Wish You Happy Forever (38 page)

Right. What was I thinking?

The day before the big party, ZZ called me from the management office at the Great Hall.

“Work on the backdrop is not yet started,” she said.

“But the event is tomorrow.”

“Great Hall team says they can't include JPMorgan's logo at official government event. Also, they say they are not certain that the children's choir will be allowed. The Great Hall of the People is not a place for children.”

“ZZ, JPMorgan is a corporate sponsor. The logo tells the world JPMorgan is helping China's children. I think they'd really like to see their foundation president on the dais at the Great Hall with their logo in the background. We need the logo.”

“I'll get Gan to help.”

“Thank you. And ZZ, it's Children's Day. The Rainbow Program is all about children. We need children at the Great Hall.”

“Understood.”

Great Hall of the People, Beijing
Children's Day 2011

“As we are drowned in the vast expanse of verdant green and beautifully blooming flowers on this joyous occasion, we gather at the Great Hall of the People to present our love to the children, in a special way, an extraordinary gift—the collaborative Rainbow Training Program for child welfare workers that will benefit the orphans and disadvantaged children all over China. . . .”

I was sitting on the dais at the Great Hall of the People listening to China's
most famous
television presenter announce Half the Sky's unprecedented national partnership with government to transform the nation's entire child welfare system.

Me.
Unsure where the movie ended and real life began.

I unplugged the interpreter from my ear. The presenter's voice softened into rising and falling tones like background music . . . and I found myself drifting . . .

It had been a long journey from the first moment when Meiying, our Maya, was placed in my arms that day in Guangzhou. I could feel her there now—that first moment, at once so foreign and so familiar. And little Xinmei, our Anya, whose physical scars so compounded her loss that she couldn't bear to be touched by one who, at first, could only pretend to love her.

So great was our need, theirs and mine, that somehow we managed to find that love in strangers. Surely, there is a place deep inside all of us that recognizes the need in each other—the very most basic human need, the one that truly distinguishes us from all other creatures—the need to love and be loved.

If we are denied, we cannot thrive.

When I was a very small girl, no more than three or four, my mother would let me take a bath with her every night. She enjoyed soaking in water that was scalding hot. She would lie there in the heat, steam rising, her body turning red.

I sat on the rim of the tub. I would begin with my toes. The hot water was almost unbearable, but if I could hold still, the pain would ease. Then I'd slip my feet in the water, hold still . . . and so it went, until I was crouched beside my mother in the bath and I could feel the soft skin of her legs beside me. We would stay like that until the water cooled and my skin shriveled. It was the closest I ever got to her that I can remember. The closest I came to feeling her love.

When I looked at Anya's little burned feet, instead of anger I felt unbearable, aching, primal sadness for the love she so needed and couldn't have. And how many others I held after that . . . the little girls I couldn't bring home, but whose need I understood in every part of myself. In some way, I knew I had been put on earth to help them find what was missing.

The Chinese, of course, said it best. About seventeen hundred years ago, the philosopher we know as Mencius said, “All the children who are held and loved will know how to love others. . . . Spread these virtues in the world. Nothing more need be done.”

SWEET CHILDREN'S VOICES
filled the Great Hall of the People. On giant screens, the faces of Chinese children, once in orphanages but now living all over the world, sang along, more or less all together. Then everybody joined in. The lyrics were corny but sweet. It was the China I'd come to love:

Now, at this moment, in that Great Hall, as wacky and improbable as it was—with the corny song and the wrong minister and the still-wet logo—the movie was far from the one I had imagined. But it was perfect.

I'd found my place and my purpose. Everything in my life, everything I had done, had prepared me for this.

What a gift I had been given!

One hundred thousand children's lives have been touched by Half the Sky. But almost a million still wait.

As the Rainbow Program rolls out, Half the Sky, together with its partners, is reaching hundreds of thousands more by training every child welfare worker across the nation in its approach to providing family-like nurturing care for institutionalized children. China's Ministry of Civil Affairs has further pledged to offer Half the Sky–inspired services to all at-risk children by converting now-isolated orphanages into community service centers, encouraging once-marginalized families to remain together.

In 2012, Half the Sky's sister organization in China, Chunhui Bo'Ai Children's Welfare Foundation, was founded, providing for the first time an opportunity for Chinese citizens to support nurturing programs for children at risk.

A nation fully committed to its children can bring about transformation of an entire child welfare system. We can envision a day in China when all children will grow up knowing love.

No child should have to wait to be loved.

www.halfthesky.org

www.chbaf.org

For China's orphans, a second chance at childhood . . .

The moment I met Meiying, now our Maya. Guangzhou, 1997.

(
© Richard Bowen
)

On the set of my last movie,
In Quiet Night
, but dreaming of China. Carmel Valley, 1997.

(
Courtesy of Jenny Bowen
)

Maya and me, happy together. Berkeley, 1999.

(
© Richard Bowen
)

Our first glimpse of Xinmei, now our Anya. Unlike her father-to-be, Anya was not in love at first sight. Changzhou, 2000.

(
© Richard Bowen
)

Maya, Dick, me, and Anya at the notary office. The red thumbs mean Anya's adoption is official. Nanjing, 2000.

(
Courtesy of Jenny Bowen
)

Welcome to China!
In the early days of Half the Sky, we'd be greeted with flowers, banners, and once, even a brass band.

(
Half the Sky Foundation
)

A surprise outing on a reservoir. Anya, me, and ZZ. Jiangsu Province, 2000.

(
Half the Sky Foundation
)