LIFE 'ND STUFF 6 - repost

    

Sonny and Hanah

  Sonny loved and doted on Hanah since he was a toddler. When she fell asleep on the floor, he would drag a blanket over her. Sometimes he'd cover her head instead. He would put his toys on top of her head area and play quietly, forgetting that she was under there.
   My kids were quite easy going. Well, Sonny went through this phase when he'd bang his head on the floor if he wasn't happy with his life. Then there was his allergy to being woken up. It was not the same child in the morning or after the nap! He even now has a formidable stubborn streak. It’s a surprise that he grew up and I didn't kill him on one of those mornings when he refused to budge, to move his arm to put on a shirt or to move his legs toward the elevator. My sister once had a dubious pleasure of bringing him

from our apartment to my parents' through the lo-o-o-ong corridor of the apartment building where we lived. Do you know, how many places there are in such a place for a child to grab and hold on to in an effort to stop the life and get off? I saw my sister after that, she looked extremely pop-eyed, and the steam came off her, like from a water buffalo. There were countless times when I came to pick him up after the nap in preschool, only to find him quietly smearing snot and tears into the massive thigh of his long-suffering teacher. And yet, on many occasions, if we just left him alone and went on with a conversation, I would, suddenly, feel him tugging on my sleeve: "Come on, Mommy, I'm OK now!"
   The situation between Mom and Grisha and Lera, finally, deteriorated to the point when they decided to move into their own apartment across the road from us. We moved them in, had a house-warming party, they lived there for half a year and then,

Grisha up and left for Denmark! Drama was a mother's milk for him. Actually, he found out that their apartment in Copenhagen was being dismantled by the tenants to whom they subleased it.

LIFE 'ND STUFF 5 - repost

     Lera and Grisha lived with my parents when my Mom just became sick. I must say, Grisha was a great help, because Lera and I were not very keen on the housework. He cooked and cleaned all day long, only to be constantly criticized by his mother-in-law, who herself stopped doing any cooking and cleaning when she became sick. Her most famous (in our family) remark to him was, as he slaved in the kitchen: "I don't like the movement of your hands!" She would hound the poor man in every aspect of his life. Grisha is a very peculiar guy, but she was just too much. He liked to eat in small amounts, but many times a day. She would be watching him and whispering loudly: "Look, look, he took another plate!", and then (with strong Jewish accent): "Did you leave anything for your wife?!" If he was taking a shower, she'd bang on the door and declare: "Enough, let the others use the bathroom!" It's interesting, that to my husband she was all sweetness and warmth, not a word in reproach. I think, in him she recognized a kindred spirit.

                                                                       In all that I didn't talk about my children. I know that many people are against the term Jewish American Princess. I coined another term, though: Jewish-Japanese American Princess. I'm not being racist. That's what my daughter was and always will be. As a baby, she would sit on her high chair, with a solemn and slightly uppity expression on her face, graciously accepting - or not - the adoration

Hanah and Grandpa
enjoying ice-cream

and nourishment from her loyal subjects. And loyal subjects she had! If you came into a room, you'd see all eyes trained on her. That was until her brother was born.
   She never expressed open hostility toward him, but she was taking steps to ensure her superiority (or just to bug him). The pacifiers or Sonny's favorite bottle would

                  

Uh-uh, what did she do to him now?

mysteriously disappear, to be found much later, just out of eyesight, behind the table leg or between his mattress and the side of the bed. In the meanwhile, the poor fellow would be screaming his head off. In fact, if you look at the photos of Sonny and Hanah at that time, he'd be always screaming and she'd be watching him with the expression of a cat in front of a bird cage.

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

     My husband has a very original mindset. Like this cat-burglar here, he thinks outside the box, and the results, usually, are highly interesting and satisfying. The small tree that you see on the right was a Christmas present given to me by Sveta, the Little Red Headed Monster's mother. By the way, she had a baby boy!
     The tree stood on our dining table for a week or so. What future could it have? I am a very forgetful waterer: no green thumb, whatsoever! The tree would've died an inglorious, thirsty death. 
     Since we didn't have a real Christmas Tree this year, I took some shiny bows for presents and decorated the potted plant on the table. It looked passably like a holiday also because it had sparkles glued to the ends of it's branches. When Taka decided to give the tiny plant a chance, he took it, as it was, with sparkles and shiny bows as well, and placed it in the ground in front of our house. And there it is now: cute and fuzzy, the bows arranged in a neat little pile before it! 
     

LIFE 'ND STUFF 4 -repost

Yokohama, Japan, where my sister-in-law lives

Not to be outdone, right after that, Taka's sister and her family from Japan decided to visit us in America. Taka went to pick them up from the airport and I stayed home to make everything ready. A long time passed. Finally, he called to tell me that his sister forgot to bring with them their little daughter's Birth Certificate. That meant that they had to stay with us until the above mentioned document could be procured from Japan, so they could prove that the girl they had with them was their own daughter. I was glad to have them with us, but the whole situation reminded me too much of my sister's couple's ordeal not to start believing that either there was somebody out there to get us or that BOTH sides of our family were extraordinary unlucky. 

I began working as a Teacher's Aid in a small school. When my brother-in-law got his Green Card, Lera and Grisha tried again to make it a go in the U.S. Without thinking much of it, I charged in to help them settle and find jobs. Lera, my sister, had a degree in Microbiology from Russia,            but all she could find was a job in a convalescent home, washing dishes. Her husband, actually, worked in Denmark as a physical therapist with the athletes and the elderly, but, I guess, he had enough of the old folks. After an extensive search and a lot of drama, he also became a Teacher's Aid. 

While all that was happening, my father had to have a heart bypass (he called it a bay-pass) surgery.  We were all tremendously invested in taking care of him and helping him get better. My Mom was always fighting one ache or another, so it didn't become immediately apparent in the hubbub that she was seriously ill. It took about three months to get the diagnosis: cancer.  

She went through chemotherapy. It prolonged her life, but it also took it away. She separated herself from the family, even from her beloved grandchildren. It seemed that she was pushing us all away before she was forced to lose everyone forever.   

LIFE 'ND STUFF 3 - repost

New Boy

I had another kid, a boy that time. He received a Korean name, Sungjoon, but my parents couldn't pronounce it. They called him San Zhuk (which can mean "St. Bug" in Russian), St. John and other Christian sounding - and so weird to a Jewish ear - names. This is how my son became Sonny. He was the apple of his grandmother's eye!  

My parents were Jewish. They weren't brought up in the religious tradition or anything, but when they came from heathen, atheistic Soviet Russia, the Jewish community in New York spent considerable time and money educating them in all things Jewish. That's why they had mezuzahs on every doorpost (little boxes with the bits of religious scroll in them), even if they loved pork and, like every person from Russia, always had bread on the table, sometimes next to the matzos, which is considered to be a sin. They had a hanging for the door, welcoming visitors in Hebrew, but, just in case if the Nazis came, they kept it inside the apartment.   

My sister, who lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, sent and brought with her tons of clothes and presents for her niece and nephew. She and her husband didn't have any children, so they lavished their love on mine.  

They decided to move to the U.S. in the end of the nineties. Since Grisha, my brother-n-law, was going to stay in America illegally, they decided,  following some crazy logic, to go to stand in separate immigration lines at the Atlanta airport (the first leg of the journey to San Francisco). Unfortunately, Lera took Grisha's passport and he got hers, which immediately attracted   
  attention of  the 
Immigration officers. Grisha was sent back, but decided to go to Israel instead of Denmark. We couldn't trace his whereabouts for  two days, and so my sister, Lera, lay  on the couch, prostrated and crying, during all that time,  sure that the Ku Klux Klan or Southern Militia in Atlanta did something to her husband. She had her Green Card, though, and stayed with us for about a few months.