These things have a way of catching up to you

Russia was a land of mystery, intrigue and fear when I was growing up in the 1970’s. As a child we were supposed to be afraid of the Red menace that was the USSR. On maps in school the Soviet Union was always red and I remember being fascinated with how large it was. It was like a nation reclining over a vast part of the world. Its head resting on the edge of Europe, stretching out like a giant cat across the continent up into Siberia with the tip of its claw reaching out towards Alaska. Maps were easier to learn then. There was no Czech Republic, or Macedonia, or Croatia, just Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. There was no Ukraine, Belarus or Uzbekistan. We had to memorize the countries of Europe in eighth grade. I remember feeling there was a certainly in maps. I had no concept about them changing. I had no concept about how moving a line and renaming the area in that line can affect one’s life. We had to make a map of one country using salt clay and paint to show the political as well as geographical features. I choose Germany. I had to show how it was cut in half, and how Berlin was cut off from the rest of the world. To us it seemed like the USSR was a dark place of snow and ice. This was a place where no one smiled, where tanks and missile launchers rolled down the street behind precise Soviet soldiers. Where everything was covered in razor wire and no one was free. It was also a place that would not hesitate to kill us given the chance, or worse an excuse.
And it bears mentioning that I grew up in North Central Connecticut home of the post-communist Polish Diaspora. I was surrounded by classmates with the suffix “-ski” on the end of their names. This loyalty to Poland ran deep in my hometown. If you were Catholic chances are you were also Polish or you wanted to be. I never saw an Irish Catholic until I moved to Boston. One of my friends had the last name of Brennan. I never made the connection that her name was Irish until I moved into the land of Kennedy. I dated a Polish boy when I was in high school. His father had left Poland and opened his own machine shop. That shop supplied parts to companies like Pratt and Whitney aircraft, which in turn built planes for the US military. So there was Mr. K, so many miles from his beloved Poland doing his small part to fight the nation that had turned his homeland into a communist nightmare. Everyone rejoiced at the election of Karol Wotila to Pope and during the crackdown against the Solidarity Union and curfews in Poland every family, Polish and not, had candles in their windows keeping vigil. I still remember making Christmas cookies with my family while listening to the news on NPR every night new arrests new curfews. That was the narrative of my childhood.
My father also for all his progressive liberalism hated communism. Which is not all that surprising, and yet there we were watching and loving one of the greatest pro Stalin propaganda films ever made. Only later would I learn of how important this film was in recruiting young men to fight and defend Russia. Only later would I learn about the sacrifice made by the Soviet Union to save us all from the Nazi terror. At the time all I knew was there was “us” who wore the white hats and “them” who had evil soul crushing communist “red” hats. At the time I loved this film, the battle on the ice being such an important moment not only in the film but for the history of film.
So a love/hate relationship was what I learned. I was supposed to love the beautiful things about people and countries but be wary about nations and their intentions. While other girls had posters pulled from the center of Tiger Beat Magazine on their walls, I had maps, Canada, Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa. I was the geeky kid who through Junior high school had maps on my wall pulled from National Geographic. I loved National Geographic. I once used an article on China to try to write my own language. I actually tried to teach it to my friends. So we could have a code. They humored me for a bit then moved on. Was it any wonder I always worried what my friends thought about my interests? I was kind of a spaz. Interested in things no one else was. Maybe myself a little like Lermontov’s Pechorin just not as cruel.
One would think this inspired deep creativity and risk taking. I just learned to move more into myself and push those interests away. So was it any wonder that by the time I got to college I chose history to please my dad. I loved history in my own right. I studied what I wanted to study but it never felt like I owned it for myself. So here is what I should have done with my life. I should have transferred to UCONN when I had the chance after freshman year. I should have gotten a degree in English and become some kind of writer. But I suppose if I had done that I would have no material now. What could be better for a writer than a wayward life of misdirection?
But none of this was for me. Husbands and kids take up a ridiculous amount of energy, time and scheduling. After we moved and were properly settled in Chelmsford I began to search for something I could call my own. I thought being an at home mom would be mine. It was my decision so that must make it mine. But there is nothing about motherhood that involves any part of me independent of the child or children. So then I thought it would be my job. Again, in many ways like mothering, just a lot more people that I didn’t care about as much as my own children. And being a “religion” teacher has become a sure road to emptiness and spiritual poverty. So I started yoga. Which would have worked if I really actually had a practice that wasn’t total garbage.
So I began to think about languages again. I needed something like that. It was some way to get some prospective on the world. Maybe if I can learn a language I can see the world from another vantage point. In reality I just wanted to learn something only now do I see that learning a language especially a language like Russian becomes a consuming process. I think I knew that going in. So I close my eyes and commit myself to learning something hard, something difficult.I take a deep breath, I inhale I exahle. It will be difficult, but it is so beautiful the way the vowels and consonants curl around the mouth. They way the sounds melt like ice cream and are as study as meat. Not just a language- a feast.
Grace and talk later in the year after she is settled in and I am working my first year of my part time gig. How are things? Ok, students are great, kids are great, life is busy oh and hey the answer to that question, the one you asked in the car when we were sweating our butts off as wafts of road kill and hot asphalt drifted in through the open windows. The answer to that question was Russian. I am studying Russian. I am leaning to speak Russian. The answer to every question is Russian.