How I Stayed in America (Part 16)

Little Fedor certainly turned out to be my best teacher. He was not an easy child. He slept poorly, ate poorly, and was constantly capricious.

I reminisce about my spoiled youth and the stories, such as if you wake     me up at night, I will no longer fall asleep. It was our way  of “bragging”       to each other. It’s like we’re such an anxious psychotype that we have to sleep all night long. Because if not… if not… What “if not”? Nothing, in principle. Nowadays, I can wake up at least 30 times per night and fall  asleep 31 times, yet still feel great the next day.  Apparently, this is me  being old. Have you heard that old people always sleep little and get up early? I’m kidding, of course. But this is how it is now. I remember the phrase of my mother, who  was  horrified  by  my  pregnancy:  “How  will you live when the child is born, if you lie in the bath for at least an hour, and then grimace by the mirror for another two hours?” Indeed, I thought, how would I manage to raise a child??? The answer is simple: a person gets adapted to everything. Yes, I quickly lost the habit of taking   a long bath, styling, and doing makeup. Now, I merely need 30 minutes  to get ready and leave the house. I learned how to shower, do makeup, get dressed, and style my hair very quickly… Maybe that’s just because I don’t have much hair though…

The first child is always difficult. It is a mixture of false alarms, heightened anxiety, manic thoughts about death, both your own and the child’s. You can throw stones at me, but if you, sitting by the bed of a child with a high fever, never thought about death, you are either a heartless warden in a women’s colony, or just a straight up narcissist.

Any mother, especially the mother of the first child, admits having the most terrible thoughts in her head. At least because she is inexperienced and feels like a stupid chicken. With the birth of other children comes experience, knowledge, and awareness. Awareness of the world as a whole. Therefore, it becomes much easier. Increased concern for children is primarily a lack of self-awareness.

I apologize for the lyrical digression. Let’s go back to baby Fedor. In Salt Lake City, where we resided, there was no such thing as a nanny. It’s simple: mothers take care of their children themselves. Utah is one of  the few states in America where women raise their children by themselves and do not work. In all other American states though,  women are fully employed, just like men. That’s why I didn’t have a nanny. My Russian nanny was not given a visa, and I was left alone in a foreign state with my baby and my husband, who was absent exactly 50 percent of the time. He was constantly on the road. By that I mean not only “on a business trip”, but also “on the move”. Therefore, his job in no way involved helping with the child. As a matter of fact, I raised most of the children on my own. My husband himself sometimes needed a  nanny — the degree of his eternal fatigue did not allow him sometimes even to get out of bed. From there came the habit of our favorite utensil — the tray: everything under the nose and in a lying state.

Let me share a couple of stories that happened to me with law enforcement officials. Frosty winter evening, seven o’clock. My son is ten months old, sitting in a child seat in the back. He’s sleeping. We need baby food. I drive up to the supermarket and think: how can I wake him up now? I’ll quickly run to the store, grab a couple of baby food jars, a vegetable marrow, and leave my child in the car. I leave the car right in front of the glass sliding doors of the supermarket. I run inside, grab whatever I need as fast as possible, however, there is a queue at the checkout. It’s small, 3-4 people at most; it’s a rush hour after all. There is one person left before me, and I see sirens on the street and several police cars. It does not even occur to me that this somehow concerns  me. I go out into the street — my car is surrounded by police. I ask, what’s the matter? Strict police men ask questions: “Is this your car?” – “Yes,” – “Is this your child in the car?” – “Yes,” – “Your rights and registration for the car, please.” They punch data through the computer. They understand that I’m not on the run, they ask where my husband     is. “On the road,” I answer. The policeman sighs heavily. He clearly wanted to hear something different from me. I begin to explain: my husband is a “Jazz Player”… (We have different surnames, and there is not even any evidence that this is really my husband. I’m Masha Lopatova, not Kirilenko, like the Jazz player…) I hear the clinking of handcuffs and contemplate what to do.

The policeman explains the laws to me, a kind of legal educational program, so to speak, common conducts. In spite of the fact that my son is wearing winter overalls and is fastened in a child’s chair, they “sew” an article for me for “child neglect”, that is, for negligence towards the child. It turns out that the whole problem is that, in their opinion, the child could have freezed to death in the car. And then a terrible thought came to me: if I put him outside, on the terrace every day, for a nap in an overalls in a stroller, is that also a crime? We’re Russians! All our children sleep on the balconies at minus 20 Celsius, and this is considered normal!!! He’s sleeping in the fresh air! I voiced this Russian tradition to the policeman, he looks at me with complete bewilderment and says: “Russian children sleep in the cold??? Ah, now I understand the expression “Russian frostbites”… I checked you through the system, and I can see that you are indeed Kirilenko’s wife, and he indeed is playing with Indiana tomorrow. If not for your husband, we would have arrested you. Do not do that again!”

P.S. I never put any of my children for an afternoon nap again, and if I did, I’d put two overalls on them and definitely not put them out in the cold.