Wish You Happy Forever (3 page)

In that frame of light, I saw a child—
my
child—and she was okay.

Better than okay. She looked like someone who had known life only as it should be—a child who had been treasured from the moment she was born.

“Honey, come see.”

We watched her through the glass.

“Look at our little girl,” Dick said.

“Well, that was easy, wasn't it?” I said.

“Nothing to it.” He smiled.

It was a miracle, this suddenly blossoming child. But a miracle that made perfect sense. Our girl knew, without doubt, that she was adored. It was that simple.

“Why can't we do that for the ones we can't bring home?” I asked—and meant it.

“Uh-oh,” he said. We'd been together a long time.

When we talk about that day, he tells me I said something else after that. I don't remember saying it—

I know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life.

Part One

Laowai

(Foreigner)

A way is made by walking it. A thing is so by calling it.

ZHUANG ZI (369–286
BC
)

Chapter 1

Clumsy Birds Have Need of Early Flight

Summer 1998

From the moment I saw Maya at the heart of that happy tangle of little girls outside my kitchen window, I felt absolutely compelled to act. I saw a solution, plain and simple. I couldn't ignore it. I would find a way to bring a family's love to children who had lost theirs. I'd bring Maya's miracle to China.

It's true that I didn't know anything about early childhood development. Or about China. Or about starting and running a nonprofit organization. On the other side of the world. Without any knowledge of the Chinese language. What I did know something about was dreaming stories. I'd been doing it all my life.

When I was tiny, I made up stories with buttons from my mother's sewing box, whole worlds of little button people. Then it was snail kingdoms in coffee cans in our foggy San Francisco backyard. At seven, I became a latchkey kid and quickly found my comfort and my dreams in library books. I checked out the eight allowed every Saturday; when finished with the pile, I read them again. The best hours of my childhood were spent in their embrace. And in time, the books inspired me to write my stories down.

I learned to look forward to a blank piece of paper. I could dream life just the way I wanted it. I was in control.

That was the best part of making movies—the part that kept me going despite the hurdles and uncertainties of Hollywood—dreaming a story and somehow making it real. Even if the films I made never mattered that much to me in the end, even if they didn't particularly give my life meaning, there was plenty to love about the process. I loved being challenged to use every skill I could muster from my meager bag of tricks.

And filmmaking had given me a few new skills. Perseverance for sure. But also how to pitch my story to anyone who'd listen in hopes of raising funds and followers. How to imagine characters, then cast them. How to imagine places, then scout them. How to visualize the way a scene should play, then guide my actors through the world I'd concocted.

I'd learned how to make something from nothing. Those babies in China had nothing. It seemed like a perfect fit.

THE NAME CAME
to me in an instant. I would call my organization Half the Sky—named for the old Chinese saying, “Women hold up half the sky.” Just what I dreamed for Maya's little orphaned sisters: I would help them hold up the sky.

I began to imagine the story, how it would play. I saw loving homes right inside orphanage walls—
real
homes designed to help young children heal and learn and trust. Places where, like our Maya, each child could know that her life matters to someone. We would find and train local women to look after foundlings as if they were their very own.

I imagined an infant program where babies could form bonds from the start. A preschool program for little girls who had no parents to go home to at the end of the day. The programs themselves would need to feel safe like family, full of love and comfort.

While I had no doubt that a world without orphanages would be a better world, I understood that China's orphans were wards of the state. Somehow we'd have to do all this inside existing institutions. That meant we would have to find a way to become partners with the Chinese government.

So I needed a pitch, a way to sell the story to China. Maya's sudden awakening made sense—I knew it did—but I'd need the science to convince others, especially government officials.

I found my science on the Internet; the words, stark and cold, came down to this:

The months immediately after birth are critical for orderly brain maturation. During this “sensitive period,” the number of synapses—the connections that allow learning to happen—increase twenty-fold. An astounding 75 percent of human cognitive and emotional growth potential—the development of intelligence, personality, and emotional and social behavior—is finalized by age seven. Holding and touching a young child stimulates that child's brain to release essential growth hormones. Without stimulation from or experience with the world, normal development cannot occur. Conversely, “noxious” experiences can cause harm to the developing brain.

There it was. Our little miracle writ plain. Science says that our daughter's transformation wasn't a fluke but rather the result of stimulation of critical hormones and elimination of noxious experiences. And there was urgency, a time window during which children must be reached. So what more did I need to know?

Well. About creating a nonprofit organization. About how to pay for one. About early childhood education. About China.

Okay, I scored a perfect zero. I got down to work.

CASTING WITH A
wide net, I returned to the Internet, where I found adoptive parents who were preschool teachers and doctors and child psychologists. I questioned everyone. I queried adoption agencies and Chinese language professors and people who ran Chinese restaurants—my Sinosphere was admittedly limited in those days. There had to be
somebody
out there who could help me make the China connection I needed. Honestly, it never occurred to me that it might be foolhardy to dive into building a program in a distant country where I didn't have a single acquaintance.

I found something online based in Beijing called the Data User Service of China Population Information and Research Center. They had posted an enticing note (in English!):

DUS is ready to serve you with raw data of population censuses and surveys in China, publications both in Chinese and in English, and all kinds of machine-readable data on floppy diskettes, tapes, and compact disks. Any time, any data, please contact DUS!

What a find! I sent my urgent questions immediately:

       
1. Approximately how many girls are currently in Chinese orphanages (welfare institutions)?

       
2. How many are adopted by foreign families each year?

       
3. How many orphanages are there in China?

       
4. Approximately how many abandoned children are brought to the orphanages each year?

       
5. Approximately how much money is spent per child for nutrition and care?

       
6. Approximately how many orphanages provide any sort of structured program that includes stimulation and education?

       
7. If there are any such programs, can you give us any data regarding teacher training, methodology, teaching materials, and class size?
Thank you in advance for your kind assistance.

I never heard a word in reply. And that was my first message from China on the subject.

No matter. I was on a vision quest. I completely ignored the fact that just about everybody I shared my brainstorm with listened politely and then said some version of “Impossible.” “Can't happen.” “The Chinese government will never let you do it.” “Why would you want to help China anyway? They throw their kids away.” “There are plenty of kids right here in the United States who need help. Do something in your own backyard.” There was no shortage of advice. I pressed on.

I found, and followed to the letter, a do-it-yourself guide for setting up a California nonprofit corporation. I discovered that I needed a board of directors. Okay. Well then, I should start with an expert. I knew just the man.

Every adoptive parent online knew Dr. Dana Johnson—a professor of pediatrics, director of the International Adoption Clinic at the University of Minnesota, adoptive father, and maybe the top internationally renowned authority on the unhappy effects of child institutionalization.

I wrote. He called and talked to my answering machine. I called back and talked to his answering machine. He called again. (That's how it was in those days.) When at last we talked, incredibly, Dr. Johnson agreed to join Half the Sky's board of directors, even though it was still a figment of my imagination. I'm still not 100 percent sure why.

With a bona fide expert in tow, I wooed some fellow adoptive parents who'd become good friends while awaiting our daughters. Four kindhearted couples—including Terri and Daniel, dear friends who'd adopted their daughter from Maya's orphanage—agreed to join Dick, Dana, and me on the founding board. They joined us as friends and as caring new parents; I was the only one obsessed. None of us had any idea what we were getting into.

Considering that we were entirely focused on China, our new board looked awfully Anglo. Some prominent Chinese were definitely in order to round out the cast, so I tried to contact every name I recognized listed on the Chinese American Committee of 100, including Yo-Yo Ma, I. M. Pei, Jerry Yang (the Yahoo guy), and Vera Wang. Only Stanley Ho, the brother of AIDS researcher and
Time
magazine's 1996 Man of the Year David Ho, was kind enough to respond:

Dear Jenny:

On behalf of Dr. David Ho, thank you very much for your important letter and the opportunity to serve on the Board of Directors of Half the Sky. Your efforts are truly noble and we salute you and your new foundation for your courage and determination.

Dr. Ho would like to consider joining the board, but is unable to make a commitment now. His schedule is quite overwhelming. How much time do you envision being required? Would you be happy with the lending of his name only? . . .

Would I be happy? “Absolutely, that would be terrific!” I replied. But Mr. Ho never wrote back again.

MOST IMPORTANT
, I had to figure out how I was going to provide nurture, individual attention, and stimulation to large groups of abandoned, traumatized small children. Maya was one child and I was but one adoring mama operating on instincts that, thankfully, seemed to be working. Now I was envisioning rooms—maybe even multiple orphanages—full of thriving, cherished children. How could I take our little miracle to scale?

I scoured the Internet again, hunting down all the child development theories of the moment and corresponding with perhaps a dozen proponents of different methodologies. Then I learned about the town of Reggio Emilia, Italy, and how it helped its community and its children recover from the devastation of war. In a book called
The Hundred Languages of Children,
I found Loris Malaguzzi:

Six days after the end of the Second World War. It is the spring of 1945. . . . I hear that in a small village called Villa Cella, a few miles from the town of Reggio Emilia, people decided to build and run a school for young children. That idea seems incredible to me! I rush there on my bike and I discover that it is all quite true. I find women intent upon salvaging and washing pieces of brick. . . .

“We will build the school on our own,” they say, “working at night and on Sundays. The land has been donated by a farmer; the bricks and beams will be salvaged from bombed houses, the sand will come from the river; the work will be volunteered by all of us.”