This Reminds Me

Archive for the ‘Russia’ Category

I’ve wished lots of women “Happy Mother’s Day” – Keith’s mom, my own mother and her sisters, my sister and niece, neighbors, Sunday School teachers, co-workers – it’s a long list.

I’ve missed one, though, these last six years, though I think of her often. She’s young – but ageless. Speaks Russian – but soundless. Important – but formless. And not here – but omnipresent. She’s Julia’s “first mother,” the one who gave her life.

We know very little about her. She couldn’t be found before our May 10, 2006 court date. I wish we had a picture of her at least. Does she have Julia’s sparklingly dark, slightly-slanted eyes? Is she athletic? Is it she who gave Julia that unusual strands-of-gold-in-brunette hair? We will likely never know.

Our earliest picture of Guanna-to-be-Julia, which we snagged off the Russian data base of orphans.  She was about 18 months old. 

There’s no denying that first mother. I’m Julia’s mom, but I didn’t birth her. I didn’t count her fingers and toes, or coo at her, or stumble around at night heating bottles. I didn’t clap at her first step, or grin at her first word. Julia has my heart, but she doesn’t have my DNA.

We’ve talked about her first mother from time to time. Mostly I bring her up. I don’t want Julia afraid to ask about her, or think that she can’t love us both. I love all four of my daughters; loving two mothers is just as natural. I’ve answered her questions as best I can. I have lots of conjectures, but not many facts.

What I do know is that Julia’s first mother loved her enough to give birth to her. She was young with no one to help her, and likely very frightened. No one threw her a baby shower. No friends at church thought to loan her maternity clothes, or a car seat. No one sent flowers to the hospital, or brought over dinner, or offered to babysit so she could run to the store. No one congratulated her for giving birth to such a beautiful, beautiful baby.

So today I want to thank her for giving birth to such a beautiful, beautiful baby.

Happy Mother’s Day, First Mom.  Our girl is doing just fine.

Last night, Hannah and I returned a pair of shorts to Sam’s.  They didn’t fit.  No big deal.

Last week, an American mother returned her seven-year-old adopted son to Russian after seven months in her home.   She felt her life was endangered by his behavior, including his threats to burn down their home.  She had her mother put him on a non-stop flight to Moscow, where Russian officials promptly hustled him off to a hospital for a physical examination.

Julia’s first plane ride was part of a 27-hour coming home marathon.

The mother was wrong on sooooo many levels, not the least of which is that now Russian officials are – once again – looking at suspending all adoptions.    We were caught in a similar mess in 2004 – 2006, which is why our adoption  took 21 long months.  My heart breaks for the families in process who have a referral, or who are waiting on court dates to book that oh-so-important second trip.

The Russian adoption community is in a furor.  With blogs, forums, Facebook and other forms of social networking – even with relatively few of us – it’s easy to make contact with other families.  And they are steamed.

3,702 Russian adoptions in 2006, when Julia came home

I understand the furor.  In no way, shape or form do I condone what the mother did.  In fearing for her own life, she destroyed her son’s chance at a better one, and may have crushed the hopes of thousands of PAPs (prospective adoptive parents) as well as the abandoned children they sought to embrace.

I also understand what is too-seldom a topic of discussion:  Not all adoptions are going to be successful.  Successful means an attached child and in the case of an older child – attached parents.  To me, adopting older (past infant/toddler) children is like a marriage.  You have to go into it thinking “forever.”  They have to choose you as well as your choosing them.  And you don’t really get to date those kids before you’re married.  And like a marriage – there’s a honeymoon period.  And later – there’s just the marriage.  And what do you do when it’s not working?  Counseling?  Medication?  Structured behavioral modification? Go ask Mom for advice?  Spend more time away from home?  Or is it divorce – on, in adoption, disruption?

I don’t know what this mother or her son did and didn’t do.  The seven-year-old boy had been home only seven months.  That’s not long enough for attachment.    Was he really so badly damaged that it was not safe for her to parent him?  Maybe.  Or did she just quit trying too quickly?

But there’s another major player here – the agency.  I didn’t love our adoption agency – Buckner – every moment of our process.  In fact, Keith and my good friend Sharon can tell you about an afternoon in a Chicago conference room that I absolutely gnawed on them,  slammed down the phone and spent the evening crying.    But as I have told every PAP who has asked:  Buckner does a better job of preparing adoptive families than any other agency of which I’ve ever heard.  We had to read books, and prepare book reports.  We had to attend a two-day session in Dallas in which they basically tried to talk us out of it, telling us every horror story imaginable.   We had to pass a home study,  and after Julia was home, our social worker visited monthly for the required six months, then annually for three years.   When we needed help from Buckner after we got home, we could pick up a phone and get it.

So where was this woman’s agency – which is one of the powerhouse agencies, BTW?    Did no one from her agency discern any red flags when they met this child in Russia?   Was the mom not counseled that attachment would take longer than seven months?  Was she not visited by a social worker monthly?  Her last visit should have occurred in March, before she put her son on a plane in April.   What happened there? Was she not matched with other adoptive families – with mentors?    Was she not pushed at forums?  Was she not given books and articles to read?

If she wasn’t prepared – if she wasn’t equipped to deal with this troubled child – then yes,  I understand why she did what she did.   And her son would have been troubled.  Those kids are thrust into school not speaking the language.  They’re eating food they don’t like with people they don’t know.  They miss their orphanage mates – their family.   They miss all things familiar.   And somewhere under it all – they miss their birth parents, and they’re angry at being abandoned.  And they take that anger out on you the parent,  just like every bio child who is unhappy does, too.

Love is not enough to overcome all those circumstances.  It never, ever is.   And that is why your agency prepares you.

I’ve spoken to or emailed with parents who have awoken to their adoptive children standing over them with knives.  Children who have set fires.   Children who constantly lie, and try to break up marriages.  Children who have abused younger siblings.  Children who have stolen from home, school, church, stores, you name it.  Horrible things that generally escalate over time when a child suffers from Reactive Detachment Disorder.  Not one of those families was a Buckner family.

This child may have needed professional therapy.  If he was really threatening violence, he may well have needed 24 x 7 monitoring.  His adoptive mother was single.   How would she accomplish that plus work to pay for that therapy?

I know the adoptive community wants to vilify the mother.   And she was wrong.  Without a doubt, she was wrong.  A child is not a pair of shorts to be returned so casually.

You don’t need much preparation to decide you want shorts.  Shorts don’t threaten to burn down your house.  You don’t keep shorts forever.  You’re not paying an agency to help you find those shorts, and ensure they fit your family.

And in adoption – that fit is a very, very big deal.

Baptists aren’t really “Lenten people” but our church family is preparing our hearts for Easter with this series.  Finding the 28 minutes a day for listening was challenging me.  So…..I’ve given up K-Love during drive time until I’ve finished hearing the New Testament.

Julia is sitting next to me right this minute, practicing the songs her choir plans to sing Palm Sunday.  This is her “I’m paying attention” face – because she is.  She takes her responsibilities seriously.

We met Julia four years ago today. She spoke - and sang - in Russian.   She didn’t know “family” and certainly not us personally.  She had no idea how long we had prepared, prayed, wept, saved, reorganized and planned to get her here, knowing God’s hand was it (but wanting human hands to move a whole lot faster.)  She had to leave everyone and everything she knew to leap into the unknown.   I believe her walking out of Children’s Home #47 with us was the single bravest act I’ve ever seen committed – anywhere at any time by anyone.

On Palm Sunday, she’ll led us in worship – in English.  And instead of her following us – we’ll follow her.

Just a moment ago, she began singing Chris Tomlin’s, “How Great Is Our God.”

How great is our God

Sing with me

How great is our God

And all will see

How great

How great

Is our God.

That’s right, Julia.

Get us ready for Easter.

I finished a fascinating book this week - The Baby Thief – The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, The Babyseller Who Corrupted Adoption.

Georgia Tann kidnapped or illegally procured more than 5,000 children in Tennessee in the 20′s, 30′s and 40′s to sell to wealthy(er) parents.  Not all babies either – some were young teenage girls, sold to single men.  Many were school-age children, snatched from their front yards with the justification of a court order secured by bribery.  Scores if not hundreds of infants died in her care, often sweltering in the summer heat of attics.

Horrifying stuff.  And yet – really historically interesting, because she also single-handledly created the first American market for adoption.  Fighting the prevailing national eugenics ferver which condemned children needing homes, she convinced couples to adopt – and thus line her own pockets with handsome fees.

I don’t agree with all of the author’s  conclusions about Georgia Tann’s legacy affecting adoptions today.  Though she herself is an adoptive parent, she refers to us “as the most pampered of the birth triad.”  Sorry.  The adoptive parents I know have been anything but pampered.  I also don’t agree that every single adoptee has the right to know his birth family.  In a perfect world, that would be true.  But if a girl has chosen life for her baby under the condition of anonymity, I think that anonymity has to be respected.   To me, that’s no different than honoring the Baby Moses laws.   This society created the “right to choose,” and that means the right to choose privacy, too – or watch for more girls to make more difficult choices.

The book’s recurring theme is the constant gnawing ache of these adoptees to know their histories, especially if they were taken at an age when they could remember a past life.  Their pain oozes from the pages as they describe frustrating, life-long quests to fill that familial void.

I couldn’t help but think of Julia, whom we adopted at age six.  She remembers Russia, of course – the good and the bad.  And I’ve made an effort to ask her questions about what she thought when she met us – what foods she liked to eat – who her friends were – what she liked to play – so that as she forgets, I can tell her those things as part of her adoption story.

The day we met in the office of the Director of Children’s Home #47 – isn’t she a cutie?!  Keith could easily lift all 37 lbs. of her with one arm.  He said, “I don’t remember this little.”  Rachel, Lois and Hannah were that size around age 2 1/2.

I’ve made an effort, too, to talk with her about her first mother.  We know little about her, but I do know she cared enough to give Julia life, and was in difficult circumstances herself.  Julia will never hear a harsh word from Keith or me about her.  Julia and often speak at bedtime about how we’ll all be together in heaven one day, and how I’m going to hug her first mother’s neck and tell her how proud I am to share a daughter with her.  I want to keep the lines of communication open on First Mother, because I don’t want my baby afraid to talk about her.  Ever.   I don’t want her afraid to “offend” me, or be swallowed by the black hole of loss, frantically “looking for love in all the wrong places.”

I think adopting an older child is a lot like getting married.  You choose them – but they also have to choose you.    There are two families coming together, not just one absorbing the other.  The honeymoon is way easier than the distance.   And while you don’t know what tomorrow brings, you know each of you had a past that will influence it.

An adoptee kidnapped by Georgia Tann said, “There’s a hole in me that can never be filled.”

That hurt me just to read it.

Pray that we families of adoptees do the things we need to do so we don’t have to live it.