Rescuing Julia Twice (6 page)

I'm thumbing through the newest nonfiction books at Barnes & Noble. The store on Broadway is crowded for mid-morning. I glance around at the mothers pushing strollers, legions of them passing time, filling the aisles and making them impassable. I feel an uncomfortable tug in my gut. That voice, that annoying voice in my head says,
Shouldn't you be buying parenting books? Or at the very least adoptive parenting books?

Maybe I should. Maybe I should do a lot of things I don't do, like floss more often or make peace with my mother, but I usually give in to my gut and my gut wants to read books on politics or the growing locavore movement. Because I'm thirty-nine, I'm the latecomer to parenting in my circle of friends and family. I never took much of an interest in other people's children, not even my own relatives, but I have watched, with some horror, what I believe is an obsessive, off-kilter generation of parenting. Too many women I know have turned mothering into their life's work. They've left behind careers. Dreams. Ways they were going to change the world. They are obsessed with stroller brands and sleeping schedules and the “right” schools. They are caught up in molding and shaping their children as though they'd all become sculptors and perfection is paramount. They treat their children as though they are their partners—blurring the line between parent and child, vying to be their child's BFF. They've read a lot of books on empowering their children.
They bask in the light they hope will emanate from their offspring. I've not yet walked in their shoes, but to me it seems imbalanced. And it has caused me some ambivalence about child rearing. On the one hand, it's been hard to watch women I know have one baby, then two, and sometimes a third, while I went through a divorce and had at times believed I would never have my own children. On the other hand, I wonder if I will fall into this parenting trap when and if I do become a mother. Part of the problem is groupthink. This helicopter parenting generation feeds off its peers, who read only the kind of books I'm standing here avoiding. They reinforce each other. They are establishing a new norm.

But in the back of my mind I toy with the notion that even if motherhood doesn't need a manual, maybe adoptive parenting does. During the adoption process, I've skipped around websites that advise and inform adoptive parents. I never spent too much time on any of them because they cause me anxiety. I'm already aware that when you adopt, you begin with a big black hole.

You don't know what your baby has been though. What has she eaten? Has she been loved or handled enough? What, if anything, has she been genetically predisposed to be or to do? In Russian adoptions you can't get information about the physical or mental health of the birth parents. You start with a mystery. You accept that, and you go from there. Sure, I could load up on what ifs and psychological terms, but I'd rather not.

I glance back over at the nonfiction books piled up in a pyramid, pull a couple to buy, and head over to the register.

Two hours later, I'm back at my desk. The phone rings. I cringe when I see the caller ID.
Why is the adoption agency calling?
I wonder. We've only been back four days.
They probably want more money.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hi, Tina,” says the adoption counselor. “I know you're probably still recovering from your trip, but I have some interesting news.”

“Interesting?” I say. “What kind of interesting news?”

“You guys will be traveling within the next ten days to get your baby,” she says. “She's from … let's see here … ah yes, she's from a Siberian orphanage. Yep, that's right. You've got to make arrangements for your next trip.”

I hear the words but can't absorb them. I know what she said, but assume I've misheard her. After a long pause, she says, “Tina? Are you there?”

“What?!” I exclaim. “That's not possible. We just returned a few days ago. I'm not even over my jet lag,” I say, hoping for a laugh. “No, seriously, we'd been told by our handlers out there that we wouldn't be called back for three to six months. Are you sure you're not making a mistake?”

“Hang on a minute,” she says, leaving me on the phone to listen to on-hold music, Patsy Cline singing “Crazy.”

I glance at the folders on my desk and mentally calculate my writing deadlines. I break into a sweat even though the apartment is not too warm. I tell myself to calm down. There must be a mistake.

“Hi, sorry to keep you waiting. No, I've got the right information in front of me. Your daughter is ready to go.”

“Okay,” I say, resigned but clearly not thrilled and increasingly aware that the counselor must be wondering why I want this delayed.

“It's just that, wow, I'm just taken aback,” I say, heaving a big breath. “And I don't have anything ready for the baby. I thought I had so much more time.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” she says. “Don't worry—ten days should give you enough time to make travel plans. I'll send you the details by e-mail. Let me know if you have any questions. Bye.”

I'm stunned. This must be what it's like to give birth prematurely. You're walking along in your sixth month—thinking you've got three more months to glow, organize spice racks, and decorate a precious nursery, and then boom, all that time is snatched away.

If there were a
Guinness World Records
entry for speediest foreign adoption, ours would win. From the time we shipped the telephone book-thick dossier to our adoption agency last August to what is now
the projected date Julia will be in our arms, it will be just six months. Everyone told us adoption takes one to two years. Olga had said we wouldn't be back in Siberia for three to six months.

“At least it will be spring,” I had said. But it won't.

Mental preparation is an important part of this transition. We don't have a crib or a single toy. I feel hysterical. I do what I always do when I feel hysterical. I call Ricky.

“Calm down,” he says. “You need a sed-a-give.” He loves that old
Young Frankenstein
joke. “When I get home, we'll sketch out a plan, and everything will be all right. I'll come home a little bit early,” he adds.

I dial my friend Lynn to tell her we're traveling again in ten days.

“Mazel tov!” she shrieks. “This is so exciting.”

“I don't have anything for the baby. Nothing! Not even a diaper.”

“Why don't you come down here and get Hil's old crib?” she suggests.

“Really?” I say. “You still have Hillary's crib?”

“Could never part with it, but I'd feel so good about lending it to Julia,” she adds.

“Okay,” I say, “I'll let you know when we're coming to Pennsylvania.”

The days are a succession of acquisitions and preparations. I am working off the longest to-do list I've ever had. Ricky and I go to a Babies“R”Us in New Jersey. I have never been in one of these baby superstores. I imagine we need one of everything. We get one of those enormous carts and start filling it with a baby blanket and a crib bumper and a crib sheet. “Where are the pillowcases?” I say.

“Babies don't use pillows,” he says.

“They don't?” I ask. We move on to the diapers, formula, pacifiers, baby wipes, baby shampoo, plastic bottles. In no time, the cart is full. This is not how I pictured feathering my baby's nest. I'm not the type of person who shops in a big-box store
—what was I doing in a place like this?

“Being practical,” Ricky reminds me, unsentimental about the need to stock up on what we needed fast and affordably.

“We have a lot to do,” he says.

The day after we bring the crib home from Lynn's, we are standing in the foyer that will become Julia's nursery. It is a windowless space of
about seven by nine feet. At least our prewar building's ceilings are high and airy, and we've enclosed the space with pretty glass French doors. There will be enough room for the crib, a bureau of drawers and a changing table. The space is too tight to include a rocking chair. Ricky opens up the folded crib, and I gasp.

“What's the matter?”

“It's dusty and scuffed,” I say.

“Okay, we'll wipe it down. Let's just get it built first.”

It takes about forty minutes to assemble. When it's ready, Ricky rolls it into a corner.

Tears spring from my eyes.

“What's the matter?” he says. “It's not bad. It's pretty, really.”

“It's used,” I say, dropping to the floor. “I want something that is new. Something that is my own. I appreciate Lynn lending us this but, I don't know…. It's just that nothing is the way I thought it would be.”

But I stop short at saying what I'm really thinking, which is
I have a used crib for a baby that is not really mine. A used crib and a used baby.
I don't let these thoughts turn to words. They'd be poisonous the second they left my lips.

Ricky comes to me and holds me.

“C'mon, let's make up the crib.”

He rips open the bags with the sheet, comforter, and bumper and begins arranging them.

“See, look how cute this is,” he says.

The comforter is a patchwork of yellow squares filled with jungle animals. It is precious, and it cheers me up. It was designed by John Lennon.

“You're right,” I say. “I'm just feeling overwhelmed.”

The next day I go to a travel agent the adoption agency recommended to get travel documents. It is manned by a flame-haired woman who is buried in stacks of paper in a stifling midtown office. She moves back and forth between Russian and English and makes no attempt at being friendly. She reminds me of Olga and of other women we met in Russia. Harsh, unsentimental, no soft edges. I wonder if Julia's genes will carry these traits.

I meet a man named Robert who will be traveling the same day we are. On our first trip to Russia, Ricky and I were alone; we did not encounter any other adoptive parents. But I'm told the second trip will be different. We will be traveling with two other adoptive families to Siberia, and there will be a large contingent of adoptive parents scheduled to fly to Moscow with us. Robert and his wife, Laura, will be collecting their child from Samara, which is about a ninety-minute flight from Moscow. He's intrigued when I tell him we have to go to Siberia—that in fact we have only just returned from Siberia and that I am not looking forward to another round in the gulag. He laughs, which puts me at ease. Robert tells me he and his wife are thinking about bringing back two children because they have been unable to conceive and they don't want to have to go through this adoption process more than once.

“Wow,” I say. “Two children. I'm having enough trouble preparing for one,” I say.

He smiles again.

“See you in a few days at Kennedy Airport,” he says, when he leaves the office.

It's Saturday, the last Saturday night Ricky and I will be free to live it up without a baby-sitter, but I'm dead tired. So is he. I can't remember when we last “lived it up,” though it's nice to know the option's there. It's like living in Manhattan. People always say the city has the best museums and theater, but how often do you really do these things when you are preoccupied with settling down and making a family?

Nevertheless, the thought of life with a baby is scary and, in truth, almost impossible for me to picture.

We go over our checklist. Everything is in order.

“We have to pack the ‘gifts,'” I say sarcastically.

We have been told by our agency that we are expected to disseminate “gifts” to nearly everyone who handles us. We are bringing silk scarves, the loose-leaf tea we sell, New York paraphernalia such as T-shirts and snow globes and lots of diapers for the orphanage. I don't mind the diapers because they are for the babies.

The Chinese delivery boy raps at the door. I'm watching television halfheartedly. While Ricky hands him money, I shriek, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God!”