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. FRIDAY Hospital 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 noon Chicago 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.