Can You Keep a Secret? (18 page)

We went to the furthest corner of the room, and lay Benjamin down on the floor.

‘Let’s hope he sleeps through this, too,’ said Colby, and he did.

It took an hour before we were finally called to our window. I had forgotten that all the embassy staff would be American, but for some reason, out of habit, I was using the same voice I’d been using with Russian speakers for three days – like they can understand English if you say it with an accent! Colby said, ‘She can understand perfect English, you know!’ He said it a bit sharply and the embassy staffer looked shocked, but Colby apologised straight away saying, ‘Oh, look, I’m sorry, but we’ve had a hell of an experience. We just want to get our boy home.’

I put an arm around Colby’s waist and hugged him.

We had a passport photograph taken for Benjamin and it was terrible, not just because of the haircut but also because we had to wake him up for it and he was grumpy. But that was okay because the next stop was the airport. Anatoly dropped all three of us on the side of the road, about a mile from the actual departure gate, which is how they do it in Moscow. Colby took charge. He was holding Benjamin over his shoulder like a dead weight, and pulling a suitcase behind him. I was dragging the other two – we were down one suitcase as the one with tobacco and pantyhose had been left behind – and we made our way like that all the way to the check-in.

On board there were a few challenges with our new son, who wasn’t used to flying – plus I wasn’t used to flying without being absolutely out of it on my anti-anxiety medication! – but it wasn’t too bad, and now I’m here to tell you that we’ve been home for exactly two weeks and I am still pinching myself. It’s early days, but Benjamin is settling in really well, and being a mum – or mom, as they say here in America – is everything that I hoped it would be. We are bonding and
getting to know each other, and Benjamin has picked up quite a few words in English and we are really learning how to love each other.

Of course, I’ve also been hard at work on what Mavis-Marie called the adoption book!

Maybe you can guess from the title of this post that I’ve decided to call mine ‘The Book of Benjamin’ because it really is a book about Benjamin’s life and times, before he came to live with us. I’ve done it exactly as Mavis-Marie told me to do it: I’ve got a nice, sturdy book, and I covered it with polka-dot contact paper so it will be able to withstand all the times that Benjamin wants to turn the pages. I stuck the photograph of Benjamin at the orphanage inside the front cover. I kept all the receipts from our travels, and the boarding passes, and even coasters from the hotel where we stayed, and I’ve stuck them all down. I’ve printed out photographs of all of us in Red Square and of the three of us in the US embassy, waiting to get Benjamin’s passport.

I’ve got a nice short version of Benjamin’s story – how he needed a family, and how we longed for a baby, and how we found each other in Moscow, and how nothing can now break us apart – and I’ve printed it out, and put a few different lines of it on each new page, so it reads like a story book. Obviously it’s going to be a while before Benjamin understands the concept of adoption, but I’ve kept it nice and simple. The main thing is, we won’t ever have to have the ‘We Need to Talk to You About Something Important’ chat with Benjamin; he won’t ever get that big shock that people talk about, with some interfering old aunty saying, ‘I can’t keep this secret any longer! You’re adopted!’ Being adopted will be the story of Benjamin’s life. He’ll never know any different.

Obviously I can’t post the book here, but here’s what I’ve written down:

To our son, Benjamin.

You were born in a beautiful country called Russia.

You had a birth mommy who grew you in her tummy, but she could not take care of you.

She took you to the orphanage, where some nice people looked after you while the government in Russia looked for the perfect new parents who would love you forever – and that was your daddy and me!

We came to Russia to meet you and fell in love with you straight away.

We asked the nice people in the Russian courts to let us adopt you and we were so happy when they said yes.

We got you a new passport and we took you home with us to the United States of America.

Now you live with us, and we love you so much, and we are your Forever Family and we will love you forever and ever and ever and you will never need to find a new home ever again – love your Mom and Dad.

Comment (1):

Oh, wow, congratulations, Caitlin and Colby! What a wonderful story!

Comment (2):

This is so amazing. I have been reading this with tears in my eyes. Such a lovely story. May God bless you and keep you all.

Comment (3):

This is so wonderful! Such amazing news! And Caitlin, don’t beat yourself up too much about your first reaction when you saw Benjamin at the orphanage! I can tell you now that when we went to get our son – he’s a Sasha/Alexander, also from Moscow – he had a very bad haircut, and he had a lot of oil in his hair. I’ve since found out that they love to put oil in the children’s hair, even though the oil they use smells absolutely disgusting and makes them look like little monsters. He looked VERY different from what we were expecting. But we have gone on and bonded with Sasha and he is the most delightful boy in the world (and, yes, I know everybody says that). The main thing is, your boy is HOME.

Comment (4):

I’m reading this post and I’m so happy for you, but also so jealous of how easy you make it all seem! We travelled to Moscow six months ago to collect our young daughter and we’ve had a very different experience! We waited for years to meet our little girl and although things are now going very well, we have certainly had a lot of challenges with her behavior! Maybe what you’re experiencing is the calm before the storm!! And that’s really why I’m writing to say that I run a support group for new adoptive moms and you being in Larchmont are not too far from us, so I wanted to invite you to come along and share your experiences – good and bad!! – at our next meeting. No children, just us girls, so we can all have a good vent! I really hope you can come. Signed, Sandi Miller, Ho-Ho-Kus, USA (email address attached).

The (Alternative) Book of Benjamin

Okay. It’s taken me a while to work up the courage to say the things I’m going to say, but some of you will have read that last comment on my blog from a really brave lady, Sandi Miller, inviting me to attend one of the meetings for newly adoptive mothers at her home in Connecticut.

Well, I went along and – WOW.

Sandi Miller, you blew my mind.

I had been so excited about bringing Benjamin home and I just wanted everything to be perfect – and I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that when I wrote that first post, I was basically still pretending that things WERE perfect.

The real story is that things have actually been pretty difficult with Benjamin!

The reason I didn’t want to admit that in my first post was that I was afraid that if I told the whole truth, people would think that I was a bad mother. You expect so much from the experience of
adoption – everyone tells you what a good thing you are doing, and what a good person you must be – and you hope it will be fantastic, and when it isn’t, I suppose you blame yourself. Now that I’ve met quite a few people who are in the same situation, I think it’s time for me to tell the truth and hopefully that will help others and we can all help each other.

Some of you will already know this, but Sandi has been hosting her meetings for adoptive mums for more than a year now.

For those who don’t know, she’s got five biological sons. That’s right, FIVE! And then she’s got the daughter she adopted from Moscow last year, whose name is Masha. She has her own website where she explains it all: she always wanted a little girl but she doesn’t have girls! She has boys! So they went for adoption. Masha was five years old when Sandi went to pick her up, and well on the way to being diagnosed as what the Russians call
debil
– it means ‘underdeveloped in her mind’, or as they put it, ‘in her capacity to make a useful contribution’.

In the website that Sandi keeps to chart Masha’s progress, she says, ‘To be diagnosed as
debil
is disastrous. Once a child is given that label they are basically doomed.
Debil
children aren’t put up for adoption. They are sent to special schools when they are very young, and then to special technical schools for other
debil
teenagers, many of whom are what we used to call retarded. They are sent to live in a government-funded apartment, with other
debil
adults. And then to work in menial jobs in a factory, and whatever children they have will be taken away into an orphanage, and the cycle continues. We were overwhelmed to be given the opportunity to adopt a little girl, but also to rescue Masha
from that dead-end life. I will admit, though, that I have caught myself saying, “Okay, but who is going to rescue me?” Because it has been extremely challenging.’

Sandi remembers her first few days with Masha in Moscow as being one long screaming session. Her sons – all of them went to Moscow with their parents to meet their new sister – had to sleep with their heads under the flat pillows in the grimy hotel. Masha’s passport photograph, taken at the US embassy in Moscow, has got her with tears streaming down her face, and Sandi makes no bones about the fact that it hasn’t exactly been uphill since then.

Given that we’ve been having a few problems of our own, it goes without saying that I was keen to meet this lady!

So, on Thursday evening last week, I went along to one of Sandi’s support-group meetings. And, boy, am I glad I did. It was a very large group, about thirty people, all crammed into Sandi’s house, and I must admit I sat back a bit, to let other people talk, but it was all worth hearing.

Sandi’s story of the plane trip home from Moscow is on her website. Basically she remembers her adoption attorney gave her a print-out, called something like
Flight Home – 101
that was supposed to give her all the little tips and tricks she’d need to keep Masha entertained. She remembered saying to her husband, ‘How is this different from travelling with your own baby?’

Well, as everyone probably knows, Masha was awake – and screaming – for seven of the fourteen hours back to JFK International!!!!

It’s been pretty much the same story ever since: Masha fights and kicks and screams and squabbles. And the thing is, Sandi
doesn’t mind talking about it! She’s one of those people who just believes that a problem shared is a problem halved, and I have to admit I felt so much better after being in her company for an evening, and here’s why: we’ve been having a lot of the same problems.

If I’m being honest, the whole process of adopting Benjamin and trying to get him to settle into our house wasn’t as easy as I said. It’s been really hard, even from the first moment that we arrived in Moscow.

I’ve already written about the nurse in the orphanage who brought our son out to meet us. What I didn’t admit was that when we first arrived, the first thing she said was, ‘Oh, you are here for Benjamin’ – she didn’t say the J so it came out more like Ben-ya-min – and she shook her head like she was quite amazed that somebody was going to take him.

We couldn’t work out why she was being so miserable. I said, ‘Yes, our son is Benjamin,’ and she said, ‘He a strange boy, but I think a good son for you.’ Well, I was absolutely furious, but what could I do? We were standing there waiting to meet our son! And the Russian people can be quite strange: abrupt, and humourless. If you’ve been there you will know what I mean. My husband, Colby, didn’t really react, but later that night, when we were back at the hotel, still amazed and shocked that we’d been able to take this little boy out of the orphanage and that he was officially ours, I said, ‘I’d be surprised if Benjamin wasn’t a bit strange after spending all those years in that orphanage.’

Because of course by then we were getting a handle on exactly how strange Benjamin could be. Like probably everyone who is
reading this, I had been reading adoption websites for quite a while before we finally made the journey to Moscow, and my favourite bit was always the part where the child flew into the arms of their new parents, or else a happy nurse with a big bosom and a starched cap would come and place the baby in their arms.

I know I’ve already said this, but Benjamin didn’t do that. The nurse brought him out and he just stood there. My first reaction – the one that I never thought I’d admit to – was: ‘Oh, no, he hates us,’ because Benjamin did not look at all happy to see us. He didn’t even look up. I tried to rationalise it, saying to myself that was surely to be expected, given his background. But still, it was awkward.

Eventually I said, ‘Can I shake your hand and say hello?’ but of course he didn’t speak any English. The fat nurse gave him a little push in my direction and the next thing I knew, he was standing in front of me. I didn’t know what else to do, so we gave him the train and when that didn’t work I put my arms around him, but Benjamin didn’t respond to the cuddle. He was stiff as a board.

I stepped back and tried to make eye contact with him, but his gaze was all shifty. I don’t mean that in a bad way, just no matter how I dipped my face and tried to get a look at him, he wouldn’t let me study his face. I was a bit surprised. I’d been thinking about a boy throwing himself into my arms, and grabbing my necklace and nearly choking me, and saying,
Mama!
But if I had to describe the way Benjamin reacted to my getting down to say hello to him, I’d say he was limp. His arms were hanging there, his feet were flat on the ground, his head was hanging down. I took him by the chin and tried to lift his face up to meet my gaze and he turned his head away.

Colby was watching from the sidelines. He looked at me and said, ‘Well, this isn’t a great start,’ and I was trying to be as brave as I could. I said, ‘It’s okay, we’re just getting used to each other, aren’t we, Benjamin?’ But Benjamin just stood there, like he had his chin stuck to his chest.

So, it was around then that the nurse said, ‘You take him, you take him,’ and although we hesitated, it was like I said: I didn’t feel we had any choice. We took Benjamin back to the hotel with us, and I know that I said that those two or three days’ worth of appointments were really good, and that Benjamin just slept through everything, but the truth is, he pretty much had to be dragged around the streets of Moscow. There was just no way that he wanted to go anywhere with me, or with Colby, and we were mystified because that’s not the way it’s meant to be. And before I met the other mums at Sandi Miller’s house, I was just too ashamed to admit that we hadn’t had the perfect experience of everyone’s dreams.

The problem was basically that Benjamin wouldn’t lift his feet, and he wouldn’t lift his chin off his chest. Colby actually complained to me at one point: ‘The only part of him I’ve been able to get a good look at is the top of his head.’ I thought he might be cold – the clothes he wore out of the orphanage were pretty horrible, and not much of what I’d brought with us from New York would actually fit him because he was so small – so we went to that GUM department store and bought a fur coat – no PETA complaints, please! – but he refused to put it on. I bought mittens, too, but apparently they were no good, either. He didn’t throw them on the ground so much as peel them off when I wasn’t looking, and
then I couldn’t find them. I could at least force him into the coat, but then I had an additional problem, which was, if he’s not cold, then what’s wrong with him?

Anyway, we got the things done that we needed to – mainly with a sullen Benjamin being dragged or carried around by Colby from one appointment to the next – and then we got ready to board our Delta flight, but as soon as Benjamin figured out that we were getting on a plane he immediately began to scream.

Honestly, you would have thought that we were murdering him. It was high-pitched, like a fire alarm, and my first instinct – like when a fire alarm goes off – was to want to do anything I could to shut it off, because the sound was like fingernails on a blackboard. But nothing I could do seemed to console him. I was incredibly embarrassed, and I was just hoping against hope that the other passengers would understand that it was just fear, and it wasn’t like I couldn’t understand that. It had taken all my courage to get on the plane, and here I was trying to get a small boy to join me for the return journey – taking him away from everything he’d ever known – on what to him was probably a big steel bird that was about to head into the sky.

Of course, I was hoping that Benjamin would settle down and we would all be fine once we’d taken off, but he wasn’t fine, believe me, and it may well be that we had a tougher time than Sandi. Benjamin kicked with all his power at Colby
and
at the stewardesses. He threw over the meal trays then stood up in his seat and howled at the ceiling. His face was beetroot red. Other passengers started out sympathetic, but there was soon a near mutiny in business class, so much so that Colby agreed to take
Benjamin down to the very back of the plane, where he tried to muffle his screams in the toilet. There were quite a few other parents on the plane and they at least had some sympathy for us. One mum offered to give us her portable DVD player – she had
Lilo and Stitch
and
Monsters, Inc.
– and a set of earphones, saying, ‘Music soothes the savage beast.’

It was a kind and loving gesture from a fellow traveller, and I might have wept if it had worked, but it didn’t. I couldn’t get close enough to Benjamin, not even in the toilet, to show the screen to him, or to put the earphones on him. What he really needed was some kind of tranquilliser.

We gave up our business-class seats, in the end, to the family who had been sitting in the very back row of the plane, and we took their seats. A couple who had been sitting in the row ahead insisted on being able to move because Benjamin would not stop fussing. At one point – okay, at more than one point – the stewardess came over and said, ‘You must try to do a better job. He’s got to quit that.’ Benjamin was standing up in his seat at the time. His face was bright red, his fists were balled up and he was screaming. But when I tried to take him by his waist and force him onto his bottom, he balled a fist and punched me in the face.

Now my cheek was throbbing, and my eyes were watering, so I was pretty much useless, and finally Colby did a karate chop against the back of Benjamin’s legs, and he collapsed into the seat. But not for long. He was soon loose and on all fours on the ground. He crawled into the space between the last row and the toilet wall, and for the first time since we’d boarded he finally fell silent. A man who was sitting a few rows ahead said, ‘Thank God he’s calmed down.
I was about to slap him myself,’ and it was all I could do not to get up and slap
him.

I did try to explain to the passengers in the seats around us: ‘We have only just picked him up from the orphanage. He’s unsettled, he’s unhappy, please just bear with us.’ Colby had been saying, ‘He’ll fall asleep in a minute, I’m sure. He’s tired and he’s never been on a plane before. It’s been a tough day for him.’ Some people were kind but others were ruthless, looking at me like, ‘How is this my problem? I just want to get home in peace.’

I took advantage of the fact that Benjamin had quietened himself down behind the back row of seats to start searching frantically through my bag for things I’d brought to entertain him on the flight – things like the Magna Doodle, although I didn’t dare give that to him, given how violently he could thrash around when you tried to get him to concentrate on something. Colby, being stronger, was able to hold Benjamin even as he kicked and screamed, but for me it was like wrestling a wild animal.

I suppose he stayed behind those back seats for an hour or so, but then some meddling stewardess came and announced that it was against the regulations for him to crouch there and he would have to take his seat. Well, we tried to drag him out and you can probably guess what happened: he took off down the aisle, and actually stopped near the middle doors and tried to open them.