Rescuing Julia Twice Read Online Free PDF Page B

elephants good luck?” I am not superstitious—at least I don’t think I am.
    I’m delighted by the Gzhel, Russian porcelain popularized in the 1830s. It is fancier that anything we own, but there’s something about being an adoptive parent that makes you feel as though you should bring back little pieces of your daughter’s heritage to her new home. My mind flits between a scene in which I’m serving tea from these beautiful objects and the running tab of what we’ve been spending. Again, Ricky encourages me, and the saleswoman wraps up four cups, a teapot, and the elephant sugar bowl.
    On our last day in Moscow, we go to the GUM (pronounced
goom)
department store, which is a famous glass-encrusted Victorian pile filled with expensive shops. It resembles the grand pavilion at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. A refuge from the near-zero cold, we walk up and down the nearly deserted mall. Like everywhere else in Russia, there are shops filled with fur hats. I go into one and try some on. When I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I feel ashamed.
    â€œThat one looks nice on you,” Ricky says. “Buy it.”
    â€œDon’t even …”
    I grab his hand and we leave the store.
    On the way out of the arcades, I notice a children’s store. It is fancy. It has the look of the New York City Madison Avenue children’s boutique. I peer closer to get a look at a beautiful ivory-white quilted down jacket ringed with a fur hood.
    â€œThat jacket is made for Russian winter,” I say. “It’s precious.”
    â€œLet’s go in and have a look,” Ricky replies.
    â€œNah, I don’t think so. Let’s leave it.”
    I walk away with a pit in my stomach. I want this baby. I want to clothe and protect her, but I’m not ready. She’s not real yet. She’s in Siberia. I need more time.

Four
    I’m thumbing through the newest nonfiction books at Barnes & Noble. The store on Broadway is crowded for mid-morning. I glance around at the mothers pushing strollers, legions of them passing time, filling the aisles and making them impassable. I feel an uncomfortable tug in my gut. That voice, that annoying voice in my head says,
Shouldn’t you be buying parenting books? Or at the very least adoptive parenting books?
    Maybe I should. Maybe I should do a lot of things I don’t do, like floss more often or make peace with my mother, but I usually give in to my gut and my gut wants to read books on politics or the growing locavore movement. Because I’m thirty-nine, I’m the latecomer to parenting in my circle of friends and family. I never took much of an interest in other people’s children, not even my own relatives, but I have watched, with some horror, what I believe is an obsessive, off-kilter generation of parenting. Too many women I know have turned mothering into their life’s work. They’ve left behind careers. Dreams. Ways they were going to change the world. They are obsessed with stroller brands and sleeping schedules and the “right” schools. They are caught up in molding and shaping their children as though they’d all become sculptors and perfection is paramount. They treat their children as though they are their partners—blurring the line between parent and child, vying to be their child’s BFF. They’ve read a lot of books on empowering their children.They bask in the light they hope will emanate from their offspring. I’ve not yet walked in their shoes, but to me it seems imbalanced. And it has caused me some ambivalence about child rearing. On the one hand, it’s been hard to watch women I know have one baby, then two, and sometimes a third, while I went through a divorce and had at times believed I would never have my own children. On the other hand, I wonder if I will fall into this parenting trap when and if I do become a mother. Part of the problem is