Origins of Obsession and Perhaps Madness:

My father loved history. He always had a pile of popular history books next to the side of his bed. He read every day. I was more interested in literature but was smart enough to realize that good stories come from someplace like a troubled history personal or political. He also liked movies especially the classics. Our local public television station used to broadcast old films every Saturday afternoon. This was real treat in the days before HBO, cable or even the VCR because the films would be run without commercials. I spent my afternoons with James Cagney, Catherine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, Bogart and Bacall and one afternoon Elvis. I usually watched these films by myself with family only occasionally wandering in. One Saturday my dad had checked the listings and told me that one of the most amazing films was on and suggested we watch it together. The film was Alexandar Nevsky. This film became somewhat of a joke to my mother and brother because they for the life of them could not understand what we saw in that film. When my parents bought their first VCR unit my dad came home with Alexander Nevsky on video. They groaned, but I was elated. After that my dad was banned from going to the video store lest he brought back that film or God forbid, Ivan the Terrible, Battleship Potempkin or October.
I loved these films and began to expand my love of these films into other foreign films and especially the European films made outside or before the Hollywood studio system. To this day I would gladly pass up Lon Chaney’s werewolf for Max Schreck’s Count Orlok any day of the week. Any opportunity to see Little Flowers, Metropolis, Intolerance, or my beloved Russian films I saw them, rented them, loved them. Then I went to college and like the other artifacts of my childhood; forgot about them completely.
I got distracted. I never really thought that was a real career. Plus there were all the other college distractions and young adult confusion. I settled into a history degree program I became interested in other things. I waited, wanting to take the only course in Russian history offered by the school. Then it was cancelled for lack of enrollment. Then my advisor told me I was lucky it was cancelled she hated teaching that course. I rolled over and gave up. I read Marx on my own time. I became a closet Socialist knowing that communism was an inherently flawed ideology in practice but fascinating in theory I would go onto later to study Liberation Theology which seemed to me like a more compassionate application of Marx through the lens of the Gospel. I threw myself into my literature courses I sprinted through college and missed the whole point.
I don’t recall what I was really interested in with the exception of Chris, the guy from home I dated and later married and now share three kids, a dog, a lizard, two hectic jobs and a mortgage with. I was into being a resident assistant, I was “into being into” music, I was “into being into” films, and I was “into being into” anyone but me. And I graduated and then I went to graduate school because at the time I was really “into being into” a minister.
So distractions: school, marriage children, alleged calls from God, conversion and baptism, holiness, revival, Hebrew, intellect, preaching, Liberation Theology, Greek for two weeks, clinical pastoral education, church administration, breaking up into small groups, more preaching, field education, church committees, ordination committees, Annual conferences, more district committees meeting until I just decide to chuck it all and become a Roman Catholic. No ordination, no problem. So I land myself in a Catholic high school, teaching social justice of all things. And then Grace comes into my life and calls me on the distraction, calls me to account for the distraction and inaction in the words. “What- do- you- want -to -do –with- your- life?” Later while not behind the wheel of Satan’s minivan I close my eyes and I dream of what my life could have been, the chances I should have taken. And I sob at the thought of my life wasted, my passion not pursued and then I realize I don’t even really know what that passion is. I know what it used to be. I used to walk around holier than everyone proclaiming that I was doing ministry I work for God, He is my co pilot and employer. What could be more glorious and worthy than that? I stop and think realizing that practically everything is better than that. Because here I was less than 10 years into my vocation, my ministry and I was spent and dried up. If I had a mustard seed I wouldn’t even have the energy to plant it.
So what gives a life meaning, what makes it worthwhile and beautiful? I think of my children, my gift to creation, maybe they will do something great. I think again, wow I have really rolled over into the grave if that is the case. Barely forty and already my greatest gift are my children. What about what I have to give? Then I close my eyes and think again “screw that, what do I want to do…I struggle for the preposition with, in. to? Which one do I want? I try them all but “in” makes the deepest impression. Up to this point it has been all about what I can do for others and with three children and the husband I am married to the giving part is not going to end anytime soon. So what do I want for me? What do I want to know? What do I want to learn? What will I do with what I learn?
When my father was in the hospital after his heart attack and again at our last Christmas together we had this conversation. The exact words have faded but the sense of the conversation was that I was not inherently unhappy with my challenging job as a teacher because I was actually pretty good at it. And the subject matter I was trying to make not just understandable but interesting and accessible. Isn’t Raising Arizona the best way to teach about the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill? The problem was that I needed something that fed me and helped me feel like I was still growing. My disappointment was that I thought my “teaching ministry” was supposed to do that. My dad told me after all the years of ministry he had served it gave a lot but sometimes took more. So I needed something for me. I told him I was thinking of studying another language. He asked me if I was going to finally study Russian.
I was not thinking of another degree program or a change in career. No, whatever I decided had to be done where I was. I could not leave my job. I needed my job. I could not leave my family I needed them to and of course they needed me. Plus the bottom line was working in a Catholic environment the family and job are linked. No matter how bad my marriage was ever going to get if I wanted to continue to teach in a Catholic school I was stuck where I was. So whatever I decided I had to be able to do it where I was. It was not about changing my life but changing the furniture. I needed new intellectual furniture.
I played around with the idea of learning another language for some time. When I had babies and a double stroller I thought I would learn Italian. I tried to rekindle my old Spanish and French from time to time but quickly lost interest. One lunch period with Grace we talked about learning languages, she took Greek in New Haven and I spent two years of hard labor in Hebrew. “I kind of was thinking of German?” I said. “German! No, no you don’t want to learn German. Such a hard, cold language it is not a very beautiful language” A little surprised by this response but she has a point. Ok no German. This later confirmed by a friend in Moscow who thought German sounded “bossy”.
I close my eyes and dig deep and far back to what I loved. I find buried there boxes of films books, and stories. I remember watching Alexander Nevsky why did I love that film so much? I remember the many times I have seen Dr. Zhivago. For my birthday that summer I purchased The Brothers Karamazov,it was the first book in years that had passages that brought me to tears. I see myself at age 14 under the big tree across the street from my home. There I am reading Chekov and letting him paint images in my imagination. I remember the years of ballet lessons, not French school training but Russian, in the lineage of Vagonova. I think of my first celebrity crush. The real one after Shaun Cassidy faded; I fell madly in love with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Maybe the ballet had something to do with that also. And my favorite Star Trek character was always, Mr. Chekov. And then there was the summer I invented a game called “Communism”. Which was really Risk or Monopoly but the USSR got to win. Ironically I invented this game on the Fourth of July and invited our State Representative (who was a close family friend and at our house for our cook out that year) to play it with me. I still cannot believe she indulged me in this subversive activity. These of course were pedestrian reasons to commit a sizable chunk of time and energy and really were no more than silly girlhood trivialities. But the universe, karma and destiny was about to give me an answer or a push. Among other factors, the universe was cultivating my Russian variant on the other side of the world.