Frozen (заморожены) by Anonymous
“to call him our son. He was one of over 600,000 orphans living in Russia”
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PART ONE
Growing up in the 1970s, I clearly remember the fear that we, as Americans, had of the USSR. There was only one thought that dominated the national psyche during that time, and that was of the Cold War. I recall documentaries of nuclear explosions blowing residential neighborhoods to pieces and newsworthy stories detailing preparations for potential nuclear disasters. And of course, the general sense that communism in its crudest form, was pure evil.
Then something happened in 1991 that changed the face of Eastern Europe forever. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a country that had been looming over us for decades, threatening nuclear annihilation, collapsed. And a new country, called the Russian Federation, began to form. All of a sudden, the world’s map was changing and smaller countries were breaking away from the mighty motherland, leaving communism in the dust. But those media images and the implanted fear in young American minds remained.
So in December 2009, when I boarded my first flight to St. Petersburg, Russia, the images of nuclear war, economic collapse, a rigid communist society and the rumors that Americans were simply tolerated in Russia and not necessarily welcomed, weighed heavily upon me.
Landing on a frozen runway at night in St. Petersburg is as eerie as it sounds. In December, northern Russia welcomes about six hours of sunlight each day. Even when the sun finally rises, it remains a gloomy, dark disc in the arctic sky. And cold. So bitterly cold.
As I exited the German based airliner onto a frozen tarmac, I was suddenly ten years old again, remembering my childhood fears of this faraway land. Stepping into my first Russian night, I shivered in my full-length parka coat, from both the cold and the barren empty landscape awaiting me. I watched as a small shuttle van pulled up beside us, with Cyrillic letters on its door, coming to scoop up the passengers and drive us to the airport terminal a few miles away.
As I headed down the air stairs, I looked to my left and there was an airport employee standing there, holding a large metal box. I could barely see his face, as his fur-lined hood covered most of his weathered features. He held up the metal box and pointed it straight at my face. He pressed a button and I think, a picture was taken. But I couldn’t stop, because the passengers behind me pushed me forward into the comfort of the waiting shuttle van.
"What in the hell was that all about?" I asked my husband, Mike.
"It was an x-ray machine," Mike said, as the van door closed with a slam.
We sat in silence. For the next five minutes, I went through every detail in my head about what I thought would be my impending police interrogation. I had five days’ worth of Xanax in my purse (doctor’s script included of course). I wasn’t a drug addict, I wasn’t a mule. Russians look unfavorably upon any type of psychiatric medications, no matter the conditions they are used for. But I brought them anyway since I am prone to anxiety attacks and wasn’t flying halfway across the world without them, and I had just been x-rayed by some Russian airline employee. Would I be separated from my husband? Would I get to call the US embassy for help? Would I be thrown in jail without a trial?
The van stopped. The passengers exited. I prepared to meet my fate. We walked into the terminal and I started telling my husband I was sorry and I wasn’t sure what would happen next. He looked at me with a quizzical grin, repeated "we are fine," picked up our suitcases and pushed me towards the front door of the airline terminal.
And there was Ivan, our hired driver, waving enthusiastically. He had brought his wife. None of us had ever met, but it was pretty obvious that Mike and I were the only Americans mulling around aimlessly.
With a heavy grip, Ivan shook my husband’s hand and said heartily, "Welcome to Russia! You are here to finally meet your son!" And with that, we were off. No police to arrest us. No bags to confiscate. Heading to the hotel, to sleep, to dream, to take a Xanax (or two).
Yes, we had traveled to this place, this strange foreign land I had been taught to fear, to meet a boy we had never met and to call him our son. He was one of over 600,000 orphans living in Russia, waiting for a family. We traveled over 5,000 miles, armed with a solitary picture of him that we had received weeks before, along with a name, Dmitri and an age of 17 months old. As Ivan’s car sputtered, shook and then eventually sped off, I wondered if it wasn’t Russia that I had feared all this time, but its inhabitants that I knew so little about.
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PART TWO
There are many things that I remember about St. Petersburg in December, but there are three that are most relevant. First, there is traffic. Cars trying to move left, right, even in circles, but they just eventually stop and wait. Waiting for pedestrians to cross slippery roads. Waiting for signals that never change. Waiting for other cars that cut in front of other cars. Driving to the orphanage, a mere 20 miles away, usually took 60 minutes or more. Russian life requires a lot of waiting.
Second, walking into a city orphanage (also known as a baby or children’s home, depending on the age of its residents) that houses at least 100 children is quieter than a college library during exam time. On our first visit, I was shocked by the utter stillness. As Ivan accompanied us through the heavy metal doors, and an orphanage attendant gave us booties to place over our shoes to protect the dismal floors, the four of us walked through the halls in silence. We headed down narrow corridors, lined with faded flower curtains. We trekked up stairways, as the smell of meat stew wafted past us. We passed other female attendants and simply nodded, as they hurried past us. All of this done in silence. Where were the children? And why were they so quiet?
Third, meeting a stranger in a foreign land (let alone one that isn’t even two years old) and being expected to feel the sparks of love and kinship for him, is a weird experience. I had combed blogs of other parents who had described the “love at first sight” experience as their new children fell into their arms and all parties wept with happiness. I was prepared to have some type of out of body experience as Dmitri walked in. Those of us who choose to become parents all have our own story. Sometimes it’s a happy jubilant experience, and sometimes it’s a death-defying leap. For me, it was somewhere in between.
When D’s caretaker walked him into the playroom to meet us for the first time, she spoke gently and quietly, slowly leading his hand into mine. My husband stood off to the side, as we had been instructed that most of the children fear adult males because they rarely see any. D looked at me with some curiosity and I noticed that he had the brightest blue eyes I had ever seen. I called him by his name; with what I was sure was the strangest of accents he had ever heard. He stared at me and then looked back at his caretaker for help. I felt uncomfortable, out of place and unsure of what to do next.
And then as D began to cry, he broke the awkward silence that had been looming over us since we had entered the building almost an hour before. All of a sudden, I felt like I had given birth and my son was alive, healthy and crying. I scooped him up with whatever maternal instinct had just kicked in and carried him around the room, repeating his name and a few other Russian words that we had learned from Ivan on the long drive to the orphanage that morning. Eventually the tears subsided and D allowed my husband to approach. We sat in a circle on the carpeted floor, rolling some plastic balls to each other and stacking colored cups, staring at each other, without any words to exchange.
As we sat down with the orphanage director the following day, she provided us very limited medical information on D. Scary things popped up from the report. D had been diagnosed with a “funnel chest” and “mixed” developmental delays. When we provided the report to our international adoption doctor later that evening, you could almost hear her giggling through her email response.
Our doctor told us that most of the diagnoses were exaggerated and some weren’t even correct. While Russian and American medical experts and language differ, we are all still people and some of the medical problems that the Russian doctors claim to exist in these orphans, didn’t exist at all. How else would these children find permanent homes? Or at least, that’s what we were told. Sometimes the medical evaluations are ramped up, exaggerated, untrue. It brands these children with special needs because they are, in the eyes of some Russians, imperfect. We heard stories that “gypsy” children, the ones with dark hair and oval eyes, aren’t good enough for adoption. The quiet ones who stand in the corner, eyes cast downwards, aren’t strong enough for the Russian families to even consider. Overall, while D was somewhat malnourished, he was healthy. But he didn’t fit the mold and he was branded with some special medical diagnoses, left to hope for a family that may never come.
“He needs sunshine. Lots of sunshine and fresh foods,” Olga, our orphanage translator told us one day as we sat on the floor again, stacking blocks and pushing toy cars back and forth with D. “You Americans eat too much of that processed food. Give him fresh fruit. He may be moody now," Olga continued, looking over at M, who indeed had a small scowl on his face, “But he will change. Give him love and he will change.”
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PART THREE
Three years later, it’s hard to believe that I didn’t give birth to D. Strangers and friends often comment on how much he looks like me or Mike. Although some personality traits differ, many are similar, including his love of adventure, his independence and his stubborn streak.
As the years go by, we have slowly begun to incorporate D’s Russian heritage into some family traditions, all while telling his adoption story in terms that a 3, 4, soon to be 5 year old can understand. We have pictures hanging in our home of our 5 weeks spent in Russia and we hold D’s United States citizenship papers sacred in a fireproof safe. But as life hustles by, D’s beginnings in a Russian orphanage, and our journey to become his parents, slowly becomes part a fading memory of the tapestry of his toddler years.
And then in December 2012, the United States government signed the Magnitsky Act, a law designed to punish Russian officials for various alleged human rights violations by prohibiting their entrance into the United States and use of our banks. This Act disturbed already stressed international relations between the two countries. The Russian Federation decided to pass its own law in retaliation, but few Americans own assets or take expensive vacations in Russia and so, a similar act would have little impact. And so, President Vladimir Putin, backed by over 95% of the Russian State Duma, decided to punish Americans by instead, punishing his own orphans. The Dmitri Yakovlev Bill now prohibits Americans from adopting Russian orphans. Other countries are watching and waiting for similar prohibitions to be enacted against them.
As I began understanding the magnitude of what this meant not just for prospective parents, but for thousands of orphaned children, those memories that had begun to fade, recollections of plodding through snowy Russian streets, taking walks with a little boy that we barely knew to pass the time, came flooding back. We have no organic connection to this boy that we call our son. He may look like us, he may act like us, but in biological terms, he is not part of us. And yet, the three of us became a family in the strangest of ways and nobody seems to remember life before that moment happened.
I read recently that Americans are the most likely group to adopt abroad and adopt children with special needs. Given D’s odd Russian diagnoses, and the fact that no Russian families even visited with and considered adopting him, it’s more than likely, that this child, who is as normal as the boy next door, would be considered a “special needs” orphan in Russia. At age 4, D would have headed to either a mental institution (for his speech delays) or children’s home until he turned 16 years old.
What happens then is an unknown, although a lot of articles have been written on these children. At 16 years old, his “graduation age” from the orphanage, D could have turned to a life of crime, poverty and drugs. Few, if any, resources are provided to discharged orphans and over 50% are considered high risk when released into society. Ten percent or more, depending on the statistics you read, commit suicide from the despair and loneliness.
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PART FOUR
I hope someday that D asks a lot of questions about his heritage and I hope he is proud. The Russians are a robust resilient people. Less than 30 years ago, his country collapsed and society was thrown into a way of life that, it appears, nobody was really prepared for. Since the disintegration of the USSR in 1991, child abandonment rates have increased substantially. Only now, 22 years later, is Russia finding its way. And apparently, given its latest decision to punish its native sons, it still has a long way to go.
Like becoming a parent, there are many ups and downs to becoming an independent thriving country. Caring for its own people, much like caring for your own children is often a thankless task that you hope will someday result in a strong peaceful, prosperous nation. I pray that Russia will step up to the task ahead and I pray that I, too, will succeed in raising one of Russia’s children as my own, as D forges ahead in this life to become strong, peaceful and prosperous.
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This article was submitted anonymously.