I know we tend to pickle memories in a brine that renders them more rosy-shaded than blood-red.   Nonetheless my journal is a record of how I viewed my world at the time, a primary source with hopefully less cherry-picking than my mind might remember now.  Still, reading those journal pages 25 years later, it seems they might have been wrapped in pink cellophane, oh yes, the ‘honeymoon period’.  And I am not alone, at least as far as I could tell from the one or two books I came across in those early years.  One book I remember was written by a woman a year or two after adopting her ‘forever child’. The book was rosy from cover to cover.  We would have written the same and if Kisses from Katie[i] is anything to go by, people still are.

Recently I heard the Avett Brothers on Jimmy Kimmel singing a song that asks, “How long is now?”. The song, full of hope and happiness, answers with the word, “Forever”.  It brought this time to mind, singing of the wonderful days in a lifetime.

This post will offer vignettes of that good time as I seek to establish something that may seem obvious but, at perhaps a less than conscious level, is not always firmly embedded. Yasik is person, not merely a set piece or accessory in the arrangement called family.

I was wondering how to approach understanding who Yasik was showing himself to be as our son and how that might help to reveal his perception of himself and his new world.  I googled with the words that came to mind: personality traits, that sort of thing.  Google led me to philosophical sites of all things: the idea of personhood.[ii]

It appears we as persons are physical and mental beings who develop networks of beliefs that impact how we calculate and think about our environment and social relationships, using reflection and language to make autonomous choices and engage in actions. My journal entries allow me to work backwards from Yasik’s actions to uncover the person he was/is.

But why examine such abstract philosophical and psychological concepts?  I had been considering sharing some bits from the journal that I later recognized were best kept private to the family. “Yeah but …, No but…” CHILD CATCHERS: rescue, trafficking, and the new gospel of adoption[iii] by Kathryn Joyce deals with a variety of movements that have led to bartering in orphans for their souls, for money, for prestige, or to fill some personal hole in their lives.  Christians rescuing heathen, governments looking for financial gain or political pawns, couples looking to place a family portrait on the mantle.  John Brooks in The Girl Behind the Door[iv] says, “We treated Casey as if she were our new pet”. At times in the ‘honeymoon period’, as I bring forward in the post Parents? Yet Tourists?, our child was our pet. We may not have seen our child as a commodity, but it can’t be denied that some part of us, wanting family, did not initially see our child as a distinct and individual person but as a piece to finish a look we imagined completed our image of ourselves and our lifestyle.

Perhaps we can hone an awareness of the orphan as a person in his or her or their own right by thinking very specifically about what makes each of them a person. Perhaps then we will recognize each child caught in the liminal (a word new to me but I like its eeriness) state of orphan as an individual whose personhood must be valued.

Physical being

Numbers-wise there was not much of the ‘physical being’ about Yasik at the start: essentially 40 inches by 40 lbs.  But whatever little there was, it was packed into a well-proportioned body, capped with soft blond hair.    We had a cherry tree in the front yard with branches like big arms about four feet off the ground.  Dave tucked into the arms one evening to hide in a game of Hide and Seek but those 40 inches of bursting energy were just not up to the hunt. Dave sat right in front of Yasik in the cherry tree, but 20 inches short of the tree’s arms, he could not see Dave.

Where it mattered, of course, and especially with the adjustment a pair of glasses made, Yasik could see just fine.  We watched a video with Yasik one evening about where kids come from. It made the observation that a woman has breasts, showing a cartoon woman with straight out breasts and nipples.  Later I said to Yasik, “See, I have breast too”.  He said, “No, yours don’t stand up.”  He could see. Yasik could hear (he loved listening to music with earphones) which was later confirmed as hearing issues are usually checked as part of an assessment of learning difficulties; Yasik could smell (well we assume so for I have no concrete examples recorded); Yasik could taste (at first only familiar foods – which shows discrimination, right?); Yasik knew the message of touch (holding our hands and cuddling); and that sixth one, proprioception, appeared to be working just fine as his very effective fine and gross motor skills demonstrated despite Orphanage Risk Factors’ mention that often institutionalized kids are clumsy.  From leaping around on the park dragon to hitting the T-ball to biking, he showed skill and prowess.  Of course, there was that one time just after Yasik got comfortable on his bike, we biked around the block. On Braid St. he biked into a telephone post. He got a bit disgusted and said, “Tomorrow they have to move it over there” – meaning across the street. But clumsiness or awkwardness of movement have never been evident.  He knows where his arms and legs are and where they are headed – exactly where he wants them to go.

And as for that one bug-a-boo, size, the material on Orphanage Risk Factors notes that institutionalized kids make size gains within months of adoption. I noted sometime after Christmas of that first year that “he keeps growing.   He wants to be measured a lot to check if he’s grown and usually he has – he is growing steadily but he is still the littlest kid in the school”.   Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents takes concern for size seriously, saying children can feel embarrassed about being short.  They may see it as mocking their drive for independence from being needy[v].  Getting glasses centered his right eye but being little was an on-going concern.

Notes from our ‘getting to know Yasik’ meeting with orphanage staff say Yasik had dealt with rickets, poor nutrition and a lack of Vitamin D due to little exposure to a world beyond his crib. He also had what they called an infant allergy or intolerance to sweets. The staff assured us the rickets and allergy and their after effects were now gone, as is most often the case once diet and exercise needs are met.

He did have a secret power though – when chicken pox banged at the door, the doctor thinks the resistance to infection spawned in the orphanage made him quite invincible to many childhood illnesses. Other than a mild diarrhea, he was free to play in the park for the week he was quarantined from school. His body was also well adjusted to the rhythms of life for he slept well, ate well, especially sausages, piroshkies and fruit in the early months. The fruit kept things humming so well that we would occasionally ban apples. Loving fruit, Yasik would have us check to see if his poop was firm enough to lift the apple ban.

Mental being

And the ‘mental being’?  A Google definition says it is about memory, emotion, intention, desire, pain experience, perception, and belief. I would like to add as a separate concept, the gift of curiosity we are given.

For whatever emotional, psychological or neurological reason, Yasik says he has no memory of his life before the flight to Canada. Yet ….. while we waited for our pre-dawn flight home in the Moscow airport, facing out into flat river valley, a harvest moon arose.  It was huge.  One evening, a few months into his first year with us, he and Dave were on the computer.  Dave was making supper and Yasik was playing on the computer. A large moon came up on the screen.  Yasik called Dave over and pointed to it, “Papa that is where Yasik is from”.  He explained that “They pulled the string” (like maybe a bus stop string?) and he came down on an airplane.  His memory system was doing what memories are to do – providing him with a narrative. He came from the moon.

It is the only memory he shared other than recognizing the little kids pictured waving good bye to him from the orphanage front porch.  Sadly, or simply the by-product of embracing a new life, there came a day when he no longer wanted to look at their pictures before bed.  John Brooks talks of the same with his daughter, Casey.   John and his wife Erika had created a “scripted fantasy story” about Casey’s bio mom loving her but wanting her to have a better life and so the Brooks “went all the way to Poland to find” Casey. (I bet they dragged that word ‘all’ out).  But Casey showed little curiosity about her bio family or the orphanage, or Poland[vi].  And yes, more could be said re: the fantasy story and magical thinking as per the Child Catchers: rescue, trafficking, and the new gospel of adoption[vii].

We could not deny he had emotions either, from robust anger to sweeping happiness.  Angry that he must obey, laughing so freely when happy, yelling, “Yee Haw” while biking, excited and giggling playing Hide and Seek. He had us outside, having one of us hiding while he had the other counting and helping him hunt, but it was all his when the hunted one was spotted as he broke into a determined run to kick the can; he burst with pride at handling bumper cars with Kyle; he entered into T-ball games wholeheartedly – no standing on the sides, no matter who played. Yet come the evening, he slipped into cuddly mode.

Yasik fell from a stand at his last T-ball game and he was leaning against the fence trying not to cry. Dave went over and picked him up from behind. He turned into Dave’s neck and cried his heart out. But again, all in the same day, he might punch your bum and leap on you. He would leap on my back while I was crouched at the fridge and get me in a strangle hold.

Erik H. Erikson, student of life, according to Daniel Levinson[viii], and person who never knew his bio-father and never felt fully accepted by his step-father, designed a theory of human life rather like a train on a railway line with 8 stations along the way.  Yasik should have, at this point, passed the stop of Trust vs. Mistrust (infant) and Autonomy/Independence vs Shame and Doubt (toddler) and if all was going well, was in the stage of Initiative vs Guilt (pre-school).  Orphanage Risk Factors suggest that often children who begin life in an orphanage are emotionally delayed.  So, was the train of life carrying Yasik getting to each stop on time and leaving on time?  Can adoptive parents even tell this early in an adoption? Were we going to see Yasik trusting us as his parents? Sara Nović saw her adoptive son’s freedom to say ‘No” as “[trusting] us enough to know we wouldn’t disappear at the first sign of non-compliance.”[ix]  Was he confident enough to take up challenges?  Was he becoming more and more skillful and able to make decisions that show a growing control of his impulses?[x]

Not to gloss over the Orphanage Risk Factors I have noted here and there, I might add that we did watch Yasik self-soothe by rocking on the couch while watching TV or listening to music and when in the car.  I’d also say there was some self-parenting when he could get a bit bossy, telling us to stop doing something that irritated him or becoming indignant when disciplined.  But he was not having obvious problems with impulse control other than making sure we knew his negative opinions as clearly as his positive opinions.  He did not come to us cowed by orphanage punishment though he would show initial hesitancy when encouraged to try new things like testing out the slide at the playground or learning to ride his bike. Nonetheless, there was no evidence of a ‘learned helplessness’ for with encouragement, he tried whatever challenge was offered.   Was he indiscriminately friendly? I don’t think so for it took little for him to be willing to make friends.  When visiting in the home of his buddy, the buddy’s mom found him to be more cuddly than her son. But there was no going off with strangers or seeking a stranger’s attention.  And if you watched him watching ‘Forrest, Forrest Gunk’ you could rest assured he was able to hold a concentration or focus. He was acting like a happy little boy. He seemed to have enough trust and independence to beetle on into anything.

Maybe the mental being marker of intention will provide some answers. Dave’s birthday came along in March.  Yasik and I went shopping for a gift for him.  He got Dave a plastic foldable set of swords – for lots of sword fights with himself. On another day, Dave suggested Yasik pick flowers for me.  The next day Yasik was mad at Dave for a reprimand.   On the way to school I told Yasik that Dad did so because he loves him.  Yasik goes “Oh”, stopped and picked a buttercup, saying, “This is for my daddy”.  As an afterthought, he picked one for me so I picked one for him and again he said. “Ooh” – both ‘Ohs’ in awe. (I kept that little flower in the journal for many, many years).

Any organism, if it is alive, demonstrates desire, so it can be no surprise that desire burbled in Yasik’s breast.   Right from the start we could tell he was into long-haired girls.

We were visiting friends in Chilliwack whose only child was a beautiful, long-haired girl. Yasik fell in love with her, not reciprocated of course, for she was several years old than him, but she played with him and that was good enough.

I have read here and there that curiosity is a special gift tucked into the bundle of personality traits of the lucky. I am not so sure; it seems to me that whether it is slipping into a shop to see an item we are dreaming of or questions we have about the connection between nature and nurture which leads us to Nobel prize honours, we likely each have some measure of curiosity.  Even our dog shows curiosity most days, sticking his nose in here and there on our walks.  Yasik too, has always poked his nose into things around him: how to drive the car, checking out what might be hidden in dense bush, even if it meant getting dirty to find out, figuring out how to help some fish get upstream.

It is harder to pin point his experience of pain for he rarely seemed bothered by confrontations with pain. Much of what would have others cry out seemed to bounce off him. Or maybe his physical dexterity came to his aid, allowing to him slip past most potential accidents.

Perception it seems is the expression of the physical and genetic attributes as they entwine with the mental attributes which together lead to a way of regarding, understanding or interpreting something.  Or better yet, we as persons are physical and mental beings who develop networks of beliefs that impact how we calculate and think about our environment and social relationships, using reflection and language to make autonomous choices and engage in actions, with the right to be accountable for our choices.

I think Belief, in a narrow definition, is chain-linked to perception so will check it off the list as essentially being dealt with as perception.

I hope to discover Yasik’s attribute of perception as I work through the next few posts.  Other than that, the bases are covered.

So yeah, he is a person.

Footnotes

[i] Davis, Katie with Beth Clark   Kisses For Katie: a story of relentless love and redemption  Gale Cengage Learning, 2011.

[ii] Camilleri, Adrian. “What are the Characteristics of Personhood?”  Philosphymt.  https://philosophymt.com/what-are-the-characteristics-of-personhood/.  January 7, 2022.

[iii] Joyce, Kathryn.    the Child Catchers: rescue, trafficking, and the new gospel of adoption.   Public Affairs,2013, 67

[iv] Brooks, John   The Girl Behind The Door: a father’s quest to understand his daughter’s suicide.  Scribner, 2016.

[v] Gray, Deborah D.  Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents. Perspectives Press, Inc., 2002, 37-39.

[vi] Brooks, John.   The Girl Behind The Door: a father’s quest to understand his daughter’s suicide.  Scribner, 2016, 55-56.

[vii] Joyce, Kathryn    the Child Catchers: rescue, trafficking, and the new gospel of adoption.   Public Affairs, 2013, 75 – 127.

[viii] Levinson, Daniel J.  The Seasons of a Man’s Life. Harper & Row, 1979.

[ix] Nović, Sara   Mother Tongue: a memoir   Random House, 2026, 219

[x] Wade, Carol et al.  Psychology: custom edition for Thompson Rivers University.  Pearson, 2007.

Institutions of all sorts dress themselves in routines. It is certainly a given for orphanages whether George Mueller’s Ashley Down in 1849 or SOS Children’s Villages today.

Routine at Ashley Down Orphanage 1849 – 1958.[i]

Routine at a SOS Children’s Village in Tanzania, 2023.[ii]

Routines in Russian orphanages

Were the orphanage routines in Russia in the 1990s as airtight as the George Muller Orphanages’ routine or did they resemble the routines of SOS Children’s Villages today? Did Russian orphanages include education and leisure or creative activities as well as food and bed times?

Human Rights articles affirm that Russian orphanages do offer education as well as meeting the physical need of the children.   Nonetheless, a study of two St. Petersburg orphanages reported a 2 care-giver to 4 child ratio. Staff at these orphanages worked 40-hour weeks.  Routine is implied, even if possibly weighted in favour of staff demands over child needs of individualized care.[iii]

One day doing some ‘gentle art of Swedish death cleansing’, I rifled our ‘important papers’ box. I came across some notes I took in the one meeting we had with staff before Yasik became ours. His schedule may have been:

His routine appears not so different from today’s SOS Children’s Villages, not even so far off from George Muller’s orphanages.

Routines for Families

And not so different from the way responsible parents anywhere in the world manage the lives of their children.   There is no ‘Breaking News’ to the place of routine in the lives of families whether biological or adoptive. A routine aids in meeting the demands on the lives of children and the demands on their parents. Routine is a glove slipped on whether a child has never known a conflict-filled home or is coming from a life filled with destabilizing events.

Routines for adoptive families

I doubt there is a manual for adopters out there that does not urge routines.  “Routines provide essential predictability, but the quality of relationships within them determines their true impact on a child’s development”, according to Grok.

Most offer advice similar to this:

Children crave structure and routines. It helps give them a sense of control and allows them to develop trust. Having set bedtime rituals for a younger child, or a weekly family movie night for an older child, are great ways to establish a connection. Routines establish a solid foundation to grow from. In turn, your child will bond with you more easily![iv] 

The Adoptive Parents’ Handbook quotes a researcher:

Children who have experienced complex trauma frequently have lived in an environment void of structure and routines.  They form a perception that the world is an unpredictable and dangerous place, and their capacity for developing competencies though self-exploration and mastery become inhibited by fear.  One of the key principles for restoring a sense of safety for a child is implementing predictable daily routines that establish safety, help children organize experience, and develop mastery.[v]

Routines shifting from institutional to family

How does a child whose earliest life experience has been shaped by institutional routine see becoming part of a family routine?  How is ‘family routine’ different from institutional routine? Is it all so different?

Free of jet lag, adoptees will get up more or less at the same time, at least on week days.  They will dress, eat and head off to whatever the day demands. They will be given opportunities to play and regular times depending on the whether it is a week day or a weekend. They will eat at roughly the same times and head to bed at times encouraged by child authorities the world around. Routines are accepted as part of any well-functioning life.

The difference is that they will do so with less people and a higher adult to child ratio.  Many will be in a 2 parent to one child ratio – much more parent than peer orientation.  The experience will be new; these new staff members are strangers; there will be adjustments but hey, the new staff have come bearing gifts and goodies and are offering lots of attention.

During one pre-adoption interview, I volunteered that having a bio-baby was not fully excised from my mind. Our case manager’s eyebrows went into steep arch.  No, no, no. We could not be thinking of having a child, as if there was even a serious possibility of a baby from my past prime body. Our sole focus must be given to this child. I promised to go on the Pill.

And we, with little conscious thought that routine was a must, slipped into family routine: morning, daytime and evening musts and wants, decided both by us and him. He wanted time to watch Forest Gump. We wanted to tuck in some educational moments, working with Yasik on the alphabet. Well, we had bought this cute little easel to hold big paper.  So OK, begin to establish routines as soon as needed, but the whole perfect-parent-molding-the-perfect-child plan might need to be spaced out a bit. 

We found a night time routine that worked for us: play, watch a video, bathe, read a bit,[vi]kiss a lot.  Born for Love says for someone who has lacked such attention is, “Like an addict with a tolerance, it takes a higher “dose” to get the same effect”.[vii] Yasik initiated the kisses as easily as we did, taking our faces in his hands or blowing a kiss at us and beaming.

We did put together a photo album of the orphanage and the kids there.  He looked at it often in the early days.  I would end the evening with a little prayer to ‘Dear God’ with him and he was out.  We were not inclined to incorporate church-going into our life style but I wanted Yasik to have some awareness of a god. Praying was what I did and passed on to him.

Routines to thwart

be

What happens in an institution when a child doesn’t want to comply with the routine? Having too much fun at play time, dawdling over a meal, not wanting to go to bed? It can be called ‘being silly’; it can be called ‘non-compliance’.  It can elicit a happy face or one of those downward dog faces.  It can be a good laugh; it can trigger an appointment with the behaviour changing squad shouldering back packs filled with therapy tactics, empathic or draconian.

Yasik certainly did his best to thwart family level efforts of routine barely 24 hours away from his daily experience of orphanage routine.  In a whole new world of light switches and tv remotes in the apartment in Russia, eating and sleeping were not high on his agenda. Being given a whole bedroom and all its wonders made sleep seem even more unfair. Other parts of routine were more acceptable, at least if the food was familiar.

For all those little attempts to adjust routine, for the most part Yasik knew he was sticking to a routine. When we later began to ask Yasik what he did at school, he seemed quite accepting, quickly recognizing that there was routine, “Work, work, play, work, play, play, work.”  He’d accepted that everybody in his world was sticking to routine.

And our routine was given the ‘stamp’ of approval by our social worker/case manager. The first post-adoption report put our early days with Yasik in social workese,”[Yasik] likes to have structure”.  She knew what the adoption advice manuals promoted. We were all comfortable with slipping on the glove, sticking to a routine.

Footnotes             

[i] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=367933023629309   or https://www.mullers.org/history

[ii] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=367933023629309   or https://www.mullers.org/history

[iii] Tsvetkova, L.A., Grigorenko, Elena, L., Rifka J. Muhanedrahimov, Arintcina, I. A., Solodunova, M.Y., Anikina, V.O., Vasilyeva, M.J., Chernego, D.I.   “Structural characteristics of the institutional environment for young children”. Developmental Psychology, Volume #9, 2016. https://psychologyinrussia.com/volumes/?article=5351

[iv] https://www.adoptionchoices.org/bonding-with-your-adopted-child/

[v] Tantrum, Barbara Cummins. The Adoptive Parent’s Handbook: a guide to healing trauma and thriving with your foster or adopted child. North Atlantic Books, 2020, 85-86.

[vi] Szalavitz, Maia, and Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.  Born for Love: why empathy is essential and endangered. William Morrow, 2010, 312.

[vii] Szalavitz, Maia, and Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Born for Love: why empathy is essential and endangered. William Morrow, 2010, 135.

Library shelves in the 21^st century continually showcase new books being written about adoption scandals coming to light in countries from China to Canada to Argentina to
Britain. Each speaks to horrors that make international protections of vulnerable children understandable.  In 1997 we could not have imagined following the dots from the need for such protective measures to our personal experience of adoption. When that young judge in Russia pronounced us acceptable parents, we understood that Yasik was indisputably our son.

Forming a Family involves interviews and paperwork

That heavy word ‘however’ now comes into play. At least in the language of legal documents, he was not yet entirely our son. We likely huffed and puffed about that revelation at the time, but as I write today, I understand. A mere four days into being family in Canada, we were told we also had another 10-day wait period before Yasik was truly, truly, truly our son, perhaps part of the wait period begun in Russia. 

In all the joy of those days, months and years of the ‘honeymoon period’ the uncertainty continued to rattle, a reminder that adoption was its own kind of family. Yasik became our son in 1997 but not until September 2000, having completed 5 interviews, at the going rate for a social worker, and the cost for translation to Russian, were we assured there would be no more post-placement interviews. 

The BC Adoption Act and Financial Administration Act: Adoption Regulation, last amended March 30, 2022, appears to request only one report now. 

Our first interview/report in November 1997 concluded with this statement: “I recommend that this placement continue to proceed.  It appears to be an excellent match and all are enjoying forming a new family together”.  

What if it had not been recommended to ‘continue to proceed’ three months after Yasik came into our lives? 

Little caveat here: after the five interviews, release from yearly interviews came when Dave wrote to the adoption agency that we thought we had made sufficiently plain that Russia need no longer worry about Yasik’s unshakeable place in our hearts and lives.  The BC adoption agency wrote back to say that the number of post-adoption reports came at the request of Russia which had experienced a few ‘rehomings’ or returning the adoptee to Russia.  We were but a part of a greater concern for the welfare of vulnerable children and should be grateful that Russia was doing its homework.

Added to the interviews, in this two-week parental leave, we began to get Yasik’s Canadian paper work together when we ran into one of the hiccups I had noticed at work particularly with Sri Lankan students.  At the top of his landing papers, the government had written Yasik’s name using the Cyrillic alphabet.  At the bottom of the paper his name was written in the letters we call the ‘right’ ones.  The government was going to use the letters at the top on his citizenship card and his care card.  The person on the other end of the telephone would not budge, telling us that it would require a change by an office in Victoria and would cost $225.00.  Immigrants with limited financial resources and hesitancy to make waves regularly found themselves with names that included the tribal name, a part of their name these prospective new Canadians did not use even in their former country. This would add letters to a name which then became too long for computers to accommodate. But we were people much more secure in our rights as Canadians.  Dave called Victoria and told them quite firmly that there was no sense to using the Cyrillic alphabet in Canada.  The preferred spelling at the bottom of the page was as clearly written as the Cyrillic.  The voice on the other end of the phone acquiesced. I have not discovered if this remains a problem for the newly arrived.

Forming a family involves hesitancy

My journal can be annoyingly honest at times. It admits that both Dave and I did have an ‘adjustment’ moment wondering if we could really do this, even wondering, did we want to!?!  Yes, it warrants an exclamation mark accompanied by a question mark.  Note though it was a ‘feeling’, not anything we acted on for the next line goes on to reassure that the feeling petered out.  Yasik had the resolution “weighted unfairly in his favour”.  He beamed at us and it was game over.  Dr.Bruce Perry tells us our brain reward system sinks us.

What could prompt parents to give up sleep, sex, friends, personal time, and virtually every other pleasure in life to meet the demands of a small, often irritatingly noisy, incontinent, needy being?  The secret is that caring for children is, in many ways, indescribably pleasurable.….  What we call “cuteness” is actually an evolutionary adaptation that helps ensure that parents will care for their children, … the important neurobiological “glue” that bonds and creates healthy relationships[i].

And now it was the first week of September, 1997, the September week that Mother Theresa died, and even more absorbing for the globe, Princess Diana died. Over a decade later, we would share another eventful week with the royal family.

Forming a family involves concern over deviations from expectations 

There were two disconcerting pieces to this otherwise wonderful beginning.  I noticed at the park how quickly other children pointed out how small Yasik was, his inability to speak English and that he had one lazy eye.

With this, and too readily for Dave, Yasik would at times hit or try to bite me in unacceptable excitement.  Where did the biting and hitting come from? 

Let’s get the hysterical response out of the way first. Yasik had been institutionalized in his most formative years; if he was hitting and biting, he must have RAD, reactive attachment disorder, so say the fear-mongers. This ‘diagnosis’ for adoptees ‘acting up’ was one of the first I heard.  Was Yasik being a bully?

Initially, as adopters sought to understand their adopted children who were not acting particularly perfectly, RAD was a handy blanket explanation. In time the messaging was studied. Now adoptive parents are warned against jumping on this bandwagon too quickly. It is considered by many researchers to be rarer than first thought[ii].  For us having to deal with a couple of tantrums would have made rushing to a diagnosis of RAD ridiculous. 

Was Yasik simply trying to take care of himself as he understood self-protection, a survival response learned in the orphanage? Hold On To Your Kids led me to wonder if this was a learned behaviour in the orphanage environment where children would of necessity be more peer-oriented than parent-oriented in learning social behaviours[iii]. Attaching in Adoption says, “Children who lived with busy orphanage workers or with depressed or drug-affected birth parents learned to get louder, more persistent, more irritating, or more charming, to get basic needs met … [therefore]“The rule of thumb is that, when first placed, children will relate to new parents in much the same way that they related to former parents or orphanage workers”[iv].

Or did it come from the trauma of the first four years?  “The aggression and impulsivity that the fight or flight response provokes can … appear as defiance or opposition, when in fact it is the remnants of a response to some prior traumatic situation ….”[v].  Our minds default to choices based on associations to memories.

The brain tries to make sense of the world by looking for patterns.  When it links coherent, consistently connected patterns together again, it tags them as “normal” or “expected” …[vi].

Orwas this anti-social behaviour a child’s way to express the separation/the strangeness of all the newness jumping up in front of him like goofy characters on a subterranean canal ride at a theme park, an inappropriate response but perhaps the only one he knew.  Maybe hitting or biting were simply overload reactions to not having enough language to cope.   How could he ‘use his words’?[vii]

Or was Yasik testing a love he did not yet understand or trust? How does a child understand a parental love he or she has never yet experienced?  How is trust generated in someone who has only ever been a client, not a family member? Pretty much every book I’ve read about nurturing an adoptee will make note of children who test boundaries as a way to test the strength of the love being offered to them[viii]. Appearing to prove they are not loved or loveable but yearning deep within to be proved wrong. As Bruce Perry says, it takes a whole lot of love but the message of love can find secure hold in a hungry heart.

Some of Dr. Perry’s understanding of the need for a whole lot of extra loving came from watching a caregiver named Mama P. She saw even older children as yet emotional babies still needing loving cuddling to allow catch up for those areas of a loved-deprived child’s psyche still underdeveloped[ix].

Our response to this behaviour: at first when he hit out, kicked, spit, slapped or punched, we held him down, put him in bed and even spanked him once.  He would cry but then calm down and all would be fine again for our little newcomer with little language living in a world still very strange to him.  By the end of the first week, we hit on the ‘novel’ idea to put a chair in a corner and have him sit there to cool down. 

Attaching in Adoption says “If children throw tantrums, hold them close…. to … comfort them”.[x] 

Brodie in need of one last cuddle, Oct 08, 2020 – June 23, 2026

Born for Love reminds parents, when your attachment is still insecure then

 … social punishments like a “Time-Out” [can be] less effective.  Being less loved – or having repeated early experience of loss … can also make loving itself harder and less satisfying.  Like an addict with a tolerance, it takes a higher “dose” to get the same effect…. neglected children or those with other attachment disruptions are much harder to soothe or to teach….[xi]

Were we just plain lucky that one or two opportunities to explore a time out and a nod toward the chair led Yasik to cool it?

I have come back time and again to this encouragement from Perry: “although early deprivation is damaging, the worst outcomes can be mitigated”. He is referring to monkeys here … but then he finishes with, “Fortunately, this is often true for humans as well.”[xii]

Forming a family involves social dilemmas

These first two weeks as a family came between the end of summer classes and the beginning of the fall semester; there was no opportunity to access my union’s allowed three days ‘parental leave’ for adopters.  It was time for school. 

Luckily I guess, that particular year I had evening classes so the first days of September gave me a schedule that allowed me to be at home with Yasik in the morning.  Dave dropped some of his course load, taking only morning classes three days a week.  Yasik’s needs were directing his art education. I stuffed Yasik into his car seat and worked against afternoon homeward bound traffic to Emily Carr University, picking Dave up. He took the driver’s seat and headed further into Vancouver to my school after which Dave and Yasik caught the bus home while I taught.  Two weeks into the school year with this schedule and we furrowed our brows. Perhaps we ought to just see about a possible kindergarten for Yasik.

We called the school to make an appointment, and Yasik was a new kindergarten student by the end of the day.

The journal says “And childhood is over – the staff at the community school down the street urge starting kindergarten as best for him for socializing, school prep, and ESL (the kindergarten teacher spoke some Russian).  And he has been watching the kids at the park – we feel he is ready”.  We would be keeping our promise to the Russian judge for this was not (God forbid) abandoning him to day care.

And what do the experts say about that: most say don’t rush into a wider social world. Keep your child close for enough time to build a secure sense of family. Might sending Yasik off to an institutional setting, even one as cozy as our little community school be heading right back into a peer-oriented, rather than family-oriented, environment?[xiii]  Some specifically adoption advice books were quite blunt: “As a new adoptive parent you should take time off from work after your child comes home… building trust is a process that cannot be rushed”.[xiv] Even in the face of “A social dilemma [which] already exists about the balance of career versus adequate time for infant attachment.  When older children are adopted, there is even less appreciation for the generous amount of time needed for parents and children to form attachment.[xv]

For us specifically, the ‘social dilemma’ seems to have come down to bowing to the dollar over the hopes of the heart strings.  We had to find a way to pay off the adoption debt and the mortgage and Dave’s education, and the life we promised to provide this child, but we did also believe we would be meeting Yasik’s language needs and the social needs we understood a child of his chronological age needed.  And once again we were working with our lack of awareness of the emotional impact of his past.

Adopting Older Children shrugs a bit “You also need to give yourself permission to not be a perfect person or a perfect parent.  Sometimes you will just be a “good enough’ parent and that’s okay”.[xvi]

We chose to send him to kindergarten.

Footnotes

[i] Perry, Bruce D., MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz  The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook.  Basic Books, 2017, 90-91.

[ii] Mercer, Jean   Understanding Attachmenty: parenting, child care, and emotional development   Praeger, 2006, 109-112

Perry, Bruce D., MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz  The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook.  Basic Books, 2017, 229

[iii] Neufeld, Gordon, PH.D. and Gabor Maté, M.D.  Hold On To Your Kids: why parents need to matter more than peers.  Vintage Canada, 2005, 65.

[iv] Gray, Deborah D.  Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents   Perspectives Press, Inc., 2002, 81-2, 24

[v] Perry, Bruce D., MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz   The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook.  Basic Books, 2017, 52.

[vi] Perry, Bruce D.. MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz   The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook.  Basic Books, 2017, 26

[vii] Gray, Deborah D.  Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents   Perspectives Press, Inc., 2002,73

[viii] Mercer, Jean   Understanding Attachmenty: parenting, child care, and emotional development   Praeger, 2006, 119

[ix] Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz   The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook.  Basic Books, 2017, 152, 153.

Gray, Deborah D.  Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents   Perspectives Press, Inc., 2002, 275

[x] Gray, Deborah D.  Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents   Perspectives Press, Inc., 2002, 231

[xi] Szallavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Pery, M.D., Ph.D.  Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered   William Morrow, 2010, 135

Tantrum, Barbara Cummins. The Adoptive Parent’s Handbook: a guide to healing trauma and thriving with your foster or adopted child. North Atlantic Books, 2020, 78

[xii] Szallavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Pery, M.D., Ph.D.  Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered   William Morrow, 2010, 56

[xiii] Neufeld, Gordon, PH.D. and Gabor Maté, M.D.  Hold On To Your Kids: why parents need to matter more than peers.  Vintage Canada, 2005, 33, 65.

[xiv] Bosco-Ruggiero, Stephanie, MA, Gloria Russo Wassell, MS, LMHC, and Victor Groza, PhD Adopting Older Children: a practical guide to adopting and parenting children over age four  New Horizon Press, 2014, 67

[xv] Gray, Deborah D.  Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents   Perspectives Press, Inc., 2002,22

[xvi] Bosco-Ruggiero, Stephanie, MA, Gloria Russo Wassell, MS, LMHC, and Victor Groza, PhD Adopting Older Children: a practical guide to adopting and parenting children over age four  New Horizon Press, 2014, 222

Checklist: get landed

Taking Yasik through immigration, Dave was asked, “Is your wife landed?”  Dave assured him, “Yes, yes, she is just over there, waiting by the luggage”.  The customs officer tried again, “No, is she landed?” And Dave proudly repeated, “Yes, we both went to get our son and she is waiting by the window.”  Did the officer’s training finally kick in?  He clarified, “No. Is she a citizen?”

_{davevincent.com}

And we were back in Canada.  My parents, brother and his family, sister and her husband were there to pick us up and hustle our son into his new family, taking pictures, hugging and talking.  We felt so full at this moment, with love, family, satisfying occupations and interests, sufficient money coming in to keep the roof over our head and the bills paid.  We drove home to find my sister, Barb, had streamers, balloons, welcome signs, new toys, clothes, a car seat, and a big meal ready….  Book after expert advice book on adoption cautions against overstimulating a new adoptee with people, parties and presents, just so you know.

After eating, we gave the wrapped toys to Yasik to open.  He picked up a gift but the wrapping stumped him.  Goggle told me only recently that generally Russian gift giving etiquette says that cheaper gifts are not expected to be wrapped in paper, only expensive ones. It is safe to say that any gift he may have received up to that point came unwrapped.

For most of my twenties and thirties I lived in other cultures.  At work I often talked with our foreign-born students about their experiences and the impact of culture shock on their hearts, minds and bodies.  Nor was I personally a stranger to culture shock.  Yet it did not occur to me or any of the other adults in the room, half of whom had dealt with as much culture shock as I, that Yasik, now in Canada for roughly three hours might be dealing with this phenomenon as well. It was merely cute that he needed his 3-year-old cousin, Kyle, to show him what to do with gift wrapping. Were Dave and I given any heads up about an international adoptee’s perspective on a new culture?  Not likely as our adoption prep seminars focused on adopting locally.  And remember, we had little time to prepare for an international adoption.  Does that hold up as an excuse?  Adopters today appear to have much more information to prepare them.   Try a quick Google search for sites dealing with international adoptees and culture shock. You will find advice giving adoption sites and journals providing research of the issue.

Happily in this case, a little culture shock didn’t slow Yasik. He studiously set about practicing the gift unwrapping lesson Kyle offered. Any diffidence at being the center of attention in an unfamiliar social setting disappeared. The little gift-wrapping hiccup turned out so positively for him, he moved on to giving his new Aunt Rena Russian language lessons, laughing at her pronunciation.  Some of our family’s first observations were that the orphanage must have taught him manners for he was polite.

After the meal as everyone prepared to leave, Dave scooped Yasik up, thinking he might have fun helping Dave move our vehicle out of the way.  Yasik burst into tears.  Given the lack of sleep and jet lag it shouldn’t have been a surprise but I noted the outburst in the journal because the tears stopped as soon as Dave returned from the driveway.  This was one party he did not want to leave. Or could we dare to imagine it was an attachment hook we could hang hopes on?

My mom and dad gave Yasik a teddy bear almost as big as him.  Dave found him at 4:30 a.m. the next morning hugging and talking away to it.  Studies in Attachment began early in the twentieth century.  Dr. Rene Spitz a psychoanalyst studying hospitalized infants

[observed that] these babies [abandoned infants who received little individual attention in group care] developed odd reactions to strangers, .… the usual behaviour was replaced by something that could vary from extreme friendliness to any human partner combined with anxious avoidance of inanimate objects to a generalized anxiety expressed in blood-curdling screams which could go on indefinitely”[i].

But he liked his teddy….

Checklist: look for kid fun, visit the dentist, visit the doctor

Having only a few days left of ‘parental leave’, we tucked in some family picnics and we slipped quickly into what most families in our neighbourhood seemed to do; we took him to the playground.  Other than a bit of experimenting with a play water pump on the periphery, he simply stood to the side holding our hands, watching other kids playing.  Getting him to actively engage took commandeering Kyle and climbing ourselves up the no-thrills slide the length of our own bodies.

We tucked in some introductions to our friends as well in those first days. As the first post-adoption report notes, initially Yasik “appeared reluctant to let [his parents] out of his sight“. Yet Yasik was quickly overcoming shyness around others.  One relationship that particularly warmed our hearts was with Tony who himself was raised in Canada’s early adoption and foster system, one that was very difficult for him (SeeA Canadian Story of Adoption in the 1930s, Becoming Family). Tony showed Yasik his bee hives and he went home with a jar of fresh honey.

The honey bit is not a segue way into a dentist visit. Yasik’s first dental appointment was on the checklist regardless. He seemed to take lying in the dental chair in stride but he looked to me so defenseless that I found the experience more emotional than I had expected.  He did not have the language needed to understand what was happening or to express his thoughts about what was happening.  Heart strings were pulled and then snapped back a bit.

It was also actually imperative to introduce Yasik to our family doctor. The Hague Convention requires countries, of which Russia is one, to provide a translated medical report but adoption handbooks warn that this could be incomplete or possibly even inaccurate[ii].   Our pre-adoption medical report listed convergent strabismus (glasses were needed), adenoids enlarged (left to re-adjust on their own), dermatitis (never noticed it), speech delay (normal), short for age.  His motor skills were in line with his age as were his eating and sleeping habits.

Our doctor agreed that other than being small for his age, a common side effect of orphanage life, he was quite healthy.  It was the doctor’s opinion that he may have built up a strong immunity by more exposure to bacteria and whatever else did not have to battle Purell.  And that seemed a good conclusion for he was never sick with any of the childhood plagues other children battled each year.  

Odd, isn’t it?  Impervious to bacteria yet not getting enough nourishment to meet standard growth charts.  And it isn’t merely a matter of a lack of veggies and salmon as the experiment conducted by the German king, Frederick II, demonstrated in the 13^th century.  His curiosity about the development of language led to his forbidding care-givers in an orphanage to speak to or hold the infants in their care.  The babies all died. Updating from the 13^th century, here is a rather unequivocal research statement from the Psychology In Russia journal: The research literature suggests that institutions for children left without parental care do not provide environments that adequately promote children’s development, and that characteristics of orphanages should be considered as an environmental factor influencing developmental difficulties in children living in institutions and later in post-institutional families.[iii] Institutionalized children come into their adoptive families often pre-packaged with deficits biological, psychological and social. What was that doing to our son’s young heart, mind and body?

Born for Love gives Chapter Three[iv] to an examination of the repercussions of early life in an orphanage.  The focus in this chapter is a girl adopted from a Russian orphanage but some of the research behind her story is taken from studies of Romanian children who spent their early years in orphanages during the time and under the experiments of President Nicolae and Deputy Prime Minister Elena Ceausescu. Not to sound like a snob but the deputy prime minister came equipped for this research with an elementary education and likely a doctorate obtained with the help of a professor. One of the charges for which they were ‘summarily executed’ as the saying goes, was the claim of their ‘research’ “that children will develop just fine without individualized attention and affection”.

The 25-year study at SFU on the Romanian orphans meets the appropriate definition of research. A paper which came out of this study under a heading titled “Physical Growth”[v] says:

While the malnutrition of institutionalized children contributes to their growth deficiency, another contributing factor may be the poor quality of interaction and stimulation offered by the low caretaker-to-child ratio in these institutions.  This type of growth deficit, known as psycho-social dwarfism [now referred to as psycho-social short stature], can be very serious.  However, upon removal from stressful or neglectful conditions, children suffering from psycho-social dwarfism tend to make tremendous gains in both height and weight….

Contrary to Deputy Prime Minister Elena Ceausescu’s ‘research’ findings, this article and others in this search make the point that lack of nurture in infancy and early childhood compromise physical growth. 

Quoting Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard’s “Yeah but, No but…”[vi], it’s nice to be able to rebut that this can be mitigated once a child is placed in nurturing care.  At our first post–adoption interview it was noted that Yasik “appears to need much cuddling” but that over the course of the three years of post-adoption interviews he went from 39.5 inches to 47 inches.  Okay, so still not the class giraffe but also not the only one in the front row of the class photo.

Checklist: Forget the past?

We don’t know how much Yasik understood of his situation as a ‘social orphan’, for about those years, Yasik continues to say he remembers nothing or next to nothing before the jet ride to Canada. Did stress or even trauma from the first four years shrink his hippocampus, or put him in a dissociative state in order to cope with the lack of consistent nurture?[vii]  Yasik had definitely experienced physical and emotional neglect, likely physical and emotional abuse, and had definitely been exposed to domestic violence and household substance abuse.  See Orphanage Risk Factors for more on this issue.

Is it not possible to think that becoming a member of a family in a strange new world has added a further level of stress, however delightful the stress, to a young and still developing mind.  The stress of transition to an entirely new life, now heaped on top of separation from first caregivers and accustomed living conditions, abusive or otherwise, may stymie memory.  And then again, a young brain still developing, may not have retained these memories.[viii] 

Two strangers are what he perhaps came to understand he was to hope for.  I have read here and there that for children in institutional care, the hope of having parents is the Holy Grail. How is a Holy Grail imagined to a 4- or 5-year-old?

All of these strangers’ attention is solely on him and any desire he manages to communicate, but everything is new and mostly impossible to explain when these two strangers have neither language or culture awareness to reach out to him.  Attaching in Adoption cautions: “The comfort and competence that children feel in their own culture is lost as they enter a new surrounding”[ix].

Checklist: start the re-education program

Those shoes Yasik wanted to put on the moment he awoke in Moscow. We bought him new runners and tried to make the shoes disappear for they were already cramping his toes.  That evening we got the shoes off him and set them by the door. He wailed.  He seemed to have the idea that taking off his shoes meant bed time, probably an orphanage routine. The wailing stopped when no one headed him off to bed. Taking his shoes off at the door like a good Canadian became a new routine he comfortably settled into.  Like a proud mother, I also note in the journal that he was happy to help with household chores.  And like a proud mother who believed in education I have noted that in those first few days we taught him A and B.

Yasik had now moved from émigré to immigrant in less than a week.  He had moved from an orphanage setting to a residential home, no one but him in a large bedroom.  Routines had been dismantled and recreated; cultural changes had been made with absolutely no orientation; no one spoke the only language he knew other than about 10 words to cover the necessities of life; he was interacting with two strangers whom he had been told are his mama and poppa; little of the food was familiar other than macaroni and sausages, and what about jet lag? All this newness at every hand and he was handling it entirely alone.

Footnotes

[i] Mercer, Jean.  Understanding Attachment: parenting, child care, and emotional development.  Praeger, 2006, 33-34.

[ii] Bosco-Ruggiero, Stephanie, MA, Gloria Russo Wassell, MS, LMHC, and Victor Groza, PhD.  Adopting Older Children: a practical guide to adopting and parenting children over age four. New Horizon Press, 2014, 162.

[iii] Structural characteristics of the institutional environment for young children. Developmental Psychology, Volume #9, 2016

[iv] Szalavitz, Maia, and Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.  Born for Love: why empathy is essential and endangered. William Morrow, 2010, 53.

[v] Le Mare, Lucy, PhD, Karyn Audet MA

A longitudinal study of the physical growth and health of postinstitutionalized Romanian adoptees

file:///C:/Users/jacka/Downloads/A_longitudinal_study_of_the_physical_growth_and_he.pdf,

‘Psycho Social Dwarfism’ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6741153/ 

[vi] BBC production, Little Britain

[vii] Perry, Bruce D. MD, PhD and Maia Szalavitz   The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook   Basic Books, 2017, 49-50

Szalavitz, Maia, and Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.  Born for Love: why empathy is essential and endangered. William Morrow, 2010, 255

[viii] https://www.healthline.com/health/why-cant-i-remember-my-childhood

[ix] Gray, Deborah D.  Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents   Perspectives Press, Inc., 2002, 149

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.

Yasik

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.

Dave

At 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.

Gail

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.