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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I reminisce about my spoiled youth and the stories, such as if you wake\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 me up at night, I will no longer fall asleep. It was our way\u00a0 of \u201cbragging\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to each other. It\u2019s like we\u2019re such an anxious psychotype that we have to sleep all night long. Because if not… if not… What \u201cif not\u201d? Nothing, in principle. Nowadays, I can wake up at least 30 times per night and fall\u00a0 asleep 31 times, yet still feel great the next day.\u00a0 Apparently, this is me\u00a0 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\u00a0 was\u00a0 horri\ufb01ed\u00a0 by\u00a0 my\u00a0 pregnancy:\u00a0 \u201cHow\u00a0 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?\u201d 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\u00a0\u00a0 a long bath, styling, and doing makeup. Now, I merely need 30 minutes\u00a0 to get ready and leave the house. I learned how to shower, do makeup, get dressed, and style my hair very quickly… Maybe that\u2019s just because I don’t have much hair though\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \ufb01rst child is always dif\ufb01cult. It is a mixture of false alarms, heightened anxiety, manic thoughts about death, both your own and the child\u2019s. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Any mother, especially the mother of the \ufb01rst 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u00a0 the few states in America where women raise their children by themselves and do not work. In all other American states though,\u00a0 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 \u201con a business trip\u201d, but also \u201con the move\u201d. 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\u00a0 nanny \u2014 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 \u2014 the tray: everything under the nose and in a lying state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let me share a couple of stories that happened to me with law enforcement of\ufb01cials. 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\u2019ll 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\u2019s small, 3-4 people at most; it\u2019s 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 \u2014 my car is surrounded by police. I ask, what’s the matter? Strict police men ask questions: \u201cIs this your car?\u201d – \u201cYes,\u201d – \u201cIs this your child in the car?\u201d – \u201cYes,\u201d – \u201cYour rights and registration for the car, please.\u201d They punch data through the computer. They understand that I’m not on the run, they ask where my husband is. \u201cOn the road,\u201d I answer. The policeman sighs heavily. He clearly wanted to hear something different from me. I begin to explain: my husband is a \u201cJazz Player\u201d… (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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201csew\u201d an article for me for \u201cchild neglect\u201d, 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: \u201cRussian children sleep in the cold??? Ah, now I understand the expression \u201cRussian frostbites\u201d… 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!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
P.S. I never put any of my children for an afternoon nap again, and if I did, I\u2019d put two overalls on them and de\ufb01nitely not put them out in the cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n