ABOUT THIS SERIES
Sun-Times Sunday news editor Marcia Frellick and her husband, Dan Kening, spent
a month traveling halfway around the world — and through miles of red tape — to
Odessa, Ukraine, to adopt their son, Eddie. This is the story of their quest.
THURSDAY Plans for a daughter change quickly as they meet their new son.
FRIDAYHospital stay extended; close encounter with an angry, drunk man.
TODAY Missing documents, a judge’s decision.
PART THREE
PUBLISHED IN THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Sunday, Sept. 26
THURSDAY, AUGUST 5
The courthouse looks like a place where crack deals are made, not prosecuted.
We stand in the parking lot outside what seems to be an apartment building for
an hour, rocking back and forth on our heels, making small talk, then move
inside. Crumbling plaster, peeling blue and purple paint.
We sit on a bench in the dimly lit hallway for another hour making patterns out
of the spider webs, sitting in complete silence, watching people come and go.
Our translator, Misha, comes out and tells us the judge won’t see us until 3
p.m. (it was 10 a.m. at that point).
This was starting to sound like the Wizard of Oz: “Go away! The wizard will not
see you.” I had sort of imagined it would be like that. We would go before the
fiery head and say “Please, sir. We have done all the things that you asked for
the last 10 months and all we want is to go home.” And the fiery head would yell
“SILENCE!”
So we return at 3 and get in fairly quickly. Dan says he is more nervous than he
was on our wedding day.
We sit next to our translator and across from us are representatives from the
orphanage.
The judge is behind a big desk in an open-collar, short-sleeve shirt and looks
to be in his 50s. I could imagine Dan would be grumbling about why he had to
wear the tie when the judge is dressed casually.
The only picture on the judge’s desk is one of himself smoking a pipe, which I
found kind of amusing. He flips through our documents and turns to Dan, who
stands up to answer two questions about finances and health issues.
Then he turns to me. I stand up and focus on the speech I’ve prepared.
Patronymic. Patronymic. Patronymic. But he asks only whether I agree with what
my husband has just said. I say “yes” and add “absolutely” just so I get to say
more than one word. He agrees to waive the 30-day stay, and we’re done.
Ed and Mary go next and have the same good fortune. They will be going home with
their beautiful two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. So it’s back to the cafe for
our final meal together. Afterward, we pack.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 6
Today we bring the clothes and shoes that we will take our kids away in. Our
interpreter gives us the bouquet of roses we are to give to the orphanage
director (always odd numbers of flowers, under Ukrainian superstition, otherwise
you have just presented the bouquet of death or some
thing.)
The nannies who worked most with the child get them dressed and ready to go, and
it’s an emotional time for them. They know a better life awaits, but they can't
help but want them to stay. They wave goodbye all the way down the hall.
Outside, we stop carrying Eddie and let him walk through the big green iron
gates. He just wanted to know what’s on the other side of the street. Our
thoughts were a little further down the road.
And now it’s time to jump in the car. Eddie seems to love cars, so he goes right
in.
It would be seven hours in the car on my lap driving on a road last repaved
under Stalin with shock absorbers likely purchased about the same time.
We were told to buy two towels in case Eddie lost his lunch. We thought we might
need one of those for ourselves.
I can only imagine the thoughts going through Eddie's head:
“Hey, what happened to all the short people?”
“I left a perfectly good orphanage to watch these goofs make monkey faces at me
and try to tickle me to death?”
“By the looks of these guys, they couldn't make a decent borscht if their lives
depended on it.”
We arrived back at the Sasha-Tasia place, and Eddie survived our first day of
parenting.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 7
Finally we get to do some sightseeing. We are overwhelmed by Kiev’s elegant
architecture — gold- and silver-domed Orthodox churches often painted in pastels
— and gleaming monuments. On Saturdays, wedding parties circulate downtown to
pose for photos by the most scenic spots.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 8
We called Ed and Mary at their host family’s home and arranged for our drivers
to take us to the zoo.
Eddie loved the petting zoo where you could serve specially made cones with
scoops of vegetables to the pigs and goats. We suspect Eddie may be part goat.
He loves to tear up newspaper and eat it.
We went back to our host family’s house and met with Lana and Tanya, who would
prep us for our meeting at the U.S. embassy the next day. Lana asked us a
question that just about sent me into cardiac arrest. She said: “now, you have
your income tax statements and have filled out your forms for the embassy,
correct?” The color drained from our faces. We were never aware we had to bring
these documents with us.
So it is 7 a.m. Sunday in the United States, and we need our tax statements for
the last two years. There are only two places they exist — in our files at home
and in the offices of our Chicago coordinators. Our Chicago agency is closed,
our local coordinator is out of town, and my brother is out of town. So we leave
a frantic message with our neighbor. Thankfully, we had also left him a key.
Tony gets the message soon afterward and is saddled with looking through our
files with categories such as “stuff to keep” and “letters” to find the tax
returns. Let’s just say they weren’t under “T.” And our departure date is riding
on his finding them. We wait. Eat. Walk. Watch TV. Think of backup plans.
By 11 p.m.Kiev time, we finally get the word that everything’s OK.
MONDAY, AUGUST 9
We had one medical check left to go and then our appointment with the U.S.
embassy. Little Eddie needed to emigrate.
The night before we started to fill out the forms with information about
ourselves — jobs in the last 10 years, aliases — then realized they were asking
about Eddie. Job: Toddler. Aliases: “Fast Eddie.” Eddie “Fingers” Kening, “Eddie
Spaghetti.”
We got to the embassy and though the lines were out the door we mysteriously got
to go right to the front.
During the interview, they asked about our stay and when we told them it was a
little longer than we hoped for but pretty close to the 3-week estimate, the
agent told us we were lucky, that the usual wait is more like 3 to 6 weeks.
We walked out and the appointments, the notaries, the medical checks and the
hospital visits were all over.
All we had to do was get on a plane the next day. We went back to the
Sasha-Tasia place where they would make one last attempt to fatten us up for our
long journey home.
They are generous hosts, but we are limited to a few rooms and now that we’ve
added a son, the walls are closing in. We spend most of our time in a room with
a TV and a few toys. When Eddie cries, we shut the door and hope Sasha, who must
sleep during the day, won’t hear.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 10
Nothing was going to bother me this day. Nothing. We were going home with our
son. Or at least to Amsterdam and then home. Because of the flight times we had
to stay overnight there. We were on the same flight as Ed and Mary that far so
we strolled our kids around the Kiev airport and nervously waited to see whether
storms rolling in would mean yet another long wait.
But we left on time, had an uneventful flight, landed in Amsterdam and said
goodbye to our new friends who were heading on to Rome, and proceeded to
passport control.
The agent took a look at the red passport, peered way over the counter and shook
his head. Eddie didn't have a visa for Amsterdam. We were OK to leave the
airport, but he wasn't.
Actually, we knew this could be a problem but getting him a visa for one night
was way too complicated and would have delayed our departure. He told us to wait
on a bench while he asked his supervisor whether he could write a special
permit. I was getting visions of Tom Hanks in the movie “The Terminal,” where he
starts wearing his bathrobe around the airport days after they won't let him
leave. But I guess the supervisor realized that Eddie was unlikely to get a job
in Amsterdam — after all, his only real skill was putting sand in small buckets
— and he wrote him a one-day permit.
On to a nice hotel with thick, navy carpeting, hot water, big bathtub with jets.
We were one big happy family.
Wednesday, August 11
This was the flight I was nervous about. We thought we had reserved a third seat
for Eddie, but that's not what KLM thought. At least we had a wall in front of
us and we were the only two in our row so he had a place to play at our feet.
I felt like a DJ who had to prepare 7œ hours of airtime without a single break.
We had things that rattle, sing, jump and honk. We had books and sippy cups and
food and what turned out to be our saving grace — Cheerios. Eddie can eat these
one by one into perpetuity. I think he ate them all the way to Iceland and then
fell asleep in my lap.
The air pressure didn’t seem to affect his ears. Strangely I think it destroyed
Dan's sense of smell.
I would wake up from a nap and say, “um, his diaper's dirty.” Dan would scrunch
up his forehead and said, “It IS??!!”
We landed just about noonChicago time, breezed through customs, got our baggage
and the big doors swung open on the welcoming hall.
First I saw my mom waving and signaling my sister-in-law, who was getting the
arrival on video and fighting back tears. Then Dan’s mom and the two
grandfathers started waving from the other side of the crowd.
All eyes were focused down toward the floor at an overwhelmed little boy in a
stroller, his brown eyes big with wonder, his three middle fingers anchored in
his mouth making increasingly intense sucking noises.
The adoration had only just begun.