The People

The people were beyond memorable. We will never forget any of them. Here is a quick synopsis:

Dr. Olga: Doctor on the floor of the baby home that Dima lived in from birth to age 14 months. Smart, savvy woman who (we believe) kept our son alive for us. The conditions were horrible and her supplies unreliable. She was a modern-day miracle worker.

Dr. Sergei: Head Doctor of the Baby Home #2. He looked like a Russian Brian Denehey, only shorter. When our liason informed us that he'd prefer a bottle of scotch whiskey to a shirt, I inherited a beautiful striped Polo shirt. Donna was fairly convinced it wouldn't fit him anyway (too many gifts of scotch, perhaps?!?) Another sharp operator. We brought a Western-trained, Russian/English speaking doctor with us to examine the child before we accepted. He didn't reveal until an hour into the interview that he spoke fluent English. He wanted to be sure the "rent-a-doc" was telling us the factual information about our potential son.

Alexander, the Driver: How did "Sasha" become a nickname for Alex? I've got an Aunt Barbara they call "Pee Gee" and a President who calls his chief advisor "Turd Blossom", so I shouldn't be casting aspersions. A nice man who didn't seem at all troubled by his boring job.

Helen, the Translator: Helen is actually the daughter of our "liason" in Perm, Lana (see below). We never determined her exact age, but he was young (college-aged) and very atuned to the fact that she lived in a big-small town. She tried her best to make us comfortable, playing Frank Sinatra in the car, for example and telling us about the upcoming Madonna concert in Moscow. I advised her that Frankie is from our home state. Then I asked if she knew Bruce Springsteen. She hadn't heard of him. When, a few hours later, a Springsteen song came on the radio (albeit covered by someone else), I got excited and said "listen...THIS is a Bruce Springsteen song!" Helen didn't understand my excitement and she said, quite cautiously, "Is this man, Springsteen, a friend of yours?" Guess you have to be from Jersey.

Sergei, Husband of our Liason, ex-KGB, Professor at Perm University: Sergei didn't speak a word of English, but opened up his home to us. We had vegetables from his garden, shared a bottle of Champagned to celebrate our new son's imminent arrival and shared stories from the Cold War (through his exhausted wife). He told a wonderful story about serving in the KGB, having to monitor the movements of two Norwegian military officers visiting Russia. When the two officers got drunk and one wound up on a barge headed north, the other in a brothel, Sergei's KGB career came to an abrupt end. He is very bright, very warm and very Russian. He sang to us after dinner (I tried to accompany him on their upright piano, but it hadn't been tuned since Krushchev went on permanent holiday in Crimea). He asked us to come back and visit, and I believe he was sincere. I owe him a return visit and the ability to tell him how I feel about him (and his family) in Russian.

Lana: Our coordinator, the head of language studies at the University at Perm and one of our favorite people in the world! She certainly got paid more for doing adoption assistance than she does at the university, but she definitely has the interests of the children first. She is a quintessential Russian woman: a giant heart and a tough, 'help me or get out of my way' exterior. She has a self-effacing sense of humour that caused us to like her quickly (she's quite large and she said her husband believes that "only large women are good women"). Her husband, Sergei (see above) said that "Russia is the world's heart". If that's true, then it's because of people like Lana. I can't wait for the day when our son is old enough to understand what she did for him (and for us) and take him to Perm to meet her.