Hanni Beyer Lee Archives - Mothering in the Middle

My Daughter’s Mothers

Hanni Beyer Lee

My three daughters were all adopted from China at older ages. Despite the immense losses each of them have carried, they have loved me and accepted my affection and care without question.

It doesn’t mean they have not hurt inside or pushed back at me. But they have called me Mama from the get-go and always reached out when they needed me.

My second daughter has a different story. We found her family early on. Her life in a state-run orphanage in the historical city of Nanjing ended at age 7 when I flew there to get her. I presumed she had been one of countless abandoned infants and spent many years with her orphaned peers.

I met Jiawen on an unusually warm evening in March, 1999. Although the flight was predictably excruciating, I was ecstatic. I was pulsing with adrenalin and I felt very confident, having done this the year before. I spoke Mandarin, and China was no longer a wildly foreign place. […]

Third Daughter

by Hanni Beyer Lee

She is my fourth child and my third daughter. She holds a special place in the order of the family. She is my last child. The others are grown or grown enough to be out of the house. She is the child I long to be closer to. She is the child who pushes me away and the child who needs me the most.

In 1981, I gave birth to my son. I was 23 years old and single. In 1995, I married and at 48, in the prime of mid-life motherhood, I traveled to China to bring home my third daughter. Mei Mei means little sister in Mandarin. I traveled with my two older daughters, also adopted from China. We were a fearless bunch maneuvering our way through Hefei, the city where my third daughter is from; all speaking Chinese together and attracting a crowd wherever we went. […]