Giving Birth to a Child Would Have Taken the Same Amount of Time
We wondered what our adopted daughter would be like. What was her past? Little did we know we would find out everything.
Nine months from the day we started filling out the Ukrainian adoption application we were approved and on a plane to Ukraine to find our little girl. How ironic that giving birth to a child would have taken the same amount of time. Ron and I spent most of the ten hour flight to Ukraine wondering what our daughter would be like. Would she be out-going or shy, artistic or athletic, funny or introspective? Would she like animals? We hoped so since we had a big, brown, lovable lab named Smudge, and four horses.
But we almost didn’t make it to Ukraine. The Miami office of The Department of Homeland Security, which gives adopted children citizenship as soon as their feet touch US soil, had seemed determined to prevent us from adopting. The Department insisted they hadn’t received our FedExed application even though we had documentation that they had signed for the package. Our adoption application including the home study from our adoption agent, background check from the FBI, original birth certificates from Texas and Virginia and marriage license from Colorado was lost forever. There was a little girl in Ukraine pointlessly waiting for parents because DHS was disorganized!
The Department of Homeland Security lost our paperwork. Not trusting the competency of DHS mailroom, I guilted the clerk into letting me hand deliver our reconstructed application, which is not allowed. I had to meet her in the parking lot at 6:30 am. She said she would be wearing red. I felt like a spy.
Redoing all the paperwork took months, especially getting the right phone number for the FBI and convincing them to resend our background check. During this time Ron and I channeled our frustration by preparing our daughter’s room. We built a child-size table and chairs out of walnut with maple inlay. Ron had come up with a unique way of embedding magnets in the top of the table with a thin layer of wood covering them. I sculpted toys, also with magnets embedded, that could be attached to the table. One of the toys consisted of two wooden slices of bread that connected with magnets. From colored pieces of felt I cut swiss cheese, ham, tomato and mustard that could be layered between the slices of wooden bread and then stuck to the table. As our trip got delayed longer I had time to make more and more toys. There was an ice cream cone, orange slice, cupcake, brown lab, teddy bear, butterfly, cat, lady bug and slice of birthday cake.
A friend, the owner of Genius Jones, a high-end children’s store, saw the furniture and asked Ron to manufacture a line of children’s furniture for his store but we weren’t interested. We had been inspired to make the table and chairs for our daughter. We took pictures of the furniture, her room, our house, Smudge, my parents (who would be her grandparents) and made a photo book to show her what her life would be like in our family.
Not again! Now Interpol is stalling our adoption.
When Ron and I finally landed in Ukraine, Alex, our adoption facilitator, met us at the airport with bad news. Interpol had seized a suspicious container and in it was our dossier including the long-awaited approval from the Department of Homeland Security. These papers were required for our appointment at the adoption center in Kiev. Interpol could take a week, a month or longer to release the contents of the container. Ron and I were devastated but there wasn’t anything we could do except wait and hope. We decided if Interpol didn’t release our papers by the end of the week we would go home. We couldn’t put our life on hold and wait in Ukraine indefinitely. We were frustrated and discouraged.
Our hosts said Americans smile a lot and asked, “Does smiling so much make your cheeks hurt?”
As a whole, Ukrainians don’t smile. The people on the street and in shops look like they’re mad at you. It’s unnerving. If you smile at them they don’t return the smile. They just ignore you harder. Pasha and Alla, the Ukrainian couple that Ron and I were staying with, explained that Ukrainians are suspicious of strangers that smile at them. Our hosts said Americans are always smiling and asked us if it made our cheeks hurt.
As unfriendly as Ukrainians seem at first, once you get to know them they are exceptionally warm and generous. To help us keep our mind off of our missing paperwork, Pasha and Alla spent the week thinking of interesting places to take us. We visited the folk art museum, gold-roofed churches, Andriyivskuy Street, where craftsman sell souvenirs, and the WWII memorial, Lady Victory, a giant silver-colored statue of a woman, bigger than the Statue of Liberty, commemorating victory over the Germans. The bloodiest battle and turning point of the war was the Battle of Kiev. Still hopeful for a successful adoption, we wondered how our future daughter’s ancestors had been affected by the war.
Pasha saved the best excursion for last, The Ukrainian Village. Acres of rolling hills were covered in traditional farm houses. Depending on the region, the small houses were white or yellow ochre with flowers painted around the doors and thatched roofs. At the center of each house was a huge stucco stove with a small metal door at the bottom of one end where wood would be inserted. The most unusual feature of the stove was the long built-in ledge that was stacked with blankets and used as a bed. I wondered how many Ukrainians had waked up on fire!
Workers at the park dressed in traditional Ukrainian costumes and were sprinkled around in exhibits demonstrating pottery, candle making, pansky (egg decorating) and horsemanship. A young woman on the stable staff was rigging horses to a wagon when one slipped away from her. The woman, shrieking and waving a switch in the air, chased the poor critter all over the open fields. Ron and I could have quickly caught the horse for her by letting him settle and then slowly meandering to him with soothing words and a treat. Instead we silently cheered for the horse…run away, run away, faster! Why would the horse want to come back to her?! She was just going to beat him. What a miserable life he had with her as his caregiver. We wondered if she was just inexperienced or would we discover that her her attitude was common in Ukraine.
My phone rang. It was Alex, our facilitator. Realizing that this was the call we had been waiting for, Ron video taped me on the phone as tears streamed down my face. Our papers had arrived at the adoption center. Our appointment to select our little girl was the next day!
The trip to the historical village gave us insight into what life was like for our daughter-to-be.
Here is a little more of our story:
Forward: I Felt the Infant’s Sharp Teeth Dig Into My Shoulder
Chapter 1: What’s the First Thing You Remember?
Chapter 2: I Stole His Scooter One Winter Night
Chapter 3: My Last Walk to School
Chapter 4: Giving Birth to a Child Would Have Taken the Same Amount of Time
Chapter 5: How Were We Going to Pick a Daughter to Adopt Based on a Little Photo and a Few Facts?
Chapter 6: What Do You Do When You’re Six and Find a Dead Body?
More of the story coming soon.