This is a tale of two children, one from Haiti, one from Nepal. I wrote about them both in the past year as their parents struggled to get them home to the United States. Here’s an update on their first Chicagoland Christmas.
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Last Tuesday, when Jean Onelien took his 3-year-old daughter Maulissa to the Skokie library, she scooped up a handful of fresh snow and stuffed it in her pocket.
“I want to save it, Daddy,” she said.
It will melt, he explained, and don’t worry, there will be more.
Maulissa had never seen snow when she arrived in the United States this spring. She had never worn a winter coat, boots or hat. Now she dresses for the cold with the thrill of a girl going to a party.
In January, after an earthquake devastated Haiti, Onelien, who left there at 17, fought to get his daughter to Chicago. He went twice to Port-au-Prince, alone, slept on the ground, smelled the rot and listened to the chaos, pleaded with embassy officials for Maulissa’s visa. Finally, in March, he got his wish.
“If my daughter was still in Haiti,” he said the other day, “she probably wouldn’t be alive.”
Maulissa spoke no English when she arrived at the Skokie apartment he shares with his Haitian wife.
Now, he said, Maulissa chatters on in English. Her favorite word is “silly,” as in “Daddy, you silly.”
She goes to a Montessori school in Northbrook, not far from Sunset Foods, where Onelien works as a clerk. The school offered free tuition.
“But I say I have to pay something,” he said. “I will feel better if I make a contribution.”
At school, Maulissa saw a piano for the first time. She loved it as much as she loves snow, so for Christmas, her father bought her an electronic keyboard that plugs into the TV.
Onelien still worries about his parents, who remain in Haiti, where a hurricane followed the earthquake, and cholera followed the rains.
“But I have my smile again,” he said.
He, his wife and daughter eat breakfast together every morning, dinner every night.
“Every time I see my daughter’s face,” he said, “I can see it’s a new beginning for her. She’s really happy to be with mom and dad. And I’m very grateful for being in the United States.”
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Candice Warltier’s daughter, Antara, met Santa Claus for the first time a few days ago at the Roscoe Village Winterfest.
Antara, at 16 months, is a social girl. She laughs easily, dances often and opens her arms to strangers.
But this giant, hairy man? No sooner had Warltier parked her on his lap and backed away to snap a photo than Antara looked up at him, back at her mother, and screamed.
“Her back arched, like ‘Get me out of here,'” Warltier said last week.
I wrote about Warltier in September when she was stuck in Nepal, trapped in a U.S. policy shift designed to cut back on abuses in the Nepali adoption system. In November, after three unexpected months in Kathmandu, she was able to bring Antara home to Chicago.
Warltier says that, Santa Claus aside, Antara has adapted joyfully to an American life. It helps, she realizes, that during her exile in a Kathmandu apartment, she spent all day every day with her daughter.
“In Nepal, it’s a much more simple life,” she said.
Now that she has gone back to work running her own public relations firm, she bundles Antara up for child care, takes her to holiday parties and arranges play dates. One play date was with another Chicago girl adopted from Antara’s orphanage.
So many people have given Antara toys since she got here that Warltier hasn’t bought her a lot for Christmas. She did get her a musical drum and some kiddie jewelry.
“She likes the bling and the dance,” Warltier said.
The only gift Warltier wanted is the one she has: her new daughter, and a few quiet holidays with her parents.
“I am so lucky,” she said, “not only because we made it home, but because she is such a joy.”
She doesn’t like to talk about her own good fortune, though, without mentioning the hopeful adoptive parents still stuck in Nepal, or in the adoption process.
Like Jean Onelien, she appreciates her holiday fortune all the more because she knows she is one of the lucky ones.
