To Sing Frogs Epilogue

Epilogue

 

Time Marches On

 

  In September of 2011 I returned to visit Russia as I do from time to time. During my stay the region was preparing to host APEC 2012. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit involves 21 member countries of which the United States and Russia are only two. The group represents approximately 41 percent of the world’s population and 55 percent of the world GDP. As such, Russia was spending vast amounts of money to modernize the Vladivostok area. New superhighway and bridge construction projects were more massive than I could have ever imagined. The highway next to where the Vlad Inn is located was raised over twenty feet. New ramps were built into a freeway, which before had been no more than a busy four-lane road.

Some of my original friends who worked at the hotel have moved on. Others remain. Newer employees have befriended me as well. The place was eerily void of adopting parents and their children on my most recent visit. Adoption relations between the United States and Russia had continued to deteriorate. This was particularly the case since the Torry Hansen fiasco. Referring to that occurrence, Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, rightfully called the returning of Hansen’s adopted son, Artyem, to Moscow “a monstrous act.” Because of all of the negative rhetoric many prospective parents from the U.S. had been under the impression that adoptions from Russia had ceased. But it wasn’t until December 28^th, 2012 when President Putin signed the Dima Yakolev law which would ban all adoption of Russian children by U.S. parents beginning January 1^st, 2013. It is one of the saddest things I have ever seen in my life.

Russia has worked on mimicking the foster system of the United States and numbers of children in orphanages have dropped from the estimated 800,000 at the time of our adoptions. The new “reported” statistics vary wildly, are unverifiable and even the lowest of these would still be far too many children without families. I don’t believe that children need to come to the United States to be happy. But numbers don’t lie. On the average, children do much better and are more successful when they have “forever families” regardless of whether those adoptions are domestic or international and regardless of whether people or organizations support international adoption.

Of all the places I travel, the Vlad Inn is my only home away from home. The establishment is no longer run by a North American and while a hint of food from home lingers, the menu has suffered a little. Ketchup slathered Buffalo wings were really experienced later on at the Vlad Inn rather than earlier in Munich like the book indicated. The hotel’s “maple syrup” now lacks maple flavoring. I recommend the Cajun Rib Eye or the Barbecued Shrimp. They are both still excellent. For breakfast I recommend the Barbecued Shrimp or the Cajun Rib Eye. In my opinion Surf and Turf can’t be beat.

I felt a loss when I visited the Ussuriysk Baby Home during one of my returns. As I walked upstairs I raised my eyes to see the stained glass figures that for me had come to symbolize orphans. The butterflies were now gone. They were replaced with a modern swiveling double-paned window that lets in light and keeps out cold.

Haggard trees whose branches hang down like fingers—to protect the cache of ill-gotten souls—still line the front to the property of the Partizansk Children’s Home. Other than Sarah, Marina, and Julia, the others are still in that orphanage. The photos Natalia sent to Sarah as a gift when we went to Spain proved that. These unfortunates will continue in the residence of single-brick monuments for a few short years. They are too old for Russians—as well as most others—to consider for adoption. Their shelf lives have long since expired. Soon they will fade away like the teenaged girls who came to tell Sarah goodbye. Those three young women have since faced the fate awaiting those who age out of Russian orphanages.

When others read stories and hear statistics they will consider the plight of these children. When I experience such things, I see faces. When I hear the hushing skas, shas, and shkas of Russian baby talk (or even those sounds from fountains, brooks and streams, or breezes whispering through mountain pines), and when I see butterflies—especially yellow Monarchs—I am haunted. I have still not been able to forgive myself for my inability to help those children. My nightmares haven’t ceased as I hoped they would. Over the years they have grown more graphic and horrific. No one forgets when they abandon their friends.

The siblings Amy and I adopted came from two different addresses. I had found and photographed the wooden shack several years earlier. I only discovered the fallen down concrete house where Katya and Luba resided on my last visit to Russia.

An old babushka woman sat and cut up potatoes on a porch belonging to one of the better-dilapidated houses of the village. The wooden structure stood next door to two remaining concrete walls of the former house residence dwelling place where my two younger daughters had lived existed.

“Yes,” she said to Anya. She knew Oksana Koshkina. The mother had lived next-door years before. She had two little girls with her at the time but something happened and the children went away. The babushka showed little interest in hearing that Katya and Luba were adopted by Amy and me and that they now lived in the United States. When Anya asked the old woman for Oksana’s whereabouts, she told her the woman moved to another part of the village soon after the children went away. She continued by informing Anya that Oksana had died three years prior. When Anya asked the particulars of her demise the babushka shrugged. “Who knows?” she said. “You know how these people live.”

According to this new information combined with dates in our children’s adoption files, Oksana Arsentyevna Koshkina died at the age of thirty-five. She outlived the life expectancy of her demographic (those who age out of Russian orphanages—at sixteen) by four years. Over half a decade of slow—almost imperceptible—evaporation of my loathing, hate, and contempt for the woman had run its course. All that remained in the dry and dusty bed of a former inland sea was the sand and silt of pity. Had those who possessed the means been kinder she might have been someone’s adopted daughter. Instead, she and the next generation were turned over to orphanages. The chain might have continued in perpetuity.

Marina is now gone from Far East Russia. My son Steve and I spent an extended weekend with her and her wonderful family in the city of their new home; St. Petersburg. They were grand and gracious hosts who spent unbelievable amounts of time showing us one of the most beautiful and fascinating places I have ever visited.

Stass and Anya are no longer a couple. They have divorced and Stass lives in Israel, the land of his forefathers. Anya and their daughter, Sasha, still reside in Vladivostok where Anya has been forced to find another career.

Time marches on.

The orphans remain.

 

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