On bus rides and languages separated by alphabets and cultures

I often ride the 30 bus in San Francisco. Starting near AT&T Park, it crosses SOMA (South of Market), then skirts downtown, ducks under Nob Hill via the Stockton Street tunnel, embraces Chinatown and North Beach, sideswipes Fisherman's Wharf, pauses briefly at my home, then traverses the Marina District along Chestnut Street, ending near the iconic Palace of Fine Arts and Chrissy Field.

Not the 30, but my favorite line, the F, brought from Milan, Italy. At Fisherman's Wharf. 

It's a cheap but thorough city tour. Locals and tourists are mashed together. 

I usually chat with people, but sometimes I need down time. One day, I plunked myself in the middle of a three-seat bench at the front and began to read emails. Two enormous men squeezed down, engulfing me in bodies and aromas, the larger one on my left in shorts, oblivious to the cold fog.

Ignoring my attempts at isolation, the man queried me in a gentle, friendly — but persistent —manner, about phones in general and mine specifically. I ducked on pricing, confirmed usability, and kept trying to return to the screen.

“I'd like to ask you a survey question, if I may,” he eventually asked. “What person born since 1900 do you admire the most?”

I told him in today's environment it would be easier to decide whom I admire the least, but again he was gentle in his persistence. 

He nudged, “If there was one person born since 1900 whom you could converse with, who would it be?”

Finally intrigued, I decided to back away from the present political situation, and said, “Winston Churchill.” I’m not sure how I picked him, it was not a deeply considered response.

“You must be a student of history."

He then asked if I knew an author called David Irving, who wrote a book called Churchill’s War. I must've looked interested, because he described a great historian, who had been jailed in Austria just a few years earlier for his political views. My skepticism quickly led to a search.

I turned my screen toward him and said, “But he's a neo-Nazi and racist.” 

“Oh,” he chuckled, unfazed. “That's just the way he's being portrayed. He's a very thoughtful person.”

Sincerity oozed at me. “Really,” he said, as he got up and then apologized because we had reached his stop. My screen did not leave much doubt about this author’s beliefs.

The news that day was all about Donald Trump refusing to acknowledge racism and neo-Nazi chanting at a deadly event in Virginia over the weekend. I had just marked a note in my calendar to avoid Chrissy Field on August 26 because another such event was planned there. And now this? On a bus in San Francisco?

I glanced up at the women facing me across the bus. One had a black print hijab over a long blue robe. Only her eyes and a bit of forehead were exposed. The woman next to her had a black scarf wrapped around her head in the style of the women in Iran, and a beige wool Inca-patterned shawl over black slacks. I didn't want a conversation with a neo-Nazi to be their image of a bus trip through San Francisco.

“Where are you from?" I directed my question to the woman whose face was uncovered.

“Illinois,” she replied, with an Indian accent.

This has become quite normal lately, and I understand that my very question could be taken as racist. Clearly, it spoke to their clothes and the character of their faces. Most of the time, I can use an open friendliness, and perhaps my gender and age, to go deeper without offense. This woman, however, easily unbent to my grin at a response which confirmed her Americanness. 

“I am originally from India,” she continued.

“Really? I am going there next month.”

“Oh? And where will you be going? The Taj Mahal?”

“No, I am going to Orissa.”

"Orissa?”

Not confident that she knew where that was, I added, “and Chattisgarh.”

"Chattisgarh? You are going to Chattisgarh? Not the Taj Mahal? Not Agra?”

I confirmed that I go to India quite frequently but I've never been to Agra. She encouraged me to go, but finally asked me where in Chattisgarh. I showed her my itinerary, and a few photographs.

And just like that, we were friends.

She told me she was from Chattisgarh, and her husband was a doctor who had treated people like the ones in my pictures.

“He had an emergency surgery on a man with an arrow that pierced his chest,” she said, pounding her fist at a spot next to her heart. “They don't use guns, just bows and arrows.”

I absorbed this amazing story, along with the fact that they moved to America in 1993 and her husband went back to school and became a neurosurgeon.

The fully-covered woman next to her sat mute, but her eyes followed us. I am not yet fully comfortable with breaching the privacy of those who cover themselves, and usually just smile. I finally asked where she was from.

“Pakistan,” she said from behind the cloth.

“Oh, where in Pakistan?”

“Karachi.”

“And have you been here long?”

“Three years.”

“Are you together?”

I learned they were both from Illinois, and are friends because their daughters live in San Francisco. They were visiting family and helping to take care of grandchildren, one of whom now burst onto the scene, with a young woman in a beautiful long black gown, her head uncovered. They all spoke rapidly, checking out the neighborhood.

“What language are you using?”

“Urdu,” said one. “Hindi,” said the other.

In the remaining few minutes of our trip I learned that those two languages have radically different alphabets but are mutually comprehensible, something I had never understood until that moment.

“Like in your countries," the Indian woman said. She had learned in our interchange that I was born in Yugoslavia, and had mentioned Croatia and Serbia. 

“Yes, we too,” I acknowledged, “have languages separated mostly by alphabets and cultures.” 

We all laughed together as the bus stopped and they walked off, heading towards Fisherman's Wharf.

What is a Mother Tongue?

What is a mother tongue? What is your mother tongue? What is your mother’s tongue?

Sometimes the simplest questions take a book to answer. Such is the case with my story, with my book — Mother Tongue.

What language did you speak with your mother? What language did you speak with your father? What language did you speak with your brother?

For me there are three different answers to those questions.

Did you speak your mother tongue with anyone except your mother?

That, of course, is the most bizarre question so far for me, and the answer is no. I spoke a unique language with my mother, one I am still fluent in. And by the way, it was not my mother’s native language.

Is this story a fantasy? Is it fiction? Is it an invention of the most convoluted imagination? Are you about to read a book about zombies or science fiction? No, this is a book true to my memory, which is supported by years of historical research.

The language under discussion is Serbian. My mother was Croatian. My father was Russian. I grew up with my brother in San Francisco, California speaking English. I was born in Serbia, but left when I was six-months-old. I didn’t speak any language until I was two. 

I didn't know why I spoke Serbian, rather than Croatian, with my mother Zora. It never occurred to me to ask until I started writing this book. And by then, my mother was gone.

Mother Tongue is an exploration of lives lived in the chaos of a part of the world known as the Balkans. Following three generations of women in a history spanning a hundred years. It follows countries that dissolved, formed, and reformed. Lands that were conquered and subjugated by Fascists and Nazis and Communists and nationalists. It explores lives lived in exile, in refugee camps, in new worlds.

Long after my American passport replaced a document that read ‘stateless,’ the ‘birthplace’ on that passport changed four times in four successive renewals. Until the first time, I believed my country of birth was a fixed point. Today I know better.

Manifest of passengers on the S.S. Constitution, 1953, including my family. 

My first United States certificate of citizenship. 

Hidden in old boxes

The night before I was leaving for a recent trip to India, I had a flash of insight, realizing I could include more family pictures in my first book, Mother Tongue. I always pack light, no matter how long the trip, so, instead of packing and chasing down chocolate powder and deciding what to do with my mysteriously unstartable car, I set off on my family photo project. 

Could my book midwife make adding more photos happen? Could I find the pictures I had in mind, scan them, and reread enough of the book to figure out where to include them? 

Packing? What packing? 

My excitement over this new possibility energized me to the point that all tasks were now possible, no matter the timeline. With great joy I leafed through the albums my mother had carefully saved. 

My parents

With my brother

With my brother and our parents

I went on to read through my book, and the next day, during my flight to India, I planned where to add the photos. But before that, I got distracted one more time. 

When I couldn't find a picture of Harold, my late husband, with my mom — and couldn't get from my apartment in San Francisco to my house in Healdsburg (where more photos are stored) because my car wouldn't start — I turned everything in my apartment upside down in desperation, searching for it.

Instead, I found a Christmas card from 1965 from someone in Chicago who had been unsuccessfully trying to find me for months. I had no memory of this person, but decided that it was a good idea to look her up.

I figured that in these days of Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and Twitter, she would be easy to find. However, since my generation seems to lag when it comes to technology, all I found was an article from 2012:

Anne Kuznetsov,* 62, was arrested by the Chicago Illinois State Police at 3:45 p.m. on an outstanding La Grange Police Department warrant for driving with a suspended license, police said.

Somebody my age would've been 62 five years ago. And I realized that I must've met Anne in 1965, when I went to a summer national Junior Achievement Conference in Indiana. Like me, she was the winner of a the trip of a lifetime.

But the only information I could find was that pathetic paragraph?

If I didn't have to jump out of bed, shower, finish packing, and head for the airport, I would have had time to consider far more deeply what that all meant, and hopefully, someday I will find the inspiration to keep searching. 

*name has been changed

A Christmas story: A little girl and a little boy

A six-year-old girl stares in the window of an inner city neighborhood grocery store in San Francisco in the 1950s.

The window is cluttered — it's hard to see through the dirt. "Mike's" says the sign above the door. The little girl's eyes are determinedly fixed on an object that glows, just behind the smudged glass. It is a doll behind that window, the only doll in any window in this neighborhood, and it is there as a Christmas promotion. The store is directly across the street from the little girl's house. She can see the doll by gluing her eyes to the window of the room her grandmother sleeps in, which doubles as the family's living room. She will never want another doll as much as she craves that tall perfect blonde in her pink gown — she has to have that doll.
 
But December 25 comes and goes with the doll still in the window, removed a few days later to be replaced with a sign that advertises Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
 
The little girl is right. She never does crave another doll, for she is not a doll kind of girl. She becomes a tomboy who turns to skates and stilts and baseball and bicycles. But on that January 6, almost 60 years ago, it is her family's Christmas Eve and a large box under the Christmas tree holds the magic doll. The warm glow of that moment and the image of that perfect blonde haired beauty remains planted somewhere deep inside that one-time little girl's heart.
 
Fast forward about sixty years.
 
A little boy turning five is getting ready to start school. He spends most of his days with his grandmother — let's call her Vesna — and whenever she lets him, he is playing with her computer and watching Disney movies. One of his favorites is a Disney animated adventure film called Cars.
 
The computer also shows him many goodies that surround this cartoon. The internet brings backpacks and lunch boxes with cars on them tantalizingly close — Right there in his grandmother Vesna's bedroom. Right there behind the smudged glass where he presses his finger on this magic backpack.
 
The little boy is 8,000 miles from Disneyland. The Disney store does not ship to his country. While the backpack is not expensive, getting it to Serbia might be. But the little boy really, really, really wants that backpack. And his grandmother really, really wants to get it for him.    
 
A few miles from the Disney store in San Francisco wanders the one-time little girl — me — who had long forgotten about wanting that doll 60 years ago. There is a text from Vesna about a Cars backpack and that once little girl shakes her head, thinking about the crass commercialism that has spread a desire for this backpack to the far corners of the globe, even to a house in Belgrade, where the little boy is about to start school.
 
The little girl was born there and when she visits, the little boy's father will be warm and polite and, until pressed, will avoid saying what he really thinks about her adopted homeland, America — a place he believes is evil. It is not only the source of much of the world's crass commercialism, but of the specific bombs that fell on his town not that many years ago.
 
As she walks down the San Francisco street, however, it is the memory of the doll in the window that pulls her into the Disney store. And while the backpack cannot be teleported to Vesna's apartment in Serbia, the young salesclerk quickly messengers a picture to Belgrade where it is greeted with glee.

On the beach

In the city of Puri, on the east coast of India, a place of pilgrimage, and more importantly, beaches, I was awake at the light at 5:30 a.m. and walked on the beach, where the sun toyed with a few clouds. 

I found a bracelet in the sand — a triple band of little brown wooden beads, and asked a handsome young man— the only person in sight — if it was his. He said no, but offered that we could throw it back into the ocean. Somehow, it became clear that it was meant to be an offering—to the sea, the sky, the silence.

Women collecting pieces of wood that the tide brought in overnight.

Some women in saris collected wood along the beach. I quickly snapped a picture of them emerging from the sunrise, and we all enjoyed it, until a man walked up and asked for money — on their behalf, it seemed.

Most people here still enjoy having their pictures taken, and often ask me to take more. A fair number do check, as a passing gesture, to see if I have something to give them. I don't give people money to take pictures, preferring to walk away. I do, however, now carry a few San Francisco keychains or postcards as gifts for people I connect with along my path.

Closer to 6:30 as I was returning, crowds were entering the beach, and a drone was hovering overhead. 

I came upon a camel, a group of photographers, and two more drones. 

The photographers told me they were shooting a “preevary”— a short video, they clarified.

We continued talking, and they told me a bride and groom were involved. I walked over to the couple, who told me they were shooting a "preeveg." 

I eventually understood they were shooting a pre-wedding video and flew to the beach just for this photo shoot.

I continued along and found a group of people who would in any other circumstances be considered insane. They were old and skinny, wearing saris and dhotis. At the direction of their spiritual leader, they entered the water fearlessly, spread themselves facedown on the sand, waiting for the waves. When the waves came, they were submerged in a broiling mass of bubbles. The stronger women pulled men weighing around 60 pounds, definitely near their last pilgrimage, up to their feet and back to shore.

My own gods drove me closer to capture their images. I ran to escape a large wave, getting soaked and almost crashing into a few worshipers on my way out. This continued until they had all finished their objective, and they walked toward me, telling me how happy they were.   

“Happy! Happy!” It was either their only word of English or their joy wiped all other words from their minds. Of course, I never figured out while on that beach exactly what they were trying to do, but I assumed it was a pilgrimage. They then walked away and the beach was given back to tourists.

I was a sandy, salty, soaked mess — and my grin reached from ear to ear as I walked back to my Western hotel where the man watering the bushes obliged me by spraying my legs so I could enter the lobby.

Tatiana and Tatyana

One the same day that I flew home from India a few weeks ago, instead of going to sleep early, I went to read my story about Morocco at an event called Lit Crawl. It’s the celebratory end of San Francisco‘s week-long LitQuake, and 10,000 people come listen to several hundred readers in various cafés, bookstores, libraries, and other venues in the Mission District.

It was a wonderful event in a packed café, and I read with a small group of fellow travel writers led by Larry Habegger, whose company, Travelers' Tales, will be publishing my book, Mother Tongue, in March.

Toward the end of the evening a young woman walked up and waited while various people introduced themselves to me.

“Hello. My name is Tatyana,” she said.

“How wonderful,” I said. “That’s my name too, you know.”

“Oh yes, I certainly do.”

Someone else wanted to talk to me, but it was obvious this young woman had more to say, so I kept looking at her.

“The coincidence doesn’t stop there.” A big grin settled into her eyes. “I grew up in the same house that you grew up in!”

“That can’t be true!” 

But it was.

Her family, it turned out, bought our family house when my mother finally had to give it up after living in it for over 40 years. 

The house in 1987

On a recent Sunday, Tatyana and I walked around Spreckels Lake — a pond in Golden Gate Park across the street from the house — which my mother walked around every morning into her 80s.

The house in October 2017

Raptly engrossed in each other’s stories, we circled many times. At one point, the founder of the House of Bagels, a sweet looking 70-ish man whose story I would normally be sharing with you now, persistently but unsuccessfully tried to connect with us. We were simply not available. We were on a mission to learn about each other.

My brother Alex and I moved into that house on 35th Avenue when he was 14. Tatyana moved in when she was 14. I went to Washington High School and University of California, Berkeley. Tatyana went to Washington High School and University of California, Berkeley. We both worked with computers. I speak five languages, almost six. Tatyana speaks five languages, and is now learning another, determined to exceed her grandfather’s skill with six languages. We both married non-Russians. We are both writers planning the publication of our book. And we grew up in a house that was the culmination of our parents’ American dream and a home we loved. 

With my brother and parents, Christmas 1987.

The commonalities seemed to end there. My Cossack father’s family left Russia around 1917, during the revolution that created the Soviet union. Tatyana’s family was part of the Jewish immigration of the 1980s and 1990s, when the Soviet Union was falling apart. Tatyana is deeply steeped in Jewish studies and her sixth language is Hebrew. I spent much of my youth feeling vaguely guilty about the role of the Cossacks in persecuting Jews in Russia.

And then something I couldn’t believe tumbled out of Tatyana‘s mouth.

“My grandmother was a Cossachka.” She looked at me, unsure if I knew what that meant. “A Cossack, you know.”

And now the commonalities multiplied. Our fathers were both Cossacks. Their families were both forced out of their homelands by Communists. Mine ended up in Yugoslavia, hers was pushed by Stalin to Moldova. Each married a long-time native of their adopted country, had a son, then a daughter named Tania, and then was forced out again. Both finally ended up in a house in San Francisco on 35th Avenue between Fulton and Cabrillo.

My Russian Orthodox father married a Croatian Catholic who converted to his religion, the one I was raised in. Her Russian Orthodox father married a Moldovan Jew, and in that religion a child’s faith is determined by her maternal lineage. As we talked I realized — 50 years late — that my first fiancé was also a Jew, through Gracie, his zany Russian Jewish mother.

And of course I can’t help but think that had my family stayed in Russia, they too might’ve been pushed by Stalin into one of the outlying republics like Moldova or …

Creating photographs, words, and connections

A great photograph tells a story. But a great written story doesn't necessarily have great photographs to go with it. 

Over the years, my photography and written storytelling have grown more linked. My best stories evolve over time as I internalize my experiences, and are often written later, using notes I made in the field. These notes add detail and can help create a more intimate reality. Photographs taken at the time can also help remind me of specific settings or people.

But the best photographs from a trip might not match the most significant story.

I met a woman on a river trip in Myanmar, and our brief visit will live with me forever. I have a video of her rolling chewing tobacco, and a picture of the two of us together. But I don't have an amazing scene that would tell you the story of her life in one picture. Most often, my deepest connections preclude photography, because I am talking and interacting with people, not shooting.

When I wander with my camera looking for scenes, photographs often come before I connect with people, or in the moment of connection. I don't consider myself a great portrait photographer, because I don't think I have the personality required for that art, for patience is a key ingredient, and patience is something I lack.

I have been asked if I get permission before I photograph people. I do sometimes, but not as a general rule. I typically acknowledge the person with a nod of gratitude or a smile. If the person does not want their picture taken, I will not persist. 

One place where I have easily captured portraits of people is India. I love how welcoming many people are, and how much they enjoy having their pictures taken.

Women have to carry water long distances in tribal areas of Odisha, India, and sometimes are reluctant to be photographed at the source. This woman clearly didn't mind at all, and paused with over 40 pounds of water on her head to smile at me.

That used to puzzle me until the prevalence of camera phones led to people asking if they could take my picture. I find it easy to say yes, and I am usually flattered, especially when it's a handsome young man!

Looking at my pictures, I can often trace the path from surprise or suspicion to acknowledgement or connection. While for many photographers that is the moment that initiates the photography session, for me, it will initiate the final photograph, and the moment that will start the shift to whatever level of personal connection I will have with that person.

This is probably the first time that my writing was initiated by my photographs. I hope as I continue to combine my stories and images the marriage will be fruitful to both!

For your laughing eyes

Traveling through Central Asia reached me on levels that peeled away years of my life. For the first time since I was young I was surrounded by people who spoke Russian. People who wanted to know why it was that I, too, spoke that language.

My fellow travelers came to understand when I responded, "I am American, but my father was Russian. He left Russia 100 years ago." The questions flew at me in rapid fire succession, lest I disappear before the mystery was clarified.

Waiters hovered around me in Bukhara, Uzbekistan,  knowing that I would translate mysterious requests, as complex as the need for a fork or a second beer. They saw many French, German, and Italian tourists. But English knocked them flat. They did not see many Americans.

Toward the end of dinner one night a handsome young lad walked up behind me and gently said, "This is for you," as he handed me a delicate white rose.

I don't mean a green-stemmed white rose. I mean a delicate all-white object that seemed to glow in the open-air caravanserai where a violinist played Mozart and a singer had just finished a rendition, in Russian, of "Очи Чёрные / Dark Eyes."

And just as I had finished explaining to my friends that it was a song about captivating dark eyes, this rose was placed in my hand.

I stumbled through a thank you, and asked: "But why are you giving me this?"

And the gracious young man said: "For your laughing eyes."

I doubt that he expected me to leap up and hug him, but how could I resist?

My rose didn't make it home intact, but I photographed it before going to sleep. I had walked home holding it delicately before me, marveling that someone had taken one of the paper napkins that graced almost all of the tables in Uzbekistan, and had created an object that could give me such joy.

On research and writing: From dusty tomes to instant information

During the process of writing Mother Tongue, I was reminded that things happen in small steps.

Sometimes, it is remembering this that gets me moving again on my writing when I feel stuck. One doesn't need endless hours to start writing. A few minutes here and there will do.

However, a few minutes in, I would often find that once again, I was wonderfully distracted by history, as writing a historical novel in the age of the Internet is definitely an experience shaped by its time.

Many years ago, I decided to explore the question of my mother's nearly mythical heritage. She kept telling us that 500 years ago her family came from Montenegro to Istria. As far as I knew, that information was not written down anywhere, although in my book there must be a mysterious old Bible. 

Exploring the question meant exploring the New York City Public Library. At the time, the main library on Fifth Avenue was an astonishing source of knowledge. The staff who peopled the Slavic department rivaled my professors at the University of California, Berkeley. They had already confirmed the veracity of the stories about why my family and I had fled Yugoslavia. I would talk to them at length about my questions, and they would refer me to old New York Times microfiche reels, or head off to the stacks to come back with mysterious dusty books. 

One of those dusty tomes told of the plagues that wiped out the population of Istria during the Middle Ages. They told of the Venetian empire strengthening, and taking over the area. Of Venice sending ships to Montenegro, where the Ottomans were invading. Of the ships picking up the fleeing 'barbarians' and depositing them along the Istrian coast. 

Thrilled with my discoveries, I neglected to make copies of the pages, or to write down the name of the book. On a recent return trip to that library, I learned that the department had been desiccated by budget cuts.  Moreover, those people that helped me were probably long retired, if even alive.

At home in San Francisco one day, I decided that I needed to do a little more research about more ancient history. Instead of flying to New York, I picked up my iPad. Instead of talking to some gentle elderly man, I talked to Siri. Instead of dusty old tomes, I got Wikipedia and Google transcripts. 

That Istria was the ancient Illyria discussed in the Iliad was another story I have shared with people for years. One more time I decided to confirm the veracity of my statements. One more time I learned I have not been incorrect. 

Illyria, it seems, covered much of what was once Yugoslavia. In fact, it was right near the dividing point of Montenegro that the Roman and Byzantine empires abutted. The rationale for the Bible being written in Cyrillic rather than Latin was discovered from my desk, as the sun rose over San Francisco. 

Rage and Love

My brother Alex and I fought bitterly as children.

He doesn't remember it well, but I do. What I remember of my childhood is tempered heavily by a massive rage. A rage at the injustice of the world. A rage at being smaller than my brother, and him being able to beat me up. A rage at being smaller than my parents and having to listen to them unless I wanted to get hit. An all encompassing rage deepened by it not having an outlet. Because I was small, there was not much use in expressing that rage physically. So I tried to use words; and that was not terribly effectively.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!" I hated the apparent truth of that silly rhyme, learned in the Inner City school I went to, for words were all I had to fight back with. In the end, it was the hard manners of those street smart kids that I learned so effectively. I shoved that rage somewhere deep inside, stored and tempered for the day I would somehow learn to keep people from walking all over me.

I do remember love as a child. Love for my adopted grandfather, Dyadya Zhenya, who I met in the refugee camp where we lived in Trieste. Love for a new Zhenya who took in our family when we came to America. Love for another wonderful man, named Wise Owl by the Hopi Indians he spent so much time with. Zhenya Ishevsky. Zhenya Kvasnikoff. Tolya Wise Owl Zoukovsky. There were many others. Olga Turskaya. My Aunt Galya. My kindergarten teacher Miss Laskey, who became Mrs. Lane halfway through the year. Their love filled my childhood, their names roll off my mind as easily as if they were still here in the room with me. 

Alex and me with my beloved Dyadya Zhenya in Trieste. That day he was on duty at the guard station at San Sabba, the refugee camp we lived in. 

It's as if I veered between love and anger, and not much in between.

My parents I mostly remember as taskmasters and rule setters. My mother believed saying good things about us would swell our heads. She thought love was expressed through actions, not words. It never occurred to her that a child might not understand the deep love behind her instructions on how to live. 

So instead of praise I stored up rage. Rage at my tone-deaf efforts at singing with my boring alto voice in a social circle where singing Russian songs and being part of the church choir weremandatory activities. Rage at the term of endearment "my little elephant" turning to insult when transferred from my father to Prima Ballerina Jana — Wise Owl's willowy but fierce wife who turned me down for ballet lessons. Rage at our family friend, Olga, who would sing loudly in my ear, sitting next to me as I banged away at the correct piano keys, finally telling my mother it was hopeless, I was a robot when it came to music, I didn't have that oh-so-Russian trait of a musical soul. Rage at my lifeless fine hair; at my height that refused me the last inch I wanted; at my weight that insisted on pounds I didn't need. Rage at being too smart and too white at a school where being tough and black was prized and normal. Rage at Betty, my one possible American best friend, whose mother didn't want her little girl hanging out with "one of those Russians." Rage at the brown stubs that were my early teeth — probably due to some lack of nutrients — and at the dentist who saved us money by pulling them at night without novocaine when they refused to drop out, to make room for the new crooked set we couldn't afford to straighten. Rage at being foreign when I wanted to be like everyone else.

Alex remembers a “normal” childhood and I am amazed every time I consider that. I remember my father sitting for hours with him every night, banging the table at his son's incomprehension of anything mathematical. Alex occasionally cried, but I always raged. My father believed his son had to be an engineer, in case we were evicted from yet another country against our will, for engineering was supposed to be the international language. Never mind that my father couldn't find work as an engineer because he couldn't learn English. His son had to be an engineer. Never mind that his daughter was a mathematical genius. His son had to be an engineer. Never mind that for Alex 2+2 could as easily be three or five as four. His son had to be an engineer to protect him from the random injustices of the world.

Alex and I visited Istria in Croatia together a few years ago and at the end of that trip we traveled to Italy, where we walked through San Marco Square in Venice without a fight. During our previous effort to travel together in Italy, as I was ending my teen years in 1968, we argued bitterly in that famous spot and parted ways for the rest of the summer. This time, we drank champagne on the Grand Canal as the sun set and day tripping crowds departed. I knew deep inside that there was no better place my life could have led me. 

I call that progress.

Enjoying a Campari spritz with brother Alex at the famous Harry's Bar in Venice, May 2014.