@ Home in the World

Do over!

This morning I signed the papers accepting the recommendation that Pumpkin repeat Kindergarten. It wasn't easy to hear, but it wasn't a big surprise, either.

I wish that I could come up with some way to describe how I feel other than "disappointment." Not in Pumpkin, or in his teacher or school; I think everyone involved did the very best they could in the situation. It's more that I'm disappointed things didn't work out on the standard path.

I, of all people, should know better.

I know that Pumpkin's sensory issues and language difficulties are quite common for an internationally adopted kid, but what I know is not just about him or about adoption.

I know enough to understand that the "standard path" is kind of a myth, and that every kid develops and progresses differently. I know that this "grade by age" system is the way it's always been done, but it doesn't really work for a lot of kids. I look around at the kids in our church, and our town and school, and the blogs I read, and I see a lot of kids with "issues." Those issues often mean that they need a little extra help or accommodation or understanding from the school systems which are trying not to be one-size-fits-all in spite of our nation's current standardized testing mania. I know that last year our school asked that an extraordinary number of Kindergartners repeat this year and I think I know why.

The work that Tigger is doing in first grade is astonishing. He's had a small amount of homework four nights a week for the better part of this year. He's had a couple of larger projects including a multi-step autobiographical project that culminated in a grade-wide play, and his first (small-scale) research paper. Tigger's in a multi-age class that combines first and second grades, but a research paper?  Wow!

Smart as he is, there's no way that Pumpkin could handle that kind of pressure. This is the school system's way of ensuring that Pumpkin can handle the work and the social interactions without expensive special education services. This is their way of keeping him from getting lost in the system.  I think I'm okay with that.

In my life, I have encountered an extraordinary number of youngest brothers who have lost their way in life - my brother, my uncle, my husband's uncle, the youngest brothers of several friends. Some found their way back, others did not. I have no idea what sends these guys to the edge, when their older siblings did not have the same struggles, but I've seen it enough to worry about it. I'll never know if this is the thing that helps keep Pumpkin from getting lost, but it's worth a try to me.

My Russia

"Mama, will you draw my Russia?" asks the Pumpkin.

He and his father are the real artists in the family, but he insists and so I take the crayon and do my best attempt at something resembling St. Basil's or St. Petersburg's Church of the Spilled Blood. My attempts are always too asymmetrical, the onion domes too disturbingly phallic. But Pumpkin doesn't really know this, and is pleased.

His teacher told me a story of an international chamber music quartet that came to visit the school and play for the students. The musicians were from everywhere from Wyoming to Japan and they played music of all different cultures. When they announced a piece from Russia, Pumpkin once again said "My Russia!" and sat up with a smile. A boy from another classroom turned and said to him "I'm from Russia too." The two boys listened to the piece with rapt attention, happy to have connected with their heritage, and each other, in some small way.

It's hard to know what he remembers. He will often repeat the phrase "I was a baby in Russia," but the truth is that he didn't come to us until he was three years old. I think he knows more than he can really communicate.

Russia remains important to him, but he has crossed a threshhold. He no longer wants to be addressed by his Russian nickname. "I'm not __________, " he will say. "I'm __________!" The songs he sings now are all in English.

For both boys, Russia is a place of fancy buildings and stories. Most of their memories are wrapped up in the photos they've seen a million times. But a place you have lived in inevitably touches you and lives on inside of you ever after. Russia is a multi-dimensional study in contrasts; opulence and dilapidation; opportunity and struggle;  democracy and dictatorship. It is the coldness of the climate, and the gruffness of the people, broken open by the warm smile the director gives you when you say "Da. Yes, I will take this child, about whom I know so little, and make him my own. He will have a home with us."

Like their birthplace, the boys have struggled with transitions, clinging to the old, while trying to find their places in the new. Their challenges have brought me to the breaking point more than a few times. But more and more these days I can look at their little heads bent over their "work," or talk with their teachers about the difficulty they are having and the support they are getting, or watch the sheer joy they express when visiting with their grandparents, and I can think  --

Thank God they're here.

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This week we mark five years with Tigger and three years with Pumpkin as part of our family. We celebrate the growth of both the children and the adults in the family.

All Those Other Children

After a difficult second day visting the Baby Home, Viktor, our facilitator and translator, arranged for us to observe Tigger in his group. We were concerned about his complete lack of eye contact and wanted to see know he got on with the other children and the caretakers of his group. The plan was for us to sit unobtrusively in the back of the room and watch.

As honored as I was by this opportunity,* I was also terrified. What if I fell in love with a different child in his group? Would we try to adopt both of them? Would I have to choose between them? Would the other child even be available for adoption?

Armed with snacks for T (giving your child food is part of the bonding process) in our duffel, we were ushered into the little room that served as their dining room, and classroom. It looked like any preschool classroom, tiny tables and chairs, shelves full of "developmental" toys, primary colors. Unobtrusive wasn't going to work. In preparation for our visit, his caretakers had gotten him off the potty first and he was alone in the classroom when we walked in. He stopped what he was doing and stared at us. At first I thought he recognized us, but then other children came in. One by one, they came zipping into the room, saw us, stopped and stared. Even as they moved into their activities (the caretakers do what they can to help the children develop motor skills and on this day it was sorting blocks and stringing beads), the children would steal glances at us.

Developmental work carried on for about 20 minutes until T's caretakers, seeing that he wasn't doing much of anything, moved all the children to the larger playroom where they could run around. They formed a train and danced around the room. We may have wanted to see T in his regular surroundings, but his caretakers wanted him to make a good impression. Piper and I moved to the playroom and several of the children approached us looking for attention. "Can we play with them?" I asked? Yes.

T was very deliberately hanging out on the other side of the room, away from us. The smallest child in the group came up and fussed at me. I picked him up and held him for a while. Every time I tried to put him down, he would cry. So I held him until something else attracted his attention and he wriggled down. At some point I realized that he had extra thumbs.

A truck lumbered by the orphanage and many of the children ran to the window. I helped some of the kids up to the windowsill where they could stand. The baby home's nearest neighbor was some kind of junkyard and the trucks going by all day provided the children with some entertainment. T pushed up a large foam block and stood on it to see out the window on the far side of the room. Eventually one of the children spotted a bird and a caretaker and several of the kids started making bird noises. In an effort to protect them from illness, the children had not been outside for several months so this was literally their window to the world.

The children (except T) were clearly thrilled with the extra adult company and would come over to show us something they were playing with or to play with my rings. One little girl with short, sandy, hair  did make an impression on me, the most outgoing of the group, but I decided it was time to interact with my son.

I walked across the room to get him, sat down with him, and tried the only thing that had gotten him to smile the day before - a couple of rounds of Trot, Trot to Boston. Thankfully, it worked because Viktor came up and told me we were being "observed" by someone from one of the Ministries who would testify for us in court as to how we interacted with our child.

A few moments later I told Viktor that he would have to get someone to explain T's daily routine to us, so we could make him as comfortable as possible when he came home.

The caretakers told the children it was time to clean up. T joined his group in putting away the toys (we'd have to remember those words in Russian). When it was time to eat he was the first to scoot back into the classroom for his bowl of red cabbage soup and cup of tepid tea.

Back in the car Viktor asked us formally if were were ready to accept the referral for the child.

We were.

At the hotel, I realized how utterly exhausted I was after that visit. I had no idea how emotionally draining the whole experience would be. All those other children, what would happen to them?  Most were in very good health in spite of their small size. How many would find homes, and what would become of the ones who didn't?

By many estimates, there are some 600,000 children in orphanages across Russia. It's a number almost impossible to fathom. Many of them are not orphans at all, but have living parents who cannot afford to care for them. And that's just Russia, it's not counting the children in China and India, Africa and Latin America, or the thousands in the foster care system here in the States. Whose children are they?   

Sometimes I think I started this blog less for the two children who came into our home and family and more for the ones who didn't.

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*I don't know how common this is. Our social worker expressed some surprise that we were allowed to do this, but I have also spoken with other parents who have been given tours of their child's living and sleeping quarters.

Orphanage #6

Our second day at the baby home did not go as well as the first.

From the moment we started up the stairs I thought the place felt different. We could hear a child crying in behind a door somewhere and when they brought T. to see us, he was clearly agitated about something. He seemed more frightened of us than the day before and he would not make eye contact. We finally engaged him with one of my silver rings and a few rounds of “Trot, trot to Boston.”

On our second visit we were due to speak with the head doctor of the orphanage. Viktor ushered us into the doctor’s office where we waited, and waited. Viktor returned and sat with us. “On this day you would expect to talk to the doctor to get the medical information for the child. Today there is no doctor here to speak with you… but there is a very good reason…. Today one of the children in the orphanage died. All the doctors are at the hospital….”

Stoic Viktor. I never could tell whether he was actually broken up about it or just hesitant to tell us. I like to think it was the former.

We did eventually get to speak to the doctor, who gave us more in depth information about T.’s medical history - very healthy, only sick twice in his two years there, normal growth patterns. There were comments on his social status - a two-year old “leader” in his group.

I voiced my concern over T.’s lack of eye contact on our second visit. It was as if we had to start all over with him and I wanted to know that he had formed an attachment of sorts with his caretakers or groupmates (of course at that age toddlers don’t really play with other children, so this would be harder to tell). Viktor insisted that T.’s reaction had more to do with the fact that we came to visit just before mealtime and the child was afraid he was going to miss his lunch. “Vova,” Viktor said, using T.’s Russian nickname, “likes to eat.”

To our surprise, Viktor arranged for us to see T. in his group setting. But that is an experience for another post.

Adoptions Suspended

If you are reading this blog because you are interested in adopting from Russia, you might appreciate this article, the best I've seen explaining the current suspension of foreign adoption from Russia.

Since I have been paying attention to these issues, such suspensions have happened several times for various reasons. Putin shut down adoptions altogether shortly after becoming president in order to clean up much of the corruption that was associated with the process at the time. Prospective parents adopting in the 90s were asked to bring $10,000 in cash. I don't think that sort of thing happens anymore, we were given an itemized list of fees and expenses (not including hotel and meals). Some of those fees were either approximate or given in a range, but at one point our facilitator gave us back money when something didn't cost as much as he thought it would.

But Russian attitudes toward adoption in general, and foreign adoption in particular, are not very favorable. When we were there for our second adoption, much was being made in the Russian media about the death of a Russian boy at the hands of his American parents. The focus was on the dozen or so children who have died in the states over the years, with little mention of the hundreds who die while still in orphanages. There are rumors that Americans buy the children for the purposes of organ donation, with no discussion of the children who are sold for sex (warning, real terjearker at that link) in Russia. It has been said that Nina Ostanina, deputy head of the Duma's commission on family affairs, has long wanted to stop foreign adoptions altogther, but doesn't have the support in the Duma. Instead the process gets harder and harder. I also read somewhere that Russia is considering a foster care system, and while that may help address some of the attachment issues that occur as a result of institutionalization, I fear that it will leave many more children vulnerable to abuse.

My point here is not to castigate the Russians or the orphanage system. My hope is that what happens with the new accreditation system really does benefit the children. For many of us who have been there, all of those children reside in our hearts. My wish is that relations between our countries would improve despite our leaders' efforts to the contrary. My fear is that if my boys should someday want to return to Russia to the learn about the land that (and the women who) bore them, they would not be welcomed.

Adoption, for all its faults and challenges, is a gift born out of loss on all sides. It may or may not be the best case scenario, but it is certainly not the worst. 

First Day in St. Petersburg

The city of St. Petersburg is only about as old as the city of Boston. It’s hard to remember that because the history and the architecture makes the city seem ancient. For its 300th anniversary, St. Petersburg was getting a makeover. Roads and buildings that had fallen into disrepair over the years since the fall of Communism were getting some much needed attention, work crews and scaffolding were everywhere. March and April are tough times to visit Russia and really see its beauty. Not quite winter, not really spring, the first impression is grey and grimy. But you can’t miss the brightly colored buildings, palaces from tsarist times, now mostly museums. The churches and cathedrals with their stunning onion domes tell you immediately that you have arrived in Russia.

In many ways, St. Petersburg is a very European city. It considers itself the Venice of the north. Entire parts of the city are on separate islands, connected by bridges. More than once we saw people walking the frozen canals. But there would be plenty of time to explore the city after we met our child.

After Vika haggled with Air France for the swift return of our luggage, we were whisked off to the Ministry of Education to get the referral for a two-year old boy residing in Orphanage #6. Waiting in that office with other prospective parents, we noticed that it was occupied by mostly women in high heeled boots who walked briskly and loudly through the halls, slamming doors behind them; an intimidating first impression. But our “invitation” meeting went smoothly and then it was off to the baby home.

Detsky Dom 6 is a dilapidated yellow building that houses about 85 children in groups of 10-15. We were asked to don blue plastic booties to keep the city dirt off the floors. The orphange is old but essentially clean despite the smells of cabbage soup and diapers. We were introduced to Viktor, who would be our primary facilitator. We then met the orphanage director and were shown to a small sitting room where we would meet our child.

When they brought our two-year old boy into the room he cried at first until I picked him up. When I put him down again he pointed at my husband and said “dadda.” Or so I thought. The facilitators quickly corrected my impression - the word he used meant “man.” Orphanage children don’t see a lot of men, and those they do see are usually doctors who are going to give shots. It takes a while for these kids to warm up to their new fathers.

After a few minutes, the facilitators left us with the baby and we attempted to get to know each other. T. was wide-eyed and cautious. He regarded us warily. I suppose we did the same.

So much goes into “meeting your child.” I guess there are few decisions in life as big as this one. Can you bond with the child? Is he healthy? If he has health issues, are they ones you can cope with? We’ve met parents who have had to turn down an initial referral because of health issues. The specter of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome hangs over the whole decision, though I’ve come to suspect that the fear is greater than the actual occurrence.

They tell you to bring food, as that is the best way connect with your child. Feeding your child facilitates the bonding process. Bring toys, particularly toys they have to do something with. Neither of our children were even remotely interested in stuffed animals until months after they came home, and toys like blocks will help you get an impression of where the child is developmentally.

By the time the facilitators returned, I had T. in my lap with his head on my chest, rubbing his back, and watching him look up at me from to time. I had, in those short moments, found the key to connecting with my son. He LOVES to have his back rubbed.  I think Viktor might even have looked a little surprised when he came in to read from T’s medical history.

Another quirk about Russian adoptions is that the Russians don’t want healthy children to leave the country, so Russian medical records are often littered with scary-sound diagnoses like “perinatal encephalapathy.” Expect to hear about allergies to fruits. You may need an American doctor to consult with.

Visits with your child are never long enough. When ours was over we returned T. to his group and the door to his little world was quickly closed. Pak-kah!

Our hotel, the Angleterre, was a welcome retreat after our long trip, our encounter with the ministry, and the experience of the orphanage. Fairly luxurious, it was an odd place to be doing laundry in the sink until our luggage could be recovered. But we desperately needed sleep, we needed a real meal, and of course, there was a lot to think about.

Brave and Crazy*

A woman in church made me cry the other day.

Now in fairness, I'm strangely prone to crying in church. There was the day that the neighbor's oldest child guided Tigger up to the altar to be part of the children's procession at the end of the service, and the day I realized that Tigger could go up to the altar by himself at the end of the service without my fearing for his behavior. There was the day that my father-in-law took my hand for the Lord's Prayer at a moment when I was thinking about the loss of my own father years earlier, and countless other times when emotion has simply gotten the better of me.

So naturally tears sprung to my eyes when this woman approached me with a hug and said "I just wanted to tell you how much I admire you for what you are doing with your boys. Your oldest has come so far, I'm so impressed by him. You are very courageous and you are doing a great job."

It's a small church, and a small town, and just about everyone who knows us knows our story. I'm pretty open about it anyway. When you show up one day with a toddler son you didn't have last week, people are going to know. But our kids happen to be from Russia, their skin tone matches ours, so it's not like we have strangers coming up to us at Target and asking where they are from or who their "real mothers" are.

When you get into the adoption process, you often get a bonus lesson about the rude, offensive, or insensitive things people might say or ask when talking about your kids or your experience. We may have it easy, because we don't have the racial component added to our story, but I personally haven't heard much that I'm offended by.

To me, ignorance is only bad if it is willful. And while there are some who will use questions to voice a judgement, most people asking questions do so out of curiousity, a desire to know more, to learn what someone else's reality is, and how they cope. I wish that I were more comfortable talking about questions of difference, that I could smoothly navigate issues of race and ethnicity, culture, special needs, and class difference, but they are generally outside of my experience, and so I have to ask. And this is where it gets tricky, because I'm not likely to approach strangers with questions, I even have a hard time with small talk in the checkout aisle, so I have to get to know a person before I can ask that sort of thing. I have to hope that the person I'm asking senses my awkwardness and decides not to take offense, because if people stop asking, we will never understand each other.

Now, adoptive parents generally don't want to be thought of as charitable, courageous, or brave simply because we are adoptive parents, but I could not think of my church friend's words as anything but encouraging. My mother made no secret of the fact that she thought I was crazy for having kids at all, let alone going "halfway across the world" to get them. I think she was afraid I didn't have a strong (read controlling) enough personality to be a good parent.

Yes, I might feel differently if I heard "well that's brave" from someone who just met us and heard our story for the first time, but I also recognize that behind the "you're crazy" tone, is personal apprehension "I couldn't do that," or "I don't know if I could handle that." If I had had a better sense of the reality of what I was getting myself into before I got into it, I might be saying the same thing. But if I lived governed by my fears, I'd never get anything done. Of course, now I am doing it, and, after much trial and error, I'm doing it pretty well.

*Apologies to Melissa Etheridge

Race Part 3

Part 1. Part 2.

Back in the morning to Sheremetyevo 2, just long enough to catch the shuttle (an unmarked, white van, thank you very much) to Sheremetyevo 1. The domestic airport was even more decrepit, but it at least it had bright new computer screens announcing the departure gates and times. We quickly found our flight listed at gate 13 and headed over.

“Don’t we need to check in over there?” asked my husband, indicating a row of desks.

“No, we have no luggage to check.” And so we sat.

When they finally began to board the flight, the attendant looked at the hand printed ticket someone had given me at the counter the night before, and said “This is not a boarding pass, you have to go over there to get a boarding pass. Hurry.”

And so we dashed back over to those desks my husband had asked about (yes, he was right) and showed them our tickets.

“I’m sorry,” said the woman behind the counter, “that flight has already left.”

You know, I had held it together for almost 36 hours. In all our travels, we had never missed a connection, never lost luggage, never been stuck anywhere except Logan Airport. I was exhausted, stressed, I’d been wearing the same clothes for the last two days, I was worried about ever getting out of this city and all I wanted to do is meet our little boy. So, with nothing left, I lost it on some poor young woman behind the counter in a Moscow airport.

“What do you mean? How could the flight have left? It’s over there boarding now!”

“No, that is the flight to Minsk, your flight left ten minutes ago, it is already gone, I’m sorry.”

“But there it is, up on the screen, at gate 13, with ten minutes to go!” By this time my husband was trying to shush me, something he rarely bothers to do.

“Oh, that is only what the computer says, and the computer is always wrong.”

But my little scene did get us some help. Of course the next Aeroflot flight was not until late in the afternoon, but perhaps we could get another ticket with the other airline that made regular trips. It was a small bite out of the cash we had brought with us, but we got ourselves some roubles and bought new tickets.

More waiting. Enough time to figure out how to use a Russian payphone to call our facilitators, and notice that an awful lot of the suitcases going by were mummified in brown plastic packing tape. Enough to question whatever made me think I could do this, and to worry that this was a sign of things to come.

At last they began boarding our flight - on to a shuttle bus. The bus was filled with Indians - were we in the wrong place again?

“St. Petersburg?” I asked the guy next to me.

“Yes, St. Petersburg, you are in the right bus.”

I must have expressed enough relief for him to catch my accent. “American?” he asked.

“Yes”

“Where are you from.”

“Boston.” It was a major city, perhaps he would have heard of it.

“Ah, Boston. I went to college there.”

Wow. Small world. I began to relax a little after that. He told us a few stories about his college days, spoke to his family about the fact that we were from Boston. Nice guy.

We boarded the flight and arrived in St. Petersburg an hour later. Our facilitators were there to meet us. Vika took us to the Air France office to make sure we got our luggage back. It was still Monday, the ministry would still see us and we could meet our son right after that.

Amazing, indeed.

Originally published on Harbor Log, March, 2006

Race Part 2

Continued from here:

The flight to Moscow was uneventful, but because we had left later than I expected it was quite dark when we landed. Sheremetyevo Airport is a strange combination of 60’s mod geometry and Soviet-era industrialism. I distinctly remember a ceiling covered with concrete cylinders with matching, if rather dim, light fixtures, all wrapped in a blue-grey cigarette smoky haze. It’s amazing how assaulting cigarette smoke can be once you have become accustomed to the smoke-free environments of the States. Yet, stepping off that plane and encountering my first signs in Cyrillic, I started to smile. I had wanted to travel to Russia since High School, and here I had finally made it. Fortunately most of the signs were also in English with those international symbols for things like baggage claim and we made our way down to the bottleneck that is passport control.

There are forms to fill out, one for customs claims (actually you fill out two copies of this for entry and exit), and a second for registration, so they can theoretically track your travels across the country. Passport control takes the top of the form and the bottom half remains in your passport until you leave.

I bring this up because as excited as I was to finally be in Russia, I was a bit intimidated as well. I didn’t know the language anywhere near as well as I had hoped and there were all those years of history filling my head. What if I got something wrong? I must have looked nervous, because the woman in the booth gave me a quick grin after seriously frowning at my passport. Relax, she seemed to say. A couple of stamps, and I was through. Once my husband had been through the same process, we headed off to find our luggage.

Since much is being made of the “anniversary” in the media, I will mention the other reason I was a bit nervous about this trip. The United States had invaded Iraq two days earlier. Most vocal in their opposition to the war were France, Germany, and Russia, all countries we would be travelling through for this adoption. How would we be treated? Canadian flag patches, anyone?

We found the baggage claim area, but after what seemed like a half and hour, it was clear that our luggage had not made the change of flight with us. More paperwork, more frowning Russians, and then suddenly we didn’t have much time before we needed to make our connection to St. Petersburg. Back upstairs to study the board. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t find the flight number so I asked someone at a counter. She wrote down a number and pointed us up to the next floor. The man behind the counter there wrote down a new office number and sent us back downstairs. I think this happened two or three times, and everytime we returned to the main floor, we were accosted by a swarm of Russian taxi drivers all looking for a fare. At one point a crowd of travellers dashed for the exit, and a woman behind the counter motioned for us to follow, but since I had no idea where they were going we stayed put.

I began to feel as if we were never going to escape that dark, smoky, seemingly airless, windowless, airport. We were never going to get away from these predatory taxi drivers. I was panicked, I couldn’t breathe, we were losing time, and ultimately we missed that flight too.

It turns out that there are two Sheremetyevo airports, one for international flights and one for domestic flights. In order to meet our flight to St. Petersburg, we would have had get on the shuttle bus (following the frantic crowd) and ride to a completely different airport. Resigned, we changed our flight to the following morning, booked at room at the nearby Novotel, called our facilitator, and had dinner in the otherwise empty Mexican-themed restaurant off the lobby. We hadn’t made it to St. Petersburg, but at least we were out of that building. By that time I needed a margarita.

Oh yes, there’s more, but I will end here for now with the note that last night’s * Amazing Race started with the tail end of the teams’ Moscow leg. Out of 10 remaining teams, two got evening flights out to Frankfurt, and the rest had to sleep overnight in Sheremetyevo (shudder).

*Orginally posted on Harbor Log March, 2006

Our Amazing Race

The beginning of our first adoption adventure...

It’s late March and both my husband and I feel that it’s time to be off to St. Petersburg. There’s just something about the temperature or the light this time of year that brings back that feeling, part anticipation, part panic, that is part of the travel portion of the process. Both of our adoptions took place in the Spring.

Russia may be unique in requiring two trips for an adoption. On the first trip you meet the child and accept the referral. The second trip is for the actual adoption court date and resulting paperwork.

Since becoming parents and having much of our own travel restricted by the presence of small children, we have become big fans of The Amazing Race. For those who haven’t seen the show, a bunch of two-person teams run frantically through airports to secure flights to their destinations, and upon arriving, run frantically through a foreign country trying to complete tasks before heading frantically back to the airport for the next leg of the race. All the while they bicker with each other, try to get directions from people speaking a completely different language, absorb some culture in a very short time frame, and occasionally eat really strange food.

Our first trip to Russia was a lot like that.

We knew, before we ever left Logan Airport, that we were going to miss our connecting flight in Paris. Why we didn’t attend to the issue in Boston is anybody’s guess, but we thought perhaps they could find a different flight from Paris more easily in Paris (yes, I know this is all computerized, I had other things on my mind at the time). At least I was able to sleep on the flight across the Atlantic. I was unable to sleep on the flight to Rome six months earlier and it wrecked me for three days. When we arrived in Paris, I was awake and ready to put together Plan B.

We were sent to the Air France transfer desk and we had a bit of trouble finding it. Once there, the woman behind the counter, listened to our plight and said. “We will put you up in a hotel here in Paris and book you on tomorrow’s flight.

Panic. “But, we have an appointment to meet a two year old boy for an adoption on Monday. We have to be there!”

“St. Petersburg is not a major city, we do not go there more than once a day.”

“Do you have access to other airlines, can you find us another flight? We really have to be there.”

“Well, you should always allow two days when travelling to Europe.”

“I thought we just did.”

I handled all of this in the most businesslike manner I could muster. I had no idea what would happen if we couldn’t get a flight, so it was important to be polite even if the woman behind the counter was being rather rude. I was very disappointed that this first encounter in France was turning out to be so -- so stereotypical. My husband stood there calmly, not saying a word. He told me later that he was about to lose it, but I had no idea.

“Alors!” Madame frowned at her computer screen. Tap tap tap, on the keyboard. “Alors!” Tap tap tap, “Alors!”

“Alors! Okay, I will put you on a flight to Moscow, and from there you can get a connecting flight on Aeroflot to St. Petersburg.

I had heard about Aeroflot, jokes about milk crates for seats and wondering if the plane was going to make it to its destination. I was nervous, but desperate. “We’ll take it!”

That settled, we headed over to the new gate to await our flight to Moscow. I learned how to use a European credit card phone to call our facilitator in the States about our change in plans. I think that call might have cost me $10.

Ah, but our adventures were far from over, as you’ll see in upcoming posts. For now I will just say that when someone offers you an overnight stay at a Paris hotel, TAKE IT!!!

- Originally posted on Harbor Log March, 2006