Thursday, May 23, 2013

THE CITIES : HAYWARD, CALIFORNIA/NEW YORK, NEW YORK


HAYWARD, CALIFORNIA/NEW YORK, NEW YORK

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     Nothing could compare with the challenges and excitement of traveling to a place like Africa. I think, the only thing that could top it was getting married and starting a family, but that is a very different kind of adventure. 
     Small room that fit only our large mattress, a few boxes with belongings and a computer station that my husband, Taka, created by putting one picnic table on top of another, and that was it, the sum of what we had in the whole world.
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     We didn't have much of a honeymoon. After about a week from our wedding, I flew to Russia, to help with the teachers' and High School students' seminars there. Coming back from such spirit filled endeavor to an ordinary life was not easy. Fortunately, I had a job waiting for me: a receptionist at the Wholesale Seafood company. A year later I was pregnant and on the run. 
     New York was steaming like a swamp. The Washington Heights, the Spanish Harlem, was in turmoil. The police killed one of the Latino residents of the borough, - that was a reason enough for a riot and arson.
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     Disoriented from the impossible situation that I found myself in, I wondered the streets obscured by smoke from the fires, passed the looters carrying things out of the stores and concentrated on simply putting one foot in front of another. I also sat in my parents' apartment and melted in the summer heat, while they were visiting my sister in Denmark. 
     Taka and I.. What can I say? "East is East and West is West?" We just didn't see eye to eye.images (287×175)     I was not used to the way he expected me to behave, and I never expected him to behave like he did: arguing about every idea or point of view, throwing tantrums if I disagreed with him, being cranky or outright hysterical for no visible reason.. Leaving and going to my parents seemed like the only thing that made sense. I felt so betrayed and at the end of my rope that I didn't think, what will happen when I'm on my own. 
     He showed up on my doorstep just in time. I was losing my resolve fast. Everything I knew about marriage came from the shows that I watched and the books. A romantic reunion seemed to be in order. Like a fool that I was, I didn't try to talk things over in a neutral place, to come to some kind of an agreement.     images (300×168)




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