In the beginning it was simple and then it got complicated.
We rented The Lion King and Air Bud and Titanic. We painted our own pottery and ate at In-N-Out where they loved the French fries more than any other French fries. They started watching soap operas, All My Children and General Hospital, and I told myself it was good for their English. We shopped for jeans and bras and t-shirts because children from orphanages are like newborns; they bring nothing with them.
People spilled over themselves to give presents, even people who didn't know them-or us very well. People didn't like it when we asked them to pare it down, that our daughters did not know how to incorporate what many folks call "abundance" into their lives, and reconcile it with what their family back in Russia didn't have. It's not like giving presents to a newborn, we tried to explain, to someone who doesn't know what she's getting.
"So spoil them," they said.
We explained that the girls stuck chewed pieces of gum into the corners of the wall, saving them for the next day. Or week. How they boasted that some kids made a piece last a week. Or a month.
"How cute," people said, a bit too cheerily. A bit condescendingly. "You just have to teach them to be like American kids, so they know they can waste things."
Excuse me?
One would think-in our consumer-oriented society-that that is what most kids would live for, yearn for, long for. Things. An accumulation of stuff. Maybe someday they would-or wouldn't. But in the beginning the girls did not know how to incorporate and integrate all that people gave them, forced on them, really. They were happiest watching a video under a big blanket, walking our greyhound, going through their photo albums.
"Don't worry," people said, "we'll change that." And as if welcoming the girls to a foreigner's convention they pumped their hands, and presented them with bags of candy and fistfuls of Mylar balloons on top of all the clothes and shoes and gifts they'd already given.
"You don't understand," we kept saying. They rewrapped presents and hid them in their closets, as if trying to forget about all the new things they had, all the things their family didn't. "They have a family who can't waste things; they don't have things to waste," I'd add.
"They'll change," they said, flippantly. Some said I hurt their feelings stopping the "flow of abundance." They cautioned that I was being a bit of a killjoy. They pouted. Said it wasn't fair of me rob people of wanting to shower the girls with plenty.
I didn't want to rob the kids of a thing I said at first, perhaps defensively. Soon I realized that was doing no good. Presents kept rolling in. At some point I realized that it wasn't that these people didn't understand--it was that they didn't want to understand.
And I began to understand, also, that those presents had more to do with the givers than they ever had to do with the kids.
And it was still simple and complicated.
