Glimpses of LongLong and his nanny JiaJia are seen in a screen grab of a pre-adoption video. Five years later, after being adopted and moving to the U.S., LongLong and JiaJia have reconnected.

We only got a few glimpses of her. A woman, perhaps in her 60s, with a colorful blouse and a jade bracelet. A little boy — now our son — sits comfortably on her lap in video clips the orphanage sent us. He’s quietly eating a banana as I imagine he had hundreds of times during his two-and-a-half years in her care.

In 2018, my husband, older son and I traveled from San Francisco to Wuhan, China, to adopt Longlong. Like other adoptions from China, we know nothing about Longlong’s biological parents. “Jiajia” — the local, Wuhan term for maternal grandma — is what Longlong called his foster grandma from the video.

She is our only tie to his life before Gotcha Day, when orphanage staff escorted six toddlers into a conference room to meet their adoptive families from the U.S. We met our son, who was confused, upset and bundled in four layers of clothing to protect him from the Wuhan winter. Foster families who dropped off the children that morning weren’t permitted to meet the adoptive families.

We returned to the U.S. a few days later........

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