My 10-year-old son often wonders why Russians are the bad guys of so many of his books and movies. He names them. There is Irina Spasky, ruthless former KGBer of "The 39 Clues," and Yuri the gym rat/assassin of "Pink Panther II."
Also, the buff, blond-haired thug in "The Spy Next Door." Gilligan even encounters a diabolical Russian spy on his island. This Evil Empire treatment mystifies my child. After all, he reasons, he is Russian-born and he doesn't hurt people, at least not on purpose.
I discuss the Cold War and how caricatures sometimes live on. I renew my pledge to brush up on Tolstoy, the great Russian architecture, ballerinas and Olympiads. I want to neutralize whatever fictional terrorist creeps into our household next. I pull out the illustrated kids' Russian-English dictionary.
But the latest plot twist offered up by its unlovable leader hardly helps build the case for Russian pride. In move that would have made Boris Badenov proud, Russian President Vladimir Putin has barred Americans from adopting Russian children.
I am biased, but it is hard to see how this decree helps — Russia, or the kids who need to get out.
It was not lost on me during two visits to the Moscow area in 2003 to adopt an infant that I swooped in with a privileged status that has to invite divisions. A well-oiled network of handlers met us at the airport, cut through lines and roadblocks, provided an apartment, cooked our meals and whisked us to appointments in dark offices where documents were signed. We produced our assigned fees at every stop. We presented a bottle of cognac to the judge who granted me motherhood.
If I benefited from a nation's misery, it was clear Putin's people had far worse problems than American arrogance.
There were the roads, where broken down, overheated vehicles were so numerous that no one paid attention. There was the apartment house we stayed in, a dungeon of a building with several intoxicated adults outside at all times and no lighting to get us to the filthy top floor and our own, surprisingly clean, quarters. There was the power outage within hours of our arrival that left us wondering if this had been a good idea. There was the wretched, pathogen-filled water and weeks of recovery from having inadvertently consumed some.
There was the near plane crash. Yes, it was Aeroflot. This happened after the first visit to Russia, when I did not yet have the baby. Within minutes of take-off from Sheremetyevo Airport, the cabin felt drafty, then exceedingly cold and then downright frosty.
Loss of cabin pressure was followed by screams, though some passengers continued reading. For me, the descent triggered a hysterical laughing fit — a throwback to fourth grade. When the Aeroflot plane hit ground, I am confident it moved faster than any aircraft has traversed land.
Back at Sheremetyevo, some Russians exited the plane calmly, as though they expected to be home roughly 37 minutes after leaving. A few Americans breathlessly spoke of the piece of emergency exit door that had whizzed past their seats.
Russian children also came off the defective plane, maybe 10 or 11 years old, leaving home to start life with new parents who accompanied them. I wondered what they thought when they were back so soon.
The children in my son's orphanage were preschoolers. On my first visit, the place felt quaint. Caregivers in pleated frocks rocked my son in their arms, laughed with him and scolded me for loosening the many layers of his clothing. The babies slept in a cheerful room of wall-to-wall cribs.
But the place was freeze framed from my own childhood 40 years earlier. Infants drank from glistening glass baby bottles washed in deep cast iron sinks. Colorful prams dating back to Sputnik were parked throughout. Asked what they needed most, the pediatrician orphanage head replied "everything."
Six weeks later, we were back to bring my baby home. It was springtime and 3-year-old girls joined us in the orphanage play yard. The girls squeezed onto swings without seats and gestured for me to push. Others lined up for turns on the only tricycle.
They surrounded us, small girls with blunt haircuts. With nothing else to offer, I pulled a toothbrush from my bag. They grabbed it and passed it around jealously. Two inventive children toyed with a rock in a paper cup and added a dandelion. Children with disabilities had been wheeled out in cribs and left there.
Soon, the caregivers signaled for us to confiscate the toothbrush. The girls reluctantly returned inside. In three days, my child would live in an American neighborhood with four parks. I wanted all those girls to join us.
Since then, American adoptive families have contributed money for a new playground and significant orphanage upgrades. The man who coordinated my arrangements reports other good things.
Private investment has resulted in attractive new apartment buildings. Incomes are on the rise. Russians increasingly study at top European and American universities.
Some Russian republics are encouraging Russians to adopt Russian kids and providing subsidies. But there remains a long-standing taboo, even hostility, toward orphans. I am told that Russian couples even fake a pregnancy to conceal an adoption.
So children still fill the orphanages. Freezing out Americans is an assault on the many Russians invested in finding a better life for the wonderful people like the squawky baby I brought home.
Recently, I asked my son what he thought of keeping Russian children from America. It was gray and snowy, very much like winter in the town where he was born. But we were chugging up a chairlift during a New England skiing vacation.
"I'm lucky I wasn't born now, or I'd never be here now," he said.
"Besides," he added of the man behind this decision, "he is a big fat blap."
Jane Gottlieb is an Albany writer and former Times Union reporter.