The Adoption of Denis Tho: Waiting For A Son

This story was originally published during December as a four-part series for Advent. Since Advent is the liturgical season before Christmas celebrated in the Christian religion, it was a good time to share the story of Denis's adoption. Like the Christmas story itself, this is a story of waiting, of journeying to a faraway land, and of the joyful arrival of a son.

My husband and I have a daughter, Katrina, 13, and a son, Garrett, 9, both adopted as infants from Korea. In 1992, we wanted to expand our family and began to explore adopting more children. Because we already had two Korean children, we were especially interested in Asian children. By this time, we were beyond the age limit for adopting even older children from Korea. China was just opening up adoption to foreigners. Things have changed, but at that time the government of China would not allow families with more than one child to adopt, so we were ineligible for Chinese adoption. Knowing that the former Soviet Union has a substantial Asian population, we decided to apply to adopt from Russia or Ukraine. We completed a homestudy with a local agency and began to look for two children.

The adoption placement agency to which we applied sent us, in March of ‘93, to Kherson, a small city in southern Ukraine, to adopt two pretty little girls, half-siblings, who were 5 and 7. We were told that there were no Asian children waiting to be adopted, but these children had been in an orphanage for three and a half years and met the US government's definition of "orphan."

We knew that a primary reason for the large number of children in orphanages in the former Soviet Union is the extremely high rate of alcoholism among the population of those countries. What we did not fully understand, however, was the devastating effect this has upon the children's development. After we brought them home, we discovered that the little girls we adopted had been severely harmed, physically by their mother's heavy drinking during pregnancy, and emotionally by profound neglect during their earliest years of life. Sadly, they did not adjust well to our family, and we later arranged for them to be readopted by families who were childless and better equipped to meet their special needs.

A few days before we were to fly overseas to adopt the girls, the adoption agency sent us a very brief videotape of them. In one scene, the younger child is just getting up from a nap, and behind her in the dormitory a little Asian face pops up and looks at the camera, curious about what is going on. Both my husband and I had the same reaction when we saw that video. "Why can't we bring him home?" we asked each other.

When we went to Ukraine, we took a small photo album we had prepared for the children so that they could see pictures of our family, our cats, our house, where they would go to school, and activities from our daily lives. The orphanage director and other workers took great interest in it and within a few hours it must have been viewed by everyone at the orphanage. Later it was given back to us and we were told that everyone on the girls' living units had been looking at the pictures. "And," Tanya, our interpreter, told us, "all the children think your son, Garrett, is Denis."

"Who is Denis?" we wanted to know, and when she began to explain, we knew it was the little Asian boy we had seen in the videotape.

The children at the orphanage delighted us. We would go each day to visit, then take the girls for an outing, and back to the apartment where we were staying to feed them lunch. We would drive up to the orphanage, and if any of the children were outside they would come running, yelling "Americanski!" and waving their arms in the air. We had tucked four or five dozen packs of American chewing gum into our suitcases, and we would take some of this with us each day to the orphanage to pass out as small treats for the children. After the first time we handed out gum, they would yell "dvatchki! dvatchki!" (their word for chewing gum) when they saw us coming.

The first time we visited the 5-year olds' living unit, we saw Denis. He stood back, away from the crowd of children pushing to get close to us, watching us with solemn, dark Asian eyes. I gave him chewing gum, too, of course, and he accepted it. The children all wanted our attention, and wanted to be touched. Every day we touched them and talked to them and gave them chewing gum. Denis was cautious, however, studying us quietly. Though I never saw him smile, I thought he was beautiful.

Finally I asked about him. The caretaker on the living unit told us, through our interpreter, that he was five years old, almost six. The worker said she believed he was half Vietnamese and half Ukrainian. He looked completely Asian to me, but maybe I was wrong. She said that he seemed to be a smart little boy, always asking questions. Later I asked the orphanage director if he were free to be adopted and she said that he was. "But if you want a little boy," she said, "I have others you would like better." No, I thought, there is no little boy I would like better. I want Denis.

After a week in Ukraine, my husband, Nick, was flying back to Moscow, then back to the US. I was to stay behind a few more days to finish up the adoptions. On the day Nick was to leave to return home, we went to the orphanage, and in saying goodbye to the girls, Nick picked them up. Then other children clamored to be held, so Nick and I were picking them up and paying attention to them one at a time. Denis came up and reached up to me with his thin little arms.

"Nah roo-ki" he said.

I looked at Tanya for a translation. "He wants you to pick him up," she told me. Glad for the opportunity, I bent down and scooped him up into my arms. I looked at that serious little face and saw the beginnings of a smile. I hugged him and he threw his arms around my neck and placed a big, wet kiss on my cheek before breaking into a grin so large it made his eyes almost disappear. Something very powerful happened to me in that moment that created an instant bond with this child. It was as if he had grabbed me by the heart. I was somewhat shaken by it. "Denis," I told him quietly, as he put his forehead next to mine and looked me in the eye, "I'm not going to leave you here. I'll find a way to come back for you."

I knew he didn't understand, but I had to say it. I felt deeply that it was true. I walked over to my husband and handed Denis to him. "Here," I said, "Hold him." I wanted to know if this child would have an effect on Nick, too. He held Denis for a few minutes and hugged him before it was time to go, but appeared calm. So it seemed he had no effect on Nick. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps I had imagined what had happened with Denis, that powerful magnetic pull that had reached out from him to my heart. Then we were walking outside to the car. Tanya and our driver, walking ahead of us, turned to walk around the corner of the building. When they were out of sight, my husband suddenly stopped and leaned against the building. He put his face in his hands and burst into tears.

Thinking he was upset about traveling alone back to Moscow and leaving me behind, I tried to comfort him, saying, "The girls and I will be all right. Don't worry."

"No, it's not that," he said, shaking his head, "it's that little boy!"

I was astounded. So it had happened to him, too. "We'll come back for him," I said to Nick, more shaken than ever. "Somehow we will find a way to come back for him."

I had become friends with my interpreter, Tanya, and I told her how we would like to adopt Denis. She and her friend, Olga, a government official, who was working with us on the adoption of the little girls, told me a day or so later that if we wanted to come back to adopt Denis, they would try to make it easier for us. Ukrainian law did not require us to use an adoption agency, she explained. If we came back within a year, we could use all our old documents. This was good news. The placement agency had charged us thousands of dollars to locate children for us, only to tell us there were no Asian children available while Denis sat right under their noses.

We had gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to obtain the documents in our dossier, and had paid several hundred dollars to have them translated into Russian and authenticated by the Ukrainian government. International adoption is not inexpensive. We had refinanced our house to pay for the adoption of the girls. With Tanya and Olga's (and God's) help, though, we might be able to afford to come back for Denis.

Before I left with the girls to go back to the United States, I spoke with Valentina, the director of the orphanage, about our plans to come back for Denis. I asked her, as I had asked Olga and Tanya, not to tell Denis we were planning to come back until everything was arranged. I did not want to break his heart if something happened and we could not adopt him. She saw the tears in my eyes as we prepared to leave. She tried to cheer me by focusing on the future. "Come back in summer time," she said to me, "and we will go to my family's dacha. You can swim in the River Dnieper and see how lovely Ukraine is in summer." She said that Tanya could come to visit Denis, at the orphanage from time to time, as she had offered to do. "No tears!" she said, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder, "we will take very good care of Denis until you come back for him."

Though I didn't know it then, there would be many, many more tears before I was able to go back for him.

Click here to read part 2 of the story of Denis.

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JenniferORiordan@Prodigy.net

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