Do Svidaniya

The last thing I expected to do today was meet Liza's mother.  In fact I never expected to meet her.  Based on what we have been told and have seen, this meeting would have only resulted from our request and long drive.  When I asked a week ago if Liza would be seeing her at all in this process, I was told it would be a bad thing to allow before our court date.  After that, obviously, it would have to be something Liza wanted.  She had said she wanted to see her house one last time, which is an hour's drive, but not mention her mother.  I did not want to force it but I knew that it would be a healthy step in her ability to move forward in her own life.

We had told her that her brother would be coming today, to say goodbye.  She knew we were coming as we visit every day.  Walking in we found not her older brother "R", but her younger (6 yr old) brother "N" who still lives at home.  He was sitting in her lap at a table in the lobby.  I thought he was a boy from the orphanage she was loving on.  I thought the women at the table were the elderly cleaning ladies.  She gestured across the table with an uncertain expression and said, "Mama."

What I was hearing wasn't lining up with what I was seeing.  This woman didn't look 36.  She didn't look like the mother of a six year old.  Far beyond it.  She was not at all what I expected and I can't even tell you what that was anyway.  Not once in all this time have I considered this most anticipated, sometimes dreaded, awkward and emotional moment in adoption.  It wasn't supposed to be part of our story.  Meeting the woman who gave birth to the child you call your own is....indescribable.

It throws your whole sense of certainty off even while you are glad for it and the knowledge and closure it brings.  Here you are bonding with and adjusting to your new child, not in a hospital room with no intervention or outside influence, but in an institution that does not even recognize you as a legally valid presence.  And suddenly there's this woman who gave birth to her and then repeatedly rejected her.  And you don't know how to feel.

Well I don't.  I don't think Liza did either.  She had no warning and hasn't seen her in I don't know how long. Years.  It is something I wanted for Liza.  But she looked shell shocked the rest of our visit.  It's different I think when it is not an infant who hasn't been harmed; but a child who is nearly grown with countless scars.  We had no interpreter and had all but lost the power of speech; certainly bilingual speech.  All I could do was squeeze her mother's hand, look into her eyes and give her all I had to give: a picture of Liza in her new home.  She took it with a smile, said "До свидания.  счастливый" (Goodbye.  Happy.) and walked to the bus that would take her 120 km back home.

Liza said goodbye to 2 brothers and a mother today, not for the first time, but maybe for the last.  Leaving her there today of all days tore my heart out.