From Chapter Six, “Kazakhstan”

One of the little girls we had hoped to adopt was Vera, who lived in Kostenai, Kazakhstan. We had been looking for a child for so long, we accepted Vera's referral without thinking about what the trip to get her entailed. We learned, too late to change our minds, that it was an extremely arduous journey, with dangers for our five-year-old Natalie that included stops in Russia, where she was still a citizen (due to recent changes in Russian law). The decision of my sister-in-law, Sarah, to accompany us on the trip eased our concerns considerably, though it did not much lessen the risks. But our well-laid plans were changed on September 11, 2001.

We had accepted Vera's referral the week before Mother's Day 2001. On September 11, 2001, Natalie clutched my hand as we walked into her kindergarten class for the first time. It was about 8:50 a.m. Central time. We had been listening to Mr. Rogers's “You're Growing Up” audiotape on the way in to school, and were still humming his perky tune, “Everything Grows Together,” as we walked through the door. As I glanced about expectantly, looking for other parents I might know, the atmosphere seemed odd. Some parents were going around happily with their kids, exploring different play stations. But a surprising number were looking stricken, talking into cell phones. When one of these fathers dropped his arm to his side for a moment and looked up, I caught his eye.

“How are you doing?” I asked brightly, trusting that my sense of something amiss was all wrong.

He looked at me, failing in his attempt to return my smile. “Haven't you heard?” he replied.

*****

“There's no way we can go to Kazakhstan now,” Marc said on the phone to me later that day. I was reeling in my initial shock.

“ What ? What's this have to do with Kazakhstan?”

“Theresa, it's right there . It's in the same region of the world. There's no way we can go there now.”

“Can't go? Of course we can go! We have to go get Vera!”

“Theresa.”

“ You don't know we can't go. You never wanted to go. You're just using this as an excuse.”

“ Theresa, are you insane? Of course we can't go. ”

“We don't know that. Let's wait and see what happens.”

“If Sarah won't go, we can't go.”

“Sarah will go. Let's just wait and see.”

Quick, get out the map. Where's Kazakhstan in relation to Afghanistan? Past it, on the other side, far away. It's a huge country.

A day or two after September 11, Sarah calls and says she can't go anymore.

I think, “We'll have to find somebody else.”

Marc says, “That's it then. We can't go.”

I call the U.S. State Department. I explain our plight to the Central Asia expert: we have a little girl there, in Kazakhstan. We are supposed to go get her soon. What does he think? Would we be safe?

He is a very nice man. He wants us to be able to go adopt our little girl. There is no warning about traveling to Kazakhstan, he tells me. You can go, as far as the U.S. government is concerned. The problem is, you just don't know how long you might be held up. If there is military action, it could affect the airports. But fundamentally, it would in all likelihood be safe to go.

We could go, but there's no telling when we might get back, if a war started.

Marc and I hold anguished talks at all hours. Are we just wimping out? Are we just using this as an excuse not to go? We never wanted to go in the first place. We had not been concerned, before, that a plurality of the Kazakh people are Muslim. The Lonely Planet web site says that the Kazakh people are very kind and hospitable. The gentle, loving face of the nurse in Vera's video has been a beacon of hope, a promise of what to expect in the people. But now, this Muslim plurality is more concerning. Might some tiny fraction of that plurality be radical? What if we become targets for just one or two extremists? We are obviously American; Marc is obviously Jewish; we are traveling with a tall, blond child: we would be conspicuous. The odds of being hurt are very, very small, but still . . . they are greater now than they were on September 10. It would be different if we were traveling alone, if we didn't already have a child. If it was just the two of us, childless, going to collect our first child, we would not have been deterred. But to expose Natalie to the increased danger changes the equation completely. Taking her in peace time was already exposing her to absolutely the highest risk we would consider; an iota more risk for her tipped the scale.

Vera's image floats before my eyes. The scared, darting eyes, the hands clutching the dolly. The big smile, the little fist clenched behind her back as she returns the truck to the nurse. We had not watched her video over and over and over again in the months since we had first received it. Studying it would only have caused pain. Why nudge ourselves into love with a child we can't yet reach? But Natalie had not been so well-protected. She had incorporated Vera into her doll play from the moment she first saw her video. Virtually every time she played with her dolls, more than once a day, the story involved Vera: going to get Vera, or being home with Vera. Vera, her long-awaited sister.

It takes me about a week to accept that we cannot go get Vera. It feels like I am aborting a live little girl. I cry and cry. Finally, in bed one night, I break it to Natalie. “Natalie, honey, I have some bad news.” She stops moving and looks at me closely. She is dimly aware that bad men have crashed planes into buildings in New York. “We can't go get Vera any more, honey.”

“ What ? Why ?” she wails.

“Honey, those bad men are in between us and Vera. We're safe where we are, and Vera's safe where she is, but it's not safe for us to go get her any more.” I clutch her as she starts to cry. “I'm sorry, baby. There's a war going on between us and Vera. We can't go any more.”

For months we have been going to get Vera. And now we aren't. Natalie arches her back and wails, tears streaming through tight-shut eyes, “No, no no no nooooooo!”

Marc, seeing his baby get hurt, is in anguish. His anguish becomes fury directed at me, because I am the cause of Natalie's pain. I insisted that we tell her about Vera, despite his reservations. I can feel his seething dismay on the other side of Natalie's wracked little body.

“Well when can I get a baby sister?” she cries after awhile.

“I don't know, baby, but we'll keep trying. I just don't know.”

I have been worried that Natalie will be troubled by the vagaries of adoption, the apparent randomness with which certain children become your children, your brother or sister, and others don't. How will it feel to her, knowing that we could have been Vera's family, and now we won't be? That Vera would have been happy with us, but we trust she will also be happy with another family?

I say, “God, or the forces that be in the world, meant for us – for you and me and daddy – to be a family. They didn't mean for Vera to be part of our family. We don't know why. But Vera is supposed to be with someone else, and she will be. The little girl who is meant to be part of our family will be part of our family. We will find her.”

Those lost pictures on Mother's Day. It was an omen.

Vera drops out of Natalie's play forever.