Like Karin Evans, author of The Lost Daughters of China, Jeff Gammage is a journalist. His memoir, written seven years after Evans’, is entitled China Ghosts: My Daughter’s Journey to America, my Journey to Fatherhood. The title is apt: while Gammage credits Kay Ann Johnson, author of Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment and Orphanage Care in China with helping him understand the context of his daughter’s story, his own book focuses much more tightly on his story and his daughter’s.
Gammage and his wife Christine adopted a two year old in Aug 2002. His memoir is valuable for its evocative description of the Chinese countryside and towns and for its depiction of adopting a toddler, and of a toddler’s grief reflected first in seeming lack of emotion, then in wild keening, then with sudden acceptance and equanimity.
Gammage and his wife also encountered an unexpected health issue with their daughter: a festering wound on good portion of head. Was it responsible for her flat affect? Did she have brain damage? Others in their group—Americans and even the Chinese translators and child care workers–kept saying, you must be sure you want to adopt this child. Gammage and his wife became afraid that seeing a doctor would indicate to the Chinese that they weren’t committed to this child. They were—even when Gammage imagined her bedridden and uncommunicative in their apartment for life, they never wavered in their conviction that she was their daughter. This is especially moving since Gammage describes his initial uncertainty about fatherhood when his wife proposed adoption. The moment he saw his daughter, he writes, he felt a love that was “fierce” and forever.
Gammage and his wife, and the doctors they consulted in both China and the U.S., confront the fact that often we never know exactly what has happened to our children before they came to us. The Chinese doctor’s theory seemed incredible to Gammage and his wife, given the size of the wound. The two ointments they were given seemed to help—although Gammage and his wife never knew just what they were.
(This brings to mind my own adoption trip when I was faced with a powdered formula canister that I couldn’t read the mixing directions on and a yellow packet of something that I was told was “medicine for fever”.)
At first the new parents felt angry—how had someone let the wound get that bad? But there were also smaller marks on her head, like pinpricks from an IV, the most common way of giving antibiotics to babies in China. The people he met at the orphanage seemed genuinely caring about their daughter, and he saw that medical attention was being provided for some children, and probably had been to his daughter, at least to some extent.
The title “Ghosts” seems to possibly be for several things: the unanswered questions that may always haunt them, the unforgettable images of the children left behind in the orphanages, and the Chinese elders and ancestors Gammage imagines to be watching over their family, to look after the girls and hope they find pride in their heritage.
Gammage’s travel group was told that none of the children had notes on them when they were found. Later writing to China, Gammage discovered that there was a note, and it was sent to him. Brief as the note was, he points out that just having the correct birthdate confirmed and a sample of a birthparent’s handwriting is a treasure.
As is this book, the most recent memoir I’ve read of an adoption in China.
Please see these related blogs:
China Adoption Book Review: Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son
China Adoption Book Review Series: Wanting a Daughter, Part Two: Chinese Do Adopt Daughters
China Adoption Book Report Series: Wanting a Daughter…Part Three