Mail 03 - May 28th
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Mail 03 - May 28th |
May 28
We have a teenage
daughter!!!!!
From the beginning:
We left Kiev at 6 am for a
3-hour van ride to Gorodnya. The 3 hours took us back 60 years. Gorodnya is a
tiny town, dirt roads and very few cars. The roads are filled with elderly women
on even more elderly bikes, motorcycles with sidecars (the WWII kind), draft
horses pulling flatbed wagons filled with potatoes and beets, and random flocks
of chickens. Everything is broken, mended, re-broken and mended again. There is
very little color except for the lush green of the fields that in some lights is
SO green it actually hurts your eyes. Most people still use outhouses and even
businesses such as the courthouse do not have indoor plumbing. You can tell that
people live hard lives; they look tired and pained. No one smiled or even spoke
in an animated manner - it was just a quiet, desperate kind of place.
We had to make a number of
stops to get official papers signed to allow us to meet Nelya. This meant
sitting is a hot, diesel van at a roadside and waiting for an hour or so, trying
to keep two preschoolers amused while our facilitator schmoozed the social
workers.
We finally got to the
orphanage. Basically, we drove up and the gates of hell opened. This is not a
nice place. Neil's orphanage was poor, and sad, but there was hope inside. This
place is more like a concentration camp than a home for children. It is dark,
cold, damp and extremely stinky. Everything is molded, peed on, mildewed and
rotten. Walking up the walkway to the main entrance was probably the hardest
thing I have ever done. The children all came to peer at us. They had sad,
sunken eyes and blank faces. You could tell that a piece of their heart was
whispering "take me" , but their pride and learned disappointment wouldn't allow
them to even make eye contact. At this point I started to panic. All the horror
stories of attachment disordered, hate filled children came flooding back. I
wanted to pick up my babies and run, all the way back to the airport. I just
kept repeating "Julie wouldn't have lied to me" in my mind. Bella and Neil, the
sweet, naive creatures they are, thought the place was "cool" because there
were lots of kids and dogs.
Mangy, wormy, neglected dogs - as sad to me as the kids.
We entered the hallway,
into a dark, cold foyer with 20-foot ceilings and an incredible stench. We were
escorted to a small room, nicely furnished and decidedly less stinky. The
Director, a man in a nice suit, came forward. He introduced himself, asked a few
questions of our translator, shook our hands and we were dismissed. All of this
was in Russian, so I was unsure of what was happening. We were then escorted to
another office. More children came out to peer, and stared until we were out of
sight. This office was also comfortable. It was staffed by a friendly woman
named Helen. She spoke little English, but smiled and patted our arms. She began
to ask questions of our translator. We sat, waiting for the process to wind down
and to hear if we would be able to meet our daughter. At that time, the door
opened, and in walked a hunched, frightened child. My first thought is "she has
been sent here for a paddling - how cruel" She looked up under her long,
scraggly bangs and I saw such fear in her eyes it took my breath away. Our eyes
met, and I realized it was her - it was our Nelya. I jumped up and hugged her
and began to cry. She began to cry as well, and clung to me like a hurt toddler.
Bill stood and gently hugged us both and she started to sob. Then he began to
cry, and the kids started jumping up and down. I looked down at her face and she
is beautiful. She has a beautiful profile, (very like Bella's) long, thick hair
and perfect skin. She is petite and well proportioned.
At that moment, she
changed. Right before my eyes I saw a little girl regain her hope. It was so
precious. I cannot say that I loved her unconditionally like I did Bella and
Neil, because tempering that love is
the question of whether or
not she will love me. It's much more like an arranged marriage than a birth. We
spent the day together, and her natural grace and strength became more apparent.
She is a good girl, by hard work and ongoing choice. At this orphanage they get
to choose. As small children, they are strictly supervised. As they age, it
happens less. By the time they are 10, there is not enough staff or resources to
concern themselves with these older kids. If they go to class, great. If they
don't, no one checks. They can primp themselves up and walk off to town to smoke
and hang out as hoodlums. Those that don't, don't because they intrinsically
want to do right and to learn. There is no reward in it for them really; at 16
or so they are out on the streets just like the "bad kids", with no chance at
college or a comfortable life.
We were asked to determine
a name for our daughter. We asked her for her preference. She wants to keep her
first name, get a new middle and last name, and change her spellings to be "Amerikanskii".
She had thought it through! That said, she is now Nelly Margaret Delmatoff;
Nelya, Nell or Nelka for short. She was quite insistent that she have two "L"s
like Bella does.
We returned to our
apartment after a long, drawn out, cognac fueled lunch in a total pit of a disco
(a story for another time) and the 3 hour ride, complete with speeding ticket
and $2 bribe. Showered, shampooed, in clean clothes and eating voraciously, she
is ours. And we are very glad.
More to come; love you all!
L