support network I had created for myself.

I didn’t really have a moment to focus on her missing year. I only had energy to keep my head above water.

Now that PundiGirl is seven, life is different. There are new issues, but the overwhelming demands on my time to be there for her each and every need have morphed into a different kind of parenting. Not less taxing emotionally, but I do have a few spare minutes to shower and eat.

And more time to think about the days I missed. And the months.

And the fact that PunditGirl was going to have a hole in the history of her life most children don’t.

So I came up with a plan that sounded a little crazy — to find out as much as exists about her life before the red thread brought us together.

I’m lucky in a way most adoptive families will never be. There is someone I met after we became PunditGirl’s parents who visited the orphanage just weeks before we traveled there. She and her family took scads of photos.

And videos.

So even though it seemed like folly, I bought plane tickets to meet with this family and talk and see what information they had.

It was worth every penny for one thing alone — a videotape.

There on one of the many videotapes they had shot inside the orphanage was my little pumpkin head.

A PunditBaby.

One who was totally different than the child presented to us in a hotel room just days before the Year of the Dragon turned to the Year of the Snake.

Inquisitive. Smiling. Playful. Cautious.

Scooting around a playroom in one of those baby walkers with wheels that American parents are now cautioned never to use.

Listening to tinny Chinese children’s music emanating from an old cassette player hung from the ceiling. Following her nannies when called to the door to return to another room for lunch and a fresh diaper.

I’d had thoughts of her, not knowing what her life was like, worrying that there were no smiles or toys or affection in her life. We were warned that the babies’ lives were hard but that the nannies did their best with the few resources they had.

I didn’t expect to see a happy baby, though.

And while I know she was not happy all the time (what baby is), the video filled my heart with overwhelming joy to know that one of the stories that we created for PunditGirl — that the “aunties” who took care of her also cared for her — was, in fact, the truth.

I saw what the nannies did for the 100 or so infants and toddlers. A routine of hard labor — I can’t imagine the thought of dealing with 100 babies. Every. Single. Day.

Of course, we were told lots of things while we were there and had some basic information about when PunditGirl slept and what she ate and their characterizations of her personality (which were not off the mark).

But in a living room in New Chinatown in San Francisco on an unusually beautiful August morning near the bay, I got a peek into PunditGirl’s life that I never thought we would have. Most children like her never will.

Only the sheer coincidence that there was another little girl from the same baby home, whose parents travel to China frequently, who wanted to write a book about where she came from led to the making of a videotape that will be able to answer a multitude of questions for PunditGirl when she is older.

Concrete answers. Real answers. Not conjecture or supposition.

Her real life. As it was before she became PunditGirl. Not her whole life, but a big part of it.

It’s not a lot. It’s not the same as the first lock of hair or the first baby tooth or all the firsts that parents get to document for children who become theirs at the moment of birth that those nannies couldn’t.

But it’s a start. It’s more than we ever thought we would find.

And that makes me profoundly happy.