And here I am, sitting at a table in a teeny apartment overlooking
a busy street in a one-thousand-year-old city in Eastern Europe, drinking
coffee that we’ve made out of bubbly, gassy water that we purchased by
accident, not understanding the language – and even if we did, not
understanding the Cyrillic alphabet. The sun is beaming through the window at
6:00 a.m., but outside snow lines the sidewalks and mottles the crazy roof
lines, and the cold bites right through your clothing as if you weren’t wearing
any.
It’s a moment of peace in what has been a couple weeks of
sleep deprivation and an emotional rollercoaster unlike any I’ve known.
And now it really sinks in.
I don’t know how we did it, but we’re here:
WE MADE IT!!!
Peter has been patient with my hysteria over technology, or
lack thereof, which has almost resolved itself so that we can relax from the
panic that has gripped us by spending several days en route with no means to
communicate home. Now we can laugh a bit
and – more importantly – look forward. A
word of advice for those who may be traveling out of country soon: Learn your technology BEFORE you leave. For whatever reason, our phone will not work
here. Our brand-spanking new laptop that
we purchased just days before flying out is loaded with Windows 8, which is
about as user-friendly as changing the diaper of a wiggly toddler with only
your left hand. It REFUSES to
acknowledge any wi-fi that’s been made available to us. That left all hopes pinned on an old I-pad
that a neighbor was kind enough to run over to us the day before we left … but
never having seen one, let alone used one, we found that learning on the fly (literally!)
does not work out so well if you’re not a gadget-savvy teenager or you’ve left
your gadget-savvy teenager at home. What
this meant was, by the time we were flying out of Munich, not having talked to
our family in two longgggggggggggggggggggggg days, I panicked. I mean,
seriously panicked. The nose of
that plane was pointed in the wrong direction: How could I put myself on the
other side of the world from my family without a means to communicate? I sobbed the entire flight to (Our Country X). When it became apparent that the drunk man
two rows back had died en route, a little perspective settled in. Things could be worse.
Yesterday I staved off my mounting panic to make our first
appearance at the department of orphans, the moment we’ve been anticipating for
months. Sitting in a room lined with
binders full of pictures of the country’s orphans, we held our breath that our
girl was still amongst them. And she
was. And she’s still available. We were given an opportunity to view other
orphans or to change our mind. We didn’t
hesitate for a micro-second: We accepted
her referral.
Afterwards, we walked across the street from the government
building to a local restaurant and met for the first time many of the folks
behind the scenes of this country’s sad orphan situation, whose passion and
perseverance in fighting to create adoptive opportunities for the cast-away
special needs orphans is remarkable. Were
it not for them, we would not be here. Were
it not for them, these children would never know a family or a world outside
the confines of their institutional walls.
You could almost see their halos.
We also met several U.S. families who are adopting special
needs children.
One of them, as it turns out, will be adopting from the same orphanage as
us. Lucky for us, they are avid
i-Pad users and were willing to give us a crash course right then and there. Voila! I was able to send a cryptic and hilariously
desperate message to Facebook, begging someone, anyone to check in on my family and
Pilar. By the time we’d left, we’d
received response back from family in the U.S. and, for the first time in several days,
the cloud of panic lifted.
Now I can look ahead!
This afternoon, we will pack up, drop by the government
building to pick up our orphan referral, and head out on a 12-hour overnight
train to the region in which Melody’s orphanage is located. (Sorry, still can’t disclose her real name or
specifics of our whereabouts!). Tomorrow
will be spent running around gathering paperwork, meeting the director of the orphanage,
and setting up a visitation schedule with Melody, whom we will be meeting
within the next day or two. The length
of our stay there will depend on how long it takes to get a court date, as long
as a couple weeks. Between now and then,
we’ll make a daily trudge through the snow
to the orphanage to spend time with, and get to know, our Melody.
Last night I dreamt of her.
I dreamt that her groupa nanny walked her out to me and gently set her
down in front of me. I expected her to topple
over, but instead she took several steps
to me in that crooked just-learning-to-walk way. Her long dark hair was held back in two
ponytails, and she smiled shyly at me. I
picked her up, surprised by her healthy weight, and she perched on my hipbone
as if she’d always been there. I woke
up this morning at 4:00 a.m. feeling hopeful and, for the first time in a week,
semi-refreshed. Six hours of sleep sure
beats the heck outta my two-hour average over the previous few days. Add a pot of bubbly-water coffee and a chunk
of a chocolate bar for breakfast, and I’m ready for anything. Speaking of, everyone talks about how much
weight they lose when they come here, but I don’t see that phenomenon in my
horizon when bakeries and chocolate and fresh bread abound here.
We finally got our (until now useless) laptop online, thanks to an old-fashioned
Ethernet cable that was lent to us by our apartment’s manager. Since we need to return it to him today, Peter
just set off on a mission to buy another cable before we head out to country, assuming
our wi-fi woes will continue. All you can see of him is his nose poking out from behind a wool hat with earflaps and a scarf wrapped tight. He'll face the cold rather than face a panicked mama again. Oh, and
he's searching for water that tastes and acts like water.
Buying anything here is an adventure itself.
I’ve packing to do, so that’s all for now. Love to all, and miss you so much I feel it
in my bones.
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