June 22, 2005
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Dmitry was in a reminiscent mood this evening, fetching paper and pen
to sketch out his home in Pervomaysk. Some stuff was new, while
other was not. I was aware of the apple trees they had, but not
of the garden where they grew cucumbers and potatoes, and occasionally
strawberries. There was also a banya, the Russian bath which
sounds like a sauna. He told of sitting in it and getting hotter
and hotter, whacking himself with birch twigs, then running out and jumping into the snow.It sounds like torture to me but he sighed nostalgically over it.
When he gets going about his life in Pervomaysk it forcibly brings home just how different life
is here. He needs to write these memories down, else he's going
to forget them, I fear; after all, there's Shumerly in between
Pervomaysk and Texas . . . he was a month short of 8 years old when he
was moved to the children's home. IOW, this stuff happened about
half his life ago.
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Our son spent his entire life in care till we came along. Baby house till 4, then detski till we adopted him a few days before he turned 6. He no longer remembers the names of the children in photos we took, though I was able to get some of them down before he forgot. But every once in a while he will come out with some memory of life there that he had not previously shared. Best would be to have him write it down, or tape record it, because sometimes I'll tell our son something he told us and he thinks we made it up.
Tape recording it is an excellent notion...I suggested he write them down and was rewarded with an absolutely classic, teenage-son eyeroll, as in "You have got to be kidding."
Him? Forget?
Like that's gonna happen, he thinks. Trouble is, we know he WILL.
He might go for audio or video taping of his stories, however. Good thought!
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