Liankacreations

  Today I heard from my half sister. Did you know I have two half sisters and one whole sister? Lol. Olya just turned 61, and I, not being a very good sister, forgot to say happy birthday. Well, we didn't communicate for a large part of our lives. We lived not too far from each other, but she lived in a closed city where I couldn't go without a special invitation. We didn't have a phone at home, so contact was very limited. Then we started getting together, first to visit our common father's grave, and later just to meet and talk. That was right before I relocated to the US. Have you ever noticed that the further away you are, the closer you become? So, I sent her my late happy birthday wishes, and she sent a few messages back. She said she was tired from working at her dacha. Do you know what a dacha is? My husband does. It's a summer cottage with a garden, and not a small one. So Olya was tired from growing vegetables and berries and preserving them. Other than th...

  Today, thanks to the internet and advances in cell phone technology, I had a conversation with a friend. My friend Olya lives in Gelendzhik, in southern Russia, on the Black Sea. I live in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Seven hours in differences in time and  the entire Atlantic Ocean  between us. Because of the current circumstances, Olya has internet access only at home, not when she is outside. The stars have to align for us to talk. Luckily, today they did. We talked about many things: recipes and workouts, menopause and hormones, children and grandchildren — my grandchildren, since she doesn't have hers yet. And then, when we decided that I probably don’t sleep well because of hormones, she told me that she doesn’t sleep well because of the sirens warning about drone attacks. Lately, it has been happening almost every night. She said something like: "We live close to the mountains, so we don't have drones flying directly above us — but we can see them flying closer to...

  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...