Tag Archives: Ukraine

Why a wave matters, thoughts on parenting a nonverbal child

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nonverbal

Why a wave matters, thoughts on parenting a nonverbal child

“I had a dream last night that Evangeline started talking,” Sergei tells me as we tag team through our early morning duties to get our four children off to school.

I smile at the thought … we both seem to dream about Evie speaking to us at different times … and busy myself making peanut butter sandwiches for the girls’ lunches.

About our girl

Evangeline is six. We adopted her from Ukraine when she was two and a half years old. She has Down syndrome like her older sister Polly.

And so far, she is nonverbal.

For a while after Evangeline came home, I thought it would just take time and therapy for her to start speaking. I assumed that nonverbal meant  Evangeline would not be able to communicate with us until she could use words.

It has been a struggle. Evie doesn’t initiate closeness. She tends to stay to herself. She watches the world with her cool blue eyes and I wonder, “oh baby girl, what are you thinking?”

I ache to know.

I dream of her whispering the desires of her heart in my ear.

But that is not happening today.

So I work at learning the language she does speak.

When Polly hugs her too hard and Evie cries, I teach Polly. “That’s Evie’s ‘no.’ She doesn’t like you hugging so hard. Be gentle.” When Evie takes my hand and leads me to the bathroom, I know she wants to take a bath. When she brings us her pecs (pictures exchange communication system) picture of a pudding, I happily give her a snack.

I don’t take these things for granted. They are huge milestones for our girl, and I am thankful her world is opening up a bit more. I am thankful she is starting to understand that she has a voice. I’m thankful she is starting to believe she can trust us with it.

But my mother’s heart craves more. I want to hear Evangeline’s actual, audible voice making words. I want to talk to her. I get angry on her behalf, because she should have more in life, and I get sad … because, honestly, it is hard work for both of us to try to speak the same nonverbal language.

The school bus is almost here.

I zip up Evie’s fuschia spring coat with yellow and light pink swirls on it, smooth her corn silk hair from her forehead, and look my heart-shaped faced daughter in the eye. She allows me a gaze, a prize for the day as eye contact is hit and miss.

“We love you sweet girl. Have a great day at school.” The yellow school bus pulls up to the house, I clap my hands twice, signing ‘school,’ and watch my husband gently lift our girl up into his arms to take her outside.

I sigh, look around, realize there’s still much to be done to get the other girls ready for their day, and call to Polly to get dressed.

“Hey, guess what?” Sergei says to me as he comes back inside, closing the front door behind him.

“Before Evie got on the bus, she turned around and waved at me.”

My husband’s words stop me. Tears well up in my eyes.

“Like a real, intentional wave?”

“Yes, a real, intentional wave.”

“As in, ‘bye?”

“Yes, as in ‘bye.”

We look at one another for a second as our other children buzz around us.

Sergei smiles.

I smile.

Who knew that an intentional wave could make a mother cry?

I’ll tell you who. A mother to a child who is nonverbal.

Our daughter Evangeline waved ‘bye bye’ to her father before getting on the bus.

That matters …

It matters so much.

And I realize. She is speaking … we just have to slow down enough to hear her.

Adoption: the severe and sublime work of bonding

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Evangeline and I in Ukraine after meeting in 2009.

Evangeline and I in Ukraine after meeting in 2009.

Adoption: the severe and sublime work of bonding

She chose the wall

This first night I spent with my freshly adopted daughter from Ukraine three years ago reminded me of watching wildlife.

We were staying at my mother-in-law’s apartment in Kiev, Ukraine and three weeks prior to that night our visits were limited to two-hour intervals at her baby orphanage located outside the city.

That night, upon entering the bedroom, my daughter dove for the large pull out couch pushed up against the wall. Once in bed she observed my station next to her and sized up a blanket rolled up along the part of the edge my body didn’t cover. She realized this was not the plain, low wooden crib she had grown accustom to over the two-and-a-half years of her life in the orphanage, nor were there any other children from her group near her settling in for the night. Knowing my three bio kids back home and the types of tantrums they throw, my immediate expectation was for my little one to scream and howl with fear and eventually make her way over to me, the only other person in her proximity, for comfort.

That didn’t happen. She did not make a sound.

But she was not pleased I was there. She dealt with my presence the only way she knew how; to ignore me. As I lay on the edge of the bed, one foot resting on the floor, the sun set on the 27th day of my stay in Ukraine to complete this adoption.

I tried to imagine the trauma of leaving the only home a child has known, riding in a car for the first time, eating unknown foods, being dunked in a bath for what seemed the first time (she screamed through that) and swallowing a mouthful of blood after someone stuck a purple bristly stick into her mouth, vigorously moving it up and down, up and down.

I could not.

And I decided that first evening to sit near her quietly, a decision for better or worse, to watch the little girl I did not actually know but already loved, and see how she put herself to sleep.

After panning her head from left to right and back again a few times, she planted her pudgy little arms onto her legs while sitting. She started to rock back and forth, all the while grinding her teeth incessantly, and hard. She closed her eyes here and there and chewed her tongue.

I think, although I am not sure, that Evangeline spent a lot of time in her crib at the orphanage. And having been abandoned at birth due to her diagnosis of Down syndrome, she probably never experienced someone lovingly rocking her to sleep. It was still painful to watch.

But not as painful as her next trick. After rocking for forty-five minutes, she rolled over to the concrete wall, covered with meager thin wall paper probably dating back to the 1950s.

Upon making contact she leaned back and proceeded to smash her forehead up against the wall.

This was the only time I broke my role as observer that night.  I placed my hands on her shoulders and whispered in Russian, “nelza, tak ne nada.”  “No, no, you don’t need to do that”.  My husband and children and I lived in Kiev for almost four years as missionaries until the birth of our third daughter.

I could have never guessed that God would have me use my Russian for something like this, though.

Evangeline shrugged me off and I moved her away from the wall. I pulled the blanket from my feet and wedged it between her and the cold, hard surface. She did not contest. Maybe she wasn’t aware she could? After her silent concession she made do with rubbing her head against part of the wall and part of the blanket.

It hurt my heart to watch her. I sat back on the bed and wondered if there would be a day she would let me, no, want me to rock her to sleep.

She chose me.

Fast forward three years.

What can I say? This adoption process has been arduous.

Evangeline and I have stumbled along, attempting to learn a mother/daughter dance, two steps forward in our bonding, a giant leap back. We’re awkward. We step on each other’s toes. I’m sure I’ve made mistakes. And I feel like at times, she still isn’t open to my love.

And worse yet, at times, I’m not open to her.

Last night I was sleeping downstairs on the couch because I’ve been terribly sick with a sore throat this week. I woke up to a smiley face next to me.

Evangeline had come downstairs to find me. I gathered her to me, and she complied.

She just cuddled right in, my six-year-old daughter who hasn’t muttered but a word here and there since she’s come to my family. This daughter whom therapists say is about twelve months old developmentally.

I rubbed her forehead, no sign of a bump from hitting her head. That behavior, thankfully, had long fallen away.

“Hello little one, how’d you find me?” She smiled at me, looking me in the eye, and hunkered down and I thought about how a few days ago I asked her for a kiss, and she bent her head, ever so slightly towards me, along my lips to brush her’s. She had let me in at that moment, just for a moment, and it filled the well of my heart to the brim.

I breathed her in, as we snuggled in the dark of night, thankful that this girl who used to choose to bang her head against the wall to fall asleep now, at least some nights, chooses me.

It’s not perfect, this relationship between my youngest daughter and me.

But it is a relationship.

A mother/daughter relationship, complete with ups and downs, and the continual frightening, beautiful process of knowing one another, the severe and sublime work of bonding for the glory of God.

Thankful for special needs adoption

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Thankful for special needs adoption

(In the midst of all my other writing projects, I’ve been writing down snapshots from Evangeline’s adoption in Ukraine :) . Plus, November is Adoption awareness month, which got me to thinking …)

In 2009, my husband Sergei, our older daughters Elaina and Zoya, and I all travelled to Ukraine to adopt a little girl we were to name Evangeline, who happened to have Down syndrome like our youngest daughter Polly.

Our special needs adoption from Ukraine was a bit different from others in the fact that we had lived in Kiev for four years before Polly was born as missionaries. So while there, we stayed with Sergei’s mom. We knew the city and we spoke Russian, which means we could converse with Evangeline’s caregivers while visiting the orphanage.

I’ve been thinking about those seven weeks in Ukraine a lot lately.

I’m thankful for Evangeline.

And although I probably couldn’t have said this the first year she was home with us and much of the second, I am thankful for special needs adoption.

Adoption is painful and adoption is beautiful.

In my experience, it is painfully beautiful. Adoption balances both attributes. It wouldn’t be the same without each. Adoption teaches me about myself, and God, and the world.

The first time we met Evangeline at the orphanage, we went to the backyard to get acquainted.

Kids from her group were inside a large, wooden structure, akin to a pack-n-play here in the States, only three times bigger. In the corner of the play area, a large blue and white striped umbrella shaded the space. The umbrella didn’t fit. Its rightful place was on a beach on Lake Michigan, but not there, in a broken down orphanage twenty kilometers outside of Kiev.

the umbrella isn’t in the shot, but you get the picture

Two workers watched the children. One sat nonchalantly on a stool. Her hot pink painted lips pursed together while she looked through us, bored. The other worker had a kitchen towel in her hand. She went from child to child, clucking in Russian, while methodically wiping each child’s nose or mouth, whatever needed it, with the community towel.

One boy, who looked to be about five, slouched in a baby cruiser outside of the wooden pack-n-play. Drool pooled in the corners of his mouth as he stared off into the distance.

A little girl in the pack-n-play let out a high-pitched giggle and put her arms up to be held.

Another child smiled up at me sweetly.

The orphanage worker holding Evangeline halted, turned towards me and pushed her into my arms. And I was holding her, this fictitious character who, in actuality, was flesh and bones and blood and bowel movements. My arms shook. It was surreal after having dreamt of her for nearly a year, to have this child in my arms.

Our first meeting in Ukraine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I could write our story the way I hoped meeting my daughter would go, I’d say I fell in love with Evangeline as soon as she was placed in my arms. Back in Chicago I was sure she was mine. I’d fall instantly in love with her.

But in the backyard of her orphanage my heavy thoughts doubled her weight in my arms. Reality sliced emotion.

I had come full circle, from struggling, to wanting my biological child with Down syndrome, to adopting another. This was my shot at redemption.

And I out of fear, I was blowing it.

“Slow down, child.”

God whispered to me through the breeze. For a second, I thought the earth below me was quicksand. But, no. It was solid ground.

Our routine in Ukraine included daily treks to visit Evangeline while we waited for the adoption to finalize. We brought snacks. Elaina and Zoya played. Sergei and I took turns carrying Evangeline up and down the small, cracked sidewalk while a statue of Lenin hovered over us smack dab in the middle of the yard. His cold, stone face accused anyone who dared to meet his eyes.

It was June, and the days were hot in Kiev. The kids were stripped down to diapers and underwear. One day while visiting, I watched an orphanage worker break off a leaf or two and give it to a crying child to appease her.

Sergei and I talked to the workers while we played with Evangeline. It was difficult for me to understand some of them because they spoke surzhyk which translates to “an impure language,” a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian. Most of what the women said was lost on my ill-practiced, strictly Russian speaking brain.

But a few workers, upon realizing I could converse with them in Russian, spoke to me.

“Why do you want a sick child? We have several other children who are much better than her, ” one woman said while Evangeline sat in my lap, her face covered in dried snot. Her legs crusty with dirt. “She is an imbecile,” the worker coolly glanced away as her words hit me like rocks.

I wanted to snatch Evangeline up as the heat rose to my cheekbones. I was suddenly ready to take here home, bathe her, brush her teeth, clean out her ears, lather her up with baby lotion, and rock her to sleep.

I squeezed Evangeline to me and focused on the cement. I felt the worker’s eyes on us. I looked up at her face.

I asked God to help me forgive the hurtful words the worker said, and forgive my crappy heart response. Her job couldn’t be easy. We only ever saw two workers allotted to Evangeline’s group; usually ten to twelve kids, at a time. And they were probably paid the bare minimum, hardly anything to live on in Ukraine’s struggling economy.

I took another breath, and spoke.

“She is who God has for our family. We already love her. We can’t wait to take her home.”

Evangeline has been home for three years.

And God has taught me a lot about myself, and a lot about redemption.

Can I be honest? Adopting a child with Down syndrome from Ukraine was a feeble shot on my end at redemption.

Outwardly, I deemed myself altruistic. Adopting was the right thing to do. A life would be saved. But really, my intentions were selfish. I wanted a do-over. I needed a do-over because three years earlier, I had given birth to a child with Down syndrome, and grieved the child I expected, and held myself back from loving her at first.

I used to think of redemption as a one-time thing. People of faith talk about God redeeming us, buying us back through his Son. I subscribe to this theology. I buy into the idea that God liked me enough to trade his son for me.

But I also realize now that redemption happens all the time, over and over, everywhere.

We are all a work in progress. There’s a continuous need for redemption in my life. And even though my intentions weren’t entirely in the right place regarding the adoption of Evangeline, God, OF COURSE, knew better. He redeems me again and again as a person, and as a mother through the adoption of Evangeline.

I am thrilled to report that those little ones I talked about in her group:

The boy staring off into the distance,

cornishadoptionjourney.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the girl who raised her arms up for me to hold,

www.lorainefamily.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the sweetly smiling little thing who met my gaze,

Creation Speaks Photography
www.ellenstumbo.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

… They have all been ADOPTED, and are thriving.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful to report that these children will enjoy turkey day with their parents and siblings here in the States through special needs adoption.

I know the families and I think each of them would say that adoption isn’t easy.

Adoption is painful.

Adoption is beautiful.

But mostly, adoption is redemption … For us all.

And I am thankful. Eternally thankful.

Learn to do right, seek justice, defend the oppressed, take up the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. ~Isaiah 1:17

*To read more about these wonderful adoptive families, click on their pictures.

Telling the whole truth; trading ugly for glory

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( Here’s a post from the archives. Still right here today, prodded by God to tell the whole truth in my life for his glory. Fall for me means kids in school, speaking engagements, writing assignments, and the continual journey towards publication of my memoir. This old post encouraged me today. I hope it does something for you, too.)

Telling the whole truth

These last two weeks, I actually sensed God’s desire for me to open up more about my personal life. I’ve written about my struggle in telling the whole truth in the memoir I recently finished writing, and about the severity of my experience with post-adoption depression after we brought our daughter Evangeline home from Ukraine.

A little bit of electricity zapped my fingertips as I hit the publish tab on both posts.

What would people think if I put myself out there? I should just keep these things to myself.

This year, in addition to therapy and after school activities and church and writing and querying agents for my book, I’ve also had the privilege to speak to a handful of MOPS groups in the Chicago land area. I talk about the birth of my daughter in the former Soviet Union and her diagnosis of Down syndrome and about the grief that ensued for almost a year after the loss of the child I expected.

I have other presentations about how to teach our kids to be good friends to those around us with special needs, and about loss and grief in motherhood.

Every time I speak, there is a part of me that is afraid of judgement. Maybe I shouldn’t share all of me. Maybe I should just share the good Christian/ pastor’s wife/ missionary parts of me and tuck away the other parts: the mom who didn’t want her child. The mom who went to a bottle of Chardonnay instead of to the Lord. The mom who adopted another child with Down syndrome; a quasi stab at redemption, only to find that she, of course, was still the one who needed redeeming.

But each time, and I’m serious when I say this, I can almost hear God’s voice saying “tell the truth.”

“Share all of you, Gillian. Because in the hard parts, in the times you made bad choices, in your brokenness and lack of faith, I was there. And that’s MY story in you.”

 

Before I speak, I usually run to the bathroom and grab a wad of toilet paper to sop up the sweat underneath my arms. I smooth my hair, and look at myself in the mirror.

I think of God’s voice telling me not to waste the life he’s given me. I think of one mom who may be struggling.

If my voice encourages her to speak up to someone about her struggles, then sharing the ugly parts of me is more than worth it.

And I think of Polly’s voice, chattering in my ear non-stop throughout the day. I think about her reciting the Star Spangled Banner with her class in the morning at school. I think about when she tells me that she loves me, and how it fills me up to the brim of my existence with thanks and praise that I get to be her mom.

I think about Evangeline. Oh, how I long to hear her voice. I anticipate it. I wait for it. And until then I stand up for her as her voice.

So, I step out in front of strangers and tell them my story, and I keep querying publishers for my book, and I keep writing down my rambling thoughts here.

I include the embarrassing parts for sure. But I also include the best parts, how Polly and I are crazy in love now. How thankful I am to be Evangeline’s mom.

How awed I am that God knew I needed to be broken in such specific ways in order to be used for his purposes and for his glory alone.

Last night, I got an email from someone who attended one of my talks in September thanking me for my willingness to be vulnerable and for sharing my dark moments, thoughts and actions in my presentation. She is a mother to a child with special needs. Here’s a little bit of what she wrote:

What you said made me feel “normal”, connected and accepted.  (I’m tearing up as I write this to you, even now, because it meant so much to me and I understand how difficult it is to be honest like that with others… even if they are “strangers”.)

That’s really the point of why I do what I do.

I have a voice, and I am learning how to use it.

I’m telling the whole truth.

What about you? How are you using your voice?

How I met my Ukrainian husband

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Our first date in Kiev

 

 

 

 

 

 

How I met my Ukrainian husband

(An excerpt from my memoir about meeting my husband Sergei in Ukraine in 1996.)

Moving to Ukraine

I was twenty years old when I moved to Ukraine. I was still considered a new Christian, which meant that I fervently believed what I believed before the mud of life started to creep up on my squeaky clean faith. I talked to God all the time, like he was all five people in a T-mobile family plan. I was positive he wanted me to be in Ukraine for a year, but I had no clue what I was doing as a missionary. I had never taught before. I still didn’t really know the Bible well.

I didn’t even know Ukraine existed before I was assigned to move there.

I thought it was part of Russia and the only things I knew about Russia was what I gleaned from Rocky IV, like, the women were extremely tall and beautiful, no one smiled, and it was always cold.

The day our plane landed in Kiev, I found my luggage and got through customs. Sergei claims he was one of the first people I met when I got off the plane.

“I was at the airport. I helped you with your bags.” Jet lagged and frightened, I had no idea whom I met that night. All I remember was a cold, dismal airport and men everywhere. Some dressed in dark, pressed airport uniforms, their grim stares swiping over our motley crew of Americans. And others, zipped up in thick, black leather coats and furry shopkas, winter hats made of animal fur, pulled down over their ears.

It was the first week in January, and it was -15 degrees below zero in Kiev.

My teammates and I filed out to an old bus without heat. My eyes burned in desperation for sleep as we drove through the city in the dark. I couldn’t see anything outside the foggy bus window.

The bus stopped. “Gillian, Andrea, this is you,” our team leader Jerry told us. My best friend Andrea from college and I were helped with our luggage and herded into a broken down, old apartment building. We squeezed into a small wobbly elevator that reeked of urine and watched our Ukrainian chaperon hit a floor number. We took the elevator all the way up to the ninth floor. I breathed quietly, willing the decrepit old elevator to make it. When the doors opened we were opposite a huge steel door. Our Ukrainian helper pulled out a set of keys, opened the steel trap door and went to work on the second one; with funky red quilted leather. The apartment door key was old fashioned, starting with an oval shape and ending with two huge notches at the end. It looked like a key that would have been used in the book, Series of Unfortunate Events.

It looked like a key God would use to open the book of life.

We were deposited into the foyer of our new apartment that night. “There’s bread and cheese and juice in the fridge. Stay here and wait for us to call you. We’ll tell you what to do next,” the Ukrainian helper said. The big quilted door closed us in. I heard the key rattle as the steel door snapped shut. I looked at my friend Andrea. She looked at me. We both burst into tears. What had we done? We clung to each other for a few moments in the cold, dark Ukrainian apartment. Instead of being exciting, it felt more like someone had kidnapped us and stuck us there for ransom. God, I did hear you correctly, right? What were you thinking bringing me here?

Moving my heart towards him

My first six months in Kiev, Sergei and I were merely acquaintances. Our team employed interpreters to help us buy food, sight-see, and pay bills and ours was the third group Sergei had worked with, but we worked in different schools.

In the summer the schools and universities were on vacation. Our major project that year was teaching a curriculum on morality and ethics based on the Bible to teachers. So we had to come up with other things to do with our time in June, July, and August. A few of us decided to invite college students to play volleyball on Saturdays at Hydro Park, the beach along the polluted Dnieper River that ran through the middle of Kiev, cutting the city into the left and right bank.

Each Saturday, halfway through our game, we’d take a break. Someone would read a Bible verse and talk about his or her relationship with God, and we’d all sit in the hot sand, sun burned and looking intentional, like we were on the beach that day for God, not a killer spike.

Sergei was the interpreter for our God talks at the beach.

He was very good at translating Russian to English and vice versa, but he was a horrible volleyball player, always claiming that the veter, the wind, caused the volleyball to bounce out of bounds when he hit it. He’d go for a swim in the river and I’d look away, embarrassed, when he’d take off his shirt and shorts. He was painfully skinny, a fact not helped by his choice of tiger print Speedos. Stringy, dirty blond hair hung to his shoulders. We Americans would sit on the beach, hot and sweaty, and watch our Ukrainian friends swim perfect back strokes in the yellow river.

After volleyball, Andrea and I would invite everyone back to my apartment. We’d bake cheesy bread in the oven and make popcorn, a novelty in Kiev at that time, something we had brought with us from the States. We’d eat and pray and talk about Jesus with Ukrainian twenty-somethings who grew up in an atheistic country.

I noticed Sergei a lot at the beach. He was serious and took pride in his country. “I never want to live in America. God has called me here to help my own neighborhood,” he would say confidently. This was amazing to us Americans because most of the people we met that year were enamored with the United States. Sergei wasn’t hanging out with Americans to attain the Utopian lifestyle seen on Dallas reruns dubbed in Russian on television. During meetings and in conversations and prayer, he always put our group’s focus back on what God was doing in Ukraine.

I found myself looking around for him at meetings. It shocked me to catch myself thinking that his focus and pride was sexy. Sexy really wasn’t a word a young missionary should have had in her head. I sat next to Sergei in prayer and batted my stubby eyelashes at him as he translated. He must have noticed my attention, because he started to show up at our apartment to walk me to team meetings.

My attraction to him was fully realized one Saturday morning while he interpreted a study on the New Testament book of John.

After every few sentences, my teammate Jim would stop talking and wait for Sergei to translate his words into Russian. Sergei spoke quickly, and with conviction. That day as he translated, I convinced myself that his clear blue eyes were focused on me.

And they were. I called my mom a few weeks after he and I admitted feelings for one another sitting on a bench outside my apartment building, and after we talked to our team leaders to see if it would be okay if we dated.

“Mom, I have something to tell you.”

“Well, whatever it is, don’t tell me you fell in love with someone named Sergei.”

“Funny you would say that. . .”

Sergei had nothing.

He was three years younger than me. He took showers once a week. His teeth were crooked. He had never owned a dresser for his clothes. I took him out to dinner one night and his hands shook as he ordered his meal because it was the first time he had ever eaten out in a restaurant.

I was raised going to restaurants at least once a week. My dad gave me twenty bucks to blow with my friends every weekend. I had a dresser and a closet full of clothes back home. My mom insisted I took a bath every day.

A few weeks before my year-long assignment was complete, I was sitting on a crowded bus in an aisle seat. Sergei stood next to me, his body shielding me from Ukrainian elbows and knees. His arms were pressed on the back of my seat and the back of the seat in front of me, creating a little dome of protection. By then we had been dating officially for almost four months. I looked up at him and he looked down at me. He smiled his crooked smile and I thought he was the most handsome man I had ever seen. At that moment, I was certain again in my spirit, so strong that it almost was an audible voice, that someday I would be his wife.

Happy Valentine’s Day to my husband. Nearly sixteen years after we met, I am still so thankful for my lousy volleyball player.

STORY BLEED MAGAZINE

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I have a post up today at STORY BLEED MAGAZINE.

Again, it is about the harder parts of our adoption story. Both STORY BLEED and WE ARE GRAFTED IN contacted me months ago about using my posts and now they happen to launch a day apart.

Funny for me too, because Evie and I are going to a new therapy appointment this morning. My mind is connecting the dots.

God is working a beautiful picture in us.

Would love for you to stop by STORY BLEED and WE ARE GRAFTED IN and check out some of the uglier parts of our adoption story.

They are just as important as the beautiful parts.

And if  you are an adoptive mom, I’d love to hear how your life is going with your little one.

What I miss about living in Ukraine

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The Question

Here’s a question from Jill:

I would like to know what thing(s) you most miss about living in Ukraine. We were missionaries in Canada for a short 13 months, yet I find myself longing for the beauty of the Canadian Rockies, the drive from Calgary to Banff, the provincial parks, the cleanliness, the politeness, but most of all …the feeling that we were so completely in God’s hands. Um, not that this is about me.  

The Answer

This is a hard question to answer, Jill. Life is busy these days, but when I sit down and think about what God allowed us to build in Ukraine for four years, I suddenly find myself standing under a waterfall of nostalgia, thankfulness, and sorrow.

I miss (in no particular order):

My family: Sergei’s mom, and his brother, and his dad.

Sergei and I met when I was on a year long mission trip to Kiev my junior year of college. He, and his mom both worked as interpreters and ministry partners with our team. As soon as Sergei and I “got the hots for each other” to put it spiritually :) , his family has accepted me and gently loved me unconditionally.

I miss Ukrainian food, our friends, the church that started in our living room.

I miss grueling Russian lessons with my teacher who became my friend.

I miss the day when Russian clicked, and I joined in and followed conversations.

I miss watching Elaina and Zoya accept the Ukrainian culture as easily as putting on a new outfit to start the day. I miss hearing them chirp away in Russian and my feet on the playground, the sand mixed with dirt and glass outside our apartment building.

I miss rickety elevators that smelled of urine, and the day by day, minute by minute knowledge that I was so totally outside of my comfort zone I could do nothing but cling to Jesus.

And so I did.

I miss the old men sitting outside on the benches in the early morning, some waiting to play a game of chess, some waiting for the liquor stores to open to exchange their empties with full bottles of liquid courage and happiness.

I miss how my friends crammed into two room apartments with their children, and in-laws, and didn’t even bat an eye.

I miss how we would sit around and sing songs and tell jokes for hours, how the meals lasted so long but we didn’t care, b/c there were toasts and smiles, and shots of vodka for those who could stomach it.

I miss seeing God show up in peoples’ eyes for the first time – something I was keyed into in Kiev, something I don’t even expect to see here in the States for some reason.

I miss the Babushki (grandmothers) yelling at me to put a hat on my kids, or zip up their coats, or to stop sitting on the cement ground or else I would become infertile.

I miss my American teammates who became my family. They gave me opportunities to breathe, speak, and laugh in comfort.

I miss the depth of friendships formed with women whom at one point I could not understand both linguistically and culturally.

I miss seeing my husband laugh so hard he would cry at jokes I still don’t quite get, and watching him revert back to his childhood and hoarse around in the kitchen he grew up in with his brother.

I miss having less, but receiving so much more in life that really counts. I miss materialism being cleared away.

I miss losing weight simply by eating natural foods cooked from scratch, and walking everywhere I went.

I miss the architecture.Ii miss the golden-domed Orthodox churches.

You know, we moved back to America six weeks after Polly’s birth. I spent the next year grieving her diagnosis, and then started the difficult work of rebuilding my life.

The only way I could deal with the abrupt change in the road, i.e. not living in Ukraine anymore, was to stuff the pain and loss of the life I had really grown to love, way down deep in my heart.

And yes, when I sit and think about it. It hurts.

I miss Ukraine.

(For those of you who wonder where the heck all this came from, Sergei and I served as missionaries in Kiev for almost four years. We planned to live there indefinitely. We moved back to the States for Polly’s care and early intervention, but then she got Moyamoya syndrome, a stroke and seizure disorder, and now it looks like we won’t be returning to Ukraine.)

A gift to my daughter’s other Mother for Mother’s Day

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There are many things I like about Ukrainian culture.

One thing I absolutely loved while our family lived there for four years were my children’s birthdays.

In Ukraine, guests not only bring a gift for the child on her birthday, they also bring one for her mother. We’re talking flowers, chocolate, maybe a pair of earrings.

This is genius! Can I get an AMEN, moms?

It makes total sense. The mother is the one who made all the food for the party, and cleaned up the house, sent out the invitations, found a cute outfit for the birthday girl to wear, bought presents, wrapped presents, I could go on and on.

You are the one who stayed up all night with her in the bathroom with the shower running for croup. Motherhood is difficult. You care, you help, you pray, you breathe your child.

Evangeline’s birthday is not until October (and yes, I will accept presents for each of my children’s birthdays, email me for details).

A gift to Evangeline’s other mother

Sunday is Mother’s Day and on that note, I’d like to give a gift to Evie’s Natural  Mom.

So, here goes:

Your daughter is doing very well.

She’s healthy and strong. We talk all the time about finding a little gymnastics class for her. The girl has quads that could possibly take on a bodybuilder.

She’s beautiful. Her silky hair is growing down her back. It’s soft and smooth. Her eyes are like the sky. When she smiles at you, looking you in the eye, everything else around you fades away.

She’s happy. Evangeline loves to go outside. She loves to swing at the playground. And she has finally mastered the slide. She climbs and slides down all by herself, and it makes her so proud.

 

She’s included. Her three big sisters make sure that Evie is in on every game they play. They sing songs, build forts, take baths together (although the two older ones really are too big now). And in the last few months she has even started to enjoy playing with her big sister Polly, who is in her face all hours of the day. Her sisters love her so.

 

 

 


She’s going to school. Every morning Evie brings me her coat. She’s ready for the bus! She loves to go to school. A lot of times at drop off, she doesn’t want to get off the bus.

She also has a dog! We just got a dog a few weeks ago, and at first Evangeline wasn’t so sure about her. But now, they are starting to play together. Evie likes helping me take Scout for walks.

 

She’s valued. I must admit that at times our relationship has been difficult for both of us. But God has tethered my heart to this little girl. I am so thankful to be a part of her life.

So, I want to give a gift of thanks to you today. Thank you for sharing your baby with our family. I don’t know how it feels to be you, so I won’t pretend to. But I want you to know that I think about you. And I am thankful for you. And I hope this little update will bring a smile to your lips.

–Her other mother

(P.S. If you are a natural mother or an adoptee and find anything in this post offensive or just off, please email me at gillian@rcn.com. I am learning as I go as an adoptive mom, but desire to be respectful and thankful in my speech regarding adoption.)

Learning the language of my non-verbal child …

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The misconstrued assumption that she has no language

I’m a writer.

A reader.

A word person.

And my five-year-old daughter, fourth in the line of sisters, has no words.

At times her inability to speak brings tears to my eyes. Somehow, without my full approval, part of me has decided that because she cannot yet speak, she has no language.

Evangeline came to our family from an orphanage in Ukraine when she was two years old. I suspected she would not be speaking. It usually takes kids with Down syndrome a bit longer to gain the strength and coordination needed to produce words and her start in life wasn’t great. No therapy, not a whole lot of social interaction.

I was right. She wasn’t speaking.

Two-and-a-half years later she still is not speaking (although she said doggie last week out of the blue, clear as day, hit me right between the eyes, can I think of any more cliches to get my point across?). Once in a while she makes a sound that is close to “Hi” or “Papa”, and we take it. We dance, give high fives, smile, laugh.

This is it! She’s going to start speaking.

But she doesn’t. We all talk to her, sing to her, sign at her but she doesn’t speak.

Realizing her language

I want to hear her voice. I want words.

But I don’t get them.

I pray. “God, help me. I don’t know how to do this.”

And he answers with one word.

Language.

And I am reminded of my past. Our family lived in Kiev, Ukraine (the city my husband was born and raised) as missionaries for four years. Our plane landed on the hardened, snowy Ukrainian soil (January’s not a great time to move, um, anywhere) and the only words I could put forth confidently in Russian were, “Hello, my name is Gillian.”

So I studied.

I studied Russian every day for over three years. I ate, slept, breathed Russian, and still it took a long time to speak. And so I got by in group settings on body language. I laughed when everyone else laughed. I met eyes with my husband to see what he was doing and copied him. I watched. I observed. I learned the cultural language in Kiev way before I learned Russian.

In those first few months it meant a lot when someone in Ukraine spoke English with me. Even if he or she didn’t know my language well, I appreciated the effort.

Learn her language, Gillian, even if it is not the language you prefer. She has a voice. Make no mistake, she is speaking to you.

Learning her language

I begin to pay attention to my daughter. I watch. I observe.

Indeed, she speaks. Even without words or signs, Evie communicates.

*A shoe thrown at you – please, take me outside.

*A small hand leading you to the bathroom – I want to take a bath.

*Arms reaching up - hold me.

*Finding her purple coat and bringing it to you – school.

*Going to her seat at the kitchen table and getting in – I want to eat.

Days pass and Evangeline gets more comfortable as a member of our family. She speaks to us in the way she knows how. As we’ve taken the time to learn her language, she is freed up to speak more. She has two signs now: music and more.

We still talk to Evie all the time. We teach her signs with hand-over-hand prompting.  I praise God for the communication my daughter and I have, and still, I petition for actual words. My dream of one day hearing a whole, clear sentence out of my daughter has not dissipated.

But I am thankful God slowed me down enough to realize Evangeline has a language, even though it may not be one I prefer. Having kids really isn’t about our preferences as parents though, is it?

Every person has a voice.

It was a lesson I desperately needed to learn.

My five-year-old daughter who is currently non-verbal has a language.

And it is up to her family to learn it.

Do you have a child who is non-verbal? What’s his/her language?