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Thank You for Being a Friend

According to my recently unearthed diary (it was not missing or anything, I just do not like to refer to it too often because of the cringe factor), my teen years were full of seemingly perpetual anguish related to various betrayals which I would never recollect but for this traumatizing written record. I was, at times, surrounded by The Mean Girls—but who wasn’t in their teen years? But in a period of just three days recently, I interacted with a variety of people who, in various ways, reminded me how incredibly blessed I have been by friendships in this lifetime.

I auditioned for several parts in a show at the local community theater. I did not get cast for several reasons.
- First, for one of the characters, my Russian accent is no longer convincing. Yes, and I feel slightly stupid even writing this, but I am only identified as vaguely Eastern European to someone with a very good ear. There were literally women on that stage who sounded authentically foreign-born (and weren’t), while I was doing a desperate impression of Crazy Russian Hacker. And I am terrible enough with accents that I cannot just summon it.
- Second, the director decided that the part of a “wanna be lawyer” should be played by a man, because, well, lawyers are men. Triggering, and certainly nothing I have not heard from every corner over the past three decades, but for reasons passing understanding I always expect more parity from community theater. What an unlikely source of optimism! This actually reminds me of a time when I was not cast in another show. It was a dual part—Eastern European mother in her youth in Act I, and then her daughter, a lawyer, a couple of decades later, in Act II. The director called me and told me that I was believable as one but not as the other, and for the life of me I cannot remember which one was which. There is great irony somewhere here, but ultimately, I guess I would prefer to think that I am an implausible lawyer. Frankly, I usually feel that way anyway…
- But, my point in all of this is that I ran into two women I know at the audition. The camaraderie, the emotional support, the cheering each other on and complimenting each other even though we were up for the same couple of parts was absolutely lovely. I have not known either of these fine humans in my youth, so cannot tell with certainty if we are all improving with age or if I am meeting a better class of people. Perhaps a little bit of both, which is both sensible and hopeful.

Not to make it sound like my American youth was misspent in the friendship department, the following day I drove to Hell (a real town; I am not this inventive) for a “Still 50” party of a high school classmate I have never met before. Well, we met during a series of Zoom calls that were held on the regular during the darkest days of the pandemic, and encompassed a group of pals who all graduated within three years of each and now live all over not just the continental U.S., but as far as Hawaii. I count myself more than a little lucky to enjoy the company of almost a dozen folks who knew me at my utmost awkward, clueless, and, in my mother’s characterization, gloomy, and who still willingly interact with me going on forty years later.

The following day I had a lunch lasting several hours with a college friend. We have not seen each other in about a decade, which is a ridiculous and inexplicable gap, but there it is. The old saying of picking up where you leave off without missing a beat is always true with this friend, and has been for over thirty years. I often see people question if there can be genuine, non-romantic friendship between men and women, and this long-standing unshakeable bond between an introverted engineer/scientist and a [seemingly] extroverted lawyer/amateur thespian is a testament to the fact that friendship, like love, is a gift that you take where you find it.
And finally, there is my childhood BFF. She is the one whom I met on my first day of school, and who is the closest I have come to having a sister in this world (I have known my actual sister for a fraction of the time, both in quality and quantity—but that is another story for another time). We have lived world apart for over forty years, and have averaged one in-person meeting per decade during this time. Right now, she is on a road trip to the Russian Near North. From each scenic stop, she has been sending me daily videos, narrating the town histories, telling fun local facts, showing scenic views. They visited Novgorod the Great, Petrozavodsk the capital of Karelia, Murmansk above the Arctic Circle, stopped on the shores of the Barents Sea. I have felt included in this wonderful adventure. In return, I send videos of my foster dog. And beer. And my office. And I feel unbelievably fortunate that my first school friend is still my best friend. She is, and always will be, family.

The wisdom of the years taught me that not all friendships are for always. Some relationships are for a season, and every season has its ups and downs. Looking back, there have certainly been some downs. But, as the song goes, thank you for having been a friend (this is the Russian/Georgian version—not to be confused with the theme to “The Golden Girls”). The ups have, and continue to, fill this life with meaning, warmth, and laughter.

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So Many Books, So Little Time

I read a lot. I have always read a lot. It started one warm sunny summer afternoon when I was five. My grandmother was reading “The Wizard of the Emerald City” to me (Russian version of “The Wizard of Oz”), but had to set it down because, as usual, household chores beckoned (this was some years before she started enlisting me and came to the swift conclusion that my lack of floor scrubbing and chicken plucking skills will never land me a husband.) She put the book on a piano stool (a piano in that time and place was mandatory; I was not encouraged to touch it). I circled it for a bit, unsure of how much trouble I will earn myself for touching a library book, but simply dying to know what happened when Ellie, Totoshka, and the gang encountered the savage сannibal. I picked up the book and managed to put enough letters together to get through the rest of the chapter. In my mind’s eye, I still see how the setting sun was streaming through the windows (we had northern exposure in our one room).

And my most enduring, most comforting, most enriching, most faithful, most influential past time was born. I have never stopped reading, not through years of university, child-rearing, long hours at work. Backpacking through Europe at 19, I would go without a meal to spend what seemed like an extraordinary amount of money on English-language paperbacks in non-English speaking countries to read on trains (added bonus—lost weight). I would choose the most pages for the money, which was not always the best literary value, alas.

My reading practices, however, changed over the decades. As a child, if I liked a book, I would read and reread it. I would go back, flip through pages, land on a random passage, read from that point, look for favorite passages, reread those, and so on. This might explain why occasional quotes from “The Three Musketeers” or “Twelve Chairs” or even Chekhov’s short stories still come to me unbidden, but a book I read a month ago is so thoroughly forgotten that I might not recall either the title, the author, or the plot today (I mean you, “Where the Crawdads Sing”. No offense).

At some point, quality fell somewhat of a victim to quantity. You know those Goodreads challenges, to read 50 books a year? (Well, that’s the challenge I set for myself every year—doesn’t everyone? A book a week, with a couple of weeks off for binge-watching Netflix seems very reasonable.) But why such a rush? Is it because a friend said once, “I haven’t even read 1,000 books!” in a self-horrified manner? But, that was probably about 20 years ago, so I have hit the quasi-magic number by now. Or is it just because there is an embarrassment of riches out there? I do not want to miss out on something great, and so gulp books down like Lindor truffles.

But I miss the reflection. And what I really, really miss is the change in my relationship with books.

When I was a child, I read like a child. The literary characters were my friends. They lived in my imagination, and they were my counterlife[1]. I lived in their world, and they lived in mine.

In my childhood, the counterlife was galloping through the vaguely unimaginable streets of Paris with the musketeers. It was pure fantasy, as I never expected to walk the streets of Paris any more than I expected to walk on the surface of the moon[2]. When Did the Arc de Triomphe Start Leaning? – Old Lady Writing

At some point, and I do not know when exactly that border into adulthood was crossed—and the crossing was, I imagine, inevitable—book characters stopped appearing in my reality. Or, more accurately, I stopped going into theirs. A certain detachment occurred where, while I remain entertained, enlightened, educated, and generally touched (and occasionally irritated and even bored) by what I read for pleasure, it is no longer my alternate reality. It is just that—entertainment, education, etc. It is enough—of course it is enough, there are so many great books that I have read and have yet to read—but I sometimes miss that untamed fantasyland of my childhood, where every story was examined through the lens of how it could play out in counterlife, and where I tried every character on for size as a potential friend or alter ego.

It is unavoidable and logical, but it is occasionally sad when I stop and think about it. That wild inventiveness would be very helpful right now, as the global pandemic still rages, theaters are still closed, and non-fictional friends are still remote. This might be a good time to work on breathing new life into the counterlife…

The three most influential books of my childhood. There might be a theme here. Please note and appreciate that the illustration to famous poisoning scene of the “The Anjou Wine” chapter of “The Three Musketeers” is by the author of this blog.

[1] Thank you for introducing this term in “The Glass Hotel”, Emily St. John Mandel. I have always said “parallel universe”, but that implies, I think, something more impossible rather than improbable.

[2] I might add that the vast majority of my childhood literary heroes were male. I am of the generation and culture that was not bothered by that. In the childhood reenactments that I held with my girlfriends, we WERE the musketeers. I even won the top prize at a school New Year’s party, dressed as a musketeer in a costume made by my mom, wielding a plastic rapier, and performing the famous “Song about the sword”. What did I win? Probably an orange. Valor and Glory of the Motorbuilders – Old Lady Writing

“One for All and All for One!” Again, by the author.

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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)

Extroverted Introvert or Introverted Extrovert

Introverts seem to have come into vogue lately. In my youth, the terms ranged from the mild “shy” to less-than-kind “loner”. In my culture, being solitary in any form was not a value, because after all, we lived in a collective. In my language, there is no word for “privacy”. No, there really isn’t! I tried to find a translation, and the closest English word I could find was “confidentiality”, which is clearly not the same thing.

My spouse and children laugh at the notion that I am an introvert. I am appalled at the notion that they think I am anything but. Have they not met me? I love all sorts of solitary activities, I have no concerns with seeing movies and eating out and traveling alone, I have a very small circle of friends, and I hate talking on the phone. I do enjoy social gatherings, but am never disappointed (and often not-so-secretly thrilled) when they are cancelled. I have to give myself a substantial pep talk when I go to networking events, and have been seized by panic when I show up and do not know anyone. I am also not great at small talk. I thought I fit the memes quite well, until I really started to think about this. I decided that I really need to understand the terms before I start labeling myself.

As a child, I was regarded as fairly unfriendly, and I accepted that view of me for the longest time. I lived with a grandmother who so completely lacked in introspection and ability to derive any joy out of her own company and inner gifts that spending time in solitary pursuits was to her not just unattractive, but unnatural. I loved playing with other kids, I had neighborhood friends, I loved adventures, but I also loved reading and drawing. I remember being allowed to read only to a certain chapter before being made to go outside to play, and pretending to read slower than I actually did in order to prolong the pleasure. I just cannot imagine stopping anyone from reading, regardless of their personality type—reading is fundamental! I was labeled unsociable by my family not because I had a shortage of social activities, but because I did not constantly crave them. Looking back now, I see that I had a pretty healthy balance in my life, but was persistently pushed off balance. I was relentlessly driven to one side of the continuum. Resistance was futile!

Hanging out with people one knows and likes and walking cold into a gathering of strangers are completely different experiences. One does not have to be an extrovert to love the former, and an introvert to hate the latter. I am often that last person to leave the party—but only if I am having a good time. Oh, and I am also a huge talker. Huge! Privately, I chastise myself a lot for not listening well, and yet still I cannot shut up once I get going. But, I have also been known to make my excuses and beat a hasty retreat—if I am having a lousy time. I have participated, reluctantly, in many a stilted and awkward conversation, and was once asked if I had a disability because I was so quiet. Does that just make me a person who knows what she likes and does not want to waste time on things she does not? Aha, what a concept!

I learned a new term today—yes, literally today. I am an “ambivert”. According to Merriam-Webster, that is the person who has both extrovert and introvert characteristics. It is a social adaptation—the person behaves according to the situation. On the spectrum, I am in the middle. And there is nothing wrong with that. Does freedom come too late? Well, not necessarily. All of us are works in progress until the end, and self-understanding is never wasted. Being armed with this new-to-me term, I shall boldly go, both to parties and on my solitary runs. Allons-y!