This being a mother of two and dealing with sibling rivalry is new for me and rough. It’s made even more complicated because I can’t understand what the children say when they talk to each other. They speak Spanish to each other. How do you officiate when you can’t follow the game?
To make it even harder the game keeps changing. Andry races through the different phases adopted children go through as they adjust to their new family and mourn the loss of everything they have known up until the point they were adopted. He has lost rituals, rules, food, friends, family, bedtimes, music, smells. Consistency is comforting to children. It takes a while to for the child and adoptive parents to build up a history together so that the child can feel safe and relax.
Okay, okay. Intellectually I know this. But putting it into practice is challenging and mentally exhausting especially when the kid is 13 and you don’t speak the same language. I’m delighted to discover he is very willing to discuss what he’s thinking. However, since we only have a vocabulary together of about 300 words, our conversations aren’t as deep as either of us would like them to be.
Ron and I are using every fiber of our beings to figure out what Andry is thinking and what we can do to comfort him. I wish Andry’s forehead had a big mood-ring stone right in the middle of it. Different colors would signify different emotions so we would know what was going on with him; blue-lonely, violet-sad, yellow-homesick, red-mad, orange-upset with my sister, green-jealous, turquoise-sleepy, brown-bored…I bet if we could find a stone that looked like a third eye, Andry would even agree to let me glue it to the middle of his forehead. He thinks monsters are cool.
(I was correct. Right now he is sitting next to me watching TV and looking over my shoulder. He saw the colors written above and asked what it was about. Using our 300 words and a lot of handmotions I explained. He laughed and thought it was a good idea.)
Andry is very bright, quick and sensitive. He, like Olya, can feel situations, but sometimes he misunderstands them and gets his feelings hurt. Sibling rivalry further complicates the situation. For the past two days there have been a cluster of issues with Olya and him. Part of me wants to laugh when I hear them bickering because it’s a bit like music to me. They’ve missed out on so many years together; so many normal brother/sister interactions. But I also know many of these times, Andry is wondering, “will I be loved as much as Olya is?”
To Olya’s credit she is rock steady. I am really impressed. Even though she is required to share our attention, thr reality is Andry is getting more of it. Olya has not acted jealous, pouted or had a single emotional outburst in the five weeks we have been here. That’s a long time. She acts as though she is confident that she is loved to pieces, which she is.
When we were alone together I told her how amazing she has been with Andry. She looked at me squeezed her eyes shut and grinned.
Today Olya was talking to Andry about life in Miami. She said something about him having a job at Miami Ad School. Olya absolutely LOVES being at Miami Ad School and was sharing something she loved with Andry. She pretends she has a job at the school working at the front desk and frequently “helps out” the staff by putting labels on envelopes or other little things. He mistook what she said about him “working” to mean that he had to go to work when he got to Miami.
Andry was upset. He wasn’t speaking. Since their whole conversation had taken place in Spanish it took us a while to unravel what had transpired. I explained how Olya loves helping at school and had thought he would also. We explained how Patrick, Erik and Cheryl’s 16-year-old son, helps out on his summer vacations. We reassured him that he would not have to “get a job” but that he might enjoy helping out. He might especially like helping Carlos, whom Andry already knows and likes. We told him Carlos knows a lot about computers. Andry loves and has an aptitude for tech stuff. Andry relaxed once he understood. He was his happy self again.
I must say that most of the time the kids act like a couple of puppies bouncing all over the place together. As I type, Olya has put two pairs of Andry’s underwear on her head to good-naturedly taunt him. He in turn, found one of her little socks to wear on his ear. They are getting along remarkably well considering the number of hours they spend together every day.
It’s 9:30 at night and Nikolai just called on my cell phone and asked for Andry. When Andry heard Nikolai was on the phone his face crinkled with what looked like dread. I told Andry he didn’t have to talk to Nikolai and he relaxed. I told Nikolai to call Yelena. After the call I explained again to Andry that he always has a choice. If he wishes to talk to Nikolai that is fine. If he doesn’t want to talk to Nikolai it is also fine. Interaction with his biological parents is always his choice. I think we will need to explain this many times. He must feel in limbo right now. I think I remember that in Dante’s Inferno Hell is describe as limbo. For the last 13 years he has had a strong, though not especially healthy, relationship with his biological parents. Ron and I are supposed to be his new parents but the adoption is not totally legal. We aren’t in Miami yet. We are just waiting and waiting and waiting.
Today we found out that even though it has been 12 days, two days longer than the 10 day-wait for an adoption to become official, we have to wait until Wednesday at 5:00PM to get the signed court decree. That will practically be 15 days. Then we can take the six-hour, round-trip drive to get Andry’s birth certificate and have a new one made and legalized. That takes a day if we’re lucky. Then we have to get a passport for him that can take up to 10 days, but we are hoping for two-four days. Then Andry can get his physical that is needed before we can go to the American Embassy which is closed on Fridays. We are VERY ready to come home but don’t know when that will be!
Just before bedtime, Olya stood up quickly, and her computer slid out of her hands and fell to the floor. She knew the worst; her computer was broken. She was correct. And there is no way to get it fixed before we leave. The long wait to leave for home will now seem far longer for Olya.
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