The first summer of my life. Since I remember myself from a very early age, and since I liked looking at my pictures even when I was a very small child (and that’s why, perhaps, I still remember it so well!), I could not believe I didn’t remember that summer! It felt unfair that I was in Estonia, looking at these beautiful flowers, and all of it was gone from my memories!
My aunt Kima is holding me here; I am six months oldMost likely the same day. My great-aunt Fania, Kima’s mother, is holding me
My father’s mother Henrietta had passed away by that time, and I called her sister, my great aunt Faina, baba Fania.
With baba Fania, looking at dahlias
My great uncle Misha, baba Fania’s younger brother, had a car, which was a rarity at that time in the Soviet Union. Sometimes he would drive from Leningrad to Narva-Joesuu, or as we called it at that time, Ust-Narva.
Mom and I inside the uncle Misha’s carWith my father on the beachWith my father inside the rented house
My mom didn’t print (or threw away) the pictures where I was shown with my dad, and I never knew they existed until I took all the old films from my Mom’s apartment, and Boris and I started to scan them.
My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs, and what was before and after.
My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996.
I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future.
I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life.
As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.
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Hettie's Reflections 