Last Monday, when Igor and I sat down at the Siskel Center after the Tarkovsky documentary with tea and my apple cake, I confessed that I felt hopelessly unprepared for retirement. That was the first day I was on call at my part-time job, and an incident happened, and I had to investigate. And here it was. Except for a couple of tech interviews, I haven’t had a chance to solve any puzzles in four weeks. And although it all happened at a very inconvenient time, I was so grateful for this opportunity to use my brain :). That was possibly the first time after my last day at my last job that I heard it loud and clear: I am not ready to retire yet. And not even ready for part-time only yet.
Igor replied that it was expected, and I asked a rhetorical question: why can’t I be like normal people? We both agreed that if I were a normal person, all our lives would be completely different, and it’s unlikely Vlad and Anna would have been born. As for Igor (it was his birthday, after all!), he definitely wouldn’t come to the US. And then, reflecting on these past forty-one years, I said: the last normal thing I did was give birth to you.
Thinking it over for the past week, I still maintain it is true. I often think about this whole process of me transforming from “one of many” to my present-day self. Yes, I was almost a straight-A student for years, although there was a period of lower grades in the middle of my college life, but there were many others, more talented, brighter. I was an active young pioneer and an active comsomol member, and at the same time, “just a little bit dissident-minded”, “for all good against all bad.” Just like almost everyone around me. And like “everyone,” I got married during my senior year in college and gave birth to my first child shortly after graduation. It was expected. Almost all girls timed it that way.
Everything else was a deviation :).
