When years make sense

Whenever I encounter a year in my readings I tend to measure it according to my mother's year of birth. Roosevelt was first elected a president 28 years before and the Watergate scandal took place 13 years after my mother was born.

Last week I had a lunch conversation with a Belorussian student about our respective families. She is now a junior and had not been home, in Belarus, since her arrival at college. She told me that she was the only child of her parents. She told me that she missed sitting at the kitchen table while her mom was preparing dinner. She told me that her mom was her best friend.

How can you take someone away from her nostalgia and loneliness when you know how pure and real these feelings are? They bring images of warmth that the mind freezes and idealizes. They guide you through what is important in life and what will be kept forever virgin.

The Belorussian girl told me that she missed her parents but did not miss her country. She, like many other citizens of ex-Soviet republics, recognizes two distinct concepts of home country--the beloved one associated with parents, childhood memories, and friends, and the hated one associated with bureaucracy and corruption. It is the motherland versus the government.

Although I left the Belorussian girl to her nostalgia, I did tell her something reassuring during this lunch conversation. I told her that my mother had a birthday in a week, on March 12, and that I was about to send her a postcard.