The Liftoff

Marianne remembers the night she got the call that two children  —  a five-year-old girl and her two-year-old brother from Siberia who had been abandoned by their parents  —  had recently been declined by a pair of adoptive parents. She was told the children did not speak English. Marianne didn’t know a word of Russian. Moments later, the little boy and his sister’s pictures popped up in her e-mail in-box. “Are you interested?”

Marianne, then fifty-two, had fantasized about being a mother ever since she was a little girl growing up in Detroit, the second oldest of six brothers and sisters.

“It was just chance that two young siblings became available so quickly. I have heard stories of people waiting years for their adopted children, and many horror stories of going to get them in their native land and then being denied. I was very fortunate.”

She hopped on a plane to Siberia.

“I feel it was meant for me to get these two children,” says Marianne.

But she did not get her hopes set on them right away. “I knew that if they had any severe physical, mental, or psychological handicaps, I could not take them. It would not be fair to them. I did not have the time or resources to give to children with those problems.”

For several days, she observed the children in their native Siberia. The only way the trio could communicate was