This Reminds Me

Keith and I know the names of exactly four residents of St. Petersburg, all Buckner-affiliated.  St. Pete is an eight-hour train ride from Moscow, a city of 10M inhabitants.

So today in Moscow, whom do we see among the 10M?  Yes, one of the people we know from St. Pete!  While eating lunch in the Starlight Diner – in walks Natasha from St. Pete, here soliciting a donation from Lincoln Motors for orphanages in St. Pete.  To say we were stunned would be an understatement.

Naturally, we had to visit with Natasha bit before we left for the American Embassy to register Julia for U.S. citizenship.  (She’s a citizen when the wheels of our plane touch U.S. soil, BTW.)  And whom did we meet in the Embassy?  One of the scores of adoptive parents we’ve grown to know these 22 months on the adoption.com Russian Adoption Parent Board!  We heard the mother calling to three-year-old “Summer,” and I thought, “That sounds familiar.  How many parents are naming their daughters ‘Summer?’”  So I asked where she was from, which was Georgia, and then I knew for sure and blurted, “You’re RainyinGA from adoption.com!”   She knew us as beckyww and keithww; we had a happy time comparing notes.

There were 20 – 25 families waiting with their kiddos in the Embassy office.  A few older than Julia; most younger, none younger than 14 months since the rules have changed.  Far more boys than girls.  At least three families with much older children at home now refilling an empty or soon-to-be-empty nest.  Several families with sibling sets.  At least two families on their second Russian adoption trip.  One two-year-old boy wearing a blue sweat suit that his mother informed me cost $150 at the nearby mall.  He’d thrown up on his clothes in the car; they dashed in the mall to buy “something simple” to wear to the Embassy.  “Wow, stuff is expensive here,” commented the mother.  We agreed that we prefered to shop at our American fashion center – Target.

Before we left the Starlight Diner, Natasha asked Julia what she liked best about Red Square: Lenin’s Tomb, the beautiful grounds, the Kremlin, the young Pioneers demonstrating, etc.?  Julia’s answer?  “The fountains.”  Yes, the child is half monkey (climbing fiend) and half fish (water entranced).  Here’s a picture of her splashing in a fountain outside the Starlight diner today.

It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears Its a world of hopes, its a world of fear
Theres so much that we share  That its time we’re aware
Its a small world after all

Thank you, Walt.  We agree.