We got a panic call early in the morning from Yelana: “We have a problem!” It turns out that the SDA is requiring us to get documents signed and notarized from both Nikolai and Maria stating that they will not oppose the adoption of Andry. Without these documents adopting Andry would be very difficult and take weeks or months longer or be impossible. And to be legal, both Maria and Nikolai must have passports to prove their identity to the notary.
Yelana got Maria on the phone. She and Nikolai were in Kiev at their second dental appointment. But, Maria was cooperative, and even more amazingly, so was Nikolai.
We sent Yelana and Vassily to pick them up after their dental appointment. After weighing all the pros and cons of where we should discuss the issues with Maria and Nikolai, we finally decided to let them come to our apartment. Yelena was trying to dissuade us from letting the couple see our comparatively expensive apartment and from getting to "close". But, we finally said, oh what the Hell. So, they see it and ask for a color TV or whatever. We’re already fixing their teeth and have agreed on buying Maria’s decorated eggs to the tune of $100 a month; we’ll deal with it.
Maria and Nikolai showed up with Vasilly and Yelana about thirty minutes later. The children were happy because they had wanted to show them the apartment. We sat around the kitchen table and talked about the problem of the documents and unbelievably both Nikolai and Maria agreed to do whatever necessary. There was a hitch; Maria had a passport but Nikolai had no documentation of his identity whatsoever. Getting a passport could take longer than a month in Ukraine.
We decided the only sensible course was to go to their village’s (county seat) administrators and see what we could work out.
Maria had been looking over Olya’s shoulder while Olya and Andry where showing her all the pictures on Pippa’s computer.
Extraordinary! Maria was getting a good look at all the photos we had brought to show Andry what life would be like with us: Olya’s school, our house, Olya’s room, Andry’s future room, Miami Ad School, the beach, our vacation house, pets, family and friends in Miami, the beach… She seemed to be fascinated. In fact, we took the computer with us on the three-hour drive back to the village (Telizynci).
A look out the van window.
Andry continued to show Maria photo by photo and translate the description in Ukrainian, from time to time asking Olya in Spanish to tell him what was going on in the photo. After two hours, the computer was in Maria’s lap, and with instruction from Andry, she was clicking from photo to photo. She spent the entire trip looking at every photo. And I’m sure it was the first computer she ever touched.
The children hugging while asleep.
When we pulled up at their house, the kids jumped out and ran inside. By the time we got to the door Olya was coming out telling us Maria’s mother and Nikolai’s father were both drunk from too much vino.
Olya was right; the old woman was socked and babbling incoherently. Of course, I couldn’t have understood her anyway, but Andry was telling Olya that his grandmother didn’t know what she was saying. He said she drank all the time.
The weather had radically changed. From sunshine to rain and wind to a cold drizzle and all of us were in short sleeves without long sleeve shirts or coats. Pippa and the children were in shorts. We had missed lunch and only two bags of nuts for the children. And we were very distressed.
We would be back and forth from administrative offices in the village to the house. We went first into an administrative office very close to their house. It was as if we had walked into the Soviet era. We were ushered into an office with old wooden court seats at one end and a fifty-year-old man behind his big desk at the other end. Lots of loud Ukrainian and shoulder shrugging, phone calls and more shoulder shrugging. He eventually told Yelena there was nothing he could do; he would do it but his superior, a woman, would not agree to do what we asked. So we left.
We went then to another administrative building about ten minutes away. This was a notary, a woman doing the talking and an older man, not talking, working on a computer. Well, a little success. She agreed to make the document for Maria (even though it was not her day to work). She could not help us with Nikolai however. After a half hour we had Maria’s signed and notarized document in our hand.
Yelana and Vasilly dropped us (Ron, Pippa, Olya, Andry and Maria) back at the house and they took off somewhere with Nikolai. We spent a little time in the garden. Maria was digging potatoes for us to take back to the apartment (we forgot the potatoes when we left).
Andry showed Olya the vegetable garden.
There are many fruit trees in the yard; cherry, pear and another berry we don't have in the States.
Maria also showed us the new outdoor cooking area they had made since we were there.
Hannah kept talking to us and hugging Pippa. We hadn’t a clue to what she was saying. Andry showed Olya the well and how you turn the crank to pull up a bucket of water. One of the village babushkas must have seen us at the well because she hustled over with her bucket to get water and “talk” to us again.
In about half an hour, Yelana, Vassily came back to get Maria and off they went again. All the village offices would close in a matter of minutes.
We spent more time with the litter of puppies and the litter of kittens,
Hannah and the elder Nikolai, who was also many sheets to the wind. We stayed inside the house because it was really freezing outside. There was no heat inside but the house was tight and it was much warmer than hanging around in the cold drizzle.
Andry translated a bit of what Hannah told us. The whole family (Hannah, her parents, Maria and Nikolai) had worked on the collective farm. She showed us a picture of her taken when she was "much younger."
She also showed us a picture of her parents who had built the house when she was 15.
This house was the big house. The smaller one had stood on the same property about 6 feet in front of the current house. The bed Olya and Andry are sitting on in the picture below is actually part of one of the two wood burning heaters that heats the house.
One of Olya’s only memories of living in the house was of “swimming” in potatoes. Apparently there was a place in or near the house where they were stored. I (Pippa) asked Andry if he could show her that place. Andry lifted up the rug under our feet and started picking up loose boards to reveal a dark hole under the house. It was about 5’x 4’ x 3’ and currently potatoeless. Olya was able to understand her memory.
Olya and Andry were completely bored; Andry seemed more contemplative than sullen. I (Ron) took out my Ukrainian phrase book and did a comedy routine for him mispronouncing all the phrases (I wasn’t trying to mispronounce the words, mind you).
In about an hour or so, all of them returned. Yelana had performed a miracle. She had gone back to the first administrator and apparently they found a way after all to get a document for Nikolai to sign. She told us she would tell us later just how she performed this miracle.
Maria was in the indoor “kitchen”, a very small closet-like space, preparing a meal for us. She was being very hospitable even though she had had four teeth pulled earlier in the day and was in a lot of pain. She had stopped at the local market and bought a bag of things. Very quickly she set a number of small bowls on a tiny table and pulled chairs up to it and asked us to please eat. The children were eating in another room.
Of course there were the expected vodka toasts that are such a custom in this country. Nikolai sat at the table with us. Maria stayed in the other room with the kids. Nikolai declined the vodka saying he didn't drink anymore. We have never seen he or Maria take a drink in all the times we have been with them. I ate cold cuts and a few meat vereneky which had ketchup squeezed on top; a couple of tomatoes and several chocolates. There were also cucumbers and bread slices and orange Fanta, apparently the main soft drink in Ukraine. Olya skipped in to our table a couple of times, just to make contact with us. After dinner Maria gave the kids ice-cream cones and a bag of candy for the ride home.
As we were about to leave Nikolai asked if we could help them with the bus fare for the upcoming trips to Kiev for their dental work. It’s 50 grivanas for each person, round trip. I gave him 300 grivnas for the next three trips. We had no problem with this since we had promised to do it all along. We also gave Maria 50 grivnas for all the food she had bought for this meal.
We left quickly after that with a great sense of relief. We had two critical signed and notarized documents that were essential to successfully adopt Andry. Pippa and I talked at length about the cooperation we’d gotten from Nikolai and Maria. After all, they were in effect signing Andry off to us forever. Why would they agree to do it. He is obviously very important to them. And why did they go to so much trouble? Who knows?
Three hours later we were back in Kiev but before we could go crash at our apartment we needed to deliver our new documents to the facilitator who would take them to the SDA (national adoption center) as soon as it opened in the morning. The SDA had told our facilitator these were the only missing pieces they needed to approve our application. The final approval would come tomorrow, Friday. With that approval we could ask the judge for a court date, which hopefully would be next week.
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