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Published on 02/24/1997 All articles from this issue

Adopting a new way of living

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By Joanne Griffith Domingue

Town Crier Staff Writer

Local woman offers Russian sisters a fresh start in America

Sisters Ilona and Katya, 4 and 5, strapped wee, animal-shaped backpacks onto their backs brought by their new mother. Then they walked out the front door of the Russian orphanage that had been home for more than two years and never looked back.

Now, just four weeks later, the little girls are settling in to their new home with their mother, Los Altos store owner Linda Janes, who adopted the girls in Russia early this year.

Toys fill their Cupertino bedroom and matching, handmade quilts, in shades of mauve, cover their twin beds.

Their eyes twinkle, and they flash shy smiles as they carefully share their color books, puzzles and musical Disney toys with this reporter.

Even though the girls don't yet speak English and Janes does not speak Russian, this new family has no trouble saying "I love you" - with hugs, with smiles and gentle touches, with unfailing attention to what is in each others' hearts.

Everything is new. At first the girls particularly loved turning the light switches on and off, on and off, and using the garage door clicker.

They are still adjusting to the food. They like pickled things, Janes said, and pork and spareribs. But foods such as hot dogs, French fries and cereal are all new.

"After Ilona finishes her dinner, she tells her sister, in Russian, that she must eat," Janes said.

"The nurturing she has for the little one," is too touching.

A Russian friend of Janes comes over and helps translate as the girls get used to their new life.

Janes said that the children love car rides, but at first she didn't realize that.

"The girls cried when the car stopped. I was afraid they didn't like their home or something." Then she had her Russian friend translate.

"They just didn't want the car ride to end," she said.

Janes bought a new car for her new family. She needed one, she said, with an automatic shift.

She drives the girls in the new silver Volvo wagon to the Monarch Christian Preschool in Los Altos where they go each day for day care when Janes goes to work.

Katya and Ilona seem to fit right in.

"I'll take a 100 of them," said Jeannine Filippi, director of the school. "They're happy. They're darling. They want to be loved, and it's fun to do."

For many of the 87 children, aged 2-6 at Monarch Preschool, English is not their first language. In fact, Filippi said that is true for 70 percent of the children.

"We're a melting pot. Some children come not knowing a word of English," she said.

Currently, in addition to Katya and Ilona, there are four other children at the school - two from Korea, one from Japan and one from Czechoslovakia - who are learning English. They all learn fast, Filippi said.

"She understands when I talk to her," said Heather Willard, a teacher at the school who has Katya in her class. "She just doesn't answer back." Her quick smile melts everyone's heart.

Katya and Ilona have come a long way in three weeks, said Jennifer Merrill, one of the teachers. When they came, they did not know how to hold a crayon.

For their first day of preschool, Janes brought along her friend who speaks Russian. She explained to the girls that Janes was going to work and would be coming back.

That first day the girls stayed just two hours in the morning. The second day they spent two hours in the afternoon.

When Janes left, "They cried. I had to be available," she said, "if they needed anything. "But they (the school) didn't call. So I called them to see how the day was going." And everything went well.

Janes, 52, a single woman who owns Cooks' Junction as well as Janus, a store filled with elegant gifts and table settings in downtown Los Altos, said she always wanted children, a houseful in fact.

"But it didn't work out that way."

She said she began thinking about adoption at least 10 years ago.

"But with two stores the timing was just not right," she said. "Then I thought - 'I'm too old.' Then a friend sent some adoption applications."

She began the formal adoption process of applications, home studies and research in August 1994 with Bay Area Adoption Services in Mountain View.

Janes, who was born in Yugoslavia (now Serbia) during World War II, fled for her life with her mother, brother and sister to Austria. Her father died during the war so she knows first-hand about growing up in a single-parent home.

It's not surprising that Janes looked abroad for her adoption and was drawn to Rainbow House International, a New Mexico agency that specializes in overseas adoptions.

Rainbow House, a 14-year-old charitable non-profit organization, works with families in all 50 states and makes about 120 placements per year, said Donna Clauss, the executive director.

They rely on local agencies like B.A.A.S. to do the pre- and post-adoption work, and then Rainbow House deals directly with the overseas countries.

When considering an adoptive family, "We look for excellent resources in our families who can be a resource for a waiting child," Clauss said.

Single parenting is not an issue at Rainbow House, she said. And Clauss considers age an asset.

With adoptive mothers like Janes, "she's mature, she has years of wisdom," Clauss said. "So often young parents see children as a way of working out their own goals.

"Older parents are more content to allow the children to unfold and be how they are, quite happy in respecting their uniqueness.

"There's no such thing as a Ken and Barbie doll family. We look for flexibility (in adoptive parents)."

After an application procedure, pre-adoption training and home study with B.A.A.S., in July 1996 Rainbow House sent a video of Katya and Ilona.

"The minute I saw that video, I knew they were my girls," Janes said.

The Monday after Thanksgiving, Janes learned she would need to go to Russia twice over the holidays, to complete the adoption paperwork before she could bring the girls home.

Janes arrived in Russia Dec. 13 on her first trip. She met the girls for the first time Dec. 17 at their orphanage in Tula, a few hours south of Moscow.

"They called me 'mama' right from the start," Janes said. "My heart pounded when I heard it. Then someone blew my bubble and said they call everyone mama."

Janes had been told there were 51 other children in the orphanage so she brought toys for them all - Barbies, crayons, coloring books, storybooks, Dalmatian stuffed dogs - as well as presents "for my kids."

She traveled with just a few outfits for herself so she could bring the gifts.

She also brought bags of humanitarian items like shampoo and soaps from B.A.A.S.

On Dec. 20, she returned to the United States.

"I was gone (from the stores) the busiest week of the year, and I didn't think of the stores once," she said.

On Jan. 7, she returned to Russia. This time, she took clothes for all the children at the orphanage, 51 complete outfits, as well as underwear and shoes for her girls.

"You bring the clothing you take them home in. When you bear them, they come to you in their birthday suits," and you dress them to take them home. Adoption is no different.

The hardest part, the only time Janes said she felt the least bit afraid, was when she went before a Russian judge, herself a single mother with one child.

The judge kept asking Janes why, at her age and being single, why she wanted two children.

"She kept telling me I had 10 days to change my mind. There is no way I would change my mind."

Janes has the name of her girls' birth mother and their siblings. The girls are the youngest of five, all of whom were placed in the orphanage.

"I'd like them to maintain their ancestry, and I plan to take them back (to Russia)," someday when they are older.

"But it will be hard. Russian law considers their adoption closed."

Janes said that her adoption costs were about $25,000, which included the adoption fees as well as all transportation for her two trips to Russia and to bring the girls home.

Now their little backpacks, one a bear, one a lion, sit on their beds like stuffed animals. Janes smiles and her face glows.

"Most of all, I want to love them and have them love me. I believe I can be a good parent who will love and encourage my children to become whatever they desire."

For more information about overseas adoption, call Rainbow House International at (505) 861-1234; or Bay Area Adoption Services at 964-3800.