|
Dedicated to my son
By Vlada Sergueyeva
Translation by Tanya Yurlova
Excerpts
Whenever I start thinking about the Baby Home and the children who live there, I begin to cry. I so much want to believe that the kids who lived there with my Alyosha also found parents!
Here I am, walking along a corridor, and Alyosha is running towards me shouting "Mama!" at the top of his voice. He saw me for the first time only yesterday and was very shy: he didn't utter a single word for a long while. But he took the goodies and the toy car I brought for him and allowed me to escort him to his group. Today, as I crossed the yard, I saw him peering out of the window before he came running out to me. We walked, played, I fed him fruits and when it was time to say good-bye he clung to me and started bawling. The caretaker barely dragged him into the room where all the kids had already started eating. She closed the door but I stood behind it and listened to his inconsolable wails.
The next day, Alyosha didn't let my hand go for even a second. I was asked to take a few other kids for a walk. They all wanted to hold me and called me "Mama". When Alyosha caught something in his eye, I carefully removed it, and everyone started rubbing their eyes and asking me to take a look. Then I straightened Alyosha's hat, and, all of a sudden, everyone's hat needed straightening. When I tried to sit him in my lap, all the kids who had been playing around ran over to me and started settling as close to me as possible. They looked me in the eye and seemed to beg me to hug them. I took out all the goodies I brought for my son and started sharing them among the children; trying to hug this one, kiss another one, stroke the third on the head. Alyosha started crying. "This is my Mama!" he yelled pushing the kids away. "No, mine!" yelled each one in return. I could barely calm them down. I understood that I should not single Alyosha out. How could these two and three year-olds understand that he was the one to be adopted and they would be left behind? And is it at all possible to explain this?
Alyosha looked at me with happy loving eyes and kept hurrying me, "Mama, let's go home." He had no idea what a home meant. One of the caretakers just taught him these words. But, at that time I didn't know about it. What I did know was that never in my life could I leave this child behind. Because he trusted me. He called me Mama. He didn't really speak and knew nothing about the life beyond the Baby Home. But he instinctively knew that his loneliness has ended. To leave him now would mean to betray him. I would have never forgiven myself for such a treachery. Understanding this was probably more important than love, which, after all, I may not have grown to feel for him, and more important than my formal obligations, which came with signing the adoption documents. I have experienced many difficulties since then, but after this piercing realization of my responsibility towards him the thought of abandoning him has never once crossed my mind.
Alyosha was ecstatic about leaving the Baby Home. He was very proud of his handsome new bright blue winter overalls, the new hat and boots. He also had cute mittens and a scarf, but most importantly, he had mama. "Mama, Mama," he explained to the passers-by, the bus and the taxi drivers. He flat out declined to leave the cab. He yelled something like "car", "ride", "I don't want", and I had to literally tear his hands of the car seat. Of course, it was the very first car-ride in his life and he wanted for the fun to continue. Only telling him that now we would ride the train helped.
In the train he became even more excited - he had never had so many impressions in all his life. But he also began experiencing fear of the new and unknown. When I stood up to leave for the restroom, he grabbed me and started crying. He was afraid to be left alone. Everything and everyone was unfamiliar. I was his only link to his past. He associated me with the Baby Home, where he was also surrounded by people who took care of him and whom he knew. A couple of days after coming come, we went to the outpatient clinic to get a physical for the pre-school, and, all of sudden, Alyosha brightened up and reached out towards the doctor. In a second he would have hugged her! My first reaction - surprise, was quickly followed by a painful realization: it was the doctor's white smock! All the staff at the Baby Home wore white smocks and Alyosha thought that he had returned to his familiar surroundings. We barely made it home from the outpatient clinic. Alyosha resisted me, pulling me back, falling into all the puddles in his new overalls, and started bawling. Yes, not crying but bawling! But I myself was close to hysteria and did not understand at that time the reasons for his misbehavior. And all he wanted was to just return to his world because everything around him was so alien!
I have many photos from those first days. Alyosha has the look of an old man - guarded, melancholy and tired. As if he knows something no one else does. He never smiles on any of these pictures, he, whom his grandmother later started calling "Smiley" because he had this contagious laughter that could start for no reason at all
But, at the beginning, smiling and laughing was something Alyosha still had to learn.
|
|
|
