We’ve gone to Paris twice now, and I have to say that each time we’ve gone, I’m amazed at how many famous artists were rejected and ridiculed during their lifetimes.  When you enter a museum, you’re given the option of renting a handheld recorder with options in various languages.  Each painting or piece of art has a large number next to it.  When you input the number, you can listen to a narrator explain the painting–the history behind it, the artist who created it, and what the critics thought about it at the time.  I would guess that 85-90% of the time, the artist was told that his art wasn’t for the masses.  It goes to show how much the critics didn’t know.  Either that, or our tastes have changed over the years.  Back then, the artists pushed the proverbial envelope, and their audiences weren’t ready for their unusual creativity.  But isn’t that the way it is now?

I’ve found this same phenomenon with writing, too.  I’m convinced that you have to find the right editor, the right agent, who likes your stuff.  Just because you’re not getting bites doesn’t mean you’re a horrible writer; it’s just that you haven’t found your audience yet.  You have to be noticed, and this is extremely difficult in today’s world.  Especially when book reading is at an all-time low (or so they tell us!).  If you’re a reader, it makes sense that you might like some books and not others.  You might enjoy fiction, whereas your spouse or friend might delight in a good mystery.  On and on it goes.

On our court date for Liliana, we found out that she’d been rejected by several Ukrainian couples because of a minor thumb deformity (which can readily be fixed).  She was ours because someone else didn’t want her.  Not only did her parents reject her, but others also, and after all that, she finally ended up with parents who are ga-ga over her.  So, you see, I don’t take much stock in rejection.  It means nothing, unless you want to believe that the current rejection will open up new doors that are even more glorious than the options you have now.

I was scanning all our adoption documents this morning, so we’d have digital copies of everything, and I came upon the parents’ court hearing which explained why Liliana was taken away from them.  For the father (who was really a lover on the side): tuberculosis, drunkenness, incarceration, and joblessness.  For the mother: nursing while drinking, unfit environment, and abandonment of her children (all four of them!).  After being in the Ukraine and seeing what is tolerated, I think the situation must have been pretty bleak for the Ukrainian government to deem the parents not up to the task of parenting.  Liliana was taken away from them at two months.  Since you need certain documents finalized (oh, do Dan and I know about that!), she was in a hospital’s care until she was eight months old.  I can only imagine the lack of care or love she found there.  At eight months she was transferred to the orphanage.

When Dan and I were there, we got a glimpse of how the babies were cared for.  Outside the building, in both the front and the back, they had large square cribs (we would call them playpens, but they looked more like cribs with the wooden slats)–maybe 10’ x 10’.  The caregivers would sit on a bench and gab, while the babies would either roll around, crawl, or stand up and look out.  Once, when I approached with Liliana during our visiting time, several of the children came to peer out at us.  One boy banged his head repeatedly against the railing.  I’m not sure if this was to get our attention or if he was stressed.

I told Liliana it made my heart sad to see what she had had to endure.  I told her I was sorry that Papa and I couldn’t have come earlier to take her home.

Then I promised her the moon for the rest of her life.

[Post image: One of Monet’s haystack paintings, Musee d’Orsay, Paris]