Growing Up In The Soviet Union. Chapter I: the Balcony

It's amazing how a picture of my childhood home in Russia, sent by a friend who was passing by, unleashed a flood of random thoughts and memories this morning. Specifically, a picture of the balcony of apartment 13, where I lived for the first seventeen years of my life, until I packed a duffel bag and moved to US (but that story comes much later). For now, let's talk about the balcony. That balcony and that yellow, dilapidated Soviet-era building with crumbling plaster may look depressing to you, but to me it holds many happy memories. It leads into "my" bedroom that I shared with my sister and my grandmother in a two bedroom apartment. Every inch of that apartment was lovingly remodeled by my parents to maximize the space and to give it some personality in the world of cookie cutter drab government issues living quarters. Our tiny kitchen, where I learned to cook by watching my parents work together wrapping dumplings ("pelmeni"), preserving all the summer vegetables and fruit we grew, brewing home made kambucha ("kvas") and baking, was fitted with a track door that my dad engineered using some toy wheels. That allowed some extra space in the corner where we eventually had a small TV with a built in VCR. The VCR was such a rarity in those days (late 80's), that I was strictly instructed not to talk about it outside of my group of close friends for fear of being either robbed or reported for having imported goods...My friends did get to benefit from it by hanging out on the wrap around bench in the kitchen and watching badly dubbed Jean Claude Van Damme movies and Back to the Future. The hallway leading up to the kitchen held our 2nd refrigerator, as the one in the kitchen was tiny by American standards and we were a family of six (after my brother arrived on the scene and including my grandma). One wall along the hallway was fitted with floor to ceiling bookshelves built by my dad that held the overflow of books from the living room as well as my favorite literary magazines that arrived once a month. At the other end of the hallway was my parents bedroom that also served as my time-out spot since it was the only room in the apartment with a lock. If you took a left turn coming down the hallway from the kitchen, you would then be headed towards my bedroom and the living room directly across from it. As I mentioned earlier, I shared my room with my younger sister and for at least a few years, with my maternal grandmother. For privacy, my twin size bed was separated from my grandma's side of the room by a book shelf and I had my own reading light as I read everywhere at all times and often after "bed time." If I remember correctly, by the time my sister graduated from her crib in my parents room, my grandma moved out to live with my aunt, so it was now my sister and I sharing the bedroom. And now, back to the balcony that faced the yard also known as "dvor" which was a square space in the middle of a block of apartment buildings. The outdoor space had some communal clothes lines, playground with perpetually rusty monkey bars and swings and a makeshift outdoor skating rink. Whenever it was dinner time or time for my favorite weekly kids' TV show, my mom (along with every Soviet mom in the neighborhood) would simply yell for me from the balcony. The balcony was an extension of our living and storage space and held additional clothes lines (for those of you not familiar with the concept, you hang your clothes to dry outside in the absence of a dryer). Jars of pickles and jam were also stored here along with packages of "exotic" fruit such as mandarin oranges and persimmons, sent to us a few times a year by friends and relatives in the south. Since this was "my" balcony, I often snuck out there late at night to eat some fruit while reading a book. In the winter, I would step outside barefoot and stand in the snow in hopes of catching a cold so I could get out of going to school the next day.It never worked, in case you are wondering... To you, it may look like a sad apartment building, to me it's a portal to my childhood. To be continued...