I had promised you a harrowing tale that occured while we were in Russia adopting Chase...Well...

This story goes with my last post.

However, for the sake of not making that last post a novel, I am creating a new post for this most 'harrowing' of tales....


Well, it goes like this...


We had been in Rostov, Russia living in a small apartment for 8 days. If you read the post below, you will understand why we didn't have Chase yet, weren't allowed to visit him, and had very little to do except visit Rostov's many statue memorials. (after 18? yawn)


Actually, one day we were going to see the circus but when we got there we were told that the circus troope had not shown up. To our westernized minds, this seemed rather ludicrous and unusual. However, the local people just gave a mild shake of the head and went on to something else.


Apparently simply advertising that a show, circus, etc is coming to town guarantees nothing.  The people of Rostov seemed very used to these cancellations...Jim and I, on the other had, were let down as we were really looking forward to experiencing something other than steel statues.


Regardless, on the 8th day, that night actually..quite late that night we hear knocking on the front door. Strong knocking.

We were immediately on edge as we were instructed not to open the door for anyone.


Jim peeked through via the chain lock and saw that it was our cook, Jenna.  


Wondering what in the heck Jenna was doing in the dead of darkness, knocking on our door, we opened it and had her come in. 

She was a bit winded. As if she'd almost ran to the flat and beat it up to the 5th floor we were on.


She started wringing her hands, pointing to Jim, pointing to the door.

[You know how in Spanish and English there are some similarities and a smidge of verbal communication can occur between two individuals where one speaks Spanish and the other English. ABSOLUTELY no the case with Russian and English. Nope. ]


It seemed Jenna wanted Jim to go somewhere with her. However, no what in nothing was I going to be left alone in the apartment!


Where did she want him to go? We had no idea what she wanted but we did know we'd been instructed by our adoption agency in the states to go no where without our interpreter. 

And Alexi, our interpreter, was not on the scene nor was there a phone in our apartment that we could call him.


However....Jenna kept pointing at door. Pointing at Jim. 


She ended up finding Jim's COAT and started to put it on him. At this point, we knew we were going to have to go with her so I grabbed my coat too.


Then she started pointing at Jim's rear end!!!  WHAT? Jenna! 


She was SO demonstrative it was obvious that she was in a great hurry over something. 


We finally figured out she wanted us to bring money (that's why she was pointing at Jim's rear end ;) and it took another several minutes of gesturing on her part to make us understand that she wanted us to bring a credit card too!


I was thinking, "Oh hot dang. All those rumors I'd heard about having to pay adoption-involved people off once you get in country is stinkin' true! We are in a hot mess!"


Well, we descended the dark staircase and exited into the BITTER, FREEZING, PAINFUL cold of that January night.   


It was PITCH black. 


I was started to throw "Hail Marys" "Help Us Jesus" "Oh crud we are so stupid" thoughts all around in my head.


Jenna started, at a very quick pace I must add, tromping through the apartment complex parking lot and we followed.....Jim hiding the $8,000 cash (yes, you read that right. She said "all" with her hands...and we'd yet to pay the orphanage fee so we still had way to much money for a "tourist walking during a dark night" on us) and credit cards in his coat. 


I started thinking, "Andrea! The agency warned you about this! What the hay are you doing trekking through a parking lot, following a relative stranger, to an unknown destination while carrying all this cash? We are acting like naive tourists. " 

 "Please Lord don't let us be caught up in some Russian underground spy ring where they are going to put us in a cement room until we agree to be spies for them once we get home! We are horrible liars! We'd never succeed and THEN what would they do?!"


The "following Jenna" part was getting harder by the the millisecond as she was making her own path through alleys, descending a muddy retaining wall (at this point I tripped and worry about the underground spy ring ebbed as surely they were watching us and could see that I am not cut out for covert anything!).


We had been walking for over 30 minutes. I was as cold as dry ice and near tears. 

Jim kept saying, "It's gotta be okay. It's Jenna. We know her."  But, though he was trying to reassure me, if felt an awful lot like he was convincing himself of his own words.


MORE walking. Crossing deserted streets. Walking through empty parks. Stumbling over curbs. Deciding what I wanted my last words to be. 


Jenna never looked back ..... The lady was on a mission (of what we had no clue) and she was going to succeed. 

I was hoping that turning two Americans in to some Russia mafia ring did not warrant a financial reward or that Jenna was not going to suddenly stop by a random trash can and tell us to put our money under it for a "payoff" that would be picked up later!

[I obviously read to many spy novels]


Finally, about an hour later and after Jim and I's non-Russian blood had seemingly froze within our veins, Jenna comes to another apartment building that looks JUST like the one were staying in.


"JIM! Did we just walk in circles? Was this some sort of parenting test? "  


Jim is silent as he is busy trying to act all natural and stuff....as if we trek through dark, foreign cities with strangers all the time and that the $8,000 he had in his coat was a natural, normal thing for him.


Jenna motions us inside.

At this point..I'm about to run to the nearest American Embassy.

She wants us to go inside this huge apartment complex, at night, with no lighting, and for reasons we STILL do not understand?


I am silently praying like Mother Teresa and Billy Graham combined. I was terrified. I was also frozen, muddy, and tired.


Jenna kept motioning for us to come into the building...if you can "demand" something without words but via hand signals...THAT is what Jenna was doing.


So.....yep....We followed her in.


Oh heck the smell was overpowering, as was the dark.


Of course, she headed to the staircase.  Of course, I'm sure I am about to be sold into some slave ring.


We go about 8 floors up (in the dark).  We enter a hallway. Jenna almost runs to an apartment door within the hallway.

Jim and I are lingering near the stairs in case a big, bad "Demitri"answers the door drooling for the 2 Americans he'd ordered.

To our surprise, Jenna's SISTER answered the door. We had met her already.


I started to breathe...alittle, but not really.


The two motioned, again...demanded...for us to come inside.  

I thought..."DANG! I should have been leaving signs of our whereabouts...like little bits of the fluff from inside my coat as  a path to return to in case we end up running out of this apartment for our lives. 

We could have followed "the fluff" all the way back to where we SHOULD have been at that point in the night before we made the fatal and naive decision to be dragged, via hand gestures, across a dark, sleeping Russian city."

Once inside the apartment, I DO NOT JOKE, Jenna's sister grabbed Jim by the arm and pulled/dragged him to where a man in the front room was sitting.....and this man was on the phone.


I am thinking...."Oh heck. Someone's dead at home. Oh heck our agency found a problem with the adoption. Oh heck this dude is mafia and is going to pat Jim down for the money. Oh heck we are so stupid. Oh heck...should I leave Jim and run for it?"


The man shoves the phone towards Jim....


"Jim! Wait! We have no idea. You may be giving them some sort of 'Proof of Life' before they kidnap us and tie us up in the basement"


Jim, into the phone, "Hello?"


"Oh Hello Mr. Cockrum! I am SO glad they were able to find you."


Jim, "What is going on? Who is this?"


"Oh, this is BRITISH AIRWAYS. "

(thud.)

"We were called and informed that your date of departure from Moscow is going to be one day earlier than scheduled. We need you credit card information to change the dates. 

It seems your friends were trying to do this for you but we are not allowed to change tickets without updated credit card information and they did not have this. So, can I have that information now?"


Jim's body language adds 10 years to his life. He looks at me and gives a "thumbs up".


I want to vomit.


Jenna, her sister, and the man (which turns out to be Jenna's brother-in-law) are all smiling huge grins because, apparently they'd just been telephoned by the Russian counter-part of our adoption agency that this change needed to happen tonight or we would be charged a large fee.  

The family was mighty proud of themselves for helping us in such a large manner. 

(Apparently, Jenna insisted Jim bring our cash because she was unsure of how the process worked. We figured this out later from our interpreter.)


After Jim finished up the phone call and got the correct departure tickets, the family gave us tea and we all sorta stared at each other because of the massive language barrier. 

They were very sweet to us and tried to convey that they thought adoption was a beautiful thing. 


I was slowly able to relax and let the underground spy ring, Russian mafia, slave trade, and kidnapping thoughts slowly dwindle as I watched this family smile at us and gesture their thoughts on Chase, the adoption, and such.

However, I was still having trouble getting the teacup to meet my mouth cuz of my shaking hand!


They could tell we were a bit shaken up...and they laughed about it and shrugged their shoulders pretty much saying, "it had to happen tonight".


After tea, we headed back out into the pitch dark night to return to our apartment. Of course, Jenna had to walk us back as we had NO idea where we were in Rostov or how to get anywhere.


The return walk still had it's fair share of mud, stumbling, and an element of scary given the time of night, etc but instead of talking about "Okay, if we get kidnapped, who in our family can pay the ransom', Jim and I were oftentimes laughing so hard that we could have raised Lenin from the dead! 

(Yes, he's entombed in Moscow and we were then in Rostove...but...we were laughing that hard and loud !)


We honestly, a few hours earlier, had NO idea what was happening. We were truly thinking very large-scale issues.....but it was about 3 plane tickets.

Apparently, the only people that wanted "Proof of Life" was British Airways.....smile.

And THAT is one of my life's harrowing tales.....

Whatcha think?


Andrea