The Eternal Flame

After Nanjing, the parents and babies and I flew to Guangzhou, where the US consulate would oversee a swearing-in ceremony, making the adoptions official. Much paperwork still needed processing, including identification photographs and the babies’ passports.

[This is the fourth and for now final post about adopting my niece. To read the first post, click here. To read the previous part, click here.]

The US agency had arranged for everyone to stay in the 843-room White Swan hotel along the Pearl River. The hotel is luxurious with great atriums, nine restaurants,  art, shopping of all kinds, and conference areas. A major business center for Guangzhou, it served as “adoption central” in 2003. Everyone working there spoke excellent English. By now the parents and babies had become families. The group grew friendly. The babies began recognizing each other.

In the middle of the legal process, the agency had arranged for us to visit one of the city’s five Buddhist temples. This captivated my spiritual fervor, fired inextinguishably by my Catholic childhood, but good for nothing since then.   

The monks would bless the babies and another monk would photograph the parents and babies with a golden Buddha especially devoted to children. (All other photography was discouraged.)

After my mishaps in Nanjing, Janice, the main guide, stuck close to me. When I told her how Buddhism appealed to me with its minimal hierarchy and creed of acceptance, she volunteered to ask a monk to recognize me as one who struggles with faith.

The Buddhist temple, at least the part we visited, lay spread out over an octagonal yard, dotted with small shrines. Clean, white pebbles covered the ground and a line of monks in yellow robes, their heads shaved, circled the area in a walking meditation.

It fascinated me and I must have lost track of time, musing over these monks as experts at praying. They kept no mental record of those receiving communion and those abstaining. They never prayed for novels to get published or lovers not to leave. They prayed for the universe.

At the temple’s primary shrine burned an Eternal Flame, fueled by oil in a shallow dish. For a few cents—no bargaining—you could buy incense and burn it in honor of the Buddha’s special love for children.

While a gaunt, handsome monk photographed Mary and Tom and Hannah, I bought incense for each of my parents’ children and grandchildren. That meant eighteen sticks of incense.

Since my youngest sister died when she was eight, it seemed important that every stick burn well. I worried that a stick might not catch. It might go out too soon. And I noticed that many of those set before the Buddha had done just that—stopped burning at the top. Dipping the incense in the Eternal Flame, my superstitious anxiety made me jitter.

Suddenly Janice was calling me. The families were already waiting on the bus and I hadn’t gotten all the sticks to burn yet. I passed them back and forth through the Eternal Flame. When Janice arrived to see what was keeping me, I must have made a last, desperate swipe to light them, because I splashed the oil. It drenched the Eternal Flame. And the fire went out. 

Janice saw my distress and took my arm. She told me not to worry. She’d seen the Eternal Flame snuffed before. Other tourists, sometimes merely a strong wind…

Perhaps, but when she reported my mistake to the monks, they didn’t treat it like a mere triviality. All of them, plus some summoned from indoors, convened around the extinguished flame and stared at it. Several parents, babies in arms, were now drifting off the bus. Was there a problem?

Janice shooed them back on the bus, including me: Not to worry. The monks would arrange a temporary flame until they had calculated the appropriate moment to renew the Eternal Flame.

Possibly not all the parents understood what had happened. No one laughed or teased me, not after the turquoise pin incident. I hoped Buddha forgave me, but only the monks could settle that. Unlike my inherited religion, a personal confession was superfluous. Even an Eternal Flame, I like to imagine, sometimes sputters.

(That's all for now.)