family - Jubilee

Why not?

Adopting four children. For the new parents, the awareness of belonging to a larger family. A font of courage and correction. The realism of faith

By PAOLA BERGAMINI

Her laugh is the same as when we met 20 years ago in GS: hearty and contagious. Maria laughs when she says to me, “Did you ever think that I would have four such beautiful children? Look me in the eyes. We need some healthy realism here.” What kind of healthy realism makes one say “yes” to the proposal to adopt a family of four children? I want to say, “What great people!” But, reading my mind, she insists, “We’re not heroes–that needs to be made clear. Let’s take things in order. The idea to adopt came to us through watching others. Like a suggestion that comes from reality: why not take advantage of the fact that we did not have children, to open ourselves up to the possibility of adoption? Why not? It was an opportunity, not the wish to fill a void. The idea might come to someone else to leave on a mission, while we were in the most propitious situation for this possibility. Reality is clear; all you have to do is look at it. It’s simple, isn’t it?” Clear as a bell. It knocks you off your feet. A chance grabbed in an instant. The official applications began. In the beginning the idea was to adopt a young baby. Maria and Andrea turned to an association, CIFA, which had contacts in Brazil, because Andrea had been there for work and had been captivated by the country. But reality makes other suggestions…. In that period, two of their friends had just come back from India where they had adopted four siblings. “Seeing them showed us the possibility of something we had not even considered. They weren’t heroes; they were normal people, we know them well. There is something very special about company–in company what seems like madness can become normal. Even more. Seeing them meant that the terror running along my spine never won out. So we looked carefully at our resources and said we would be willing to adopt more than one child.” Resources? Financial? Technical? Another laugh. “Yes, sure, you count your money. But there was another point on which we had to do a balance sheet: Andrea and me. We had to be absolutely certain of the stability of our affection, of the stability of our affection as husband and wife. The two of us were not lacking something, we were not looking for something that was missing. Only the unity between us, which has to be conscious and aware, allowed us to evaluate a hypothesis like this. At a certain point, it was clear that our life’s fulfillment was not a child, the healthy desire to have a child, no! Our life’s fulfillment lay in the unity of our marriage, in our faithfulness to this sacrament. It is not even a certainty of the fact that because you can’t have children you decide to adopt. The adopted child might not ever come, the bureaucratic mechanism could get stuck. Reality does the rest….”

Beyond the Urals

Reality was a telephone call from CIFA: “There are four siblings in Russia. Let us know.” No Brazil, four children.... “We evaluated our resources, acting quickly, so that things would not get blocked, yet taking enough time to understand that this was not a gamble. And we said ‘yes.’” In mid-January 2000, they left, their destination being a village lost somewhere in Siberia. “It was a wild trip. Between the car that had no heat in the below-zero weather, the desolation of the landscape, the driver who spoke only Russian and offered us ice-cold meatballs… and all this while you are thinking, ‘I am on my way to meet my children.’” Waiting for them in the icy square was the director of the Institute. He gave them a warm welcome. They just had time to put their bags in the run-down hotel before going to the school. In a little room, they met the three younger children. The director said to the children, “Here are your Mama and Papa.” “It was so shocking, so beyond any experience we knew, that we didn’t feel any emotion.” Then the oldest girl arrived. Gifts, a visit to the village museum, and at a certain point one of them asked Maria through an interpreter, “Do you have any children?” “No, we have you.” The time to look at each other, and then she said, “We are yours.” “I was not moved to tears. I thought, ‘Okay, we have made a decision, they have made a decision. Let’s leave.’ It was the recording of a piece of information. After only three hours they had understood that they were ours, without reasoning about it. They grasped the fact. Before we left, the director said goodbye to them with tears in his eyes, adding, ‘We are very diffident toward foreigners. However, now that we have met you we are happy that the children can go with you because we could never give them what you can offer them.’” Healthy realism.

Home again

Andrea and Maria stayed there for three weeks to complete all the official papers. Returning home, they had to face the problems of a family that had grown from two to six. Moving to a new house, changing cars, school…. By June, Maria was physically worn out. Their friends said, “We are here to give you what you need and to pick you up when you are completely done in.” And thus it was. Friends, the concreteness of persons who “at the right moment have the courage to correct us without mincing words.” The children understand that Papa and Mama are part of a larger family, without lots of words, without educational strategies. “There’s no need. Children understand immediately what is important to you. What you live for. You no longer worry about making a mistake. But this is true for all families. We’re normal. Is that clear?” Very clear.