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I recently did my first adoption story time at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh. Luckily, I was guaranteed an audience as it was their regular Monday morning preschool story hour. Happily, my reading/storytelling drew a larger crown than usual. I’d estimate there were 15 or so mother-child pairs at the reading, five of which were adoptive families.
The reading went well. I read my book (When I Met You) as well as A Mother for Choco, by Keiko Kaska, and My Family is Forever, by Nancy Carlson. I had wanted to read Over the Moon, by Karen Katz, but the woman who set it up said it was too long. Over the Moon is Little J’s favorite adoption book. Even though we didn’t get him in a land full of beautiful birds and tropical plants he knows that we went on an airplane to get him and he always shouts ME! when he sees the baby in the pictures. We love Karen Katz in our house. But apparently it was too long for those limited pre-schooler attention spans.
Anyway, despite feeling kind of nervous and self-conscious and the fact that most of the kids were looking anywhere but at the books or me as I read I was pleased with the outcome. Most of the kids paid a little bit of attention, I exposed a bunch of children (I’m assuming) to the idea of adoption, I sold some books, and best of all, I met a whole group of kids and parents who have ties to Russian adoption. I also was invited to bring Little J to a Russian adoption playgroup in Chapel Hill! (I’ll post on that after our first meeting).
After the reading was over a woman came in with her two children. She sat behind my chair and read them my book while I supervised the coloring page I brought. When almost everyone had left she brought the two books she’d bought up to me to sign. She’d driven all the way from Kinston (an hour and a half drive) to my reading and had hit traffic so they missed it. Luckily, she had time to talk afterwards.
Her children, E. and A., had only been here for five months and already both of them could speak a good deal of English! This was astounding to me as Little J took a year and three months to say anything (we got him at 15 months), and didn’t really have language completely for almost two years. E., who was three, had a lot of language and also spoke some Russian (”Dobre oota!” he said. So cute!) and his sister, barely two, also knew a lot of English words. Both were super behavers, too. As the mother of a child with sensory-seeking behaviors and a healthy dose of defiance I appreciate well-behaved children when I meet them. Their mom attributed this to their orphanage as well as a great deal of consistency and effort on her part. I’ll say.
Their mother told me they were the second sibling set that she and her husband had been referred. They had already been on trip number one to meet the first sibling set when the paternal uncle showed up at the orphanage and refused to give permission for their release. The judge in the area was sympathetic to their situation and tried to get the man deemed unfit (because apparently he was) but then the bio father (from whose custody the children had already been removed) showed up and contested the adoption. According to this woman the reason they were contesting it wasn’t because they wanted the children but because they were against Americans adopting from Russia. After struggling with this for a year or so the woman and her husband finally sought another referral and met E. and A. . A happy ending to a really frustrating story!
I told her how sorry I was that they had to lose these other two children and she said they haven’t given up. If the judge in Russia manages to have both men deemed unfit then they will be able to get their original referrals. Imagine that! They potentially will be going from none to two to four children!
It’s stories like these that make me realize how lucky we were in the process of adopting Little J. Our adoption went so smoothly it’s almost unbelievable. Seven months start to finish. That was in 2003. The whole reason we chose to adopt from Russia when we did was because of the clear-cut nature of the process: then, you did the paperwork, you paid the fees, you went to Russia, you met your child. After the ups and downs of miscarriages and fertility treatments it was a relief to finally choose adoption.
Now, it’s not so easy. I know things are rough now for many people. I hope things will come around again. I’d hate for smooth Russian adoptions to be things of the past. There are so many children over there who need homes.
