Running Away… or Reliving Starvation and Deprivation?
Posted in: Home & Family Life, Russian Adoption | Comments (0)
A couple of weeks back, my boys ran away from home.
I think. I’m not sure.
For someone who sleeps very lightly and has two Scottie guard dogs that would pounce on anyone trying to come or go, the whole thing is baffling to me. Before the crack of dawn, the boys had disappeared.
Benedetto and I had gotten up, he took the dogs for a walk, and I hopped in the shower. It was time for the kids to rise and shine and I was about to head to their rooms. My husband arrived to meet me first.
“The boys are gone,” he said somberly.
“What do you mean?” This was not the kind of news that normally greets one first thing in the morning. We often referred to the dogs as “the boys” and I wondered if they had slipped out the door without their leashes, or if someone had dognapped them.
“The boys are gone,” he repeated. “I found a note in their room.”
The blood in my veins turned ice cold and my heart stopped. These were the human boys, our sons. Time stood still while my world swirled around me. I read the hastily-scrawled and misspelled note that had been hurriedly taped to their bunkbed.
It stated that they were going camping (?), we were not to look for them (?), they would be home in another day and a half before 10:00 am, maybe earlier (?). Oh, and “Don’t worry.”
My mind reeled. Our eldest son had never given us a moment’s trouble in six years, since coming home from Russia.
Our next son had been home one and one-half years. He had constant minor problems mostly due to naivete and other contributing factors. I could not, for the life of me, envision either one of them pulling off such a stupid stunt. Never in a million years.
And here’s the rub: we had just met with the police the day before. Our goal was to let the children know that police in America were honest and could be trusted. All of our children had had negative experiences with Russian police. So the four of them met with an officer friend, he let them try on handcuffs, talk about how juvenile delinquents were given several chances, etc. Meanwhile, the boys were hatching their plan for that night. Inconceivable.
Benedetto had already combed the house by the time he told me. Now he ran outside, to the woods here and there, searching. I manned the central command headquarters at home, staying near the phone and feeding the girls breakfast. After an hour and a half, I insisted that we call the police. The boys knew nothing about child predators and the dangers of the outside world.
We phoned our police friend. He joined in the search and told us to call the local police. An officer came to the house and took a full description. It’s then when I began to put two and two together. We had recently been watching survival films with teens making their way in the wild. Hmmm…. The boys had taken a flimsy pop-up tent and fishing gear. Davy Crockett and Tom Sawyer with Russian accents.
That morning it was 29 degrees, below freezing. The two brain surgeons had not taken their winter jackets, only thin fleeces. They made their get-away on foot-powered scooters. Bingo: for me, that spelled paved roads or paths.
The golf course!
A neighbor friend of theirs had a father who managed the golf course. He had taken all of the boys in a golf cart along the circuitous paths in the last year. This was the only place they visited without us, and maybe thought we would not know. I got on the phone.
“Benedetto, you need to call this neighbor,” I urged, giving him the number. He called back within a minute.
“He said he saw Petya and Pasha just 30 seconds before,” came his excited voice. “They were coming out of a restroom on the golf course and he asked them if everything was okay. They said they were heading home, but walked the opposite way. He said they must be in the woods near the river.”
Benedetto phoned again 30 minutes later when the two men found the boys. We called the police, gave them the news, and they came to our home to verify. My husband warned me that I was not allowed to be mad when the boys returned and that we had to listen to them if they had any problems that they were not telling us.
“Remember the prodigal son,” he reminded me. “The father ran to meet him.”
“Yeah, and the prodigal son was not 13 and did not leave home in the middle of the night…..”
Three and a half hours later from when we first discovered them missing, they were home. It was maybe six hours from when they left. Dirty, hungry, cold. The two had eaten half an apple, and had a Bible with them, enjoying morning devotions sans campfire. They were surprised that the police had been called, which only spoke to the utter confusion of the adolescent brain.
We had numerous talks throughout the day. What were they thinking? Did they need to get away? Why did they go?
That would be: They weren’t thinking; No, they liked life at home; and They simply wanted to go camping.
The next day, I did review as many fear-inducing pieces of information as possible with all of our children. What is a child predator and how many can be found on the map near us, bringing up visions of Hansel and Gretel to the 100th power. Which poisonous snakes are not totally dormant in the winter when a tent is plunked down on their head and two bodies flop on top of said snake which will then strike and kill them. We talked about drinking water and how long someone could survive without drinking or eating enough. And then there was that little matter of frostbite with noses, fingers, toes and ears having to be amputated. So if the loonies did not kill you, the snakes, starvation, dehydration, and exposure to the elements would. A rather low-key presentation, I thought.
I’m not sure that we could call this running away in the traditional sense, but it certainly felt like it. The incident brought up so many underlying issues in my mind that might possibly stem from being orphans. Did they feel better internally if they did not have parents, food, or a roof over their heads? If they had been used to faring for themselves at very young ages, was it similar to having a set point for one’s weight, where only Herculean effort would remove them once and for all from any reverting-back? Were they bound to return to this internal comfort zone of deprivation?
Discussions ensued involving liberal amounts of tears on all our parts, asking for forgiveness for doing something so dumb and scary, and reassurances of our love for them. Pasha reported that when Papa told him he loved him, he “really felt something”.
No matter that we tell all the children every day that we love them… and actually mean it. Some things click and some things don’t. Better late than never.
That night, Benedetto decided to sleep in the cold playroom from which the kids took their leave. Problem is, he never informed me. When the dogs grew restless and needed their late-night walk, I sweep the house. It appears that now my husband has run away from home. My heart pounds as it only can when one is awakened from a dead sleep and faced with a life-altering situation. Yet again. Within ten minutes, I find him fast asleep in the playroom. I am not amused.
The next day, a security professional comes while the children are out. We activate our door alarms. No one would be coming or going anymore without our knowledge. At about 1:00 am, I almost jump out of my skin as the key pad peeps near me. I run to the boys’ room and cannot see if they are there in the darkness. Benedetto is not in bed, I quickly check the family room and a guest bedroom. Finally I find him in the office, where he is standing next to the alarm.
“It always peeps when you set it,” he explains, like I’m the crazy person.
For now, we’re watching no more of children against the wild survival films, lest anyone get any ideas. Benedetto did briefly mention “Call of the Wild”, but I didn’t even want to entertain the idea.
“Alexandra, how about ‘The Wizard of Oz’?” he asks tonight.
“I’m not sure. Possible nightmares…” I muse. But we download it.
Not having seen the movie in the last 25 years or so, I had forgotten that Dorothy ran away from home with Toto just before the big twister hit. But as she’s told at the end of the story, she had to find out for herself that, “There’s no place like home.”
May all of our kids know that, and feel that, no matter what storms of life may come.
admin @ March 9, 2010
Kadima! Victory is Yours
Posted in: Current Events, Spirituality, Travel | Comments (0)
Dateline: Jerusalem. Loud knocking at the door and the war command, “Kadima!” (Onward!) awakened Benedetto and me from our winter’s night sleep. A kind soul ensured that we would be awake, taking refuge in a sealed room with absolute strangers, and wearing our stifling gas masks all night long to usher in the beginning of Israel’s Gulf War. It was a rude awakening after a perfectly elegant dinner party for two the night before.
The whole city was under curfew and we were allowed to walk anywhere within a block or so. We made the best of it, as he was scheduled to leave the next day for several months, while I worked on some projects of my own.
The two of us had been married just over ten years. It was a horrific half year, in many ways the best of times and the worst of times. The war stretched on and on, through January, through February. I tried to carry on and accomplish what needed to be done, but daily life was difficult. Until February 28th.
Nineteen years ago today, I was there in Jerusalem when the Gulf War ended. After weeks of running to a designated “sealed room” and strapping on my bulky and utilitarian rubber gas mask as air-raid sirens blared, the miraculous moment was revealed to me by a rather snide and sarcastic comment overheard on the street.
“Hey, idiot,” one teen guy said to another in Hebrew, “haven’t you heard? War’s over.”
He pointed at his peer’s kufsat masicha, the utilitarian cardboard box on a long, black strap that all of us used to carry our gas masks. My own was safely tucked inside a dark canvas bag, the type that most Jerusalemites used to schlep anything from groceries, to books, to… gas masks, these days.
The war was over-?! Could it be??? Today was the Festival of Purim, the holiday celebrating Queen Esther’s intercession in Babylon on behalf of the Jewish people who had been sentenced to death by a royal decree. They, instead, won a victory over their enemies.
Little girls dressed as Queen Esther strolled the mid-morning streets. The significance of the war’s end was lost on none of us. Little did we know that another Gulf War would eventually follow, and it, also, would end on Purim.
Only if you have been through the preparation for war, the terror of war, and the aftermath of war, can you understand the all-out sense of relief when it’s over. No more evening curfews as the madman Saddam Hussein preferred to lob his missiles under shroud of darkness. No more stores sold out of heavy plastic sheeting and masking tape as residents sought to secure the seal around doors and windows in case of gas attack. No more lugging heavy glass bottles of water from the supermarket or neighborhood maccaulet, since plastic bottles were thought to be more permeable. No more soaking towels in bleach and stuffing them under door cracks, or running to twist the cannister filter onto the rubber gas mask, tightening the five straps and ensuring that the seal was airtight.
Many were the war days I had walked stone pathways through lush and rain-sodden winter gardens. Giant, fragrant rosemary bushes were interspersed with rich, red geraniums, and my favorite purple anemones and fuchsia cyclamens. Twisted, ancient olive trees marked the way as the sun glistened on wet pavement. There was a holy hush often, as residents stayed close to home. A rainbow stretched across the sky, piercing dark clouds, God’s promise reaching from heaven to earth on Mount Zion.
Even in the midst of battle, there was hope. Our prayers had been heard. We came out in victory. So will you.
admin @ February 28, 2010
Why Do I Homeschool?
Posted in: Home & Family Life, Russian Adoption, Travel | Comments (0)
I’ve asked the same question, myself, on some not-so-good days. The closest I can come to a concise and cogent answer is that I hope to train my children’s minds… while losing my own in the process.
Later this spring, my eldest son, Petya, and I will be traveling to a homeschool convention. We don’t fit a lot of the stereotypical models of homeschoolers, so it should be interesting. I’m a bit giddy even thinking of what we might wear to such an event—a teen boy is easy enough to dress—a shirt and sweater with slacks, plus now he’s taken to wearing a blazer with jeans for his “hip and happening” look. But me? I’m not sure that my de rigeur business skirt suit or pants suit will fit in among prairie dresses and long braids. But then maybe I’m stereotyping, too.
I am pleasantly surprised not to see any weird seminars being offered on the forwarded daily schedule. No “Frilly Dressmaking 1, 2, 3”, “How to Make Meals for a Household of 20”, or “Why University Really Doesn’t Matter”.
We’re going to the convention for academics and morale. My son needs to mix with others who have done fabulously well being educated from home. I need to learn how to keep the kids learning by leaps and bounds… without resulting in me wanting to run away from home.
Things were easy enough with one child from Russia. I started homeschooling because I did not wish for my child to enter public school not speaking a word of English, similar to my father’s experience long ago in New York City. Falling in with the wrong crowd, and getting in non-stop trouble were par for the course for he and his twin brother who had been raised in a Russian ghetto. When our son Petya entered the scene, he was 7-1/2 and had never been to school. How could I plunk him smack into a foreign language second grade and expect him to enjoy it?
As parents, our concept of education was that it was a lifelong learning endeavor. We hoped to guide him on an amazing adventure, rather than have his head flushed down the toilet by the resident school bully. It started out swimmingly with a compliant child, eager to learn. Now, six years later, he was above grade level, while his siblings struggled and backpedalled, all requiring different school materials and courses. They needed threats, coercion, and pep talks to get through one, single day. It was exhausting.
So I wanted to reward Petya as we looked forward to high school when academics, course selection, and grade point averages really Mattered. He, meanwhile, was looking forward to a three-day getaway with Mama, all expenses paid, and room service to boot. I wondered how long it would take us to get to this distant convention. He wondered if there were any indoor pool? Not that we’d be lounging around the hotel. I had every hour, on the hour, scheduled.
“Think of it as a working vacation,” I tell him.
“No problem,” he replies, noting that pizzas are deeply discounted after 9:00 pm, on the room service menu, and that we are in possession of tickets to a sold-out comedian’s parody on homeschoolers.
My teen has known me long enough to realize, that if he puts in his work time, fun time will be sure to follow. I take care of him, he takes care of me. A better son I could not have asked for. But he’s the one who got me into homeschooling in the first place. I’ll try not to hold it against him.
Naturally, the kind of presentations that I really need will not be on the docket: “How to Homeschool All Day, and Work All Night”, “How to Homeschool on Planes, Trains, and Automobiles”, “How to Homeschool When Your Children Do Not Speak English”, “How the Denying of Privileges Will Make Your Student Learn Short Vowels If Not Multiplication Tables”, “How to Homeschool When Your Foreign-Born Children Equate School With Being Beaten for Wrong Answers”, and “How the Police Can Be Used for Homeschool Tardiness… For Kids Who Like to Sleep Beyond 6:00 am”. Ah well, maybe next year. As they say, it’s not about Me.
Some of the greatest minds are being gathered for this conference which has enough Ph.D.s presenting information to dazzle any Ivy League or Ivory Tower wannabes. Looking over the lineup, I jot down some possibilities. We’ll aim for the probably packed-out ballroom sessions on “How to Complete College by Age 18”, or the benefits of Latin in “Why the Best Language to Study is a Dead Language”, in addition to sharpening writing and speaking skills, how to follow your dreams and find your life’s purpose, and so much more. There are parental sessions on burn-out, but I dare not take these, lest question and answer sessions follow, and I depress everyone there.
Recently, we took our kids to visit the local public schools. The administrators were very accommodating and responsive, helping them understand that other children work hard every day, too, and that school need not be a scary place. Benedetto and I had decent school experiences, so I try to come up with why it is, now that the younger kids know a little English, we continue to homeschool.
1. I want them to be at grade level before they qualify for AARP.
2. All children should know at least four foreign languages by the time they become teenagers.
3. I’d rather deal with any behavior problems at home than take time out of my perfectly packed day and have to drive to the school to pick up a child. They probably knocked somebody’s block off for a very good reason.
4. We like to travel during the off-season. The thousands we save each year can be going to the kids’ college fund, or my plastic surgery fund.
5. It’s best that the children be taught for seven hours/day instead of zoning out for six and coming alive during 45 minutes of ESL once/day.
6. I don’t want to do their science projects for them, whether flickering light bulbs or spewing volcanoes. I’m not interested in making my cup cakes look better than your cup cakes for the class snack time.
7. They will avoid the embarrassment of having no baby photos for the school yearbook, nor class bulletin board.
8. They do not need to settle for one or two field trips per year, when they can do ten or twelve… and actually learn something.
9. There is no peer pressure at home. Our dogs do not watch MTV, know the latest movie that’s out, nor crave $150 sneakers. I can live with that.
10. They think that their parents are the smartest people on earth.
So forget my momentary lapses of exhaustion, frustration, and self-centeredness. I consider what it’s like to do a science experiment in the kitchen, sit by the fire and play with the dogs, make a meal together, hike to a glacier, review the Civil War on a battlefield, travel to a foreign country and the kids can speak the language, volunteer with the homeless, reenact Colonial life, visit an ailing grandparent, grow a garden, learn a sport, try a musical instrument, memorize theorems and algorithms, write a thank you note, study the stars on a cloudless night, or skip a grade when the student is able…. Priceless.
These are the best days, the homeschooling days, that allow us to make up for lost time and value and educate those who were once so far away, but now are safe, secure, and seeking to learn all that life has for them. I think we’ll fit in at the homeschooling convention, after all. Cincinnati, here we come.
admin @ February 21, 2010
Russian Adoption Delays and Detours
Posted in: Russian Adoption, Travel | Comments (0)
A funny thing happened on our way to adopt twin baby boys—we ended up with four older children. Russian adoption is an imprecise science at best, a disaster on an average day, and a multi-track train wreck whenever we crossed their border. But delays and detours don’t always spell denial.
Maybe I should have been traveling by pohyezd (train) one year ago this week when I met our dear daughters-to-be. My first mistake on the plane flight to Sweaty Starii Krai was to drop off to a bobbing-head, drooling mouth, fitful sleep. I had been flying for many hours, or weeks, or months, I remember not which. Excitement turned to exhaustion. Before I knew it, we were landing.
A small airport, I had never been to this region before. It was late at night and foggy. Walking inside the two-room terminal, many were the travelers flooding the wooden-podium, makeshift taxi stand. It seemed odd. No “Taxi” sign. Nobody had a car or friend coming to get them? Everyone negotiating prices. Long lists of passengers. Anyhow, my driver would be coming to get me, so I focused on finding my bag on the tiny conveyor.
Walking past “security”, an older gentleman in half a uniform, I found mobs of unofficial taxi drivers. These were swarthy men with ancient Ladas, for the most part. They stuck to me like flies on glue. I confidently pushed past them, out into the chilly night, but there was no one else. Not a soul to meet me. Something was amiss.
I could not stand there on the sidewalk, burly men trying to grab, i.e., “help”, me with my bag. Clutching my purse tightly, filled with wads of spanking new US Dollars for The Payoff to our facilitator, I knew I had to get inside the terminal. Of course, I no longer had a ticket, which meant I could only go so far. As in two steps.
I appealed to the outside security guard, a younger man of about 60 or so.
“Eezvehnee’tyeh, pazhal’istah,” I started, explaining that I had a Problem. “My driver is not here and he was to meet me.”
The kind man sized me up, lady on the verge of hysteria, understanding I could not go in, and I could not go out.
“Do you have his phone number?” he asked. “You can call him from my cell.”
“Oh, balshai’ah spasee’bah!” I rummaged through my documents.
“Take your time, it will be okay,” he counseled.
Withdrawing the sheet of paper with contact numbers, I showed him Alex’s number.
“Gdyeh ohn?” (Where is he?) the guard asked.
“Here in Sweaty Starii Gorod,” I offered.
“You are not in Sweaty Starii Gorod,” he said, as my heart began racing faster than any Trans-Siberian Express.
“Shtoh? Where am I?!” I’m starting to panic.
“You are in Sweaty Starii Krai, the region, but your plane was diverted to another city because of toomahn (fog),” he told me. Apparently my long winter’s nap had tuned me out of any emergency announcements onboard. The darkness had blotted out any airport signs.
“How far away am I from my destination?”
“About three hours by car….” No wonder so many of the passengers had crowded the makeshift taxi stand and now half of this city’s men were gathering outside to “assist” the stranded travelers.
My heart was sinking. I had three days to get in, see the girls, and get out. Maybe not here, but in my part of the world, time was money. I could not afford to be diverted, detoured, nor delayed, although our second Russian adoption had taken four years to complete.
“Let’s call Alex,” my new friend suggested, as a crowd gathered and onlookers gaped and stared.
When he answered, the man explained who he was, and where I was, and handed the phone to me. I had never met Alex, but understood that he spoke no English. So there I plunged into rusty Russian to ask what to do.
“You have a driver that will be there in one minute,” his voice crackled. “I will pay him tomorrow. Do not pay him anything. He has worked with us before. You are now in City A. He will take you to City B to stay in a hotel overnight. Tomorrow morning, we will drive three hours to get you, and take you to Sweaty Starii Gorod. Pohnyeemah’eetyeh?”
“Pohn’yahlah,” (Got it) I said, thankful that they were taking care of business. “Sorry for any trouble that the fog caused you.”
“Yeah, we’ve been waiting at the airport for a couple of hours. Your plane circled several times and then had to divert. Neecheevoh, it’s nothing, we’ll see you tomorrow and take you to the orphanage first thing. Be in the lobby.”
As we hung up, there in front of me loomed a very large man with a tiny piece of cardboard with my last name scrawled on it. My driver! I profusely thanked the security guard.
“God bless you!” I patted his arm. He was beaming as the hero of the day. He quizzed my driver, Boris, as to where he was taking me and making sure that everything was in order. With that, we took our leave, and disappeared into the foggy, damp night.
This driver took me through pot-holed, older parts of whatever city we were approaching. It was about 30 minutes away. Boris spoke of the renovations being done to older buildings, something I really enjoyed, though inwardly, I was holding my breath. We had long departed from any highways, this looked nothing like a city, but instead, the roughest part of some inner-city slum. Where was I? Where was my hotel? After all I had been through, I was not about to end up being robbed and left for dead on some back-road alley.
And then, just as quickly as our descent into darkness had begun, we came to some paved streets. Going through a guard booth, we entered a brightly-shining parking lot, and up a winding drive to a resort hotel. Here Boris carried my bag, walking me to reception, and making sure I was okay. Another Russian gentleman. I spent the night, stuffing and preparing gift bags to give to our girls, and nursing my laryngitis that was developing by leaps and bounds. I had no idea how this was a resort, nor what were the attractions to see, but it was a nice hotel in the middle of nowhere and I got a good night’s sleep.
After the next several days of adventure, it came time to return to Moscow and then home. I had planned to spend the weekend in Moscow at leisure. The flights were such that I could only arrive from Sweaty Starii Krai in the morning, after the morning flights had departed from Moscow for abroad. So stay I would. After all, the agency was charging me for a driver since I had “chosen” to overnight in Moscow-??? Might as well make it two nights instead of one.
Smart move. This time I stayed awake, though I had to leave my hotel in early morning darkness. The fog was so thick, I wondered if there would be any flights at all today.
“Please, God…” I prayed.
“No problem,” said my tried and true regular driver (or make that tired and true). “We are used to fog,” said Igor. These guys were troopers, getting up at the crack of dawn and often working late into the night.
Sweaty Starii Krai’s airport was even smaller than my diverted one. Two ramshackle rooms, one flight in, and one flight out each day. They weighed my suitcase, my carry-on, and were about to weigh me-! Guess they didn’t want to break the scale…. We all flocked into the one waiting room and watched Popeye cartoons in Russian. Not another foreigner in sight.
Then the dreaded announcement came: half an hour delay due to fog. Yep. Then another hour delay. It all added up to about two hours’ delay as we at last hiked out on the tarmac to the solitary waiting plane.
I trusted that Vlad, my driver in Moscow, would know of the delay. I had no way to contact him, not one to use my cell much in the US, much less carry it abroad. That was Benedetto’s thing, and unfortunately, he was not with me.
We approached for landing in Moscow’s Sheremyetyevo Airport, then I heard the engines gunning. Back up we went. Circling a few times, an announcement was made, some kind of rapid-fire regrets. Everyone moaned and groaned and got on their cell phones. I turned to my seat-mate and asked what was happening.
“Nizhniy Novgorod,” he confirmed in Russian. “We cannot land here.”
I explained that I had no way to tell my people what was happening and he said to use his cellphone. I asked if we were responsible to get our own transportation back to Moscow.
“Nyet, we will get back on this same plane. They will not remove our luggage at all. But,” he added. “Do NOT go with any drivers.”
“How far is Moscow by car?” I asked, looking down at the forest below and small figures of cross-country skiers traversing the terrain.
“About six hours. And maybe slower because of the snow. They will charge anything.”
That’s when we were walking into the terminal and I heard the ruble price being bantered about. Quickly calculating in my head, it came to… $500! Who knew if these private entrepreneurs would even get me to Moscow?
“Will we need to spend the night here?” I wondered.
“Nobody knows,” he shrugged. “Look, I’m going out for a smoke. Sit with my briefcase and we will take turns walking around. I will call your people and let them know that you’re delayed.”
And thus began my day-long friendship with Sergei, the engineer. He had been in Sweaty Starii Krai on business, now going back home to Moscow. Here it was, Valentine’s Day, and he had to call his wife and tell her that he, also, had been detoured.
I thought about the whole adoption process being metaphorically depicted before me: delay, after detour, after delay. For all of the problems that we had experienced in earlier adoptions, this one was speeding along. There were the normal bumps in the road, or okay, more like ski jumps off the mountain in a blinding blizzard, but time-wise, we were moving right along. The adoption would be completed in six months’ time from start to finish. Now the delays were in the travel itself.
The hours clicked by, as more and more planes diverted from Moscow. The terminal filled up. I ate my granola bar, apple, and Diet Coke, happily brought from my last city. No need to buy inflated airport snacks. Sergei sent and received multiple text-messages from my people in Moscow. He was a saint.
Six hours later, we were summoned to board. My seat-mate insisted on carrying my bag, as we took the bus through heavily-falling snow. Back onboard, I breathed a sigh of relief.
We landed in Moscow, and there Sergei waited with me for my big suitcase. He made sure that Vlad found me, and vice-versa. Both men thanked the other and I could have kissed them both. Vlad had shuttled back and forth between two airports as they kept changing our arrival destination, in addition to time.
I arrived in the city and got into the apartment around 8:30 pm, talked with Benedetto, who once again had no idea in what city his wife was landing, ran to the 24-hour gastronom and bought a few food supplies, then hit Moo-Moo Restaurant for a late-night Valentine’s Dinner for myself.
Friends, delay is not denial. If you’re in the middle of a detour, enjoy the view, make new friends, but keep pressing for your intended destination. Together with God’s help and the intervention of kind strangers, you will get there.
admin @ February 10, 2010
What’s in the Attic?
Posted in: Home & Family Life, House Renovation, Russian Adoption | Comments (0)
The first time this house was infested, there was a horrific smell. Awful. As though someone or something had died.
“What IS that?!” I pressed Benedetto.
“Most likely a dead animal outside, nearby….”
“Outside? I don’t think so.”
We were preparing to bring home our first son from Russia. He was already school-aged, although he had never been to school. No doubt his olfactory senses would be keen enough to whiff the Stink of the Century.
To further exacerbate matters, my husband was now on crutches. We had gone out for a celebratory lunch before flying out the week of our court date-to-be in Russia. There was a patch of black ice, he slipped, broke his ankle in three places, and court was delayed by six weeks.
So here we were, holed up in Stinky Hollow, still traveling non-stop, but with great difficulty on his part, and great difficulty on my part when we’d get home.
“Pee-yew!” The smell was getting stronger.
The smell was also getting stronger as my beloved insisted that I was not doing the grocery shopping as well as he could. I would not debate this matter, but neither would I make a federal case out of my buying vanilla yogurt instead of plain yogurt. He came to prefer vanilla…. This was repeated with dozens of issues, dozens of times a day, involving food or non-food items. But with an Italian husband, it usually involved food. On one of my multiple grocery runs, an elderly woman in a powder blue Cadillac backed into my already-backed-up car in the supermarket parking lot. Now our back bumper was crunched, on top of everything else.
It was currently our one-week countdown to depart for our new court date. I had been shuttling Benedetto here, there, and everywhere, waiting on him hand and especially foot. With his right ankle broken, and two crutches necessary, he could not drive, he could not carry a cup of tea, he could not wear anything but zip track pants. Trendsetter that he was, he looked fine in tweed jackets, sweaters, and the track pants, with a special black sock to cover his toes. This would be interesting to see how he would navigate in the snows and ice of Russia, my one-legged man. I wondered if we would find vanilla yogurt there.
But for now, I scheduled faithful friends to be his drivers, and food shoppers, and right-hand assistants. As for me, I was off to Scotland for several days of speaking engagements, overlooking the Firth of Forth and eating roast chicken with the most proper mustard that knocks the wind out of the diner. Strolling the village of Carnoustie, enjoying the rough of the golf course, or the brisk breeze by seaside cottages envigorated me. I needed a break, not that this was any break except from being a 24/7 nursemaid. In another few days we would be in Russia, becoming parents to a 7-1/2-year-old boy. Before acquiring him, we had to divest ourselves of The Big Stink. And it was not going to be the Big Easy.
While I was in Scotland, Benedetto, as only a husband who is pushed by his wife beyond his comfort zone can do, called over his posse: a friend and another guy with some background in animal control. They opened the hatch and up into the attic they crept and crawled. Sure enough, they spotted a possum waddling back and forth, and the “expert” decided it would be best to shoot him with a .44 magnum. We had ended up with the Gomer Pyle of gopher control.
“Hellooooo, guys—you know, that’s my ROOF up there,” Benedetto called upstairs, supervising on crutches from below. “We don’t need any big holes on top. Can you flush him out and shoot him outside?”
“Sorry, sir, I only have a gun permit to shoot inside the house….” came the voice from above.
What???!!!
The expert didn’t want to get anywhere near a wild possum, but finally decided to lasso it. They found the dubious source of his entrance to be a vent where the animal had ripped the cover off. That was easy enough to seal. But now to get Fat Boy outta there….
The expert came at it with his pole-and-a-noose, not to mention his steel-toed boots. The men ran back and forth in the attic, chasing it this way and that, all the while not trying to rile him up. I wondered whether a Possum Whisperer existed and what you could say to such a funny-looking creature. At last they got him. Mr. Possum was sent back to the wild, the hole was patched, and I was regaled by the tall tales half a world away.
So here we were again, six years later, currently with four children, two dogs… and something upstairs scratching with claws along the floor.
“It’s a squirrel,” my husband declared. Had to be benign and cute, no doubt.
“A flying squirrel, probably with access into your home,” wrote one of our faithful blog readers. She relayed how a neighbor discovered flying squirrels by seeing their footprints on top of a china cabinet as she was dusting. Additional excellent reason not to dust.
However, the animal did sound as though he were in the house. Lying in bed, I heard an extraordinary ruckus in a spare closet. I dared not open the door. He was probably trying on different outfits, coordinating heels and bags for each, or rubbing his flea-infested body with my lavender sachets. Going in for my morning shower, the vent above would shake, rattle, and roll as Fat Boy tried to jump in with me. Needless to say, I was not one for group showers. I thought he might see things that would scar him for life.
My own guesstimate was another possum. I heard him on the move, lumbering here and there every morning at 6:30 and every evening at 6:30. At least he kept to a schedule. I had no idea if he was coming or going at these hours, but I often heard him flop down right above our bedroom. It was not a delicate flop, but more like a WHUMP! He had to be about the size of one of our Scotties, maybe 20 pounds or so.
This time, we called a national company. We needed an expert. A day later, he came to inspect the attic.
“How will the man know what kind of animal it is, if he returned to the outdoors?” Petya wondered.
“I’ll let you in on a secret,” I whispered. “The man is a poop expert. He looks at the size and shape of whatever he finds up there. Elementary, my dear Watson.” Petya’s eyes widened to imagine that we were smack dab in the middle of our own mystery, while he was immersed in reading “The Hound of the Baskervilles”.
The expert emerged and climbed back down the ladder from the attic. This was no Gomer or Goober, this was Sheriff Andy Taylor, himself.
“Just tell me: it’s not a squirrel, right?” I looked up from my computer.
“Most likely a raccoon,” he acknowleged. “The droppings were large, with some old possum droppings here and there.”
“That’s why we hired you—to catch him…and to vacuum,” I smiled, having made sure that this was indeed included in the price. “Did you see him?”
“No, and I didn’t want to poke around and get him upset, either. He has a nest toward the front of the home where he sleeps, then his urinal is above your bedroom….”
Well, that did it. I was not going to be nominating Mr. Raccoon for a guest appearance on the Wonder Pets anytime soon. A urinal? He would dare to tinkle above my head each night? I sincerely doubted it, in that location, unless the big guy flopped down right after doing his business. I daydreamed of him snoozing right above us upstairs, feeling close to his human family downstairs.
Mr. Animal Control’s plan was to set a trap outdoors with peanut butter, and if that failed, set one in the attic. It made me nervous for certain geriatric neighborhood cats and dogs that toodled into our territory on a regular basis. Could they climb into the cage and become stuck?
“Possible…” the workman said. “But I’ll be back every couple of days, and the cage simply contains the animal, it doesn’t harm him.”
Oh well, we’d have to live dangerously, then..
A few days later, on an early morning, an adolescent raccoon stared at us from inside the outdoor cage. He washed his paws and face and enjoyed the peanut butter. Without a phone, room service had to wait.
Benedetto and I were both right: he was big, but he was cute. The worker came and got him and we haven’t heard anything since from either the former nor the latter. Of course, the hole is still not patched and Mr. Animal Control hasn’t been back, yet, to vacuum, but we’re hopeful that he will complete the job and the adventure will be over.
At these prices, maybe our expert will vacuum downstairs, put in a urinal upstairs, and make all of us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
admin @ February 4, 2010
A Mouse in the House
Posted in: House Renovation | Comments (0)
Like Charlie Brown’s football being whisked out from under him at the last possible moment before the punt, there are few things that conjure up thoughts of “What’s the use?” as much as home renovations.
We all know that any good rehab will inevitably be double the time and double the cost, since contractors subsist on overtime and overruns. The classic 1986 film, “The Money Pit”, barely scratched the top of the hardwood floors when it came to extreme problems lurking just below the veneer of any “diamond in the rough” home. But apart from shady contractors on the make, even in the case of handy do-it-yourselfers, some disaster is bound to happen.
When we were once young and optimistic about such “opportunities of a lifetime”, we invested in a large, urban brownstone. In some ways, we should have been smart enough to see the handwriting on the wall: “Enter at Your Own Risk”. It was there, alright, blaring out its message loud and clear as we unscrewed the wood covering over the nonexistant glass insert halfway down the front door. Benedetto and Alexandra, in our Innocents Abroad personas, stepped delicately into the big, old, shack-of-a-mansion, while the realtor looked this way and that on the street and said, “At least there’s plenty of running room”, in the not-so-slim-chance that we were pursued by gangs of thugs.
After a quick walk-through, the two of us determined that the house had good bone structure, along with lots of cosmetic needs. Well, that was an understatement. This was a project that no Maybelline, Cover Girl, nor Sepphora could solve. The brownstone needed more than Bobbi Brown less-is-more. We were talking full face lift, tummy tuck, lipo, and new dentures.
We were cheered by our steal-deal of the century when the banker tried to deny our loan. An investor of sorts himself, he could not believe the lower-than-low price for one good hunk of a house.
“No can do,” he reported over the phone.
“What’s the problem?” my husband asked.
“Not enough entrances.”
We had a feeling that he hoped to scoop up our little jewel for himself.
“Not enough entrances? How can that be?” Benedetto pressed him, not willing to take “no” for an answer. “There are three doors, and all have been there for over 100 years.”
Getting the loan officer’s supervisors involved made the moonlight mystery disappear under the harsh light of day.
The house was ours.
When we moved in, I came to the realization that there was no kitchen. At all. Kinda slipped my mind to check. We would put one in eventually, but in the here and now, Benedetto built a kitchen sink. It was truly a marvel the meals that one could whip up with a sink, a microwave, and a mini-fridge.
I preferred to make the place visually attractive. I was a visionary and saw real potential in this place. Never mind that we lived smack in the middle of a “developing neighborhood”, i.e., GHETTO, presently, bigger issues loomed. There was brown paint slopped on every wooden window frame, pocket door, and hardwood floor throughout. The dark color had to come off, along with repainting the walls that were institutional, seafoam green.
The bathrooms rated as rudimentary at best: a clawfoot tub here and there, sometimes the water worked, sometimes it didn’t. We rigged up a circular shower curtain which, due to its flimsy properties, as soon as it became damp, would wrap around one’s body like shrink wrap. Soap and shampoo only served to make it adhere more enthusiastically, creating a fight to the finish to extricate oneself from the bath.
Naturally, we took possession in the summer and there was only hot water (when there was water, that is), along with no airconditioning. It was a long, hot summer. Benedetto installed a small window unit, which blew the singed circuits every time, as did my hairdryer. We lived a lot by candlelight in those days and I wore a ponytail with pizazz.
Dining was problematic—preparing the meals in the English basement and carrying them up a flight of steps to the pseudo-dining room. We could have eaten, seated before the soapstone fireplace in the front parlor of the basement, but, either some dampness, or the burying of the family jewels, had caused a coffin-sized hump in the middle of that floor. None too anxious to remove any floorboards and peer beneath, we called the hump “Aunt Bertha”, just in case it was an antecedent’s final resting-place.
So there, on paper plates in the main floor dining room, surrounded by our draped and sheeted antiques, we dined. It was then that I heard scratching, only the kind of noises made by urban vermin. They were coming from a tiny, 18-inch-wide closet of yesteryear.
“Ignore it,” suggested my husband, as I moved slowly in the opposite direction.
“Open the door!” I shouted, anxious to catch the cacophonous varmints.
“YOU open the door!” he laughed in disbelief. “Whatever’s in there, will be out HERE, if we open the door.”
Later on, when he decided that our furry friends were no longer home, Benedetto gave a look. Sure enough, a hole in the closet, leading out to the back alley. Grabbing our stash of joint compound, he spackled a generous supply to fill it in. THAT should teach them a lesson!
Until the next week, eating again in our makeshift dining room, when such a ruckus of scratching and wrestling and banging arose until three mice tumbled out from under the gap at the bottom of the door. Somersaulting and scrambling past our chicken dinner, they were as surprised to see us as we were to see them. They tore back into the closet and into their newly-reopened hole. Maybe they were doing renovations, themselves….
“I don’t believe it,” my husband shook his head. “They gnawed on the joint compound and spit it back into a pile on the floor. These are street-smart mice! They won’t even eat it and die.”
“We have to do SOMETHING. I can’t live like this, rehab or no rehab,” I let him know in no uncertain terms.
“Don’t worry—this time we’ll use steel wool inside the joint compound. They’ll break their tiny teeth on that….”
Now, I must say, my husband is an extraordinary person. People from near and far come to him for advice. He was on one of these life-altering telephone conversations late one night in the bedroom, as I was reading nearby. Deciding to go to the bathroom, I put on my stretchy sock-slippers and headed into the darkened hallway.
“Eeeekkkk!” screamed a corndog-sized creature upon which I had just stepped. I felt his tiny bones shifting and squishing as I inadvertently put the fulness of my weight upon his furry body.
“Eeeekkkk!” came my echo shriek as Benedetto hurriedly covered the phone’s mouthpiece and glared at me, before turning back to the conversation.
“Excuse me, and you were saying…?”
Meanwhile, his wife (that would be moi) was back on the bed, fanning herself, and wondering if a heart attack made your heart stop altogether, or made it beat so rapid-fire that it finally exploded. I knew I should have bought that fainting couch at the antique store.
Late that night, we had The Conversation.
“Listen, I always said I’d get you a fur coat. I figure we’re a couple of pelts closer to our goal…” he teased.
I was in no mood.
“DO something,” I told him. “I’m serious. Get a glue trap or something.”
“Glue traps are not humane. The mouse gets stuck and finally starves to death. And I’M not touching the trap if he’s still alive,” he shook his head.
“So what do you propose?”
“A regular mouse trap that snaps and kills the mouse on contact.”
“Great.”
“Hey, if it works….”
We needed to try something. They were not in the closet any longer, but had moved their place of residence to Anywhere and Everywhere. This old house was riddled with holes, like Swiss cheese. I wanted to talk tin ceilings, and new cupboards, and matching mantels, but instead, all we had in this rehab was mice.
And so it was that, a couple of nights in a row, I heard traps snapping. However, they never caught anything.
“He must have been running by and the pitter-patter vibrations set it off…” my mate mused.
Then, one autumn day, early in the morning, I heard a trap crash loudly a floor or two beneath us.
“Snap!” went the mouse trap.
“Eeeeiiyhhh!” screamed the mouse over and over in his high-pitched voice.
“Benedetto…!”
“Don’t listen…” he put the pillow over his head.
“Don’t listen-?!”
The little guy wailed in pain for the next couple of hours until Benedetto went to investigate around 6:00 am.
“Stupid mouse—he got caught on his side in the trap,” he reported.
“And…?”
“Well, he’s dead now, probably from the shock.”
I was the type of person that didn’t even like roughing it in a camping setting, and here I was, living smack in the middle of Rat World. The conditions were Third World, if not Fourth. I was ready to rig up the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, and get out of town fast, heading for any kind of New World available.
“Never again,” I announced.
He thought I was referring to the mouse traps. But we went on to do several more renovations, each time pushing my sense and sensibilities to the limit, each house fraught with its own challenges. In one of our current homes, modern and beautiful, I was recently awakened in the early morning to hear scratching in the attic….
Something is up there. Where’s my joint compound?
admin @ January 25, 2010
A Child’s Looks: Let’s Be Honest Here
Posted in: Russian Adoption | Comments (0)
Our first son’s referral photo was so cute. He stood tall and straight like a little soldier. Just before we traveled to meet him, more photos came to us. These were disturbing.
The bright smile was still there, but now his back appeared misshapen, and his head spread wide and flat. Could it be the same child? Were these the foibles of Photoshop? Petya was also dressed in an odd New Year’s costume, making him look buffoonish. The photos would not have been out of place if they had hailed from an insane asylum….
“I don’t know—“ I started to waffle. This, from the one who had BEEN SO SURE in the beginning.
Many are the parents suffering nightmares, wondering what their referred child will look like. I recall hearing from one adoptive mom as she waited for her Chinese referral. She thrashed in bed, awaking with a start, drenched and delusional: she and her husband had been referred a 30-year-old Chinese man-! In the nightmare, he quietly got into the taxi and they took him home. They had no other choice.
Russian adoption referral photos might be helpful or harmful. Numeous children have been overlooked or bypassed because the person snapping their photo was less than an Annie Liebowitz. Frequently, even with the best photographer, it was hard to touch-up a chop-job haircut, helter-skelter clothes, and green or purple medicinal blotches on the face. Why they didn’t tell the kids to smile I found out one day at the dyetsky dom.
“Smile!” I encouraged some kids gathered with their teachers, as I took their picture for posterity.
“We don’t smile,” said Galina Andre’evna. “We are Russians. Russians have bad teeth.”
I found out just how bad when my kids came home and our millions were used on their dental decay issues….
“Horoshoh’…” I changed tactics, “Ras, dvah, tree: don’t smile!”
In our daughters’ case, I never saw their official referral photos, which is just as well. Imagine concentration camp inmate meets furious federal prisoner. The shaved heads and foul looks on their faces said it all. They had just been forcibly taken into custody, disoriented and angry, suffering from lice and other maladies. They would have to go to school for the first time in their lives and they were not at all pleased. No one would want these two preteen terrors.
Yet, instead of presenting such a disturbing scenario, the adoption agency showed me an unofficial photo that one of their reps had snapped of semi-smiling girls in bright clothing about a year later when they both had hair again. The older girl actually sported bleached blond locks which I didn’t know for some time to come.
In the case of older children, packaging was everything. This agency worked hard to seal the deal. We were not even looking for girls, but their constant e-mails pushed us in the right direction.
Younger kids were different. A baby is a baby and in high demand. Hard to tell what they would look like when they got older. Agencies often used that to their advantage, some refusing to give out any information whatsoever.
See, agencies want you to travel to Russia. Agencies need you to travel, since this is a lucrative business for their drivers, interpreters and facilitators over there. If nobody travels, there’s no work for them. Agencies will try to make PAPs feel shallow and inferior if the prospective adoptive parents ask for a photo. They will say that you need to travel “blind”—no info, no photo, no idea if you’ve just delivered boy, girl, kitty cat, or chimpanzee.
Nonsense. Why travel halfway around the world to meet a child you would never accept into your family? Cross-eyed, cleft palate, and club foot can all be altered through surgery, but not everyone has the time, private funds, nor health insurance to undertake such interventions. Other unalterable conditions, such as Downs, or FAS, can be seen in certain children’s facial features. Doesn’t a parent deserve to know this before travel? I think so.
Look through the Russian orphan database at www.usynovite.com and observe how many of the kids do not look normal. At all. There are parents making more than one referral trip to Russia these days, because the first child visited had no chance of ever living a productive life. Forget Russia’s oil and diamond reserves, it’s adoptive parents that are keeping things economically afloat over there as four or five trips are no longer unheard-of to complete one adoption. Folks just pray for a healthy referral, even if it’s a baby that’s blue with yellow polka dots. Appearance means nothing to them.
And then there are those who would turn down a referred child based on looks alone.
I don’t know. But if you feel this way, you need to acknowlege those feelings, and wait for a child meeting your criteria. To “force” yourself to accept a little light-skinned child, or a deliciously-dark beauty WHEN THEY REPULSE YOU, is a recipe for disaster, sooner or later. To thine own self be true. You’re the one who’s going to be living with the child.
Why do you want to adopt children? To help a child with no prospects for his future, to have an attractive “accessory” in life, or to mold a mini-me? For some, it’s all about the child, for others, it’s all about the parents and what the child says about them.
Why would a family care so much about a child’s looks? Maybe the parents work in a very public setting and don’t want constant comments about their mismatched children. Maybe the family just wants to relax and not always be the spokespersons for international adoption. Maybe they want the child to feel more attached and not that he’s sticking out like a sore thumb.
There could be a difference between the wishes of those who have bio children of their own prior to adoption, and those who have been waiting a lifetime for children. As the years pass, subconsciously, the bar may be raised… or lowered….
Not to be uncharitable, but I’ve heard it postulated that maybe attractive parents desire attractive children. Maybe less attractive parents claim it doesn’t matter. Having seen a whole lot of photos over the years, I’m not 100% sure this theory works each time, every time. Or maybe nobody’s told you: you’re not as cute as you think you are!
I remember when we were much younger, being in India, or the Philippines, or Hong Kong, or Uganda. Many were the sweet orphan faces. It was not a far stretch to dream of bringing one or two home. Color and race meant nothing, but then I don’t live in a small town nor among rabid rednecks. Our friends are international and rainbow necks, you might say.
Another consideration might be those who may not appreciate their different-appearing children to be the constant source of comments and speculation. This I can understand. Some agencies actually ask for preferences in appearance. Our first agency, which we had to fire before we ever got to Petya, asked for us to list race, hair color, and eye color of a potential child.
So I did.
“Why did you fill out that section of the form?!” they screamed at me over the phone.
“Um, because it was there?”
No one had given us the secret decoder ring to figure out agency double-speak, nor told us that certain sections of the application had no purpose in being there. Ah, well.
Being blond over blue myself, our first son Petya looked nothing like me. This was brought to my attention at, of all places, a felafel stand in Jerusalem. I had just scooped some extra-hot zhoug into my pita—the green kind which is a step beyond the red hot sauce. Not a time to be trifling with me. I was already hot under the collar. A Joe-Cool guy sidled up to the two of us.
“Is he your son?” asked the leather jacket.
“Yes….”
“He doesn’t at all look like you,” he observed.
There are few times in life that I am speechless. The term “chutzpah” sprang to mind. Some other more ugly things were percolating under the surface, as well. Though not flesh of my flesh, I could not be any more connected to this child, this son, this dear one whose personality mirrored mine step for step, and who was now being maligned in front of my face.
“Imagine that: a DNA expert at the local felafel stand…” I murmured in Hebrew, thankful that Petya knew nothing of the language at that time. He was safe in his Russian cocoon as I shepherded him out into the street, pickles dropping in our wake. I felt like telling Joe Cool that he was one big kosher dill himself.
I can remember staring for hours at each of our children’s referral photos. With older children it was not so much that they had been chosen for us by the Ministry of Education, but we had chosen them. Long story. But I had as many trepidations as those who traveled blindly. Numerous were the nights that I talked with the photos, their grainy images mute to my multiplied questions: “Are you my child? Do you want to live with us? Will you like it here?” Years ago, when adoptive parents received brief video clips of their intended children, scores admitted to watching the two-minute footage so much that they wore out the tape.
All of us created cute bedrooms, and bought attractive clothes, all the while insisting that looks didn’t matter….
Funny thing is, if it’s important to you, kids can be improved. (I aim to improve myself every day, as well. Some days, it actually works.) A new haircut, decent clothes, better posture, and a happy smile will lead to a mini-makeover for anyone.
Children can also be presented to look like they “fit”. Petya has more of Benedetto’s coloring, brown over hazel, even if their facial characteristics are not all that matchy-matchy. But put them both in white polo – white polo, or blue shirt, red tie – blue shirt, red tie, and the comments come pouring in, “Well, if he isn’t a chip off the old block!” “No question about whose son he is!” “Like father, like son!”
So is it shallow, is it vain, is it ridiculous to want a child who resembles you? Maybe, maybe not. I believe that most parents care how their children appear. I at least like mine neat, with well-combed hair, brushed teeth, and clean clothes. Do the best with what you have. Is that a crime?
My second son and two girls tend to resemble me. Whenever I’m somewhere with my daughters, chattering away in Russian, we get a kick out of anyone trying to interfere, trying to figure us out, trying to put all of the pieces together. Simple minds, simple fixes….
“Where are you from?” comes the inevitable question.
“Raseeeyah!” they reply.
“Oh, your mother speaks English so well….”
Genius. It runs in the family, even if the looks don’t.
admin @ January 19, 2010
Scotties Who Sabotage
Posted in: Dogs, Home & Family Life | Comments (0)
Have you ever had a dog that takes umbrage at the fact that you have a life of your own? For Misha and Grisha, our Scottish terriers, all must revolve around them… or it must cease to exist. They wish to sabotage my every effort to work, to sleep, to eat, and to exercise. This is their job… and they are very good at it.
For the New Year, I have certain goals and objectives. When I start to work, frequently from my home office, the moans and loud yawns commence.
“Misha, hush up! Can’t you yawn quietly?” I reprimand him when taking an international phone call.
This is followed by Grisha stretching like a yogic pilates professor, another protracted groan emanating with front paws outstretched, concave back, and bottom stretching upward to the sky. You would think that the weight of the world was upon them. Instead, their sole responsibilites are something along the lines of: get up, yawn, groan, stretch; go outside, bark at every rabbit, squirrel, bird and waving branch, do their business; come inside and get a reward, lick their private parts; dance for their breakfast, wolf it down in 30 seconds flat; lay down for a brief nap full of leg jitters, muffled yelps, and eye twitches, until they need to go out again. Repeat the process several times a day.
I sit at my computer and the boys hop up on a chair, facing me eye to pleading eye: they want a massage. Used to the finer things in life, Misha and Grisha feel that we run The Scottie Spa. Tickle their tummy and rub down their back, to the manor born. With their Russian names, soon they’ll be demanding a steam bath in the banya and being beaten with birch branches. At least mud masks are out of the question with their long, black beards, and cucumber slices on the eyes also a no-go, hindering their spying capabilities. The two dogs are now at the expert level of surveillance and sabotage.
When I eat, I must sneak my food. They know the hand that feeds them. The rest of the family can eat normally at the table and we refuse to feed them any scrap at that time. But when I carry my plate to the sink, they follow hot on my tail, nudging my leg repeatedly like sharks. It has happened where they will lay crosswise in the doorway from the dining room to the kitchen, blocking my movements unless they get a handout. It’s the same, first thing in the morning, when I emerge from a shower in the bathroom, and again, they lie in wait for their morning victuals.
This lying in wait has been taken to the extreme recently. There is a couch outside of my bedroom door. It is long and black, just like little Grisha who blends in all too well. While Misha stretches out on the floor, back against the couch, Grisha assumes a Cheshire cat pose, reclining on the couch’s high, narrow back. I pass by him a couple of times before my morning coffee takes effect, not even seeing him, as he observes me with his ever-moving eyes. It’s only when the tail starts its metronome-like rhythm that I glimpse him.
“Grisha!” My pats and kisses only serve to speed up the thumping tempo.
The two of them get plenty of exercise on our daily constitutionals, or when we let them tear out the back door of one house where the backyard is fenced. They dart this way and that, making a full circumnavigation of territories new and old, checking and rechecking for any perceived intruders. But should I pop in an exercise DVD for myself, look out, world! The dogs much prefer that I be a big, old, lazy couch potato like them.
As I step in time to the music, Misha begins to cry and whine. He jumps and prances, but can’t quite get the steps right. He knows that this is a play time, yet is unsure of who does what. At a key moment, he leaps in front of me and I lightly kick him square in the smacker.
“Misha! I’m sorry!” I hold his face, dropping to my knees. If I try to put them outside the room during my exercise, they howl and scratch at the door. The only thing I can do is take to my bathroom and pop the DVD into a computer there.
“Step, two, three, four!” I march and lift and twist on the sly.
The bathroom has become my bunker of choice. Much as in Soviet days when every hotel room light fixture held a listening device, I have swept the master bath and found it to be bug-free. I am safe from the Scotties’ ever-attentive probing gazes, and sabotaging efforts, though I have come to the conclusion that my little guys most likely work for the KGB, now known as the FSB.
My saboteurs willl not find me here. This is the one place where they give me a break… or I give them a bath! They provide me a wide berth in the bathroom, but it’s only a matter of time before they invade this last vestige of tranquility. And so I’ve taken to eating, or exercising, or working there upon occasion. Soon I’ll need to move in a desk. It’s the only place where I can get a minute of peace and quiet, and pursue my own life.
I imagine myself to have outsmarted the little whipper-snappers, but for all I know, they’re out raiding the refrigerator or watching international dog shows on TV, or doing Special Ops training exercises sliding on their bellies under the furniture or parachuting into the family room, rather than sprawled across the doorway, tails wagging, waiting for my exit. They have me just where they want me… especially at night.
Sleeping is almost impossible. For me, not for them. Both dogs insist on sleeping inbetween my legs. Listen, I grew up with a dog who loved to be behind the curve of the legs, but these Scotties could have a career in law enforcement: “Spread ‘em!” Then they circle round and round and plunk down for a long winter’s nap. I never thought I had arthritis or other aches and pains, but currently, every morning, I’m starting to wonder as I must lie immobile for the entire night. Grisha will sometimes move to Benedetto’s head, climbing on top of the pillow, and doubling as a warm winter’s bedcap.
Difficult as it is with these little double-crossers who demand my undivided attention, whenever they reach out to nudge and kiss me, I am theirs. Mission accomplished.
admin @ January 11, 2010
A Stitch in Time
Posted in: Home & Family Life, Russian Adoption, Spirituality | Comments (0)
Cross-stitching has become a craze of sorts among our children. First it was the girls, then the boys. Cross-stitching is a craft woven deep within their Russian souls, helping us to teach life lessons along the way.
Sashenka got her cat kit when she turned nine in October. Then Pasha oohed and aahed over hers until he was granted one on his thirteenth birthday in November. We sit cross-legged on my big bed, the three of us unravelling the embroidery threads and figuring out how many ply are needed for each stitch. Pasha catches on and sails through his frog in no time, while Sashenka is unable to do much at all on her own.
As December approaches, Mashenka wants her own kit for the holidays, a wish that is granted. The genie then concludes that she must have been in an altered state to acquiesce to such a request. The kits cause more and more headaches for yours truly.
“Can’t do it,” concludes 11-1/2 year old Mashenka, insisting that I do her project for her. An unwilling surrogate, I repeatedly review the basics with her. Teach a man to fish….
“If you begin with Cinderella’s hair, you need to count how many stitches are in each row,” I point out. “See, there are five here, and three and a half here….”
She refuses to listen, making x’s one after another. Cinderella eventually has a blond brick on top of her head.
“Etah nee pra’velnah,” (It’s not correct) I try again. “Why is her hair in a square?”
“She is a couch,” Mashenka declares.
“A couch?”
“Koro’vah,” she clarifies in Russian.
“A cow?”
“Her hair is square, like a cow!” she laments, wanting me to make it all better.
I decide that it’s time to stop rescuing her and start enabling her to stitch her own life story.
“Is it Cinderella’s fault? She’s looking to you to make her beautiful. You need to count the stitches.”
At the same time, little Sashenka, the embroidery beggar, shuttles between myself and Pasha, pleading with us to give her a handout of one or two paltry stitches. Petya, our oldest son, whom we believed to be too old and masculine for such pursuits, also asks for an embroidery set of his own. We pick up some post-holiday deals and he follows Pasha as a close second in skill.
Now mind you, the girls were the ones who claimed to be cross-stitch experts. They demonstrate that they know nothing of the most basic stiches: cross-stitch, lazy-daisy, back-stitch, satin-stitch, and French knot. I show them over and over, but they return five minutes later, asking me to complete the row, while they have no interest in lifting a finger.
Pasha, the stitchery savant, has his own stumblingblocks. Finding it difficult to read in English, he looks at the picture and tries to take it from there.
“Let’s separate the threads first. How many ply are in one thread?” I quiz him.
“Six.”
“So if we want to have three threads, we divide it into how many groups?”
“Two,” he sighs, much preferring to fly by the seat of his pants.
I remind him that if he uses up all of his embroidery thread at once, there will be none left to complete the project, since some stiches use 1, 2, or 3-ply. It helps to tell him that he’s been referring to the Spanish section of instructions—Ola! No wonder he’s having problems. At the same time, Petya has so many languages on his instruction sheet, we’re surprised to find Russian, naturally available for the one child who has no problem with English at this point. Preparation, planning ahead, patience: these were the unavoidable life lessons that are woven into our sewing circle.
Remembering my own childhood, I can’t recall any specific projects that I completed. I must have been all of six or seven when I sat with my mom, happily sewing loop after loop of the lazy-daisy petals, finishing off with a few French knots in the middle of the flower. Before we proceeded with any major project, practice was needed, a unique concept in this day and age. If memory serves me correctly (and that’s a big stretch for anyone who has four kids), I believe my mother was working on embroidered pillow-cases. Why she didn’t just go out and buy 100% Egyptian cotton, 200 thread count Frette linens is beyond me. At the same time, she would keep me occupied with iron-on patterns of flowers and other simple outlines. I was totally satisfied for the immediate gratification of a finished petite fleur. I learned to work quietly and methodically, deep snows falling outside and chai simmering inside. Oh, to develop care, and concentration, and creativity in those coming after me.
Yet, even without metaphors or life lessons, the cross-stitches proved challenging enough. Today, I struggled with a nine-year-old who could not master the simple back-stitch.
“Okay,” I counsel her, “look: we come up at one, go in at two, underneath to four, and back to three….”
“Mama, can I do my turdle?” she wheedles, side-stepping any issue of learning, wanting to head straight for the proverbial, imagined greener pastures.
“Until we finish the kitty-cat, there’s really no sense in moving on to the turtle, right? Let’s learn these simple stitches and how to count each square, and then we can go to the next project….” I hold the carrot out, forgetting that carrots hold little appeal in a fast-food society.
These projects were nothing like the red and black cross-stitch of my grandmother’s generation, intricate and elaborate designs found on dresser top scarves and side table doilies. These true works of art could still be found in higher-end, exclusive Russian folk art stores.
As they gained experience, maybe the kids might gravitate toward sewing up a few of the the traditional “rush’niki”. No one with any tangential Slavic ancestry could avoid the long, white linen towels striped with red patterns near the ends and associated with every event from cradling at birth, to weddings, to welcoming guests with bread and salt, to death. As a matter of fact, the more I considered it, my children were perfectly suited for embroidery, which technically means “to embellish”. One could not find better embellishers than these four, whether placing several small junk pins on an elegant suit jacket, or the numerous and dubious details added when story-telling. Gee, I wonder who they got that from….
It was becoming evident that the pink, purple, red, yellow, green, and black threads were a metaphor for life in the adoptive family. We were being woven together with quite a bit of effort, sticking ourselves and drawing figurative blood upon occasion, experiencing no little frustration at times, and often not understanding the big picture. The popular saying, “A stitch in time, saves nine” might have referred to fixing a rip before it became any worse, but it could also refer to much of the everyday-life background that our children lacked. The building blocks of knowledge, and common sense, and civility, were sorely lacking in the beginning. It was like skipping every other stitch where the blah, blank, beige canvas showed through the otherwise beautiful pattern. Many stitches had not yet been sewn on the material of their lives, and other stitches were there that needed to be ripped out. Where the stitches of family life, and education, and compassion had been neglected, we had nine times the work facing us now.
Maybe it was more of a lesson for me, than for them: Follow the Master plan and the picture will become clear.
Happy New Year.
admin @ January 4, 2010
Teaching My Russian Kids… Russian!
Posted in: Home & Family Life, Russian Adoption | Comments (0)
Do you think your Russian kids speak real Russian? Unless they’re teenagers, think again. Our kids were adopted over the years from the ages of 7.5 to 11.75. Except for the oldest, all speak a substandard form of Russian.
Only a fluent, native-born Russian would detect this. Not that I’m in that category, butchering and making up words at will. But I have enough friends and family willing to tell me-! Which is why I, in some ways “least likely to succeed”, will be teaching them Russian.
Don’t get me wrong. We have a bonafide tutor for the oldest boys. She makes them speak, and read, and answer questions about famous Russian plays by Marshak. My concern centers around the basic, everyday, shoot-the-breeze-with-your-friends-in-the-ploschad type of Russian. I am focusing on conversational Russian, polite Russian, and written Russian.
I have my work cut out for me.
“Where is your rucksack?” I ask one day.
“Toot’ah,” replies one.
“What?”
“Tahm’ah,” she thinks she’s answered incorrectly.
“‘Toot’ah’? ‘Tahm’ah?’ No such thing in Russian. It’s either ‘toot’ or ‘tahm’.”
I make my plans to gather the troops and run them through the paces. It’s one thing to have Russian natives comment about the cute American kids who speak such good Russian, it’s another thing to have the cute Russian kids speak awful Russian. We convene at the long, lacquered, kitchen farmhouse table, hanging halogen lights doubling as interrogation spotlights.
“Dokumenti!” I bark out, play-acting a Customs Official at an unnamed Russian airport.
“Mama, you need to say ‘please’”, protests my youngest in Russian, so sweet.
“When I hear it at the airport, I’ll say it,” I play-snarl back.
My eyes narrow as I peer at my older daughter. I find a ruler to smack on my hand’s open palm, pacing back and forth, soldier-style.
“Kak vas zavoot?”
“Uhh… Mashenka?” she starts tentatively, exactly the goldfish in the shark pool that Customs Officials are trained to spot.
“Famil’yah –- eem’yah –- oh’chestvah,” I remind. Last name, first name, patronymic. For this exercise, we have ditched our multi-syllabic Italian last name for “Smirnov”.
“Uh… Smirnov….”
“Ehhhhh!” goes my pretend, game-show buzzer. “Wrong! How do we make a female last name? What do you need to add to Smirnov?”
“Smirnovna…?” she attempts, confused.
These are my Russian children. They have no clue. They have never lived in the real world where they would have the need to address anyone by their last name.
“Ehhhhh!” goes the make-believe buzzer again. “-Ovna is the ending for the patronymic.”
“Ooh-ooh-ooh!” Petya our oldest son raises his hand excitedly.
“Dah, gaspahdyin’?” I give him my wary gaze.
“Smirnov’a!”
“Prah’velnah, ten points for you,” I congratulate.
“Eem’yah,” I turn back to the girls. “I don’t have time for this. Speshee!” The more pressure I put on them, the more giggly and happy to learn they are. They think it’s a game.
“Mashenka!” says one.
“Sashenka!” exclaims the next.
“What, you think I want to be your friend? Is that what your passport reads? You need your legal name!” I protest, still in the Customs Agent role.
This is a good way to get rid of parental frustration and angst, I’m finding. I would recommend commandant role-playing to any parent needing to keep the troops in line.
At several points, I send one or more to “prison” for not giving me their place and date of birth in a rapid-fire manner. The power that I wield….
And thus we start our hour-long lesson, quizzing backwards, forwards.
“Ivan, the son of Ivan,” I toss out to the boys, like a dry piece of bread to a couple of hungry goosie waddling down a muddy village lane.
“Ivan’ Ivan’ich!” shouts Pasha, who still retains the most correct Russian out of the four of them, though he’s been home now a full year and a half.
“Ahtlitch’nah!” Excellent, I applaud him.
“But why not ‘Ivan’ Ivan’ovich?’” questions Petya.
“Good question, you’re both right. One is how you pronounce it, one is how you write it.”
Our writing exercises could be termed an exercise in futility. The kids insist they are brain surgeons and above something so elementary as handwriting or vocabulary practice. But we all know about doctors’ handwriting-! Bring it on.
“Horoshoh’, exa’men!” I announce.
“Nyetttt!!!” they shrink back in horror.
“Dahhhh!!!” my gold teeth gleam in the sunlight.
“Nomer ahdyin: ‘Zdrast’vweetyeh! Davai’tyeh pahznakomeemsyah!’ Nomer dvah….”
“Mama, slow down!”
Afterward, as I check over their eight or so test phrases, some of the kids don’t captalize anything; one writes entire sentences as a whole, bolshoi, run-on mega-word, totally connected at every hook and loop; another substitutes the occasional English letter for the Russian sound. It’s enough to make the most hardened of teacher/tutors give up, but, glutton for punishment that I am, I trudge forward.
We try to finish on a high note for the day, a free word-association exercise involving Russian formal names and nicknames.
“Yevgeny….” “Zhenya!”
“Nikolai….” “Kolya!”
“Maria….” “Masha!”
“Yekaterina….” “Katya!”
“Aleksandr….” “Sasha!”
“Boris….” “Borya!”
“Anna….” “Anya!”
“Dmitri….” “Dima!”
“Anything else? Just Dima? How about ‘Mitya’?”
They shrug, unimpressed. “Dima” does it just fine for them.
I wrap up the lesson, summarizing the high points.
“On a female last name, what letter do we add?” I coach.
“-Ovna!” one shouts.
“No!” I put my head in my hands. “One letter—ahdnah’ book’vah!”
“Aaaa!” shouts another.
“There is no long ‘aaaa’ in Russian…” I moan.
“Ah! Book’vah ‘ah’,” they all scream, our grand prize winners for the day. At last.
Next class, maybe I’ll try to focus on the Russian vocabulary needed to decipher Rohrshach ink blots, or how to conduct a business presentation, argue a legal case in court, or defend a Ph.D. dissertation. Anything’s got to be easier than saying hello and figuring out their name in Russian….
admin @ December 28, 2009
