We thought we would be staying with Florine and his wife again, but there had been some issues there with Florine’s sister prostituting herself out in their apartment at nights. It was a dark place and I did not feel safe there anyway that first night we were in Romania. Instead, we were picked up and taken to stay with Virgil and Flori. Their apartment was on the 18th floor of a typical Romanian concrete apartment building in downtown Bucharest. The elevator had no light bulb and was only large enough for me and a couple of our bags. I was terrified to go into that dark rickety contraption alone with Errin still strapped in her little pack on the front of me. It even had the little gate thing instead of a door that had to be manually opened and closed. It felt like I was on the “Twilight Zone” ride at Disneyland, (which is now Guardians of the Galaxy). I knew there was no way I could make it up 36 flights of stairs to the 18th floor. I’ve never done small spaces very well, and darkness is even worse. So I said a prayer and got in the elevator. Thankfully someone was there to get me out when I at long last made it to the 18th floor.

It was evident Virgil and Flori were more affluent than Luci and Manole had been. Their apartment was spacious compared to our accommodations in Galati, yet still very small. Virgil was retired, and as I recall he had been some sort of engineer. We had a bigger room this time, with two beds thank goodness. They had beautiful ornate furniture which was old, but well maintained.

They told us they had traveled to Hungary years before to get it. I imagined someone having to carry that heavy furniture up all those stairs and felt bad for them. There is no way any of it would have fit inside the tiny elevator. The first thing I noticed in this otherwise lovely apartment, were cracks in the walls and ceilings that were big enough for me to put my hand inside.

I went in to use the bathroom, and many of the tiles were missing from the sides of the shower surround. There were also large gaps in the wall where the water from the shower would just go down to who knows where? When we asked about the cracks, they told us they were from the 6.4 magnitude earthquake that happened in May of 1990. There were aftershocks almost as high for days after. When I asked about showering, they told me to just go ahead and not worry about the water going down the cracks in the wall. Buildings with this type of major structural damage would be condemned and torn down here in the United States. Being on the 18th floor made me nervous about the stability of the apartment complex. The water and the heat were still controlled by the government, but we had more access to it in Bucharest than we had in Galati. We quickly got settled, and were rushed off to the American Embassy where we began the process of getting Errin’s Visa to come home. Val came and voiced concern once again, about the “Intent to Adopt” document that Ron had sent next day certified mail over two weeks prior which still had not arrived. He told us without that document, we would not be allowed to get Errin’s Visa, and would not be allowed to leave the country. And that she could not stay in Romania either, because she was now a child without any citizenship.

When we made the reservations for our return flight before we left Utah, we made an educated guess on when we would be coming home. I was living for that day, hoping and praying we would be able to make that flight. Without that document, it wasn’t looking likely and the clock was ticking.

Upon arriving at the American Embassy there were throngs of people pushing up against the gate trying to get inside. It was heavily guarded with U.S. military men with machine guns. Virgil parked the car on a side street and told us he would wait while we went inside. We had to push our way through those people to get to the gate. The military men looked at my paperwork and told me they would get me inside. In order to do this, it took many of them who appeared from outside the gate to come and push the crowd back far enough to open the gate. The appearance of the guards let the crowd know the gate was going to be opened, and the crowd turned into a frenzy. The guard at the gate told me to be ready. I didn’t know what that meant, but when the other guards pushed the crowd back, guards hurriedly opened the gate just wide enough to grab ahold of me, Errin, and my dad and aggressively pull us inside the compound. As soon as they got us inside, the gate clanged shut, the crowd broke through the guards and were yelling and pushing against the gate again. They were holding paperwork through the metal grids begging us to help them. The guards were not kind to the crowd, but were very kind to me. I wanted to hug them! I couldn’t decide if I felt safe or not? I wasn’t sure why those Romanian people were there, and wondered what would happen if they broke through the protective barrier?

We were quickly ushered inside where it felt like INS in Salt Lake City all over again. It was evident we would be there for a long time. But this time there were lots of adoptive parents, mostly women, with their adopted children in tow. There were many kids sitting in corners, rocking, screeching, and banging their heads against the walls. Their adoptive mothers trying to get things approved at the barred service windows. I thought I would be speaking with U.S. citizens who worked there, and obviously they were, but most were either Romanian or Latino. They were all women, and had the same mean temperament as the women at INS in Salt Lake City. Many times in the process of working with our own government officials I felt they were trying to do everything they could to keep us from adopting these foreign children and bringing them back to the United States, the land of freedom and promise! The woman I met with was extremely angry with us for not checking in with the embassy upon our arrival in Romania over two weeks prior. She was not interested in hearing why we were not able to do that, and proceeded to let me know how displeased she was, and how we would have not had any help or protection had we needed it. After repeatedly apologizing, and telling her how very sorry I was, she finally settled down and was very snippy when she told me we were lucky that nothing had happened to us because the United States would not have been able to help us due to the fact they didn’t know we were even in the country. She told me to NEVER do that again! I promised I wouldn’t. I presented her with my carefully assembled two-inch-thick stack of paperwork I had meticulously gone over numerous times before we got there, to make sure it was all there and in the proper order according to the list on our adoption form instructions. She went through each page almost purposely looking for discrepancies. She marked my papers, told me there were things missing that had been changed in the past two weeks, and that I would have to get those before she would process our paperwork. She also, firmly pointed out Ron’s original “Intent to Adopt” paper was not accurate and would need the updated one before we could apply for the Visa to leave. She also let me know if we did not have this document submitted the day before our flight, the entire adoption would be thrown out and we would not be allowed to get a Visa to take Errin home.

Adoptions in Romania had been closed for over two weeks, and we would be the very last plane load of people going home with children. Those who didn’t have their paperwork completed and submitted by the date she gave us would have to leave without their children. The amount of stress this put on me was beyond anything I had experienced up to that point. I had to keep reminding myself to have faith that Heavenly Father was with us, had gotten us this far, and somehow things would work out. Here I was in my own country’s embassy, and they were not willing to help me. We were there most of the day, had only eaten my little bag of pink wintergreen lozenges, fed Errin a few times, and I had been dry heaving for hours. She threw my paperwork back at me, and told me not to come back until I had everything required including the new documentation that had recently been added. We went back out, where the kind guards once again had to push the crowd back in order to open the gate and shove us back through. The people surrounded us pushing and pulling on us, begging us to help them. I was afraid we were going to get trampled in the crush of people! We worked our way back to the car where Virgil had been waiting most of the day. I was sick, frail, and exhausted in every way imaginable. My entire body was quivering from the inside out. Errin was in her little front pack where she had been most of the day except when we took her out to feed and change her. There were protests going on in the streets, we were not safe to go outside, and spent most of the following week inside the apartment. I had lost fifteen pounds by this point in our journey, and wondered if I would survive long enough to complete the tasks at hand. Dad spent most of his time in the comfortable living room with Virgil and Flori, while I spent most of my time in bed laying down with Errin lying next to me screaming. The effects of the phenobarbital they had given her in the maternity hospital to keep her quiet lasted for two years.

Feeling guilty that Flori had to go out and find food for us every day, I didn’t ask her for help with Errin. I warmed her bottles on the scorching hot light bulbs in the table lamps in our room. At this point my strength and energy was all but non-existent. Thankfully, anything else that needed to be taken care of legally, my dad and Val were able to go and do. I no longer had the strength to leave the apartment. Flori found more options for food than were available in Galati, but my doctor here at home told me not to eat anything that had not been cooked or wiped down with rubbing alcohol and then rinsed with the last of our bottled water. One day she came in with a lovely looking bowl of strawberries with sugar sprinkled over them. They looked so good, but dad thought it would not be wise for me to eat them since we were not able to clean them enough. He sat and ate that huge bowl all by himself. Afterward, he discovered what my doctor was talking about and ended up spending a lot of time in the bathroom. I was grateful I hadn’t eaten any, but he said it was worth it. We were also told they were giving us bottled water from the store. Dad was drinking that so that I could have the small amount of bottled water we had been rationing from what we had brought with us.

He walked into the kitchen one morning and saw Flori filling “the bottled water jug” up with water from the tap. No wonder he was sick too. The last of my black-market Coca-Cola was also almost gone. I was rationing the last couple of cans to just a few sips per day, and my stash of pink lozenge mints was beginning to get low as well. If we didn’t get our paperwork completed and on that flight home, I began to wonder if I would be going home in a wooden box.

Val came one day and I could hear him having a heated discussion in the kitchen with Flori. He came and yelled at me telling me I was not taking care of Errin as I should. Flori had told him I was not using the kitchen to heat her bottles, she cried non-stop, my dad was changing Errin’s diapers, and that I was not doing what she thought I should be. I burst into tears, and showed him how I was heating her bottles. I told him it didn’t matter what I did, she would not stop crying and would not be soothed. Luckily I had taken some binkies on ribbon clips and those helped a lot as long as they were in her mouth, but she was not able to keep them in unless someone was holding it there. I told Val I really was a good mom and doing the best I could, but was so sick, and unable to do the things I would normally do on my own. I showed him how loose my clothes were on me, and told him, I just needed to get home where I could get the medical help I needed and be in my own home with the support system of my family. I assured him Errin would be well taken care of. I told him I was afraid I would have to be admitted to the hospital when I got home because I was so ill. Val felt bad afterward and told me he was going to take us to the “International Hotel” in Bucharest for a good meal. He asked Flori to look after Errin, and we went to what appeared to be a more modern hotel in the heart of Bucharest. The food was not bad, but after not being able to keep any type of meal down the entire time I had been in Romania, I’m not sure anything would have truly tasted good. He ordered me some orange juice to try and get some of my strength back. It was obvious it had come out of a can, and tasted nasty. I did the best I could to eat the meal he so generously provided for us. As we were leaving, I looked in to where the swimming pool was. There was a large log floating in the pool, the water was thick, green and murky. Probably not the most sanitary place to take a refreshing dip after a long day in Bucharest. :)

One night, I got up to go to the bathroom, and on my way back I was feeling my way down the entirely blackout dark hallway. As I felt my way along, my hand came across something soft and animal like. I let out a scream to which everyone came running. When they turned the lights on, it was a stuffed pheasant hanging on the wall in the hallway with a missing head. My fingers had gone into the empty opening of the neck, and it had scared me to death! I had not remembered it was there, and not being accustomed to our surroundings, especially in the dark had come up against the scary beast! Everyone got a good laugh out of that, but it almost gave me a heart attack! That became the joke for the rest of our stay there. I was actually grateful for something that made us laugh – even if was at my expense!

It seemed that last week would never end! It was noticeable there were growing issues of unrest going on in the streets of Bucharest that I hadn’t seen when we arrived. Virgil and Flori told us it was an important anniversary of some sort that had to do with the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu. They also told us I would have to stay inside, which I was more than happy to do. They said I stood out too much because of my blonde hair, fair skin and blue eyes. I found this interesting because Errin was born with all those same physical attributes. With each passing day, the unrest in the streets below elevated. I remember sitting on the bed in our bedroom one day listening to the riots going on in the streets outside and wondering how high up can machine gun bullets could go? Even with the threat of being hit by a stray bullet, there were times I would creep to the window and sneak a peek outside to try and see what was going on. What I saw was frightening. People out of control, cars burning, machine guns going off everywhere. I couldn’t help but think, we’ve gotten this far, we are SO close to going home!!! Am I going to be shot on my way to the airport?

Val stopped by late the night before we were to go home. Our flight was supposed to leave the next day, and we STILL had not received that last critical document from Ron in the mail. We were all pretty somber. I had prayed and prayed and prayed. Everyone at home was praying as well. The members of our ward at church had even had a group fast in our behalf knowing what we were going through. I will never forget what happened next. It was around 10:00 at night, and I was so sad words can’t even begin to describe. Out of the blue, the doorbell buzzed. Flori looked concerned, as this was NOT a normal thing this late at night. I was sitting on the bed holding Errin, Val, dad, and Virgil were all standing there with their arms folded trying to figure out what we were going to do.

We were all wondering if there were secret police on the other side of the door coming to raid the apartment and take us away for whatever reason. Flori came back with the most puzzled look on her face and an envelope from Kaysville, Utah in her hand. She handed it to me. I opened it, and the document we had been waiting for was safely tucked inside. I burst into tears! But then asked Flori if they actually had their mail delivered to their door that late at night. She told me they did not, and that she had never seen that man before in her life. I am convinced to this day, it was an angel sent straight from heaven!!! Yet another major miracle in our behalf!!! I then looked at Val and asked if it was too late? He quickly told me he would be there the next morning to pick my dad up and take him to the embassy when it opened at 8:00. He felt confident they would be able to get the paperwork filed without me, and Errin’s Visa issued in time for us to make our flight home. I was so grateful I didn’t have to leave the apartment to go through the whole embassy thing again. They told me the mean lady at the embassy was actually kind, and questioned one item in our packet, but then waived her hand in dismissal, stamped the paperwork, and issued the Visa. She told them they were lucky they got her because no one else would have done it for them, another miracle.

They raced back to the apartment where we were all packed and ready to go. However, the streets were in utter chaos, and Val and Virgil were concerned we would not be able to get through the crowds to the airport, let alone not get shot before we got there. They wrapped my head in a scarf, had me wear sunglasses, put Errin in the front pack on me, and had me zip up my coat so she was not visible from outside the car. With my tummy wrenching all the way to the airport, Virgil dropped us off, Val helped us get inside and through security which was extremely tight. The airport was filled with women and screaming babies and children. We were all scheduled for the TWA flight to Frankfurt and then on to the U.S.A. When we had to go through customs, and they began opening our bags to go through them, Errin started screaming at the top of her lungs. What she lacked in size, she made up for in volume. The guards were annoyed, and immediately zipped up our bags and waived us on our way happy to get the screaming child as far away from them as possible. As soon as we got to the gate she quit crying and took her binkie. We loaded onto the noisy crowded plane and settled into our seats. It was a tight squeeze with all the stuff needed to take care of a baby, and only two cramped seats in coach. But I didn’t care, we were on the plane, and I held my breath as we waited for take-off. As the plane lifted off the ground, and we left the turmoil, armed guards with machine guns and tanks behind us, I remember looking out the window over the country that had given me so much, yet taken so much away at the same time. I wondered if I would look out over that country ever again. I hoped not at the time, and have not been back since. We’ve talked about it, but the trauma for me is still too great, and Errin too has some reservations about going back. I was so sick, but the sun was peeking out from behind the clouds and we were on our way home! Home to our spacious 1700 foot square home, home to hot and cold running water, home to a new toothbrush, home to electricity, home to bathroom doors that locked, home to a soft spacious bed with clean crisp sheets that didn’t smell like moth balls, home to a warm heated home, home to freedom, but most of all, home to family with Errin in tow, and Tyler still on the way.

I thought our story would end here, but there is still more to come. So be sure to check in for the rest of our adoption journey. We battled through a lot of hard things, and much darkness, but in the end goodness, right, and LIGHT will always prevail!

Love Ya, Les :)

Family

Chapter Eleven : Back in Bucharest – The Final Week