My Trip back to Russia
- By: Irena Schneider (Is this you?)
- Created on: 09/26/2007
- Rated By 1 Users
- Comments: 1
In the summer of 2005, I finally came back to Russia for the first time since I immigrated. It had been eight years. My family had changed, my city had changed; I had changed.
Instinctively, I understand that I cannot possibly live there again. Despite this, there is something profound about Russia. I cannot but feel it like an unspoken, innate longing for maternal affection.
Recently, I saw a news report from Russia, where the reporter stood in front of the old cement glazed houses with yellow and light orange paint cracking off their foundations. These houses were the kind with huge arabesque-like antennas over the roofs and mini flower balconies with barely enough room to stand in them -- “ the kind that seeped through me with the city's rhythm every day of my visit. They had windows with the small rectangular openings bearing ventilators not of the most technological value.
Still, they give the windows just the kind of character that makes me appreciate the kind of humble life I had before, or perhaps fear the kind of humble life I could have had. My mom and I strolled down Lenin Street, past the busy shoppers and the colorful aged buildings. We stopped at Maternity building No.
1, the oldest one in the city, and she pointed out to me the window of the room in which I was born. In this quiet fascination; in this strange implicit reconciliation with the past, I watched a life that was once the only reality to me become only a fantastical glimpse into what I no longer knew. Every morning, I would get up and find my grandfather sitting sideways on his stool in the kitchen, contemplating the zooming cars below on the busy Red Prospect.
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