I can’t tell you how fascinating it is to watch a child who is yours, but who has none of your genes.  Truly, she’s come to us without our DNA makeup, so what she is, right now, is a mix of her parents’ genes and her environment.  This has always been a curiosity for us–which is the more deciding factor.

Her mannerisms are already here.  Dan drops a matchbox car and points to it.  What we expect is that she will take it and keep it; most kids do.  But no, she walks over, picks it up, and hands it back to Dan.  We’re both surprised.  Dan then tells me a story of when he was in the hospital as a young child.  There was a visiting chaplain who would make the rounds to all the children, just to talk with them, give them love.  Well, the hospital gave out popsicles every once in a while, and when Dan was given his, the chaplain asked, “Mmm, that looks good.  May I have a bite?”  Immediately, Dan handed it to the chaplain, and the chaplain was so shocked, he told Dan’s parents about it.  “You don’t understand,” he said.  “None of the other children do that.  They hold it tighter, because they’re afraid of losing it.”

The temperature of Liliana’s feelings is in her eyes.  You can literally see the battle going on in that little body of hers.  She will release sometimes and laugh or smile, then the next second, she frowns and grows contemplative.  It’s almost like she’s “gone,” in the sense that she’s dead to the world.  Does she have a happy place already–where she goes in her head when she experiences stress? If she does, that makes me sad.

Dan and I have discussed the wisdom of visiting her twice a day.  Of course, we wouldn’t dream of doing anything differently, because the establishment (both the adoption program here and the orphanage workers) wouldn’t understand it.  It’s just what you do.  What we’re thinking is that we’re cementing the fact that we’re continually leaving her.  True, we return, but this back and forth must be confusing.  We can speak the language of love, but not Russian, and you should see her face when one of the workers passes us, gushing in Russian.  She’s all ears.  She smiles.  She’s herself again.

One of the social workers and translators here told us a story of the first adoption he facilitated (in his wallet, he carries pictures of all the children he has found homes for).  When the couple would come for their visits, he would translate for them, and the child seemed to like this immensely.  Then, on the day the parents came to take their child away permanently, the orphanage caregivers said to the boy, “You go with your mama and papa now.”  The child ran past the couple and into the arms of the social worker.  He said, “I never did that again.  The child seeks comfort wherever he can get it, and I represented something he knew.”

Liliana is a sponge for love.  Her body sinks into ours when we’re holding her, and she folds her shoulders in so she’s as small as possible.  She wants to be held constantly–to be close–and we give her all we can.  I suppose we’re building trust, which takes time.  We have to remember that we’ve known about her for four years.  She’s only known about us since Monday.  I will say this: it makes you want to rescue all the children in the orphanages–to fill up their love banks.

Dan holds her for a long time today.  We’re still not sure if he’s returning home (very soon we’ll be spending money both at home and here–more than we have), and he wants to maximize his part of the bonding.  He has a real knack with her.  She watches as he shakes the water off the tree branches.  Then they watch the sky tram going up and down the mountain.  They pet the cat.  They find a wooden wheel, which Dan rolls down the playground slide, and the wheel goes zipping away.  This delights her, and when I return the wheel to her, she wants Dan to do it again.

Every once in a while, Dan will set her down, then move a short distance away from her, with his arms opened wide, and when she realizes what he’s doing, he runs to her, scoops her up, and lifts her high in the air, then brings her close to him.  She loves this.  She does this thing where when Dan comes toward her, she pumps her arms up and down.  It’s a hoot.

Ach.  I’m sorry.  Have I become one of those parents who can’t stop talking about their child?  Please forgive me.

One last thing, on another note.  Have you ever walked into a room and smelled something peculiar but familiar, that whooshes you back to a certain time, a certain place?  I’m a firm believer in smell memory (and taste memory), and when we travel, I take different perfumes or candles or scents with us, so that when I wear that particular scent (usually as a perfume or lotion) later, it reminds me of all those surroundings and food and people.  For instance, when Dan smells the sunscreen I put on my face, he sighs and says, “You smell like St. Barths.”  Well, of course, we wear sunscreen there–that’s why he remembers it.  And it brings back all the pleasant memories we have there–of the beaches, the quiet, the French food, and our lazy happiness.

Another example.  When I was teaching, I attended a teachers’ conference at the International Wolf Center in Ely.  One night we went for a snowshoe hike, and the leader pointed out the signs of the forest and its animals.  We stopped at one point, and she broke an aspen twig off its stem, and she handed us each a portion of it.  She said, “Chew on it.  What does it remind you of?”

I chewed.  It was bitter, and it made my tongue shrivel up.  I thought, “Yes!  I know this; I know this.”  And suddenly, I was pulled back to my childhood when I would take aspirin for tension headaches.  “Aspirin,” I said, astonished that aspen could taste exactly like aspirin.

She nodded.  “Yes, it’s salicylic acid, the stuff that aspirin’s made up of.  The Native Americans used to boil aspen twigs and use it for various remedies, one of which is a headache.”  Who knew?

So, that’s what I mean by memory.  It’s amazing how well it works.

On this trip, I’m wearing DKNY’s Red Delicious.  Maybe it was the apple shape of the perfume bottle that attracted me (after all, Eve is coming out in January!).  But I’ll be curious to see if Liliana has any memory recollection of the distinct apple smell.  Or maybe it will represent stress to her; I don’t know.

How can we really know any of these things for sure?