Russian Orphan Makes Six

Welcome to the Tuesday guest blog. Every Tuesday "On Balance" features the views of a guest writer. It could be your neighbor, your boss, your most loved or hated poster from the blog, or you! Send me your entry (300 words or fewer) for consideration. Obviously, the topic should be something related to balancing your life.

By Shari MacDonald Strong

When I announce to friends and co-workers that a teenager from St. Petersburg is living with our family this summer, people think I'm crazy. They have a point. My husband and I already have three children, ages three to six. But I keep remembering what Michael J. Fox said in an interview before his fourth child's birth: Something about looking around at his family and realizing someone was missing from the party.

If a child is missing from our family, I thought I knew where we'd find her. We've already adopted from Russia, so I located an international hosting program, sort of a cultural vacation for orphans. I expected that we'd know immediately if our host child is our future daughter. It feels more complicated than that.

A high-spirited beauty with mischievous blue eyes, 14-year-old Olga agonizes over a harmless sore on her lip, draping her golden brown hair dramatically across her mouth like Dracula's mustache. She teases our children as relentlessly as a blood sibling, screams to wake the dead when tickled, dreams of attending music school. She melts into me for hugs, walks with her arm locked in mine and wants desperately to be adopted but begs our interpreter not to tell us.

I want our family to be a fit for this remarkable child and agonize because it doesn't feel that way yet. I worry about how the kids get along, feel exhausted by the expenditure of energy required to balance the needs of small children and a teen. My work gets done late at night, when everyone else is sleeping. Was I crazy to try this? If we're not Olga's family, who is? How do I weigh her needs against my family's--or my own? I want to strive for some kind of balance, but wonder: When it comes to work, children and family, does balance exist?

Shari MacDonald Strong writes the Zen and the Art of Child Maintenance column for Literary Mama, where she is also Creative Nonfiction Editor. Her work has appeared in It's a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters , and has written on international orphan hosting at Mamazine.com.

By Leslie Morgan Steiner |  July 25, 2006; 7:13 AM ET  | Category:  Guest Blogs
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