Okay, enough about us.
What we really want to tell you about is them.
The judge wore an elegant burgundy robe with velvet trim. Sunglasses. Black open-toe heals. An outfit that will look great with the burgundy Dolce & Gabbana purse we bought her. The prosecutor was dressed like Gopher on The Love Boat. Except she had a stare made of darts. And her gaze was fixed on Steve’s boots again.
This got Jane’s back up. Literally. She did as her father taught her to do on important interviews. She did not sit back. She held her posture tall and strong, as if it could turn darts into rubber.
And then Steve approached the stand and addressed the court. His boots were killer. Think Gary Cooper in High Noon. “We’re petitioning the court to allow us to adopt the little girl we’ve been visiting for 32 days now, and with whom we’ve fallen in love….”
The prosecutor started to prosecute. She asked many questions about why we would use an adoption agency in Maine, if we live in Massachusetts—as if there might be something wrong with us that our own state disdains? Might this be a technicality that she could hang us on? (Jane couldn’t sit quietly. Her posture was not effective when Steve was in the spotlight. She started telling Steve to tell the prosecutor that Maine is right next to Massachusetts and that he grew up there. All his family is there.)
When that became as uninteresting as it really is, the judge asked about why we didn’t adopt a child in the United States. This conversation quickly veered away from the case at hand and into sociological curiosity about foster care and what happens when a young American woman leaves her baby at the hospital without telling anyone. We did our best to explain. They were really interested. They said this won’t effect your case, but please tell us more.
We did. We had been briefed to be concise and direct, not wishy-washy, so that’s what they got. We hope we were accurate too.
There was some alternating of who’s on first. There was sitting and standing. Sort of like a religious ceremony. Eventually, Jane took the stand. There was talk about health insurance in the US (another sociological inquiry—who gets it? who doesn’t?). Talk about medical care for diagnoses that don’t exist in the English-speaking world. Talk about finances, and Jem’s right to our wealth—and how it is generated. Jane described her job to an audience of cadavers. She said she does some freelance work for extra income, and the court went astir. Even our representation was awakened from their slumber.
The judge said we’ve heard your husband cooks and cleans—a Kazakh woman does all that and goes to work and takes care of the children—so what do you do? That’s not easy to answer, actually. So Jane went for the sisterhood jugular: “I tell him when to cook and what to clean.” Appropriate laughter followed. “He’s an excellent cook,” she declared, in his defense.
Think Gary Cooper on a rotisserie spit.
They were fascinated by the fact that we don’t carry our passports with us everywhere in the US. How could a driver’s license be substituted as proof of your identity? They all wanted to see Steve’s driver’s license. “Oh, it lists his height even!” The judge asked if she could make a photocopy of it. Steve would have given it to her for keeps to put an end to all this questioning.
That seemed to do the trick. Soon after, the judge left the room to go make her decision.
And when the judge is away….the girls get to play! A photo of a Kazakh child previously adopted (Aitugan) in our album caught Dina’s (our translator) eye. We also had a few photos of another child (Islam, who is now called Lance), as well as a group photo from Kazakh culture camp in New Hampshire, which featured another child from our baby house. This brought all the girls together in oowing and ahhing formation. A very sweet sight. Probably uncommon in an American court of law. Jane looked up at the video cameras and wondered what they were seeing.
The festivities were cut short when the judge returned with a verdict in her hand. We rose. She read. We cried. (There must be a Latin phrase for that.)
And then we had a photo shoot with the whole posse. 100% Kazakh style.
And when we left the room, we were 15 days away from the finalized court decree, and the rest of our lives as parents to the utterly captivating, completely delicious, and tres magnificent Jem Aliya Buchbinder-Johnson.
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