A place to call home
A Chicago couple went the extra mile to give four abandoned children in China a second chance in life.
AN outraged Janet Agranoff watched in 1996 as 60 Minutes aired a report about “dying rooms” in Chinese orphanages, where infants and toddlers – most of them girls – were left to starve. When the report ended, the obstetrician-turned-stay-at-homemum looked at her husband and said: “We’re going to China.”
The Chicago couple, who already had a teenager, knew they didn’t need a child who was perfect. And because both were trained as doctors, they felt they could handle the challenges of caring for a child with medical needs.
And so, in 1998, they went to China and came home with Lily, a toddler who had a heart defect. Two years later, they went back for Maggie, who was said to be deaf. Then came Mei Lynn, who needed open heart surgery, and later Nora, who has spina bifida. Now, life is a whirl of activity. Each of the girls has gotten the surgery and medication that largely resolved their health problems. Today, Lily, 18, is an accomplished musician who starts college in autumn. Maggie, 16, is in her high school swim team. Mei Lynn, 14, runs cross country, and Nora, 11, dreams of becoming a writer.
“I’m a paediatrician because I think I can make a difference in kids’ lives,” said Agranoff’s husband, Todd Ochs, 63. “But what I’ve learned is that it’s one kid at a time. Big policies and programmes, that’s not where change takes place.”
Instead, change takes place in their treelined backyard, where at the foot of their basketball hoop, Ochs gives lessons in the fine art of the layup. In the kitchen, Agranoff demonstrates how to bake fresh bread. On the front sidewalk, the older kids taught the younger ones how to ride bikes.
The big house on Winchester Street, Chicago, the United States, always seemed to have room for one more. Agranoff’s 94year-old mother moved in two years ago. An exchange student from Thailand arrived in autumn. And a teenage friend of Lily’s is also staying, temporarily, on the second floor.
It is a life that Agranoff, 64, could not have imagined.
When Agranoff gave birth to a beautiful girl named Anna in 1981, she and Ochs thought that the baby would be their only child.
Agranoff had suffered from a second-trimester miscarriage two years before, and her pregnancy with Anna hadn’t been easy. Seven months in, Anna had stopped growing. She was born by emergency C-section, at 32 weeks, weighing 1.3kg.
What’s more, both Agranoff and Ochs were busy with demanding medical careers. Agranoff ran an obstetrics practice at Ravenswood Hospital. And Ochs was in the middle of a residency at Cook County Hospital, and later joined a paediatrics practice in Chicago.
For a decade, they did the dual-career juggle.
But in 1992, Agranoff decided to opt out and become a stay-at-home mum. Not long after, came the episode of 60 Minutes.
They were in their mid-40s. Agranoff had more time, and Ochs, an only child, had always wanted a big family.
“We’re both impulsive people,” Agranoff says. “And I thought, ‘Gee, you know, I can probably handle another child now.’ And Ochs was like, ‘OK. Let’s do it’.”
Two years later, they brought home Lily, a toddler who had been born with a relatively minor cardiac defect called patent ductus arteriosus. In the United States, the condition is easily fixed with surgery.
But in China, where specialised healthcare is not widely available, Lily was dying of heart failure.
A beautiful girl with a big head and a tiny body, she ate constantly but didn’t grow. At three years old, she weighed 8.5kg, the average weight for a 10-month-old. Her heart was so enlarged that, “if you touched her chest, it felt like a motor,” Agranoff says.
Back in Chicago, the couple got their new daughter the surgery needed to fix her heart. Then they stood back and watched her bloom. In the span of 12 months, the tiny girl grew 30cm.
It wasn’t long before Ochs began to talk about adopting a second child.
“Anna is going away to college soon, and Lily really likes having a sister,” he said.
In the winter of 1999, they brought home Maggie, a strong and compact girl with short dark hair and a mischievous personality. The orphanage had described her as deaf. But when Ochs and Agranoff met Maggie in China, she was talking, joking and playfully reaching out to tickle other children and adults. She clearly wasn’t deaf.
Was the paperwork wrong? Had someone tried to prevent Maggie’s adoption by describing her as disabled? Ochs and Agranoff would never know.
“It didn’t matter,” Agranoff said. “We were taking her home.”
In Chicago, their house was suddenly filled with toys and trikes.
On a vacation to China in 2001, the family visited the orphanage where Lily had spent the early part of her life. There were so many children that Agranoff wanted to pull up a truck and bring them all home.
Back in Chicago, she and Ochs gently broached the topic of finding another child. Lily and Maggie didn’t hesitate. “Let’s adopt another!” they said. The family learned about a three-year-old who needed open heart surgery – a gruelling process for anyone, much less a toddler.
Ochs urged caution. But Agranoff felt drawn to the story of the little girl, who had been abandoned at the gates of a British orphanage.
They brought home Mei Lynn in the fall of 2002, and took her to Children’s Hospital for the six-hour open heart surgery. When she was released, doctors told Agranoff not to let her run for six weeks. “That meant six weeks of chasing after her and saying, ‘Don’t run!’” Agranoff recalls.
By this time, Ochs had learned much about the adoption community in Chicago. As part of his paediatric practice, he began reviewing medical records for families who were considering adopting from overseas.
One day, he brought home a video of a girl in Tianjin, China.
“‘Come look at this,’” he said to Agranoff. On the screen was a little girl saying “Ma ma.” She had spina bifida. And she had been turned down for adoption by eight families.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me,” Agranoff said. Because how could she say no? There were moments, years before, when Agranoff wondered if she would love an adopted child as much as she loved her biological one. Ochs never doubted their ability to love, but he wondered if an adopted child would love them back.
“You don’t know because you’ve never done it,” Agranoff says. “But when we did it once, we knew.” “It became a seductive process,” says Ochs. One by one, the girls arrive home from school. They drop their backpacks in the kitchen, poke their heads in the fridge for a snack, before they ask about dinner and disappear into various corners of the house.
Soon, the sounds of laughter rise up from the backyard, where Mei Lynn and Pim, the exchange student, are engaged in an exuberant game of badminton that eventually draws the whole family outside.
Nora, who has spina bifida, picks up a racket and joins the game. She can run and jump like any other kid. And today, she bats the shuttlecock towards Mei Lynn, who underwent heart surgery when she was a three-year-old and who now leaps to return the volley.
Life hasn’t always been easy. All the girls wonder about their birth families. They’ve struggled with feelings of anger and loss. Because each was abandoned, it’s unlikely that they’ll ever know more.
Still, they’ve learned lessons about what a family is, and what a family can be.
“I feel like I was given a second chance by coming here,” says Lily, the oldest of the adopted girls, who was born with a heart defect and who has since become, according to Agranoff, “the glue that holds them all together.”
The sisters understand each other, Lily says. And they know they’re never alone.
“I learned that basically anybody can be a family, and it’s not just blood relations,” she says. “Family is someone you love. Someone who loves you back.” – Chicago Tribune/MCT Information Services