Searching for signs in all the Hong places

When Kath and I made our Christmas Eve announcement about Maeve, who's current Chinese name is Yu Cai Ling, my mother blinked and told me in a rush that her grandmother's maiden surname was Ling ... and so it must be a sign.

Last night we went out to dinner in Singapore with Lucilla's older brother and other family members from the Lucilla's side. And when Kath told her uncle what Maeve's current name is, he leaned over and told us with delight that the Mandarin 'Cai' in Cai Ling is the same Han-Ze character as the Cantonese 'Choi' in Lucilla's Chinese name, Choi Yoong ... So it must be a sign!

In the international adoption-from-China community, a tale is repeatedly told of two rivers flowing down from the mountains, flowing towards each other without being able to see each other, their meeting-point foreordained. A Chinese legend that suggests the role fate plays in bringing people like Kath and I together with our still mysterious, wondering-what-will-she-be-like Maeve ...

Signs and portents of destiny lie in the deep-heart's core of all ancient cultures. So winging our way to China, our daughter's historied homeland, Kath and I playfully looked for signs ... The movie she watched on the plane? The Departed. Yeah, that's us. The movie I watched? The Queen. On our way to Mabs, Queen Maeve (a queen from the British Isles, for those of you who've never heard of her) ... Kath's already bought Maeve a tiny t-shirt inscribed "I Rule Therefore I Am."

Uh-oh, two queens in the house upon our return from this trip. That leaves me as peon and serf to both. Ah well, fate again.

And yet again: As we passed close to the North pole on our long flight to Asia, my amiable She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed wife became She-Who-Can-Sleep-Anywhere. And I, ever the insomniac, gazed out the plane window at the stars over the pole. Then opened up the book I'd brought along to get me through moments like this. Le Guin's "The Farthest Shore", a book composed in simple beautiful prose-poetry about a place called Earthsea. Apropos when visiting Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, etc.

As the plane crossed from Russia into China, Le Guin's novel offered me this line. "'Your roots are deep,' he said. 'You have strength and you must have room, room to grow.'" Natch, Maeve came to mind. Will she be as strong as her mother Kit Yee, the strongest person I've ever known? Kathleen inherited her calm gentle nature from her father Marcus, a quiet happy calm she shares with her brother Andrew. But from her mother Lucilla she inherited an unusual, bendable but unbreakable strength and practicality. Maeve will hopefully inherit both from Mom ...

Later in the flight, passing over Jiangxi, Kath still asleep, and me knowing both of us are as close as we've yet come to our daughter (she's a mere 8 miles below, somewhere far below, beneath the clouds. Sleeping peacefully like her Mom-to-be up at 40,000 feet?), Le Guin offers me this: "Each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply ... wonder who, after all, you are."

Kath and I, between acts, high in the sky above our daughter. But we know ourselves well. So the question we've both been wondering for the past two years of adoptive pregancy, the question we ask ourselves, is who we're about to become.

We know one answer: Mama, Baba, Bao Bao. 'Mom' and 'Dad' are titles we've been testing on each other since receiving our proposal for Yu Cai Ling--soon to be our Maeve Lili, and to assume her own title. 'Daughter'. Nuer. (Thanks, Nance, for inscribing the Han-Ze for daughter in your beautiful card!)

One final sign: before the four of us (grandma, grandpa, new mom and dad) set out by night limo for Peason, I gave my own mom a tape of songs we'd put on my laptop to play to soothe our new baby Nuer. The mix included songs like the heartbreakingly sad and gorgeous 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' by IZ (Peter, can you comment-in the link to the IZ video for anyone who wants to click it?). Songs like Loreena McKennitt's 'Marco Polo', a westerner who headed east to Asia (the route we did not have to take, fortunately!). Songs like 'Orinoco Flow' by Enya, chosen for it's journeyish chanting of 'Sail away, sail away, sail away', as well as its references to Beijing, and for its symbolism of the great river's flow, waters of destiny bearing us to Maeve ...

And so a musical sign reaches us out of the mists of our first day in Asia. Meandering through Hong Kong's maze of alleys and streets, we pass stores piping Chinese music into the fog-shrouded financial district. Then Marcus leads us up to the high ultrahip district called Lon Kwai Fong, where we discover not one but two Irish pubs. The Whisky Priest, and the Dublin Jack. Piping out of the Dublin Jack is the first song in English we've heard anywhere in Hong Kong.

Enya, Orinoco Flow. 'Sail Away, Sail Away, Sail Away!' Signs hovering all about us, and we're floating on air over here. The air of anticipatory happiness.

Ciao for now!