 |
|
Dear Hayden,
I remember when you were six and one day wanted to watch tv. In my effort to distract you, I said, "You know, when I was little, I had no tv." Your response was wide eyes. I went for more drama. "And your grampa Tichenko, my father, who was living in Russia when he was your age, not only had no tv, but no radio, no car. He never saw an airplane; there were no movies......" Well, you were now distracted and said, "Boy, I'm glad I wasn't little then." When I was little, I grew up with the stories of immigrants, my dad from near the Black Sea, my mother from Antwerp, Belgium. When I was six, like you are now, the house was filled with foreign language from Russian friends and Flemish relatives. Cigarette smoke filled the house, all of us coughing and waving as though it were natural. I remember thinking that all the other kids in school knew something I didn't, that they all had American parents who also knew what was going on better than mine did. I was glued to the radio, listening to "Baby Snooks" and "The Shadow." I didn't miss tv because it didn't exist then, but got to watch it start several years later when Aunt Celeste got one of the first. It was all black and white and there were about three shows, all shown live. No movies. I remember my mother when she told me of watching the first talking movies. My friends and I played in the streets - hopscotch chalked by the curb and hide and seek from one side to the other - and on the empty lot on the corner. No one worried about us: cars were few and the lots where we built forts and caves were unfenced. No one thought to wonder who owned the property. We walked to school and were required to walk home for lunch at noon, then back to school for the afternoon. If you had to bring your lunch to school and eat it there, you had to have a written reason. It was assumed the mommy's were home making the lunch. Going to the moon was considered laughable fantasy when I was little, but it's a fact that you take for granted. I reflect on these things because I feel, as a first generation American, born in a time of enormous change, like I'm living with one hand in primitive knowledge and another brushing technological miracles. I lived with those from the old world absorbing the result of their cultures, their anxieties and courage and I am now steeped in a computerized present with you with all new sets of things to think about and do. Nothing seems impossible now as it did then. Your dreams and fantasies seem way more complex than those of my day. You have so much more input that it seems to me you have to deal with more reality at a younger age than I had to. What a trip! I'm so glad to be here with you. With Love, Nana |
 |
