Custody Date

It's Friday, “Custody Day”. Very strange to be giving birth this way, so to speak. We wake up in the morning with two children and, after lunch, we'll have three. Andre has no idea what's in store for him -- he's already been given a different name, now he's goint to leave the only home and the only care-givers he's ever known. Hope he likes us well enough to do this!

Lana is wearing her long, flowered dress. It's her "I mean business" dress. Sadly, it was also her "Let's party like it's 1999" dress; her "I'm an educator" dress; her "travel" dress; her "casual Friday" dress; and her "Ask me about Amway" dress. We'd seen this one before...LOTs before. She does mean business, though. She's bursting through doors like a gurney on the way to the operating room. We're thankful we're not on the wrong side of those flying doors.

Our first stop is the Perm Courthouse to get his Original Birth Certificate and Four Copies of the Court Decree. We're there before the courthouse is open for business, so I decide to snap a few shots. The next thing I know, an older Russian man is yelling at me in Russian. Unfortunately, I have chosen to get my cultural understanding of Russians from less than authoritative sources -- namely, The Simpsons. There was an episode in which Lisa becomes lost in the Russian District of Springfield. She encounters some Russian men playing chess. They realize she is lost, so they give her directions to get home, but in the Russian communication style (loud, flailing arms) which frightens Lisa. I assumed this man was one of those helpful Russian chess players. This was a serious mistake. He was a judge from the courthouse who wanted to understand why an American was outside taking pictures of a government building. Now I don't look at all like a terrorist or a spy, but this guy lived through the Cold War. It's fairly understandable that he would be at least a little suspicious of me. The only reason I'm not deported immediately is Lana. Not just that she knew the judge, but apparently he has the hots for her. This works in my favor, so I have nothing further to say on the matter.

Now we deal with the bureaucracy at its worst. Picture your local Department of Motor Vehicles...on a day when their airconditioners and fans aren't working...and their toilets are all backing up. This is not going to be pleasant. Lana explains that the woman at the front entrance will keep us waiting so that we know who's boss (hint: it's not any of us). Lana explains that to get what you need from the bureaucracy, you have to humble yourself or, as she so beautifully put it: "I am ready not to be important. "

We get the docs we need and Lana reads the Court Decree aloud twice. Now she's hit her stride and the full agenda kicks in. It looks like this (quite literally):

9:00-9:08, Original Birth Certificate and Four Copies of Court Decree, Courthouse, Perm
9:13-9:18, Adoption Certificate (with our names) from Leninsky District
9:36-9:44, Birth Certificate with our names as parents
10:02-10:13, Apostilles (including time for Lana to sneak in a well-deserved smoke)
10:17-10:19, Photo copies (at the Ural Hotel)
10:27-10:47, Andre’s Russian passport

In the middle of all of this planned madness, Donna frowns and scolds me: “You didn’t bring up the highchair from the basement”. I try to explain to Lana that Donna doesn’t understand the concept of compartmentalization – focusing on the task at hand and deferring other items until the appropriate time.
Lana: “Donna, now I am thinking only of birth certificate. Then I am only thinking of apostilles. Then I am only thinking of the child’s passport. Then I am only thinking about your flight tomorrow. Donna, live in Russia in my house for two weeks…Sergei will cook, you will be cured.”

We finish Commrade Toad's Wild Ride, then stop for lunch and a rest. Later in the afternoon, Lana returns to take us to Baby Home #2 for the last time. We bring gifts for Andre's first "family" -- perfume for the ladies; a bottle of Macallan 12-year-old for Dr. Sergei. We sit down on the couch where we usually played with Andre and started the normal "look, we're funny, please like us" routine. After a few minutes, Lana exclaims "Don't you people want to leave this place? You don't have to stay anymore! He's your son now!" Holy sh#*, she's right. We can go. We have a son and he's going to go home with us. We have a son.

Court Date

The Dream
It's Sunday night, September 3rd. Court is tomorrow (the only "real" hurdle left). We've been in Perm since Wednesday, August 30th. We've completed our ten visits with our soon-to-be son (five on the previous trip, five this one). Nothing left but the legal formalities -- well, and my wife's anxiety. She is relieved to find out that the judge is a misogynist. He doesn't want to hear from her, so I will do nearly all of the speaking. This works for both of us -- Donna gets nervous in these situations and I love the sound of my own voice. It transfers her anxiety, however, from having to speak in a foreign court to worrying that I will blow it. Not that she thinks I am incapable of saying what needs to be said...it's that perpetual worry that I will say too much. More specifically, humor doesn't translate well across languages. I understand this problem. In much the same way I understand the value of flossing, I choose to ignore this practice. My wife knows this all too well (both the flossing part and my constant abuse of humor in serious situations). I confirm these fears, as I usually do, by asking our coordinator if I can ask the judge to dismiss a parking summons I received on our last visit. This goes over as well as the t-shirts I tried to distribute as gifts (see the logo from the shirts below).

Perhaps my wife is on to something about me...

So, the dream: It's Sunday night and I'm not sleeping. This time, it's not the ever-present official bird of the foothills of the Urals, The Mosquito -- we're at the hotel with air conditioning (ignore the fact that it's 8 celsius at night -- we're Americans...we INSIST on air conditioning at all times...unconditioned air is...well...unAmerican!) It's also not the bizarre roar of a Bengal tiger we swore we heard the first couple of nights from our hotel room in the Industrial District, Perm City. Felt like an episode of Lost. Gave our coordinator a good laugh, too, when we asked what it could be -- she explained that our hotel is across the street from a zoo. Never occurred to the dumb Americans. We caught Lana giggling several times, muttering to herself 'ti-gre'.

I'm not sleeping because of the ever-present fear that something new can go wrong. So it manifests itself in me this way: Aeroflot flight 316 is descending, but we are targeting a US aircraft carrier. My wife and I are on the plane, trying to go get our son, but we're obviously getting caught up in the middle of some geopolitical mess. Are the Russians the ones who are upset (hey, I voted for Kerry...and Gore...really........I've got bumper stickers.........and all of the people in my town hate me................) Maybe the Americans are causing this (politics stop at the water's edge...Dubya's my commander in chief.......I didn't bring my car, who here will know that I voted 'blue'.............) The Aeroflot crew politely put on CNN to explain why we’re not permitted on Russian soil. Anderson Cooper is even less comforting in this dream than he must've been to the people of New Orleans with his photo-op charity. The laws of physics and engineering I'm breaking by having a 767 land on an aircraft carrier...1000 miles from the nearest ocean...are doing nothing to interrupt this nerve-fest. A Ural Hotel mosquito would actually be quite welcomed at this point. I wake up on the USS Mattress to find I am on Russian soil; Anderson Cooper is no where to be found; and my wife is as sympathetic as the bedframe is when you stub your toe. My nerves are out-of-touch with reality...it's court day and everything is in order. For now...

Court Date
I am confident, not only because I have performed on stages larger than the family courtroom in the Industrial District, Perm City, but because I have prepared and been prepared. Olga (our excellent, waif-like translator) has outlined for me what I must say and what I will put into my own words. There is little wiggle-room here, so my wife is very comforted (and smug...smarmy little thing that she is). I must say certain phrases in a certain order. I write them down and rehearse them like I'm studying lines for Godot. The only risk I run here is slipping into a different speech (mine starts with "I am Glenn Michael Thompson, born in Trenton New Jersey, United States. I live in Mendham, New Jersey in a single-family home...") The speech I'm in danger of delivering? "I am Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire. I own a mansion und a yacht."

I stand in the hall warming up with singing exercises. It loosens my throat and vocal chords but it also takes my mind off the Soviet-era block walls. It's easy to get lost in a USSR moment. Olga gets more nervous because the singing makes her think I'm nervous (or maybe my voice just grates on her nerves, but she's too polite to say this).

The Documents
Court consists largely of the judge reading into the record all of the documents we've prepared to prove we are worthy of parenting this son. In our case we thought it would be easy as we have two girls already. They may be emotional wrecks (Deidre, the 5-year-old, cries when the wind shifts directions...Alaina, the 2-year-old, makes Camille look like a stiff) but they look perfectly normal to outsiders. We assumed this would make for relatively smooth sailing, legally speaking. As the judge looked at page after page of photocopies with notary stamps and apostilles, we got lulled nearly to sleep. It didn't help that the room was not airconditioned (the Hotel Ural helped prep us for this nicely, though) and that the judge is a low-talker. We needed sub-titles that just weren't available, so we had to sit perfectly still. Scratching your arm would be enough to drown out a full sentence from this man -- breathing became something of a luxury. The only page that the judge spent more than dva seconds on was the description and picture of my car, a 2003 Toyota Prius. When I asked the coordinator why he paused on that particular item, she said "He is man. In the future, I ask all couples to bring pictures of cars to keep judges' mind off questions of the Prosecutor."


The Disaster
So we're snoozing but cruising. I can already taste the victory vodka I have planned for this evening. It will all be over but the waiting...until...he asks to see the roster of Russian families. Each child is supposed to be presented to at least three Russian families for domestic adoption before being placed on the registry for International placement. The social worker presents the looseleaf notebook that passes for the official docket of families and orphans in the Region of Perm. It is full of blank spaces -- families who don't appear to have seen any children; children who were never presented to any Russians; etc. He ERUPTS! The low-talker has found his voice and it appears to have come at a bad time for us. The tirade is apparently directed at the social worker -- it is her job to keep this book updated -- but we can't tell what he's saying. Not because we don't speak Russian, but because our translator is catatonic with fear. She is staring at the floor and ignoring my persistent requests to find out if this has anything to do with our case. The lovely Olga has become as useful to us as a solar panel to a Texan. The judge storms out of the courtroom. We have a flight to the States in 19 hours and we don't know if we should stay, go, pray or bang our shoe on the table top.

The Idiot

We're all in the hall now. Our coordinator, our translator and the social worker. Apparently, Judge Low Talker has decided that this case cannot go forward because he has no idea if Dima (or any other child on the registry, for that matter) has been presented to three Russian families in accordance with their law. While 1% of me is happy to see the rule of law actively at work here, the other 99% is pure rage. The kind that could fool me into thinking that I could punch a hole in the cinder block wall of the Perm courthouse -- a stupidity-induced broken hand would go nicely with this quandry. So, speaking of stupidity, the coordinator is grilling the social worker to find out what happened and what she's going to do about it. The social worker is young and, as we're now finding out, clueless. We don't speak Russian, but deer-in-the-headlights is a universally translatable look.

The coordinator is as upset as we are -- she knows what this means to Dima. Yet another deferred "freedom" date. In an attempt to share our outrage, she explains that the social worker did not do her job and is now not prepared to fix her mistake. In explaining, she utters what is probably one of the most memorable lines of the entire process:

"She is so stupid, she's probably adopted."

She is so stupid, she is probably adopted. I realize the double layer of irony is self-evident, but I need to spell it out, if only for sport. We're in the middle of an adoption process -- one that requires us to explain to the judge why we believe we can love our adoptive son as if he were our own; as if he were equal to our biological daughters. The author of this quote helped us craft our speech to the judge. More importantly, she knows that I am adopted -- we have represented this over and over as a primary motivator for wanting to adopt in the first place. Ah, the truth serum that is anger.

здесь приходит судья

The Judge and Prosecutor return (I've taken to capitalizing their titles because they've taken on much more importance in our lives than I'd expected). They are laughing with one another -- perhaps because they have the stupid Americans over a barrel? No, it seems more like he's strangely attracted to her 1959 Baltimore haircut. It looks quite sassy juxtaposed against her military uniform.

We file back in and put on a hangdog look that would make them feel guilt if they weren't still interested in terrorizing the social worker (can you blame them?)

The Judge begins a 10 minute diatribe. Olga, our translator, had been giving us a sentence-by-sentence captioning of the events. Now she stands silent, as if speaking or exhaling could change the course of events. My wife, paean of positive posturing that she is, is looking at me with an increasingly pained look...a look that says "Put on the Closed Captions, I can't follow the dialog". Olga waits until the end to explain what the Judge has said -- she starts from the beginning

"When, in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds..."

Are you kidding me?!? Did he rule in our favor or not? She continues

"...one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood..."

Where is this going?!?

"...what happened to the Delta I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? Ooh, we're afraid to go with you, Bluto. We might get into trouble. Well from now on you can all kiss my"

Stop! Olga, do we get our son or not?

Da.

In Russia, they need to learn about leading with the headline, but it's no matter. We're ecstatic. Our rollercoaster ride is going to end with smiles on our faces. Even Judge Low Talker smiles at us! And, in English, tells us 'Congratulations and good luck'. Sweet justice, sweet words.