Flight Home

The flight home was difficult-and that is a severe understatement. I would like to tell you that I am a veteran traveler with children. I fly frequently with my biological children by myself. Granted, we all speak the same language, our flights are 7 hours instead of 30, and none of us smoke, but still, I know how to travel with kids. I've dealt with eardrums rupturing in flight, throwing up, potty accidents, dislocated elbows, and a myriad of other events that I felt qualified me at least a tiny little bit, or at the very least, had prepared me slightly to travel with the boys.

I don't sleep before I fly internationally (the few times I have traveled internationally I have done this and it helps me adjust to the time change very easily). It was a no brainer, too, because we had to leave our apartment at 3 a.m. to get to the airport in time for our 5:30 flight, which meant we had to be awake by 2:30 a.m. at the latest.

The boys didn't fall asleep until 11:30. I could've kicked myself. I had planned on bringing along some melatonin to use in case of an event that I deemed an emergency and this would've qualified. Not as an emergency, that would come later. The melatonin would have just been handy at this point. I had put them to bed at 8:30, but they were too excited to sleep. I wasn't too concerned though, thinking that this would help them to sleep on the airplane.

Wrong.

Actually, it helped BoyOne to sleep. I think he would've slept anyway. He's a teenager. BoyTwo was c.r.a.z.y. As in during our thirty hours of traveling, he slept for two hours. TWO HOURS people!!! That alone can make a person crazy.

I'm considering manufacturing a shirt for adoptive parents to wear on their flights home that says something along these lines, and in four or five languages so that most people on these international flights can read it:

'Don't judge me or my children. You have no idea what they or I have been through. We have only officially been related for one week. If they are driving you nuts, just know that I am at my wits end and truly wish that I could do something about it. If you have any tranquilizers, they would be greatly appreciated.'

BoyTwo was on crack or something. He's always been a 'bundle of energy' but this was like nothing I had seen since my brother was a child. He literally could. not. hold. still. For even one second. It got to the point where I had to physically restrain him so that the flight attendants would leave us alone. If I wasn't holding his hands, he was pushing all the buttons on our row and the one in front and behind us. I had to wrap his legs inside of mine to keep him from pummeling the seat in front of him. He was the fricking energizer bunny. I seriously want to know who slipped him what. This went on the entire time during the flights. Oh! I almost forgot to tell you about the screaming. This wasn't the typical 'oh my little ears hurt so bad' type of screaming, this was the 'I am totally aware that I am bugging the hell out of everyone around me and I'm getting a high off of it' kind. So his legs were in between mine, one of my hands was clasped over his mouth and the other was holding his arms still. If I happened to doze off and let go, he would go ballistic again. Please, don't think that this happened once for thirty seconds and I was thrown to the depths of despair. After this happened during the entire flight from Kyiv to Frankfurt and all other resources had been exhausted, this was what had to be done so that we weren't forced by the flight crew to parachute from the plane into the ocean during our second flight. BoyOne tried to help, but his means of getting BoyTwo to behave and comply are not exactly conventional or acceptable (except for in the institutions of Ukraine), so that wasn't really working out either. The other problem was spitting. As in the gross thing that boys do. On the floor of the plane, airport, apartment, store, you name it. If we were there, so was his spit on the ground. And don't even get me started on the snot issue. He was blowing his nose on his fingers and then wiping it where ever he happened to be. He did this once when we hosted him and I showed him how to use a tissue and was totally grossed out and that was that. I guess he FORGOT!!!! And me reminding him and offering tissues and making him clean up after himself didn't help. Touching. He touched everything and everyone. EVERYTHING!!! EVERYONE!!!!! I was mortified.

By the way, have I mentioned the six words he knows in English?

"I WANT EAT!!!!!!!!"

and

_______ ____ _______.

The first time he said the latter, I thought that certainly, I had misunderstood. In my delirious exhaustion, I MUST have had a brain lapse, so I asked him what he had said. That was a mistake because then several others heard it too. Niiiiiiiiice.

When I arrived in Germany, two things were running through my mind:

1) What have I done?!

and

2) What am I supposed to do for the next twenty hours?!

And then BoyOne stole some cigarettes at a shop in the Frankfurt airport. Sweeeeeeet. Unfortunately, I didn't figure this out until we got to the States. I don't know. Maybe it was a good thing that I didn't find out. The boys would still be in Frankfurt.

The overseas flight was just as awful as the first flight, only much, much longer. When I landed in Washington D.C., I was so happy to be surrounded by fellow Americans that I nearly cried. Only to be seriously disappointed a few minutes later when I heard the customs workers being very, very rude to a man who was immigrating with his wife and two kids.

Nice man: "Excuse me, where I supposed to go, please?"

Customs jerk: "How do I know? You're supposed to go where they told you."

Nice man, who hopefully didn't understand the customs jerk: "Thank you. Have good day."

Customs jerk, mocking the nice man: "Yeah, man. 'have good day too.'"

Suddenly way less proud to be an American. And no, I didn't get the jerk's name to report him and no I didn't offer to help the nice man. Honestly, I was desperate to do both, but I could barely hold myself together at this point. I did see another worker come to help him. I'm still bothered that I didn't do anything about that though.

After our lovely five hour layover in D.C., during which time I had to cart BoyTwo around like he was a rabid dog, we boarded the plane to home. Thanks to some 'strong headwinds' we were forty minutes delayed. There was a man on our flight who had a connecting flight that was waiting for him (did you know that they still did that?!). We were all asked to stay seated so that the man and his luggage could get off the plane as quickly as possible.

Finally, finally, we were in America. Land of the free, home of the brave. In my home state. Minutes away from family and friends, awaiting our arrival. I was giddy to see them and to have the boys have so many of their friends from their orphanage there to greet them. I was hoping for a magical, made for the movies, moment. In my mind I could see the smiles, feel the hugs. I was having a wonderful slow motion vision of reunion when I heard wheels screeching to a sudden halt. Then I realized it wasn't wheels screeching, but my very own Ukrainian.

We didn't even make in down the dang corridor from the airplane to the terminal before BoyTwo had a full blown tantrum over who knows what. By then, other passengers had just had it with him and just climbed over him. I had zero sympathy for the kid. I didn't give a holy crap that he may have been tired, overstimulated, nervous, whatever. I wanted him to shut the heck up and get us down the stairs so that I could hand him off to my husband. I was done.

Finally, we made it to the gate and started to walk down the terminal where we all needed to use the bathroom. BoyTwo did his awesome nose blow a couple of times so I had to clean him and it up. All the while he is still jumping up and down, screaming at the top of his lungs. The thought that ran through my mind here was that I totally understood why that lady shipped her kid back to Russia. Only God knows what that woman went through. I know what she did was wrong and I know that the little boy had what I'm sure was a horrific history that led him to behave the way he did, but if I was going to have to deal with this for the next who knows how many years, I'm not so sure that I would be able to make a great decision either.

When we finally got down the stairs to the crowd of friends and family who had so patiently been waiting for us, I didn't even want to touch him anymore. I passed him off to Huz and my sister (who is miraculously still talking to me!!) and hugged my girls. What I really wanted to do was curl up in the fetal position and take a nap for three years.

It was so, so great to see my family. I just wanted to hug and kiss and hold my clean little girls who smelled good and who don't swear at me. Who actually wanted to be with me. Two of my sisters were there to meet us, Huz's sister and her family, Huz's brother and his wife and her mother, and loads of our friends who had all recently adopted. Honestly, the thing that kept me off that dirty airport floor was all those people. Knowing that they were there for us to support us and that some of them had been through this exact thing, been in the exact place I was now, felt the exact same hopeless, end of the rope feelings I was having, seeing them standing kept me standing.

Thanks guys.