To Sing Frogs Chapter 35a

Ivan the Terrible. What a nut-job. I was watching a television special on Russian history in mid-January. Sarah had walked past several times, never stopping or even slowing down. My daughter always left the room if people were talking about Russia. After all, to her the country was not a place; it was an environment. To Sarah, it meant nothing more or less than an abusive home and an orphanage. The Russia of Sarah’s understanding had imprisoned her and still retained one of her best friends as a hostage.

Our new children had assimilated and were now as much a part of the hundred year-old walls as the remodeling and the rest of the family were. Amérika was now Sarah’s home and that was all she needed to know. After several beelines through the living room the older daughter entered again, this time with purpose. She placed herself between the television and me. Then she spoke abruptly, almost angrily. “Papa, wy yoo luv Rosha?”

Tough question. I switched off the TV and looked intently at my frustrated daughter. She stood with her back straight, her fists clenched at her sides and her chin perpendicular to her chest while keeping her distance. I scrambled for something to say. I reached out my hand indicating I wanted her to come to me. She stood her ground and waited for an answer. How could I love something that had hurt her so severely? How could I love an entity that still kept Yula from having a family?

I dropped my hand to my side. I didn’t know how to express my complicated and mixed emotions to a five year-old, much less to one who struggled with the only language we had in common. I looked down at the red carpet while trying to find an answer. Then it hit me.

“I love Russia because Russia gave me you.” I held out my hand again and wiggled my fingers. This time she scurried over and burrowed under my arm. I pulled her in and hugged her tightly. I didn’t turn the television back on. We just sat there while she let me hold her.

That conversation was a milestone for Sarah. She finally understood that good things came from Russia too. Somehow we would need to figure out how to keep the good and walk away from all of the bad.

Difficult as it was for Amy, my early-winter trip to Russia had yielded positive results as well. Just like Celeste had been forced to bond with me in Moscow, Sarah turned to her new mother when I was gone. It wasn’t seamless. Symptoms of RAD are never easy to overcome nor are they short lived.

The most difficult aspect of Sarah’s disorder was inconsistency. As her relationship with us—and particularly with Amy—progressed, she would become increasingly sweet, playful, happy, and more and more like a little girl than an adult. Then without warning the three steps forward would give way to two steps back.

Sarah was angry. She was abrupt. She refused to follow even the simplest of instructions. She challenged us on every level. The primal part of Sarah’s brain was telling her that she shouldn’t attach. It warned her that she couldn’t handle the pain of the inevitable if she became too committed in the relationship. Furthermore, since failure would happen anyway, she might as well get it over with sooner rather than later.

As her relationship with us wobbled she became more and more charming with other adults. She would tell teachers that her new mother inflicted skins and scrapes. One of her teachers even observed her pulling off a scab and increasing the size of a scratch before reporting to her that her mother had hurt her. There were never broken bones, cracked skulls, internal injuries, black eyes, or dozens of bruises that abusive parents try to blame on Reactive Attachment Disorder. But Sarah’s baseless accusations broke our hearts and accomplished her goal of keeping a little bit of distance between us.

Sarah parent-shopped everywhere. She couldn’t allow anyone to send her back to an orphanage. There wasn’t an adult Sarah knew—outside our family—who didn’t think she was the most charming little girl they had ever met. The idea that they were being manipulated was never considered. They hadn’t a clue that they had been targeted, tagged, and filed away as new prospective parents.

 

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