World Beginnings

Adopted children seem to have unending questions about their identity; I speak from personal experience.  Now imagine learning that you were adopted from China by American parents. As time passes, your adoptive parents reveal painful bits about your history: that you were abandoned by a busy roadside in a cardboard box wrapped in an adult raincoat or left on the steps of a busy government building? Next, stop at an overcrowded orphanage with room after room of twenty baby beds per room and one “nanny?” Netflix has a documentary called “Found,” focusing on three Chinese American teenaged girls who discover through the DNA kit “23 and Me” that they were cousins! The documentary follows the girls through a series of zoom meetings, discussions with their adoptive mothers/fathers, and finally meeting a young Chinese woman with a degree in genealogy and a passion for helping parents and adoptees find each other through the use of DNA research. Through this emotionally tumultuous journey,...

Grocery shopping in China was always challenging   made more so  by the fact that so few of the Chinese spoke English. Body lotion and face creams were particularly hard to find because all had whiteners, as some unsuspecting women discovered after using them for a few weeks when splotches appeared on their face and bodies! One day I was at the big Suego across from school, as opposed to the little Suego closer to my house, I was in the women's personal care aisle desperately looking for a body wash I recognized, when I saw a large display of Cunt Soap. I did a double take and looked around for a hidden camera or laughing people but no one was looking. Quickly I bought ten, it was right before Christmas and they would make perfect stocking stuffers! The next day, I took my “find” to school to share at break and lunch with fellow staff members. The next time I was in Suego, the shelf was almost empty. Nanjing, China 2012

Fall Harvest  Dirty pink bundle left on the street faint feeble heart, uneven   crying, gasping for breath, calling for help.  Who will come? Who will succor the abandoned? The hopeless? Mother’s love absent,  father’s protection forgotten familial support blown away  in the October wind. Time of harvest, but damaged fruit, like refuse, tossed aside without thought. A child is not a piece of bad produce. Charged with doing no harm, oath abdicated...coldly sent to die...alone-quickly forgotten. No record of life... of death. She never existed. But God works in mysterious ways sending an angel to hold her softly, gently.  For the only time  in her short life she was Loved. For Jenine Basaraba, Nanjing China; October 2013