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.

It was a normal day at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. Up before the crack of dawn, through ticketing, security, and customs, we presented ourselves at Passport Control.

“Dokumenti,” demanded the bored, matronly guard.

We were adopting our first son’s friend. It took us four years of official red tape, adoption agency scams, governmental denials, and regional shutdowns. In a matter of an hour or two, he would at last be exiting off of Russian soil.

Not so fast.

“Adoption decree and court papers,” the border guard insisted, eyeing our family of four, noting that only the two kids had Russian Passports.

This was a new one. Why not just the passport? I slid the packet under the plate glass window, upon which she settled down to a long morning’s read.

Ten minutes passed. Twenty minutes passed. She, no doubt, enjoyed the more sordid parts of such a horrific history, chronicled for the sake of court testimony, not the prurient interests of a bored border guard.

“Eezvehnite, pazhalista—“ I interrupted her concentration. “Yest problema?” Is there a problem?

“Nyet,” she went back to her reading.

I felt my blood boiling as the preteen boys shifted from foot to foot. Her coworker in the next booth asked her why the slow-mo treatment of the tourists. She shrugged her off, as well.

At forty minutes standing before the little glass booth, I’d had enough.

“Excuse me, please, but why are you reading his court papers?”

She looks up, obviously irritated at my interruption. The sleeping bear awakened.

“Ohn russki grahzdanen,” (He is a Russian citizen) she testily explained. “I must make sure that his documents are in order.”

So I figure if we’re ever going to get out of this holding pattern and make it to the Golden Land of Duty Free, I needed to insert my two rubles.

“Da, and here is his Russian Passport… and it’s in order.”

She goes back to reading.

I go back to talking.

“I mean, let’s think this thing through… Doomahyete,” I encourage, feeling as though I’m instructing Dorothy in her ruby slippers to concentrate. “What’s the likelihood of us finding a child on the street with the same last name, having all of the paperwork to obtain a passport, and making him agree to come to America with us???”

“We have to be sure,” she sneers, not amused, not impressed, not in a hurry.

About an hour later, she comes up for air and asks for our first son’s court papers.

“Nyetoo,” (He has none) I affirm. “He’s been our son for over five years. You already have his Russian Passport and here is his other one.” I considered calling for a supervisor, but that struck me as less than a positive Russian chess move. Might cause us more problems to make too much of a stink. If she had missed the “Service With a Smile” seminar, there was not much I could do about it now.

She glances at the dual passports, while meanwhile, I can picture Petya passing out in a cold sweat as he understands every word spoken. Perhaps one day he would come back to study in Russia, but for the present, he wanted to go home. Pasha had never been home, but even he knew that it was better than this. At last, the stern woman, who was probably younger than me, but appearing and acting much older, slowly slides the stack back to us.

“Horoshoh,” (Alright) she waves us through, an indelibly harsh reminder to our sons that you don’t mess with Mother Russia. Escaping her clutches, we make a mad dash for the plane.

Which reminds me of the time I was heading to Israel, a regular shuttle I traveled for some years. A sting operation was underway for diamond dealers.

I boarded the transatlantic flight in New York, and there on the jetway, leading to the plane, were Federal Agents stopping most every Hassidic man, right next to the stacks of Yediot Aharonot and Ma’ariv newspapers. I put mine back in the pile and reached for the Herald Tribune, instead.

“Do you have any diamonds or large sums of money to declare?” the agents inquired.

The men tried to brush by, mumbling something in Yiddish.

“Yiddish?” the agents pursued them. “No problem. Read this,” they said, presenting a printed card with all of the laws stated in their own language.

I strolled past, pockets bulging with rare stones and stacks of foreign currency.

Alright, maybe in my dreams….

But I should have known the bubble security cameras were in full operation. It wasn’t until exiting the country that they nabbed me.

Once again at Passport Control, this time in Tel Aviv, a guard examined my passport front to back, or I should say, back to front, Hebrew style. Flipping it closed, the young twentysomething female soldier met me eye to eye.

“Go to the police, please,” she said, as though this were an everyday exchange.

“Ha’mishtarah?!” (The police?!) “Why? Where? What?” I wanted to know.

“The police. In the corner room.”

And thus I made my way to the Border Police, like one of the old fashioned “Alt!” border gates had just lowered in front of me. Could family dogs visit incarcerated persons? was uppermost in my thoughts.

“Shalom,” I introduced myself to the chainsmoking blond in charge.

“Darkon, b’vahkahshah,” (Passport, please) she smiled.

Hmmm… everyone so interested in the small document stating very little and with a less than ideal photo prominently featured.

“You come and go a lot,” she noted in Hebrew.

“Ken….” (Yes….)

“And do you have an Israeli Passport?”

“No….”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes….”

She checked back in her computer and tried a different tack.

“Think back, maybe a long time ago….. Did you ever declare citizenship here?”

“No….”

“Maybe you forgot…” she tried to help, at which I burst out laughing.

“I think I’d remember something like that…. Is there a problem?”

“No, no problem.”

Gee, I’d heard that before. Maybe this was some joke being played on me by my Israeli lawyer. With my demographic, I couldn’t imagine that they’d want to draft me for the Israeli Army. I mean, they didn’t even offer high-heeled infantry boots, plus, entering the paratroopers would result in too much windblown hair during the jumps. The navy might make me seasick. They would have to make me… a border guard!

No, their interest could not be the draft. The only thing I could think of was tax evasion of some sort. I wondered if they served felafel balls in prison. I could survive.

At last, the policewoman decided to take my sweet face at face value and believe my story that I didn’t play fast and loose with my citizenship, spreading it here, there, and everywhere at will.

“Okay, look, I’ll let you go, and I’ll mark that all is okay,” she reassured me.

I assumed she was entering our Important and Enlightening Conversation into her computer. Again, I was missing out on sampling the fine eau de parfums of Duty Free.

She returned my passport, wishing me a nice trip and I hightailed it to the bank to exchange my remaining shekels.

Taking the currency and my passport, the clerk gave a small gasp and turned to look me up and down.

“What happened?” he inquired. “I’ve never seen such a thing!”

“Mah zeh?” (What is it?) I asked.

“FREE TO DEPART BY ORDER OF THE MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR,” he read the stamp and handwritten permission penned in Hebrew all around its edges. “Did you do something?” he laughed.

“Not that I know of!”

I took the money and ran for the plane, a recurring theme in my life. The only comfort I received in these inconvenient airport interrogations was that, while being detained, at least I was staying out of any more trouble. I didn’t need additional International Incidents. With all of our international travel, there were bound to be bumps. Yet with a fast-paced lifstyle, the small bumps could develop into major speed bumps, resulting in one big careening crash of a learning curve.

No time for that. We had places to go, things to do, people to see. Best to fly below the radar and leave the big bags of diamonds at home for now.

Newly-adopted kids know nothing. They will argue this point to the death, waxing eloquent on topics great and small.

“Elena Grigore’evna had this hairstyle in the orphanage. She was our favorite vaspitatel and told me I looked good like this, too,” she models with enthusiasm the most awful hairstyle you could imagine, no doubt all the rage in some remote Russian hamlet where mullets are probably just coming into their own. I gag and try to make a quick recovery to a neutral facial expression, using the famous Judge Judy parenting technique said to work with the most unusual and vexing situations.

“That’s nice, dear.”

They like to debate everything, while in essence, knowing nothing. You may say that the same happens with pre-pubescent biological kids, but in this case, being a know-it-all can be very dangerous.

“I want to cook for you, Mama,” Mashenka offers at our Moscow apartment.

Open flames and knives that she barely knows how to handle, make me noticeably nervous. She says she’s going to fry an egg, or something along those lines. I set the burner for her and leave her to her task, against my better judgment. Twenty minutes later, she still has not emerged. I knock on the kitchen door, and she presents me with… perhaps an omelette is not quite the right term… there are mixed eggs, onions, and tomatoes, swimming in about three inches of butter. The creation is scorched on the bottom, and blackened and stuck to the ancient frying pan. Now I know why “Blackened Eggs” is not a feature of most fine dining menus.

The eggs wouldn’t stop sticking!” she exclaims.

“Well, you need to use a spatula, and keep scraping the bottom of the pan before they start to stick–.”

“Nyet, Mamoola. That would never work,” she shakes her head. Of all the crazy ideas.

I focus on her heart and praise her efforts. We choke down the blackened breakfast. It’s not until the next day that I discover she’s ditched the worst half of the horrible fare down the sink that has no disposal. It starts stinking up a storm.

But this is the delicate dance between older adopted children and their new parents. Rather than ask for help, they would prefer to wing it and wreak havoc. If something breaks, burns, or blows up… “Oh well.” It wasn’t their fault. They are used to communal property, and never taking responsibility for anything.

Sashenka runs the water for five or ten minutes at full force just to brush her teeth. You would think we owned the Hoover Dam. I explain to the girls that we actually pay for the water that we use. Flushing the toilet ten times in a row does nothing but waste water; instead, they should wait for the toilet tank to refill and then flush.

But it falls on deaf ears. They know better.

I show them the on and off switch of the shower.

“Kloochee’. Vwee’kloochee,” I demonstrate. Yet, after thirty minutes, I still hear water running. I knock on the bathroom door and enter the steaming sauna, fog and mist everywhere, shower pouring hot and heavy.

Mashenka stands there, outside the shower, towel wrapped around her as though in her right mind, combing her hair.

“Mashenka—the shower!” I shout, pointing out the obvious. She looks at me blankly. “Turn it off!”

“Mama, it would not turn off. I tried,” she shrugs. Not her problem.

I reach in, turn it off… and show her again how this magical wonder works. I come to a critical conclusion: they are brain dead, pure and simple.

When enjoying a soft drink or juice in the car, inevitably they leave the packet or straw behind, usually both. The car is littered with debris that the dogs chew on and choke. This is all amusing until the girls glimpse my Look of Death gaze bearing down upon them, and then they see the errors of their ways.

Until the next time.

They eat like pigs. They refuse to blow their noses and keep snorting, instead. Their nails were long and filthy, encrusted with dirt and at least twenty layers of nail polish, if not paint, before I intervened. They giggle at bathroom humor, and scream for us like fishwives. The older applies her lipgloss and then wipes her soiled fingers down her clothes, or across the counter of the bathroom, pink glittery streaks declaring, “I was here.”

They try to stay up late and sleep in late. Both insist that they need not buckle any seatbelts, and that the police would never give us a fine for such a silly thing. They toss water bottles on the floor like an alcoholic’s den, while hoarding new clothing tags in hopes that they might be winning lottery tickets. They talk over the top of us, trying to drown out the voice of authority.

These are our daughters and they are not bad at all. Actually, they want very much to please. But for now they know better. They must know better because adults have always proven to be very unreliable.

The know-it-all mentality is a defense mechanism, a way to protect themselves, a show of bravado against a black backdrop. And so I smile, and pat their backs, and hug them, and tell them that all will be well.

It will be. They just have a lot to learn, and a lot to let go of. Much like the first days of school, they want to see if we’re substitute teachers that can be snowed and replaced, or whether we’re in it for the long haul.

Only with time will they understand that we’re here to stay and so are they.