Yesterday was a day of layers. That is the best way I can describe it. We woke up and went downstairs for breakfast, which was included in the hotel deal. I went the wrong way and wandered towards another lobby-part, inside the hotel, that had a mysterious neon blue light and fancy counter with a pretty lady sitting behind it and 2 giant- and I mean GIANT men who looked like movie stuntmen. When I said, “Breakfast?” in my weak little smiley tourist voice she pointed a long manicured finger in the opposite direction, with a stern face as the two Vladamirs watched silently in front of the heavy closed doors.
Oisin followed me to our table a few minutes later, and I asked him if he did the same thing I did, with the blue light and the double Vladamirs. He said no. “Didn’t the metal detector give you a clue?”
“Metal detector?”
“The big thing you had to walk through to get to the counter? Hello? It’s for guns. That’s some sort of a nightclub up there.”
Ah. Ukrainian mafia, nightclubs and guns. All inside the hotel!
Breakfast was good. It was a buffet style, with lots of different things: little buns with a variety of fillings inside like apricots or sour cherries, cured meats & sausages, cheeses, different types of salads- like chicken salad that was like a creamy coleslaw with super tasty chunks of chicken, herring, boiled eggs wrapped in little paper twists, crepes filled with poppyseeds or apples, a baked “curd” with raisins (which sounds gross and nothing like how fabulous it tasted- it was more like a noodleless sweet kugel, some kind of firm sweet pudding made of what I imagine was a soft cream cheese mixed with sugar, eggs, vanilla, raisins etc and baked till firm then sliced and dusted with icing sugar), muesli, juices, etc. It reminded me of when I was little and hated eating breakfast. When I slept over at my Grandma’s just about every weekend as a kid, she’d ask me what I wanted for breakfast, and I’d always say a grilled cheese sandwich. I used to hate cereal, and pancakes and other “breakfasty” food. So, along with the fact that everybody is tall here, I find myself wondering if stuff like this is part of my secret DNA.
After breakfast, our facilitator (Xenia) and also a translator (Natasha) were going to meet us in the lobby to talk about what is going to happen at the Dept meeting- which is Sept 2nd at 10am. This is where we “choose” our child. After being interviewed yet again by another psychologist. In any case, after hearing all about Xenia from our agency in Montreal, I was really excited to meet her. She has the reputation of being a bit of a bulldog, and although she has a masters degree in physics and mathematics, she chooses to work in international adoption instead. She really, really loves kids. When I met her, I instantly “clicked” with her and liked her immediately, which was great. I wasn’t expecting someone so tiny though! She is just over 5 feet tall, sparrow-like, with sparkling auburn eyes. I didn’t know if I was expecting someone younger or older, but she looked to be in her late 40’s or early 50’s, and she reminded me of a no-nonsense school teacher. As we were soon to find out, she also has a wicked sense of humour!
She gave us the low-down on what happens at these hour-long appointments at the dept, and what to expect with available waiting children. It was all stuff we had heard before, but she said it in her fiery Xenia way: “You must be clear with what you will accept. All children will have health problem! You find correctable problem! If it choice between cute child with serious health problem, and ugly child with small health problem, you must look with heart, not eyes!” And, “Everybody who come to Ukraine want to adopt, and will leave with child! But couple with closed mind maybe don’t adopt in Ukraine. I tell them go instead adopt from Barbie store! Every child have blue eyes blond hair and smile!” None of this was news to us, we’ve been fully prepared the entire way. We were told to make a short list of health issues that we would accept in advance to narrow the list immediately. Oisin and I feel a bit differently about this, admittedly. He feels that we shouldn’t add to the situation by accepting long-term health issues, where I feel that if you have a baby by birth you don’t have much of a say in medical stuff. Plus, kids with illnesses don’t have much of a shot of ever finding a family in Ukraine- the stigma of being an orphan PLUS a sick orphan pretty much guarantees you a life of institutionalization. I guess I feel like if we are lucky enough to live in Canada where medical care is a human right, why not think about helping someone who will otherwise have yet another strike against them? I do understand where Oisin is coming from though- and there really isn’t a right or wrong way to go about this; it really is a personal choice. In any case, we’ve negotiated about what we feel we can best handle as parents. So we’ll go from there when we are presented with the files of kids.
After the meeting was over, we decided to go for a walk to the dept office so we would know where to go on the day without getting lost. We wandered up a steep hill with the most beautiful buildings again- decorated like wedding cakes, and all the pastel colours of easter eggs- soft teal blue, baby duck yellow, rosebud pink… all accented with white iron rail balconies, cornices, swirling trim. We passed a market full of souvenirs of stacked Russian dolls, Soviet era military gear with fur hats and golden pins and wool coats with brass buttons, and painted miniature lacquered boxes with ballerinas and embroidered scarves and wooden eggs. And then I began to feel very sad.
All the adoption books talk about grief. It’s the equal and opposite reaction of all the happiness of creating a family, really. While you, the adults, are overjoyed at the fact that at long last you’ll be parents to a little one you love and adore and celebrate- at exactly the same time, that little kid you are so thrilled and excited about is being taken away from everything and everyone they’ve ever known. And that is pretty damn scary and permanent. Of course we can all intellectualise that they are being given a better life in a family and not an institution where they will have love and care and opportunities for education, etc etc, and long term it’s hard to argue with all of those good things. But even so, as we walked around and it really began to hit me hard, everything I was looking at and appreciating was about to be stolen from our child. She would never know this street in the casual manner of someone who walks across it every day. She wouldn’t attend the incredible, ornate church down the road with the golden onion-domed roof. She wouldn’t meet or marry that handsome young Ukrainian guy waiting at the streetlight. For all the good we were doing on her behalf, we were also removing a lifetime’s worth of possibilities from her. I thought about where I grew up and the things that I loved so much they are as much apart of me as my skin and bones: the smell of the hot prairie grass in summer when the gravel crunches under your feet, the blue endless sky in summer and the green & purple gasoline swirls of the northern lights in winter. Campfire and chirping birds. CBC radio on in the kitchen when you make pancakes on Saturday morning. Kissing your teenaged boyfriend in a freeezing cold car after a movie.
The guilt is breaking my heart already. Who are we to swoop in like some kind of patronising superheros to save the day? Who is to say that one life is better than another, when really they are just different?
Compounding the misery was the fact of seeing all these souvenir stands. Look at where they are: Right outside the children’s dept office. My stomach dropped even further. Suddenly I felt pretty ignorant about adoption statistics. I mean, I know how many kids our agency has placed this year- 22. For the entire province. The other agency placed 4. That’s 26 kids in total for the entire area of Quebec- it doesn’t seem like a lot, does it? But what about other countries? The short answer is I really don’t know. Is it enough to warrant an area of tourist trade? Or have the stands always been situated here, before the dept offices changed address a handful of years ago to tempt tourists on the way to the now closed and decrepit church that is sealed up like a building site? It’s an ugly series of questions.
Later that night the time change caught up with us full force as we lay awake in bed to a rainstorm of monsoon proportions outside our window. Thunder and lightening cracked blue against the ceiling and I wondered if it was raining also where Mena was sleeping.
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