Birth of a Nation

In 1991, Ken’s and my world was rocked because we became parents. We felt depths of emotion that we never knew we had; we became broker and richer than we ever had been; we even found out about a world of products that we never even knew existed; but our lives became fuller by far for the event.
In 1991, the Soviet Union fell. The Russian world was rocked; the people felt deep emotions they never even knew they had regarding their old condition and the new; they became poorer (85%) and richer (15%) than they had ever been; they found out about a world of products that they had never even known existed; their lives are richer by far for the event.

I realize the analogy is far from perfect, but there are some points of comparison to childbirth and the new Russia that I’d like to explore.

The changeover in 1991, like a gestating baby, was a long time in the making, and yet it was all at once. The process has certainly not been without birth pains; we have been told by several people that corruption within the governmental system is so rampant it’s a given that many officials, small and large, are “on the take.”

And the results are mixed. With any newborn, you really don’t know what you’re getting. A blessing, yes of course, but what will this new creature look like? How will she function? What will she be like?

She retains some of the characteristics of the old ways. Russia still has a flavor that is uniquely Russian. People may talk about 1991 and its events and the new government, but Ken and I were in the Kremlin (can you believe it?) and we looked at some of the tombs of the tsars dating back to way before Columbus discovered America. This kind of rich history impacts a place, so that people have a sense of where they’ve come from. The earliest mention of Russia, after all, is in 1147. Old. Very old.

I’ll give you an example that happened to Ken last year when he first visited here. The newspaper conducted a poll to ask St. Petersburgers to list their top fears. Now, you who are reading this blog, please stop for a moment and think, “What would I say are my top fears?” Perhaps death, spiders, ill health, money problems, the death of your spouse or child?

The number one answer from the people, a smattering of people all ages, was famine. Famine? I’m fairly sure famine wouldn’t make my top 100. Not my top ONE HUNDRED. But they—or at least their parents and their grandparents tell them, remind them, imprint on them— remember the shortages, the problems, the hundreds and thousands and yes, millions of deaths that happened during the 900-day siege and the crop failures and the bread lines and…
and… and…

This old yet baby country has characteristics of the new being she is becoming as well: for one thing, products previously unattainable are available now; one of them is yogurt, of all things. Of course, everyone is
delighted that such things are available in every grocery store, small or large, now. The woman we went around with in Moscow, Valeria, remembers when one of her classmates missed, not one, but two days of school in order to buy new shoes with her mother at the state-authorized market.

But there are less pleasant things too that come with the new freedoms: cell phone rudeness, overfondness of western phenomena like McDonalds, young people decorating their faces with studs the way the tsars studded their living quarters with precious metals, AIDS. The dilemma is poignant: how can one make people choose wisely? Free will is a double-edged sword indeed.

The story doesn’t stop, of course, with the birth of a new baby or a new nation. In our case, we changed and shaped Katie—and Katie changed and shaped us in ways unthinkable to the childless us. And then, shortly thereafter, another birth occurred in our household, and this one continued the process even more, because there were now interactions between the new beings, and things were happening, happening, happening, everything changing, growing, altering exponentially.

And our new baby, Krista, has blue eyes, just like her mother and her mother’s mother; and yet, she has this
one small spot in one of her eyes that is hazel, exactly the color of her daddy’s and sister’s eyes, a complex, fascinating combination of all the flavors and genes and experiences that went into her conception and birth, and this new being, like the “new Russia,” will become—her own self.