I won the parent lottery

So, I finally began reading The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and after I read the chapter, "I won the parent lottery," I can't seem to get the phrase out of my head. Randy's story is truly inspiring as are hundreds of cancer stories. He had a mass audience. Each of us does, if we want to be heard. I truly believe that I won the parent lottery. Yes, I've fought with my parents. Yes, I've had the adolescent stage where I wished they would get divorced. Yes, I wouldn't trade them for anyone in the world. My parents invested their life into me (and my sister and nephews), but primarily me. I hope that I have the strength and courage to give my kids at least half of what my parents gave me. My mom and dad are very different, have a very different approach and both love me infinitely. My mom was the artsy one. She took me to the theater and to the ballet. She took me to Bulgaria on my 5th Birthday and to Moscow before I started school. She read me a bazillion stories and kept a diary of my perls of wisdom. My dad was the athletic and mathematic one. I knew the entire multiplication table before I started school. I played badminton and walked for miles "zagorod" [upstate] to pick berries and flowers. Hence, my love of walking and perhaps my profession, although, I enjoy reading a lot more than doing tax returns. But, I did minor in English.

Anyway, those are the little things. And right now they are incoherent, but I'll keep writing. Every day on the way home from school or on the way to Grandma's my parents would recite a new poem. By the time we were on the way back (or closer to home), I was retelling it. My parents invested all their time and energy into me. I was never too young or unimportant. My opinion always mattered, whether to buy flour in Minsk, to wear gold earrings while passing customs while immigrating to the states or buying an apartment which I'm now again sharing with my dad.

It always amazed me, but lately it's become a lot more evident for some reason how I remember a LOT more things from my childhood than most of my friends that immigrated around the same time and around the same age. I remember the streets, the way to school, to grandma's, to home (I have never been back). I remember my friends, my teacher, my doctor. I remember a ton of detail. I remember my grandpa. I remember my feelings.

Now that my mom is gone, I notice doing certain things that I was never taught, but I realize that those are things that she instilled me and they are inherent. My dad and I folded the duvet cover today. I didn't have to say anything, I just gave him the other end and we pulled in opposite directions. I remember when my parents used to do that when I was small and I would run underneath with bouts of laughter. I remember seeing my dad on TV and coming to his office. I remember him making me photocopies of a book his co-worker gave me as a souvenir. In 1980's Ukraine, that was a BIG deal. I remember visiting my mom's small library while "Дом учёных" was undergoing renovations. I made Borsch and Golubtsi last week, to taste, without a recipe. I did well in school without ever feeling pressured to. I wasn't "supposed to be" anything, despite my dad's big dreams of having a doctor in the family.

As usual, I notice that I'm rambling. Perhaps, I'll make this entry more concise when I focus, but I could write volumes about how the only thing I ever won in life is the parent lottery. I wish my mom had better luck in the longevity lottery, but she left a huge imprint on many people and the world.

Peoples

"Some people come into our lives and quickly go, others stay awhile and we are never, ever the same."

That has been a long time favorite quote and I don't even know who penned it/said it. Yet, it is very true. I have always been a suckerfor conversation. All my long term relationships with people were rooted in interestic discussion. As an old friend of mine recently said in describing me, "you followed what you always follow, conversation. For you, it's orgasmic." This is true and fortunately I've come in contact with many interesting people. I was never good at initiating contact, but once I get started, I'm open, honest and often say more than I should. Recently, I've befriended a few older and wiser people and our conversations have both inspired me and given me hope.

I've recently eavesdropped on a conversation of a wealth manager at a party and was so drawn to his discussion with a dimwit that I had to apologize (for eavesdropping) and sat outside for an hour in 40 degree weather looking for the perfect opportunity to introduce myself. Of course, the opportunity never came, but I am still intrigued enough to talk about it. I had a discussion over beer and wine with someone whose life didn't start till 30. And I've become almost friends with a woman I met at my nail salon years ago. We speak almost daily and she never ceazes to amaze me. Life is an interesting thing and as I'm beginning to understand goes wherever you take it. It's not the blind leading the blind - it is what you make it.

I'm going on a tangent (as usual), but there's a reason determined people get what they want. Wishes do come true. Believing in something really does make it a reality. For those that know me, you're probably wondering, "who are you and what have you done with Alla?" It's me and I believe that I will be successful and live a long and happy life surrounded by people that matter and with something interesting to discuss. But shhh...it's "The Secret."

--
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From a book I've been trying to get through for months. . .

"When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse."

"To the child, the genius with imagination, or the wholly untraveled, the approach to a great city for the first time is a wonderful thing."

"[She] shook her head. Like all women; she was there to object and be convinced. It was for him to brush the doubts away and clear the path if he could."

"She saw what [he] liked; in a vague way she saw where he was weak. It lessens a woman's opinion of a man when she learns that his admiration is so pointedly and generously distributed. She sees but one object of supreme compliment in this world, and that is herself. If a man is to succeed with many women, he must be all in all to each."

"She was no talker. She could never arrange her thoughts in fluent order. It was a matter of feeling with her, strong and deep."

"...He began writing her regularly-a letter every morning, and begging her to do as much for him. He was not literary by any means, but experience of the world and his growing affection gave him somewhat of a style...[He] surprised himself with his fluency. By the natural law which governs all effort, what he wrote affected upon him..."

"She increased in value in his eyes because of her objection. She was something to struggle for, and that was everything."

-Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

. . . and this is only page 132 of 400 which I can't seem to force myself to read.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I live in NY and riding on a rush-hour commuter train when I'm trying to finish an amazing novel, everyone is extremely loud and incredibly close. September 11 touched everyone that lives in NY (and beyond), similarly to WWII touching every Jew (and other). Jonathan Safran
Foer's second novel encompasses both. More importantly, it touches a human heart. It asks (and sometimes answers) questions of love, of life, of beauty, of loneliness, of darkness, of death, of loss, of family.

Having read two novels by Mr. Foer and one by his wife, Nicole Krauss, I must admit that there's a similarity in their writing - using different voices to project events from different angles, at different times, with different backgrounds, ages, sexes, etc. What touched me the most, however is the dedications of the two novels, which I read were written at the same time:

"To Jonathan, my life"
"For Nicole, my idea of beautiful"

That's love. Or maybe that's life. Or maybe I'm still too idealistic as much as I hate to admit it. Or maybe I just love a good book.

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Everything is Illuminated

...well, maybe not everything, but the memories remain.

Jews Have Six Senses

Touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing … memory. While Gentiles experience and process the world through the traditional senses, and use memory only as a second-order means of interpreting events, for Jews memory is no less primary that the prick of a pin, or its silver glimmer, or the taste of the blood it pulls from the finger. The Jew is pricked by a pin and remembers other pins. It is only by tracing the pinprick back to other pinpricks – when his mother tried to fix his sleeve while his arm was still in it, when his grandfather’s fingers fell asleep from stroking his great-grandfather’s damp forehead, when Abraham tested the knife point to be sure Isaac would feel no pain – that the Jew is able to know why it hurts. When a Jew encounters a pin, he asks: What does it remember like? -Johnathan Safran Foer

Summer Reading

I picked up a few books from my cousin over the weekend and left Miss Carrie that I was reading on the side as after many chapters and many quotes that I want to share, I still cannot get into it. I started reading The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, a novel that made it to the NY Times Bestseller List and the following just really moved me:

"Then she kissed him. Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."

and remembering a childhood dialogue:

"'If I had a camera,' [he] said, 'I'd take a picture of you every day. That way I'd remember how you looked every single day of your life.'" it goes on, but for that I advise reading the book.

Next on my list, incidentally by Nicole Krauss's husband, Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated and then, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.