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Requiem for a Friend

My childhood was spent on a quaint little street (which merits its own story) of post-war apartment buildings. My grandparents moved there in the 50s, but by the time I was growing up, it transitioned from being a new construction on the outskirts of town to being the last street of the old town before the bridge to the Motorbuilders plant and the wave of new developments. This location and timing were significant for two reasons. First, as the original settlers grew older and their children, those the age of my parents, starting to move away, our street started losing its children. I lived with my grandparents, so most of my friends moved away. And second, I was sent to attend school at the “exemplary” #37 (where I, rebel and delinquent https://oldladywriting.com/2023/11/11/scrap-metal-fiasco/, never lived up to the teachers’ memories of my mother, socially conscious gold medal recipient) while the few kids remaining in the neighborhood went to the local #57. As the result of these events, by the time I was of school age, I had no friends in the neighborhood or, as we say, “in the yard”. My great good fortune was that my best friend from the yard would continue to visit her grandparents every weekend, and she was more than enough.

The most magical street in any childhood.

My first conscious memory of Tanya was when I was five years old, and my grandmother and I were returning from my first summer in Crimea https://oldladywriting.com/2024/09/15/on-the-train-to-crimea/. Tanya and her mother were also returning from a summer somewhere, I want to say Gelendzhik, which back then was just a Black Sea resort with no palaces in sight. We all converged on the “sausage train” from Moscow, where Tanya and I pooled our toy resources in the aisle. She was two years older than me, but only a year ahead in school because of her December birthday, so she was just about to start first grade.

From then on, most of the memories of my childhood are connected with her. There was the routine of the Sunday mornings (we went to school six days a week, Sunday was our only day off) when I would knock on her grandparents’ apartment door to see if her mom brought her over on Saturday night. She was a late sleeper, so I would hang outside, dribbling a ball or jumping rope, until she came out of the building. There were also all the winter vacations, when we would split our time between skiing around the yard and sliding down various hills on a big metal plate, or watching TV and drawing at her grandparents’. We were never at my house—my grandmother hovered, my grandfather was seeing patients—but Tanya’s grandparents’ apartment was the most warm and welcoming place. Her grandfather, Sergei Ivanovich, was mostly silent and absent, but her grandmother, Anna Stepanovna, was the kindest, gentlest woman I have ever known. God gave her a long life with unimaginable tragedies along the way. It was my privilege to have known her.

Tanya, being older or most likely just being more talented and creative than me in every way, always took the lead, and I happily followed. She did not just draw—she came up with the idea of making a little magazine and we “published” an issue every day during one winter break. In the summer, she taught me various tricks and games to play with a bouncy ball and how to make dolls out of matchsticks and flowers. She came up with catchy poems, made up words, fun nicknames (her son still knows me by the enduring childhood nickname we called each other), and games that transferred our neighborhood into islands of adventure. She turned every outdoor game into a showcase, whether sliding on ice patches or jumping off milk crates. She called the back door to the nearby household goods and services building “mysterious”, and we would spend hours observing to see if anyone goes in or out (no one ever did). With her, the mundane became extraordinary.

Mysterious door; in our childhood, it did not have any signage.

She also instigated most, if not all, of our shenanigans, some more questionable than others: jumping on a mattress on someone’s patio until we got caught and chased away by the owners, sneaking into the training session of the folk circus until we got caught and chased away, running across our tiny street in front of infrequent vehicles until some truck driver stopped and yelled at us, throwing pebbles through the open window of the sewing shop of the household services building… Actually, that one ended badly: the manager (who probably exited through the “mysterious door”) chased us all the way to Tanya’s grandparents’ house, where we ran for safety. My grandmother was over at the time, dragged me home, and grounded me, even though we cried, apologized, and were forgiven by the manager lady. Anna Stepanovna came to our house to beg my grandmother to let us continue playing, but you can guess how that ended. Our piece de resistance was sporadically sending bizarre, occasionally rhyming, always pompous letters from “secret admirers” to Tanya’s great-uncle, an unassuming man whose appearance we found comical (although, to be fair, we never mocked it in our letters). We thoroughly enjoyed composing our outlandish missives whenever the spirit moved us, but the joke ended up being on us—the man taught at a technical school, and assumed that he did indeed have admirers among his female students.

Of course I kept the magazine, all 13 issues.

Because my grandmother liked and trusted Anna Stepanovna, Tanya was the only friend to whose house I was allowed to go unaccompanied. Sleepovers were not common in our world, largely because of lack of space, but one time, when there was a family wedding that my grandparents were attending, I begged and pleaded and was allowed to stay at my friend’s—which was a surprise to her! I was watching a children’s movie on TV when she arrived on a Saturday night, and hilarity ensued. I was preparing for this, she was not, so I take full responsibility for coming up with what seemed like such a good idea at the time, setting an alarm clock for the middle of the night and putting it under her grandfather’s pillow. It was the only time in my life I was swatted by a belt, which I richly deserved. It was also the only sleepover and probably the most fun and memorable night of my childhood.

I envied Tanya to some extent, but it was more of an admiration. She was a beauty, blond and blue eyed, tall and willowy. She was a ballet dancer in childhood, and I’ve hobbled on her pointed shoes. As a teenager, she no longer danced, but took up piano. She loved animals; she called her kitten “member of the family” and it was always used as part of his name. She desperately wanted a dog, a dream that was realized in her adult life so much so that her son became a dog trainer. Because of her early childhood in Bulgaria https://oldladywriting.com/2025/05/20/thank-you-for-the-alphabet/, Tanya had real Bulgarian friends who would visit with their exotic foods like lokum (Turkish delight) and gum. Her uncle had an Army friend who was stationed in East Germany and sent exotic toys. In the apartment where she lived with her mother, she had her own room. She was so cool in every way, but she also had an open, sunshiny personality. She was the never a “mean girl”.

I was, by every measure, a very late bloomer, so by the time Tanya became a teenager, our two years’ age gap became more marked. She no longer came to her grandparents’ every weekend, and the time I used to spend in the yard I started spending with my school friends. But she came to say a wrenching and tearful good bye on my last night at home…

There was only one visit after that, when I was 19. It was as if no time has passed. We retraced the steps of our childhood adventures; we had a lot of laughs. Her grandmother was alive and as warm and vibrant as ever. Our lives diverged quite a bit after that, as lives do, regardless of town and country, but we kept in touch. She got a lot less than she deserved, which is unfair and unjust. I will not write about that, for I was not a witness, and it is not my story to tell. Her last text to me was, “I remember the taste [of lokum]!” I always thought there would be more time, as one does…

Memory eternal. December 2, 1966 – June 16, 2026, 10:30 p.m.

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Lost Boys and Girls

*Warning: strong language

Two weeks after I graduated from high school, my mother and I moved to Fort Worth, Texas to join my stepfather, who was already working there. I spent that summer doing nothing but watching The Monkees reruns on TV, going to the record store to buy The Monkees records on the rare occasions when I had access to a car, occasionally going to the library to search for articles about The Monkees on microfiche, and generally daydreaming about Peter Tork. https://oldladywriting.com/2021/12/19/listen-to-the-band/ I was not made to get a job, probably because we did not have a spare vehicle for me to get to one, or maybe also because it was not necessarily our cultural expectation. It was the last time in my life that I was home during the weekdays (not working) and/or out during the weekday not going to work. I have been fantasizing lately about what that would feel like again…

I returned to Fort Worth the following summer a much different person. I finished my first year of college, and it was time to get a job. My stepfather was temporarily in New York, there was some car that was available for my use (though not the infamous turquoise Dodge Diplomat that ended up accompanying me back to Ann Arbor—it was serving its time in NYC as my stepfather’s unsuccessful yellow cab), and my mom and I decided that, since we both love Arby’s and frequented the one on Camp Bowie not far from our apartment, that would be the logical place to work. The manager, Shirley, hired me on the spot, and thus I entered the work force.

It was a typical first job for a teenager (and my only foray into fast food business). Interestingly enough, that restaurant was staffed not with my peers, but with actual adults supporting families. I was somewhat disappointed to not get nearly as many hours as I hoped, but in retrospect, I am not sure I could have handled making sandwiches and cleaning toilets 40 hours a week. I definitely was not nearly as enthusiastic as the rest of the crew, and my status as a college kid rendered me suspect. Until Monique showed up.

Monique was an emancipated minor, about a year younger than me, if memory serves. She was streetwise and tough, a huge fan of Prince, and had the biggest heart. During that summer, we bonded as the only teenagers at that Arby’s—and she was also the only person my age I ever knew in that entire town. We hung out as young people did in those days, going to arcades, bowling, and most importantly, to the movies. We would get our Arby’s discount and smuggle our beef ‘n cheddars and potato cakes in our purses. The two biggest movies for us that summer were “The Lost Boys” and “Adventures in Babysitting”. We saw each of them more than once and quoted them endlessly and randomly.

“The Lost Boys” recently opened on Broadway. Of course I saw it. Of course I loved it.

I generally do not approve of this trend of turning movies into musicals—I want to see something original—and end up preferring the theater version to the screen one, because there is nothing better that live theater. But this one hits differently. The stage version is fabulous, with great acting, gorgeous voices, fantastic special effects. The characters are just as enticing as the original ones. Ali Louis Bourzgui as David sports that familiar bleached blond pompadour/mullet, and is there anything cooler than a vampire who sings in a baritone? They did use one of our favorite quotes: “My own brother, a goddamned, shit-sucking vampire!” (Little brother Sam, played by Corey Haim in the movie, of course, and by Benjamin Pajak on Broadway—this kid is a star and The Star of this show—but not “Great, The Bloodsucking Brady Bunch (Corey Feldman as Edgar Frog in the movie, and Pierce Wheeler on stage—he was the understudy the night I saw the show, and was wonderful). It’s a tremendous spectacle, and I am rooting for it to win all of its 12 Tony nominations.

After coming home after a wonderful Broadway weekend, spouse and I immediately sat down to rewatch the movie. It sure holds up. The Coreys in their first joint venture; Kiefer Sutherland before he became Jack Bauer; and who remembers Alex Winter as a vampire before he joined Keanu Reeves on an excellent adventure? And let us not forget that it, too, has a killer soundtrack (no pun intended). Spouse was particularly disappointed that “Cry Little Sister” was not featured in the stage version. Monique and I used to sing to that, her voice no better than mine (sorry, Monique).

In short, I loved the musical—go see it, on Broadway, or when it tours and comes to a theater near you, for I have no doubt that it has staying power. And the reason it does is partially because the original material was so good—and partially because there are many of us who might not remember what we ate for breakfast but vividly recall the first time we saw “The Lost Boys” in a movie theater. So after you see the musical, dig up the original movie in whatever medium you have available, and enjoy some heart-warming ‘80s vampire nostalgia.

A couple of years after that summer, Monique enlisted in the Army, and we lost touch. Wherever she is, I hope all is well with her. Meanwhile, “Adventures in Babysitting” is still waiting for its live theater version…

Pierce Wheeler (Edgar Frog) after the show.

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We All Scream For…

Is there anything more universal than ice cream? That’s a rhetorical question; I was just thinking how many memories I have tied to it throughout my life, starting long ago and oh so far away…

Like everything in the Soviet Union, our ice cream was *supposed* to be the best. Of course it seemed that way, because we had nothing with which to compare it, and of course I loved it, because I was a child. In my town and in my time, we had two kinds, and two kinds only—“creamy” and “plombir”. The first one cost 13 kopecks and came in a waffle cone; the second one, 19 and in a paper cup. Both came in one flavor, basically sweet cream (not vanilla; all that is white is not vanilla). At this point in my life, I would not be able to tell the difference between the two, if I ever did, but the important difference was that if someone had a 20 kopeck coin and someone else had 5 kopecks, or someone had 15 and someone else had 10, you and a friend needed to only come up with one kopeck to get two “creamys”, instantly making it a party. The constant search for the elusive missing kopeck is a vivid memory of my childhood. On one particularly desperate occasion, a friend and I contemplated selling her baby cousin whom we were watching for as many kopecks as we needed for a “creamy”, but that is another story for another time…

Once my mother took me to the famous ice cream café Cosmos in Moscow. Having never had anything more exciting than the above-mentioned, I was significantly overwhelmed by its choices. I ended up with something covered in chocolate sauce and hazelnuts. Whenever in doubt, I will always choose hazelnuts, but chocolate sauce and I have never really been friends, whether on ice cream, on waffles, or on anything else. The buildup to it was greater than the experience itself because I think I expected something life-changing, but instead, like everything else in our Golden Domed capital of that era, it was hectic, harried, preceded by a very long wait in line, and basically ended up a “creamy” in disguise.

When I was visiting in the waning days of the Indestructible Union, wandering around town with my BFF, I suggested we grab a “creamy” or maybe even a “plombir” for old times’ sake. Her response? Ice cream is not always available this time of year. It was May. Enough said.

[Fast forward to 2003] When I was in Kyiv with some clients, I was very hopeful for some tastes of childhood. Our first encounter was with an American-style ice cream cart that sold the same products that you will find in any American convenience store’s freezer—good stuff, but not nostalgic. But when we encountered a café on Khreshchatyk, my client Peter went inside to investigate, and emerged with several bowls of ice cream—and several forks. Why not spoons, the rest of us asked, quite logically. Well, because forks were offered gratis, and spoons cost extra. Not that Peter could not afford spoons, but it was the principle of the thing. And this, much more than the taste of the ice cream, was enough to instantly remind us of our shared Soviet past.

Meanwhile, back home in Ann Arbor, Stucchi’s opened in 1986, when frozen yogurt was new and exciting. Most Fridays, I would meet up with my two best gal pals for a scoop of frozen vanilla yogurt with chocolate covered almonds (for me; I did not pay attention to what they had), and then we would head over to my apartment two blocks away and talk about boys until late into the night. Best times! And best ice cream, that sadly went the way of my beloved Breyer’s Vanilla Chocolate Almond Swirl Ice Cream. https://oldladywriting.com/2022/01/29/murder-at-the-marsh/

Credit: https://localwiki.org/ann-arbor/Stucchi%27s

Another college memory is a weekend field trip to Barcelona during my study abroad in France. That weekend deserves a story of its own, but at one point, my classmate Lavonne and I discovered a brand of push pop that all these years I thought was called Calypso—but brief internet research revealed that the name is Calippo. It was some kind of tropical flavor that must have contained crack, because Lavonne and I spent all of our pesetas and most of our time scarfing it down all over town. No one else in the group was affected by this temporary weekend madness. I know, it was not technically ice cream, but it was a frozen treat that deserves to be included.

There was also a couple of ice cream producing events which, while I would hesitate to classify as fiascos, were less than entirely successful. One of my selfsame besties owned (maybe still does) a hand-cranking wooden bucket of sorts in which you can make ice cream with the aid of rock salt entirely without electricity. It was a rigorous exercise, taking turns with that thing. We lost steam several hours in, at the point of having created a milkshake, earning every calorie we consumed that night.

Another time I made my own ice cream without the aid of the wooden bucket. Well, it was something about freezing milk and sugar and adding lavender flowers to it. I planted a lavender bush just for this occasion, eagerly waited for it to flower, and was way too impatient to grind them into the milk. It was flavorful, and entirely too chunky and raw, and one time was enough. Not too many, but unequivocally enough. And the bush has since died, though from causes unrelated to ice cream.

Honorable mention goes to the Hӓagen Dazs store at the now defunct Smith Terminal at Detroit Metro Airport. My mom and I had a tradition of getting a scoop of Rum Raisin, to which I added going to the neighboring bookstore and buying an Agatha Christie mystery before getting on a plane. By the time I returned after a few years away, the ice cream shop was gone, then the bookstore, then the entire terminal. Some things have certainly improved in this particular airport, there is no question about that, but I do miss this special custom of my younger days.

This is a Hӓagen Dazs kiosk at a nearby mall. They do not serve Rum Raisin. Are they barbarians?

The most delicious ice cream I ever tasted was in Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. I took a break from my steady diet of brie and borrelnootjes and treated myself to a scoop before ducking into Madame Tussaud’s (I NEVER miss a wax museum. Ever.). It is difficult to recall what was so special about it, other than the almost celestial creaminess. I still think of it as a transcendent experience. I have known other people who have traveled to Copenhagen, and no one ever corroborated this. If I ever make it there again, right after visiting the Royal Treasury which I could not afford to see last time, I will go in search of this amazing ice cream. Or maybe not, because I cannot bear to be disappointed…

A gratuitous photo of borrelnootjes, a complete nutritious meal. I have lived off of it for weeks at a time.

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Nouvelle Vague

Time it was,
And what a time it was
It was . . .
A time of innocence
A time of confidences

Simon and Garfunkel, Bookends

I have been watching the Oscars since 1983. I know this because I did not see the 1982 ceremony, during which “Chariots of Fire” won Best Picture. We were too new to the US and its traditions. Once I grasped the meaning and excitement of this award ceremony, I never missed it to this day. My freshman year in college, I actually found someone in my dorm who let me borrow their TV set for the evening (This was way before one could watch videos on the phone. Come think of it, this was before cell phones—imagine that!) Another year, spouse and I were traveling, and asked my in-laws to tape the Oscars for me. That was the year of “Life is Beautiful” and Roberto Benigni leaping over tables. But I digress…

I used to be a film lover, but over the years, my life has subtly shifted from being a movie person to being a theater person. Over the past couple of decades, I have been heading into the awards season usually having seen only one of the nominees (and it does not matter if there are five as in the past or 25 as there are now), and then I catch the rest on the plane at some future point. Sometimes I happen to read about Oscar snubs and become convinced to see the ones that were not nominated. This is how I came across “Nouvelle Vague”. The name alone was enough. It is about the making of “À bout de souffle” (I don’t call it “Breathless”), as well as the exhilaration of the beginning of that era in French cinema, The New Wave.

I have taken a couple of film classes. In French. French cinema classes. And one actually in France. So my formal knowledge of French cinema, while by no means impressive, is probably more substantial than my comprehension of many other art forms (although it ends before the beginning of the 1990s).

Nouvelle Vague itself is not my era. As it is basically late 1950s to late 1960s, it is before my time. I did not live it, but I did study it. And if I am being perfectly honest, I am not even its biggest, or even middling, fan. I prefer the gentle romanticism of its predecessors, and the romantic nostalgia of its followers. When I saw “À bout de souffle”, I did not really like or understand it. Besides “The 400 Blows”, I cannot name a single film of that period that I like (and don’t even get me started on “Weekend”—I am not sure I need to get to know Jean Luc Godard any better than I already do…) And to me, Jean-Paul Belmondo is “Cartouche”, the lead of a swashbuckler which could have been made by Christian-Jaque ten years prior, even though it wasn’t.

The first (and only) time I saw the original film, it was in a dark classroom on the Left Bank, during my semester abroad. My friend Scott and I decided to pick a catchy phrase or scene from each of the movies we saw. This was the second one. We learned the word “dégueulasse” (disgusting), which for me was probably the most significant linguistic discovery of that summer. There is also a scene where the main characters make faces: happy, angry, surprised. I was constantly asking Scott to do it, and it always made me laugh. When I saw the filming of it in “Nouvelle Vague”, it instantly transported me to that summer.

I really do not know what I would or could have thought or felt about “Nouvelle Vague” the movie without my own cultural references to its origins, with its Belmondo who is genial, affable, and charming in his own way, but not in the inimitable way of Belmondo himself, without my delighted recognition of the film’s veritable parade of the giants of French cinema. I simply cannot be objective about that. My lived experience might be why I cried after this movie ended. It brought back certain sensations, certain states of mind. It reminded me of that magical summer in Paris—well, obviously that. But it also reminded me of the magic of movies, how I used to love them, how thinking of some of them just drops me into the past. I am not entirely sure that seeing “À bout de souffle” itself would have made me feel more in touch with it, if that makes any sense.

This film was not nominated for the Oscar, which these days means less than nothing, as far as I am concerned. The one it’s about, which is considered one of the greatest films of all time, was not nominated, either.

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Belgium, Take Two (or Three)

My return to Belgium was not prompted by any nostalgia https://oldladywriting.com/2025/11/23/whats-in-belgium/ but by the last piece of art from my Bucket List–the Ghent Altarpiece, aka the Adoration of The Mystic Lamb. As a child, I read a book called “Pelike with a Swallow” by Anatoliy Varshavsky, in which each of the 12 chapters is dedicated to a particular art mystery, from ancient to modern times, starting with the self-same pelike and ending with Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais. I might add that I have now seen nine of these art works, excluding one Rembrandt in Stockholm, one portrait in Russia, and a bust of Flora that, as of the writing of the book in 1971, was attributed to Leonardo but half a century later was conclusively proven to be made in the 19^th century by an English sculptor. I might just quit while I am ahead, for how can one top The Mystic Lamb? Even since I learned about it, I have been haunted by its reputation as the most stolen work of art in history and by the fact that one of its panels remains unrecovered to this day.

Ghent seemed the most Dutch of Flemish towns, and the least sunny day of the week contributed to the comparison. There is still enough whimsy, including this thing (a weather vane?) and Gravensteen Castle, where the audio guide offered either a straight history or a humorous version thereof. Spouse and I both elected the latter, and it was an overload of bad jokes. More audio guides should have this option.

At St. Bavo’s Cathedral, we were first treated to an interactive 3-D presentation on the history of the altar which was pretty cool but for an extremely annoying virtual cauldron who led the way from one exhibit to another. The fear of banging into that thing, never mind that it was not corporeal, created a fair bit of unnecessary tension and distraction. Just go straight to the Sacrament Chapel and enjoy The Altarpiece. I have no words to describe it…

I could not miss visiting my old friend Brugge, though I did not recall that the walk from the train station was quite so long, or that the Belfort was not really visible until you are pretty much under it. From the art scene, it is home to the Madonna of Bruges, the only statue of Michelangelo to leave Italy during his lifetime and subsequently stolen by the same villains as The Ghent Altarpiece—Napoleon and the Nazis. Otherwise, Brugge has two fabulous breweries, De Halve Maan and Bourgogne des Flandres. That’s the best part about Belgium, really, that balance of admiring great art and architecture and then taking a lovely break with delicious beer. I bought no lace doilies this time.

I still found Belgium quite lively and warm, in spirit if not in actual temperature. Brussels is a raucous delight, especially during the Christmas market season. In fact, the town’s and possibly country’s biggest fair opened three days after our arrival literally at the front door of our hotel. It was the best surprise ever! The second best was that, despite being advertised as a bilingual town, it is a French-speaking one. Not only did I not need to subject anyone to my atrocious attempts at Dutch, but also did not need to resort to my best foreign language, English.

My mother has been saying that her main reason for wanting to visit Brussels is the Magritte Museum. Well, we differ in many ways. The only painting of his that I recognized there was The Empire of Light, and that was only because my next-door freshman dorm neighbors had a poster of it on their door. The man with the apple face is not there, although the giant green apple sits on the roof, misleading visitors. I feel like it is best to just listen to the Paul Simon song “René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog after the War”. The adjacent Oldmasters Museum is more my speed, with some particularly wild Bruegels and Boschs. I may not know much about art but I know what I like, as John Cleese famously said to Eric Idle.

As far as culinary delights, there are many in Belgium, but the greatest of these is chocolate. I like it. Moreover, I believe in its medicinal qualities. I partake daily. But, the number of chocolate shops in Brussels was so overwhelming that I ended up basically paralyzed with indecision. I bought one sampler at a place called La Belgique Gourmande, set foot into the first ever Godiva store (bought nothing), and ultimately loaded up on Lindor truffles, which are not even Belgian. We did purchase a bag of traditional Belgian candies called Cuberdon, sugary triangles with gelatinous filling. They are not unpleasant, but can only be tolerated in small doses and not often, given their exceeding sweetness. It is no surprise at all that they are not known outside of Belgium.

Since I went to Portugal the first time and did not try any port https://oldladywriting.com/2020/11/29/o-fado/, I make it my business to drink the local beverages of choice and fame. In Belgium, it is a no brainer, for it is the land of beer, though honorary mention goes to the Filliers whiskey, which, coincidentally, was the winner of my annual whiskey advent calendar last year. I rooted so hard for it, but truth is truth—of the 24 samples, it was the best, the smoothest and the most delicious.

I learned to drink beer in Ireland, and Guinness remains the gold standard. It is the perfect beer, and any negative comments on this topic will be deleted. Belgian beer, nonetheless, is still flavorful and delicious. I consumed significantly more of it than chocolate, which is to clarify, a pint or two at lunch and dinner, with no ill effects and great enjoyment.

Beyond beer and chocolate, Belgium is home to two culinary creations: Belgian waffles and what should be called *Belgian* fries, or frites. I am inclined to side with the Belgians regarding the invention of the latter, as their neighbor to the South has enough gastronomic clout. The Frites Museum was a really good time. Not only was it informative and interactive, but the price of admission included a cornet of actual traditional fries at the end. Ask me what I got at the Magritte Museum—so it is pretty conclusive which is the superior place to visit.

I made the same mistake with the waffle as I did when I first came to Koksijde all those years ago, getting the one smothered in chocolate sauce and loaded with other toppings, including a chocolate Manneken Pis. It was overwhelming, and the experience lasted me the entire vacation, possibly beyond.

And speaking of Manneken Pis. I understand he is possibly as much a target for thieves and vandals as the Altar of Ghent, and apparently the little statue to which the tourists flock these days is a replica. Spouse and I visited him at least daily during our stay in Brussels to check what outfit he was wearing, and also sought out Zinneke Pis (the dog) and Janneke Pis (the girl). Admiring some of the world’s greatest art as well as hunting down the sculptures of various urinating creatures—this trip had it all!

I could not identify even remotely any street in Brussels on which I might have walked to the hostel with my roommate all those years ago. I remember only that it was the cleanest room we had during our wanderings, which is saying exactly nothing. And I did not make it back to Antwerpen. On the flight home, I rewatched “In Bruges” and “The Monuments Men”, so different from each other as well as from my actual lived experiences during my week in Belgium, yet somehow relevant and a perfect coda to a great trip.

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Yahrzeit

“It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.”

― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

My grandmother departed this life about a month short of her 102^nd birthday. Whenever anyone says that I have “good genes” and can expect a similarly lengthy tenure this side of paradise, I immediately rush to correct them. First, she was an outlier; we do not have longevity in my family, and my father did not make it to 75. Second, her long, long, LONG life was nowhere near a blessing that people imagine it to be, not to herself and not to her immediate family.

Grandmother lived life with an unshakeable belief that her way was always right. She tolerated no challenges to her authority, even in little things[1]. I would maybe concede that there might be something to this, being myself a person prone to doubts, regrets, and second-guessing, had any of it given her any joy. She often repeated her life’s philosophy: you have to hate yourself, and that will inspire you to be a better person. But even as a child, I suspected that deriving inspiration from self-hatred is not going to be my path in life. Years later, I came to the conclusion that her inflexibility was simply the result of lack of introspection, fear of the unknown and the unknowable, and an absence of curiosity.

She had a hard life, but that is neither an excuse nor an explanation. A lot of people have had hard lives. She lost her father as a teenager—but as far as losing fathers, I can certainly do her better. She lived through the wars—yes, plural, because she would always mention the Russo-Finnish War of 1939 in the same breath as The Great Patriotic War. I once read a book on history’s dumbest wars[2], and was delighted to recognize the Winter War as “Grandma’s War”. But again, the number of people who were affected by wars in their lifetime does not necessarily equal the number of people who permanently lose their joie de vivre. While I suspect that the privations and fear of the dark decade of the 1930s in the Soviet Union were not helped by one of history’s most stupid wars, our family did not lose anyone to it, or even to the massive devastation that followed, and did not live in a territory that was occupied by anyone since the Tatars-Mongols came to town in the 13^th century. And even my grandmother was not old enough to remember that. All of my friends had grandparents (and some even parents) who lived through The War, yet most of them were not forced to wage their private battle for independence against their own families.

A nephew drowned in the 1950s, which seemed to affect grandmother more than the young man’s own mother, my grandfather’s older sister. Grandmother drew the following conclusions from his accidental death: (1) water must be feared, and learning to swim can only lead to trouble (which made my growing up on a river and spending all the summers of my childhood at the seaside that much less pleasurable), (2) a tragedy is sure to befall your children as soon as you look away (despite the fact that the beloved nephew was an adult when he died—it truly was just an accident, a tragic accident that can happen to anyone who is living a life and doing things in the world), and (3) daring to enjoy life after bad things happen to loved ones makes you a bad person. The strongest condemnation that grandmother voiced about her sister in law who survived the death of a son was that “she must have loved herself too much”—too much for what? For going on living? Yes, that was indeed the implication, for loving oneself was the greatest character flaw she could imagine.

To be fair—though fairness has never entered into our relationship—the world has changed quite a bit from the time she was taking life lessons from her own mother in the 1920s to the time she was attempting to impart these instructions to me half a century later, and more drastically still to the present day. Looking back, I have trouble recalling any words of wisdom from her which I have stored away or applied to any situation in my life. There was always a lot about decorum, much of it so embarrassing that my hand does not rise to share it here. There was quite a bit about appearances, equally outdated and, not surprisingly, heavy on body shaming. But nowhere did she stand out quite like she did in teaching me basic homemaking skills: plucking chickens[3], scrubbing floors (on hands and knees—never make it easy by using a mop), darning socks, etc. Maybe the last one is not entirely useless—but that is mostly because I enjoy the needle and thread crafts. Still, her point was that no one will marry a girl who could not do these things. Despite my reasonable and consistent academic success, she labeled me quite early on as a potential failure in life due to my lack of enthusiasm for cleaning supplies over books, and for my unswerving commitment to learn how to enjoy life rather than endure it.

Food was the biggest and, in retrospect, the only language of love that she spoke. Talking about anything beyond the basic needs was simply not done. Are you hungry? If yes, have some bread with either salt or sugar. If not, go play outside. God, she was so tough when she was raising me, and in the era when it was no longer really necessary! She was always wearing an apron, always stirring a pot—no, literally, an apron was a part of her “uniform”. In her later years, when she would come to my house, she would bring an apron to wear around. Later still, she would bring a change of work clothes, an old dress that was no longer fit to be seen in public. My house was never clean enough for her.

She always made sure that I was well fed and clothed, and my physical needs were always met. She never said I looked nice without adding that something was off in my appearance. She never told me I did something well without mentioning that someone else did it better. She often lamented that I was not living the life that she felt I should be living in order to make her proud. I never tried hard enough, and I never measured up. I lived with her until I was almost 13, and it was possibly the greatest disappointment of her life that there came a day when she lost control of mine.

To many, she was a good friend, loyal, present, and generous. She never forgot a birthday and never refused a request for help. She kept in touch with several generations of acquaintances, neighbors, and distant relatives. Her tirelessness, which did not flag until her 90s, was remarkable, and I continue to hope that I inherited a sufficient fraction of it.

She outlived all her friends and most relatives, including some who were much younger. Only a handful of people remain who really knew her. There were some good times; I am deeply sad that there were not more.

[1] There was one thing—she did not monitor what I read, either among the books we had at home or the books I would pick up from the various libraries I frequented. Her loss of vigilance on this front was my saving grace, although she did think that I spent too much time reading and not enough outdoors.

[2] Stupid Wars: A Citizen’s Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous Revolutions, by Ed Strosser and Michael Prince

[3] Did my aversion to poultry start in childhood? Over the past few decades, I worked my way from observing grandma burning feathers off chickens with a blowtorch to experiencing mild nausea at so much as a sight of a cooked chicken breast. It seems to be socially acceptable to be teased about this; I am happy to provide this cheap laugh.

Grandma’s teiglach. I have never tasted it anywhere else, and I do not make it nearly as well as she did.

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Always Nordic, Never Alpine

Pandemic winter is both harder, because there is no place to go, and easier, because there is no compulsion to go places. I briefly interrupted my hibernation on a Saturday afternoon to engage in some cross-country skiing. It was more like “cross-yard”—in fact, it was exactly that, because I literally skied out of my backyard and around the subdivision where I live. Very Old Country. Driving to a specified and possibly paid location just to ski around seems entirely too bourgeois, unless one is on a holiday.

This is me, starting out in my actual back yard.

I would not say I was skiing before I was walking, but I certainly do not remember learning to ski. It was just something children did all winter long, along with sliding down every snow drift and every patch of ice in our path. All my skis in childhood were the kind that did not require special boots, but the type where you just slide your foot into a rubber band, and another rubber band goes around the heel (and sometimes not even that). You put your “valenki” onto the rubber piece, because “valenki”, being just felted wool, are very slippery (Although I was always made to wear galoshes over mine. I come by my indifference to fashionable footwear honestly). In Russia, I never graduated to the adult skis which came with special boots that attached to the skis with the metal cage-like fastenings that looked complicated and somehow final, leaving no possibility of escape.

Not my actual skis, but a pretty accurate representation.

In my childhood, my main ski route was in the front yard of our house (so that my grandmother could watch me out of our kitchen window). It was an easy and pleasant morning before going to school during the second shift, until it became less attractive when big garbage bins were installed in my direct path. Occasionally, I was allowed to ski in the big field behind our house, a site of soccer matches in the summer. Both of these have since been sacrificed to progress: the field is now home to an auto dealership, and an extremely shocking high rise is getting built right across from the old two- and three-story apartment buildings. At least the trash bins have disappeared.

These are way fancier than anything we had back in the USSR

Skiing was the gym activity during the 2nd and 3rd quarters of the school year. As a gym activity, it was terrible for many reasons. First, the school-provided skis were awful and literally went nowhere, because they were never properly waxed and got stuck in the snow. Choosing skis in the gym was a predictable pandemonium. If you were not appropriately aggressive, you could end up with two left skis. I usually brought my own skis, like some of the children of Soviet privilege, and because my grandmother was convinced that the school skis were unsanitary disease-bearers. This involved hauling a pair of skis on the crowded trolley #4, an experience similar to riding the NYC subway during rush hour, but with worse smell (some of which was contributed by me, because at one point I had a winter coat with goat fur collar. Let me tell you, nothing, nothing at all smells worse than goat fur, even after it was aired out AND sprayed with Red Moscow perfume. This might explain why I have never found goats even remotely adorable). Guarding my skis against breakage was a nerve-wracking experience for several winters.

When I was very young, we were not allowed to use poles in school—the temptations of wielding them as swords or trying to poke someone in the eye was too great. I am ashamed to confess I was not always able to resist either once the pole ban was lifted.

Second, although gym during the ski season was a double lesson to allow us time to change, returning to regular classroom after being outside for an hour and a half, sweaty and soaked, covered in snow, was entirely uninspiring. In my later school years, I have taken to not returning. Along with a few pals, we would ski away from the pack on the field where we raced in a long loop, right across the roundabout at October Square (luckily, there were not that many cars in my hometown in those days), grab our backpacks from the school vestibule, and keep going. Who knows what kind of a delinquent I might have become had we stayed in Russia? American schools sure scared me straight…

Third, we had to learn downhill skiing. Now, there are no mountains where I come from. In my entire life, I have never lived anywhere near a mountain range of any kind. To me, anything taller than me is a mountain. If I see an incline, it’s a mountain. There was not so much as a hill in either our front yard or our back yard. However, my hometown, like any medieval fortress, is built along a river. The dramatic and terrifying hill, “Friday Descent” (probably referring to Good Friday, otherwise it is a pretty random name) was the location of our Alpine exercises.

Trust me, this is significantly more terrifying in winter.

Although I am not particularly afraid of heights, I am strangely afraid of speed—or, more precisely, of my inability to control myself on runaways skis. Thus, most my training on Friday Descent ended with practicing safe falling, which is the skill that serves me well to this day whenever I am confronted by any elevation while skiing. I either fall immediately, or sit on my skis like they are a sled. Occasionally, tired of rolling over into a snow bank, I would just find an opportune moment while the gym teacher was focused on observing students at the bottom of the hill and ski away on the hilltop, across the roundabout, and you know the rest.

Since I have not attended a gym class since I managed to get an exemption from my last one in the mid-80s, skiing, strictly of the Nordic kind, has been a pleasurable activity. And so, if you see a middle-aged woman gliding across your front yard—or your back yard—one sunny winter afternoon, it just might be #oldladyskiing.

The Old Country. Front yard: behind the fence on the right is where I used to ski.

The Old Country. Back yard: the big wide open field is no more.

Charlie Chaplin Christmas

I am not a total holiday Scrooge or Grinch. I do happily celebrate Christmas. In fact, my family’s most cherished and enduring Christmas tradition is to watch “The Muppet Christmas Carol”. We have not missed a year since it came out. I can recite all the words, just like I can to “The Lion in Winter” (another Christmas movie, though not part of our lore) and, of course, “Chariots of Fire” (entirely unrelated to this holiday, but I never pass up an opportunity to mention it). And a few years ago, I actually went to three churches on Christmas Eve: Orthodox Church for Eve of the Nativity service, Catholic Church because a friend of mine sang “O Holy Night” during mass, and Methodist Church for evening carols and candles. (This feat is not likely to be repeated)

If you are one of the very few people who have not seen this, go watch it now. You are welcome.

Back in the Old Country, all holidays were secular, some were political, and we only read about Christmas in classical literature. The religious aspect of it was merely a relic of antiquity, but we had the rest of it, the tree with all the trimmings, the gifts, Grandpa Frost and Snow Maiden, festive meal with friends and family, kids pageants, seasonal movies and, of course, “The Nutcracker”. It was just entirely conflated with New Year’s. It was the “New Year’s tree” and Grandpa Frost, bearing gifts, was joined, at a critical juncture, by Baby New Year. As a child, I had some vague notion that the pre-revolutionary holiday, while similar to our own, contained some forbidden mystical elements, but never understood why it was celebrated before the actual final day of the year—and what did people then do on December 31, the *real* holiday, if they already spent all of its currency the week before? I assumed it might have had something to do with the old Julian calendar, with its confusing two week delay, which was finally abolished in 1918.

Our first year in the U.S., my mother allowed me to open the gifts under the tree on Christmas rather than December 31, but strictly because I was a tremendous pest about it. She literally told me, “I hear in this country, they open the gifts a week early”! I took that as a very personal victory, and it was also the first time I heard that this unfamiliar holiday was still being celebrated, and in the New World no less. Who knew? We continued to do our tree/gifts/dinner thing on New Year’s Eve.

For the next decade, this holiday continued to elude me. American Christmas always seemed reserved for family, but it was also a part of the larger holiday landscape, so December 25 was really no different than any other vacation day until the big event—New Year’s Eve.

One time in college, I actually spent part of winter break with a Jewish friend. Her kind mother was so concerned that I was being deprived of some family tradition that she took me to a neighbor’s house to at least look at a decorated Christmas tree. It was nice, and I did not have the heart to tell her that the tree alone did not mean much, and it was a week early anyway.

On my drive home, late that Christmas Day, my car spun out on a highway in a snowstorm and ended up facing the oncoming traffic. Some kind man drove me home in my car, because I was too shaken up, while his wife followed in theirs. They kept asking if I had someone to be with me. I reassured them that I did. But, I lived alone in Michigan, my parents lived in Texas and were on a cruise to boot, my grandparents lived in New York and were visiting friends in Atlanta, all my friends were with their families, every single store and restaurant in town was closed, and this was before cell phones. I started watching TV, and it blew out in the middle of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”. It took me some years to learn how the movie ends.

The last time I did not celebrate Christmas was a tail end of a very rough year, probably one of the Bottom Three in my life thus far. My personal life was unsettled, I was fed up with living in Manhattan in a high-rent closet where cockroaches paraded by my futon every morning in search of sustenance (but the joke was on them, because I kept everything, including silverware, in a refrigerator that they have never figured out how to breach), and fed up with school after attending it non-stop in various form for almost two decades. I still lived alone, but finally near family, which was the one saving grace in an otherwise dark period.

The only photo from the unhappiest place I have ever lived.

My mother inexplicably sent me a small live evergreen tree, which was incongruous in my tiny apartment, and incompatible both with my hectic lifestyle and black thumb. Predictably, it did not survive the season.

I cannot remember now what depths of despair made me summon my grandparents all the way from Brooklyn on Christmas Day to my tiny studio. We first went to see “Chaplin” at the movie theater. Robert Downey Jr. was not the action star he is today but a handsome young romcom-ish actor, before all his troubles, and way before he successfully overcame them. The film was beautiful, and he should have gotten the best actor Oscar. I still think of it as one of the biggest Oscar snubs in my lifetime. Back at my place, grandmother fried up some liver and onions on my two-burner stove, and somehow all three of us managed to squeeze in and enjoy both the feast and the company, keeping the window open because the radiator emitted unrelenting heat—but I lived on the ninth floor, so it was safe. If this is not a quintessential immigrant Christmas in New York, I do not want to know what is.

The outside of my apartment building was deceptively nice.

Through the years, that day has acquired the soft patina of nostalgia, but I do know that it looked and felt less like “Home Alone 2” than “Fairytale of New York”, for this was a time before Disney moved into Times Square, and you could literally smell Manhattan Valley, the upper part of Upper West Side, as soon as you crossed into the 90s.

I did not record this particular day in my diary, but sometime before the end of that year, I wrote about how much I hated my life. Within a week, a new year dawned, and it turned out to be one of the Top Three for me. It just goes to show, the darkest hour is just before dawn.

What’s in Belgium?

I have been to Belgium twice, and both times were unanticipated. The first time was a family vacation during my summer in the Netherlands. The second time was during my summer in France. Both trips are well documented in my erstwhile diary, and both make for a read that is astonishing in its testament to the fallibility of human memory, as well as to the weirdness of teenage travels, and in the 80s to boot.

My first trip to Belgium started in Antwerpen (I do not call it “Antwerp”), but we only stopped at the port where a friend of my Dutch mother was a “shturman” https://oldladywriting.com/2025/09/21/poison-fire-and-flood/ on a cargo ship and gave us a cool private tour. We then made our way to the coastal resort of Koksijde—close to the French border, but because I was traveling on a refugee travel document and had no visa to France, France was not available to me then.

It was the first and probably the last time in my life I was at a campground. We (my Dutch mother, little brother, and cousin) came with two tents, table and chairs. As at any resort, there was time spent on the playground, time playing cards and badminton, going to a nearby bar and to a bakery, neither of which I can visualize now, hanging out on the sand dunes, and visiting coastal towns nearby.

I liked Belgium. I was happy to see the signs in French, which I was already studying, along with the Dutch. Past recollection recorded has it livelier, prettier, and cleaner than the Netherlands, but I would say now that it was the novelty and the relaxed vacation atmosphere that made it seem so. The beach, however, did not impress me. I made a note to go to Romania’s or Bulgaria’s Black Sea beaches when I grew up—this goal remains unmet to this day.

We had a lovely day in Brugge (I do not call is “Bruges”), that most picturesque of Belgian towns, despite our car being towed from a no parking zone. We retrieved it and continued to have a lovely time despite the car subsequently being totaled in an accident halfway through our two-week trip. It was a most bizarre thing: we were stopped at a red light in a small town called De Panne (which literally means “breakdown”) and were suddenly rear-ended by an old man who apparently should not have been driving. It was a small European car, but it should have still been visible in broad daylight.

By macabre coincidence, similar to the one when my dog was hit by a car in care of a dog sitter while spouse and I were touring Dachau, the accident happened on our way back from visiting the World War I Trench of Death in Diksmuide. We then arrived too late for an excursion at some castle, were detained by cows crossing a road, and decided to skip our customary café outing to rush back to Koksijde to see “Amadeus” at a movie theater. It was a veritable Appointment in Samarra, albeit significantly less fatal.

I was awed then, and remain to this day, by the composure of my Dutch mother who, after some deliberations with adult family members, made the decision to continue our holiday sans auto. If there was any stress, tension, or worry of any kind, it was either not recorded by me (extremely unlikely) or she assessed the situation and moved on with minimum disruption and maximum determination. I see no similar scenario in which I or any member of my biological family would not completely freak out and flee. There was some talk of leaving me with the adult (21 year old) cousin, but ultimately (after learning that this is not permitted by the exchange program’s rules), all four of us rented bikes and proceeded to continue to enjoy our holiday. Special mention goes to the now defunct bee-themed amusement park, Meli Park, which we visited and found hilarious in its earnestness, and to me, who rode a bike like a [very sore] champ and held her own [at a somewhat lower speed] among the Dutch. And we also saw “Amadeus”.

I managed to visit Antwerpen once more. In college, another Dutch cousin and I went there for the weekend by train to visit her brother (the cousin of the family vacation fame) and his then boyfriend. I remember walking through some heavy iron door into the deafening noise and strobe lights of a disco and drinking a lot (“I drank three mugs of beer and a shot of Baileys”, I wrote then). I remember that we slept through the day and have not a single recollection of seeing anything of the city, but the diary says that “during the day we walked around Antwerpen.” I took several photos of all of us, and for that I am grateful, because “some are no longer there, and others are far away”, as Pushkin famously said (sounds better in Russian). I cherish the memory of that weekend with my Dutch cousins; the city is just background noise.

That same summer, my roommate Kathy and I https://oldladywriting.com/2021/04/10/meet-me-in-sistine-chapel-or-rome-second-try/ did that European train loop which had us crossing Belgium on our way to and from Luxembourg. We missed our connection in Basel and spent the night in the cold train station. The next train to Brussels was full, and we hopped on the one going to Calais (the joys and perils of Eurail Pass!). In Thionville, the train split, and while I was checking to make sure there was room for us, I almost left without Kathy, and we again ended up waiting in a train station. But, there was a vending machine that yielded an extra cookie, so there was that. This is all to say that by the time we finally arrived in Brussels, we were so excited about real beds, hot shower and impending hot breakfast (included) that we decided to skip the city altogether, though we did make it to Brugge in passing, mainly hunting for lace doilies.

I never saw Brussels to this day, Antwerpen remains a mystery, but the Flemish Coast is a very fond memory. To be continued…

Time Shelter: Reminiscence, not Review

“The past is not just that which happened to you. Sometimes it is that which you just imagined”*.

The older I get, the more disappointed—and, frankly, disbelieving—I am that we cannot travel back in time. The more years pass, the farther I get from certain cherished moments, the harder it is to accept the permanence of their departure. Watching Doctor Who, the ultimate wanderer in time and space, I get a vague sense of unease from the episodes set in the future. What is the far future to me? I will not see it, so I am not curious about it and not invested in it. But the past, well, it is full of second guesses disguised as second chances. It is full of the comfort of nostalgia. “It’s been written that the past is a foreign country. Nonsense. The past is my home country. The future is a foreign country, full of strange faces, I won’t set foot there”*.

In “Time Shelter”, Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov creates the perfect scenario for which my soul has been yearning. Gospodinov is Bulgarian, and we are exactly the same age. I feel his story almost instinctively, beyond the words, for he writes not just about the decades he experienced, but as only an Eastern Block Gen-Xer experienced them. It is rare that I hear the echoes of the voices in my head in print.

His first person narrator meets Gaustine, a mysterious psychiatrist who opens a “clinic for the past”. It is meant to evoke recognizable memories for Alzheimer’s patients by reproducing the surroundings of their comforting past lives, but the concept takes off and everyone wants to starts seeking shelter from the relentless passage of time by stepping into the past. “Everything happens years after it has happened”*.

Like Gaustine’s patients, I am not even interested in the historical past, someone else’s past. I do not want to meet Shakespeare (whoever he really was) or see dinosaurs or anything like that. (OK, maybe I want to meet D’Artagnan in his natural habitat, but that is all). And fine, I don’t even want to change anything. I saw “Sliding Doors”. I read “Midnight Library”. I am no longer sure which parts of my life I would want to erase if there is no guarantee that this would not have a detrimental effect. I can no longer fathom what my life would look like today if I had made different decisions at some critical junctures. I might have been spared some pain, but what unanticipated and ultimately avoided sorrows were waiting in the wings? The decisions that I made, I stand by them. The decisions that were made for me trouble me still with the passage of years but regret is useless. And it all basically worked out.

The pool would have been beyond that fence on the right

It is just that the melancholy longings come unbidden in the twilight, and that is when I sometimes wish I could revisit my past. I want to see the sun rise over the roofs from the balcony of my mother’s apartment, for every occasion on which I visited her there seemed special and wonderful. I want to sit in my childhood apartment’s dark room lit only by the lights of the Christmas tree, the only year my grandparents had a real tree and could finally hang up the one ornament that was too heavy for our little artificial tree—an orange, the size and weight of the actual fruit. I do not want to forget either that orange that always stayed in the ornament box in the entresol except for that one brief appearance or my favorite ornament, wild strawberry with a human face. I want to go to the grocery store on the first floor of our apartment building and buy birch juice by the glass and a hard block of coffee with milk, meant to be dissolved in boiling water and not gnawed like I did as a kid. I want to watch my collection of film strips in the hallway of our apartment on the coldest winter days. I want to marvel at the hollyhock mallow plants in our neighbors’ garden in the summer. I want to see again that inground public pool that was filled in when I was just a toddler, leaving behind a weed-covered wasteland—was my memory of this thing even real, a random outdoor pool on our quiet little street? And I want to sit on our old couch and read the books of my childhood. There is so much from that era of gentle stagnation which seems positively utopian in comparison to our present cataclysmic times. “Warning, history in the rearview mirror is always closer than it appears”*.

My favorite part of this mesmerizing novel, which I had to read twice in a row (and even that was not quite enough to fully take it all in; I am yearning to read it again), is when time shelters become so popular that European countries actually vote on returning to their respective favorite past eras. The clinics of the past are no longer enough; entire countries become engulfed in nostalgia. It is fascinating to read what decade each country chooses as representative of the glory of its people, yet still recognizable and not entirely devoid of modern comforts. Some decades of the last century are obviously fraught; 30s and 40s have their devotees, but Gospodinov is not going there. The story is not about that. So many countries choose the 1970s or the early ‘80s (including most of the [former] Eastern Bloc—the whiff of freedom in the air, before reality bit), with only Italy choosing the ‘60s. Bulgaria’s choice is not mentioned, but there is a hint. “What decade would you choose? “I’d like to be twelve years old in each of them.” * That would be my answer, too.

*All the quotes are from Georgi Gospodinov, “Time Shelter”, English translation by Angela Rodel

https://georgigospodinov.com/

[Caption: my time shelter, for better or worse]

Poison, Fire, and Flood

One of the main villains of my raucous childhood was one Shturman. This was, and is, his real last name. I am not changing it here because (1) he is not likely to read this, (2) this unusual name[1] is too much a part of him, and (3) every word is true.

Shturman’s code name was “Douche”. No, listen, in Russian, it just means “shower” (and in French as well, but we did not know it then). And the reason he was “Shower” was because we called him “D.Sh.”, which stood for “Durak Shturman”, which means “Shturman the Fool”. So it all fits together rather beautifully. Since “fool” was the worst insult we knew, literally everyone’s code name started with “D”, but this was the only one that is not lost in translation[2]. At school, he was known as “Shturm Zimnego”, or “Storming of the Winter [Palace]” (the event that, according to what we were taught at school, started the Great October Socialist Revolution), but we did not feel that he deserved so much honor.

All positive comments regarding these flowers will be deleted

My BFF and I met him on the first day of school, September 1, 1975. In fact, we all met each other for the first time that day. It was not a good day for me, for it started out quite literally on the wrong foot. All the girls were wearing pretty summer sandals (my friend’s were pink). I, as was my lot in childhood, was wearing heavy, hideous black/brown booties. I was perpetually overdressed in childhood by my overprotective grandmother; I always had a couple more layers on than anyone else. My mother, who gets incredibly defensive about every single choice made for me not by me, would undoubtedly say that prettier shoes could not be found—and that would be a lie. Everyone else wore common Soviet-style sandals readily available at any children’s clothing store in town. My ugly orthopedic boots were imported. And to top it all off, the trend of sending me off on the first day of school with a bouquet of chrysanthemums for the classroom teacher started that unfortunate day. You guessed it—everyone else had lovely summer flowers. I yearned for daisies, and cannot abide chrysanthemums to this day. But I digress.

Mine and my BFF’s mothers and both of Shturman’s parents went to high school together. Their paths diverged for a few short years after college and joined again on that day when it was discovered that they had children born in the same year (two in January, just a week apart, and one in November), who will be starting school not just at the same time, but at the same school and in the same class. Of course, given that our parents were friends, we were thrown together a lot in those early years, for all the holidays, all the birthdays, summer trips to the countryside, etc. Well, since I lived with my grandparents, I was not allowed to celebrate with my friends, so that was one very small benefit, having a bunch of 50+ year olds rather than Shturman over. And since I was born in November, I did not have to share my birthday with him, only with the October Revolution, celebrated in November according to the “new”, Gregorian calendar.

To commemorate the Revolution, we got a few days off from school—basically, our fall break. In that place and time, it was common to gather for all festivities. One year, when I was maybe in second grade, we all met at my BFF’s apartment. The adults, which consisted of Shturman’s parents and mine and my friend’s mothers (both divorced, but with or without boyfriends—memory fails) went for a walk. Do not be shocked, it was a kinder, gentler time; neighbors looked out for each other and each others’ kids. And it turned out that the real danger lurked within…

The adults departed for their nighttime stroll, and BFF and I hoped to have some fun: sing along to Soviet pop music with pantyhose on our heads, make plasticine animals, read about astronauts and plan our own future space adventures—really, the possibilities were endless. It was a Soviet studio apartment: one room, bathroom, and a kitchen at the end of the hallway. We staked out the kitchen. Shturman pestered us for a bit, at one point brandishing a bottle of wine[3] and boasting that he can drink it all. We called his bluff with all the disdain we could muster; predictably, he did nothing but buzzed off to the room. But our little gray cells were already activated.

As children, we were told that alcohol is poison. As we saw adults drink copious amounts thereof, the unspoken assumption was that it is poison specifically to children. Which budding sociopath came up with the cunning plan of serving tea laced with alcohol to our arch enemy shall remain undisclosed. I know that “Hey, Shturman, do you want some tea?” was not spoken by me. He and I were never verbal with each other, letting our fists do the talking.

My friend made him a cup of tea, which was actually mostly vodka. Shturman, clearly feeling very pleased with himself and his imaginary superiority over us, took a sip, immediately choked and started coughing, eyes bulging. You did not see this coming, right, because you thought Russians drink vodka from birth, and I am here to break down the stereotypes. He dropped the cup, and there was that moment in which you know things can go either way—and this is how they went, with him screaming “I will kill you!” and us shrieking and running. Studio apartment, where are you going to go? Bathroom, of course—the only place with a lock.

Shturman started pounding on the door and screaming, “Come out or it will be worse for you! I will break down this door!” BFF was sort of turning on me: “So, alcohol is poison, huh? He is alive and well, and even worse than he was!” I was just hoping the door will hold, and besides, it was a modern apartment, with a “combined” bathroom, meaning toilet, sink, and tub were all in the same place. We had all the conveniences, and could wait him out until our parents’ return. Eventually our enemy calmed down and walked away, and we settled in the bathtub, lulled into a false sense of security.

Suddenly, a scratching sound alerted us to a new potential disaster. Shturman procured matches and started lighting them and shoving them under the door. He decided to smoke us out, that weasel! But the joke was on him—we had access to plenty of water, and started pouring it on the matches, having emptied the toothbrush glass for this purpose. Neither side was going to surrender, but we assumed that the matches will run out before water. As luck, good or bad depending on perception, would have it, adults came home before either, to a minor river in the hallway, with purses and shoes floating by.

We refused to leave the bathroom until the Shturman family departed. I remember nothing of the aftermath of this event (not even the last of its kind), beyond never getting along with this Shturman until I left the country several years later. I have not seen him since. Wherever he is, I hope he is not holding a grudge.

[1] It literally means “navigator” in Russian. Unusual and kind of cool, if one stops and thinks about it.

[2] For example, we referred to Shturman’s father as “D.P.”, i.e., “Durak Papasha”, meaning “Dad the Fool”. We disliked him because his son looked just like him, and we never saw him as anything other than his son’s father. Yet DP was the only father that was present in our group of friends. Something to unpack here.

[3] Again I remind you, different time, different place, no burden of Puritan heritage.