by Tom Dombrock

It’s 6:45 in the morning, and I am sitting at my computer reading e-mail and drinking coffee, waiting for my call to action.  It happens every morning about this time.  The silence of the house is broken by a little voice calling, “Daaaaaaaddddyyyy.”  Helen Mei – the one we call The Shmunkin – is awake and ready to start her day.  Not certain I heard her correctly, she will continue calling out, changing the volume, pitch and tone of her voice, until I finally arrive to rescue her, and another day begins.

It wasn’t always like this.

My wife, Claire, and I first met Helen Mei in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China in May of 2005.  We knew the first few hours and even days would be challenging.  As Claire reminded me many times leading up to that day, “The first thing we do is break their hearts.”  Here’s a little girl who has spent her entire life in the same place with the same group of people – in Helen’s case, a foster family – suddenly taken from everything she knows, and handed over to people she has never met.  People with light-colored skin, round eyes and big noses, and speaking a language she can’t even begin to comprehend.  And the others?  The ones who loved her and fed her and cared for her to that point in her life?  Gone.  No warning.  No explanation.  Just gone.

It’s a lot for a Shmunkin to take.

I have a short, very low quality video of that first meeting.  It shows a little Chinese girl – all of sixteen pounds, clutching an well-gnawed, stale, horrid-smelling fish-flavored cracker – being handed over to Claire.  She looks around a few seconds, seems to realize what may be happening, and begins screaming.  Not a cry, a scream.  Confusion.  Terror.  Anger.   Emotional trauma that would last for the next five or six hours, until she finally fell asleep from exhaustion.  That first night, she woke up a few other times, still scared and angry, before falling asleep again. 

By the next day, she began to accept Claire.  In fact, within a day or two, started calling her “mama.”  Well, actually, she said, “mm-ma,” which was close.  But it took longer for her to accept me.  In fact, there were only a few occasions when she was okay with me, but not for that first week.  After that, she once let me hold her, and a few times she would let me sit with her on the bed in the hotel room with Claire out of the room.  But when I tried to dress her or change her diapers, or if I would try to hold her while Claire was nearby, she would struggle the whole time, not wanting me to touch her. 

It was hard on all of us.  Me, because my little girl would not accept me.  Helen Mei, because she was terrified.  And Claire, because she rarely got a break from constant child care.  In fact, the only times Helen would be quiet with me was when I put her in a stroller and went for a walk, giving Claire a chance to rest, if for only a little while.  We saw some glimmers of hope toward the end of the trip.  I was allowed to walk around the plane with her on the flight back, and she even played some with the pen I kept with me, putting it in my mouth and smiling. 

But when we got home, the new surroundings, the lack of sleep, and the jet lag really got to her.  That first night, we went to bed around seven.  Helen slept for a very short while, then Claire got up with her.  By three the next morning, completely exhausted, Claire woke me up and said I had to take our daughter and do something.  So we went for a walk around our neighborhood, for over two hours while Helen slept.  It was then I decided I had to be more aggressive in getting her to trust me.

From that day on, I started getting up with Helen Mei every morning, regardless of the time.  At first, it was three or four in the morning.  Then it was five or six.  But every morning, without exception, it was me who got her up.  She started to like it, and I was the happiest man in the world, just me and my little girl sharing some time together.  She still considered me a poor substitute for Mama, so, once Claire got up, she no longer wanted anything to do with me.  But I knew that, too, would fade.

Now, over a year later, all of that is a distant memory.  Mornings are Helen and daddy time.  I get her out of bed, give her a little breakfast, and we sit down to cuddle for a few minutes.  Then we go into the bathroom, where we brush our teeth together, and I comb her hair and mine.  As I shave, she plays with the shaving cream.  Finished, I lean down for my daily inspection, and Helen runs her hands down my cheeks and pronounces them “smooth!”  Then we get dressed, give mommy a hug and a kiss, and head out to day care.  No worries.  She knows we’ll be back.  She trusts us.

I still get a little choked up when I remember the struggles we went through.  How sad Helen Mei was at her loss.  How scared she was of these new people.  How worried I was she would never like me.  Looking back, I think I can understand what she was going through.  She lost her birth mother when she was a few days old.  She lost her foster mother when she was fourteen months.  She didn’t want to be away from us, didn’t want to go to bed, and didn’t want to go to day care because, in the back of her mind, she was afraid of losing us, as well.

No chance.