I arrived home late one night from school, totally exhausted. When I came into the house, my host mom, Nadia was cleaning up the mess from dinner. The kids, Dana-6, Sasha-4, and Yegor-2 were rough housing in the next room. I started talking to Nadia in Russian, asking her how her days was and how she was feeling. She told she was having a terrible day and was completely exhausted from the kids. Of course, right then all the kids started hitting each other and crying loudly. She just had a look of 'where is my husband, I need a break' on her face. I felt awful for her. Being a mom is so exhausting. Anyways, Yegor took up all of her attention immediately because he is the youngest and Dana, the oldest is a big whiner so she got her attention as well. Poor Sasha wasn't being paid attention to and she was already upset. She ran upstairs and I tell you what, you could hear these kids from down the street and around the corner.
Anyways, I was in the process of heating up and eating my dinner because I was so starving. But one look at Nadia's face when this all went down sent me straight upstairs after little Sasha. I found her face down on the floor sobbing. I sat down on the couch and told her in Russian to 'come here to me'. She picked herself up and basically just melted into my lap with her face pushed tightly in my chest, her hands around my neck, and the tears and sobs pouring out. I held her in my lap just patting her back for a good 5 minutes until she had calmed down. I pulled her face away from me and asked her in Russian, 'what is this?' while wiping away a tear. She wiped off her face, looked me straight in the eyes, and in perfect English said, 'Jill, I love you.' She gave me a hug and then went off to go play again. Let me just say, I speak in only Russian to the kids because they don't understand English and can only say basically good night and good morning. This blew me away, Needless to say, I was the one crying this time.
Tear jerker, right? I love these kids so much. I've always wanted younger siblings.
You're the best, Jilly - its going to be hard to say goodby, isn't it? but look, you're just building a bigger family and you're always going to be saying goodby to someone and...saying hello again someday.
ReplyDeletethat is SO sweet.
ReplyDelete