from russia with love

It is ironic, but my parents find me too Canadian, while my husband finds me too Russian. I guess once an immigrant, always an immigrant. I’m probably always going to have a double identity.

For a period of time it wasn’t really surfacing too much. Life in school and university, and even at work, revolves around a predictable path that hardly leaves time to ponder its meaning.

But once my child was born, all of a sudden my past became important. Surprisingly even to myself (and even more so to my husband, who luckily adapted), I realized that it IS very important to me that my kid knows my language, my culture and the history of where I’m from. Images of me being old, gray and forgetting English floated in my mind. He needs to learn Russian, if only to understand what poor old mommy is mumbling. But more so to know who he is.

You need to know where you come from, to figure out where you’re going.

Being a Russian in North America is unique. Years of Cold War have hardly created a positive perception, even less so an accurate one. I’m constantly amazed by the misinformation on what communist Russia was like.

First of all, I’m stating it for the record: I do not approve the communist ideology or totalitarian regimes in general. But not everything about Russia was bad and ugly. I can’t help remembering certain aspects fondly. For example, Russia had reasonably good medicine. At least I remember that when I was a kid and had a fever, the doctor came to see me. For free. My parent’s didn’t have to take a sick child to a clinic and then wait for hours to be admitted. After freaking out over my kid’s fever, I can truly appreciate that for what it’s worth.

In the time since I’ve left, I have heard the most bizarre misconceptions. From “did you have –insert domestic appliance here, such as TV or a fridge- there?” (Of course not. We had no technology. We sent a man to space on a horse.) To “is it true there is no food in Russia, and you had to line up for hours for stale bread?” Funny, I don’t remember ever having stale bread. In fact, the only bread I do remember, is freshly baked and still warm. The discovery of week-old sliced bread in a plastic bag came only upon my arrival overseas.

See, having a double identity is fun. People open up to you with comments so absurd, you’d never come across them otherwise. And that’s an experience I feel I owe to my kid.

Though, given the multicultural background he is, “double” is a major understatement.