The Russians were coming and our family grew excited at the prospect. They wanted to interview us and show the world a “happy adoption story”, an elusive idea that was rumored to exist.

We could only imagine the questions.

“Have you killed any of your Russian children?”

“Let me see… 1, 2, 3, 4… nope, all present and accounted for.”

“Are you holding any in a closet, starving them to death?”

“No room—too many other skeletons there.”

“Do you impart Russian culture and customs to them?”

“Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,” I would declare with uplifted sworn-statement hand, upon which we all might swing into a rousing rendition of “Kalinka”.

You think I’m kidding.

Partly. We actually did sing “Kalinka”.

Interestingly, we got a hip, young journalist whom all the kids really liked. She no doubt gave us a fake name, so we turned the tables and gave our real names for once. I could see her press pass dangling from her neck as she manipulated her microphone this way and that, speaking in rapid Russian, her mp3 recorder taping more than five hours of both amazing insights and inane chatter.

In our family, that amount of talk could be recorded at just one meal-time, and hardly did us justice. She had enough space for 37 hours—what were the other 32 hours going to be used for—the perpetrators of the “parasailing donkey incident” in Russia?

I considered which one might grab more column inches in print, and more air-time when broadcast. Well, if anyone could compete with a flying donkey, it was our laughing hyena of a family.

With professional panache, the kids rose to the occasion and gave enough significant soundbytes to springboard us to a front-page spread. The fact that they were all photogenic didn’t hurt matters, either.

What’s next? Probably a Russian reality show with our kids as comic relief, singing, shmoozing, splashing their way to prime time.

Writing an eclectic, here, there, and everywhere, around-the-world-in-80-days-and-back-again type of blog, it’s obvious that I have a good handle on branding and niche marketing. That’s why for summertime reading on long trips, I tend to grab a couple of cheap ladies’ magazines. I like the two-minute pieces that are all across the charts covering inane items that don’t distract me from my children asking to eat, or the dogs asking to relieve themselves. Or vice-versa.

My jaw goes slack when perusing “Fifteen Uses for Peppermint”, or “25 Ways That Lemons Can Light Up Your Life”. I never imagined such things. Popping some extra Vitamin D, E, magnesium, and folic acid each day, I have been given the assurance of the magazines’ experts that I will never come down with cancer. The covers’ headlines promise me that I’m going to lose at least 100 pounds in the six weeks leading up to Labor Day (along with looking 20 years younger) if I drink 8 glasses of water a day (and probably eat nothing), while whipping up coconut cream pies and death-by-chocolate desserts for the rest of the family. Using handy planning guides, they instruct me how to cook meals under $1.50 per plate, until I discover that I’ll need a lifetime investment in cream of chicken soup, Velveeta cheese, and tater tots.

Maybe we should pass. Spending $5,000 a month on food for the family makes more sense than gambling it away with unhealthy “meal helpers”. Anyway, by clipping the magazine’s coupons, I’ll slash my normal expenditures by 50% in no time. I just won’t have much time for work since clipping, or printing, or downloading, or organizing scraps of paper takes time.

But being a broad-based ladies’ magazine, there are several feel-good feature stories each issue that are motivational in nature, such as “How I Raised 150 Well-Adjusted Foster Children on a Farm Near Philadelphia While Pursuing My Ph.D.” or “Learning Important Life Lessons by Observing Mold Patterns Growing in My Dirty Refrigerator”, along with “Creating Designer Duds by Shopping the Thrift Stores’ Midnight Madness Sales and Using Duct Tape to Redesign Everything During Three-Minute TV Commercial Breaks”.

Somehow, I’m not motivated by many of the features. I’m awed, for sure, yet not so inspired as to try it myself. Sometimes, I feel like a slacker compared to such talent among us.

I’ll need to buy another magazine to find out how to get over such thoughts. At $1.79, at least it’s affordable therapy. I understand that next month, I can be “Happier in 60 Seconds!” and that’s a cheery thought.

Today we mourned the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the first and second time, that happened on the ninth (tisha) of the month of Av. It is a day for sitting low to the ground, mourning, fasting, and reading the book of Lamentations.

And I ask myself: how can one mourn for what one has never experienced? It is the yearning in the heart, the stretching for more, the belief that, as good as things are, they can always be better, that drives one to honor the past, while feeling our way out into the future.

So many monumental turning points have happened over the last 100 to 150 years of Israel’s modern-day history, even though the country has only existed as a modern nation for the last 62 years. What an example of living our lives in de facto fashion preparing for what we know in our hearts will soon come to pass, because if we waited for de jure declarations, we would have missed many opportunities. Eliezer ben Yehuda began reviving the Jewish language long before Statehood—if a dead language could come back to life again, what are the other possibilities?

It is this juxtaposition, this jostling of mourning over what was, and merriment for what is, and what will be, that gives us hope. The Israeli national anthem, penned in 1878 as a nine-stanza poem by the Galician Jewish poet Naphtali Herz Imber, came to be called, “HaTikvah”, the hope. This was long before the United Nations’ partition plan for Israel in 1947. There were visionaries who saw into the future and pulled that reality into the present with the force of faith.

Not until 1967, during the Six Day War, was the Temple Mount again within Jewish hands. As the Israeli paratroopers took the land, they broadcast the news over crackling radio, “Har haBayit b’yadeinu!” (The Temple Mount is under our control!).

So why do we still mourn, when there is so much for which to rejoice? There is the understanding that pain often precedes the ushering in of something good. Not that it’s necessary, but life often happens in cycles, whether in terms of war, economics, joy or sadness.

I believe that it’s time for joy. We can look to the past and gain strength. There exists a foundation of others who have gone before us and, against incredible odds, have prevailed. Who are we to shrink back, to think of ourselves as less than, or unable to rise to the challenges of the day? Our forefathers were ordinary people who took extraordinary steps.

Today we consider the Temple and the Presence of God, and though enemies may have destroyed His dwellingplace, whether crafted of stone and precious jewels, or crafted of flesh and blood, He is greater than any limits. He walks through closed doors to cities, to situations, to sensibilities.

While we mourn the destruction of the Temple, we simultaneously celebrate that He yet lives. From Jerusalem, to Baghdad, to Moscow, to Beijing, He is only a prayer away, a very present help in trouble. May He turn your mourning into joy.

Mashenka squirmed in her seat as young Sashenka recounted some story about their birth grandmother and the cow that was killed. The elder rolled her eyes and tried to tell her sister to be quiet. It happened every time their past came up—whether sky-high empty bottles from alcohol, or dangerous persons coming and going from their hovel, or wandering the streets never knowing where a parent was, or why they didn’t go to school like others. I thought it was finally time we addressed one sister’s need to talk, and one’s need to keep secrets.

It all started benignly enough with a date night for myself and Benedetto. We had not been doing much alone as a couple, as often happens when parents first adopt. Everything is so new to the child, often he or she cannot communicate with a non-Russian-speaking babysitter, and there are fears of abandonment. But now, a year had passed since our last adoptions, and we felt like making a few more forays out… without the kids.

The next day, I asked the kids, “Do you ever think Mama or Papa won’t come back when we’re out for a while?”

“Sometimes…” said Sashenka.

“I think that maybe you vill be in car wreck…” said Pasha.

“Maybe you no vant to be around us any more,” said Mashenka. “So you go away.”

“Okay, first of all let me say that it’s normal for a mama and a papa to want to be by themselves every once in a while. It’s not because we don’t like you, but because we need time to ourselves, adult time, when we can hear each other without screaming in the background.”

They all looked sheepish and grinned.

“And besides, this is my house. I’m not about to leave my house. If I ever get tired of you, I’m not the one who’s leaving…” I narrowed my eyes at them, knowing that three out of four claimed that they would be living with Mama and Papa at home forever and ever.

To which Benedetto constantly replied, “You will not!” while tickling them all.

“Let me ask you this,” I proposed, knowing that there were significant people in their lives in the past who would disappear for days on end. “In the length of time that you’ve been home—one year for the girls, two years for Pasha, six years for Petya—have we ever not come home once?”

“No…” they acknowledged in unison.

“And out of three meals a day, has there ever been a meal that we forgot about, that we did not cook for you?”

“No….”

“Has there ever been a place where we forgot you, and left you behind at an event?”

Again a negative response. (I dared not let them know how many times I had witnessed just such an event among larger families, where they simply forgot one of the kids. Best not to stir the pot.)

These were older Russian adopted kids from trauma and abuse backgrounds. In their minds, given their pasts, there was nothing that was really outside the realm of possibility when it came to that unknown and unreliable person known as a “parent”. Chaos and uncertainty still very much swam beneath the surface of our life, like a shark ready to gobble and devour. No matter that the waters appeared placid from my perspective. They lived in whirlpool of nagging and obsessive thoughts from their past that could rear up and rage at any time.

I shared with our four teens and preteens the story of Thomas Edison’s early life in Michigan, how he had been running to meet a train, with a bundle of newspapers to sell in his arms. The train was already departing the station, and, as he ran alongside, a man pulled him aboard by his ears, damaging them forever. It was due to Edison’s destroyed sense of hearing that he became interested in sound waves and what they could do. It was during his all-day train layovers in one city that he joined the public library and devoured, legend has it, every volume in the building. His own personal tragedy turned into inventions that blessed many in his generation and in those to come.

“Does God make mistakes?” I asked the children. “When you were born in Russia, did God say, ‘Oh no! I wanted them to born in America!’ as though it were a surprise for Him?”

They all giggled at the thought.

“Did God destroy Thomas Edison’s hearing?” I continued.

“No… it was that bad man who pulled him up!” Sashenka exclaimed.

“Right,” I nodded. “He was just trying to help, but did it in an odd way that hurt the young boy. Was God able to use that negative life experience to give Thomas Edison some goals and direction in life?”

They could see where this was headed.

“When God had you born into different families in Russia with many problems, those problems were not your problems. You didn’t do anything wrong,” I encouraged them, knowing that they could not hear this enough. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, or embarrassed of, Mashenka. Your past is not your future,” I stroked her arm.

“Say that someone had a bad drug addiction that they overcame,” I offered, “and they hoped to help others get free from drugs. If they told people, ‘I once had a problem, but I really don’t want to talk about it…’ would many addicts find help?”

“No….”

“So it is with your life stories. You can share enough of your history in order to help people who may need your insights without going into all of the personal details. Always remember that anything negative that your birth families did, or that the orphanages did, is no reflection upon you. They had a problem, period,” I said. “Ooh neeh bweelee problehmee.”

“You know what,” I laughed, “if Misha or Grisha came and pooped on the floor next to me, I would not think that something is wrong with me-! It would mean that THEY have a problem, not me!”

They liked the analogy. Anything poopy packed a punch with this age group. They had definitely experienced a lot of poopy things in life.

But God makes no mistakes. One animal’s poop was valuable fertilizer in someone else’s garden. If we could just get by the smell of the past, we could move into the beauty of the present and everything good that was growing now.

Just about the time the ten (make that eleven and counting…) Russian undercover agents were being arrested for spying in America, our family invited five Russian students home for dinner. If they were planting microphones for information-gathering purposes, they’d get an earful at our house, that’s for sure.

“She took my pencil!”

“I don’t know vhere are my spelling vords!”

“His feet are touching me!”

“Tell her to stop reading out loud!”

Ah yes, such gems are bound to entertain the FSB (formerly known as the KGB). At least the eavesdropping agents would not require simultaneous translation on their direct feed, since our kids regularly resorted to Russian for all complaints, quarrels, and questions.

Many casual observers could not fathom that the suspected spies lived among them in surburbia, just outside major metro areas. Made absolute sense to me. Not everyone can afford the high-rent districts of the city. Plus, where else do you think they would live—in the Kremlin, or on Capitol Hill? Maybe. But these were the elusive “everyday folks”, couples, families that you’d never suspect. Probably kids like ours will be their next recruits—I mean, who would imagine that children with their never-ending questions might be involved in covert and clandestine operations? Perfect.

They say that most of those arrested did not have Russian names. Oh well, that disqualifies my kids. But many are the days when my kids become confused about their own names, addresses, and emergency phone numbers—what city are we in, and what is our street number?

That might make them very attractive as spy recruits. They would be so deeply under cover that they would forget their own identity, which could prove advantageous in times of torture and interrogation, yet work against them when reporting-in to headquarters.

“Hello, this is Parrot… no Pelican… uh, Rhino?… no, Rubber Ducky!”

A Ph.D. counter-terrorism expert friend of ours once commented a year or two after we brought home Petya, that we should monitor his activities. He knew we were part of the Russian-American community and that Petya could be found at some official functions.

“They’re going to start recruiting him,” he informed me.

“For what? He’s nine years old—,” I laughed.

“It begins with careful cultivation over years…. E-mails, cellphone calls, sleep-overs….”

Little did the Rooskies know, Petya had a secret anti-agent weapon of his own: helicopter parents, aware of his every movement-! The boy’s conspiratorial career would be over before it ever began.

It is currently estimated that there are more Russian spies operating in the US and in the UK than were operating during the Cold War. At any given time, approximately 50 couples work under deep cover in America, “illegals”, while thousands of others engage in everyday secret snooping and surveillance, “legals”.

I’m not sure that the Russians would want to try recruiting any of my Russian-American, dual-passport kids. There would be no successful outcome for several reasons. First of all, they were adopted at older ages and take a very dim view of all that had befallen them in the homeland. Secondly, some of them have the attention span of a distracted ten-year-old waiting just before the school’s final dismissal bell sounds for summer break. Thirdly, they’re not the best blackmail candidates.

“We’ll spread it around that you don’t eat your broccoli,” comes the sneering, threatening voice over the crackling phone line.

“Go ahead, Big Nose, and I’ll tell your mom…..”

On the other hand, doggies Misha and Grisha show some promise, having a lot to recommend them. They can often be spotted fake-sleeping, peering at my computer screen from behind their bushy brows, no doubt passing information to neighbor dogs feigning to lift a leg in our yard. Best to stay alert to the seemingly-benign.

As they say in America: “In God we trust.”

All others, we monitor.