OLGA

“I am Olga. I will work for you.” This is the first thing Olga said to me at the airport. She is dressed conservatively by Ukrainian standards. A soft turtleneck sweater and a fitted skirt that hems at the top of her heeled boots. We already know of her reputation from other adoptive parents. Olga has been coordinating adoptions in Ukraine for ten years and after fifty placements she stopped counting. She speaks warmly about the families she has helped. She now asks that her families limit sending greeting cards to Christmas and Birthdays, otherwise the amount of mail is overwhelming. Our agency has said they wish they had an Olga in every region.

She is warm with us and well versed in the needs of adopting parents that are non-Ukrainian speaking, unfamiliar with the streets, unable to read the Cyrillic alphabet, jetlagged, and hungry. She tells us exactly what to pay the driver, and that we can pay him in American dollars. Most things we can pay for in American dollars.

Her English is clean and she speaks to us like writing a letter. “Today, I shall take you for groceries. Tomorrow you will do this for yourselves.” She walks with a swing that makes men and women step from her path. We shuffle in her wake like ducklings. We were told our first list of tasks. She checked the exchange rate at a nearby bank and we switch some US dollars into hryvnias. We bought groceries at a small market a block from our apartment. “You will need water.” She grabs two bottles from the store shelf and hands them to me. We've learned it is better to simply follow her lead and save our fumbling for later. She continues, “You will have six slices of ham and six slices of cheese. This will be enough food for breakfast.”

She took us to the “Double Coffee”, a restaurant with menus in English and pictures of the food. We like pictures. Kiev students sit around us practicing their English language skills. Here, we got our first example of how she would work for us. Our young waiter forgot to divide the bill, accidentally including her meal on our check. She sighed and shook her head. She called him back to the table and spoke to him in Ukrainian. Her voice revved louder and faster, leading to a punctuating hand spearing into the air. The young waiter lowered his head and conceded. She continued. Some students glanced over, but turned when she looked their way. After two minutes of explanation from Olga, the waiter walked away to correct the problem. Kathy and I thought she was finished, perhaps the passion was just a characteristic of the language. But a moment later, “One moment, I will go to help him.” She walked to the register where she found more employees to straighten out. She came back to our table completely unflustered. “They tell me he is new. This is a good lesson for him.” She continues, “The youth, they want to make money and not earn money.”

During this process, when so many parts of adoption are dependent on the details, it brings a certain comfort that she will let nothing slip by us. Later we witness her same demand for perfection repeated; when a bank has trouble processing our debit cards, when a landlord has difficulty calculating US dollars to hryvnias, at the airport when we are charged for overweight luggage. We are happy that she is on our side.

When our young waiter returned with the corrected bill she smiles, “Yes, this is perfect.” The waiter bowed respectfully and walked away quickly. In moments we were talking about the miracle of adoption.