From Siberia With Love

I've been in Ohio for the holidays for nearly three weeks now. It's been fantastic. Lots of visiting with family, lots of fun with friends, lots of eating yummy food that's making me gain weight like nobody's business...but that's another blog. Anyway, now that all the festivities are over, I'm finding myself with more free time on my hands than I've had for many moons. And free, quiet time, at that.

Today I've been thinking about perspective. About how my feelings undulate so quickly on something; it's good, it's bad, it's scary, it's familiar, it's comforting, it's boring, it's dangerous, it's exciting. As if I am standing inside a sphere, and where I am standing doesn't change, and what I'm looking at outside the sphere doesn't change either, but the sphere moves, throwing new and different colors and textures on the thing I'm looking for. Nothing changes but my view of the thing, and yet that makes all the difference.

Today in boredom I turned on the tv. I watched "Siberian Adoption Story" and almost turned it off when they started interviewing the prospective adoptive parents. I'm sure it must be difficult to have that sort of emotional experience video-taped, but they made me cringe.

The adoption story followed two American families as they went through the process of adopting Russian baby girls. One couple was from Florida, and they were striking in their resemblance to Barbie and Ken. Blond and tan, they were beautiful people. The woman annoyed me from about the third second of the recording. She was sharp and pushy to the Russian translators and officials; basically, she was the opposite of a respectful international visitor.

The couple had two children of their own (boys, ages 4 and 6) and decided to adopt after four miscarriages in a row. The woman wanted a girl. She talked about how they considered using their own egg and sperm in various procedures, but that was going to cost about twice what an adoption would. The woman said, "I just kept thinking, is it worth all that money for the baby to have blond hair?" and I thought, "Please be kidding" but no smile followed what I thought MUST be a punch line in poor taste. She was serious. Her deep tan, bleach-blond hair and heavy makeup weren't an act. This woman was all about appearance.

She hired a doctor to look at photos of the baby to try to determine whether she had fetal alcohol syndrome. When she and her husband saw the child for the first time she said, "I think if she were out in the sun, she would have blond hair." On the airplane with other prospective parents, she said in amazement, "Those babies look like Americans! They're beautiful babies. You can't adopt an American baby from America!" Needless to say, the woman didn't mean the babies looked like Americans; she meant they looked like Caucasians.

After the doctor emailed to say she didn't think the baby had FAS, settling this couple's mind on adopting (because we certainly wouldn't want to help a needy child; just one that is healthy and looks like us), they returned to the orphanage with an Armani baby outfit and (I pause, close my eyes and shake my head here, at the sheer ridiculousness of this one) an electric baby wipe warmer.

SIDENOTE: you can't even use that thing in Russia! The outlets are different! And even if you could, the baby doesn't need our electronic gadgets! She doesn't need AMERICA to swoop in and wrap her up in money and designer onesies and SunIn Hair Lightener; this baby, just like every other baby in every country, needs love. She needs acceptance and security and a warm, full belly.

I was saddened by the constant refrain of my fellow countrymen and women, "She will have a much better life in American than in Siberia." Ah, the arrogance. Yes, living with a loving family beats living in an orphanage, hands down. But living in America is not superior to living in another country, even if that country isn't as technologically or economically or any other-ly advanced as we believe ourselves to be.

I love my country, and I am thankful to have been born here. But I have met people all over the world, in poor countries and rich, who are equally thankful to have been born into their own circumstances, under their own flag. We delude ourselves when we embrace the narrow view that life as we know it is superior to any other sort of life. Delude ourselves and display our ignorance to the rest of the world.