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Rookie Mom

One couple's search ends half a world away

By KATHERINE SNOW SMITH
Published July 10, 2005

May 3 was the day after Carol Hand's birthday. That's the day the St. Petersburg resident received a call from Children's Hope International informing her that she and her husband needed to send more forms to Russia in their quest to adopt an orphan there. Instead of waiting nine months for a baby to grow in utero, they have been waiting for almost two years, taking a very different journey toward parenthood.

The Hands have been getting doctors to sign off on their health, having their home inspected by a social service organization, getting forms notarized, then updating forms and getting them notarized again.

And they have been waiting. Waiting for the mail to come. Waiting for the phone to ring.

There were several delays along the way. They realized their notary's term might expire before an adoption was complete, so they had to fill out the papers again and get a different notary. At one point, all Russian adoptions were put on hold while the Russian government reviewed the country's overall international adoption process.

"Through all the frustration and all the process, we understood why you had to do it," said Tom Hand recently. "It proves you really want this child and that is very important to the Russian government. They want the people who adopt to be absolutely crystal clean. I wouldn't want it to be easy."

So in May when Mrs. Hand heard she needed to send more forms, she wasn't surprised. But she was surprised when the caller then casually said that the Hands had been matched with a child and would have to be ready at a moment's notice to travel to Moscow.

She wasn't told if their child was a boy or a girl. But she did get a birth date, Sept. 20, 2003. To Mrs. Hand, getting that call was like the moment when so many other women see two pink lines on a home pregnancy test. In one instant, she had learned there was a little 19-month-old soul miles across the ocean destined to be theirs.

"Tom was in Las Vegas for work. I called and told somebody they had to get him out of the meeting. I said "Tell him his wife says it's urgent,' " she recalled with tears in her eyes.

A month later, the Hands got another call, on a Thursday, saying they needed to be in Moscow the following Tuesday. Mrs. Hand spent almost two hours with a US Airways agent who managed to use the couple's frequent flier points and piece together two free flights to Moscow. After arriving, they slept a few hours, then took a four-hour flight to Tomsk, the beautiful village in Siberia where their child lived in a small orphanage.

As they walked to the building, they saw a caregiver leading a group of toddlers in a line, all of them wearing little hats to protect their fair skin from the sun. The last little girl in line was wearing a pink dress and paused to look back at the Hands.

"Oh she is so cute," Mrs. Hand remembers saying. Then the caregiver said something in Russian to the Hands' interpreter.

"That's your little girl," the interpreter told them.

Once Mrs. Hand dried her tears, the couple met with the girl named Nadia in a small playroom. They had been warned that these children rarely see men and might be scared of men and outsiders.

"She was screaming her head off. Her whole body was just shaking," Mrs. Hand said. "I brought her a stuffed animal and gave her that, and she stopped shaking. She was holding the bear but still crying a little. Then I asked her if she would like a cracker. I gave her Goldfish (crackers) and she calmed down. She was just beautiful."

By the end of that first visit, she was holding on to Mrs. Hand's finger and taking little walks around the room. The Hands got to visit her twice a day for three days, for a total of about nine hours. They read books to her, sang songs, played games and just held her. The little girl became more comfortable but still didn't smile. But in the last few minutes of the last visit, as Mrs. Hand played patty-cake with Nadia and her husband videotaped the scene, Nadia gave them something they could take home and live on for months: her smile.

"Typically when I walked her back to the room with the other children, she would just go in and not look back at me. But on this last day, she turned around and stood there and looked at me," Mrs. Hand said.

The couple are waiting now for another call to summon them to Russia to go before a judge. If that goes well, they will work through the immigration process and could bring their daughter home 10 days to two weeks later. They have been told they might be called to go over in September.

The Hands left the stuffed bear and a toy phone that plays songs with Nadia. Though they saw other children grab them from her several times, they hope she can hold on to the toys. They also left a photo album with pictures of themselves, their home and their dog.

"Whether they will show it to her on a regular basis, I'm not sure. But our picture is on the front, so even if they don't open it up for her, I hope she'll still see us," Mrs. Hand said.

The children in the orphanage were not as neglected as the Hands had feared based on the stories they heard. The caregivers were loving and attentive. While many children were standoffish to the Hands, the ones who weren't broke their hearts. "Sometimes they would break away from the group," Tom Hand said, "and try to come in the room where we were and they would say: "Mama, Papa.' "

Last year, 10,000 Russian children were adopted by foreigners. More than half of them, 5,865, are now part of families in the United States. The Hands decided to adopt after three years of unsuccessfully trying to conceive a child. They ruled out adopting a baby in the United States fearing that one day the birth mother or father might try to reclaim the child. For now, their biggest fear is that something will go wrong and they won't get Nadia, whose face now adorns their screen savers, the refrigerator and the DVD Tom Hand's brother made from the video.

When they were at the adoption agency's offices in Russia, Mrs. Hand commented on all the pictures of happy children hanging on the bulletin board.

"Those pictures were not taken here. Those are pictures parents have sent us after they are gone," an employee told her. "A lot of times we get a picture and don't even recognize the children because they have changed so much when they are so happy and loved."

The Hands look forward to the day their daughter is here in St. Petersburg and they can send a happy picture of her back to Russia.

"I can't wait to put her in her little hat and hold her hand and just walk around the neighborhood," Mrs. Hand said. "She loves to just walk."

You can reach Katherine Snow Smith by e-mail at snowsmith@verizon.net or write Rookie Mom, St. Petersburg Times, PO Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731.

[Last modified July 9, 2005, 23:35:17]