Reece’s Rainbow Report #66: Spitz Family

She wondered if she was going to fall over. Every part of her body, in fact, was reacting to what was about to happen: the New Yorker was getting ready to be face-to-face with someone she had dreamed of meeting for what felt like forever. 

No, it wasn’t a celebrity. Instead, it was a toddler named Lyla in a Ukrainian crib, barely clinging to life, who didn’t even know Summer and her husband Dave existed. 

“It was somewhat like adrenaline but more electric,” says Summer, a 52-year-old electronic health records representative for a pediatric practice. “I owed her so much and I loved her more than I had loved anyone. All of that was racing furiously through my body and it was the most exhilarating experience of my life.” 

Yet Summer, a mother of eight ages 30 down to 16, couldn’t stay forever in the Ukrainian orphanage. The Spitzes were there in 2012 to pick up “Michael,” a three-year-old with Down syndrome who would soon be known as Gavin — but they had fallen in love with Lyla first, back in 2010. 

Summer had read an article in People magazine about Reece’s Rainbow (RR) as part of their 2010 “HEROES AMONG US” series. That led her to the RR website and its photo listings of waiting children. There was “Lilianna,” a blue-eyed blonde with Down syndrome, a heart defect and a missing left hand. 

Summer didn’t even read the girl’s biography. She just knew she was looking at a future Spitz. Eventually, Dave and their three biological children knew it, too. 

But then, mere weeks before they were set to travel, someone got in touch. “Lilianna,” whom they would call Lyla, was too sick to be adopted, and that was that. The Spitzes were devastated. 

“It was the most heartache I ever experienced at that point,” Summer says. “I was head over heels in love with her. She consumed my heart in a way I had never felt.” 

Dave suggested they look for another little girl in Ukraine, so despite their wounded, raw hearts, they did. “Mariya,” destined to be called Belle, came home in January of 2011. Almost three years old, she also had Down syndrome and a heart defect. 

Summer wondered whether she would ever be able to love Belle the way she loved Lyla. But the moment she first held Belle, she had another bedrock realization: she was meant to be this girl’s mom, too. 

Lyla must have been sent to lead me to Belle, she thought. 

Once home to New York, the Spitzes experienced unexpected joy. Siblings fought over spending the most time with Belle, and even Dave and Summer struggled with wanting to be closest to her. In public, the entire family felt fiercely protective of this little girl who had thus far only known life in a crib.

“If anyone even looked at her, we were ready to fight,” Summer remembers. “I think we were all just trying to figure out how to balance. Protecting her with all we had was all we could really do to make it up to her.” 

Before long, Belle had learned to crawl, pull herself up, walk and feed herself with help. Still, Summer and Dave thought about Lyla, dying alone in Eastern Europe. They applied to adopt for a second time, but once again Ukrainian officials said that Lyla was too sick — that she would probably die, so why pursue her? 

But wait! Once more, just weeks before they traveled for Gavin, whom they decided on after being denied twice for Lyla, they got a lifechanging call. Lyla was now healthy enough to be adopted — and she was at Gavin’s orphanage. 

“Won’t you let me see her?” Summer pleaded. Orphanage workers relented, leading the mother to a little room with ill children. Lyla was obviously the sickest, and it was everything Summer could do not to stuff her under her coat and run as fast as she could to the nearest hospital or airplane. 

But she couldn’t, of course. Thankfully, after miraculously raising $30,000 more for Lyla’s adoption fees, they returned to Ukraine the same year they adopted Gavin to also adopt Lyla at last. 

On paper, this almost-three-year-old was deathly sick. But in reality, the Spitzes discovered, with some love and medical attention, she was a spitfire. 

“Full of so much sass, naughty as the day was long and fearful of nothing,” Summer marvels. “She was sitting within days, crawling within weeks and walking within months. It was miraculous to watch. Nothing held that beautiful beast of a girl back!” 

Even so, the rest of the world seemed to want to do exactly that. Finding proper medical care for Lyla’s many needs became an uphill climb. Her lungs and heart were just so weak, compounded by years of neglect. There were myriad hospital stays, surgeries, appointments, oxygen tanks, illnesses and close calls.

“Her will to survive kept me fighting,” Summer says. “She was and is the strongest person I know.” 

Lyla demonstrated that with her daredevil personality, delighting in scaring family members, running and skipping across a room, swimming underwater despite not being able to breathe well even on land and choosing the scariest rides at water and amusement parks. Gavin was thriving, too, learning sign language at lightning speed, reading, writing, reciting the alphabet, playing sports and building Lego works of art. 

But even a will of steel wears out eventually. Lyla’s pulmonary hypertension could no longer be kept at bay. She was in severe pain and couldn’t breathe. 

Summer and Dave, a 60-year-old corrugated design manager, watched the daughter they had fought for for so long begin to leave them behind. 

“She was so uncomfortable and there wasn’t anything more we could do,” Summer says. “We just loved, snuggled and sang to her.”

Just after midnight on May 12, 2021, 11-year-old Lyla’s beautiful face changed from pain-filled to relaxed and peaceful. Summer knew she would never see her “Bean” anymore this side of heaven. She passed away at 10:32 that morning. 

“The depth of pain cannot be described with words,” Summer says. 

The family tries, though, and resorts to other ways when words fail. Gavin, now 16, says, “Bean back.” Belle, the same age and the giver of the world’s best hugs, grabs Summer’s arm — where a portrait tattoo of Lyla is inked — and pats it, as she does with anything she wants. The rest of the family, including two Spitzes adopted from local foster care, still sees Lyla in everything they do, including the flowers Dave plants for Lyla to look at from heaven. 

“I always say we are blessed to be so broken,” Summer says. “My only goal is to be reunited with her again. Every night I go to bed, I’m so grateful to be one day closer to her.” 

Not even death, in other words, can separate a pack of souls that tightly intertwined. So the crushing pain, Summer insists, has been worth it. 

“Every moment we spent with that precious treasure was a blessing beyond belief,” she says. “The thought that we might have missed out on the gift of loving Lyla is more terrifying than the journey of grieving her could ever be!” 

Enough to make her weak in the knees and send her heart racing — but this time, because the love of three children named Belle, Gavin and Lyla, Summer Spitz knows she will stand strong.