The Russian Word for Snow
A True Story of Adoption
Janis Cooke Newman, 2001 While waiting for infertility treatment, Janis Cooke Newman looked at adoption possibilities. While looking at potential adoptees, Newman and her husband connected with a video of a boy in a Russian orphanage. Impulsively, they decided to adopt the boy Grisha. The list of diagnoses Russian doctors had given Grisha gave them some pause, but they decided to ignore the list after an American doctor watched the video of the boy and told them not to worry. Newman and her husband chose people to help them through the adoption process; they chose poorly and impulsively. The adoption process dragged on for months, with delays a-plenty. Newman and her husband were cranky and tense. They had to wait and wait in Russia for their new son, and they were not good at waiting.
This story is more about their journey than it is about their son or about their relationship with their son; it reads as a travel journal that incidentally has adoption as its destination, rather than a story about adoption that incidentally includes travel. Many of the explanatory details that would have made this story clearer were omitted.
Happy reading.
