Dear Readers,

I have the rare blessing of having had two biological births and one adoptive birth. If you define a birth as the magical, mystical moment of bringing a child into your world, then I have had three births. If you have had a biological birth, you remember the months of waiting and planning; the impatience, nervousness, and anticipation of the last month; the release of the birth; and then the gentle love that begins at the moment of first sight and continues until you die. An adoptive birth bears these same experiences.

The moment of meeting a child half way around the world, a child who is held in the arms by a woman who loves this child as her own, but who wants to see her child have a family to love and care for her, to give her an education, is nothing less than a miracle. The very air vibrates with the wonder of it. Your heart becomes as soft as silk. Your arms reach for her; there is nothing else they want to do. She is your baby, your daughter. You love her, pure and simple.

Tong Ting Finds a Family is such a story. But it is not a simple tale, for the decision to adopt asks things of a person that a biological birth does not. It asks you to take a child from her culture; how do you come to peace with this? It asks that you take a child from her immediate world of people who care for her, of companions she sleeps and plays with; how do you come to peace with this? It asks that you take a child who will grow up to be "different" in her new world; how do you come to peace with this?

I had other decisions; how would my older children feel about my turning to a young child again? Would I be able to juggle a twenty-five year teaching career with the raising of a child? Would I, at fifty, have the energy to play on the floor, to be up at night, to rise at the crack of dawn, to worry about whether the sippy cup’s top is screwed on tightly?
In the end, all of these questions melted away. All of them. There was only one thing: A little girl in China who was waiting for me.

This is the story of the process that took me to that one thing: A little girl in China who was waiting for me.

Let your heart open, and see if you don’t find yourself waiting, along with me, for Ting; or maybe, for a child of your own.

-- Elizabeth Cooke