... For all 27 years of mine I’ve been living in Russia. It’s a rather big country, you know, and citizens in different regions of it can vary enormously in their set of mind, as if they were different nations. It touched me too, when I first came to the central part of Russia, 350 km from Moscow, actually moving from a northern town where I was born. My first impression was nasty – most of the new people seemed unkind, mean and green-eyed, compared to the generosity and hospitality of people knowing what northern lights and nights of midnight sun are. May be they really lacked some poetry in their mentality, or may be in my age of 9 I was too overcharging about the world around. Anyway, time passed, and now I seem to be quite adapted to the present reality, seeing all the sides of it – right and wrong, good and bad people… And understand that you might find bright sides anywhere and anytime, if you only wish.

It feels like I was a child quite not long ago, as if it was yesterday. I still remember all the things I felt then and all the things I used to find unjust from the side of my parents, my relatives, friends and other people. I thought the world was rotating around me and hoped that I had everything ahead, all the roads opened in front… Even now I’m sure this way of seeing life is somehow useful for a person, but I do remember all the negative sides of it that I call wearing rose-colored spectacles, just when you cannot look at life realistically, not able to accept both its joys and sorrows. And when one day it occurs that you irreparably lose something dear, what you thought you’d always have, you bitterly put those spectacles off and start rebuilding your worldview, although it’s impossible to help out some things you lost.

When one fine day it happened to me and my young, the best mother of all suddenly died, I was shocked and psychologically paralyzed for some years. I even started feeling sorry for the years we’d spent together, when I finally discovered her. Sorry that it didn’t happen when I was not taller than a meter, with two ponytails on my head, caring only for my own well-being, and for my mum’s – only when I saw her crying. Then I would mourn for my mother as a phenomenon – cooking tasty, wiping my snots off, standing me in a corner, giving presents and so on, but not for my mother as a person, not devoid of her interior life, character and predilections, not for my best friend who will never betray you, won’t be envious and mercenary… But, as wisdom says, it’s better to face any sorrow when trying to achieve a great revelation of life, than quietly live all the age, not ever able to discover it.

Thanks God there came time for me when I became able to learn the lesson. That’s why I say to myself – from now on, my life will be like that. – From now on, I will remember everything not because it’s aching, but because real happiness was with me. And now, being a mother of a 3-year-old kid myself, I understand that people who mean family for you are the most precious ones you have in your life. But what is more valuable – is the opportunity of your living itself. No matter if your parents are divorced or not, alive or already dead – their love will never leave you, as well as your love won’t ever leave your heart.