Last one was baby house number 3. Rostov on Don. She was three and did not speak. The adoption people gave me roses at the airport when we arrived. We adopted children no one else wanted.
First one was from Arkhangelsk. No name. She was 6.
Unable to wear shoes as her ankles were wrong.
Eventually she had 7 hours of surgery at Children’s in Seattle by the head of orthopedics.
They had to design a surgery because they had never seen anything like that before.
She has a spinal cord disease which made her feet paralyzed.
So all those years the ankle bones grew all funky.
My husband used to take her to the park while waiting on adoption bureaucracy. She told them all about him being her papa from America.
Russian babas brought food, gifts, toys, every evening to the flat.
Russians, esp outside of Moskva, are the kindest people in the world. And I have seen a great deal of the world.
The last one is a long story..
The adoption coordinators do greet you at the airport with flowers. I love the rural banya! The steaming water was scented from gathered herbs/oils from the woods.
The judge told us she was afraid we would adopt the whole village. LOL
Amazing, that you would choose to support Putin and my Russian & Ukrainian family & friends are totally against this Russian invasion.
I do identify with the Russian culture but not the politics as my Grandfather & his parents, and siblings escaped from Russia. When they came to N.Y., my grandfather refused to speak Russian & said to his mother “I am an American.”
So, please remember this conversation. No one likes to be ridiculed. You have your opinions and I have mine. In the U.S., both of us are blessed to share freedom of thought and expression without being persecuted. Hopefully, Free Republic will regain its footing and stop the .
I learn that Mar Mema (260-275) is the patron of shepherds and nurses, so I suspect your moniker reflects this saint. If so, kudos again.
I followed the exchanges between you and UMCrev about both adopting Russian-born children. Your tale seems the more heroic, though one can only "construct" with what details one has or can develop from these threads.
One places "Russia" under a set of presidents -- elections by date:
1991 Yeltsin; 1996 Yelstin; 2000 Putin; 2004 Putin; 2008 Medvedev; 2012 Putin; 2018 Putin with a coming presidential election next year, as is ours.I wager yours and UMCrev's children were adopted after 1991, obviously. And if her adopted children were very young, then they had to have been adopted during the time of Yeltsin, i. e. long before 2000 but after 1991. This would have put UMCrevmom at somewhat older than 40 at the time. Probably births between 1991-1993 would be a best guess, which an adoption process beginning in those or a year later for infant adoptions.
Of adoptions and Russia, over time, one reads:
"Russia formalized its international adoption program in the middle of 1991. That year, 12 children were adopted by American families. That figure grew quickly, topping 1,000 children by 1994, rising to 4,292 in 2001 and reaching a peak of 5,862 adoptions in 2004. (International adoption reached an overall historic high that year, with a total of 22,884 foreign-born children adopted by U.S. families.)Your adopted kids were, as you stated, "children no one else wanted" and needing medical interventions. Best I can see from the exchanges, hers were healthy enough, unless there are details not in evidence to the contrary, today probably in their thirties and getting married."Soon after, however, the number of Russian-born children adopted by U.S. families started dropping sharply year after year. Just 748 such adoptions were completed in 2012. The following year, Vladimir Putin signed a law banning U.S. families from adopting children born in Russia. The U.S. Department of State (DOS) logged 250 adoptions completed in 2013 and two in 2014—all of which were in-process before the ban—and zero thereafter."
Russian Adoption: A Brief History & What's Behind the Current Media Attention
So, two similar tales and yet two very dissimilar tales, at the same time.
Alongside this are two seemingly similar and yet very dissimilar beliefs, as you -- in the context of Orthodox Christianity -- and her with a Methodist church deep in theological schism, invoke "Christ" but with different intentions and outcomes.
Similarly some truly unaware comments would ridicule your "Russian" experiences while assiduously not ridiculing UMCrev's very similar "Russian" experiences. This shows that the "game" on these threads is very politically partisan while not reading more closely. Such is the nature of our time.
My participation in these threads is because the promotion of "confirmation bias" YouTube and parallel promotion of Zelensky as a de-facto spokesperson is the greater part of these threads' behavior. Because money -- lots of it -- is evident in much, as Modern Diplomacy wrote, "The whole Ukraine goes for sale - massive profit opportunities being created by the war'." The cottage industry surrounding the Ukraine-Russia war -- or "special military operation" as some call it, recollecting our "police action" and Obama's "kinetic military action" -- coming down to using euphemisms for wholesale death on both sides is bolstered by money. Lots of money.
Money is feeding war. And we have been at non-stop war -- call it any euphemism one wishes -- since 2001. In 23 1/2 years we've gone from $5 trillion in debt to over $33 trillion, as money continues to feed wars, plural.
Would that adoptions replace killings. And building replace destruction. But my take is akin to yours. This would have been over in short order, once upon a time though not to everyone's satisfaction. Without the money to feed it. And continue to feed it. The "world's policeman" fiction is coming to a end, as multi-polarity insists on its reality which the "unipolar" dies by a thousand cuts. Biden's "lead the liberal world order" and von der Leyen's "rules-based order" cannot continue when many other nations simply walk away. As they are doing. Which "Christ" will become more clear. The worldly global, political order "christ" or a different Christ which weeps for all soldiers and all collateral victims thrown into the maw by political leadership -- ours and theirs and someone else's?
It seems most interesting that 2024 is a year of election in Russia as in America, as well as within the United Methodist Church's "election" as to which way it will turn.
Time will tell. A Jubilee year approaches. Mar Mema was a fine example, MarMema. Best wishes.