A Picture Worth a Thousand Words
Today is the big day. We eat breakfast and ask the question we’ve been asking frequently of each other: “How are you feeling right now?” Excitement, certainly. Trepidation. Hope. All those things.
First, we have to get permission to visit the orphanage, so off we go to the Government Center at 8:30 am to be there for a 9 am opening time (accompanied by both the director and the translator, without whom we could do nothing!). Three hours and forty-five minutes later, we get permission. There’s been a staff turnover in the offices, and the newbies don’t know what to do (or so we’ve been told). All of us walk to the orphanage, up the hill and to the left, and through the gates. There are sand playgrounds with painted toadstools to the left, a dog house to the right, and large planters at the front (almost like it’s an old palace of an important man, which it is). Walking through the front door, we’re met with a large mural with bears and other such characters in it–very much like a fairy tale story.
Up the chipped marble staircase and into the director’s office.
The director offers us a seat; she seems warm and never stops smiling. In fact, she’s almost cooing at us, which makes us feel like she really knows each of her children by name (we find out later this is very true!).
We start talking about the girl we’ve come to see, but halfway through her history–both family and medical, there’s a commotion at the door, and in she walks, hands raised, looking around the room for mama and papa, as she’s probably been told. She smiles at both of us and readily comes into my arms. We haven’t expected her to be so agreeable, but throughout our conversation with the director and the subsequent translation, she sits with me first, then Dan (which I think is very unusual, because most orphanage children don’t like men at first, as they’re not used to them!).
Karina is her name. She has a wide Julia Roberts smile and dark eyes that sparkle. We see bits and pieces of the rooms she lives in, and the teachers express their excitement by calling out her name, “Karina, Karina! Mama! Papa!”
We say the “yes” that is needed for the paperwork to begin.
Our visit is short, due to the fact that it’s 1:15, and we still have to travel back to Simferopol to locate her two older half brothers in the boys’ orphanage; they have to release their younger sister to us, since the Ukraine has laws against separating siblings. We hope that because the brothers are from another father, this will allow us to take their younger sister.
We are in a rush to get to Simferopol before the offices close. We arrive at the City Council offices to get permission to go to the boys’ orphanage at 3:45. At 4:45, we’re on our way to the orphanage. We’ve been told that people are waiting to help us, and we know that the director has fostered these relationships over years, to get these people to bend to him the way they do. At 5:45 we’ve gathered the boys’ written statements (without having to see them in person…this makes it easier for both parties, I’m sure). The translator tells us later that the older boy, Vladimir, kindly said, “Yes, this is what I would want for my little sister. This will be much better for her, to go with the American parents.” Now, this allows the two boys (9 and 11) to be more readily adopted by parents who want a more specific age range, and the translator has promised that she’ll keep tabs on them for us, so we can know where they end up.
At 6:50, the paperwork is done (for today). The director, who has so graciously accompanied us everywhere for the past two days, is flying back to Kiev tonight, so we drop him off at the airport and head back to Yalta for more paperwork and an older-brother-chase tomorrow (yes, she has one more brother from another father whom we have to track down, to get his written permission).
We get in at 9:00 and immediately download all the footage we took, and realized, happily, that Dan was able to capture her first entrance into the room!
We watch it over and over again….then drop into bed, exhausted. This is what I’m seeing as I drift off to sleep: