sitting at a dinner table, surrounded by parents and their friends from a life i remember nothing of. i'm told stories of the one year they knew me, before we left for a different world. i'm hugged, kissed, praised, for nothing more then being my parent's daughter.
sitting at a dinner table, im surrounded by an engulfing, resonating, overwhelming love.
their words drip with love, seep over my heart and i can feel it vibrate within me. i've heard these stories before, i've been told how deep their friendships run. my entire life, these memories have been repeated to me. but somehow, it sounds different, here, from them.
seeing the joy on my parents faces, witnessing the connection, visible to even those who don't know the past... tears sting at my eyes. (and i wonder for a second if its not my contacts after a 12 hour flight).. its not.
at every toast (cheers), at every drink raised at the blessing that life has brought them together again, to the same table, 23 years later.
my father asks Misha, his best friend for over 50 years, a bond that neither oceans nor time could break, "Mish, te menya uvzaish?" ("Do you respect me?") (my father's favorite alcoholic's catch phrase!). Misha looks at him and says "Da, ya tebya lyublyu" ("Yes, i love you").
tears run down my face as i only sit and quietly and listen. hours pass, and i listen. i'm just an observer here, an outsider, allowed in merely because i am blood, but otherwise no real connection.
but then Misha brings out letters. letters my parents sent him three months after they were allowed to leave. letters where my father wrote how much he missed him and my mother wrote how inadequate she felt and what a failure she thought she was.
the air in the room is filled with memories, with bonds and ties that i will never fully understand, because i was never part of this world, where oppression ruled everyday life.
the love and gratitude i am able to witness at this moment, saddens me at the same time. my parents have made new friends in their new wrold. but. none that they connect with as with the people i am sitting with now. saddens me because they sacrificed their friends, who were their family to give my sister and i a different life. saddens me because i realize i can never be that person who can uproot my entire world and leave friends like these for the sake of others. (although, never say never..)
tears run down my face, while they exchange words of gratitude and a bottomless, endless love between friends, who became and remain family, decades earlier.
tears of joy, because i am happy, grateful, unspeakably proud to be my parents daughter. tears of joy that im able to hear and witness the endearment echanged between people, souls who have been connected from a time i'll never know, or understand. which only makes this that much more special.
i felt this way before. i was reminded today, when i came here as a 12 year old.. that i had said "i've never met people like you. i love you because i know my parents do, and they dont love anyone the way they love you." 'you' is not towards one specific person, it represents collectively the city in which they spent most of their lives, it means the people who i am sitting with now. the strangest part was, as i was thinking that exact thought, my uncle (not by blood, but by my father's friendship), began to reminisce about those words.
it's been 11 years, and i've forgotten that feeling until this moment. i walked into this room and felt as if no time had passed at all. only now, because im older and only a little wiser, i can appreciate that feeling in a new way. i am reminded that the raw, pure, pre-adolescent thought process still rings, only now with more depth.
i am surrounded by an engulfing, resonating and overwhelming love..
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