June 13, 2007
Welcome Hanna Mei

Life is good.  But some weeks are indeed better than others.  Last week, on a scale of one to ten, was a twelve. 

Just before midnight June 1^st, Jan and I were finally face to face with a brand new grandchild, Hanna Mei Tao Sakryd.  Previous first time grandchild gazes were a hospital happening.  Not with Ms. Hanna.  The two year old arrived with her parents and five-year-old big sister, people she’d just hooked up with 9 days before, at DIA.  And while Clan Sakryd were less than fresh after 36 hours of continually interrupted travel they were still wide-eyed awake from the adrenalin rush that comes with finally reaching home and being with family. 

While Hanna’s story is unique to us, she’s one of over 7,500 Chinese orphans adopted into American families every year.  Life for her started in Guangdong Province, China where she was found at a marketplace lying in a paper box, warmly and lovingly wrapped in a towel, and wearing white baby clothes. Hanna was brought to an orphanage where doctors estimated her to be less than 48 hours old making her birth date June 19, 2005.  She was named Shan Wei Tao. 

Our daughter Erin, and her husband, Gary, made the decision to adopt about a year and a half ago.   Contacting Denver based Chinese Children Charities, an agency that assisted some of Erin’s co-teachers in the Douglas County School system with adoption, they spent the next several months buried in paperwork, being interviewed by social workers and taking classes on parenting a child from China.  There were tips big and small, like expecting a rough trip home from the airport, as your new child has never before been strapped into a car seat.  Note: that didn’t happen; Hanna was an angel the entire thirty-minute trip.  If you’re interested, the story of Hanna’s becoming a part of our family is chronicled at Erin and Gary’s website, www.Journeytome.com.  The user name is HaileysMeiMei and the password’s Hanna. 

After spending a week with the new arrival and her family one could reasonably ask the question “Just who adopted whom?”  Hanna fits right in with the whole clan.  The nannies at the orphanage said Hanna was shy around strangers.  However Jan weaved that universal “grandma magic” and Hanna was quickly under her spell.  Grandpa, as with the other grand squirts, mainly serves as a Grandma beacon, find him and you can locate her. 

For all of us, Hanna, parents and grand geezers it was a week of discovery.  When the cousins arrived for a get acquainted visit, Hanna remained on the deck, refusing to play in the backyard grass.  We were puzzled until it dawned she’d never spent anytime on a lawn, life on orphanage playgrounds was concrete and dirt.   Soon the lure of cousin laughter proved irresistible and she headed out to join in on what, to her, must have seemed like an unstable sea of green.  

On the late night trip to her new family’s Parker abode, one couldn’t help but recall John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High.  Hanna was indeed, “Going home to a place she’d never been before.” 

With five blonde grandchildren Jan and I used to laugh about having to go to the ends of the earth for a brunette.  Turns out, that’s exactly what happened.  And for us, never has there been a better journey.