Introductions

And then it was time to take one last trip through Moscow in the middle of the night, arriving at the airport when a full moon was filling the waiting room. 

The airplane offered even more technical curiosities for Yasik.  We caught the wonder of earphones in the picture included here.

While waiting in Frankfurt for our next leg of the trip, we met an American couple who had just adopted two kids and a woman who came across as a self–appointed authority on orphanages.  She was part of a church mission to help orphanages by setting up children’s camps.  At that time Russia was quite open to foreign help, religious or otherwise.

One last leg of the flight and we were back home in Canada. Well, two of the members of this new nuclear family were returning home.  The third member was only about to be introduced to a new home.

So let me jump off that word ‘introduce’ and take a moment to do just that. I have shared fairly liberally what we knew/came to know over time of Yasik’s background. I will round out what has been shared with some of the physical data of the child Dave carried off the airplane: Yasik was 35 inches tall and weighed 35 pounds, roughly the weight of our one-year-old niece and shorter than our three-year-old nephew.  He had convergent strabismus in his left eye.  He had soft, very light blond hair, a perfect nose and a tad over blown ears.  His eyes remain hazel brown even though his passport has them marked down as green.  Like I said, he was beautiful.

And the other two in this family?  As I have exposed Yasik, it is only democratic to provide a basic sketch of Dave and me.  Dave first.

Atn the time of our adoption, Dave was 40, five foot 11 inches, not overweight but not skinny either as he had given up smoking the year before.  Our adoption home study says he has “blue eyes and glasses, balding short reddish blond hair”. 

He was born in Calgary, Alberta to a couple whose marriage barely made it past his birth, their second child together.  At the time of the home study, we understood his mother’s heritage was Metis and his father was of Scottish heritage.  He remained with his mother who moved on to various uncles, two more marriages and 3 more children, half siblings to Dave and his brother.  His relationship with his biological father was not much more than a single letter.  The first step-father was simply criminally abusive.  The second step-father, who legally adopted Dave and his siblings, was anyone’s definition of a dedicated, working-class father, although it is possible to say that a man Dave met later in life offered the kind of mentoring that qualified as the most impactful fathering of all.  His mother, coming into a loaded adulthood poorly prepared, was, at times, supportive and, at times, unable or unwilling to be the mother she needed to be.

In his late teens Dave sustained a serious car accident which left him with visible facial scars and two years of intensive rehabilitation mentally, emotionally and physically, but as he healed, he was imbued with a strong desire to get back into life. He went on to train in welding and motorcycle technology even while still paying for the impact of his childhood and accident by going into a marriage ill-prepared and rather quickly abandoned.  He also had many years training and working with challenged people which is where we met.

For a year or so we were little more than passing acquaintances. One fine morning he came to the group home to pick up a client for a day program. I was finishing up a night shift before heading off to the school where I taught. In greeting, I mentioned I was soon leaving the group home.  He came back with an offer of a ‘farewell’ coffee on a Friday evening; we went for a drive that led to some house hunting, marriage, and moving into a house together a little over 3 months later.  And whew …., this usually ill-advised route to marriage worked for us.  A year after we married, Dave was accepted into Emily Carr University of Art and Design (ECUAD); he was going to school full time, working a weekend shift with a challenged client and practicing his interests in art and motorcycles in his spare time at home.

He was about to start the second year of study and part-time employment when we flew off to Russia.

And me?  In preparation to writing this post, I wrote some preliminary notes and went off on a rampage about the religious world I was born into.  I will spare the reader.  In August 1997 I was 47, 5 foot, 6 inches tall and respectable weight-wise.  Our adoption study says I had, “long brown hair with bangs, green eyes”. 

I was born in Chilliwack, BC, to a couple who remained married their entire lives but were not well-equipped to maintain a healthy marriage.  Both my parents had a few generations to deepen their Canadian roots but as was common in the 50s held on to their origins: mother’s family were British and Scottish; Dad’s family were German and Polish.  Guess which one in post-war Canada was a source of pride and which one was best whispered? 

Both came from families somewhere between fundamentalist and evangelical Protestantism.  Whenever a question arose about what choice to make about most things from daily activities to finances to things more global, the tilt was toward the fundamentalist explanation of God’s truth.  Was bowling a sin? Most definitely, until, of course, someone thought it was possible to skirt around the sinful dangers. 

But we were a family and each of us, myself, my brother and two sisters, knew that our parents loved us and wanted us to be happy.  Maybe they were too unsophisticated to be able to guide us toward to a conventionally successful future, but they would have resisted little of our inclinations, other than what was ‘evidently’ evil.  Mini skirts made Dad squirm; drugs freaked him out. 

I use the plural for this part of my life because we siblings were each a year apart.  We all finished high school more or less and moved on to likely Canada’s largest fundamentalist Bible School.  We each graduated and went into missionary service.  I was in Northern Canada with my youngest sister and then we two joined my brother and other sister in the Philippines.  

In what can only be considered ironic, it was getting up close and personal with the human beings we were attempting to rescue from the grasp of hell, that shook my understanding of such a mission. These were good people I could no longer see a loving God condemn to hell. Even if I worried that God was holding a flaming lightning bolt over me, I had had enough. 

I returned to Canada and enrolled in Simon Fraser University along with my brother and one sister.  We each found jobs caring for the challenged and settled into completing our studies until two years before Dave and I married.  In those two years, although I continued working in a group home, I also began teaching in adult education in Vancouver.  I lucked out, finding a career I had only dreamed of in the days when I was certain God would not hear of me leaving what I had believed He considered the highest calling.

I was about to return to a full-time position as a high school English teacher when we flew off to Russia.

Ahhh ….. and a Canadian government site for prospective adopters offers a summary of the average adopters: over 30, generally financially stable and with no parenting experience.  Sounds like we were pretty normal and ready to go.

But maybe the African proverb “Tell me who you love and I’ll tell you who you are” is enough info.