Growing up Russian means napping outside in your red carriage as the snow dances languidly around you
Growing up Russian means treasuring the prizes from your Kinder eggs
It means hot borscht or sorrel soup comforting you in ways your mother just couldn't
It means hating your mothers sternness
Which really isn't your mothers sternness but the sternness she got from her mother and her father and her father's father and her mother's mother's mother and her grandfather's father
Because growing up Russian makes coldness a part of you
Growing up Russian is staring into blank eyes
Hardened as the steel your grandfather once toiled over
Growing up Russian means being bound to your homeland
It means finding comfort in every choppy voice and rolling r
It means finding your people in every fish market, deli, tea room and sauna
Growing up Russian means going to your friends house with an empty stomach
not daring to refuse her babushkas five course meals
Growing up Russian means being part of a family of millions
It means never relating to your culture but being proud of it all the same
It means being vegetarian is offensive
It means you can't sit on cold surfaces
It means never understanding your American friends' childhoods
It means tea
All
The
Time
Growing up Russian is always leaving the conversation unfinished