Where It Comes to "Who the Hell Are You?"

It has been a few years since I last went for a walk with my father.

At two I was learning to walk up a little hill outside of our house under my father’s instruction. To his great dismay, I wasn’t a great walker, though I excelled in all other toddler disciplines. To anyone who knows me now this would seem odd, for I have become a truly avid pedestrian, but as a child, I most certainly lacked an athletic streak. 

photographer unknown, family archives.

My father grew up near a forest and often headed there right after or, on occasion, instead of, school. With a slight blush he still tells the story of ditching school with his friends just to go to the forest and exchange the new curse words they had learned. Upon getting home, he says, he promptly demonstrated his improved cursing abilities to his parents. It seems that their reaction was rather uneventful.

My father got to run about and climb a variety of old agricultural machines, which lead to a few scars and naturally, stories that left my much more careful mother in horror. There wasn’t a forest anywhere near where I grew up, but the red brick apartment building constructed in the 60’s under Khrushev’s command was, thankfully, surrounded by various greenery. There were cherry trees near the dumpsters, and a few apple trees, which never really gave much fruit. Somebody had planted gooseberries and red and black currants under their window. As far as playmates went, girls were scarce, so the boys had no choice but to include me in the game of war. When it rained, we played with Styrofoam, though I cannot recall where we acquired it, and why it seemed to be of any interest – all it did was float aimlessly in the puddles.

photo credit: V. Popov

There were no climbable trees in our garden, so at least once a week, my father would take me to The Pond, which was about fifteen minutes away. On the way, my father would unfailingly present me with either historical facts or math problems about Peter and Basil who went to the store to buy various quantities of kerosene. The reason he used kerosene and not milk or sunflower oil was because it rhymed with the word for “store”, and therefore entertained me, as did the fact that kerosene was no longer in common use, and hence had an air of olden mystery to it: it was something my father had, in fact, bought in a store, something he had had need for, but I could imagine no circumstance, apart from perhaps camping, under which I would require it. In fact, no store, to my knowledge, sold any kerosene, though I never failed to look for it. In retrospect, I suppose, it is fair to say that I owe my knowledge of simple algebra to Peter, Basil, and kerosene. When we got to The Pond, which was exactly what it sounds like, a pond, surrounded by a park, which in winter provided decent skiing lanes, we would always go to the same tree. I would climb as high as I could reasonably go, and then go down to a certain branch that was about six feet above the ground. Every time, I would hesitate before jumping off the branch, but my father encouraged me and gave me instructions on how to best go about it. After I succeeded at jumping off the branch the first time, however, the fear hardly receded with each subsequent attempt. I was just as afraid the third, fifth, twentieth time – something my father found silly. Unsurprisingly, when years later I was diving into the Volga river from something like 10 or 15 feet, the same thing happened. Despite having done and enjoyed it, I was still afraid to repeat it. As it happens, this illogical fear persists still, only my father’s calm impatience no longer motivates me; it has been replaced with puzzled faces of my friends.