Anna Akhmatova

To continue on my All-Things-Russian spree... I listen to Garrison Keillor (definitively not Russian) at approximately 6:20AM every morning on WUMB. The station's taste in folk music often leaves me wanting, but it's worth waking to if simply for The Writer's Almanac.

Yesterday, on the summer solstice, Keillor included a segment on Anna Akhmatova, a Russian poet whose popularity in the States has skyrocketed in the past decade or so. Listen here. (You'll also be treated to riffs on midsummer's night and the typewriter. He concludes with a poem by Charles Wright.)

Doesn't Akhmatova have a most fabulous profile? No wonder Modigliani carried on an affair with her.

Her poems are invariably short, easy to access and understand, and almost all deal with loss of some kind. Here she writes of finding solace in a sunbeam.

Sunbeam

I pray to the sunbeam from the window -
It is pale, thin, straight.
Since morning I have been silent,
And my heart is split.
The copper on my washstand
Has turned green,
But the sunbeam plays on it
So charmingly.
How innocent it is, and simple,
In the evening calm,
But to me in this deserted temple
It's like a golden celebration,
And a consolation.

And here is a short excerpt from Akhmatova's "Requiem," her long testament to terrible Bolshevik and then Stalinist times during which her husband was killed and son imprisoned. This translation is by beloved American poet Stanley Kunitz:

No foreign sky protected me,
no stranger's wing shielded my face.
I stand as witness to the common lot,
survivor of that time, that place.

New Judge

I've been assigned a new judge in the Murmansk court. Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows.... as the Buddha said. My adoption agency and I are hoping for a turn of good luck, of course, and a judge who doesn't ask for documents that are impossible to provide.

Lately it's like I've switched the channel and not been allowing myself to tune into Daniil at all. The ongoing disappointment has just been too much to bear and I'd rather check out than fall into full despair. I still say good morning to my boy and send him good wishes, but from one step removed. A heart can be on pins and needles for only so long before it starts to weep.

But with this news today about the new judge, my heart did a little leap. Perhaps, perhaps... this summer, perhaps...

Back By Popular Demand

Many of you have responded with delight after hearing and seeing the video of Britt, my extraordinary fiddle teacher, play Midnite on the Water. I'm not quite sure how she ties into my adoption journey--perhaps it's simply the unadulterated joy I feel when I hear her play, or when I work at mastering a tune she's teaching me--and the joy I trust music will bring to my boy too.

I wonder if Daniil will have a bent for making music? He loved to dance at the orphanage and kept mighty good time. He's certainly going to hear a lot of music around our house and at summer festivals. I aim to put a fiddle in his hands the day he turns 4. My friend Matt says this is the magical age to start teaching a child violin. Before that, they're more apt to whack the fiddle on the table, the couch, the cat, whatever appears deliciously whackable. A big wooden club (with 4 strings): fun, fun!

So, once again, the incomparable Brittany Haas. This time playing a fast, fascinating tune in three parts called Jeff Sturgeon. It starts in the middle--I didn't turn my recorder on in time to catch it all--but worth a listen for the remaining 45 seconds.

(Click triangle, bottom left corner.)

Katya

Katya is my first Moscovite friend. She was the assigned translator to me and Mom back in February. Here we are, both wearing our tres chic fur jackets in the fancy art-deco lobby of the Moscow Hilton, based in one of Stalin's three skyscrapers.

I met up with Kate again when I returned to Moscow for my medical in May. She's all of 23 and feels like a little sister to me--though of course she's old enough to be my very own daughter. Her Mom, a furrier, is the same exact age as me. Here we are in one of the small concert halls at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

Katya met her fiancee Valentin at a karaoke bar two years ago. Both were fanatics, clubbing five nights out of seven, she belting out Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive and he preferring despairing songs about lost love and lost men who waste their lives away in prison. After recently landing a full-time job, Katya quickly (and literally) tired of late-night karaoke sprees. Valentin remains hooked and insists on staying out all hours, singing his sad songs. Karaoke, Kate told me in May, the passion that brought the two together, is now a source of palpable tension in her and Valentin's engagement. They plan to marry later this summer.

Midnite on the Water

The judge reviewed my resubmission and has asked for more paperwork. "Insufficient evidence," she said. I can supply her with what she wants--it will take several weeks to get the required documents, have them notarized, apostilled and then translated into Russian--but fear she will never be satisfied and that we'll play this back-and-forth game endlessly. My adoption agency recommends that we resubmit to the court my entire dossier, as it currently stands, in hopes of landing a new, more reasonable judge. Potential downsides: time. The time it takes for my dossier to get reassigned and the time it takes for dossier to rise to the top of a new judge's docket. Plus there's no guarantee: I may get reassigned the same exact judge.

This morning, before getting this news, I felt buoyantly hopeful, sure this was the day I'd be assigned a court date and could make travel plans to bring home Daniil. Now I feel deflated.

Tonight I found solace, after a day of heavy-heartedness, in playing a fiddle tune, the beautiful waltz Midnite on the Water. I needed to turn off my brain (left hemisphere) and sink into another world (right hemisphere), pass into an other-worldly place altogether. Here is a video of my fiddle teacher, Brittany Haas, playing this tune for me at a lesson.

I will carry on, of course.

(Click triangle, bottom left corner)

According to My Psychic Friend...

"This is not an adoption. This is a tangible manifestation of the grace of God." This I know is true.

He also said that Daniil's grandparents are thankful to me and offering spiritual assistance. Who knows if this is true. I do know that I am eternally grateful to them.

Oh, the Places You'll Go...

At the Cambridge toddler shower hosted by my friend Beryl, we passed around a book and invited everyone to sign up to personally and particularly "introduce Daniil to this amazing world of ours." As much as I love and appreciate the abundance of clothes, toys, wooden animals, block castles, beach buckets, fishing poles, little red wagons, backpacks, picture books, rubber garden boots, and other practical and fantastical worldy items--love and appreciate I do, I really, really do, and Daniil will too--I'm just as excited that Daniil will get the chance to go out and play, to learn and do stuff, with his many honorary aunts and uncles.

Here's a smattering of the promised adventures in store for you, my boy:

• A trip to the Cambridge Public Library's Children's Reading Room
• A trip to Drumlin Farm where you'll meet animals, wander around in veggie patches, and have a picnic
• Play time with a hoppy rabbit named Dusty
• A big outside party where you'll meet many new friends, young and old
• Ocean fishing where you'll learn how to be a steward of our precious sea-life
• Sit still long enough, and you'll have your portrait painted
• Sit still long enough, and you'll learn how to meditate
• You're inheriting a whoopie cushion and a design for a neat sling shot
• At the Green River Festival you can dance to live music
• Go for a ride in a lobster boat off of Swan's Island in Maine
• Nell and Liam can't wait to share their toys with you
• You'll get to paddle a canoe
• And play African drums
• And kayak!
• Build a drip castle
• Meet Alexander, another wonderful boy who started life in Russia
• Go caving under the ground
• Visit an animal shelter and play with the kittens
• Learn how to cook a Chinese meal
• Eat peeps with Auntie Kele, squishy sweet yellow & pink & lavender & green peeps

Yellow PJs

It's starting to feel like just an idea, this adoption, something I simply talk about in response to everyone's question: "So is there any new news on the adoption?" Something I call up my adoption agency about every day and ask: "So is there any new news from Russia?" Something divorced from an actual little boy, right now I trust fast asleep in his little bed in a room with 14 other children, his little breath going in and out, in and out, wearing perhaps the pair of soft yellow pajamas that were folded on his bed when Mom and I visited the baby home back in February.

I want to reassuringly touch that little sleeping boy's hair and sweetly kiss him on the cheek and feel and smell the warmth of that cheek and smile into his pretty blue eyes when he wakes up. "Doe-bry-utra, solnyshko. Ya tebya lou-blue." (Good morning, little sushine. I love you.)

I'm tired of the waiting. I'm ready to make this real.

Serendipitous Reference

#1 is my three-year-old, it should go without saying. I've introduced you to Daniil #2, Simkin the ballet dancer. And here's #3, Daniil Kharms, an absurdist Russian author whose heydey was the late 1930s.

Sample story: “Now, one day a man went to work and on the way he met another man, who, having bought a loaf of Polish bread, was heading back home where he came from. And that’s it, more or less.”

I stumbled upon Kharms two weeks ago in a New York Times piece about Russian poetry. This on a day when I continued to wrestle with what to name my little boy. All along, I'd loved his given Russian name, written on translated documents: "Danil." Problem was, everyone here in the States mispronounced the name as Dan'-il, stress on the first syllable, so it came out soundling like the name "Dan," never one of my favorites, with the second, less stressed syllable sounding a lot like the word "ill."

What to do? I considered changing his name to Samuel and dropping the Russian altogether. "Samuel Sjostrom" has such an air of certainty and solidity about it. But after several weeks, Samuel wasn't sitting right, much as I loved the name. My son remained Danil to me (correctly pronounced Da-neal', stress on second syllable, with the first syllable sounding like the Russian word for "yes" that sounds like "dah.") This is how I continued to reference him in conversation and in my mind. And Danil he remained to Mom, who met him in February, and to everyone else who'd been hearing of him from the very start, back in December when I was sent two little photos and a rather disconcerting medical history.

Friends suggested changing the spelling to reflect the correct phonetic pronunciation: Daneal or Daneil or Daneel. But something got lost in each of these "Anglicized/ Americanized" versions, what I can only describe as a surrender of Russian spirit. What to do? Name my boy "Danil" and wind up with his being called "Dan" with that very nasal, unpleasant sounding "a"? Or change the spelling, but sacrifice a bit of Russian soul? Or give my son a solid, pronounceable American name that reflected the solid American life opening in front of him?

It was driving me nuts. Each option left me feeling unsettled. So as a last resort, I did what I always come around to doing as a last resort. I prayed. "God, this is taking up too much of my energy, energy that could be better spent serving you and readying my heart for my boy's arrival and our life together. If there's any way you can lend a hand with his name, I'd be so appreciative. I give up. I turn this over to you."

Time: Next morning. Place: My office, Chatham Middle School. Scene: Lisa allows herself to read one, just one, New York Times article after broadcasting the morning announcements and before diving into the whirlwind of the day.

On the front page of the Arts section, I spied the article about Russian poetry. It held my attention through to the continuation on page 3. And there it was. Second column, middle of the third paragraph, there was a reference to "early Soviet-era poet Daniil Kharms." Daniil. With not one, but two i's. That was it! A little more sleuthing on the Internet quickly revealed that this spelling, the one with the double ii's, is the more common translation into English. I don't know how often a Russian "Daniil" gets referenced in an American newspaper, perhaps more often than I've ever stopped to notice, but I'm sure grateful that it was referenced on that particular morning, and that I was there to receive it. Thank you, Serendipity, God, Strong Intention, whatever hears and answers prayers.

So the spelling of the name was settled. Those back-to-back i's capture my boy's spirit and spunk, along with his Eastern European heritage. And I had another Daniil to investigate. It turns out that Kharms was one odd dude who lived through one odd (and brutal) time in Russian history. As described in a 2007 article by George Saunders,

Daniil Kharms starved to death in the psychiatric ward of a Soviet hospital during the siege of Leningrad, having been put there by the Stalinist government for, among other reasons, his general strangeness. Kharms gave flamboyant poetry readings from the top of an armoire, did performance art on the Nevsky Prospect—by, for example, lying down on it, sometimes dressed as Sherlock Holmes. His brilliant, hilarious, violent little stories are now being discovered in the West.

...When [Kharms'] stories proceed — if they proceed at all — it is often by way of a kind of comic language-momentum. In “Blue Notebook #10,” for example, Kharms starts out conventionally enough (“There was a redheaded man ...”) but then, as if reacting against all the common ways a writer might further describe this redheaded man, veers off in a mini-critique of the descriptive tradition itself. This redheaded man, we learn, “had no eyes or ears.” Succumbing to a strange frequency in his underlying logic, Kharms begins Kharmsifying: “He didn’t have hair either, so he was called a redhead arbitrarily.” By the end of the story — a scant two paragraphs later — our poor redheaded man has also been shorn of his mouth, nose, arms, legs, stomach, back, spine and insides. “There was nothing!” Kharms crisply concludes. “So, we don’t even know who we’re talking about. We’d better not talk about him anymore.”

Exiting a Kharms story, we are newly aware of how hungry we are for rising action, and we have a fresh respect for, and (importantly) suspicion of, storytelling itself. We’re reminded that narrative is not life, but a trick a writer does with language, to make beauty.

Here is Kharms, standing, saw in hand, before the woman in the box. He thinks of all the other magicians who have worked so hard over the centuries to be appearing to saw her in half, then puts down the saw, mutters, “Well, I could do it, but I’m not sure it’s honest,” and leaves the stage.

But wonderfully, even this refusal to saw constitutes a story of sorts. And it’s the kind of story Kharms writes again and again, until, having read too much Kharms at one sitting, you feel like saying: “Daniil, Daniil, you’re going to starve to death before you’re 38! Dude, get cracking! Write your masterwork!”

Then you realize he’s already done it.

Another Daniil

Here are two inspiring links to another Daniil, a 23-year-old ballet dancer whose Russian parents both danced professionally and emigrated to Germany with their son when he was 3. Daniil Simkin is now in residence with the ABT (American Ballet Theater) in New York. I've become smitten by the guy and must make a pilgrimage to see him dance.

This first 3-minute clip captures Daniil Simkin at age 17.



This second 2.5-minute clip captures Simkin three years later, at 20.



Perhaps my Daniil will follow in this Danill's extraordinary footsteps. Or maybe his path in life will be more quiet and humble. It's so tempting to dream on his behalf, but of course my Daniil will be the captain of his own proverbial ship and course. I see my job primarily as an ambassador, one who introduces him to the world, its treasures and possibilities, and as a safety net.

Bottom line: regardless of the "ends" (his career choice, school performance, etc.), I want the "means" every single day to be propelled by joy, whimsy, curiosity, delight, and unreserved love, love, love. As my friend Marty advises, I will shepard my son, but always from one step back, allowing Daniil to take the lead and experience the joy (and pain sometimes) of making his own discoveries. Above all, I do not want to stifle my son's free spirit nor try to corral it into some shape pre-determined by me. I figure we'll dance an exquisite dance together, a mother-son pas de deux, until, eventually, my Daniil will assume the stage solo--but never really alone since he'll have throughout his life, I pray, even when I'm no longer present, a full supportive company behind and beside him.

My Son's Name

Daniil Titus Sjostrom

More on how I discovered this splendid spelling of my son's first name in a future post. Stay tuned.

Petition to Adopt

I've submitted some 40 different documents to the Russian Federation, all required to be considered for adoption. One of the most important is the "Petition to Adopt" which outlines Daniil's family history and medical diagnoses. I was allowed to submit one short paragraph explaining my reasons for wanting to adopt Daniil. Here it is.

I personally met Daniil and want to adopt him because…

… in the words of the Director of the Apatity Baby Home: “This boy is open to life and open to love. He is ready to love and be loved.” What magnificent statements, and so true. I, too, am open to life, to love, and have long desired to be a parent. I am overjoyed by the prospect of building a family with Daniil. I look forward to loving and nurturing his unique personality, abilities, interests, needs, sense of humor, and spirit. I got a wonderful sense of Daniil while in Apatity. He is a beautiful, multi-dimensional 2.5 year old boy. I anticipate the joy of introducing him to the countless wonders of the world: to family and friends, to music and the arts, to oceans and mountains, to play and wonder, to literature, knowledge and education. I look forward to equipping Daniil with intellectual, social and physical tools to find a purposeful, meaningful way in the world, and to change the world for the better.

My Moscow Medical

Here's how it went in Moscow last week:

Neurologist (through my Russian translator): "Stand up, close your eyes, and touch your index finger to your nose." I succeeded. "Sit down," she said, nodding toward a chair by her desk. She wrote a page in my little assigned book, akin to a blue book used for finals, and stamped an official document, not once, but twice.

One down, seven doctors to go.

Oncologist: "Have you ever had cancer?" No, I said. "Take off your shirt," he said, gesturing for me to stand behind a white screen. I held up my arms and he examined my breasts. "Put your shirt back on," he directed, wrote another page in my little book, and stamped the official document two times.

Psychiatrist: "I see you are from Texas," he said. I was born in Texas, I offered, I don't live there anymore. "Texas is a big state, yes?" he asked, and continued, "There's desert there, and mountains and seaside?" Yes, I said. End of conversation. He wrote his page and stamped the official document, twice as a psychiatrist, twice as an addictions specialist.

Zdravstvuyte, I said to the Immunologist. (Hello.) "Вы говорите по-русски?" the doctor asked. ("Do you speak Russian?") Only a few phrases, I said and countered, Do you speak English? The doctor smiled and spoke through my translator. "At this point in time it appears to be much more vital that you learn Russian than that I learn English!" We both laughed. "Did you have all your shots when you were a child?" Yes, I said. She wrote her page, and stamped, stamped the official document.

"Come back in two hours," our hospital escort said. "Your next doctor will be back then." Zhenia my translator and I walked to Red Square, posed for photos by a fountain, bought ice cream from a Nestle push-cart vendor, and I found postcards of the Kremlin for a 7th grader at my school who's writing a report on Russia.

Pulmonologist: "Take off your shirt." I'd worn my pretty lacy bra, the one I bought last summer on Union Street in San Francisco. "Now breathe in and out," she said, listening to my chest through a stethoscope. She motioned for me to put my shirt back on and scribbled out a page. Stamp. Stamp.

General Practitioner: "Take off your pants." Including my panties? I asked. "Nyet." I took off my jeans and sat on the indicated table. She rapped my knees with a little hammer, testing my knee-jerk reflex. "Put your pants on," she said abruptly, and proceeded like the others. The Dermatologist, my eighth and final doctor, made equal haste.

Paint was cracked and crumbling in many corners. Doctors’ desks lacked computers. Telephones, relics from the ‘70s. I didn't see a patient all day, only one other adoptive mom, well-heeled from Sweden, 50ish. For three summers she'd hosted Sergei, now 11, at her home outside Stockholm where he and other Moscow orphans attended soccer camp. The camp was bankrolled, she explained, by a rich Russian hockey player. She'd fallen in love with the boy and aimed to adopt him.

Exams done, official document crowded with stamps and signatures, Zhenia and I returned to the front desk to pay. The receptionist smiled wryly. She picked up the phone and called the Adoption Director. Zhenia spoke to him and quickly hung up. "He shouted,” she said. "He told me not to speak to the front desk and to meet him in the courtyard."

We waited on a bench outside. My Swedish compatriot walked by and we wished each other good luck and god-speed. After 10 minutes, the director strode briskly into the courtyard, conspicuous in his jeans and flamboyant floral shirt. Zhenia and I referred to him thereafter as Disco Boy. "This will be $800," he told me. "I'm giving you a $50 discount since you were here three months ago." Please will you consider going a little lower? I asked. "I'm taking a loss already," he said, "and this is less than what you'd pay at the other medical centers." I opened my travel purse, where I'd separated rubles in an envelope marked with orange marker from dollars in an envelope marked with green. I reached into the green envelope and counted out eight crisp $100 bills. The director pocketed the cash and walked away.

The proverbial ball is now back in the judge's hands in Murmansk. She has my updated medical documentation, along with the requested licenses of the town assessor who'd signed a letter attesting to the worth of my house, of the psychologist who attested that I show no aggressive tendencies, and of the CPA who reported on my income, investments and federal tax returns. Let’s hope the judge reviews my paperwork soon and finds everything in order. Daniil and Mama wait.

Daniil's Voice: A Video

When Mom and I met Daniil in Apatity this past February, I had in hand a Flip video recorder, about the size of a half deck of playing cards. But stupid me, I neglected to put it to use except for two minutes on the first day at the orphanage. I kick myself for not using it during each of my hour-and-a-half visits, five in all, especially when I was given the privilege of witnessing Daniil in class with his teacher. He took such obvious pride in counting (par Ruski) on his fingers, placing blocks and matryoshka dolls on a little platform (fine motor skill development), identifying small farm animals, and repeating words while watching himself in the mirror to refine pronunciation. And then there was all that playing we did together in the orphanage play room, climbing up stairs hand in hand, sliding down the slide side by side, tossing balls back and forth, singing and blowing bubbles, reading books with my boy nestled in my lap.

Instead, I took only one video, short and uneventful, of Daniil messing around with my mom's camera. This was my first attempt at using the Flip and, as you'll see, I was shaky, literally. Nonetheless, I cherish this short film now that I'm back in the States and thousands of miles away. Daniil embodied, animated, in motion! I love his curiosity and quick smile. I love how he offers the first animal cracker to Grandma ("Babushka" in Russian) and how he reaches out his little hand and places it on her leg, such a trusting gesture upon first meeting. And his little voice, it kills me each time I hear it.

Click the triangular play button to view (underneath screen on left).

Moscow in May

Time: 10:15PM

Place: "New York Casino" Restaurant, Hotel Peking, Moscow. Sun has set, dusk prolonged in this northern latitude. Russians are gathered around TV sets in the bar, cheering loudly for the Russian hockey team in the international final with the Czech Republic. Waves of shouting, wafts of cigarette smoke.

What a difference three months make. In February a bitter wind charged through the near-barren Moscow streets. Kate, our translator, Mom and I were three of the few people who braved Red Square. Today, the city is alive with beautiful women in close-fitting dresses and 4-inch heels and men in black, fresh-shined shoes with pointy toes. A young couple kissed passionately on a bench outside of Red Square while children ran through fountain spray, shrieking. I just got back from the Tchaikovsky Conservatory and a stunning performance of classical piano and violin. Kate brought along her best friend Sveta, also an English speaker, and the three of us ate spiced lamb and rice for dinner at a festive ethnic Uzbek restaurant.

I'm here to repeat an "eight-panel" medical exam, the same one I took three months ago at the same hospital, a strange place seemingly devoid of patients other than foreign adoptive parents required to cycle through the offices of the resident oncologist, dermatologist, neurologist, general practitioner, pulminary specialist, drug and alcohol specialist, psychiatrist, and I can't seem to recall the eighth. My appointment is scheduled for tomorrow morning at 11:30. At the end of these "rounds," along with a repeat blood test and chest x-ray, I'll hand $1000 in cash to the hospital director. The most far-flung and expensive check-up ever.

I've no choice but to play by the judge's rules and am committed to do whatever she requires to bring my boy home. What's next: The judge has requested my medical exam(s) results, along with 10 new pieces of documentation, by this Thursday, May 27 at noon. If I miss the deadline, she dismisses my case. Hence, this quick, crazy trip. Hopefully she will review my case again soon, approve, and issue a court date to transfer parental rights from the Russian Federation to me.

When my spirits flag, I keep Daniil's face in front of me, his laugh and eager, innocent trust. Moy solnyshko: "my little sun."

Chance Meeting at JFK

I just bumped into a woman named Larisa reading the "Departures" board next to me at JFK. We struck up a conversation and quickly discovered that we are both in the adoption process. I'm on my way back to Russia to complete a required medical exam to satisfy a judge in Murmansk who has the power to grant or deny me the parental rights to 3-year-old Daniil. Larisa is on her way back to Kiev to adopt her 3rd child from Ukraine, a 15 year old girl named Svetlana. Svetlana stole Larissa's heart one year ago when she and her husband were in Kiev adopting another girl, 9, and her younger brother. As Larisa and her family left the orphanage, Svetlana kissed her on the cheek and thanked her for sharing special treats with all of the children. Larisa hasn't been able to get Svetlana off her her mind since and now is heading to Kiev to get the teenager registered with the U.S. Embassy before she turns 16 and is too old to qualify for adoption.

The twists and turns of the human heart and lives hanging in the balance...