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The Road Not Taken

I used to think that nothing of interest happened in 1987. No, really, when I look back on my life, it seems like the year that was boringly sandwiched between 1986 (graduated from high school, mother moved away never to live anywhere near me again, started college) and 1988 (that exciting summer in Europe, which changed my life and my personality for the better). But 1987? In the spirit of reflection, I have occasionally struggled to recall what it offered, and ultimately had to refer to my long-forgotten diary. And so, here is what 1987 contributed for the good of the order (after removal of 99% of content consisting of petty interactions with frenemies, quasi-romantic interests, and neverending purchases of Monkees paraphenalia; no names changed due to expiration of statute of limitations):

“Strange: exams are getting closer, but vacation is not. The most disgusting thing is that now I have Friday classes—studying lions, birds, dinosaurs, and French playwrights”.

“Darlene [dorm roommate] moved out and will never return again. And she took the rug with her! (but reimbursed me)”.

Don’t let the ivy fool you. A dorm in the ’80s was a miserable place to be.

“Kerri and Susan are planning to pose nude at the art school. They will get paid $6 per hour for this, which does not seem like great compensation to me. I might have decided to join them if I weighed 60 pounds less”.

“After poli sci I went by the bookstore, looking for some textbooks (didn’t find any)”.

“I am applying for citizenship, by myself. To this end, I had to get fingerprints and photos. I went to the police and took the bus to AAA, because I was too tired to walk.” [I find it ironic that a very shy and relatively busy 18 year old college freshman bravely handled a task for which her adult version gets paid as her day job.]

[Hanging out with dorm neighbors]: “I drank a bottle of wine cooler. Robin drank three.” (Thus is destroyed the myth that I never drank in college)

“Today nothing happened, if you do not count that I sang in the choir for almost three hours, and now have a slightly sore throat”.

“Today I signed a rental agreement for next [school] year. It is a studio apartment with a window facing a brick wall”. [How I loved that apartment! I lived there for three years]

Apartment building on the right. Brick wall of the neighboring building one the left.

“I was kicked out of class. Five minutes before the end, zoology professor told me to go out into the hallway because I was talking throughout the entire lecture. Class was incredibly boring, I have a cold, so perhaps I was talking louder than usual.” [This is still in the top three of the most embarrassing things that have happened to me in my lifetime]

“I have been wearing contact lenses for five days now. Good thing I do not have three eyes!”

“I think that when I will finish my paper about the League of Nations, life will immediately become better”.

[Five days later] “Although I already finished my paper about the League of Nations, life did not become immediately better”.

“Today I was registering for next term. I wanted to take American politics, something about “person and the law”. Of course, everyone is attracted to the magical word “law” like bees to honey. Some of us want to become lawyers… Class was closed and I ended up 31^st on the waitlist. So I registered for 20^th century Russian literature, just in case. If we will study Bulgakov, that’s OK, but what if it’s Pasternak, Nabokov, or even Solzhenitzyn?!” [There was neither, or maybe I just forgot]

“Life is flashing, like in a silent movie. Should I sum up the year? I got Davy Jones’ autograph, became an American citizen, started working. A lot happened this year, but overall I am happy that it’s over”.

But not so fast! Buried in the middle of that year, on July 20 to be precise, is an innocuous paragraph about my grandmother calling, overwhelmed after hearing Sergei Dovlatov on Russian language radio program. He was reviewing the edition of the almanac of the Russian writers abroad, in which two of my stories were published: “Supposedly he said that he was utterly stunned by the stories of an 18 year old who not only did not forget her native language but instead perfected it. To top it all off, he compared my writing to early work of Paustovsky [a particular favorite of mine, a writer of great lyricism and sensitivity, and a Nobel prize nominee, no less]. Funny enough, just the previous year I was lamenting how unlike Paustovsky is my prose. And then I wrote a story that raised me to these heights, if Dovlatov is to be believed. And I believe him, because he gains nothing by flattering me. He does not know me, unlike relatives, who are impressed by my writings simply because it’s me. Overall, I am awfully pleased.”

Konstantin Paustovsky – Wikipedia

How did it come to pass that this highly complementary review of my work by Dovlatov, one of the most prominent Soviet émigré writers, a friend of Joseph Brodsky, only the second Russian (after Nabokov) to have been published in The New Yorker, was not just the most significant event of that year, but not the turning point in my life? Why did I not think to contact him, make a connection, ask for advice? I have always maintained that I am most assuredly not a writer—why was this not the validation I remember desperately needing?

Sergei Dovlatov – Wikipedia

Dovlatov died in New York City in 1990, right around the time I arrived there to start law school. I have not written any fiction since then, and I stopped writing in Russian. This is merely a coincidence. But now, from the distance of three decades, the poetic injustice just seems so staggering. I don’t want to make too much out of it, this road not taken, but today I need to take some time to grieve for the person I might have been.

Sergei Dovlatov – Russiapedia Literature Prominent Russians (rt.com)

Anticipation of happy days is sometimes much better than those days. (K. Paustovsky)

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Pont du Gard and the Plague

In my adult life, I developed a fear of the plague. I blame two fictional sources for this:

The film “Horseman on the Roof”. Apparently it is based on a novel, which I have not read, and is set during the 1832 cholera epidemic in Provence. Something must have gotten lost in translation and/or in my memory, as the latter is absolutely convinced that the story is about The Plague. In all fairness, cholera is pretty nasty, too. The film was made in 1995, and I would have seen it on video some few years later, so I have been frightened for 20+ years now.
The book “Year of Wonders” by Geraldine Brooks. I read it in 2004, and have been *legitimately* frightened for almost 16 years. It actually is about the plague, though the one from the 1600s, not the Black Death of the 14^th century. Which just goes to show that whatever century or whatever contagion, they are all awful[1].

Until literally three days ago, I assumed that the fear of the plague was the same as some of my other phobias, such as the irrational dread of large statues. (Yes, the Statue of Liberty is pretty much my worst nightmare. I choose not to read too much into that…) Turns out, the plague is back.

Actual toilet paper purchased by me in France for no other reason that it was needed at the time. ‘What an auspicious purchase!

I am not making light of it. Like everyone else, I am trying to adjust to the ever-changing environment in which the toilet paper is scarce like it was back in the USSR, borders are closing (like they were back in the USSR), and no one trusts the government as a source of correct information (I think I see a pattern…) Unlike many other folks, I spent the last week in France, and gained some unexpected perspective. Spoiler alert: I think that cancer or work-stress-induced-heart-attack are still my more realistic foes in this lifetime.

I had three modest goals for this past week in the South of France:

To see the newest D’Artagnan statues. Until the last decade, there were three in the world; now there are five. If I had to drive for several hours to a couple of French villages to complete this quest, well, I did. Of course I did.
To see the Palace of the Popes in Avignon, and hopefully locate the mural of Gerard Philippe nearby. Done.
To stop by my old stomping grounds in Nîmes. This did not happen. We woke up on the day for which we scheduled this visit to the announcement that the US borders were closing the next day. Supposedly US citizens would still be allowed to enter the country, but tell this to someone with a different family history. This refugee rallied, got on a train from Perpignan to Paris, and flew out of Paris as soon as Delta would let her on a plane. Home is where the dogs are. And a paycheck.

The last official day of vacation, on the way back from Avignon to our timeshare, we stopped at Pont du Gard. I did not intend to stop there, because I had the most vivid memory of my previous visit there. Yes, it was during “that summer that I spent studying in France” https://oldladywriting.com/2019/06/09/when-did-the-arc-de-triomphe-start-leaning/. It was such a good day! I mean, I acutely remember it as a *Good Day*. It was June of ’88[2], the sun was shining, and I was surrounded by friends. Our summer program included an art class, so some were drawing the bridge. I took two photos, which in the day of pre-digital cameras was the rough equivalent of the 19 I took this second time.

We went to Pont du Gard this past week because it was on the way, and we had time. We waffled a little, because it costs $10+ per person to get into the surrounding area. But if I have learned anything in this life it is that you cannot put a price on regret. So we paid and started walking. And there it was, standing since shortly after the death of Christ, towering through millennia over The Plague, my friends and me, my spouse and me, impassively watching people come and go, sun shining, river flowing, and the aqueduct still standing.

It has been almost 32 years. I have lost touch with all but three of the people in that group. Yet on the last day of my “Feast During the Plague”, I felt surrounded by their ghosts. I have never missed KIES Group ’88[3] as much as I did during that time and in that place!

So, the ghosts of my friends from 1988. The majestic mass of that huge ancient Roman aqueduct from the first century A.D. Spouse and I, having a *Good Day*. And I kept thinking, I’ve had an interesting life. I was fortunate enough to see and be seen at this site twice in the past two centuries. And I am still in touch with three of the people who shared that incredible summer with me, and share the memories of that day. If the plague gets me, I have lived[4]. If the plague gets me, the bridge still stands. Lalalalala….life goes on! And that is how Pont du Gard helped me to deal with my fear of the plague.

[1] Unrelated to this topic, I love Geraldine Brooks’ books except one. I cannot recommend “The Secret Chord”. It is shockingly violent. I would rather read about the plague of any kind. As of this writing, she has five novels out. Read four of them in this order: “Year of Wonders”, “People of the Book”, “Caleb’s Crossing”, “March”.

[2] June 28, 1988, to be precise. I know this, because I had to keep a diary in French for class. Apparently I did not swim, because I felt fat in a bathing suit. But it was still a great day!

[3] KIES—Kentucky Institute for European Studies. Now it’s the Kentucky Institute for International Studies or KIIS (pronounced like “keys”), a consortium of public and private Kentucky colleges and universities which administers a variety of international studies programs in Central America, Europe, South America, and China. It was founded by Murray State University in 1975. Back then, it was just Europe. And it was incredible. That summer changed my life, and unlike many other life-changing events, it changed it for the *better*!

[4] But I am still betting on cancer or death-by-stressful-job. Not morbid, just realistic.

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Sorrow Floats

My former business partner used to say this—“August is a heavy month”. His father died in August, and he was not able to make it to the funeral. August also used to be a slow month in our practice, during which we usually made less money than we wanted (and often needed), so it was logically explained away by this “heaviness”.

Other than those five crazy years with him, during which we had a saying, if not an actual solution, for every eventuality, I am not sure I noticed a particular problem with August. I got married in August—not because of any particular significance, but simply because a hall was available, and friends who introduced me to my husband also got married in August, in the early part of the month, and returned from their honeymoon in the later part of it. And so there is something to celebrate during this heavy month—as of this writing, I am still married to my first husband.

Translated from the original Russian, though, the word can mean anything from the physical or emotional heaviness to heaviness of sorrow, pain, grief. August is a sorrowful month. I am not sure if there are any statistics on what month is the deadliest. I am not sure I want to know. If I just search my memory, the only person I can think of who died in August is Joe Dassin, the beautiful French singer of my childhood. He was 41 in the August of 1980. Fun fact: when I was in labor with my second child, I, for reasons passing understanding, needed to listen to Joe Dassin’s song “À toi”.[1] We brought the CD to the hospital, and my husband had to continuously replay it. Joe’s voice—and that specific song, no other, not “Les Champs-Élysées”, not “Siffler sur la colline”, not “Et si tu n’existais pas”—soothed labor pains. True story![2]

But this past August has been a tough one. I am glad to see the backside of it. I suffered three losses, two actual deaths and an emptying of my nest—neither of which I have been able to process yet; a couple of physical injuries—I am going to lose that nail after all ( the real one), plus a fall that can only be called good because there is only a flesh wound, but still, I missed a couple of weeks of running at the height of training season; and of course, there is that ever present, ever looming, ever unendurable—work stress.

Another phrase difficult to translate from Russian is one my mother used to describe this state of being. It is literally translated as “loss of strength”. I used Google translate, and it came up as “prostration”. Prostration? We do that in church! “Collapse” seems slightly more accurate, but way too dramatic. I would say there is a certain loss of strength, to be sure, but more of a loss of the mind-heart-body connection. The mind is going through the motions (especially during the work day). The heart is hurting. The body is parked on the couch. The body is fairly useless when not motivated by the heart.

But finally, as we also say back in the Old Country, “hope dies last”. I hear it in the voice of one of our dearly departed from this August. I heard him say it at a family gathering quite some many years ago, and whenever I say it to myself, I hear him and see him in my mind’s eye. And that memory-to-mind-to-heart connection is something, is it not? Yes, Sorrow floats[3] and is a short distance away; and wisdom comes in unexpected ways…

[1] It came out in 1976. My son was born 25 years later.

[2] You should have heard me humming Joe’s “Il faut naître à Monaco” when I visited Monaco almost two years ago. The reference was lost on everyone around me, especially all the poor unfortunate souls that heard me sing, but I enjoyed it! Ah, Joe, you left your mark on this world…

[3] John Irving, “Hotel New Hampshire”