The day before meeting Chloe, Brenda and Steve Mellon received a recent photograph of their daughter. She appeared in a tiny oversized shirt, but she was smiling, and her Chinese name - Ji Lijun - was written on the photo in black characters. She would soon be Chloe Grace Li Mellon, the first two names for Brenda's great-grandmother, Chloe Graebe, a strong-willed, good-natured woman; and Steve's grandmother, Grace McGlothlin, who is 91 and lives in Indiana. Li was kept as a connection to her Chinese heritage.

Story and photographs by Steve Mellon
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette This review was originally published Sunday, January 10, 1999.

Shortly before my wife, Brenda, and I first met our daughter, Chloe, in a tiny government office in southern China, I stuck a tape recorder in my shirt pocket. It seemed an easy way to document what would be, for all of us, a life-changing event. A month later, I sat in our Emsworth home and listened to the tape for the first time since our return to the United States. It is an imperfect recording - the voices muffled and mixed with an annoying electronic hiss - yet clear enough to shatter my memory of what happened that day.

Two weeks and thousands of miles after the long journey from CHina, Chloe and Brenda play in the back yard of the Mellon's Emsworth home. Click photo for larger image. Related article Epilogues '99: 'Chloe comes home,' Jan. 10

In the office were nine families and nine new daughters, along with several Chinese women who had escorted the babies. Added to the mix were an assortment of office workers, several wooden desks and chairs, and a long bench. Many of the children were crying. Parents wept, too. Cameras flashed, phones rang. People spoke loudly, excitedly, in English and Chinese. It was a crowded, chaotic and emotional scene, but I was calm and self-assured. I fell comfortably into my new role as father, methodically meeting the baby's immediate needs.

At least that's what I remembered.

Then there's that tape. It's a bit embarrassing, really. My wife comes across as the calm one. She's asking me for diapers, for a bottle, for baby powder. I, on the other hand, stumble into parenthood, nervous and overly excited. You can hear me fumble around in the bag of supplies we'd brought. At one point, I holler over the crowd noise, "WE NEED EIGHT OUNCES!" I was asking for water to mix formula, but my voice has all the urgency of a doctor performing an emergency amputation on "ER." Then I say, "She has all her fingers and toes." The words are spoken slowly, with heavy drama, the way astronaut Neil Armstrong delivered his historic "One small step for man."I was a bit wound up. I'd never been a daddy, and Brenda had never been a mommy. It was something we'd only dreamed about. Now, after 16 years of childless marriage, it was happening - halfway around the world, in unfamiliar surroundings, thousands of miles from our family and friends. We were holding a baby girl who was more beautiful than we could have imagined. She was crying, and we needed to reassure her that we could take care of her, that we would love her.

It was both exhilarating and frightening.

Shortly after meeting Chloe, Steve and Brenda moved from the chaos of a small government office into the calm of a nearby hallway, where they checked her for any obvious health problems that would need immediate attention. They found none. Chloe seemed nervous, but Brenda calmed her by speaking softly and holding her. Click photo for larger image.

I'm glad Brenda was there. She's used to taking care of children - for years she's worked as a pediatric occupational therapist. If not for her, my nerves would have gone over the edge, and it would have been me, and not just our new daughter, in need of a diaper.

Calm would come that day, in its own time. During the two-hour bus ride from the city of Maoming, where we met Chloe, to our hotel in Zhanjiang, I held our 15-pound daughter in my arms. It was a bumpy, but Chloe was peaceful,left hand. Brenda sat beside me, and the three of us watched as a huge, orange sun settled over distant rice paddies that seemed to go on forever. At that moment, parenthood was idyllic.

Reality was on its way. Brenda and I would soon learn the difficulties of caring for a young child, and for each other, in an unfamiliar country, where you can't pick up the phone and ask your pediatrician or your mother what to do when your child is feverish, and where the penalty for eating the wrong food is several hours of horrific cramping and toilet-hugging. Through it all, however, Brenda and I were both comforted by one simple fact: Adopting the little girl we had named Chloe was the best thing we'd ever done.

Chloe's first year of life is a mystery to us. We know she was born Nov. 28, 1997 - at least that's what the adoption papers say. Two days later she was abandoned in Huanzhou City, where she was sent to the Babies Welfare Court and given the name Ji Lijun. Police tried to locate her parents but were unsuccessful, the papers say.

We're not certain where she spent the first 10 or 11 months of her life, or who cared for her. We do know that, somewhere along the line, this baby girl whose life had gotten off to such a rough start was matched with us.

Brenda and I had entered the adoption process after trying for nearly three years to have biological children.

Once, in autumn of 1995, we were told that our efforts had been successful. I remember sitting in a stark-white medical office and watching a video monitor display ultrasound images of our child, who was about the size of a grain of rice. We watched it move, and were thrilled. We began talk of nurseries and names. Would we have a son or a daughter? Would we use cloth diapers or disposables?

Several weeks later we were in the same room, watching the same screen, the same image - this time without the movement. The technician's face went pale. Then she called for a physician, who did her best to explain things. I remember little after the doctor said "miscarriage." In that small room, the word was like a flash flood in a narrow valley. It was upon us before we could prepare. Suddenly, our long-running debate over the color of the baby's room was over. No more counting weeks and months on the calendar.

On the way home I wanted to say something to Brenda, but what? She had seemed so vulnerable in that white office, nodding her head while the doctor explained what had happened, why we'd lost our child. But I could not protect her from this thing, this flash flood of a word and the damage it could do. I searched for a thought, a phrase, a comment that would let her know she was not alone, that we would try again and, one way or another, have a family. But every word fell short, every sentence seemed trite. Brenda finally rescued me from the awkwardness by reaching over and holding my hand, and we drove home in silence.

Perhaps there would have been some relief that day had we known this: The miscarriage was the first in a series of events that would culminate in an extraordinary relationship between an abandoned baby girl born in a communist country, where people still plow fields with water buffalo, and an American couple raised on middle-class dreams and Cold War values.

If you'd have told Brenda and me on the rainy April day in 1983 when we married that we'd one day travel to China to get a daughter, we'd have questioned your sanity. To us, it would have seemed unthinkable.

Brenda is from a small, rural town in Indiana, where people still worship the music of Hank Williams (senior, not junior). She could sit on her porch and watch cows munch grass in a field across the street. I was raised in a more suburban setting a few miles away. As a kid, I roamed the nearby woods until they were paved and planted with split-level homes. I played with Rock-em, Sock-em Robots and carried a "Lost in Space" lunch box that always smelled of bananas. China then was Red China, according to our local paper. It was an ogre state, with a population so great its army could forever march two abreast off a cliff and yet never run out of soldiers. At least that's what we were told in third grade. Richard Nixon had yet to come along and make his historic visit.

The Chinese government was still considered harsh, even evil, as recently as 1989. Remember the bloodshed in Tiananmen Square? One of the most stunning news images in recent memory is that of a lone Chinese man standing defiantly before a row of tanks.

Much has changed. Today, China is accepting some Western ideas, like capitalism (it now has hundreds of American fast-food restaurants), and America has softened its attitude. Hong Kong is now governed by China, not Great Britain. But the change that most affected Brenda, Chloe and me occurred in 1992, when China enacted a new adoption law. Since then, Americans have adopted more than 10,000 abandoned or orphaned babies.

Americans with Chinese babies attract a lot of stares, even in Guangzhou, where it's not an unusual sight. On a few occasions, people approached the Mellons, smiled and said in English, "Beautiful baby." Click photo for larger image.

Most of those babies are girls. In the '50s, '60s and '70s, China's population grew so rapidly that officials feared the country would be unable to feed its people. So in 1979, a one-child-per-family rule went into effect. The policy seems to be working - population growth has slowed dramatically - but there is a side effect: Thousands of baby girls are abandoned shortly after birth because couples often prefer that their one child be a boy. Chinese culture traditionally favors male children - they carry on the family name, can inherit land and, in rural areas, it is believed, can carry a heavier workload.

Brenda and I sometimes wonder, how could a parent abandon a child as beautiful as Chloe? We have talked about this and have agreed not to pass judgment on our daughter's birth mother. Perhaps she was under tremendous pressure from her family and gave up Chloe unwillingly. We'll never know.

What we do know is that because of these varied and seemingly unrelated events - the miscarriage, Chloe's abandonment, social policies in China and changes in that country's laws - Brenda and I have a healthy and happy baby sleeping in our home tonight.

After the miscarriage, Brenda and I continued to try for another pregnancy. Our efforts were unsuccessful. One night in the fall of 1996, we talked about our options. We were both nearing age 40 and had spent most of our adult lives chasing careers. Perhaps we had simply waited too long to have children.

Can you accept that? Brenda asked.

What choice do we have? I replied.

Adoption, she said.

Brenda had always wanted to adopt a child, even if we were successful in having kids. In her job as an occupational therapist at D.T. Watson Rehabilitation Hospital in Sewickley, she had met and treated several adopted children, had gotten to know their families. Brenda discovered there was as much love in those families as in any she'd seen.

For months we attended meetings, read everything we could find on adoption and talked to parents and children who had been through the process. During one meeting in Monroeville, Brenda met members of an agency that handled Chinese adoptions. I came home from work that night, and Brenda filled me in: She felt comfortable with the agency, the social worker she'd met and the owners, and she felt she could trust them. She wanted me to meet them.

That night, we stopped looking. After all the research, our decision on exactly where to adopt was made on gut instinct.

In July 1997, we began working with the agency, Adoptions from the Heart, to fill out the reams of paperwork needed to begin the process. Within three months we had completed all the forms, submitted all the records, answered all the questions. We made certain we had enough money set aside for the adoption - roughly $17,000. Then began the wait.

Brenda and I painted a nursery, acquired a crib, talked about the eventual possibility of day care, but as the months passed, the adoption became an abstraction - something that would happen in the future, but we didn't know when. I certainly didn't think of us as parents. Brenda wasn't pregnant. So we went about our lives as we always had - eating out on a whim, staying up late, going to movies.

Then the phone rang.

On Sept. 1 of last year, Brenda called me at work. She was breathless. "We've gotten a message from the agency," she said. "We're going to China."

At the time, we didn't know who our daughter was, didn't know her name, didn't know when we would be leaving. All we knew is that we had been matched with a baby girl halfway around the world. Details would come two weeks later when a package arrived at our house. It contained health records and a picture - a small color image of a bald baby with chubby cheeks and a furrowed brow. She looked alert and curious.

Brenda smiled as she held the picture up for me and mimicked a child's voice: "Mommy, daddy, hurry up. Come and get me."

Our trip to China began Oct. 20 with a flight to Chicago, where we met the rest of the adopting parents in our group. Nearly all were from the Philadelphia area. Five of the nine children in our group were being adopted by single mothers - China's adoption law doesn't discriminate between married and single parents. Those who didn't have spouses brought along a close friend or relative to provide help and support.

We spent 24 hours in planes and airports - there were stops in Los Angeles and Chicago - before stepping onto Chinese soil in Hong Kong, where we were met by a guide who took us to a hotel. The long trip had turned our minds and bodies into mush. Most of us looked ready to sack out on the airport floor.

The day Steve and Brenda met Chloe began with a flight from Guangzhou to Zhanjiang, where they waited in a hotel room for a bus that would take them to Maoming, and their daughter. The crib was a reminder that, within hours, they would be parents. Click photo for larger image.

The next day, we boarded a bus for the city of Guangzhou, about 100 miles west of Hong Kong. Guangzhou acts as a funnel for all Americans adopting Chinese babies. Only one U.S. consulate office handles adoptions, and it's there.

The trip offered us our first glimpse of a country with a population estimated at 1.4 billion. We whizzed past miles and miles of high-rise apartment buildings, 15 and 20 stories tall. There were no sprawling suburbs, no shopping centers with acres of parking. Ideas about personal space were much different than in the United States, we soon learned.

In Guangzhou, we entered what I thought was the worst traffic jam in earth's history. Cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians all seemed hopelessly jammed into one two-lane road. The vehicles were so close, I began to feel claustrophobic. At one point I looked out the window and was surprised to see a middle-age Chinese man staring back at me. He was so close I could see the pores on his face. We couldn't have been more than 2 feet apart, yet we were in different buses trying to squeeze into the same lane.

Despite the jam, we saw no sign of road rage. What appeared to be chaos was, in reality, more orderly and less stressful than a rush-hour commute on a Western Pennsylvania parkway.

In Guangzhou, we were met by the husband-and-wife team who had the task of ushering 18 Americans, many who had never traveled or changed a diaper, into parenthood in an unfamiliar culture. Throughout the trip into and out of their homeland, our guides (who asked that their names not be used to protect their relationships with Chinese officials) remained calm when everyone else was on the verge of panicking. They kept an eye on us and the health of the babies. One guide especially was concerned that all the babies have regular bowel movements - it earned him the nickname "Dr. Poop."

We awoke the next day - Friday, Oct. 23 - knowing our lives would be forever changed by the time the sun set. Our group made a short flight from Guangzhou to Zhanjiang, about 220 miles southeast, along the South China Sea. There, we checked into a hotel and waited. The bus that would take us to Maoming to get our daughters wasn't due to arrive for a few hours.

Brenda used that time to methodically unpack our luggage, to check and double-check our baby supplies, to eat some lunch. I stared at a recent picture of Chloe - it had been given to us the day before - and paced the hotel room. Then I paced the hallway.

"Steve, relax," Brenda told me.

Relax? I was ready to run all the way to Maoming. Where was that bus, anyway?

It arrived shortly after 1 p.m. with a driver determined to substitute our anxiety over becoming parents with anxiety over dying on a Chinese highway. Sometimes we drove on the left side of the road; sometimes on the right. Oncoming vehicles did the same. I felt like a passenger in a two-hour Hollywood chase scene. It was one long game of chicken. At one point, after a narrow miss that caused a collective gasp among the passengers, our interpreter turned and said to us, "We forgot to tell you, when riding on a bus in China, you must close your eyes and not look ahead."

We survived. In Maoming, at the government office where our daughters were waiting, we were kept in a hallway and asked by our guides to check our paperwork for misspellings. Behind a glass door painted with Chinese characters, I could see the babies. I felt like a kid waking up on Christmas morning only to be told he had to shovel snow off the driveway before he could open his presents. Concentrating on paperwork now, with our daughters barely 10 feet away, seemed an impossible task, bordering on torture, but it was necessary. Any mistakes could cause problems later.

The moment finally came. Brenda and I were called into the room - families were called in one at a time - and a thin woman in her 30s with short hair, a black-and-white dress and a pearl necklace crossed the room, rested Chloe in my arms, then quickly turned and left. It happened so quickly. Too quickly. One second my arms were free; the next minute they were holding a girl I'd seen only in pictures and dreams.

Mother met daughter in a cramped government office in Maoming. Surrounded by strangers, crying babies and flashing cameras, Chloe was a bit apprehensive. Click photo for larger image.

Chloe was silent. She looked frightened. Brenda caressed her cheek and said hello, told her everything would be all right. I was nervous, uncertain what to do. I'd held maybe three babies in my life, none for more than 30 seconds. Now I'd gone past one minute, then two. Then Chloe relaxed and rested her chin on my shoulder. I could have held her for another 2,000 years, but it was time to check her out, to change her diaper and her clothes, so Brenda reached out her arms, and I handed a daughter to her mother.

There are so many things I wish we'd done that day. We should have tried to speak with the woman who handed Chloe to us. Was she the caretaker? Did she know where Chloe was from, what town? Had Chloe been loved? Truth is, we were overwhelmed. Weeks later, thinking of the day's events - recalling the afternoon light filtering through the drapes in the government office, the weight of Chloe's head on my shoulder, her soft and resigned cry as we changed her diaper - still brings chills, and it becomes difficult to concentrate on other tasks.

Brenda, Chloe and I will have to live with some questions that will have no answers.

The nine families in our group would spend the weekend in Zhanjiang getting to know our daughters, learning how to care for them. Chloe came to us with a mild case of diarrhea and a temperature. The diarrhea quickly subsided - when Chloe passed her first solid stool, Brenda and I danced a jig around the prune-sized turd that, to us, was as precious as a diamond - but the fever persisted. In addition, Chloe was listless, and she spent most of her time sleeping. She showed no interest in toys or play and would not interact. On Sunday, she vomited her first meal of the day. Brenda and I became concerned.

Then things got worse.

Brenda had eaten lunch at the hotel restaurant - Chinese pancakes, we recall - and quickly became ill. One minute, she was fine; the next, she was on the bathroom floor, doubled over in pain.

I rubbed Brenda's shoulders. She was soaked with sweat. In the next room, Chloe began crying. A diaper change failed to settle her down. What was I supposed to do? I felt incapable of caring for Brenda or Chloe, let alone both at once. Could I call a friend or relative for advice? Let's see, it's 3 a.m. in the United States., so that's out.

I was able to calm Chloe by carrying her around the hotel room and describing the objects we saw. "This is a doorknob," I said to her. "This is a light switch. Here's a picture frame. A lamp. Telephone."

After 20 minutes of this activity, I began to wonder what we'd gotten into. There wasn't anything about food-poisoned wives in the fatherhood books I'd read. Brenda was incapacitated. Her digestive system had violently emptied itself, and her only relief from pain and chills came when she assumed what she called her "turtle position," curled up in a ball and wrapped in a blanket. Chloe was still feverish and listless. Perhaps I should get them both to a hospital. But where?

Facts about China adoptions In recent years, the number of American families adopting children from China has increased dramatically, from only a handful in the early 1990s to more than 3,500 in 1997. Prospective parents must meet federal and state requirements for adoption, as well as those set by China. Adoption laws in other countries can and often do change quickly. In China, for example, the minimum age for an adoptive parent dropped from 35 to 30 in November. It's important to deal with a reputable agency that can keep you up-to-date and help you through the process. A listing of agencies, and other information about Chinese adoption, can be found at a Web site sponsored by Families with Children from China. A local chapter called Three Rivers FCC can be accessed through this site. Another helpful group is RainbowKids.com, an online international adoption publication. Their site offers information from a number of countries.

I walked to down the hall to see our guides, who summoned the doctor who had been looking in on the babies. She diagnosed Chloe as having indigestion and malnutrition, then gave her two injections containing vitamins. Then she gave Brenda some medication - we're not sure what it was, but it didn't matter because Brenda couldn't keep it down.

No matter. Like a bad storm, Brenda's illness subsided almost as quickly as it came. After six hours, she began feeling better. By nightfall, she was walking around, anxious to care for Chloe, who was also improving. Hours after the injections, Chloe sat on the bed and picked up one of the toys we'd brought - a colorful, plastic chain. She examined it closely, then shook it. Brenda and I let out a whoop and a cheer. It was like watching her come alive for the first time. Suddenly, she was interested in everything - paper she could crumble, buttons she could push, even her own image in a mirror. Later, Brenda tickled Chloe and, for the first time in our lives, we heard our daughter's laughter.

We left Zhanjiang for Guangzhou, where we stayed for two days to secure Chloe's immigrant visa. Then we traveled to Hong Kong to board a plane to take Chloe to her new home. She would travel through several time zones and stop in two cities before disembarking in Pittsburgh.

Chloe now lives with us in a century-old house on a hillside in Emsworth, near a city that has long been a destination for immigrants. A few nights after we arrived at home, Brenda and I wrapped her in a blanket and walked outside into the cool November air. We heard tugs chugging up and down the Ohio River, the clang and bang of Neville Island's iron works, the hum of traffic on Ohio River Boulevard. A distant train rumbled. We waited for the wail of its whistle. We listened to the creaks and groans of an American city. Brenda held our daughter close and said to her, "You are home, Chloe."