On Sunday, I was trying to talk to mom about that summer. She confirmed that she was returning to Sosnovaya Polyana every day after work, and thereby her commute was three hours every day. She said that my father “rarely” was there and that “she needs to tell me everything.”

Actually, she already gave me her letters to my father and his letters to her from that period, and she gave me her diary to read, so I know how it all looked like both from her and his perspective.
I do not doubt that I need to write about it, but I am still unsure whether to include their story in my or tell it separately.

For now, let’s say that my father came to Sosnovaya Polyana from time to time and that he took lots of pictures. I like the photos which are not focused on me because I can see the interior of this tiny apartment, and I can see Baba Ania, even if only in the background.
Also, when I look at these pictures, it is very visible to me that my father loved my mom, even if it was in the wrong way. I mean, even though he a completely messed up person, he loved her the way he could love.

The complete gallery is here, so that my children and grandchildren will know where to look for photos; I am not going to post all sixty :).

In the summer of 1964, I was one-and-a-half years old, and I spent the summer with my maternal grandparents. 

Deda Fedya (grandpa Fedya) “received” this one-room apartment from the Leningrad Commercial Port, where he worked after returning from his army service.

They lived in one of the houses built in the 1950s’, in Sosnovaya Polyana, the part of Leningrad only from an administrative perspective. I remember that in 1964, the peasant’s houses that surrounded it were freshly demolished. The wooded houses were gone, but the stone chimneys and the fireplaces stayed. Now that I recall this picture, it seems creepy, but I found it extremely funny back then. My grandfather would take me with him on expeditions to checked whether there was something worthy left in the abandoned gardens. He dug out some strawberries and planted them on his balcony, 

 I was there for the summer because of the firm belief, which I mentioned earlier, that children should have some “fresh air” during summer, and adults have to make sacrifices to make it happen. 

It was a one-room apartment, with only one normal bed for my grandparents. Mom slept on the camp bed in the tiny hallway. I slept on the small day bed. Mom walked to the train station every morning (almost 3 miles), and took a train and then a tram from the railway station to her work. My father was there only on the weekends, and I am not even sure whether their issues already started at that time.   

In any case, all these pictures were taken by my father during one of his visits. The most precious thing about these photos is that I can see parts of that apartment, and I can see Baba Ania passing by on some of them. 

The house was originally built with the woodstove only; the gas stove (on the right) was installed later) 

Since Christmas was forbidden in the Soviet Union and later partially rehabilitated in the form of New Year’s celebration, I can’t tell, “it was my first Christmas. ” Instead, it was “my first New Year,” December 31, 1963. The New Year was especially a big deal in our family because Aunt Kima’s birthday was on January 1.

I cherish these pictures because they are atypically live for that period, and none of them are staged photos. I believe my Mom never printed the pictures from that roll, which did not include me, so until we scanned the film, I didn’t know what a treasure I have in my possession.

I have some memories from that day, in part because Mom showed me these pictures often.

I found more pictures form summer 1963, the same summer, the same place, the same people. Just wanted to keep all these old photos at one place. When I was a child, I didn’t think of them more than just “these are my baby pictures, ” but now I view them as historical documents, since they’ve captured so many signs of the epoch 🙂

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!

As a child, I had an outstanding memory. I remember some episodes of my life even before my first birthday. And since shortly after my first birthday, I remember more or less “everything,” meaning I remember my life as a stream of events. That was in part because my parents made lots of pictures, and I was often looking at them. 

That been said, that fact that I did not remember the earlier portion of my life, used to frustrate me a lot! I did not remember being in Estonia for the first summer of my life, and the pictures looked so lovely! 

I was born on January 19, 1963, and at that time, mothers in the Soviet Union didn’t yet have the option of staying at home with their babies for the first year of their lives. There was only the so-called “decree.” The name goes back to the early years of the Soviet state when the laws were called “decrees.” The decree which proclaimed the right of the woman to take eight weeks off work before the expected date of birth and eight weeks after went into effect in December 1917. For this whole period, women were paid 100% of their salaries. Later, women were allowed to take four more weeks off, but with no pay. What will happen if they won’t return to work? They would have to quit the job, which in turn will result in “interruption of work history” on their record, and that will negatively affect their state pension in the future.