Welcoming the Ox

A year ago today, I picked Alex up at preschool. It was a grey day, not unlike today, but gloomier. I was freezing. My feet were wet. When I got home, something promoted my to stand in our dining room and look out across the frozen landscape of our yard.

The phone rang. It was the director of our adoption agency. We had official approval from the Chinese government to adopt Cate. Even typing now, a year later, I feel the full force of that emotion - ecstatic joy, relief, disbelief... after two years of holding our breath, after four months of looking at her forlorn little face... we had a daughter. What followed was a whirl of activity that hasn't quite ended yet.

Our approval arrived shortly before the beginning of Chinese New Year - a festival that suddenly seemed created to mark our joy and anticipation. Packages filled with red envelopes and well wishes from friends arrived in the mail. Alex celebrated Chinese New Year at school wearing T-shirts he had created with his sister's name and his own written proudly across the chest. We made paper lanterns and dragons and bejeweled the walls and ceilings. We decked ourselves and our house in red, and made a feast of Chinese food to share with friends. We listened to music, so foreign to our own ears, over and over, because google indicated it was Chinese New Year music.

Holidays are nothing if not a collection of the memories and rituals of our lives. Christmas is joy because it hearkens not only the present happiness, but the anticipation of being a kid, left sitting at the top of the stairs while my parents oohed and ahhed over all the gifts under the tree. Thanksgiving is a memory of my grandmother's stuffed celery on a green plastic platter, the Macy's Day parade buzzing somewhere in the background as my mother cooked and the house filled with delicious smells. Easter, still a joyful hunt for jelly beans among my grandparents' house plants and pictures. The feelings package themselves in so many layers, opening again and again with each passing year.

So it has become with Chinese New Year. This year, The Year of the Ox, will mark only our third celebration of the ancient tradition, and yet, it has become our own. In its celebration I will pay tribute to the anxious determination of our first celebration. Our paperwork had just landed in China, but our hearts were already tied to a child whose face we had never seen. I researched the holiday. Alex and I did craft after craft. We ordered Chinese takeout and celebrated what we hoped would be. Last year, The Year of the Rat, was a feast of glorious preparation and joy of what would be. And this year, we will celebrate all that we have.

I do not know what Cate will feel for the culture of her birth as she grows. I suspect it will be a complex web. She may reject what she once embraced and later embrace it again. She may go through a time when she wishes to disassociate herself. She may not. I have wondered how we will handle these issues as she grows. Will we stop celebrating Chinese New Year? We will fail to honor the Autumn Moon? I think the answer is no. No, because we have already made them our own. They have already entered our family history. They are ours.

I know our celebrations, no matter how much we learn, will never be authentic. I know ours are only a version of the real thing. I will never sweep all the dust to four corners and then leave it until the fifth day of the new year. I won't open every window and door in my mid-winter home to let the old year out. But if I can get my hands on some fireworks, we'll shoot them off. I'll place a bowl of tangerines on my counter to symbolize abundant happiness. We'll light as many lanterns as we can.

And I will remember with each passing year, the magical range of emotions and events that have allowed our family to make this holiday one of our own.