Of faith healers and faith
One of my earlier memories from the good old Soviet days is how we used to line up in front of the old TV (one of these giant dinosaurs, complete with legs and rabbit ear antennae, everything) to watch either Kashpirovski stare at us from the screen or hear Gorbachev wax on about perestroika or the cold war. The distortion of the picture on the TV screen would be fixed with a few hardy thwacks, sometimes on the top, or, depending on the direction in which the distortion lines went, on the respective side. Some of the mementoes that my mother saved from those days include a “letter” to president Ronald Raegan scribbled by me at the ripe age of about 3 or 4, when I had just recently learned my letters (so there were some legit words, like my own name, in addition to just doodles), telling him to stop the cold war and promote the friendship of our nations. Another priceless keepsake is a candy dispenser I made in the form of Mikhail Gorbachev, complete with the birthmark on his bald head. Yes, I was a creative child, thank you.
Another early memory is that of the morning on December 7th, 1988. I was in kindergarten and we were just sitting down to lunch: it was some kind of soup. I remember that Inessa and I went for the same heel of rye bread and then ended up splitting it magnanimously. My bowl of soup had a large potato in it that soon started splashing about in the liquid. I thought Inessa was rocking the table: she had done it before, except this time it wasn’t funny, she was going to upset all the plates. I still remember the smell of that soup, and then the panic on the teachers’ faces and in their voices. I remember being told to grab on to the person’s hand on the right and to go outside as fast as we could. It was a sort of a game for us. The reality of what had happened did not hit when my mom took me home and I saw her little Chinese statuette on the floor, beheaded by the hard fall, or the crack in my living room wall. Nor when my mom refused to let me out of her line of sight for the rest of the day, and so she took me to work with her, where she feverishly dealt with issuing visas for all the foreign aid workers. The reality hit when I was taken to my aunt’s house, and my cousin, my aunt and I huddled by the space heater in front of the television watching the gruesome scenes of other people’s reality unfold on the news. Not the best of of my childhood memories, but most certainly one of the most distinct.
I guess it is that time of year: time to remember.
Another early memory is that of the morning on December 7th, 1988. I was in kindergarten and we were just sitting down to lunch: it was some kind of soup. I remember that Inessa and I went for the same heel of rye bread and then ended up splitting it magnanimously. My bowl of soup had a large potato in it that soon started splashing about in the liquid. I thought Inessa was rocking the table: she had done it before, except this time it wasn’t funny, she was going to upset all the plates. I still remember the smell of that soup, and then the panic on the teachers’ faces and in their voices. I remember being told to grab on to the person’s hand on the right and to go outside as fast as we could. It was a sort of a game for us. The reality of what had happened did not hit when my mom took me home and I saw her little Chinese statuette on the floor, beheaded by the hard fall, or the crack in my living room wall. Nor when my mom refused to let me out of her line of sight for the rest of the day, and so she took me to work with her, where she feverishly dealt with issuing visas for all the foreign aid workers. The reality hit when I was taken to my aunt’s house, and my cousin, my aunt and I huddled by the space heater in front of the television watching the gruesome scenes of other people’s reality unfold on the news. Not the best of of my childhood memories, but most certainly one of the most distinct.
I guess it is that time of year: time to remember.