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"Gottcha!" That's what we we said to a twelve-month-fifteen-day-old beautiful, apple cheeked Chinese baby girl on the day we held her in our arms for the first time. The moment unfolded at a Chinese Welfare Institution in Nanchung. The room was small, unadorned, dimly lit and filled with anxious parents-to-be along with the hearty cries of our baby girl and eleven others who were united with their adoptive American mamas and daddies that day, November 20th, 2005.

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I remember holding my pearl of a baby girl on my lap as we took a bumpy bus ride back to our hotel. As the bus maneuvered scarily through frenetic Chinese traffic, I felt an overwhelming, marrow-deep homesickness. A longing to smell the hair of our boys, to hug them hard and long, to play the piano in my front room, to look at the pond from our dining room table; and, simultaneously, a homesickness for a place I've never been, a Place where my Heart will truly find Rest and Peace and Completion . . . a place where True Forever Family lives. Along with all these existential emotional gymnastics, I also felt a sadness that Bryan and I were about to take this baby girl away from the first home she'd ever known.

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Hoping to bring a part of China back to the states with us, I leaned over my seat to ask our guide, "How do you say home in Chinese?"

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"Jia," she said and smiled as if she knew exactly what I was thinking.
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Jia, jia, jia, I repeated in my heart. Jia. Jia. I wanted to remember this word. I planned to say it to our child after we flew across the Big Pond, landed in the airplane, and drove via car down our driveway for the first time. Jia, I would whisper in my little girl's ear. Jia. This is your home, Sweetheart.

Today is the third anniversary of our GOTTCHA DAY (a term well-known and beloved by adoptive parents of internationally adopted children).

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Today, Emily and I will dress up for tea with hats, strings of pearls (from China), boas and sparkly plastic rings. We'll set a toddler sized table for four. Two of my grandmother's tea cups - most likely filled with apple cider - will be for us. Two others will be set out for Emily's birth parents who we call Ma Ma and Ba Ba (the Chinese names for Mom and Dad).

We will sing and talk, eat Goldfish crackers and bakery cookies. And we will sip our tea. When there is a pregnant pause in the festivities; we'll raise our cups, with extended pinkies of course, and toast to Ma Ma and Ba Ba in China. We will thank them for giving Emily life, for giving her her first home in China, for

letting her come to a new home in America.

Thoughts of China and pain bearing beauty, of Emily's birth family, of jia have been flooding my mind. I wonder if Emily is remembering, too. I wonder if this season brings up for her the memories: smells, sights, sounds, feelings of the day when her life changed and she found a new kind of home in my arms.

I wonder if she remembers that we were both wearing the exact shade of jade green when we first met. I wonder if she remembers the way the Aunties told us - using pantomimed body-language - that she could walk, that she was doing so well, that she had been deeply loved in China. I wonder if she notices the big and small synchronicities that come during this time of remembering. Synchronicities like the one last night as I read the last few pages of Madeleine L'Engle's Meet the Austins to all of my kids before bed.

On the last few pages, L'Engle artfully, specifically describes the Austin family activities upon returning home from a long vacation:

We piled out of the car and in through the garage and into the house, into the kitchen. It was home and I remembered it with every bit of me . . . We were all dashing all over the house to our special places. I ran up to Rob's and my room, and there was his little bed at the foot of my big one . . . and the catalpa tree outside the east window was still naked but I thought I could see the beginning of buds. I kept going from room to room, bumping into the others, and that's what we were all doing, feeling the feel of home again.

We all ran outdoors to the swing, to John's and Dave's tree house, John, of course, to the barn . . . We ran all the way around the house, looking at it from all four points of the compass, and then back into the house again, and Mother had a record on the phonograph, and the phone kept ringing, all the kids to ask us about our vacation, and the office phone, because Daddy's patients knew he was home again.

Rob grabbed my hand and pulled me back upstairs to our room and he said, "Oh, my bed, my own bed," and I knew his God Bless that night would go on for hours if someone didn't stop him from blessing every piece of furniture in the house and every tree outdoors.

Mother called us to help, and she was getting dinner and we realized that it was dinnertime and we were all starved, so we set the table and I mashed the potatoes and Suzy cut up the tomatoes for salad and Rob went around the table giving everyone three napkins. Then we were all around the table holding hands to say grace, and we said the kind of grace we always do on special occasions, each of us in turn saying his own . . .

Then everyone started to jabber all at once and to eat like pigs and it all seemed right and comfortable and home.

On the way to the bus stop this morning, I replayed this passage from Madeleine's book in my mind. I thought about the day we came home from China with Emily. I thought about the homes we go to each Thanksgiving and Christmas. And, I thought about a Home where I hope to live after these homes all pass away. As I thought, an acrostic for HOME popped into my head:

H - Happily ever after?
O - Ostensibly a
M - metaphor for the

E - eternal.

Once again, welcome home, Emily! This is your jia, your place of love and family and fights with siblings, mashed potatoes, loud conversations, piano music and growing trees. Welcome, welcome, welcome. We're so glad that you're here! Welcome home!