Moving Forward in Reverse (31 page)

I leaned my head back in repose, knowing I wouldn’t sleep. Perhaps
it was my parental instincts kicking in, or just the understanding that this
was what I had been fighting for: this heart-wrenching, mercifully unhindered
moment when I could finally know we were home free.

During the New York to Seattle leg, the captain, who had probably
been walking the cabin to stretch his legs, asked if Nadia and Danny could
visit the cockpit. As I watched the kids look out from the pilots’ perspective,
little did I know that this would be one of the final times any children would
have such an experience. This was August 2001.

35

After getting acquainted with the dogs – an at-first-frightful but
ultimately tongue-licking-good welcome home – we showed Nadia and Danny the
rest of the house. They were adequately round-eyed and eager to explore as we
guided them from room to room, ending with Mama and Tata’s room and,
ultimately, their own bedroom. Ellen pushed the door open and stepped back to
let Nadia and Danny enter first. She kept one hand on the door as they inched
across the threshold with dilated eyes slowly taking it all in.

‘Wow,’ Nadia said softly, her eyes following a trail of frog and
butterfly wall stickers over one of the beds.

‘Wowww,’ Danny echoed, looking at the short bookcase with its
collection of children’s books resting in stacks or standing upright on each of
its shelves. On the top shelf, squatting beside the dark green face on the
cover of
Who’s There?,
was a forest green frog with a lime green belly
who said, ‘Rrrribbit’ anytime you squeezed its snout.

Ellen slowly drifted into the room after them, walking up to Nadia
and lifting her onto the mattress of her bed on the left side of the room.
Nadia looked down at the vibrant bedspread upon which she now sat, running her
fingers over the Lilly pads and flowers. Danny waddled over, reaching for Ellen
to lift him up so he, too, could sit on a bed.

After settling Danny on his own mattress, Ellen walked to the head
of Nadia’s bed and lifted her hand to point to the red, green, yellow, and
orange letters on the bookshelf over the bed.

‘N-A-D-I-A,’ Ellen said, her finger hovering in front of each
letter in turn. ‘Nadia.’

Turning to Danny, she repeated the process for him: ‘D-A-N-I-E-L.
Daniel.’

I watched them study Ellen attentively, their eyes following the
path of her finger, absorbing the sounds of her words.
Nadia and Danny
Martin,
I mouthed.
My kids, home at last.
As the thought sank in, I
felt the same debilitating emotions I had succumbed to on the plane over Middle
America resurface in full force. Never could I have even begun to imagine the
fulminant feelings which overcame me in moments such as these: the intense
devotion and rapture; the fervid yearning that made me want to hold them in my
arms forever and always; and the heart-wrenching enchantment that somehow,
through all the hardships and handicaps, I had found my way here.

Standing just inside the door of my children’s room, finally
seeing it as it was meant to be seen, full of life and childhood, I was torn
between the role of observer and active participant. Dare I advance further and
risk disrupting this pure perfection? Or stay where I was, tortured by the same
longing which had plagued me all throughout our adoption process: the need to
hold my kids in the shelter of my arms.

Before leaving Romania, we had stolen a few days for a first-ever
family vacation by the Black Sea. It was Nadia and Danny’s inaugural trip to
the beach and the moment Ellen and I released them on the sand they tore off
into the water. Being unable to run, I left it to Ellen to keep pace with our
two youngsters and took it upon myself to stake out a beach chair on a dry
patch of sand upon which I could recline. With myoelectric hands, I was taking
a risk simply sitting on the sand; building sand castles and taking dips in the
salt water were strictly off-limits. So I settled into a beach chair near the
action, resigning myself to a spectator’s role in that particular adventure.

Oh, but the sight of them playing, laughing, and making memories
proved too much to bear. In the end, I kicked off the slippers I’d worn to hide
the prosthetic feet, yanked my long-sleeve t-shirt over my head, and tugged my
forearms free of the myos. Prosthetic hands may not have been seaworthy, but
that didn’t mean I wasn’t.

As I waded into the water where my family played, Ellen looked up
at me and nodded. Danny rubbed the ends of my arms then looked at his hands,
saying something in Romanian which I assumed to be along the lines of, ‘
Where
are your hands?’.
I smiled at him as Nadia came barreling up to join us,
feet plastered with a thick layer of wet sand.

‘Come on!’ I said and scooped Nadia into my arms. She let out a
joyous squeal and threw her arms around my neck. ‘We’ve got a wave to catch.’

With her held against my chest by what remained of my forearms and
her mirthful giggles filling my ears, we waded into the sea together. As the
frigid waters lapped at my thighs and then my waist, I sucked in a startled
breath of amazement. I was in public, on a beach in nothing more than my soccer
shorts and I couldn’t care less.

If people stared or made comments as I carried Nadia then Danny
into the surf, I didn’t notice. All I was aware of were the happy cheers of my
children as they discovered the wonders of the sea. I could have stayed on the
sand, wearing my arms and long-sleeved shirt to shield me from judgments and
shame. I could have stayed on the sand, hovering in the background where no one
would notice me. I could have stayed on the sand, but I waded into the water
instead.

~~~

Now, watching my wife and children from the doorway of Nadia and
Danny’s new room as I wavered between moving forward into the fray and staying
back out of the way, it was the opposite of surreal: a scene so real, so raw it
almost hurt to look at it. This –
this
was reality; it was everything
else which was artificial and hollow. Finally, I could understand how life was
meant to be lived.

I couldn’t take it anymore, this watching and stillness. So much
of my life already had been wasted in repose, waiting, anticipating, slowly
rebuilding for the day when I could interact again. I wouldn’t sideline myself
in my own children’s lives. I refused to let The Fog keep me distant; I had too
much to live for now.

So I turned quietly to face the door, took the first step towards
leaving and, on a whim, reached the right myo out to squeeze the mouth of the
stuffed frog.

‘Rrribbit!’ he called, making Nadia and Danny laugh with surprise.
I knew then I’d squeeze that frog every minute of every day if I had to, to
hear that laughter again.

~~~

They have no idea how to swing.
I thought and winced at the notion of three and
four year olds who had never sat in a swing. It was their first full day in the
States and I had taken Nadia and Danny outside to explore their play structure,
showing them where their names were engraved onto a plaque attached to the beam
from which the swings hung and then helping each kid into one of the bright
green sling seats. Several minutes later, I was standing out of the swing-zone,
watching in mortified realization as Nadia and Danny sat, hands wrapped around
the plastic-covered chain of the swings and toes straining towards the tanbark
below in an effort to find traction. They were grinning as if it was the
greatest fun in the world, even as they futilely kicked their feet above the
ground as if splashing in a pool rather than sitting on a swing.

They’ve missed out on so much,
I thought in mild despair. I couldn’t help
facing the growing realization that they were farther behind their American
counterparts than I’d originally thought. Having been raised in an orphanage
rather than a stable family home, coupled with the fact that they were born in
Romania rather than the U.S., meant they were setback twofold.

Well,
I thought as I squared my shoulders,
I guess we’ve got a lot of
catching up to do.
With a deeply indrawn breath, I forced the
disheartenment from my expression and strode to Danny, still smiling at his
toes ineffectually hovering a foot off the ground. I lifted him from his seat,
ignoring the dismayed whimper such action elicited, and plopped onto the swing
myself.

‘Swing,’ I said and pushed off the ground, demonstrating the
forward-and-backward pumping motion meant to be used. ‘Watch me. Out –’ I told
Nadia beside me, and extended my legs before me – ‘and in –’ I bent my knees
and brought my feet beneath me. ‘Out . . . In. . .  Out. In. There you go.
Now you’ve got it!’

Once Nadia was gaining momentum, I gave Danny his swing back and
helped him get a jump-start.

‘That’s right.’ I lifted my arms like a maestro before his
orchestra and began to conduct my swingers.

‘Out!’ I called and threw my arms wide. ‘In!’ I shouted and
brought my arms towards my chest. ‘Out –’ arms spread like wings at my sides;
‘In –’ arms cupped to my chest. ‘Out. In. Out. In.’

A few minutes of my directing and I had them harmonized like a
classical symphony. As I watched them gain height and coordination alongside my
instructions and saw their faces light up with an excited sense of
accomplishment, thoughts of all the other childhood games they were missing
began to accumulate in my mind. They’d learned basic swinging and slides now,
but there was still the tire swing and monkey bars and rings and see-saws left
to discover. Not to mention all the other playground games like catch and tag.
Who
would teach them that?
I wondered. I may have been able to pull off swings,
but how was a man who couldn’t throw a ball or run ever going to teach his children
how to play catch and tag?

Suddenly, I felt more handicapped than ever. It was bad enough not
being able to hold their hands or touch their tender faces, but not getting to
be the one to teach them how to climb a tree? How could I ever live with such
shortcomings? They deserved better. They deserved someone who could give them
everything. In the end, I was only going to hold them back further.

My mind drifted back to their faces as they went down their first
slide earlier that day, to their first encounter with our exuberant canines, to
the jubilance with which they plowed headlong into the Black Sea and the
carefree joviality of their arms wrapped around me as we waded in together.
You
showed them all of that without human hands,
my mind pointed out. I thought
of my former soccer teams, the young women at UW Eau Claire and Gonzaga, the
young men from TESC who welcomed me to Washington. I had taught all of them,
too, as a handicapped coach.

So I couldn’t be the “typical” American father, but that didn’t
mean I couldn’t raise and nurture them, regardless. If I had proven that I
could make it to the Division I level as a soccer coach with no hands and only
the back half of my feet, I could raise my kids to be anything they dreamt to
be. Just like with coaching after the illness, all I had to do was change the
way in which I approached the problem. Here, as it had then, the same motto
could apply:
My mission is not to teach you, but to put you in a position to
learn.

If the myos were my handicap, growing up in a Romanian orphanage
was theirs. I would need to set an example; to make it seem as though I had no
handicap at all because they had a long path ahead of them and needed to know
that the only limitations in life are the ones we place on ourselves. If you
worked hard enough, you could achieve anything. It was the American dream and
the philosophy by which I’d lived my life. I would do whatever it took to
instill it in my kids. Nothing – not being raised in an orphanage and a foreign
country, nor having a handicapped parent – could hold them back. Not if I had
anything to say about it.

~~~

I became their playground coach and English language tutor; their
sandwich-maker and American television educator. Whenever it occurred to me, I
would say the name of an object nearby, have them repeat it, then try to
clarify it with an adjective and comparison to a similar object. They learned
the difference between the lake at the end of the neighborhood trail we trekked
every afternoon, and the small pond of water that accumulated at the base of a
beaver’s dam. There were beavers and there were squirrels. Big dogs (Stuart),
medium dogs (Nelson, our lab mix), and small dogs (Fritz and Jackie the Jack
Russell Terrier). Cats versus dogs and boys versus girls. On and on the
learning went and with each new piece of knowledge I offered, they seemed to
soak it up like a parched desert does rain.

I supplemented my lessons with mid-morning and afternoon sessions
in the chair-and-a-half (which we soon named The Big Chair), a densely-cushioned
cross between a loveseat and an armchair, beige flock upholstery embroidered
with burgundy and dark green curves that sat across from the television in the
downstairs office. With all three of us piled into its loving embrace, we’d
tune the TV to the Seattle PBS channel for our daily dose of cultural immersion
via good old American television. Mister Rogers and Sesame Street required
prior experiences which Nadia and Danny didn’t have. Teletubbies freaked them
out, Dragon Tails freaked me out (no two-headed dragon should laugh like that),
so we stuck with Clifford the Big Red Dog, Arthur, Koala Brothers, Jay Jay the
Jet Plane, and Zoboomafoo.

Later in the afternoon, after a lunch of Tat Specials and our
daily romp in the woods, Nadia and I would curl up in The Big Chair to watch an
old black-and-white episode of Perry Mason while Danny napped. I’m serious;
Nadia liked to watch Perry Mason.

Of course, television wasn’t the only aspect of American culture I
baptized them in. Music played an equally prominent role in our daily
activities. One afternoon, feeling particularly rambunctious, I had the kids
help me clear a patch of floor in our living room between the two brown sofas.
While they ran around this new patch of open floor, rebounding off the sofas
like a couple of Ping-Pong balls, I flipped through our collection of CDs. I
was determined to give them a well-rounded exposure to all that American music
had to offer, working my way through artists from Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles
to Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Today, it looks like James Brown’s on the menu,
I
thought as my hands found his Greatest Hits CD among the rest of our eclectic
collection.
Time for The Godfather of Soul.