A Place in Her Heart<\/strong><\/p>\nA month later we went out to dinner to celebrate her second birthday. L\u00ecL\u00ec kept one hand on Janet’s shoulder as she sampled food from each of our plates: egg rolls from mine, shrimp and ribs from Janet’s. But between bites, I noticed her glancing around the restaurant. After a big spoonful of chicken fried rice, she sidled over to a young Asian man sitting at a nearby table. We scooted her away but, a few bites later, she ambled over to another Asian man at a different table.<\/p>\n
The normally talkative L\u00ecL\u00ec did not utter a word the entire evening, or the days following. Nothing was wrong with her physically. L\u00ecL\u00ec and her words were simply on strike. She reverted to pointing and grunting to indicate what she wanted, as she had when she arrived six months earlier.<\/p>\n
Five days later, L\u00ecL\u00ec and I were playing together on the floor. She fixed her gaze on a doll to my left, and began bobbing and making sounds.<\/p>\n
“Just say b\u00e0ba, L\u00ecL\u00ec, and I will bring it to you,” I pleaded, at my wits\u2019 end. It wasn’t just that I wanted her to call me b\u00e0ba again. I also thought that encouraging her to use this linguistic remnant from her time in China might reassure her enough to resume speaking.<\/p>\n
It didn’t work. She lunged and reached and grunted with even greater ferocity. I sighed and handed her the doll.<\/p>\n
Desperate for clues about how to help her, I went back over that evening at the restaurant in my mind. The image of L\u00ecL\u00ec staring at the young Asian men reminded me of something Janet had read in reports about her time in foster care. L\u00ecL\u00ec moved through two homes, and her second foster father made regular excursions to the playground with her, which helped our fun-loving girl come out of her shell. Perhaps seeing the men at the restaurant sparked a memory of him.<\/p>\n
Watching L\u00ecL\u00ec pat the doll’s hair and straighten its blouse, I imagined this kind man delighting in her smile and enjoying her enthusiasm up until the moment she left. He knew that she would only be with him for a short time, and yet he risked loving her fully. He<\/em> was her b\u00e0ba, not me.<\/p>\nLying on the floor, arms at my sides, I rolled toward her. She stood up and laughed as she tumbled over me. After numerous repetitions, we sat facing each other. She once again gestured toward the doll. I took a deep breath, then said, “Say daddy, L\u00ecL\u00ec, and I will give it to you.”<\/p>\n
She looked up at me and appeared to consider this proposition. Finally, she nodded and said \u201cda-da.\u201d I held up the doll, but she walked right past it on to my lap. We read a book, with L\u00ecL\u00ec talking away the entire time.<\/p>\n
Hearing her speak again was magical. The sound of her voice filled me with joy, though I couldn\u2019t help feeling sad that she wouldn’t be calling me b\u00e0ba anymore. Through all of these feelings, however, was admiration for our little human dynamo\u2019s tenacity in holding her ground, and her loyalty to her b\u00e0ba.<\/p>\n
I thought about him while I reached for another book. I did not want to displace her b\u00e0ba. My gratitude to him precluded that. By loving her selflessly, her foster father found a place in her heart<\/a>. That she made a space for him gave me hope that she will one day make a space for me as well.<\/p>\n
\nJEFF SEITZER teaches at Roosevelt University in Chicago, where he won an award for adjunct teaching in the humanities in 2018. He is a regular contributor to The CMTA Report<\/em> and his writing has also appeared in the Omaha World-Herald<\/em>, The Brevity Nonfiction Blog<\/em>, Hippocampus<\/em>, The Write Launch<\/em>, The Good Men Project<\/em>, and Pulse Magazine<\/em>. He has recently completed a memoir about his experiences as a stay-at-home parent.<\/h5>\n
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Six months after she came home to us, our daughter stopped speaking. As I searched for clues as to her sudden silence, I became profoundly grateful to her Chinese foster father, a man I had never met, for teaching me a valuable lesson about selfless love. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22267,"featured_media":41146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,29,406,30,109],"tags":[330,19463,79],"coauthors":[19461],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adoptivefamilies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41145"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adoptivefamilies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adoptivefamilies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adoptivefamilies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22267"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adoptivefamilies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adoptivefamilies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adoptivefamilies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adoptivefamilies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adoptivefamilies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adoptivefamilies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41145"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adoptivefamilies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=41145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}