IT'S the simple things that Cyril and Susan Mulligan, who adopted 22 month old Emma in China last September, look forward to in 1997. "It's just the joy of seeing her looking at a book," says Susan. "The joy of her little words. Buying her pretty clothes, dressing her in the morning, taking her to playschool, bringing her swimming. It's being able to take her to visit my friends who have children and talking about my own child."
Holding back tears, she adds that "after all the years of waiting, of playing with my sisters' kids, it's hard for me to express how wonderful it is to have a child and how wonderful she is. It's unreal the joy she's brought us in the short time we've had her. People that have children easily don't understand the joy of watching this child growing. People who take it for granted don't see it in the same way."
Cyril and Susan can hardly take their eyes off their daughter as they sit at their kitchen table, watching her focus intently on a book, carefully turning the pages in a way that not many 22 month olds could manage.
Like the other 200 couples who were lucky enough to adopt Irish and foreign children in 1996, they have felt their lives change in a way they had feared would never happen.
Emma entered the Mulligans' lives 18 months before they were able to adopt her. She was referred to them by the Chinese authorities in May 1995, when she was only three months old but the Mulligans had to take their case all the way to the Supreme Court before the Irish authorities would approve the adoption. Before that, they had to wait three years for the assessment process to be completed.
Now that they finally have her, Susan and Cyril are determined that Emma will have a strong sense of identity, growing to see herself as an Irish child with roots in China. They are so keen for her to retain and build on her few words of Mandarin that one of the first tasks of the New Year will be finding an Irish Chinese family, with young children who speak Mandarin, for Emma to play with.
"We promised the Chinese authorities that we would encourage Emma to keep her Chinese heritage," says Cyril, who admires Chinese culture and sees Emma as a citizen of the world. "If she can speak Chinese it will be great, not just for her identity but for her career. One quarter of the world's population is in China. Why narrow her horizons when some day she can go to work in a place like Hong Kong or Beijing?"
Her parents haven't, however, been blind to the negative comments about foreign adoption which have sometimes been made in the media. They know that the risk of her running across other children who taunt her for being different will increase. "We're going to teach her that different is good. Different isn't bad. Off she has any encounter like that, we will handle it to our advantage. The main thing is that she can handle it and be confident and that she's very happy in her own skin," says Susan.
Many adopted children, in forming their identity during adolescence, begin to ask questions about their birth parents. Due to the nature of the Chinese situation, however, the most that Emma will ever know is that her parents abandoned her in the street and that she was adopted from Wuhan Orphanage. Not even the orphanage knows who her birth mother is. Emma's parents are already anticipating the day when Emma will have questions about her origins and are keeping for her a comprehensive US published book which describes the sociological background to Emma's adoption.
Susan and Cyril's hope for 1997 and 1998 is that they will be able to return to China to adopt a little sister for Emma. Like any other couple who wish to adopt a second child, Susan and Cyril have had to apply to be assessed once again. They are hoping that this time the process will be faster: neither they nor Emma is getting any younger.
SIX more Irish couples are waiting for positive word from China that they have been assigned babies who they can adopt in 1997, according to Sally Keaveney of International Orphan Aid. For the dozens of other infertile couples who long to be blessed with Chinese babies in 1997, their greatest hope is that the Irish authorities will make it as simple as possible for them to do this, which, says Ms Keaveney, would be to go through International Orphan Aid.
The Chinese have been very efficient and co operative with the organisation but the slowness of Irish bureaucracy has been a barrier. Since July 25th when the Supreme Court judgment was made, only one Chinese baby has been adopted and questions remain over precisely who will be allowed to handle such adoptions from the Irish end.