Sharing

The kids sleep late the morning after their arrival. With eight bunks in their room, we are one bed short. The first day, I held up a sleeping bag, and asked sheepishly who would use it. When all hands shot up, some waving to increase their chances, I realized apologizing for the lack of sleeping bags would have been more appropriate.

Host dad Simon is very hip with his hair spiked; Igor is smitten with the look. Walking up to him, Igor utters an inflected “Um,” points to Simon’s head, and runs his fingers through his own hair. Simon helps Igor and two other boys coif their hair like his. Igor, especially, is proud, and I don’t see him again without spikes. At the end of the week, he asks Simon to give him the gel.

After breakfast, Irina sequesters the kids in their room while we ready our gifts. When they return, we question them about their lives. Igor enjoys singing, so I ask for a song. For once, he acts bashful. “We shall support,” Ekaterina encourages him. It’s sufficient inducement, and he obliges with a haunting melody about a chained eagle. Zulya tells us Lora, her aunt, nicknamed her “Pelmini,” after Russian ravioli. Alexandra likes to sing, but cannot be cajoled to do it now. My first glimpse of her personality comes when she glows, speaking about her friends. Alexander, safe in the certainty of already having been chosen by an adoptive family, divulges a few tidbits about himself, then adds in a small voice, “What else do you want to know?”

Several of the kids are in foster care, just for the summer, to give them an experience with a family. I wonder, but don’t ask, why these families don’t care the rest of the year. All the kids have farm jobs with the families, which none appear to object. Igor smiles, noting that when he finishes helping with the hay, there’s always cake on the table awaiting him. Ekaterina and Zulya dream of going to America. Asked what he wants to be in the future, Igor deadpans, “A star.” With his personality, it’s hardly far-fetched.

When the kids query us, one horrifies me with, “If you had to take one of us to an island, which one would you take?” There are more kids than adults, and I warn the families not to answer. We’re asked about our houses, if we live in apartments, and if we have our “own children.” Zulya wonders if we’re waiting for great-grandchildren. When they ask about money, Trevor offers to show them a US dollar bill. It is the most excited the kids get the entire trip, and the hosts decide to give each child one to keep.

After more than an hour of questions, the kids get their gifts. Much energy is spent sorting through their bags, comparing contents, and displaying the loot. We derive as much pleasure watching their joy as they get in receiving. One Virginia family I’ve spoken with for over two years sends a wrapped gift for each unhosted child, along with a card. The kids know they should open the card before the accompanying gift. Each asks Irina to read theirs to them, and they listen with rapt attention.

By the time we leave for lunch at MuMu, the 10% chance of rain Moscow meteorologists predicted has become a 100% chance. There aren’t enough ponchos to go around, so Igor and Vladimir share. After eating, we find the Ferris wheel commemorating Moscow’s 850th anniversary operating, even in the inclement weather. It costs about $8 for one revolution, but we enjoy a view of Moscow its birds would envy. Unassuming Alexandra is so giddy to board that she pushes Joyce, her host, through the turnstile. She wears a nonstop grin the entire ride that Joyce claims was worth the cost of all our tickets. With the child so hesitant to assert herself, I am thrilled we did something she enjoyed.

After the ride, we visit an old park next door built to exhibit the agriculture and industry of the Soviet Union. Now its eighty-odd pavilions mainly house small shops, but it’s still a weekend destination for Muscovites. At the Friendship of the Peoples fountain, sixteen gilded maidens, each dressed in a costume of a different former Soviet republic, circle sheaves of wheat. The fountain, on a list of the ten most beautiful in the world, aimed to honor the bond of friendship between the republics, united under the glories of communism. While the fountain isn’t running today due to rain, and the union it celebrates has collapsed, we still find it worthy of its top-ten billing.

Some of the kids have a few rubles for the trip. I don’t know where they got them, but assume they’re from the summer foster families. Zulya is itching to spend hers, and after the Ferris wheel we pass carnival games. A man is chanting into a megaphone, though we’re the only ones here. Zulya pulls me aside and insists on playing his game. I think it’s a waste, but when she wins a Russian-speaking stuffed cow, her joy is boundless, and she shows it to everyone. The last day she is still clinging to it, and even I must admit the happiness she’s derived exceeds in value whatever she spent to win it.

Back in the metro, Simon is clutching Sergei’s hand. Inside, an elderly woman, box at her feet, holds a corrugated cardboard sign. As the rest of our band moves toward the escalator, Sergei pulls Simon back. Simon counters, wanting to stay with the group. Sergei resolutely refuses to budge until he has reached into his pocket, pulled out his rubles, and dropped some in the lady’s box. Simon is very moved by Sergei’s generosity. Though little in this world is his, he fights to share what he has. His teacher extolled his “nice soul”, and it’s shining through here.

We eat dinner at the hotel, then some of the kids ask to play in the rain at a playground. Every fiber of my being screams “Nyet!,” but when they ask me to take them, I hear myself agreeing. Igor marks the way with sidewalk chalk, so we won’t have trouble finding our way back. Both my compassion and my skimpy Russian restrain me from telling him it’s unnecessary, as I have a very good sense of direction. Two cats watch us out a screened window along the way; I love cats and instinctively call, “Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!” several times, mesmerizing the kids. The next morning they tell Irina and insist I demonstrate my cat-calling prowess to her.

When we’re done at the park, I retreat exhausted to my room. Exhaustion is reassuring, like a report card, that I poured everything into my mission today. It’s been a profitable gleaning of insights into the kids’ personalities, details I hope will help me help them. Sinking into sleep, I revel in how Sergei’s kind gesture in the metro enriched us all.

I hope he is repaid a thousand-fold.

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Faith

Monday morning, my inner night owl awakens with a grudge, as I gradually become aware of a din in the hall. I hear the word “explosion”, remembering with a start the Coca Cola I forgot in the freezer overnight. Rolling out of bed and slinking from my room to clean up the mess, I overhear a most alarming exchange between the receptionist and a host. Retreating, I go online to find a suicide bomber attacked the metro one-half mile from our hotel twenty minutes ago; at least fourteen people at our station are dead, and scores more injured. I grieve the senseless loss of life in a tragedy that feels more real by its proximity, knowing leaving that station was almost the last thing I did Sunday night. Suddenly, I panic, realizing Faith isn’t here. She planned to come early for gift distribution before our trek to Red Square. I can’t find my phone, and I’m frantic to call her, now. My terror, real, is short-lived, as I bolt out my door to find her arriving. I hug her tightly, overjoyed she’s alright. Delayed visiting with family on Skype, she left her flat later than intended. Arriving at our station to find mind-numbing carnage, she’d missed the explosion by fifteen minutes. The scene left her shaken, and quick to obey the barked command, “Leave the station now!” Outside, ambulances queued to transport the injured, as helicopters hovered overhead.

Hope, the Lighthouse Project director, is drifting off to sleep in the States when she hears the news on the radio. Having lived in Moscow many years, it’s a second home, with many Muscovites dear friends. I e-mail her immediately to confirm our safety, but she is so distraught she calls Faith anyway to be sure.

While the devastation sinks our plans, we don’t burden the kids with the news. After breakfast, Faith shepherds them aside, where she reads from a treatise on Moscow’s history. Meanwhile, the hosts and I organize piles of clothes, toys, school supplies, and treats. The tendency is to spoil orphans, and each of us is caught red-handed. Based on my own kids’ experiences, I have cynically warned families to avoid presents with sentimental value. Older children might retain some items, but younger children, or those at less-endowed orphanages, will likely keep nothing, the gifts becoming communal property, at best.

When Faith finishes her lesson, the kids bound into the common room to tell us about their orphanages, schools, chores, meals, and classwork. Elena, fifteen, on her first trip after a quintet of attempts to find a host, calls her orphanage more spacious than others. She beams describing the beautiful curtains the teachers sewed, and raves about the food, singling out the omelets for accolades. (Hopeless?, 10/6/09)  Anastasia, twelve, is less effusive in praise of her orphanage, one for delayed kids and not as welcoming as Elena’s. She attends school in the orphanage, and claims the food doesn’t matter. I expect compelling blog fodder when Faith queries them about their dreams, but impatient eyes are on the gifts. The conversation stalls when Erik, four, dreams of owning a cow, promptly countered by Artem, five, and his dream of a horse. Faith adjourns with, “They deserve some presents. Can I announce them?”

Four kids go hostless, brought in hope I’ll learn enough to promote them more winsomely next time. I gift these kids. Vladimir, ten, politely accepts, but I wonder if Sasha, a three-trip veteran from Vladimir’s orphanage, has divulged that gifts from the coordinator is a harbinger of no forever family. The other kids are young enough that the significance of gifts from me is lost on them. Artem, five and HIV-positive, is overjoyed with his haul. The cherubic tyke thanks me with an angelic “Spaciba!” and heaves the bag to his shoulder. He is so little that he lists perilously; even so, it is with effort that the chaperone cajoles him to release the bag; I have never seen a child so pleased by a windfall. Yuliana, like Artem five and HIV-positive, plows through the crowd, resolutely dragging her bag behind her to her room, where she can sort the treasures.

After the kids have seen their gifts, we leave on foot. MuMu is on the lunch menu, after which we visit the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Walls inscribed with names of Russia’s war dead line gold-ceilinged halls. The cavernous interior is illumined by candles and perfumed with their wax, but the church is new enough that its bold frescoes are untamed by soot. Devout babushkas in blue frocks and head scarves use paintbrushes to sweep wax drippings from brass candelabras. Some in our band light candles and pray, while I seek out a spot on the wall, made sacred my first trip, when darling Denis, ten, stumbled through a prayer in Old Russian unfamiliar to him. Faith gently guided him through the foreign words, clasping her hand to her heart as he whispered with a poignant passion. His family waits in the hotel with us now, leaving tomorrow on the train for their court appearance to complete his adoption. When I think of Denis, breathing life into an ancient devotion in this place, but now giddy in an orphanage asking incessant questions about the arrival date of his family, I meditate on God’s acceptance of what He calls “true religion”: care of widows and orphans.

An ornamented bridge joins the Moscow River’s banks behind the church. From it we revel in a spectacular view of the Kremlin, snapping pictures of myriad combinations of people. Behind us is a 315-foot tall statue depicting Peter the Great, the tsar who dragged a reluctant Russia westward culturally and the father of the Russian navy, at the helm of a ship. An almost-universally loathed part of the Moscow skyline, the statue is doubly incongruous here: the navy was never associated with the Moscow River, and Peter moved his capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg, his new eponymous city, in 1712. Wagging tongues claim the Russian-made behemoth was Christopher Columbus, but rejected by several American cities, remained here, undergoing metamorphosis into Russia’s greatest tsar.

On the route back, we patronize a small convenience store near the hotel. Two cats lounge on the windowsills, watching ice cream coolers with feline detachment. The store has three rooms; the overlap in merchandise between the rooms perplexes until one in our group gets a dressing down, Russian style, leaving room three, for room two, with unpaid merchandise. Only then does it become apparent that each room is a separate store run by an independent proprietor.

The hotel dashes my plans to blog tonight with the malfunction of the wireless connection. As reels of the morning’s events play out silently and endlessly on the television before me, I spend the next five hours in the common room, discussing adoption, travel, and children with host families, the parents-to-be of Denis and Lima, and Inna’s mom, who calls her October adoption of the fifteen-year-old “the best thing I ever did.”  (Lima, 1/16/09 and Struggling, 2/2/09)

When our little group left America, we left in faith. Hundreds of Lighthouse’s adoptive families, harkening to God’s call, have made the journey to Moscow in faith. Hundreds of Lighthouse children, with the courage to leave the known, and venture into the unknown for the promise of a better life, have made this same trip in faith. The Lighthouse Project has been guided by faith from its inception: We came in faith before, we’re here in faith now, and the good Lord willing, we’ll return in June with the same faith, and our friend Faith.

It’s always been by faith. Nothing’s changing now.

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