Mother's Day gift brings Father's Day joy

By ED SCOTT
Charlotte (Fla.) Sun
June 20, 2010

The way it traditionally works, one waits nine months for a newborn
baby. In our case, we waited five years to travel to China and bring
home a 5-year-old boy.

John Edward Scott was living in the Shanghai Children's Welfare
Institute last fall when my wife Teri-Jo and I were matched with him
by an adoption agency. It was the beginning of the end of a process
that started years earlier when we -- like many other childless,
American couples -- were hoping to adopt an infant Chinese girl.

In China, where the population is 1.3 billion, the government enforces
a one-child-per-family rule. Boys typically are "favored" by their
families, so more girls end up in orphanages. Some boys are given up
by their parents -- due to their special needs, such as health
problems -- and are taken to orphanages.

But the availability of healthy, adoptable Chinese girls to Western
couples decreased in recent years as more Chinese families went to the
head of the line for government-preferred domestic adoptions. Last
year, frustrated at the long wait for being matched with a little
girl, we looked at our agency's Special Needs Web page, where we first
saw John.

Youhan Qian was abandoned at a Shanghai children's hospital in July
2006 because he suffered from Japanese encephalitis, a mosquito-borne
illness that can cause brain damage, and his parents could not take
care of him. Officials did not know his age, but they made an educated
guess and assigned a Sept. 21, 2004, birth date. Orphanage medical
records indicate that he had recovered fully from encephalitis, but
that he was timid and kept to himself.

I believe we adopted a different boy. The only special need he had was a family.

o o o

John Edward Scott, whom we first met on May 9 in China -- on Mother's
Day -- now lives with us at his new home in Venice. He's a happy,
37-pound ball of energy, eager to spread joy and love to those around
him. The only English he knows is that which we have taught him during
the past six weeks. But he already speaks often in his new language
and he has shown a remarkable capacity for communicating his needs, as
well as his love for his new family, including a maternal grandmother
and cousins he met four weeks ago, and paternal grandparents he met
only last week.

It's difficult to put into words what it feels like to become a father
for the first time at age 45. At each milestone I've reached during
the past 11 years -- engagement, marriage and graduate school
graduation -- I've felt like I joined a club. Fatherhood is indeed the
ultimate club.

John, who calls me Baba and his mother Mommy, gives me a sense of
pride that fills a hole that I have had in my heart my entire adult
life, but rarely realized. There is no greater joy to me than watching
his face light up when I enter a room, or watching him grab our hands
as the three of us prepare to walk together. That we were unable to
bond with one another during the first five years of his life makes
this a very special time.

"Baba and Mommy and John!" he shouts proudly. "Baba and Mommy and John!"

This is no timid boy.

o o o

Becoming the father of a 5-year-old has caused me to reflect on my
very different life at his age. While John was "alone" in a large
orphanage, my sister Sheryl and I were raised in Panama City by two
devoted parents. My father, also named John, was a forester with
International Paper Company, and I have faint memories of him bringing
home rattlesnake rattles and me wanting to place my antique school
desk next to his desk in his office. Today, my John and I sit together
in a large chair and he watches Chinese cartoons in one window on a
computer monitor while I surf the Web on another.

That circle is complete, with many more to follow.

In 1970, my father entered an Episcopal seminary at the University of
the South. We spent many weekends over those three years exploring
caves, waterfalls, state parks and other natural wonders of eastern
Tennessee. Sewanee is a unique place in which to grow up; but so is
Venice. Teri-Jo, a native of Pennsylvania, and I are thrilled that we
are raising John in Southwest Florida.

Over the years Dad, now a priest in DeFuniak Springs, has taught me
many things, especially the value of hard work, respecting others and
self-reliance. He has supported me in many ways -- and still does ---
an especially difficult task years ago during my adolescence. Now all
of our relatives know how important they are in John's life and we
hope to raise him with the values we were given.

o o o

Dad often took me out on Saturdays to run errands and "fix things," my
mother, Sheila, recalled recently. So it is no surprise that John and
I already were spending our Saturdays getting things done -- car
washes and oil changes -- before trips to the library and the downtown
Venice splash pad. Only now, I am able to keep family members and
friends updated about our adventures via Facebook.

It's amazing to look at our life here through the eyes of a boy who
just spent nearly four years inside a Chinese orphanage. Watching him,
we see signs that he can be both self-reliant and very needy, but also
that he was raised by the orphanage "nannies" to be a giver. John now
proudly has many toys of his own, but he shares them with others and
hands out cookies and napkins at church before taking his own. He is
experiencing so much input now for the first time.

Early on John learned to tell us he wanted to go for a drive -- his
favorite hobby -- by holding up two fists like he's holding a steering
wheel. I often wish I could ask him to explain what it feels like to
have so many new "things" and to have quite a bit more freedom than
before. But he might tell me his early life without much English is
frustrating. He's watched a mechanic change the oil in the family car
and shrugged, wondering how we would get home with it on the rack.

John already has ridden a bicycle -- with training wheels -- on
Venetian Waterway Park, walked in the surf at Caspersen Beach, watched
a tae kwon do class in South Venice, and played pool at the South
County Family YMCA in South Venice (He swings the pool cue at the cue
ball.).

He studies things. John watched children frolic in the splash pad one
week, and played in it the next. He looked at a toy tractor kit and
finished assembling it using spare parts when all of my efforts to
complete it by reading the manufacturer's specific instructions proved
fruitless.

John was made in China, and he didn't come with manufacturer's
instructions, but on our first Father's Day together, we're enjoying
the gift we were given.