I Want to Know

Sometimes, while thinking about a little town in Jiangxi, I feel like my mind's eye could almost cross oceans and time to see what happened when Lyvia was born, where she came from and who she belonged to. I've been researching weather, sun and moon records for the day she was born. I stare at Google Earth and have the longitude and latitude of her town memorized. There I can see what we think is her town with a river that runs through it and mountains or hills I didn't really notice when we visited. Whoever recorded the satellite images used for Google Earth obviously didn't understand how much I wish I could fly through the streets and countryside there. As I try to swoop down with my zoom button and get closer to her roots, it sadly just becomes one big grey blob.

When I focus on this data and images, I can almost create a picture of her first day. While I know the image starts and ends in my mind, my heart still desperately wants to be taken to her beginnings. I've heard stories of orphanage directors who know more than they tell, villagers who bicycled all night to drop off a baby they couldn't keep, migrant workers who spend most of their time in cities far away from home. So more and more questions arise -- does the director know more than he has told us, how far did she travel from her birthplace to the orphanage and was her father even nearby or was he off in a big town trying to support his family. If I'm working through so many scenarios for her, I can only imagine how heavy her heart and mind will be as she dwells on the vast unknown.