The sun shone high in the sky, causing the heat of the summer noon to slowly build up in the nearly motionless air. Tired from swimming and playing in the lake, my sister and I finally left the cool greenness of the water, striding toward our towels so as to rest for a while in the sun and maybe even get a decent tan. Grandpa Vitya, who was chaperoning us, looked up from one of the nonfiction books he enjoys reading, as the wet bodies of his granddaughters flopped down on the towels beside him. “Grandpa, tell us something about someone,” I said as usual, though, of course, I said it in Russian.
This nebulous request generally brought a quiet smile to my grandfather’s face. Putting his reading glasses back in their blue leather case, he sat back in the shade of a large tree growing on the very edge of the beach and started talking. He told stories about everything in the world that has ever interested or excited him: our family history, his childhood friends, the first time his son (my father) brought home my mother for the May Day weekend, the animals he observed on his regular morning photo-hunting trips, the books he had read… His brown eyes gained a far-away expression, as he became completely absorbed in the events that had happened perhaps decades ago, but were as vivid in his memory, as if they had happened yesterday.
My sister and I were usually barely paying attention. We wanted him to keep telling the stories only to keep us from getting bored, not because we were truly interested in what our grandfather had to say. We forgot almost all of them a few minutes later, when we would get up and run towards the water back to our fun games, which seemed infinitely more exciting that some stories about the past. Grandpa Vitya would then put his reading glasses back on and once again submerge himself in his book.
That must have been at least five years ago. Last summer, my sister and I went back to Russia for the first time in four years. We visited Grandpa Vitya and Grandma Lida in Samara, and after so much time apart, I finally got a chance to once again talk with my grandfather.
During the very first mushroom-picking expedition Grandma Lida organized, I sped far ahead, unable to walk slowly along with the rest of my family. Grandpa followed me. I think he was afraid I would get lost although I still knew the area in perfect detail. We started walking together, and remembering all those past times, I told him, “Grandpa, tell me something about someone.” He smiled softly, just like he used to many years ago, recognizing that same request, and began telling stories. I listened to them in amazement. I could vaguely recollect hearing them told once before, but I could not for the life of me remember what they were about. Before me, unfolded my grandfather’s family history: my great-great-great grandfather, who fought in the Crimean War and was awarded with a plot of land in Smolensk County; my great-great grandfather, who opened a photo studio in Vitebsk, which was later confiscated when the Bolsheviks came to power; my great grandmother, who had been the head of the Piano Department of Vitebsk Conservatory; my great grandfather, who was admitted into the Moscow State University prior to World War I only under the condition that he would change his old Jewish name.
“Your great-great grandfather, my grandfather, was colorblind,” my Grandpa would say. “He was the one I inherited this gene from. However, he was still able to be a good photographer since at that time there were no color photos, just black-and-white—or rather brown-and-yellow—ones. He did not even know he was colorblind until once he decided to color a snapshot of one of his daughters with pencil by hand, and everyone was surprised to see that he made her hair green.”
Then he would move on to more recent history. “When my father, your great grandpa Grisha, first began practicing medicine, he lived in a small village near Vitebsk. He worked with a very interesting medical assistant there. It was right after World War I so there was a great shortage on medicine in the country. Therefore, when a patient would come to him, whatever ailment the patient had, he had nothing better to prescribe them than some castor oil. Obviously, it did not hurt, but it did not help, either. Therefore, in order to prevent any patient complaints, that medical assistant would tell them, ‘The castor oil will work, but only if throughout the course of your treatment you never once think about a white horse.’ Obviously, after such an unusual advice, the patient could not possibly stop thinking about white horses, even if that thought has never crossed his or her mind before, and could no longer blame anyone else for the ailment remaining uncured.”
While I was listening to grandpa’s stories, I kept thinking, that was it not for my request, I would have never found out so much about my own heritage. My grandfather was very interested in our family history. It meant a great deal to him to be able to pass the knowledge on to me. I did not understand it five years ago, when those stories seemed nothing more to me than a way to alleviate boredom. Of course, I also knew history better than before and could put the Crimean War, World War I, and the anti-Semitism of the Moscow University in the context of world events, but more importantly, I could hear the earnestness in my grandfather’s voice, the inspiration he put into his stories, and I no longer mistook that vigor for a mere wish to please his granddaughter.
