It's All About Me...and Halya!

It feels kind of awkward yet liberating to write, keeping myself in mind.  Even though I spent most of my life stateside, I never adopted the American mentality where it was all about me, me and Me.  I just couldn't be bothered with Ego and was more interested in figuring out what was going on behind the scenes.

I spent 3 years reading about other people's lives while journaling on a blog for my children but I eventually suffered writer's block soon after getting caught up in the flurry of their daily activities.  I learned how to cook and I socialized with other mothers within the international community, only to realize that I couldn't bear losing any more time cooking and socializing with no end in sight.  It's not that I don't enjoy introducing new foods and events to my children; I am just a control freak.  And I found out that so were the other mothers, and even my meticulous help Halya. 

Before meeting Halya, I remember making notes about what kind of a person I was looking for to help me at home.  It was highly improbable, laughable even, that I would ask for so much qualification from a person who would only be cleaning my home.  This town was filled with Brazilian, African, and Russian immigrants with hardly any education or degrees up the ying yang, serving the rich and I wasn't going to accept any of that into my life.  Well, Halya was a technical engineer in Ukraine but came here with her family so that she and her husband could earned five times as much doing domestic and construction work.  She cleans meticulously with such detail and speed, anticipating our every needs that I wouldn't be surprised if she possessed the spirit of one of the squirrels that served Anastasia's ancestors in the Siberian glades.  I don't let her make our dinner and now I don't even let her in the kitchen because I rarely cook myself and focus on raw foods instead.


She recently told me that in a few more years, her family will return back to Ukraine where she has a dacha.  A dacha is a Russian word for seasonal or year-round second homes often located in the exurbs of Soviet and Russian cities. In some cases, they are occupied for part of the year by their owners and rented out to urban residents as summer retreats. Going back to my story, this news saddened me but soon after I came to the realization that I would be moving too, to my own modern dacha that I am dreaming about.  I feel like I am finally preparing to go home; to a home and lifestyle that is foreign to me physically but my family will flourish there, this I know.  And when the time comes, I will certainly miss her because she became such an integral part of my sanity as I evolved into a hybrid mom.


All good things do come to an end, only to reveal something better and this I know for a fact now.  The blender as my right hand and the food processor, my left, I can't go wrong, really.  And everyone is happier and healthier for it, especially me!  Plus, I don't have writer's block anymore!

Life is such an amazing journey!