On family history, parenting, education, social issues and more
Author: Hettie D.
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.
Got an updated COVID-19 vaccine. After my double failure in Rogers Park (a long line for community vaccination and later, the Jewel on Howard told me that they only have walk-ins on weekday mornings (and no scheduling because of a website error), I booked an appointment in a CVS on North Michigan – convenient time after work, zero wait.
Managed to work almost uninterruptedly on a pressing issue at work and achieved the results I am proud of.
My neighbor stopped by, and even before I offered asked me whether she could have a cup of tea :). I consider that a tectonic cultural shift 😀
Mom made several attempts to record her family history with various degrees of success.Since both of my mom’s parents came from peasants’ families, I do not think I will ever learn much more about them than I know now. I will start with the earliest photos I have and will record everything I remember about them.
I know that my mom’s mother, baba Ania (full name Anna Petrovna), was born in the Pskov region in October 1911. Her maiden name was Grigorieva, and I believe I have somewhere an information about her brothers in one of the recording sessions with my mom in 2018 . Unfortuntely, I didn’t even start processing them. Surprisingly, I might know more about her childhood than my mom because I spent a lot of time with her during my second and third summers, and she used to tell me stories about her being a little girl. I never herd this storied from my mom, only from baba Ania herself. Being minimally educated, she recognized the importance of reading and self-improvement. She might have attended school for just a couple of years, but liked to tell me how she “already knew everything before she came to school” because “she read books.” She told me: And the teacher said, “well, Nura, you already know everything, so go and help me check other puples work. And here I am, walking along the rows of desks and checking everybody’s work. And all because I read a lot of books, that’s why.”
She left the village and moved to Leningrad when she was forteen to become a live-in nanny. Neither me nor my mom know anything about the family where she lived, except for that appeared to be well off and educated – some books baba Ania owned presumably came from that house.
In two years, she was already looking for a more prestigious job – a store clerk. On this picture, she is sixteen or seventeen, and she works in a grocery store near Warsaw railway station in Leningrad.
Bakarey departmentGrocery departmentWith coworkers in the same storeIn the Red Corner studying something politically-important
Looks like it was cold both inside the store and in the Red Corner since most people stay in their coats.
I can’t decode most of the slogans from the third photo background, but I can tell what was sold in the grocery department. Th list includes tea (“natural” and “surrogate”, sugar, buckwheat, millet, oatmeal, flour, coffee (also real and surrogate), several brands of sigaretts, matches, candles, shoe polish, black pepper and mustard.
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.
I learned about Theo almost by accident (I don’t even remember where I saw the ad), went to see the Three Penny Opera, and loved them! And I decided to subscribe for a season – just one seat for each performance, without my neighbor or anybody. When we went there together with Boris, we had the side seats, and I realized that if I wanted to have the best experience there, I needed to be at a table. That’s what I subscribed for, and it was a perfect experience indeed.
The authors of Baked! are young, and so is the cast, and it’s a little bit silly and naive but also heartbreakingly sincere! I really enjoyed it!
Just back from the Art Institute, where I saw a Camille Claudel exhibit. It’s amazing. I am shocked, sad, and ashamed of how little I knew about her! Like “everybody else,” I knew her name, but the only reason I knew it was in connection with August Rodin – like “everybody else.” She is always mentioned as his apprentice and his muse, and Rodin’s bust, created by Claudel, is his most known representation.
That’s who she was in my mind. Not trying to compare myself with geniuses, I still felt like I could relate to a female character developing professionally in the shadow of a more famous male figure, inevitably treated as “a secondary” both by others and herself.
In reality, however, Camille faces way more obstacles, starting from not being allowed to work with nude models as most females, followed by constant comparing her with Rodin to the point of her works being attributed to him.
She left Rodin’s workshop to be her own person and explore the subjects she wanted to explore, only to receive more criticism for nudity in her sculptures and not receive grants for any of her works to become a full-size artwork. Then, exhibiting the signs of a mental illness, destroying most of her works and spending thirty years in the psychiatric hospital. Her family insisted on her being institutionalized despite the doctor’s suggestions to take her home and reintegrate into the family.
She died in the hospital in 1943 when France was occupied, and she was reburied in a common grave, so there is no even a place to mark. Her works were almost forgotten, and her personal exhibits happened years after she passed away.
Her art is amazing and so distinct from Rodin’s works – now I know!
I tried to attend a community vaccination event today to get a new COVID-19 vaccine for me and my mom. Unfortunately, when I signed up for both of us, I forgot that I had a mentoring circle meeting at work at 12-30, while the event was planned from 10 AM to 2 PM. Overall, that was the day when I was trying to do too many things. I stayed home for a seasonal furnace tune-up, which was supposed to happen between 8 and 12. I hoped the technician would come earlier and I would have time to take my mom to the vaccination before this 12-30 meeting. But obviously, when I need it most, it does not happen. Not only did the technician come in after 11, but he also stayed for an hour and a half – I do not know what he was doing for so long! When he left, I was already in the mentoring circle meeting, and after we were done, I decided to go to the vaccination site and see what the situation was – it was only 2-30 PM. When I arrived, they told me it would be a 45-minute wait. I decided to stay. They would close the sign-up at two but then serve all the people who came by that time. I had two people at work waiting for me to get back online, and I had grocery delivery between 3 PM and 4 PM, and when I realized that it was still at least another 15 min at 3-05, I left. A lot of time was wasted. To be honest, when I was leaving the house at 1-30, I heard this sneaking voice in my head: just let it go, it didn’t work! But then I decided to give it a try… Once again – listen to the universe, and don’t try to bend it. We will find another appointment 🙂
Listen here – and you know that that’s about Chicago 🙂
Just an opening quote:
If you ask a Chicagoan what they love about their city, they’ll get poetic. They’ll gesture with their hands and grasp for words to describe what makes this “big-hearted and cold-blooded” metropolis so incredible.
I hope that I will have a chance to see fall foliage. I know that there was no way for me to go to Helsinki this fall, but I am still remorseful. Boris is telling me how the leaves are turning red and yellow and how the stores started to sell Christmas chocolate, and I am trying to give him instructions on which chocolate to buy, but I am sad I won’t be the one choosing Christmas chocolate this season. Next year, we will plan better! I know; I say it every year :).
I only briefly mentioned the Historic House Walk in which I participated on Sunday, and I wanted to show more pictures and tell more about it.
When I moved to Rogers Park, I saw that the Historical Society was just across the street from my house, but at that time, it seemed to be still “closed for the pandemic.” Then, there were so many things going on in my life that although I was still curious about the Rogers Park history, it was just “yet another thing” that I would get to “at some point.”
Then I visited the Historical Society website and realized that they are already doing many interesting things, and I am missing out. I subscribed to their newsletter and finally started to learn about tours and presentations. Most times, it would turn out that the timing does not work for me, but for the Historic House Walk, it worked! I joined the society and paid the fee for the Walk, and on Sunday at noon, I was there!
This year’s House Walk featured several houses in the Peterson Woods (I forgot to mention that the Historical Society covers both Rogers Park and West Ridge).
All the houses were very interesting and worth seeing, but I liked less the houses where the new owners made a lot of renovations, no matter how awesome these renovations looked. I liked it way more when the owners preserved the old windows and trim, opened the covered stained glass, and restored the original tiles.
While waiting for a morning train, I overheard the conversation on the platform. The conversation was about when each person planned to retire, whether they wanted to retire at all, and what they would do when they retired. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Still, I was surprised that people who participated in the conversation talked only about leisure, whether they will do cruises, golfing, or something else, and how the years of retirement should be the years of having fun.
Then, one of them commented on someone he knew who “didn’t want to retire because he would have to spend all the time with his wife at home.”
I can relate to that:). With all my love and everything, you need to be out of the house doing something else for a good part of the day. And you need to do something. I am sure I will have lots of fun traveling, doing cultural things, and such, but I am also anticipating all the possibilities of doing more volunteering, such as escorting on the weekdays and going to ODS at least once a week. Too often, I feel like I can’t drop any activity I am participating in (or want to participate in), and then I am not doing any of them well enough. So, I often think that I should limit the things I do even more and then return to them when I retire.
Possibly the reason others don’t believe me when I say that I will retire at 67 is that they can’t imagine me not doing something. But I have plans!
The problem with the past weekend was that it was soooo good! This was a God-given September, and the last weekend was the biggest gift, with the sunny sky, almost no wind, and the upper 70s.
I could not have it waster! Besides, I had some activities planned a while ago, and I didn’t want to skip them. And I am very happy with how it went:).
A long bike ride:
I saw Jupiter – more than once!And a supermoon!Long bike ideI saw maples turning redThe bees were on my balconyI was on the Historic Houses tourAnd I closed the season at the beach!Although it was almost 80F, the water was cold! I got into the water just out of principle – I had to close the season! And I said “Thank you” to the Lake!
There was also clinic escorting, and Georgia Apple Cake, and visiting with mom, and lots of other things, and talking with people, and many things which I wanted to do and didn’t have time to, but I still think I had my priorities straight.
Hettie's Reflections 