The Language of Sisters (22 page)

BY TONI KOZLOVSKY

 

I visited a woman this week who was born in the home she lives in now. Mabel Stiva is eighty-four years old. Her light blue front porch, the one that is almost invisible because of the overflowing flower boxes, is one of three front porches we featured this week because it's so welcoming.

“My home is me,” Stiva told me. “It's my family. My parents and grandparents. It's us. It's the Stivas. I made strudel with my grandma in this kitchen. My father taught me how to clean a gun in the family room. My grandfather taught me how to ride a horse out back, where there is now a line of homes. They're all gone, but the home retains our memories between the walls. That's why I'll stay here until I die. My family is here.”

I talked with a man named Marv DeSota, who said that his modern home, about four blocks away, was the pinnacle of a hard-working life, a goal he had long held. “I grew up poor. We had nothing. I had two jobs by the time I was fourteen, delivering newspapers and working in a restaurant washing dishes. I used to look at people who had nice homes and think, I want that. I want that life. I want to have a roof that doesn't leak, a place that doesn't have rats, a floor that is not so broken in places we can see the ground. This home, for me, is the culmination of decades of work. No one helped me, I did it myself.”

I also talked with an artist, Lucianne Micah, who has painted every wall of her home several times, depending on her mood and where she is in her life. “My home, to me, is my canvas. And my canvas, my art, is my life. That's why it's special. When I get tired of what I've painted, I paint it white, live with the white until I know what I'm going to do, then I paint a mural. It's mental therapy for a few hard knocks I've had to deal with in my life.”

My own special home? I will always remember a small, tight, shabby apartment I lived in with my family in Moscow, Russia, then called the Soviet Union.

Do I want to live there again? I don't. Too many things happened I want to forget. Too many dangers, too many whispers in the night, too much of the KGB. It was cold, it was poor, it was desperate. Life as an American is much better in every way.

But I can see my mother making syrniki there, with jam and sour cream, and my grandmother Ekaterina making my sisters and me dolls out of cloth, and my grandfather carving me toys out of wood. I can see my father grading his students' papers, his brow furrowed. I can see my sisters and myself playing games in the small bedroom/closet we shared, one bed, all piled in together at night. I can see my uncles and aunts playing cards, laughing, shouting, an argument here and there.

I can remember Christmas, how we had to hide our small, homemade Christmas tree in our bedroom because being Christian was illegal. I remember the dollhouse my parents built us out of wood one year, wearing mittens as the apartment was freezing, the hot water off for weeks at a time.

I will never forget that apartment, our lives there, the laughter, the happy times.

Wishing you much laughter and happy times in your own home.