A year in a life

One year ago today I was home stressing about getting the girls in school and hoping that I didn’t take too much time before I went back to work.

It is a year later and the world is still here and I have a job and my wife and I still talk to each other, it is a lot less and there is no TV after ten pm mostly, but the world still continues to turn and things good and bad continue to happen in the world.

Hallway in Valgium

My life has changed. Several years ago if I was given the chance to look ahead to the year 2010 I would not really see much in my life that I would recognize. I’m not saying it is a bad life. It’s just very different than I ever imagined it, isn’t it always?

Growing up I had this fuzzy vision that I would get a job in the city work and get married around twenty-seven, have two, three kids and live my version of ‘father knows best’. It’s funny how life has other plans for you. There is a line in a John Lennon song (who on October 9th would of turned 70, and has been gone almost as long as he was alive) that life is what happens while you’re busy making plans and I guess that is what has happen to me.

Table for going away party

I never would have ever adopted children if not for my wife. She was and is the unstoppable force behind all this life changing experience that has gone on and I say that with all love and admiration. Life with me is not easy and I could never have imagined adopting children, much less going to a country half way around the world and staying there for a month and then bring them home and trying to build a life.

The only two major contributions that I made were when we got the reports on the girls and we were given a choice between two girls and a boy. One of the girls was supposed to be mentally handicapped and Teri was unsure what to do. I said take a chance we can always say we don’t want to adopt them. After a day or so we knew we would never be returning them. The other contribution I made has been lost, because I had to leave and check on the nut bread that Teri is making and I don’t remember it.

Market outside hotel in Birobidjan

It is hard to believe that a year ago we would get on the computer and have it translate anything we wanted to say to the girls. We have not done that for at least six months. They speak English about as well as they speak Russian, which means that they are not very proficient in either language. Their school work is still below their grade level and I am concerned. Their adoption to our culture has been quick and startling. They hang around Amanda Monday through Friday in the afternoons and she is at that age where all the popular music comes from her. I remember when music was just music to me and I didn’t care what people felt was bad or good about the music. That has all changed. Lady Gaga, and all the other music acts that I don’t know and am very suspicious of and really don’t like because of no other reason than they are not my music and are singing about stuff that I don’t want my kid to hear. Is that clear? I know I didn’t understand it either.

The days of throwing the kids outside and letting them do what they want, like I used to do as a kid are long gone and I am sad for this generation. I would get home from school. Wait for my best friend Mike to get home from catholic school and then we would do what we wanted to do and do it outside mostly or in his basement or in my room, but the concept of a play date was and is ridiculous. That and using antiseptic wipes all the time and sheltering our kids from the outside world is little too much. I don’t mean we should put the kids outside and let them run wild and unsupervised like we were. There are too many greater dangers now, then before, time to get off my soap box.

To Elena’s Russian grandmother and both of their Russian fathers, both girls are alive and doing fine, better than I ever could have hoped for.