A Ukrainian Feast Under a Hazelnut Tree

A neighbor friend of Maria’s and an aunt of Nikolai’s had been continuously taking food outside to a table under a hazelnut tree, where silently, Nikolai Senior, the grandfather, sat in his wheelchair. (Old Nikolai to us, looked younger than younger Nikolai.) The old man was in a suit coat and collared shirt. His face didn’t have the ravaged look of his son, as if he had spent his life indoors while his son toiled outside in the weather. But from what we have heard, young Nikolai hasn’t ever worked very much at anything except perhaps a bottle. The women pulled some rickety-wobbly benches around the table and motioned for all of us to sit around the table outside. Our translator, Yelena, said they hoped we would join them as their guests for a little meal they had prepared for us.

But the meal was no little thing. On top of a flowered pattern vinyl tablecloth, there were two large bowls of mashed potatoes, fried onions on the top; several dishes of cucumbers and tomatoes; a large bundle of bananas; slices of orange; a bottle of wine, another of vodka, another bottle of beer; a plastic carton of lemonade; slices of bread; and a bowl of wrapped chocolates. There was one small plate of meat and cheese. The interesting thing is that no one was given a plate or napkin. Instead each person was given a large spoon, the idea being to scoop out what you want from the serving bowl. Not a bad idea, if you think about it.

Getting everyone to the table was chaotic, but it finally happened. However, Olya and Andry stayed in the house. Andry was putting together the pair of cell phones we had brought to Maria and Nikolai (complete with hours of minutes) so Andry could keep in touch with them from the USA. Olya was looking at photo books of herself when she was younger and in Spain on the Children of Chernobyl program. Now and then she would rush out to the table to show Pippa or me the photos, then run back into the house.

On one trip out to us Olya whispered in my ear asking if Maria and Nikolai ate the chickens that she had seen in the pen in the front yard. I (Pippa) told her that they did. I explained that they had to grew most of their own food. She looked worried and asked me if they also ate the puppies and kittens that she had been playing with!

The women all urged us to eat more and more (we had stopped for a big lunch at a truck stop only an hour before, but didn’t tell them.) Maria didn’t eat. The women all said that Maria never eats, she only works. None of us could drink enough Vodka to satisfy them, though we didn’t try to so hard with the Vodka.

The conversation at the table was a steady stream of everyone talking at once. Yelana could not keep up with the translation. Slowly the conversation turned to Olya. The aunt, Nikolai’s sister, was a little aggressive, something we had not seen from anyone else. Apparently she was saying that she didn’t know what was wrong, the children had plenty to eat and many people around to take care of them. She went on to say that when Maria signed a paper (terminating her parental rights) she had believed it was only for three months. Neither Pippa nor I responded except to say we know how heartbroken they must have been. I’m not certain that our response got translated. The dialogue got lost after that. We had some vodka toasts; Nikolai abstained from drinking, saying he doesn’t drink or perhaps someone said that for him. We asked Maria to tell us some stories about the children when they were little, but she didn’t seem to want to or just wasn’t able to do that. We asked about Olya’s scar on her bottom and leg, about the fire. All too quickly, everyone said there was no fire. Maria said that Olya had been playing with a kitten and fell against the stove. (We were curious about that; there was no stove for Olya to fall against that we could see. Maybe there could have been a portable heater, but frankly I doubt that. Perhaps we will never know the truth.) It sounds like things got rude, but they didn’t. Even Maria’s comments were said with quiet resolution. It was sad more than angry. I didn’t get the impression that they blamed us. After all, they had gone to a lot of trouble to receive us. They spent money that they could not afford to spend.

Yelana helped us out telling everyone that we had to get back to Kiev by 6:00. The aunt asked if we could give her a ride to the next town. We did one more round of photos of all of us. I said that now we were one family; they were part of ours and we were part of their family. That seemed to please them. I stood with my arm on Nikolai’s shoulder for the photos.

We tried to collect Andry and Olya. Olya was sitting on the stoop with one last old babusha, complete with worn walking stick, who had finally made her way to the celebration. This old woman looked a lot like a crone. In fact, Olya’s face was covered in soot from the old woman when she had kissed & caressed Olya. Pippa wiped Olya’s face. Cara sat down next to Olya and the dirty babushka. Maria rushed back with a cloth for Cara to sit on so she wouldn’t get her pants dirty on the less from pristine bench. As poor as this household was, we had the impression that Maria was fastidiously neat, a characteristic we see in Olya.

Everybody hugged and kissed everybody goodbye. I kissed Maria on the cheek and shook Nikolai’s hand. Pippa and her parents did the same. Maria gave Pippa a large jar of cherries and another jar of jam that she had put up from the fruit around the house and was saving for the winter when home-grown food was scarce. We piled into the Volkswagen van and waved to the crowd in the street and drove away from where our daughter and hopefully, our new son, Andry, were born. It was as if we were driving out of the pages of a history book, in the section on “Peasants of Rural Ukraine."