Well-loved little girl taking first steps outside DHS meeting

A wonderful little girl, just 13 months old, practicing her walking, surrounded by 4 grandparents, parents, foster mother, DHS worker, mother’s lawyer, and all the other waiting and anxious parents in the lobby of the Beaverton DHS office. Alaria is so proud of herself, but is looking around- whom should she walking to- Mom, Dad, gramma…. they are all focused on her at this moment. There have been few times when we have all come together, Alaria’s first birthday, the family court hearing in February… not many other times. Alaria was put into DHS custody on July 3, 2012 at four and 1/2 months old and was placed in my and my husband’s care as “kinship foster parents”. The placement was sudden and simultaneously unexpected and expected, with only a few hours warning for us to prepare for Alaria’s arrival into our home. Alaria’s mom had gotten into a fight with her 16 year old brother the day before, the police had been called, and KE had landed in jail for a night. That was enough for DHS, who had been following Alaria’s situation since well before she was born. As kinship foster parents, we were warned that we had to place the care of Alaria over all the care of our son and Alaria’s mother. We had to act like we were distant objective functionaries of the DHS foster care system, ignoring our relationship with our son.

For six months we cared for Alaria with great love and dedication, never raising our voices around her, responding to her every need. She had been through much upheaval and stress in her first four months, shuttled from home to home, with many different caregivers, her teenage parents rarely caring for her independently, but surrounding her with much drama and hysteria. Over the months with us,we saw Alaria blossom into a happy, centered bright eyed baby, easily adaptable to new situations and people. During those six months both Roman and KE struggled to get their lives together, continuing to smoke weed, miss therapy appts, and not find work or a stable living situation. They did make it to their separate supervised visits with Alaria once or twice a week, forming a tentative relationship with their daughter.

In January Alaria was taken out of our home because we had allowed our homeless son Roman to live in our garage for a week during an icy winter spell until he could find a place to live. Even though he had never caused any harm to his daughter, DHS was concerned we might have arguments with him in Alaria’s presence and didn’t want him in our house with her there. Someone, we don’t know who, filed a report with DHS on January 3 that Roman and his Dad got into a physical fight, which was not true at all, as they were never even in the same room together. A terrible and shocking day when Alaria was taken out and placed in stranger foster care, with no warning, no hearing as to the facts of the case, just her carried away by two social workers, one of whom was a very large imposing figure. There was nothing I could say to stop them. Alaria had no idea what was happening- just BOOM! she was gone. After being in an intimate one child only home with grandparents who had been caring for her part-time and then full-time since birth, she was placed in “stranger” foster care with a large family of bio and foster children 45 minutes away. For the first month, we were only able to see her for an hour or two at a time, not enough to re-establish, let alone build a relationship with her. Very distressing times.

Alaria seeing her gramma for 90 minutes in a DHS office after being suddenly taken away a week before. Not a happy girl.

During the six month check-up court hearing, the judge noted that Roman was not found to be a danger to Alaria, and that DHS needed to have a meeting to expand our visits with her. Another month passed and finally DHS found the time to hold the meeting that would make such a difference in our lives. DHS can move glacially slow at times and radically quickly at other times we were finding out. They follow the recommendations of the court at their own pace.

The hearing went remarkably well in our favor, perhaps because I had followed all DHS’s “rules” to a T and had overcommunicated any issues to them during the three months that she was gone. We had also hired an expensive attorney to let DHS know how serious we were about getting Alaria out of stranger foster care, or at least reducing her time there. Now we were going to visit with her twice a week, on Wednesday and a weekend day for 7 or 8 hours at a time. Roman could visit Alaria at our home and we could have family outings again. Such simple pleasures of family togetherness that had been denied for the last three months- a lifetime for a little girl changing so much every week- from just sitting to crawling and now walking and talking… Can we get to know each other again?

“Somewhere between” two cultures/two identities

Roman with other children adopted from Russia at a Russian cultural event in SF. We were one of the early founders of the SF Chapter of Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption. (FRUA).

Just saw a moving documentary called Somewhere Between about four teenage girls who had been adopted from China, mostly as infants under a year old. I was surprised how much the girls felt the same identity conflict of being both Chinese and “American” as Roman has felt being both Russian and “American”. Their conflict was even more pronounced than Roman’s because their race was different from their parents and their peer groups at school. Roman was lucky that he looked like me, with the same blonde hair, blue eyes and round face. Kids in the school hallways and people in the grocery store didn’t question whether he was our son, which was a big relief for all of us.

Deep down though, he identified himself as Russian, and would voluntarily tell strangers for many years that he was Russian. We tried to maintain his Russian identity by joining FRUA and taking him to Russian festivals in SF, having Russian babysitters to speak to him in Russian when he was in pre-school, playing bilingual Russian children’s music to him. We were told he understood Russian when we adopted him, although he only spoke a few words (as evidence of his “verbal delays” reported by the Russians. We learned a few words of Russian to ease him into our family, words like “good boy”, “go to sleep”, “I love you”, and “eat”. I’m sure speaking these words, even in broken Russian, was helpful to him- what a shock leaving one’s home, country, and language and entering into an entirely different culture! It seemed impossible to maintain whatever Russian he had with the small efforts we were making.

A few years after adopting Roman, we were riding in a taxi with a Russian immigrant driver. We were relating our adoption story to the driver and we asked him to speak to Roman in Russian. When Roman heard him talk, he became very agitated and upset and began flailing around in the back of the cab. On another occasion, we were watching “Burnt by the Sun”, a wonderful Russian film about Stalin’s purges of his high ranking officers, and Roman went right up to the TV screen and put his face against it, emotionally drawn to sounds of the language, while not understanding it at that point.

I bought every English language version of Russian fairy tales and short stories, especially the beautifully illustrated ones, of which there were many.

Baba Yaga, a frightening Russian witch who kidnaps and eats children. She lives in a rotating house held up by chicken legs.

Roman’s favorite was the story of “Baba Yaga” and the friendly Babushka Baba Yaga story by Patricia Polacco. Baba Yaga is a folktale figure that all Russian children know so well and I wanted Roman to know her too, to have that shared experience with all Russian children.

One very sad Mother’s Day when Roman was five or six years old, Roman began banging his head on the wall at Sunday School, which he had never done before. We went out for Mother’s Day brunch, and he looked very sad and thoughtful. He asked me if there were English classes in Russia, because he was realizing that even if he ever found his birth mother, he would not be able to talk with her unless she spoke English. I was taken aback and quickly realized that, for him, Mother’s Day was not about me, but was about him remembering his birth mother and not knowing who she was, where she was, and the large gap of language, culture, and country that always be there between them.

Many people are adamantly against international adoption because it takes children away from the birth heritage culture, often under dubious and corrupt circumstances. It does have its unique set of problems of identity, exacerbated by the frequent lack of knowledge of one’s birthparents, and the distance from one’s homeland and culture. I keep promising Roman to take him back to Russia, to look for his sister who was abandoned on the same day, in a different part of town, and to go back to the apartment building where he was “found,” and the baby hospital where he was kept for six months until we adopted him. I told him that I wanted him to learn some basic Russian so he could communicate with people he met, and to study Russian history so that he would have a broader context as to why his parents could not care for him in those early years after the fall of communism. He started a Russian class at the community college and immediately had an excellent Russian accent, but it was too overwhelming and he dropped out. He keeps telling me he is not emotionally ready to go. He is still angry at his birthparents for abandoning him, no matter how often I tell him that it seemed like an intentional plan to get him a better future than they could provide. There are still so many issues for him to reconcile within himself, and all the therapy he’s had has barely scratched the surface.

On his Facebook page, he is both Roman A***** (the name on his US passport) and Roman Ivanov (his given Russian name). Two identities- somewhere between.

The great unknown of international adoption

Before we adopted Roman we had three sentences of a medical report:  “stomach troubles”, delayed verbal development, and cataract in left eye.  At that time (1994-95), only Russian children with medical issues could be adopted by American parents.  Since both my parents had had cataracts and they were easily corrected with surgery, I figured a cataract was not too big a medical issue.  The other issues of stomach troubles and slow speaking could also be addressed with too much trouble, so I thought.  

Before going to get his visa papers at the US Embassy, Roman had to be examined and screened by a Russian doctor that he didn’t have any communicable disease or serious health issues.  The doctor in the picture above gave him a clean bill except for the cataract.

Back in the US, we found out he was in the 5 percentile in height and 25th in weight, with anemia and rickets vitamin deficiencies caused from poverty in both his birth family and the baby hospital which didn’t feed him much more than kasha.  The rickets had caused a flattening of the back of his head, along with a caving in of the breast bone in his chest with some spinal curvature.  The news put us in a frantic state of wanting to feed him healthy- so we were putting brewers yeast and yoghurt in mashed potatoes and cereal, extra vitamins, all he could eat.  For the first six months, whatever amount of food we put in front of him, he would eat it- huge insatiable volumes, bowl after bowl.  And he would eat everything, even the salmon mousse and other gourmet dishes my husband love to invent.  Within a year, he grew from the 5 percentile in height to the 75 percentile which he is at today at 5 feet eleven.  I wonder how tall he would have been with proper prenatal and post natal nutrition.  His teeth still show the effects of the poor early nutrition- he had multiple abcessed baby teeth that had to be pulled, and even the enamel of his permanent teeth was rough and broken, leading to many cavities, and later root canals and caps by age 18.

He never had “stomach troubles” after we adopted him, never threw up until he was an anxious adolescent, and rarely even had a fever growing up.  He seemed to miss all the ear infections, flu, colds etc that all friends kids came down with.

Roman playing on a baby slide for first time a week after we adopted him from Russia

Within a few days of coming to US, we are so excited to introduce Roman to all the fun activities of a typical American toddler- slides, swings, toys, trees, grass, zoo- it all was brand new to him. Since we didn’t have all the play structures and toys at our house yet, Gymboree was a great place for him to try the tunnels, slides, music, and balls that he had never seen before. As you can see from the picture, taken just 8 days after we first met him, he warmed up very quickly and enthusiastically to everything and with big smiles.

Roman couldn’t ever stay away from puddles, so red rubber boots were a necessity.

We felt so lucky and so blessed to have this beautiful boy in our life. Everything was going so well.

Reading to Alaria- my favorite grandparent/parent activity

Reading aloud and interactively with Roman and now Alaria is definitely my favorite bonding activity as a parent and grandparent. My mouth hanging open( as in this picture!) as I exclaim an important story line to an attentive child, is truly one of the great pleasures of my life..

One of Roman’s first presents was a cardboard picture book from Denmark with no words but wonderful graphical and colorful pictures of toys. From then on , I read to him every night until he was nine years old for at least 30-45 minutes. He couldn’t sleep until I read to him. And he doesn’t want to give his books of his childhood now that he is a young adult, because of the “memories”.

Alaria loves the “touch and feel”, and now the “lift the flap” books. In our time apart the last two months, I can sadly see that her attention span is shorter and she is more distracted and I long for more time with her to just look at books.

I don’t know if her “stranger” foster parents read to her at all, since they have six children to care for.

Granddaughter Alaria and I having fun Feb 27

This is a happy picture, with a sad undercurrent to it. I was Alaria’s foster mom, from July 3 to January 4 when she was taken away from me and my husband. We are only allowed to see her for about 5 hours a week on Wednesday afternoons. The intense attachment we built during our six months has been disrupted, painfully so for all of us.

I took a break from blogging my story as an important court date with Family Court and DHS came up on Feb 26 and my emotions were on high alert. What I found out and already knew was that DHS has more power than the courts when it comes to foster care arrangements and child custody hearings, the judge is largely a rubber stamper for the DHS recommendations. As I will detail later in my blog, DHS is the micro- manager of family life according to their whims, prejudices, and protocols, without real concern for what is best for the child or the family.

Adoption Announcement for our son

Note the “given birth day” since we had no birthparents to tell us the actual day

Deciding on Roman’s birthday was the first of many decisions we had to make as new parents that was out of the normal realm of parent decision-making. He had been found in a vestibule of an apartment building on June 6, 1994 and the Russian doctors at the time examined him and, based on his physical development, gave him the birthday of April 12. (How they picked that exact day I will never know.) I presume he was walking at the time, and speaking a few words, like most 14 months old babies. We were sent a short five minute video taken in October, that showed him interacting with the nurses at the baby hospital, playing with a block (his only toy), and walking quickly yet a bit awkwardly over to a nurse when his name was called. He didn’t seem to be an 18 month old child, and we had to pick a date for his US passport, any date we wanted. To give him an edge up, we changed his birthday to August 1 since it appeared he was behaving like 15 month old in the video and was only in the 5 percentile for height and 25 percentile for weight for an 18 month old baby.

Within a year of adopting him, he had grown taller than 75 per cent of other toddlers his age, and we realized we had erred in our second guessing the Russian doctors, so we settled on April 12 as his celebrated birthday. A few years ago we re-adopted Roman in Oregon and got him a birth certificate certified by the state of Oregon, stating April 12 as his birthday, although his US passport still says August 1 as of this day. I was told I have to go through the INS to change it, a huge paperwork hassle. One of these days I’ll take care of it.

Meeting Roman for the first time

Robert is terrified, I am elated, and Roman is tentatively happy

We met at the Moscow domestic airport after five days of waiting in Moscow for a courier to pick Roman up in Krasnodar, southern Russia, near the Chechnyan border. The Chechnyan war was in full swing and we couldn’t fly into Krasnodar because they were using the airport for military operations. The courier had flown down on New Year’s Day and was delayed on the tarmac for five hours because the flight crew was hung over from partying too much the night before. Glad I wasn’t on that flight.

On January 2, the courier brought Roman back to Moscow to meet us. I remember seeing his small, huddled outline in a corner wrapped in a very thick snow suit and with the palest of skin. A real shock after so many years and months of waiting. From the picture taken a few minutes after our meeting, you can see our different reactions. We drove the 45 minutes back to our host’s apartment, Roman quietly staring out of the window of the car at the Moscow lights going by. At the apartment, he immediately began exploring, ignoring us for the most part, and interested in everything. He repeatedly banged his head on the sharp corner of a table and never cried, but moved on to something else of interest. His lack of crying and general quietness was the most startling aspect about him.

That night I cuddled with him face to face, wondering who this little guy was, what our future would be. I began making funny faces to his face just inches from mine, and he immediately responded, mimicking me and my stuck out tongue and silly noises. I felt a great sigh of relief and tears came down my face as I realized that he was not autistic or with RAD (reactive attachment disorder) and that he had had other caregivers who had played with him, loved him in the same way I was. I felt “everything would be all right”. A naive response perhaps.

How did I unexpectedly become a grandparent?

one of two photos and a short video of Roman we received from Russia before choosing to adopt him. Not much info to go on, not even his exact age or birthday.

I’ll start at the beginning of this journey to grandparenthood, in January 1995 when my husband Robert and I traveled to Moscow to meet our 20 month old son Roman. Adopting him is a whole other story of five years of unexpected twists and turns that led to our finally becoming parents. Roman had had a difficult early life, extreme privation and poverty and abandonment at 14 months in the vestibule of an apartment house. He was taken to a “baby hospital” for six months to see if anyone would claim him or his 3-year-old sister who was left in another part of town. No one did, and he was then available to be adopted. We were thrilled at locating him through a Russian facilitator and international adoption agency, although we had to “pick” him with only had 5 minute video and a couple of photos of him to go on. We had already struggled with a failed domestic adoption where the mother changed her mind a day after giving birth, and a failed international adoption where the Ukraine closed its door to adoption two weeks before we were to pick up our young son. I had begun to fear I would never be a parent as I was 44 years old and time was running out.

I am starting with this background story because it sets the stage for what was occurring for my son and for us in the midst of the high drama of his recent relationship with his first real girl friend KE (initials only). We had experienced ourselves great grief and loss through these two failed adoptions, and my son had experienced the abrupt loss of his parents at a crucial age of attachment. Roman often speaks of the great “hole” inside himself from the loss of his birth parents who he of course does not remember except on a subconscious level. Meeting KE filled the great hole in his life.

My 19 year old son Roman and his new born daughter Alaria

A long painful journey to the birth of my only grandchild- the one I thought I would never know….

This blog will document the joys and nightmares of parenting a teenage son/father and his teenage girl friend, both of whom are /were way too immature to parent the essence of innocence, a new grand baby. When I was young and imagined being a parent and a grandparent, I did not envision the unique life story that I am currently living. Teenage parenthood is not unique, but the clash of class differences between the birth mother’s family and my own has been striking and devastating, and is still playing itself out.