Today I got a bill from the doctor. The doctor I saw last July. Really? I stared at it for a minute, trying to remember what that visit was even for. And then I laughed, in that tired way you laugh when something is absurd but also just... normal here. Because this is the United States, and this is how healthcare works. You go to the doctor, you think you're done, and then months later, an envelope shows up asking for money you didn't budget for, for a visit you'd already half-forgotten. It made me think, again, about how different this all feels from where I grew up. I grew up in Russia, where healthcare was a public service. You were assigned to a hospital based on where you lived, and that was that. Everyone had the same rights — except, of course, people in positions of power (there's always an exception, isn't there?). The system wasn't perfect. It had plenty of its own problems. But one thing people didn't have to do was lie awake wondering whether t...
It all started innocently enough. I was doing something around the house, and something reminded me of Russia — and then, as they say in the famous Russian novel by Ilf and Petrov*, "Ostap was carried away." One thought led to another, and before I knew it, I was lost in memories. My husband's words came back to me, or maybe it was a quote from a movie: "You have to be who you are. Life is what you make out of it." Many years ago, in what feels like another life, I was a good seamstress — no formal training, just an ordinary hand-operated sewing machine and a natural feel for it. I should have gone to sewing school, studied to become a fashion designer or at least a pattern maker. But my mother had other plans. In her view, once you finished high school, you went to work — preferably at the factory where she herself had worked for about 25 years. There was no room in that plan for three more years of school. But I was never simple, and maybe not always smart e...