Waiting Families Dinner...

Yesterday evening, Joe and I attended our first meeting of the Arizona Chapter FCC's (Families with Children from China) Waiting Families group. This is a group of families all somewhere in the waiting stage of adopting from China. Usually the meetings are hosted by one of the waiting families and is at their home, but this was the last meeting of the year and was a dinner at a nearby restaurant. We met several very nice couples, are of who are much closer to traveling to China than we are. The group is chaired by Maria, who has already been to China and has a beautiful daughter named Paige who is 21 months now. She passed around her photo and she is a little doll. The group will meet again after the holidays, and we are looking forward to hosting a dinner sometime next year.

Yesterday was National Adoption Day, so Maria handed out a copy of the following poem at the dinner last night:

The Daughters of China

There's an unseen tie that binds them,
A red thread that will not break.
They are woven in a tapestry
It took five thousand years to make.

Their eyes are wide with wonder
Tiny hands reach out to touch
The faces of the families
Who have wanted them so much.

The daughters of China, they fly across the seas,
Off to unseen places and possibilities.
They are gifts to those who cherish them
By those who just could not.
Acts of hope and faith and love
That we never will forget.

They were given up for reasons
That most will never know.
Now they're daughters to the families
Who have come to take them home.

And someday they'll too be mothers
And have children and a home.
Thread by thread they will tie the knots
To weave new tapestries all their own.

The daughters of China, they fly across the seas,
Off to unseen places and possibilities.
They are gifts to those who cherish them
By those who just could not.
Acts of hope and faith and love
That we never will forget.

Tim Chauvin