Russia - 2001

I became a first-time mother at the age of 50, thanks to a combination of supportive friends and family, ingenuity, and A Child Waits Foundation. Mine wasn't the typical adoption journey, but I'm starting to think there really isn't such a thing as typical when it comes to international adoption. Anyway, I seem to have done everything either backwards or contrary to every good piece of advice I've heard since. But, day by day, it all worked out beautifully.

April, 2000
Three months before my fiftieth birthday, a friend directs me to an internet site featuring hundreds of international children. I decide to take one more look, but adoption seems less and less possible at this point. I begin visiting agency sites, opening links, going from various home pages to view the waiting children. I'm scrolling through one such site when I see them - a brother and sister, ages 6 and 7. Two children! I look to see which agency is working with them. All the other children who grabbed my attention were featured through agencies in Oregon, Virginia, North Carolina, even Alaska. These two are listed with an organization located in Michigan, literally about twenty minutes by car from my back door!

May, 2000
I agonize about the improbability of actually making this happen. What if these aren't really the children who are available, but are simply representative of those handled by the agency? What if they've already been adopted? What if I don't meet the adoption criteria because I'm too old/poor/single/whatever? What if there's just no way I can afford one child, let alone two? A good friend advises that I'll never know for sure unless I make the call. So I make the call.
To my amazement, the children are still available, and I'm not too old or too single or too anything else. Most encouraging is the fact that, because the Russians work hard to keep siblings together in adoption, I can get in on a sort of "buy one, get one free" deal. I ask for the agency information packet.

June, 2000
Most of my sentences these days start with, "How can I possibly...?" The information packet comes within days of my call. I tear it open, and my heart sinks. Even though there are significant fee reductions for adopting older siblings, many other expenses were double - foreign visas, medical exams, and travel expenses. I'm still looking at about $23,000 worth of fees, donations, and travel costs. Impossible.

July, 2000
My 50th birthday comes and goes, making everything seem even more unlikely. I send out a simple prayer asking, if there really is no way this can be done, to please take the longing out of my heart and let me just get on with things. But if there is away, let me discover it and have the strength to act on it. This time, affirmation comes in the form of an idea. I work out a deal with the agency whereby we trade services - I do some brochure writing for them, they do some adoption processing for me. It's amazing what the persistent longing for parenthood will bring out in a person! One huge hurdle is all but cleared.

I call my friend with the news that this whole thing might be possible after all - I just have to find about $10,000 more to seal the deal. She calls me back later with the internet address of A Child Waits Foundation. I discover they'll lend up to $10,000. My brother, who thinks I'm crazy but supports me every step of the way, agrees to co-sign the loan. Within a couple of weeks my loan application is approved. Against all odds, I'm on my way.

August - October, 2000
I'm adrift in an endless sea of paperwork! My adoption application is accepted and my interviews and home study begin. I obtain affidavits certifying everything - home ownership, job stability (tricky, since I am self-employed), income, education, insurance, personal character, and my parental intent for these children. All affidavits have to be exactly worded, notarized, and appostilled. Everything goes into a dossier for translation and then is sent to Russia. Suddenly, there's nothing more I can do except wait. And wait.

December, 2000
The waiting is over-I get the word that I'm traveling to Russia in January. This is the first trip, when I meet the children and formally accept the referral. Then all my papers will be processed and, a few weeks later, I'll return to Russia to bring Alicia and Maxim home.

January 27, 2001
I'm traveling alone, and the farther I go, the more difficult everything becomes. I'm flying Aeroflot direct from Chicago, but we have an hour layover in New York. Aeroflot is great. The personnel are helpful; the plane is clean and comfortable - with no smoking. It was a long but uneventful flight. I land in Moscow after nine hours. I haven't slept at all. My feet and back ache from endless walking and standing in line to get through everything - customs, baggage claim, declaration of money. I just follow everyone else, with little idea of whether or not I'm going to the right place. About an hour and a half after I leave the airplane I emerge into the general crowd waiting outside the terminal. Finally I spot a man holding a little sign with the name of my adoption agency on it. It's Anatoly, the driver. I've never been so happy to see anyone in my life - unless it's Julia, the translator who's with him. Suddenly, it's all starting to seem very real.

I still face about a 2 ½ hour plane ride to Tyumen, in Western Siberia. Anatoly and Julia drive me to the domestic airport on the other side of Moscow, buy my ticket, get me headed in the right direction, but aren't allowed to accompany me to the gate. So off I go, alone again. Local time is around 10:30 p.m. and the temperature hovers somewhere around five degrees Fahrenheit.

30 hours after I leave home . . .
We land on time in Tyumen - around midnight, Sunday, local time - and walk across the ice-glazed tarmac to a little gate by a shed. Through the gate, Sofia, Vlad and Marina - facilitator, driver, and translator - are waiting for me. Marina's English is very good, and she makes introductions and talks about the next day's activities while we drive through the deserted streets to her apartment. After dropping her off, we continue on to Sofia and Vlad's where I'm to stay while in Tyumen. Sofia insists we have tea, which accompanies a light meal of chicken, cabbage, pickles, and croutons. Finally, I fall into bed. Total hours awake: 32. Still, I can't sleep.

Through Marina, Sofia has told me that Maxim is in Tyumen at a special kiddy spa rather than at the Ishim orphanage, about four hours way by car. We can meet him tomorrow! It doesn't seem possible. Fortunately, I'm finally able to doze off for a couple of hours.

Monday, January 29, 2001
With Vlad as our driver, Sofia, Marina, and I go first to the Department of Education to get formal permission to visit Maxim. We crowd into a tiny, stifling room where everything seems to be happening without me - forms filled out, questions asked and answered in Russian, rubber stamps applied and signatures affixed. Finally, we're ushered into the office of the minister. She asks me a few questions through the translator, cheerfully signs a document, wishes me the best of luck, and we're done. Off we go to the spa.

Once we're all assembled in a large room around a table, Sofia, Marina the translator, me, and three or four teachers and administrators from the spa; a nurse ushers in Maxim. He sits at the end of the table and his bottom lip quivers slightly. He's so scared! I give him some candy and a few little toys I brought as a present. I show him a pocket photo album I've prepared for him - our home, school, the cat, Grandma, our car (he's impressed with my 5-year- old Saturn and wants to know if I know how to drive it). He warms up considerably. He's so tiny and pale, with dark circles under his eyes. I want to take care of him from this day on. My son!

The two hours go by much too quickly. He gives me a good-bye hug and I'm encouraged that it isn't stiff or stand-offish as I've been warned to expect from institutionalized children. I'll be seeing him again on Thursday after my return from Ishim orphanage, but right now it seems like an eternity. I hope he understands what's going on. I hope he knows I'll be back. I ask him, through Marina, if he wants me to bring him anything. She smiles at his answer.

"I'd like a belt because my pants are too big," he says. And then adds, "Brown, please." He's six years old, and what he wants most right now is a brown belt. I make a silent vow to buy him the best brown belt in all of Siberia. I barely manage to hold off my tears until we're back in the car.

Tuesday, January 30, 2001
The four-hour ride from Tyumen to the orphanage in Ishim seems interminable. Four adults and Marina's five-year-old daughter are crammed into a tiny car. We only stop once - at a gas station where the only bathroom is an outhouse with a door that won't shut completely because of the snowdrift in front of it. I take a few steps toward it and then decide I can hold out another two hours. Maybe I should consider this phase of things my labor - four hours of labor isn't really that bad.
Finally we arrive in Ishim, a sad little town made even more bleak and gray by the severe winter. We turn down an alley and stop in front of a dreary brick building with broad cement steps and absolutely no adornment. The orphanage; inside, they've tried to brighten the place up with colorful paint, murals, curtains and carpets. But everything is still slightly frazzled.

They're expecting us. The director meets us just inside the door along with what appears to be an official hostess and a couple of teachers. Before we even get down the hall to the luncheon that's been prepared for us, I spot a tiny girl in a brown plaid suit with an enormous red bow on top of her head. She's being led by the hand toward us. About twenty feet away she breaks into a radiant smile, jerks her hand away, and runs toward me yelling, "Mama, mama!" There's not a dry eye in the house as we hug each other.

Later, I'll recall this moment with hindsight that is bittersweet. I now know that most children don't react to strangers with that kind of abandon. However, children who have attachment and bonding issues happily throw themselves into the arms of strangers and known entities equally. I will learn a lot over the next year, and some of the lessons will be difficult. At this moment, though, I am totally captivated, completely enthralled. My Alicia.

I meet with caregivers and teachers, a neurologist, and the medical doctor who has kept very careful records during my children's 2 ½ years at the orphanage. I'm also given some rare early photos of my children when they were toddlers - something many parents adopting older children don't have.

The most difficult part of the entire trip comes after the next morning's visit when I have to walk away from Alicia and leave the orphanage. Through the translator she asks if I'll come back for her before the snow melts. In February in Siberia this seems like a safe bet. I promise. She hugs and kisses me and I step out into the icy cold air. As I settle into the car, I look back to see her tiny face at the bleak window. She has a smile that warms up even the dreariest winter day. Of course, I start crying again.

February - April, 2001
Everyone thought I'd be back to get the kids within four to six weeks. The visits all went smoothly, the paperwork was all in order, and it seemed like a done deal. Still, time passes and we hear nothing. I'm in a panic, even though all the agency professionals tell me, "Don't panic. We're working with Russia. Things happen." I don't want "things" to happen unless they include me collecting my son and daughter and bringing them home. The Russian liaison at the agency vows to get to the bottom of the delay.

At the end of March I get good and bad news. The good news is that my son's paperwork has been sitting on the desk of some mid-level bureaucrat in Moscow, but has finally been released and all systems are go. I can either travel in a week or wait four weeks until the judge who is to hear the case gets back from her vacation. After waiting more than two months, it sounds absurd that I doubt I can be ready in a week. Yet there is so much to do - work to finish, gifts to buy for the orphanage and Russian facilitators, clothes to purchase, airline tickets to arrange. It's overwhelming.

Our Russian liaison says there is one other possibility, but it's a long shot. Sofia, our facilitator in Tyumen, can ask if the judge might be willing to come in for a court date during her vacation. It's improbable, but we have to try. A few days later she calls to say its all set - our court date is April 17.

April 14, 2001
I'm finally on my way. This time I fly out of Detroit. I've heard about a couple from eastern Michigan going to Tyumen on the same day I am. We even have the same court date! It sounds good to me to be able to link up with them and know that I'll have some allies throughout this trip. They're bringing home a toddler and, since they don't speak any Russian, they hope my children can help with their son. It seems like a good idea.

April 17, 2001
We're waiting in the dingy courthouse in Tyumen when word comes that the children have arrived by car from Ishim. They see me coming across the parking lot and burst from the car. They alternately dance around me and cling to my coat as we walk back into the courthouse. People on the street watch us, but there aren't many smiles. Most Russians seem slow to show approval or support for foreign adoptions.

Marina has prepared us for the questions the judge is likely to ask. As we start I have a feeling the judge speaks a little more English than she lets on. Once in awhile I catch her reacting to my answer before it's translated. Or so it seems. Frankly, I'm looking for anything that will give me a clue about how it's going.

The questions are direct and to the point. Why do you want two children? How can you take care of them? Will you be able to give them a good education? How will you cope with no husband? Will you have the energy required to raise two children? Will you have the financial resources you'll need? What will happen to the children if you die soon? In spite of all their questions, part of me reasons that they wouldn't have brought the children all this way if they weren't pretty sure the judge would grant the petition for adoption.

Sure enough, she leaves the courtroom for about 15 minutes, and returns with the official documents that make me a mom. Furthermore, she has waived the ten day waiting period (Marina had coached us how to state our case for taking the children home immediately). Everything went like clockwork - but it was still nerve wracking!

April 17 - 21, 2001
We spend the rest of the week in Tyumen waiting for all the documentation to be sent via courier to Ishim for the proper signatures. When it comes back, we will go to Moscow for immigration physicals and clearance by the U. S. Embassy. It's a difficult few days. The children and I stay in a very small, very typical Russian apartment whose usual occupant comes in three times a day to cook for us (the food is excellent!). The other couple, now the parents of an active 3-year-old, are eager to spend as much time as possible with us since my kids are a big help with their son.

At first, all goes smoothly. They take most of their meals with us in the apartment, and we take short walks around the sad, muddy, junk-filled grounds of the apartment complex. We spend one afternoon at a children's play arcade, and one afternoon at the local puppet theater. But mostly we're just waiting to go home. And the children are feeling just comfortable enough to test us with defiant behavior - made all the more frustrating because of the language barrier. Soon, it seems as though every time the kids are together they get crazy - running, screaming, hitting - displaying the aggressive behavior that was probably a necessary part of survival in an orphanage. We all have headaches and short tempers. We all think it will be better in Moscow where we know the hotel is clean and modern, and there is a huge shopping mall only one block away. It'll be pleasant to spend a few days there. Finally, on Saturday the 21st, all our papers are in order and we can travel to Moscow.

April 21 - 24
Moscow is horrible. We can't get rooms in our hotel of choice and are forced to settle for an old hotel in a different section of the city. Ordinarily, when traveling by myself, that's just the kind of place I love. But with kids it's different. Especially with kids I don't know and can't talk to. There's nothing to do here. There isn't even a decent restaurant for kids - just a bar and a very formal, expensive dining room. It's three or four long blocks across a busy highway to McDonalds and Pizza Hut - the only restaurants anyone seems to know about. There is a tiny grocery around the corner, so I stock up on cheeses, fruits, water, juices, and munchies.

Except for breakfast in a large dining hall, and our mutual appointments, I don't see much of the other couple and their son. It's just too difficult now because we spend all our energy trying to calm down the children. And I now have to keep hold of Alicia every minute as she has taken to running away from me or having a screaming tantrum unless there is one of the Russian facilitators around. It is so scary. I worry about the long trip home.

We manage to have a relatively serene outing to the Moscow circus, mostly because our two translators are with us to manage the children. Any independent sightseeing or shopping is out of the question. I notice my fellow travelers have latched on to another couple who've adopted a sweet, quiet baby. They go to Pizza Hut together and don't invite me and my children. I feel like a bad mother. I just want to get them home.

Taking the children to the clinic for their immigration physicals generates more anxiety. This is the one area where there could still be a glitch - something not noted in the medical records that might need further investigation and require, God forbid, an extended stay. The waiting room is hot and uncomfortable. The children are manic. They're jumping, yelling, running in and out of the clinic. We say "Nyet, nyet, nyet!" in our sternest voices, but to no avail. We try to restrain them physically without looking like potential abusers, but they tear themselves free and carry on. Finally, our quiet, soft-spoken driver, Anatoly, takes all three of them outside. Whatever he says does the trick, and they're relatively calm as they take turns seeing the doctor.

Both kids sail through their medicals. Our appointment that afternoon at the American Embassy goes off without a hitch and we book ourselves on an earlier flight out of Moscow on Wednesday. We're going home!

April 25, 2001
The trip home is incredible. The kids turn out to be amazing little troupers - gamely carrying their new backpacks, not the least bit afraid. They're inquisitive, interested, and the darlings of the flight attendants because they're so darned cute.

We fly first to Amsterdam where we have just enough time to check into a hotel for about five hours sleep before flying to Detroit and then home to Grand Rapids. I can't wait to get home to show off my children and then crawl into bed.

Because we arrive mid-afternoon instead of at night, only my mom and one of my brothers and his family meet us at the airport. This low-key welcome works out well, as I'd been advised ahead of time to keep any homecoming gathering quite simple because the kids will already be on sensory overload.

My mom plans to stay a few days to help me settle in with the children. God bless Mom!
And so it begins - with many, many challenges and issues. Still these wondrous children of mine make friends in the neighborhood, start school a week after they arrive home, charm almost everyone they meet, learn English at an astonishing rate, and turn their mama's life totally upside down. They teach me, and reaffirm the lesson daily, that when all is said and done it doesn't matter how your child is conceived and delivered. All that matters is the feeling you get when those small arms go around your neck and you hear the word "Mama" and you feel as though you've been waiting to hear that word from that child all your life.

For that enduring lesson, I will love them forever.

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