Tools

We adopted him

From Russia when he was seven.

Now he’s 25. His daughter in tow.

He’s doing a small remodeling job for us.

His tools and equipment are in our driveway,

Country music playing quietly. Monster drink in his hands.

A far cry from where he started.

Smolensk. Orphanage. Survival. Pain of being abandoned. Survival of the fittest.

His beard’s bushy now. His path hasn’t been an easy one.

Things are getting better. He’s getting on with things. Growing up.

Russia’s far away, though still in his head.

It’s nice having him working in our driveway. Tools in hand. Sawdust in the garage.

I think I just might now be allowing myself to like him after so many years of anguish.

He may just be starting to like himself too.

Cold War

Son viewed dad through angry eyes. The two of them were at war, though dad didn’t, couldn’t, understand why or when the war began. Was it when the adoption occurred, or did the war start later when son realized that there were requirements associated with this new family? Did the war begin when son realized that he had it good with his new family, but that he couldn’t live up to their expectations, or the expectations he thought he was supposed to live up to? You see, there’s only a war when two sides are fighting, and dad was not fighting, had no intention to fight, and didn’t even know how to bear arms. Days, weeks, months, and years went by, and the nothingness of son towards dad caused dad to build his own wall between them; a lack of reciprocity in a relationship tends to cause this natural reaction. When it became clear that nothing dad said mattered, that what dad did in his life didn’t either, and that dad himself was, for son, more an annoyance than anything else, the battle began to feel more like a cold war; no open warfare, only simmering hostility.

Shame on Catholic Charities of Buffalo

Talk about out of touch. Catholic Charities of Buffalo is phasing out their foster and adoption services due to New York State allowing same-sex adoption:

Per Catholic Charities: “It is with deep sadness we acknowledge that the legacy of … foster care and adoption will be lost,” said Dennis C. Walczyk, Catholic Charities Chief Executive Officer. As an organization sponsored by the Diocese of Buffalo, Catholic Charities cannot uphold the requirement that contracting agencies allow same-sex couples to foster and adopt children. The teaching and position of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world recognizes marriage only as a union between a woman and a man.

My Twitter Response: “My husband and I adopted our son from Russia. He’s now a dad, and we have a beautiful granddaughter. There is no such thing as “gay parenting.” Your decision will only serve to deprive children of the opportunity to live in a loving home.”

“Deep sadness” my ass. Our beautiful granddaughter would not be here if it weren’t for Tom and I adopting our son from a nasty Russian orphanage 13 years ago.

Nourishment – Our Children’s Recipe

Praises for the day we were born
Under the mango trees to frolic.
Berries of wonderment we are,
Bursting with life-giving juices.

Frothy and whipped we play
While mixing strains of tunes
Played on peppermint flutes.

With chocolate fingers and marzipan mouths,
Crimson cherry jumps
On top of our sweet cream of innocence
To embellish our communal sundae.

Praises for the day we were born,
For the life-giving milk-love
Free-flowing and warm.
Stir batter.
Add spices.

Mix us, candy toes and chocolate breath
Into the warmed copper pot of humankind.
Stir. Repeat. Pour into baking pan.
Set temperature.
On Life.

Praises for the day we were born.
Baked off and iced.
Cooled. Sliced.
Fed to the hungry arms of those who love us.

We are of them.
They now, are of us.

 

 

 

 

 

Celebrating Our Son’s Adoption – Viktory Day 2018 (14th Year)

A blonde blue-eyed “buster” joined our family 14 years ago. From Russia you came, with stories to tell, a history to share, and siblings to sadly leave behind. But this was the start of your new life, with new family, new experiences, slides, sports, cats, and delicious food. Of two new grandmas, and one new grandpa, new aunts and uncles, and cousins, and travel, and Java Lake, and church, new friends, and love.

For love is what you brought to your dad and me, and to the whole family for that matter. You laughed with grandma Mary, ate soup with grandma Adela, and talked about WWII with grandpa. You’ve cut wood with Uncle Peter, walked in the woods with Aunt Rhonnda, and helped Aunt Debbie around her home. You have brought so much to your family, and we are proud of you.

You have experienced dark days, and very bright ones too. You have made us laugh, cry, and fear for your safety. You’ve been musical, artistic, sporty, smart, fearless, and sometimes difficult. You’ve been you, and we love you for that.

The years are moving along quickly, and so it’s important for us to stop and reflect back on the times we’ve spent together, and on the wonderful experiences that lie ahead.

For you are a father now to sweet baby Piper, and you are a loving partner to a lovely young lady. You have created your own little family, right here in Western New York.
Who would’ve ever thought that a little Russian boy from an orphanage in western Russia would have such a positive impact on the lives of so many across the ocean?

So as we recognize Viktory Day 2018, we reflect on how you came to be our son.
We think about your birth father Viktor, Valentina, Baba Uli, Svetlana, and Anastasia, and hope that they too are well, both in spirit and in human form. They are always your family. That will never change. We also think about the ties that bind us together, the support we give one another, and the fun that we share together.

May this year, and the years to come be good to you.
May this moment in time be celebrated as you recognize the joy and gifts in your life.
May you always be blessed with love, good health, and a positive spirit that allows you to fly high.

So today we recognize you, dear Viktor, as our son, nephew, father, and life partner on this, your 14^th Viktory Day.

International Adoption – A Journey to Grandparenthood

I’ve become a grandpa. Yes, my husband and I are proud grandpas of a little girl named Piper Marie, and gee, is she ever perfection! She came into this world on December 5th, Saint Nicholas Day in The Netherlands. She is our Hanukkah and Christmas gift, oh, and did I mention, our little angel too?

The creation of a family is truly a miracle. Tom and I adopted our son from Russia in 2004 from a region of Russia near where my Jewish grandparents fled in the early 1900’s. Before adopting Viktor, I had received a gift from a Russian visitor, a tapestry in fact, that came from Smolensk, a medium-size western Russian city near the village in which our son was born. Then on June 19, 1996, the day Viktor was born, I enrolled in Russian language classes. A coincidence perhaps, but one that sends a happy chill down my spine every time I think of it, as if it was all meant to be.

To add even further to the mysterious path of how families come together, I have in my possession a wooden Russian figurine that was brought to the U.S. by my Russian grandparents. She represents a stout and hardened rural woman, a “babushka” who keeps her place in our china cabinet except when she and her equally hearty husband stand guard next to the menorah during Hanukkah. Funny thing, and I kid you not, she looks eerily similar to Viktor’s real Russian grandma (see photo) who served as one of the few sources of love for him before he came to join our family. So she had been standing guard not only in our china cabinet, but also, in real life, in a rural village near Smolensk, to guard our little son against the neglect he was unfortunately experiencing before and during his orphanage years. A far-fetched coincidence perhaps, though it sure feels real enough to me.

Now, 13 years later, our son is a papa. We are proud of him, since he definitely made it through the rain of childhood and the teen years, leaving us breathless, sad, and angry along the way. I’d like to think that the journey we were on with him helped him to gain sobriety and stability, and a degree of happiness that can be tough for adopted children to achieve under even the best of circumstances. He now kisses his daughter’s head knowing that she is his blood on this side of the ocean. She who looks so much like him rests gently on his chest, quieted by his loving energy in a way I’m sure he longed for – though he may not have recognized that he needed – when he was her age. He’s not setting out to re-create his own sad pre-adoption youth. No, Piper Marie only gets the best from him.

So Tom and I set out 27 years ago to love and respect each other. Fourteen years into our relationship, we added our son to our family, and we have loved and cared for him, and have taught him what we felt he needed to know to become a good person, man, and father. Our tips still continue of course, and he actually seeks out our advice more frequently now (who would’ve thought that would ever happen!), but he now has his own little family and home.

So yes, the creation of a family is a miracle however it’s put together. Our little granddaughter carries my last name, a name of Russian origin that bears the pride of a family who made it out of Europe before the winds of World War II descended. She carries the blood of Viktor’s birth parents, one of whom is deceased, and one (his birth mother) whose whereabouts are unknown. Yes, Piper carries a lot on her petite shoulders, but she does so with the love of her mother and father – our son – who’s been raised with unconditional love from his dads. Here’s to grandpahood. We couldn’t be happier!

Baffled By The Term “Gay Parenting”

I just don’t grasp the notion of so-called “gay parenting.” To my mind, there’s no such thing! Just as there is no such thing as “heterosexual parenting,” one’s sexual identity does not define one’s parenting style. A parent is straight, gay, or everything in between (sexuality and sexual orientation can be fluid of course), but the parenting style has to do with parenting and not with one’s sexual orientation. A direct correlation between being a gay individual, and parenting in a “gay way,” does not exist in my opinion.

Tom and I have been together for almost 27 years. We chose to adopt our son because we wanted to be parents. We wanted to build a family, and enjoy watching our son grow up to be a fine young man. He will soon be a father himself, so we hope that he will put the parenting techniques that we used with him to good use in the near future.  Nothing about the approach we took as parents was “gay.” Nothing about our parenting had anything to do with our identity as gay males. Quite honestly, because Tom and I had absorbed so much of what our dear moms taught us, our parenting has been informed, to a great extent, by our mothers’ methods of parenting. We simply put into effect the parenting approaches that our moms and dads taught us, along with some of our own approaches. We never deliberated as to whether our parenting style was gay or not.

Women and men have different parenting approaches because our life experiences are shaped, in part, by our gender. Our children are parented in a way that reflects those life experiences, and both mothers and fathers bring those experiences to bear on our parenting. What’s more, to think that our son did not have a qualitatively different experience having two dads than a child with a mom and dad would be wrong. He did have a different experience, just as his friends who were raised by a mom and dad did, or by two moms for that matter.

 

All of us do our best to ensure the safety and development of our children. We question ourselves each and every day as to whether or not we are making the right choices to 

positively affect our childrens’ lives. And for sure, every day as a parent teaches us something more about our own strengths and weaknesses as individuals and as parents. But to say that Tom and I parent in a “gay way,” or that a straight couple parents in a “straight way” does a disservice to all of the hard work that all of us put into our parenting, regardless of our individual sexual orientation.

 

 

Tom and I don’t desire to be a market segment catered to by marketing firms that target gay parents. We do not brand ourselves as “gay parents,” nor do we ascribe to so much of what society may assume we believe in as gay males. Neither of us ever walked out of the closet, because we always were who we were and never felt as though we were even

in a closet. So we parent simply as Tom and Brad, infusing love and guidance into our parenting, while toasting to our parenting voyage over a glass of red on a very regular basis! Gay, straight, bi, we parents choose to parent with a mate we love, and share the riches of our lives with our children regardless of our sexual orientation.

 

 

 

 

Meant to be – a story of international adoption

We adopted our now 21-year old son (and father to be) from western Russia in 2004 when he was seven years old. He had lived since the age of three in a desolate orphanage not far from the border with Belarus. His teenage sisters lived in a different orphanage not too far away. I had met Viktor through a fresh air program that brought him to northern Pennsylvania to meet American families to become part of a forever family. We hit it off, and after six months back in Russia while paperwork was being processed, I went to Russia with my Mom to pick him up. It was meant to be. As destiny would have it, I had started taking Russian language classes on June 19, 1996, the day he was born, and eight years before he became our son.

I read about reactive attachment disorder, and how it presents in children who’ve been neglected. I studied the facial features associated with fetal alcohol syndrome, trying to see if Viktor evidenced any on his face and head. I called him a few times, reaching him over a crackly phone, with Viktor asking “shto” (“what” in Russian) when I would speak using my feeble Russian skills. I wanted him to remember me, and to grasp that he would be coming back to the U.S. to be my son. I’m not sure I was successful, given how frightened he was when he realized that he would be leaving his sisters and Russia for a new life in America when my Mom and I went to bring him home.

Now, 13 years later, as I look forward to becoming a grandpa, I reflect back on those very early days with a smile. I did not know then how much our son would struggle to learn and to come to terms with his past. Through wilderness therapy in Utah, canine therapy in Missouri, a school for dyslexia and word processing issues in New York, high school, and then drug rehabilitation, he/we made it through together, in tact, and able to move forward as a family. Two fathers and a healthy, drug-free son who’s about to become a father to a little girl, our granddaughter.