Looking Up

Without air conditioning, our windows are constantly open. We wake to smoke less punishing, thanks to an overnight shower and the prayers of many back home. We walk to the kids’ flat; several run to let us in when we buzz the bell outside their building. Having sacrificed the air conditioned accommodations for them, it is mildly annoying to find the unit turned off as we enter.

After breakfast, a game helps us get to know each other better. When a yellow beach ball is caught, the recipient shares a fact about himself, then tosses the ball to someone of opposite nationality. Through the passing of the ball, we learn Egor is the best reader in his class, Alexandra dances, and Oleg likes English. We’re in a circle, and Angelina’s the only one sitting. Once, I throw her the ball as encouragement that we want to know her, too. She pushes it away, looks down, and won’t say anything, even with Svetlana’s cajoling. It’s slightly awkward, and while I wonder if we should try harder to coax her participation, I acquiesce to her choice.

Angelina travelled unhosted in January (Scared, 12/21/09). The last day of the trip, we interviewed the kids; toward the end, she had yet to speak. Faith gently probed about what she’d most enjoyed, and got three or four words in response before a very charming boy started laughing, interjecting a snide comment. Angelina clammed up, not willing to finish her thought. It vexed me that the charmer, family safely in pocket, heartlessly mocked the shy girl. As Angelina refuses participation, I feel sure she remembers the January experience, and I must work to suppress resentment toward the boy whose long-past thoughtlessness denies her a chance to shine now.

Gifts are distributed next, to the glee of all. Few here have received many before, unless they’ve traveled with us previously. Lora is an astute trader, making several beneficial swaps before a few of the hosts intervene. When our group sets out for the day, the boys pose by a red Ferrari parked in the courtyard outside their flat. As its owner has carefully tucked it in a corner by an adjacent building, I doubt he would approve of several children leaning against it for photos.

At the metro, my magnetic ticket allows us sixty rides, the least expensive option for short-term visitors. Before we’re in the door, the kids clamor to scan the strip on the card reader. It’s already hard to remember who has had a turn, and who hasn’t. As I watch a child scan the card, I worry it won’t read between entrants, and that the gate will slam closed on the unwitting second to pass, assuring its victim multiple bruises. The metro resounds with a loud, singsongy tune whenever able-bodied cheaters jump the gate. Cheerless women wearing sour, no-nonsense expressions man booths nearby, blowing police whistles as they menacingly, but impotently, jab the air at the freeloaders.

We emerge from underground by the Kremlin, stopping at a bronze plaque embedded in the stone outside the Resurrection Gate, my favorite entrance to Red Square. Popular culture considers this spot the center of Russia, though geographically that title belongs almost 3000 miles east. With their backs to Red Square, people stand on the plaque, tossing coins over their right shoulders for luck. The coins are generally kopeks, tiny denominations valued in hundredths of a cent, but a few tattered elderly ladies hover nearby, collecting the coins with frail fingers as they bounce off the stones.

Right before departure, I’d seen several horrifying photos of Red Square shrouded in smoke, just the outline of St. Basil’s visible. Today, though, with much of the smoke dissipating, I’m absent my mask, no longer fighting carbon monoxide reputed to have been as high as seven times the safe upper limit earlier in our jaunt. For my friends’ sakes, I am relieved that their first view of Moscow’s most iconic site is fairly clear. After the requisite photos with St. Basil’s as backdrop, we grab lunch at my favorite GUM Mall eatery, dining amidst a smorgasbord of color. Every time I visit GUM, there is a new, and unfailingly classy, display of decorations or artifacts; today Audis from the 1930s to the present form a car snake through the mall’s corridors. A man sits in one, and lets the kids join him. He demonstrates the GPS, a gadget the kids find irresistible. The man is so accommodating that I assume he is either not Russian, or not working for the vehicle’s owner. I keep waiting for the ubiquitous mall security officers to descend on us, rebuking and shooing us away, but they never materialize.

After GUM, we cruise the Moscow River. It’s sweltering out, though a breeze on the river provides a modicum of relief. I spring for ice cream, and most kids thank me without prompting, though I remind a few. It’s refreshing how many of the kids, orphans, remember this pleasantry, even in English. I wile away much of the ride chatting on the phone with my friend Valerie, our adoption coordinator. She calls me with encouragement daily here; I love her, and almost forget my troubles as she commiserates with me.

Cruise over, we return to the kids’ flat to prepare dinner. As we assemble the components, Lora proudly contributes the four leftover McDonald’s cheeseburgers she’d collected yesterday and stored in her bag overnight. She is appalled when I throw them away, telling her we can’t use them, since meat needs to be refrigerated. Krista brought macaroni and cheese from home, and I have pelmini, Russian ravioli served with sour cream. Kids commonly name macaroni as their favorite food, but it is eaten sans sauce here. When Krista mentions American kids love macaroni and cheese, the Russians eat it with extra gusto. Cucumber slices and plums languished earlier, but fashioned into a smiley face on a plate, they’re promptly devoured. After the meal, we’re tired. I feel guilty leaving, but the heat has sapped our strength.

Traipsing back to our own flat, someone remembers we need toilet paper. At a store open day and night, shopping reminds me of a book I read about marketing; in a phenomenon they called “the butt brush effect,” the authors claimed customers would stop browsing in an area the third time they were bumped from behind. Here, in aisles wide enough for only one person, I’m thinking the butt brush threshold would have to be higher. The inventory consists of expensive blue paper, or abrasive brown Soviet-holdout paper, sold singly for about twelve cents per roll. Back at the flat, exhaustion lowers inhibitions as we envision how we would advertise the rough paper, were we the ad agency charged with such an unenviable assignment. We settle on, “Your butt might feel it, but your wallet won’t!” and laugh uproariously until I feel lightheaded.

My room is really an office next to the kitchen, and it lacks a door. The location teems with distractions, and renders blogging impossible. While I’m on the phone, Jeff cobbles together nine wimpy trash bags into a makeshift door. Before I hang up, the thin blue plastic offers some semblance of privacy. Krista decorates it with my name, but I can’t decide if I should be honored or offended by the crown she draws atop the “B.”

By the time my lights go out, a fifteen-minute rainstorm has begun and ended. A stiff breeze is blowing through, and I reach for the duvet. With a cleansing rain, the welcome chill, my bag door, the hearty laughing session, and the prayers of those who love me at home, things are looking up.

I'm going to make it.

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Hope

Last night I’d heroically determined not to complain, no matter the circumstances here. At 6 a.m. Sunday, my resolve nosedives as I awaken to find my mask, which I’d slept in, conspiring with the smoke to smother me with breath-robbing vengeance. I vault coughing from bed in a fresh panic, maddeningly stranded in this acrid inferno. My planned Friday departure, one day closer, leaves me comfortless, as I cannot survive that long. I pound out a frantic e-mail missive to our director, Hope. My life, or at least my sanity, is in jeopardy, and my opening sentences ooze agony. But in typing, my outlook improves, as focusing elsewhere shaves the edge off my misery. This knowledge is power; my survival strategy becomes cramming every moment with activity.

In summertime, Moscow shuts off the hot water by sections of the city to fix their ancient pipes. For years I’d fretted that some yet-unplanned summer trip to Moscow might plunk me in lodging bereft of hot water, unable to take a comfortable shower. Now that I’m here on an August jaunt, wilting in temperatures better suited to saunas than Russia, I realize my fears are unfounded and unrealistic. By the time my host families arise at 11 a.m., I’m a veteran of two cold showers taken in a futile attempt at cooling.

Across town, Oklahomans Jeff and Robin are in the waning days of their month-long adoption journey, picking up fourteen-year-old Edik, alumni of one of my previous trips. They’d been staying with our Russian adoption coordinator, Love, and had spent their recent days rotating through the shower. Love’s two Persians lie pathetically motionless except for their panting until Jeff compassionately helps her trim their fluff, resuscitating them. Three days before departure, Jeff and Robin can suffer the heat and smoke no longer. They move to a very posh hotel offering a pool and air conditioning. Love is thrilled to escape the heat when they rent a room for her and the cats, too.

Early Sunday afternoon Jeff calls me, hoping to see me and my little band. It’s been a long stay in Russia, and they’re hungry for American company. When my last hosts, Iowans Barrie and Joyce, arrive, we have little incentive to remain at our hotel. We leave to meet Jeff, Robin, Edik, and Love at a KFC-owned chicken outfit, but the plan is scuttled when the restaurant proves hotter than the streets. We migrate next door to Il Patio, reputed to be Moscow’s only authentic pizza. Inside, the cool, clean air brings me to the brink of elated tears, exacerbated by the sight of Jeff and Robin, now parents. I sit next to Edik; the last time I saw him, he was in his orphanage, confessing fear over whether his new family would really come for him. As Edik calls Robin “Mama,” requesting permission for this and that, I revel in the quotidian domesticity of the scene. Gatherings of adoptive families invigorate me as our commonalities engender almost endless conversation, and we linger long after our food is gone.

Jeff and Robin invite us to their hotel; in this heat, we won’t make them ask twice. Conversing in temperature-controlled bliss, they detail how their adoption of Edik was approved by a regional supreme court judge. One of the host families, Jeff and Teresa of Michigan, has a court date scheduled for mid-September, and they listen with especially rapt attention. In the hotel room, there’s no hint of smoke, and I relish the sensation of almost being cold. When both Jeffs and Edik leave to swim, Robin and the host moms browse in a hotel gift shop, studying every item. I hate shopping and tire of the wait, so I visit Love’s room to see the cats. She apologizes for their appearance, but their haircuts are so hideous they’re irresistible. For both man and beast, appearance plays second fiddle to comfort this week, and I hardly begrudge the cats their trims. Love notices I am tired, and when she orders me to lie down on the spare bed, I make no argument. I sink into the duvet, my form cradled by pillows as prolific as rabbits; once lying there I feel little inclination toward activity. As I lounge, Love bids me in her charming English to spend the night here, rather than at my hotel, urging, “Becky, you must stay!” Cursing my scruples which mandate I suffer in solidarity with my host families, I snuggle further into the bed, and it takes every moral I can muster to refuse her offer.

When the swimmers and shoppers reappear, I drag myself from the bed to go home. While we have spent over seven hours in cool luxury, the sickening heat outside at once relegates it all to a bitter memory. Back at our hotel, we are demoralized finding it even hotter than outdoors. Retreating to my room, I have a sympathetic message from Hope, providing a modicum of encouragement. She offers to move us to an air conditioned hotel, but I am resistant in my tightwaddery, as this one is paid for already. Later, my friend Valerie, our US adoption coordinator, calls to say Hope is insistent we move. It’s past midnight here, too late to ask the families now what they want. I tell Valerie we have to wait until Monday to decide this, but she worries the less expensive hotels will be booked as there are few rooms left in Moscow; even flights and trains out of the capital are sold out.

I emerge from my room for another shower and instead discover all the hosts in the common area, flush-faced and too hot to sleep. I call a meeting, which Barrie and Joyce host. Detailing the pros and cons of moving to an air conditioned hotel, the pros have a grossly unfair advantage. The consensus is that we should move, pending the hotel’s willingness to refund our money. In Russia, where the operating premise of every business seems to be “the customer is always wrong,” even a partial refund is in grievous doubt. I leave the meeting to speak to a receptionist sitting at the front desk by what I’d been told was the hotel’s only fan. When I reveal we’re contemplating leaving due to the nearly insufferable conditions, two fans miraculously appear from under the counter. They’re tiny and tired, but I return to my families triumphant. That there are four rooms and two fans only mildly tarnishes my glee. As trip coordinator, I cannot co-opt a fan, but nobody else is selfish, either. A good-natured argument ensues, each host claiming their need of a fan is less urgent than the others’. After coveting fans so much of the day, it is comically ridiculous. When we finally determine which two parties get a fan, neither will pick one. As sweat trickles down my back, I’m impatient for my shower. Secretly numbering them “Fan 1” and “Fan 2” ends the deliberations, as fan assignment is randomized. The winners promise to pass the fans on tomorrow to those of us who do without now, but I tell them if we pass on tonight, they’ll get to keep them. I apologize repeatedly for the conditions, but hear no lamentation or condemnation from them, only a magnanimous recognition after their long journeys that this ordeal is not of my genesis. The powwow is a twisted pleasure, and I love these families more for enduring our trial with humor and generosity.

Valerie calls again, well past 1 a.m., and says Hope is renting two flats: one for us, and one for the kids. Both are air conditioned, and in close proximity to each other. She kindly makes the arrangements, as heat, dehydration, and the hour have dulled me mentally.

Anticipating Monday with the kids’ arrival and our departure to cooler digs and purer air, I collapse, masked, into bed. I know when I awaken, Hope, eleven hours behind, will have everything ready. I am still again, but not panicky now. I am never alone, even in this dark. I have friends here and at home, generous friends, and somehow together, we’ll see this through, to complete the mission that moves us all.

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Dr. Adoption

Growing up in the late seventies and early eighties, I spent Monday nights of my formative years with TV’s Little House on the Prairie. As I stared in traumatized disbelief, Caroline Ingalls labored to give birth, birthing my desire to adopt in the process. Dreaming in my youth of becoming the next James Herriot, I attended veterinary school, graduating with a DVM degree. Imagine my dismay to realize, months before commencement, that I’d missed my calling. Regardless, I practiced veterinary medicine seven years, enjoying most of them. Eventually I left the profession to raise our daughter, a curly-haired, extroverted tike adopted from Guatemala; four years later our Chinese daughter arrived. We had no business being at an adoption fair only six weeks after returning from China, but it didn’t stop us. Browsing booths in the exhibit hall, my encounter with Valerie of the Russian Orphan Lighthouse Project was as inadvertent as it was fortuitous. There, at that inauspicious table, I stumbled across both my life’s mission and the circuitous path leading our family to a new son and daughter.

In the six years since that November meeting, we’ve added the two older Russian kids to our family. What I saw in Russia and learned in the process was Exhibit A of the gravity of the orphan’s plight. Armed with a righteous sense of urgency, I’ve coordinated nine Lighthouse Project trips to Michigan and Oklahoma, bringing seventy-three different Russian orphans aged 5-15, some of them more than once. As coordinator, I seek families willing to host an orphan for ten days, run a Russian-language Vacation Bible School, and give the bushes a thorough, thorough beating in search of forever families. Such a succinct description of my duties belies the thousands of hours I’ve invested in them, and the phones I’ve worn out in the process. The task is formidable, since most potential adoptive families desire babies. When I succeed, the fulfillment is more than adequate to the effort, since finding families for kids literally saves their lives. Motivating my Russian work is knowledge that no safety net surrounds the kids who age out; in America, orphans without families have opportunities available to them Russian orphans could only dream of.

On the coattails of the Lighthouse Project I’ve met people whose beings brim with the same compassion for orphans; some of these kindred spirits are as dear as sisters to me. Fifty-nine children, including sibling groups as large as three, kids as young as six and as old as seventeen, and children with sundry special needs have forever families. Current events in Russia notwithstanding, I hardly feel finished. God willing, there are many more children, and a few dear friends, to come.

My training for this quasi-volunteer position has been as rigorous, expensive, and all-consuming as veterinary school, provided by three girls and a boy who work to keep Mom on her toes and seventy-three kids whose would-be futures have provoked me to repeated and frenetic action. A full-time position as a veterinarian would be less time-consuming and more prestigious, but since finding my calling I’ve never looked back.