The Quivering Couple

End of Day 30

Vitals:  We moved back our plane tickets AGAIN, and our house sitter is going to kill herself, or the dog, or both, if we don’t find a replacement.

Not so much:  So, when we first came here (last year), we went to a dinner with all the other adoptive parents at a local TGIF here in Kiev.  We met a couple there who were practically quivering with angst over the length of their stay here, the way they had been treated, and all the incredible  hurdles that they had to jump-over in order to get their boy.  They had good reason to quiver.  They had made three trips, stayed in a small village while they were here, lived on homemade cabbage/amoeba soup, contracted dysentery, dealt with a hostile judge and spent quite a few months and dollars getting their boy. 

We think of them occasionally...or I should say often...usually whenever we hit a (nother) delay.  

Here’s the deal. I really wanted to make it home for Thanksgiving (for obvious reasons).  I was certain we could make it.  It’s over 8 ½ weeks from our arrival here.  It just never occurred to me that we wouldn’t make it home by then.  Sadly, we talked it over with Nadya this morning.   The “destroyed” papers turned out to be a small matter.  They originated in Ukraine, so she just made some more yesterday and we signed them this morning.  Since our tickets were for 10/28, I knew we had to move them back and so today I asked her how long things might be.  The bottom line, we still don’t have a court date for Roman and, to make matters worse, his birth certificate is in another district and this will cause another delay.  She thought it would be at least two weeks after we got him before we could travel.  Thus, pounding the last nail in the coffin of our dead Thanksgiving turkey.  

We talked this all over on the way home, recapping the two lost siblings, the very important man, the destroyed paperwork, the birth certificate, the delayed tickets, the missed holiday... suddenly the realization dawned; we have become just like the quivering couple in the TGIF….  We’re that couple....We are Quiver-ers!  And, if we aren't careful, our children will soon be quivering too.

To combat this, we played a variation of round robin over dinner, asking the kids to name things they LIKE about being here: one item at a time, no repeats allowed.  We got around the table twice before everyone ran out of stuff.  I was the last man standing, since I found spices in the local market.  After my sweet victory they all went drudgingly back to eating their buttered noodles topped with organ meat and bone chips.

It was very quiet….

We finally gave in and told them we’d play again, this time listing things we HATE about living here.  Well, that sure perked them up.  We kept going around and around the table until well past 7:00.  I’d say we achieved some real family bonding.   The kids finally quit to go watch a TV show and it was just Bill and me going back and forth, listing item…after item…after item… until the dishes were done…

Bill finally got out a 1/4 liter bottle of vodka that he bought earlier for 1.4 grivna (about 20 cents) and mixed a little of it in with his AMPIKAH Orange Juice.  I told him that for all his disdain for Ukrainian culture, he was certainly embracing some of their most distinctive traits.  He told me not to mock the "wodka," since it is a well known cure for inexplicable quivering and then he took his cocktail into the living room to share it with the kids. 

That was pretty much our day.