COLUMN
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COLUMN: Life of an Immigrant Child
Alex Vakar
I never know what to tell people when they ask me where I’m from. I’ve come across people saying they’re half-French, half-American; what would I say? I constantly encounter moments where I don’t understand references that my friends are making, but I’m not a foreigner in the sense that I’m still correcting my mother’s English and explaining American high school traditions to her.
I was born in Madison, but I didn’t really grow up with American culture in my house, and never really considered myself to be American. My mom lived in Novovoronezh, Russia and my dad in Vitebsk, Belarus before they immigrated to the United States in 2000. I spent most of my summers overseas in both of my parents’ hometowns.
My grandparents on my dad’s side own a dacha* 20 minutes away from the city of Vitebsk. Ours is an old brick house filled with toys and ‘abstract’ drawings done by little versions of us, floral wallpapers and tablecloths, books and art supplies, old clothes and purses stored in the attic, old photographs and books in every room. Every dacha has a large garden with fresh produce, like tomatoes and cucumbers grown in greenhouses, dill and other herbs, strawberries, raspberries, pumpkins and watermelons, pears, apples, plums, black and red currant—the list goes on and on. My dad and his sister grew up there, and in a very real way my cousin and I did too.
The first time I visited Belarus was when I was nine months old. I stayed for a few months and “met” a kid named Maxim, who was also barely one year old. As the years passed, we continued to spend summers with a few other kids in the neighborhood that were also there visiting their grandparents. We unconsciously developed a small friend group by the time we were five and are still friends today. We have an unusual but special friendship, keeping in touch throughout the years, exchanging short texts and wishes on our birthdays and the New Year. However, nothing beats spending all night together around the campfire watching a meteor shower and staying up late enough to greet the sunrise. Although I only see these people for a few months every year, the connection we share is much stronger and greater than the physical distance between us.
Time stops at the dacha. Life feels simple. Maybe it’s the presence of unconditional love that comes with being around extended family, or the indescribable fresh air and the closeness to nature. The village has no internet service, so we all get time away from our phones and our profuse lives. We spend our days biking to the store a few kilometers away to get ice cream or to the beach to take turns jumping off a tall pier. We play songs on the guitar that wouldn’t be politically tolerated in the city, and we experience an exceptional kind of freedom. Our nights are filled with badminton and word games, or occasionally, a few times a year, we enjoy the banya built by my grandfather. By tradition, we will spend our night steaming and ‘striking’ each other with birch twigs soaked in hot water, followed by drinking freshly brewed, home-made, herb tea with Russian chocolate candy.
My first memories and associations of family are in this atmosphere: my grandmother pouring us over-sweetened tea and feeding us copious amounts of traditional Russian food, including crȇpes, smoked sausage and cucumber sandwiches, homemade birch juice and borscht, all made from scratch. While we’re washing dishes outside, my grandfather will walk up to us playing an old accordion and tell us stories about his childhood and our parents.
I can’t imagine myself without having lived these experiences, without speaking Russian, going to Russian school, experiencing a kind of culture and life that may be difficult to understand for those without something similar in their lives. The Russian community in Madison is a large one, and thanks to Russian school, I’ve met many kids who understand and can relate to the struggle of having differences in values and expectations among parents between cultures.
I often feel like I can’t relate to something when talking to my friends from both sides of the world, which feeds into my confusion of who I think and tell people that I am. I’m familiar with the melancholic feeling of missing so many people that I have a strong emotional connection to, which sometimes makes me wonder whether or not our relationships depend on the scarce, but valuable, time we spend together.
I’m not sure I will ever understand what to ‘call myself’ when I’m asked where I’m from. Having this exposure to various cultures only expands my frame of reference and enriches my life. I’ve become more resilient to unusual circumstances, which comes with being exposed to a challenging lifestyle, different in many ways from what I’m accustomed to here. Part of Russian culture is simply enjoying your life, no matter the circumstances. If hot water is turned off for some kind of maintenance for an extended period of time with short notice or none at all, we just add heating water to our daily routine and move on.
*Dacha. You call this a summer house or a cabin. They’re located in villages across Russia. Ours is located in a small village in Belarus that contains about 10 of these dachas. They are most commonly owned by grandparents who also own an apartment in the city. It’s life lived more simply, with no hot water, an outhouse and outside shower, a well from which we extract drinking water and only one small grocery store within a 10km radius.
**Banya. Similar to a sauna, with a wood stove.
COLUMN: Life of an Immigrant Child
Alex Vakar
I never know what to tell people when they ask me where I’m from. I’ve come across people saying they’re half-French, half-American; what would I say? I constantly encounter moments where I don’t understand references that my friends are making, but I’m not a foreigner in the sense that I’m still correcting my mother’s English and explaining American high school traditions to her.
I was born in Madison, but I didn’t really grow up with American culture in my house, and never really considered myself to be American. My mom lived in Novovoronezh, Russia and my dad in Vitebsk, Belarus before they immigrated to the United States in 2000. I spent most of my summers overseas in both of my parents’ hometowns.
My grandparents on my dad’s side own a dacha* 20 minutes away from the city of Vitebsk. Ours is an old brick house filled with toys and ‘abstract’ drawings done by little versions of us, floral wallpapers and tablecloths, books and art supplies, old clothes and purses stored in the attic, old photographs and books in every room. Every dacha has a large garden with fresh produce, like tomatoes and cucumbers grown in greenhouses, dill and other herbs, strawberries, raspberries, pumpkins and watermelons, pears, apples, plums, black and red currant—the list goes on and on. My dad and his sister grew up there, and in a very real way my cousin and I did too.
The first time I visited Belarus was when I was nine months old. I stayed for a few months and “met” a kid named Maxim, who was also barely one year old. As the years passed, we continued to spend summers with a few other kids in the neighborhood that were also there visiting their grandparents. We unconsciously developed a small friend group by the time we were five and are still friends today. We have an unusual but special friendship, keeping in touch throughout the years, exchanging short texts and wishes on our birthdays and the New Year. However, nothing beats spending all night together around the campfire watching a meteor shower and staying up late enough to greet the sunrise. Although I only see these people for a few months every year, the connection we share is much stronger and greater than the physical distance between us.
Time stops at the dacha. Life feels simple. Maybe it’s the presence of unconditional love that comes with being around extended family, or the indescribable fresh air and the closeness to nature. The village has no internet service, so we all get time away from our phones and our profuse lives. We spend our days biking to the store a few kilometers away to get ice cream or to the beach to take turns jumping off a tall pier. We play songs on the guitar that wouldn’t be politically tolerated in the city, and we experience an exceptional kind of freedom. Our nights are filled with badminton and word games, or occasionally, a few times a year, we enjoy the banya built by my grandfather. By tradition, we will spend our night steaming and ‘striking’ each other with birch twigs soaked in hot water, followed by drinking freshly brewed, home-made, herb tea with Russian chocolate candy.
My first memories and associations of family are in this atmosphere: my grandmother pouring us over-sweetened tea and feeding us copious amounts of traditional Russian food, including crȇpes, smoked sausage and cucumber sandwiches, homemade birch juice and borscht, all made from scratch. While we’re washing dishes outside, my grandfather will walk up to us playing an old accordion and tell us stories about his childhood and our parents.
I can’t imagine myself without having lived these experiences, without speaking Russian, going to Russian school, experiencing a kind of culture and life that may be difficult to understand for those without something similar in their lives. The Russian community in Madison is a large one, and thanks to Russian school, I’ve met many kids who understand and can relate to the struggle of having differences in values and expectations among parents between cultures.
I often feel like I can’t relate to something when talking to my friends from both sides of the world, which feeds into my confusion of who I think and tell people that I am. I’m familiar with the melancholic feeling of missing so many people that I have a strong emotional connection to, which sometimes makes me wonder whether or not our relationships depend on the scarce, but valuable, time we spend together.
I’m not sure I will ever understand what to ‘call myself’ when I’m asked where I’m from. Having this exposure to various cultures only expands my frame of reference and enriches my life. I’ve become more resilient to unusual circumstances, which comes with being exposed to a challenging lifestyle, different in many ways from what I’m accustomed to here. Part of Russian culture is simply enjoying your life, no matter the circumstances. If hot water is turned off for some kind of maintenance for an extended period of time with short notice or none at all, we just add heating water to our daily routine and move on.
*Dacha. You call this a summer house or a cabin. They’re located in villages across Russia. Ours is located in a small village in Belarus that contains about 10 of these dachas. They are most commonly owned by grandparents who also own an apartment in the city. It’s life lived more simply, with no hot water, an outhouse and outside shower, a well from which we extract drinking water and only one small grocery store within a 10km radius.
**Banya. Similar to a sauna, with a wood stove.