Our Daughter is Coming Back

It has been heart-warming to see Olya so deeply bonded with her brother. For these first two weeks she has barely left his side except to go to the bathroom. Sits close to him on every car ride. She has been insisting on wearing the same shirt as Andry. She’s been glued to him. But today we noticed that she has returned now to her mom (Pippa). Today Olya wanted Pippa to wear her red “girl” shirt that matches Olya’s turquoise one. She still loves Andry for certain, but often now wants to divide things: boys in that seat, girls in this, meaning Andry and me in one seat, Pippa and Olya in another. Today she wanted Andry and me to kick the soccer ball while she and her mom played Frisbee. That she wants Andry to connect with me is evident, but she and Pippa have had this very close mother––daughter thing; it’s good to see it coming back. It’s really beginning to feel like a complete family of four.

The day was easy and casual. A late breakfast of French toast and cherry syrup. Heinz makes a cherry syrup here in a large plastic bottle exactly like their ketchup bottle. Everything has to have cherries. And now having seen the house where Olya and Andry had lived together with cherry trees all around, we understand. But there are cherry trees everywhere; Ukrainians are nuts about their cherries.

After breakfast, in fact, we had another cherry event. Pippa had been given the name and phone number of a woman folk art painter, Oleana who was the daughter of one of Ukraine’s most famous folk artists, Marfa, who lives in Kiev. (The painting below was a the painting we had liked of hers from the museum.) Yelana had called her for us and arranged a visit.

The woman and her 27 year-old daughter met us at the lower door of her apartment studio. The studio was one large room, with folk art paintings of all sizes covering the walls. Around the perimeter of the room was a ledge of decorated vases, urns and pots.
There was one large table occupying most of the room. We guessed the table was for teaching art to children.

Oleana explained which paintings were her mother’s, which were her father’s, which were her’s and which were her daughter’s. While the style of Olena and her mother were very similar, the father’s style was more heavy handed and expressionistic. We learned that Oleana’s mother had been employed in a porcelin factory for years painting very exquisite designs. Perhaps the best description is of more sophisticated, more detailed, Pennsylvania German graphics. In World War II she had been captured by the Germans and sent to Germany; she escaped and returned five times. The soviets had her working in the porcelain factory for years and would have her paint special pieces as gifts for visiting dignitaries. She was from a village where all the artists painted in the same style. The village still exists in eastern Ukraine. Marfa is 86 now and doesn’t paint anymore so Oleana is trying to arrange exhibitions to show her work (and want us to take pictures inside the studio.)

While Olean was carefully showing us all the paintings, Olya and Andry were a few feet outside in the apartment’s playground. Actually, to be factual, they were climbing the cherry trees all around the playground, ignoring the slides and swings. Andry would climb high and get the ripe cherries and Olya would eat them. I came out to check them and Olya’s hands were covered and her mouth dripping in cherry juice.

When I came back into the studio Oleana had just brought out a painting her mother did of a large, stylized cherry tree. Perfect. Pippa and I agreed that while we liked all the work we had been shown, we hadn’t found one we would enjoy on our walls. This cherry tree painting however was one we’d like to own; it also has a symbolic meaning for us.
We stayed only for a short time longer to see Oleana’s daughter’s work, who studied graphic design in art school. Very talented and different from her mother and grandmother. Her work was not at all painterly but large graphic, representational shapes that told a story. As we were leaving she brought out something else she was starting to work on – hand painted traditional paintings.

After we left, we went downtown to make prints for Maria from all the photos we had taken when we visited their village. Like any American city, Kiev has dozens of places to make prints from CDs. We went back to a place next to the Mac store we had been to a couple of times. The shop made the prints and also made the passport photos of Andry we will soon need. We first bought some more new clothes for Andry so he would have a different shirt than the Ukrainian football shirt we had given him. No big deal, but in a few years he might rather have some other shirt in his photo.

I’m not suggesting that we are trying to erase his Ukrainian roots however. On the contrary, we want to keep his history alive: we visited his biological parents and family; intend to help them if we can; bought them a cell phone so he can stay in touch by phone and we’re paying to have Maria and Nikolai brought to Kiev to get both their teeth fixed and footing the bill for the denture work.

Well, after the prints were finished we went back to the apartment to cook dinner. The children told us they are tired of eating in restaurants and wanted to eat at home. I cooked a pork roast with roasted beets, potatoes, carrots and onions. Pippa made a pot of Ukrainian borsch to have for lunch tomorrow.

I had bought a DVD player (the fancy apartment had a big flat panel TV but no DVD player). I had let the kids each buy three movies, all in Russian. (We want to have movies at home in Russian so Andry can continue to hear the language. Olya has totally forgotten it.) But I screwed up and let Andry buy a scary vampire movie. Since the packages are in Russian I couldn’t tell what it was really about. It scared Olya (back home I would never have let them buy it) and she slept with us last night.