A few weeks back, Arizona Public Media put out a call for people’s reflections on their experience of 9/11 ten years later. My initial submission is republished below, but you can see it on the AZPM site, too, under “Video Remembrances.” What a transformative time — for all of us.
As the fall of the Towers marked a close for many lives, at that moment, it was also a beginning for our family. A very bitter sweet hour.
On that day, my wife, Joanna, and I were in China working through the adoption of our first child. Our new daughter, 12-month old Ann Lei, had been in our arms for 2 short days, and we were up in our hotel room in Wuhan, a large industrial city in Hubei Province. We were traveling with a large group of families, all of us adopting children.
We were tired after the stress of the travel, as well as emotionally spent with the process of getting to know our new daughter — and of her getting to know us.
As we lay in our hotel bed at about 9:30 in the evening, we heard via others in our travel group that some Canadians had run through the hall and said to them, “Are you American? You need to turn on CNN. Now.”
We quickly flipped the channel to see the image of smoke rising from the first tower. The confused voices on the news were still unsure as to whether this had been an accident or an attack.
Then, as we watched live, I vividly remember seeing the second airplane silently whiz across the screen, from left to right, and slam into the second tower.
At that moment, we knew it was an attack. And we were very, very far from home.
As we watched the buildings burn and finally crumble, we imagined that airports were closing, security was tightening, and that it might be a while before we were able to travel home with our new baby daughter, who was not yet a US citizen.
Sure enough, over the next 24 hours, we heard about the airport closings across the nation, and we all had the same thought: we would stay away as long as we needed, but we would be returning home with our babies.
In the following days, our travel group came together, tighter than we had ever imagined possible. We cried together, and we developed a determination as a micro community to get home together. Even though our faiths were varied, we came together and held a memorial service where the Pearl and Yangze Rivers meet, all of us placing yellow flowers in the current and watching them float away.
In the end, not enough can be said in gratitude to our local guides, our translators. Not only did they help facilitate our adoptions, but they came together and supported all of us, so far from home, in such a time of emotional need. They understood and stood with us as one. They planned the makeshift memorial service for us and did all they could to make us feel connected. It was amazing to stand on the banks of that river and hear such meaningful words spoken in Chinese accented, broken English, said to us and for us.
So, in all, it was an amazing time. Sad…horribly sad…but it also awakened a determination in us, and a strengthening of our bonds as parents and as an adoptive community. And of course, it was the beginning of Joanna’s and my life as parents to an amazing firecracker of a daughter.
