Numbers one through ten

March of last year, Steve fulfilled one of my life’s top tens.

You know, that secret little list of the top ten things you’d like to do in your lifetime? How many we actually get done is, well, as different for the each of us as what’s contained on our lists. My number one item has always been to visit China.

The desire to travel has been passed down through the blood of the women in my family. My grandmother’s travels would be and encyclopedia of information. She visited Russia back in the 1970’s when it was still the Iron Curtain. She’s seen Europe more time than I can count. And, I do believe, has seen every state in the U.S., usually from the driver’s seat of a Cadillac.

My mother picked up the traveling bug from her mother. We drove back and forth from Indiana to Florida so often that by three I could read a map and knew just what to say on the CB to find out where all the speed traps were hiding. My mother, like her mother, has also been to Europe more times then I care to count. And, like her mother, has never shied away from jumping behind the wheel of a car at a moment’s notice to head off to some great destination.

Myself? Well. I’m told I took my first airplane ride at one year of age. I know that by three I was traveling by myself to visit one relative or another. By nine I asked to no longer be signed in as an unaccompanied minor because the flight attendants made catching connecting flights a near-miss. I was better off doing it myself. And, as I already explained, I grew up a bit of a gypsy, talking to truckers and fiddling with the car stereo. Once I had a car of my own, like the women before me, I’d jump at a chance for a road trip. Making a two week honeymoon traveling from Vegas to the east coast on back roads only, an easy sell for my new husband.

But the love of all things eastern, that came to me direct from my grandmother. I don’t know if it’s their history, a time line that records to before Christ, before the start of the Romans. It may be the artistry. China developed porcelain and introduced it to Europe. So, don’t get all confused when you’re having a nice cuppa tea at Buckingham Palace. China started that particular tradition. Perhaps it’s the gardens that are both structured and natural, all blended in together.

Whatever it is, I finally got to knock off the number one thing I’ve wanted to do since I was a little girl when I traveled to China with my husband. Five cities in four and a half weeks, all but the last week was work for Steve. Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai and finally Beijing.

While Steve worked I would whiz around whatever city we were currently in, absorbing everything I could. Temples, parks, open air markets, food and people, people, people. They may not speak English and I most certainly did not speak Mandarin. But with a smile and a willingness to try, we all managed to communicate just fine. At the end of the day, I’d be waiting for Steve as he arrived back from work. We’d take time over tea to share our day’s adventures. He regal me with tales from the computing side. I’d tell him stories like:

• the Chinese businessman who saw me in the park taking pictures and offered to take a picture of me with our camera
  or
• the teenagers who followed me around half the day practicing their English
  or
• the conversation with the temple guard who spoke French but understood English (while I speak English and understand French)
  or
• the free-to-the-public park that turned out to be a zoo where I saw flamingos (all the way to China to see flamingos!!)
  or even
• getting lost in a forest high on a mountain somewhere overlooking Hong Kong… with no cell phone service.

And on and on and on.

We’d carefully plan out the weekends where I’d take Steve to my most favorite of sights from the previous week. I’d relive the first moment I saw it through his wonderment. We’d grab hands and smile, smile, smile. It felt like stolen moments out of time for us.

Five weeks and five cities later, as we stood on the Great Wall, it dawned on me that a dream I never hoped to be fulfilled was realized. It was that moment I looked at my husband and recognized he was truly my numbers one through ten in life. Through him, all my life’s desires have come to fruition.

Steve and I agreed before we got married that no mater how we were blessed with children in our lives, at some point we wanted to adopt. As we began to recognize that adoption may be our only way to have children, we started looking at options. Time, cost, restrictions of age and health all played a role. In the end, China has one of the most forgiving adoption criteria. They prefer older parents, venerating their own aging citizens for the wisdom that comes with the years.

Plus, it feels a bit like home. China really was our second honeymoon. A place we reconnected both to ourselves, our marriage and our world.

So, for these many reasons and many many more, we’ve chosen to adopt from China.
And now we have something (someone) else to make up our life’s top ten.