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Last Updated: Aug 8th, 2011 - 11:19:52 |
A Journey Back Home To Russia For Our Son
Ten years ago, we adopted Patrick in Russia. We're back in Tyumen to visit his hometown.
By Rich Zahradnik
TYUMEN, RUSSIA -- The Tyumen Baby Home looks something like an American elementary school built in the 1930s. A few cracked bricks here and there, but the place is in good shape, as it was almost 10 years ago. Playground equipment of iron painted in bright primary colors tells you this is a place for kids, in this case, where kids live.
Sheri, Patrick, and I climb the stairs that Sheri and I went up on Oct. 18, 2001, when we arrived to adopt Patrick. We are greeted by the director of the baby home. A medical doctor, she is the same woman we met a decade ago, and she beams to see Patrick. In Russian, she asks how Patrick is doing in school, in sports and how is his health. He presents her with a photo book of his life in Tyumen and America right up through Colonial’s Ellis Island field trip in June. Our translator wipes away tears and starts translating. Sheri tears up. The director tears up. Patrick isn’t quite sure what to make of all this.
Ten years ago, we told the director we’d bring Patrick back for a visit. Today, she tells us many people make this promise when they adopt, but few keep it. In fact, Patrick is the third child from the Tyumen Baby Home to return. Russia began permitting international adoptions about 15 years ago. (There will a picture of Patrick with the director next to this column if I can upload the photos from here in Russia.)
We arrived in Moscow last Sunday to join the families of 15 other Russian adoptees, ages 6 through 16. Together, we toured historic sites like the Kremlin and Red Square, learned of Russian culture and history, and ate meals together. On Wednesday, we split up to fly to the different cities and towns across the giant country of Russia where each of the kids was born. After this, we will meet up back in St. Petersburgh for more history and culture, and some relaxation.
These home country visits have two goals for adopted kids. The first, and most important, is to let them see where they come from, so as to make the mysterious and theoretical, open, visible and real. We want them to know about their lives from the beginning in a very concrete way, because knowing will counter the shame and fear that can arise when the adoption story is sketchy, or not discussed, or worst of all, treated as a secret. Kids see secrets as a sign that something bad happened, that there is something wrong with them.
The second goal is to teach them about their culture and heritage, so they can feel great when telling people who they are and where they are from. Home visits now happen for kids from Russia, China, South Korea, India, Vietnam, several South American nations, really anywhere international adoptions occur.
Not all the visits are as easy ours. The Tyumen Baby Home is well provided for, as this city of 600,000 is the capital of a huge oil and gas region in southwestern Siberia (we’re 1,300 miles form Moscow). Some places are far poorer and the conditions much tougher, and the kids will see this and need to find ways to understand it.
The highlight of our visit comes when we walk across the courtyard and go up the stairs to the room where we met Patrick. Ten years ago, he was in a walker near the doorway, chewing on a wooden Russian spoon and looking up with the big black eyes he still has. He may have smiled. Then again, he always loves to meet new people. We see the chair we sat in to read him his first (English) story: The Big Red Barn. We see where we first fed him, changed him and put him to bed, in the room with nine cribs he shared with his group-mates. Today, he stands next to that crib for a picture as a little one sleeps.
The front room of the group area (there are eight or nine babies to an area like this) is fitted out with playpens, infant swings, a changing table and a mural on the far wall. It is much as we left it, though with upgrades to the furniture and equipment. It is clean, well kept and looks like a room in an American daycare center, give or take the different styles of furniture. The back room has the cribs. The baby home cares for children infant to three; after that, the kids move on to an orphanage.
Patrick received great care here, and was loved. When we departed with him on Oct. 23, 2011, one of his caregivers followed us to the stairs, crying, saying “do svidaniya” (goodbye) until we were out of the building.
I don’t know yet what this visit will mean for Patrick. Ten-year-olds don’t tell you much about that sort of thing, not right away at least. Today, he asks us about St. Petersburg, and in particular, seeing the artillery museum there. So, still a boy. After the visit to the baby home, we go to a carnival in a pedestrian mall. Patrick bounces in harness on a huge trampoline, shoots at a target and rides the bumper cars. All right in the middle of his home town.
© Copyright 2008 by AdoptionDesk.com
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