We came into Liviv after a long drive from the Carpathian Mountains on an extremely hot day (100 fahrenheit). And mind you, the van has no air conditioning. When the car was stopped or in traffic, the heat was unbearable. The only relief in the back seats was whenever the car was in motion at high speed.
We were so excited to see Liviv. It is considered the most beautiful city in Ukraine as well as one of the most beautiful in Europe. Unfortunately we can’t confirm that. We had no time to see Liviv.
By the time we found our hotel, the “Lion’s Castle”, the sun had gone down and the air had cooled.
The hotel was on a shady street backing up to a large city park. The hotel and our room were charming and very European in feeling. We dropped our bags and went as fast as possible to an internet café to reward the children for being such great travelers on such a long, hot trip.
By 9:30 pm we felt we could pull them away and go to the nearby restaurant, “Seven Pigs”, recommended by the hotel. Pippa and I promised to go back to the internet cafe the next morning so all four of us could play Counter Strike together. The kids had been bugging us to play and we would have this evening if there had been computers available. Pippa and I agreed to come back to the internet first thing in the morning so all four of us could play.
The restaurant was wonderful. Fantastic Hutsul (Carpathian country) food and the most interesting, artistic décor we have seen in Ukraine. Pippa talked to the staff who said the beams, door and much of the decor came from three old mountain houses.
Andry ordered chicken Kiev. Funny, he has always lived in the Kiev region but it was the first time for him to try this dish. While he loves chicken, he didn't like it fixed this way.
I told everyone we were coming back the following evening so I could have exactly the same experience and the same baked pork dish that was very close to “Schweine Haxen”, my personal favorite German meal.
Pippa photographed every inch of the restaurant saying she was getting lots of ideas for our farm house in the country.
We finished dinner with Olya’s head resting on her plate. It was very late.
The children were exhausted. We all fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows on our return to the “Lion’s Castle”.
Monday, July 16, 2007
WE WAKE AND HAVE A TERRIBLE EPISODE WITH ANDRY.
I woke early as usual, showered (in cold water), dressed, grabbed the computer and went outside to the lovely garden and started blogging. It was about 6:am by then.
At nine, I went to help get the children ready to meet Yelana and Vasilly for our 9:30 breakfast date.
Oh boy! This is when the brand new day started to get bad.
Pippa and Olya were up, dressed and ready but Pippa was already frazzled.
Andry had refused to get up and crawled under the sofa bed. He wasn’t playing a game. He would not get out and wouldn’t speak. I tried talking him out from under his hiding place as Pippa had been doing for 30 minutes. Nothing.
Finally, Pippa lifted the sofa, I got Andry’s foot and dragged him out from under the sofa bed. But he would not move. He had his face covered and he was in a classic fetal position. I tried again with humor. That didn’t work. I tried reason. That didn’t work. I tried strong voice, also with no response. I was ready to pick him up and put him in the tub but at the last second, Andry jumped up, grabbed his clothes and went into the bathroom, slamming and locking the door.
Yelana showed up and we explained the situation. We waited to see if we would need to force the door open, but after a long time, Andry came out.
Yelana asked if she could speak to him alone outside. Sure, why not? Give it a shot because we’ve run out of ideas and patience.
Twenty minutes later Yelana came in to talk to us. She said Andry had broken down and cried very hard, something he hasn’t done since he has been with us. He told Yelana that his problem was the relationship Pippa and Olya had––it was extremely close, and he was jealous, and he wanted that. He said his relationship with me (Ron) was going fine, but he wanted what Olya was getting from Pippa. This revelation hit Pippa and me like a ton of Ukrainian cobblestones. How could we have been so stupid, so egocentric? We’re asking Andry if he is sure he wants to be a part of this family while the poor boy is struggling to find a way to worm his way into our tight family. I feel very ashamed.
Thinking about this, we remembered he had seen Olya and Pippa together in Spain. At that time we were not in any position to give special inclusive, parental-like attention to Andry. While we had applied to the US government for permission to adopt him we did not yet have approval and didn’t yet have Ukrainian approval. It would have been presumptive of us. We also might have offended his wonderful Spainish host family that had hosted him every summer and winter holiday for five years. He has a close relationship with them.
But now of course he is with us, trying to find his place in our family. Olya, Pippa and I already share a history and language. We could easily understand if Andry was feeling left out. We also have no idea if Maria had ever given him affectionate, “motherly” love or demonstrative affection. We certainly do give Olya a great deal of love and affection and she reciprocates. She and Pippa also look so much alike, far more so than Olya looks like Maria, her biological mother. Olya frequently wants she and Pippa to dress the same. It’s easy to see this is a very big challenge for Andry.
Poor boy. He has seen so many stressful things in his short life. He’s lived in three different orphanages since being taken from his parents and separated from his sister; he’s seen his bio father beat his bio mother up in a drunken rage, including the time he pounded out her front teeth. A year ago, while visiting Maria and Nikolai, Andry was brave enough to call the police to report his bio father when he was in another rage.
While in Spain visiting his host family he saw a healthy family in action. While they treated him like their own they were not able to adopt him. After each visit with them he had to go back to his Ukrainian orphanage where he had only himself to rely on. He has never had his own forever-family that would love and take care of him every minute of every day. Adjusting to this concept has to be tough.
Shame on us for not better understanding this.
We must understand what gigantic stresses Andry is going through: he has to learn another language, a totally different family routine; he has to deal with competition with a sister who has a head start on him; he is leaving his biological parents which must fill him with grief, sadness, anxiety and relief at the same time. No more comforting routine of visiting his Spanish host family. He is surely fearful of his immediate future with us in the USA: new school, new friends, new environment, new parents, new everything, in fact. Pippa and I have to find a way to help him through all of this. When he smiles, which is often, he is a beautiful child and he lights up the room.When he and Olya are playing together, which is most of the time and never any conflict between them, it is a heart-warming sight.
We all sat down for breakfast outside in the garden.
Pippa make sure she was sitting next to Andry. Andry was calm now. I tried to keep the atmosphere light and made suggestions for the day. Internet café, of course. Perhaps a movie. And maybe we could all go take photos in the old cemetery here in Lviv which is reputed to be the most beautiful in Europe. There were positive nods from the children and Pippa, but a very worried look from Vasilly and Yelana.
WE LEAVE TO ESCAPE THE POISONOUS PHOSPHOROUS CLOUD; WE GET TRAPPED IN A MONSTEROUS, MILES AND MILES LONG-TRAFFIC JAM AND DRIVE FOR 16 HOURS BACK TO KIEV.
Vasilly went into a long soliloquy in Russian, punctuated with big hand waving gestures. Yelana translated that last night there had been a major catastrophic event only forty kilometers or so from Liviv. She explained that a large number of railway storage cars filled with phosphorous had spilled and a great poisonous cloud was formed over the region, which included Liviv. Fourteen villages next to Liviv were being evacuated. The authorities were telling people in Liviv stay inside with the windows closed.
They were urging us to leave the city immediately and head south, back in the direction we left the day before. Knowing that Vasilly was a witness to the explosion at Chernobyl, we had no choice but to take his advice. Vasilly reminded us that when Chernobyl happened, the authorities keep the terrible news from going public for several days resulting in even more deaths and illness. He thinks the authorities may be minimizing details in this disaster as well.
We left breakfast and threw our bags in the car and headed south toward Ivano Frankviske, on the same highway we had used to come into Liviv. The day had grown hotter than the previous day. Much hotter over 100 fahrenheit.
After about twenty kilometers we came onto the longest traffic jam I have ever seen in my life and I have seen some beauties. This one looked lethal.
Vasilly took the van on the shoulder and raced down the long line of mostly trucks until he came to another line of mostly cars and small trucks veering off into a field onto some kind of small path. He pulled into this line as it weaved across open fields and then onto what must have been a horse and wagon path. In these small villages there are many horse and wagons still in daily farm use.
The path was very narrow with the small trees brushing each side of the car. The pathway was thick dust and muddy potholes and seemed to weave behind the backyards of houses in a small village. Soon, this line of vehicle also came to a halt.
But Vasilly backed up very rapidly before we got trapped and we joined another line of vehicles that were taking another equally risky path. Had he not done this, we could still be trapped in that dusty field. This, we realized, is how it is in a disaster. We only had information from the car immediately in front of us and the car behind trapped us from moving backwards. You must take a chance and act boldly. You will either have good luck or rotten luck; there is no in-between.
We continued in thick dust with the windows closed until we couldn’t stand the heat any longer and opened the windows until we couldn’t stand choking on the dust any longer. Some vehicles were having a tough time getting through some of the muddy sections, but with many tries they pulled out of the mud and the line continued.
This went on for a long, long time, I started planning what we would do if this maneuver failed. But with hope fading, we came onto a very broken concrete road that soon turned onto an asphalt highway. Miles down the road, we discovered that we were on the very highway leading to Ivano Frankviske that we had been seeking. Hot, dusty but happy to be where we were instead of where we could have been, we insisted on traveling on for a long time before we could bring ourselves to stop for water.
Many kilometers and hours later we came to Ivano Frankviske. First, a bad move into the center of the city to find a restaurant without success, but finding rush hour traffic instead. Then a turn-around to the highway outside of the city. All this in one hundred and four degrees Fahrenheit in a non-air-conditioned auto with two kids.
We stopped at one of the large restaurants, with a handful of gazebo-like outside eating shelters typical of Ukraine, and with the typical country-style interiors we’ve found all over. But, it was far too hot to eat outside. We went inside where it was not air-conditioned but a little cooler than outside.
Pippa and I wanted to grab a bowl of borsch and hit the road to Kiev. Vasilly insisted on ordering a steak, telling us he needed it if he was going to drive straight to Kiev, 650 kilometers from where we were. He also suggested that if we took our time eating, driving would be cooler an hour or so later. “OK,” your call, we answered. The kids played Simms on the computer, sitting on the floor to keep their computers plugged into the only receptacle they could find.
The rest of the trip was without major incident, thank God. Pippa was sure to always climb in the back seat with Andry. He was happy to be with her and surprisingly, talked in English with her for hours and hours, the first time he had ever done this. After one quiet, dozy stretch from him Pippa asked me to get her book from under my seat. Andry looked at her and in a concerned tone said, “you read?!” She said, “of course not” and the two dived back into conversation.
Then we had a problem with Olya, who was sitting in the middle seat with me (Ron), because of all the time Pippa was giving Andry.
I think this is what we can expect in the foreseeable future. I tried to tease Olya out of her obvious jealousy about Andry tickling her and sing-songing “Jealous Mean-Box”, while absorbing her stronger-than-usual kicks on my arm. I moved over closer to her and she put her legs on my lap and went to sleep, Andry was still chatting away with Pippa in the back seat about his summers in Spain and childhood experiences. Pippa was just eating up this special time with Andry.
I settled back, and as we whizzed down the highway at 100 kilometers an hour, took pictures of cows and cow-watchers on the side of the road.
The sun set, and crossed my fingers that we were dodging the phosphorous cloud that was––maybe, maybe not, heading our way.
By the time we got home Andry was asleep with his head in Pippa’s lap.
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