My Daughter Got a New Job

Two months ago, it would sound differently! It would still be happy news to share, but nowadays it’s more than happy news.

She started to look for new opportunities during “the normal times,” and I was encouraging her to move forward – she was with the same company since she graduated from college. But at the time, when people are laid off en mass, especially the most recent hires, at the time when a new baby is coming in two months, and when they are about to move to another town – even my adventurism won’t play.

To say that I am immensely proud of her won’t be enough. Under all of the circumstances mentioned above, she got a new job; she negotiated her salary and stock options, she negotiated a higher title, and on top of all of that, she will get sixteen weeks of fully paid maternity leave.

The next two months are going to be very exciting, and the complete uncertainty about everything adds to that excitement (Not like the months after will be less exciting!)

I do not have much to add; I wish her good luck in everything she has to accomplish in the upcoming months and years:)

Operation “Easter”

Friday night, I made my meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Saturday, I colored eggs and made a plum pie. And I baked some cookies a week before. And then Saturday afternoon, I was packing :).
I packed a bag for Igor, and I also included some food items which are either hard to find where he lives, or they are just more expensive (like buckwheat). I also packed a bag for Vlad.
Several days before that, I mailed to Igor my April monthly pass, the one which I never used and which I wanted to keep for future generations :).

That’s how our “Operation Easter” went. Igor called me when he arrived at Palatine. There are barely any people on the train these days, let along on the weekends. I put the bag in my car’s trunk and drove to the station. Igor got out when I stopped at the passengers’ drop-off location, opened the trunk, and took the bags. And then he went back to the city and stopped by Vlad ti deliver a package for him.

It was all as safe as we could make it, and I feel very good knowing that the boys got their emoji eggs, and kinder surprises, and cookies, and that I was able to send them a piece of home.

This morning, I drove to my Mom to take her to celebrate Easter with me. I tried to get all the food she enjoys, and I also asked Igor and Anna to call in, which they did. It was bitter-sweet; Anna, John, and Nadia said Christos Voskres (traditional Russian Easter greeting) to Mom, and Mom told everybody that she wishes them to escape the virus.

We all are hopeful that next Easter, we all will be together!

“I Can Do It!”

I am always taking pride in “I can do it” kind of things. However, I vividly remember what happened when Anna and Vlad went away to college. And when I realized that when I see some unknown bug in the house, I can’t scream: Vlaaad!!! Get this thing out of here! And I can’t ask anybody to get into the attic to take the stuff out. That year, I had to learn to do lots of things by myself for the first time!
When Vlad came home for Thanksgiving that first year in college, he told me: Mom, I am so happy that there are still things you can’t do yourself! And I get it :). With both Boris and Vlad, there are things that I would always delegate to them.

So what happens when due to the quarantine, your family is in five different places? You have to learn to do even more things by yourself :).

Last weekend, I had two activities of that kind. First, I needed to install a handlebar extension on my blue bike. Last year, I bought this bike “just for fun” because it was blue, and I didn’t plan to equip it fully with all the necessary details. But since my white and green bike will stay inside until the end of quarantine, the blue bike became my primary means of transportation. Usually, Boris installs all the new gadgets on my bike, or I would ask Anna or Vlad. But since none of them were available, I had to manage. Boris explained to me everything I needed to do over Facetime, and I marched to the garage well-equipped. Things didn’t go quite smoothly, but I did it!

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The Weekend Worries

On Friday, after I called my eye doctor, then next thought which occurred to me was thought about Igor’s moving to the new place. At the end of February, Igor received a note that the lease on his apartment id not going to be renewed. For historical accuracy, I have to mention that the level of hoarding was unacceptable by his landlord standards. We all had a couple of weeks of worries, mostly because we were wondering whether his current landlord will give him a bad reference. I offered to co-sign, and he secured one place in Rogers Park. A couple of days later, it turned out that another place approved him as well, but he already signed with this Rogers Park place.

I gave him a hard time about signing the new lease starting from March 15, because it meant paying for an extra two weeks. He was not ready to move on the 15th anyway, and Vlad told him he would help him to move on the 22nd.

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It is tough for me to write about everything which is happening now. As Anna pointed correctly, the fact that Boris and I won’t see each other in person indefinitely is the worst. I didn’t even realize that that’s why all other things hurt me so badly that I am losing control over my life.

People often think that because we do not live together all the time, and only see each other every several weeks, it’s not something which should affect us so severely. However, all of the periods between our visits to each other are planned and pre-calculated. Most of the time, we know our schedule for several months ahead. And we try not to be away from each other for more than six weeks.

This time it was supposed to be longer – eight weeks. But there was not much we could do: I had my surgeries (and three and a half weeks before the first surgery to be contacts – free). And then we were going to go to New York for the conference, and there was supposed to be a week full of talks, presentations, training, meetings with different people. It was supposed to be our professional highlight of the year. Because of all that, I was OK to wait for two more weeks – we did it before.

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Sweet Stopover

Yesterday, I had my second cataract surgery. I think it went somewhat better than the first one, but I will share more details after today’s follow up.

That time, the surgery was earlier in the day, we were supposed to show up at 8-15AM. And when we were going back, it was almost lunch time. I suggested we will go out, just because we haven’t done so for a while. We tried a couple of places on Palatine, but there was nothing we really liked.

So we decided to do what I actually do sometimes, and looks like Vlad does sometimes as well: having ice-cream for lunch and instead of lunch 🙂

Both of us had affogato, I had int with coffee ice-cream, and Vlad – with vanilla (only mine is shown), and then Vlad had a scoop of strawberry ice-cream, and I had a blueberry pie one. Two-cource lunch, I’d say 🙂

Dating and Getting Married While Being a Student in the Soviet Union

When thinking about the past, the most challenging thing for me is trying to remember how I felt about certain concepts, what was “a norm,” and why I believed it was, basically, about what was going on in my head. And I am talking not only about politics, or economics, or the Communist Party, or the foreign countries but about personal relationships as well.

Most of us got married early. Both girls and boys. Now I think that it was mostly because of the difficulties of renting your own space. The “expected behavior” would be something like this. You start dating. You are “official,” when you walk around, hugging each other (your right hand on his waist, his left hand hugging you over your shoulders). You go like this most of the time, inside and outside. Sometimes even during classes. You kiss in public. Then you might, or you might not try to find someplace where you could be more intimate. You do not have your apartment; you live with your parents, who themselves are trying to find a place to be intimate:). Some of your friends may have their parents temporarily away or working late; then, you can use their apartment. Many of us didn’t even have their room; I didn’t.

The is no contraception, except for the calendar method or not letting the sperm in. Even condoms are “deficit.” Abortions are legal, but you need to spend at least one night in the hospital, so your parents would know, and there is no anesthesia. For many of us, getting married was the only option to be in relationships. It’s not like there were no civil unions, but mostly among older people, mostly not the first marriage. As always, there were exceptions, but as I said, a surprising number of my friends were getting married being virgins, girls and boys alike.

There were lots of marriages at nineteen and twenty. When we graduated, most of us were twenty-one or twenty-two, and more than half of us were married, and a considerable portion of those who were married, were pregnant.

Once again, there were several reasons for that. Fist, there was a lack of contraception and a religious belief, that if you abort your first pregnancy, you may never have children. So the idea was that you have a child or two children right away, and then hope for the best or have an abortion, which was multiple. Another reason, specific for college grads, was that you had to work at the place which you were assigned to for three years after your graduation, and they could not fire you during your maternity leave. So if you didn’t like the place, you could have two children and not work at all :), and then try to get to the better place.

Originally I had a very different idea about my future life and marriage, but surprisingly I ended up with the crowd, except for I was far from being a virgin.

I married on December 22, 1984, graduated in June 1985, and Igor was born on September 28, 1985.

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.

Mom’s Birthday Celebration

On Friday, my Mom turned 85. I started to think about how we will celebrate that day way-way in advance.

Most of the time when somebody is celebrating the 85th birthday, there are lots of friends and family members who can take part in the celebration. But Mom immigrated to the US less than two years ago. Moreover, she is extremely reluctant to develop new connections, and she firmly believes that she does not understand people around her. There are very few of my friends with whom she interacts on a more or less regular basis

I knew that an essential part would be having all grandchildren there, and because of that, everything depended on Vlad’s schedule. First, he said he will be able to do Saturday, but turned out that January 11 was going to be his first day back to work after nine days off. He suggested that we do Friday night, and I said it had to be in Palatine. After all, it turned out great, because it was easier for everybody, including Anna.

It was almost a surprise party for Mom. I told her that we would do “something” for her birthday and that she should be ready by 5-30. She did not know until the very last moment, that all of her grandchildren and her great-granddaughter will be there.

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What is Art in the Perspective of a Two-year Old

Anna and Nadia were visiting me last weekend. We asked Nadia whether she wants to see art, the dinosaurs in the Field Museum, or the whales in the Aquarium, and she said – art! So we went to the Art Institute.
Anna wanted to see Andy Warhol e

xhibit, but Nadia refused to acknowledge it as an art :). After being there for ten minutes, she started to ask, “can we see the art now?”

We went to the Ryan Educational Center to do the family project – a shadow box. Then we went to see Chagall’s “American Windows.” To our surprise, Nadia liked them a lot! She was sitting on her knees by the first window, then running to the second one and sitting there, and then moving to the third one. She spent at least ten minutes there, and would probably spend more if we would let her. So you can’t even say that an abstract art in not for toddlers. Go figure!

Family Gift – Giving

This year, we were unable to get the whole family together for Christmas gift exchange, which is not the first time in our history. And even for “all of us minus Anna” part, we had to find a day when Vlad was able to take at least a couple of hour off.

To be clear, he didn’t. I do not think he had any time off except of time to sleep for the past two months. Even that time, we met at his work. He reserved a private room in zBar, and then he ended up being on the floor for most of that time. He said – Mom, did you see how many people are there in the bar?! And I saw!