We were waiting in the meeting room, the same one that we spent 5 hours in the day before waiting to meet the Director of the orphanage.. This time things happened much quicker. We were sitting preparing ourselves f
or an extended wait like yesterday when we heard some footsteps. But they weren’t like the footsteps from yesterday: plop, plop, plop. Instead they were quick little footsteps: plup, plup, plup, plup, plup. And in came walking a little girl with big brown eyes, wide and scared. She had never been in that room. She had never seen these strangers. She was completely out of her element. But the deputy director brought her in and she stood before us, bewildered and shy. Her wide eyes soon looked down and away. She was just doing her best to hide herself away from all this. It was too much for her. She didn’t want to look at these strangers. She didn’t even have her regular caregivers around. It was much too much. One of the strangers, a woman with auburn hair (who someday she would know as “Mama”) went to her and asked if she was sleepy. She was. It was her nap time after all. The woman said some strange words and picked her up and tried to cradle her. But the little girl began to cry. She hid her eyes as she cried. She didn’t like all this strangeness. She didn’t know that it was a very difficult and scary step in a new chapter in her life. But things did get a bit better. First of all at about that time a boy came in. That boy’s face was familiar...it was her brother after all. She stopped crying and watched him.
As Valya was being introduced and was upset, a home care worker brought down a little blond boy. Actually, he wasn’t that little for his age. He was quite tall. They brought him down and escorted him toward the office and then towards another hall, he was just following the workers. Finally (as is the protocol) the deputy director brought him forward and introduced him to us. He was instructed to hug us both and he did. He was trained to follow instructions. He behaved beyond his years. After all, in many ways, he was on his own in this orphanage and had been on his own a lot before that.
Then he looked at his sister and was a bit bewildered himself, perhaps because these two strangers were making her cry. Then another woman (our facilitator) that was with the English speaking couple started talking and asking a few questions in Russian. He answered quietly but not overly shyly. Then we went into a second room with a table. The tall man brought out some puzzles and the boy eagerly went at them. He ended up doing the hardest one first and he was extremely quick completing it. He worked on puzzles lots with this group, competing how fast they could be done. He must have been one of the fastest. Before we knew it, he was done three more puzzles.
Meanwhile sister Valya was in the other room. She was still confused but had settled down some. And they had out a little soccer ball. She watched the boy and the tall man kick the ball around. Boy oh boy that ball was intriguing. After all, she knew that game from playing it ma
ny times with her friends and caregivers outside. She even smiled and chased it herself. And Vanya was having fun with the ball passing it back and forth with the tall guy. But pretty soon it was time to go and we got some hugs and away they went.We left the orphanage around noon and went back to the apartment. We are not ashamed to say we both cried at the apartment and later that day. Seeing those two wonderful children, hearing about how they came to the orphanage, seeing their lives now, and knowing how we might change their lives. It was completely and utterly overwhelming.
It has been 3 weeks since we wrote the words above. Vanya now acts much more like a 7 year old. Valya cries when we end our visits and pass her back to the caregivers. Now it feels like we are the ones handing them over to the strangers. Three days from know we will be very happy not to have to do that anymore.
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