Family trees grow by many methods. Most grow naturally, ring after ring being added down through the generations. A son or daughter marries and new branches are formed to start their own little tree which will over time become their root tree. Other branches of the big family tree will continue growth until one branch comes to a dead end. Sometimes though trees grow by graphing in new sprouts, which help the big tree grow in new and different ways adding a new flavor to the bigger tree. My what's it all about, is just this latter case. Starting points, there are so many to choose from depending on the audience to whom the tale is told and so in this relating of events the beginning starts in 2007 with some backdrop. Married in our mid 30s, much older than most of our peers, we began life together by moving twice in three months ending in our present city in the fall after our summer marriage. I was blessed by a wife that is talented in so many ways working with her hands to produce art in various and useful forms. Careers and college filled our lives and three years later we bought our house, a three bedroom ranch design with an attached garage. In 2003, my wife came to the conclusion that the house was too small for the two of us, four cats and two dogs. We searched for another house, never finding what we were looking for and thus decided to expand our existing house, which turned out to cost more for a 50% increase in size than the original house. The addition included those things people dream of in a house but rarely see - space. Unable to have children, we pressed on through life. Somewhere in the mid-2000s my wife talked to me about adoption. I let her talk but did not encourage her and the subject dropped. Life went on. In the fall of 2006, she needed to attend a workshop for her work in Toronto, so we drove there and while she was in conference for three days, I explored Toronto on foot, loving the mixture of cultures, never feeling of not being safe while walking day and night all through the city of 6 million. I met a friend who lived there and we explored Chinatown, had tea eggs and with my wife had dinner at a Portuguese restaurant, a Chinese restaurant and an Indian establishment. She spoke again of adoption and I continued my pattern of letting her talk but not encouraging her and the subject dropped. One Christmas, a friend of hers from college sent her family picture for their card. Beside her friend and husband the picture included their two girls adopted from China. My wife said later, if she can do this, I can do this. Comes her birthday in February, 2007, out to eat that night, I ask my wife, what do you want for your birthday? She said, you know what I really want? I knew. I agreed to her desire to be a Mom through adoption. The next day she went to a local agency to inquire about such saying to the lady there that we were interested in a little girl 5 to 7 years old, with the thinking that by the time she would be off to college we could be entering retirement. The lady looked through her files and producing a couple of pictures said, what about this one? http://www.middlekingdomadoption.info/Tim/pic1.jpg Adoption in the abstract is one thing, pictures of actual children another. Reviewing her medical file over lunch, we found nothing there that set off any alarm bells and agreed then to move forward with her adoption, a girl who was 7 at the time, even though the picture was from a younger age. We were smitten. Paperwork for adoption is much like paperwork for buying a house in that you fill out reams of paperwork and wait and wait and wait and throw money in every direction for some purpose that is told to you that makes sense to the person telling but little to you. Some folks ask, how much did your child cost? My reply is, how much did your biological child cost? There are fees that each government charges or requires to be paid to make sure you are a suitable parent. One must prove that they are not a felon, have two nickels to rub together to raise the child (income of $10K for each member of the household), have assets beyond income to fall back on if income falters, be fingerprinted by the FBI, there are passports to be acquired, Visas for travel, paperwork for the child, a home study, approval from the US government to adopt a child, and then there are airline tickets, hotels in the country where the child is, medical exam for the child, food and other in country expenses. These costs vary from agency to agency, country to country, time of year for travel and so forth so that very few adoptions incur the same costs because there are so many variables. My wife jumped onto the paperwork and created mounds of it quickly so that by the time of the home study a few weeks later, she was able to give the social worker a mound of paperwork. Being as we were in a new world, we knew none of the lingo associated with adoption and only knew of two or three other families who had adopted a child. We just followed what our agency told us we needed to do and trusted them to do the right thing. Rules change all the time and on May 1st, the day we were to be fingerprinted, China changed the rules on the criteria of adopting families saying that no one over 50 could adopt a child. However, since we were already in progress, we were grandfathered in. Time marched along as did the paperwork, going at some point across the ocean to another government's paperwork jungle, all done by hand. As our daughter to be had an upcoming birthday, we arranged for a cake to be delivered to her with a card. A few days later pictures came to us of her with friends and her cake and card. http://www.middlekingdomadoption.info/Tim/dec07/original/Tian-1.html In March, 2008, we flew to China, via Chicago, Shanghai, Guangzhou. Arriving near midnight at our hotel, dead tired and 31 hours after lifting off in our hometown, we sank into a quick slumber. Since the time difference is 13 hours ahead of us, we left on Thursday morning and arrived there on Saturday night, so our internal clocks needed to catch up or jump into the future as it were. After a few hours rest we got up, had breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Our room on the 14th floor overlooked the Pearl River, a wide river full of traffic, barges going up and downstream, launches scurrying back and forth across the river. The area of the city we were staying in was where in colonial times (1900s), had been the area where diplomatic missions and their related offices were, ie a quiet section of the city with spacious parks on a good sized island on the edge of the river. The city itself home to 12 million people lay outside this compound, much like many American metro areas yet combining ancient buildings alongside modern skyscrapers. As we emerged from our hotel to look around the area of the hotel we were swarmed by about 20 children, in their school uniforms seeking autographs from us! They were learning English and were eager to talk with us. The following day, Monday, 10 March, we went to the bank to change our dollars into Chinese money, where their biggest bill 100 yuan equaled approximately $13.00, so for a transaction involving several hundred dollars, one would haul away with stacks of currency. That afternoon we went to meet our daughter to be. Threading through the streets and witnessing traffic on a scale that reminded me of movie pictures of traffic in New York streets but compounded by every movable thing people, animals, bicycles, motorized and not, we finally arrived at a non-descript government building whisked up several floors to go through the process of meeting out child and another round of paperwork where we swore an oath to a Chinese official that we would treat this child as we would a biological child. Again we were struck by the pictures we had seen and the actual physical child, how small she seemed. The day you meet your child for the first time via adoption and I suppose by birth, is a day like no other - full of wonder and awe. We meet for the first time - http://www.middlekingdomadoption.info/Tim/china/set2/original/030.html Thus on that day in March 2008, I became a first time baba (Chinese for father) at 54. First family photo – http://www.middlekingdomadoption.info/Tim/china/set2/original/036.html Imagine leaving everything you've ever known and in the process losing people who look like you, can easily communicate with you, smell like you and stepping into the unknown - a very brave child. Thus when it was time to leave, the tears and screaming and fighting with the interpreter began. We addressed this first with food therapy, McDonald's followed by every girl's dream, shopping therapy wherein she got PJs, a dress, new shoes and other assorted items. The next morning - http://www.middlekingdomadoption.info/Tim/china/set2/original/047.html A few days later we visited her orphanage, got to see where she had slept and the playground the children had there. She lived in a suburb city about 15 miles west of Guangzhou with a population of 3 million. For further pictures of that journey - http://www.middlekingdomadoption.info/Tim/tian.htm Tim