On Christmas Eve in 2002, my aunt Jane gave all of my family members a box. We opened the boxes all together and each of them had an ornament in it and everyone’s had something written on it in Chinese. Mine said cousin, my dad’s said uncle, my mom’s said aunt, and my grandpa’s said grandpa all in Chinese with the English word underneath it. It was silent in the room because my aunt wasn’t married and why was the writing in Chinese? She then explained, while crying, that she was adopting a little girl from China. That night we stayed up till one o’clock in the morning asking my aunt as many questions as we could think of, but at the time she didn’t know that much.
For the next year and a half, my aunt was swamped with paperwork including her financial status, work information, house information, income, debt, budget, background, medical history, and the list goes on. Along with all the paperwork, she had to have three reference letters saying why she would be a good candidate for adoption. She had to get her house inspected to make sure that everything was in good shape and that the house was baby safe.
I will never forget the day that I first saw her picture. My aunt had received it from the orphanage and rushed it over to my sister and me at school. We all stood there staring at the picture for a long time, not even saying a word. We had finally seen our new addition to the family. Her name was Min Meng Lu, but people in China called her LuLu for affection (Harrell, Interview). The time that we would get to see her for the first time was coming up close and we could not wait.
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| This is the very first picture we received of Lu |
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