“In a way I’m selfish, because this is what I’m really interested in.” Mary grins and it takes most of my self-control to not argue. I remind myself that my great aunt’s been through enough, seen enough, learned enough to know her worth. We sit in office chairs, separated by 15 hundred miles, visible to the other only as the two-dimensional — sometimes crackly or fuzzy– living busts that we’ve all gotten so accustomed to over this crazy, COVID-19 filled year. She calls, nestled in her Denver townhouse, its plaster, plastic, wooden walls shielding her from the snowstorm outside.
During this bizarre, fraught year, Mary hasn’t slowed down. She’s been engaged in multiple organizations, most prominently in one striving to build DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) in Denver and another supporting an Ethiopian Home where she volunteered and taught years before I was born. Recently, she ran shoe drives and fundraisers to support the Ethiopian orphanage as they build another Home and beef up the needed fostering systems since adoption to the US is no longer an option.
Maybe it’s true; that what she does is selfish because she enjoys it. But beyond all her volunteering, engagement, fighting for social justice, striving to do what’s right, I can’t ignore the fact that she’s always been there for me with an open hand and friendly ear.
Her life has not been a dull 70+ years.
“A lot of that started in Russia. The world opened to me.” Before that, Mary explains, “I didn’t know what I didn’t know.”
⨇⨈⨇
“When I came back from Russia, one day I was at the grocery store and this lady with her long nails and her fancy hair–” Mary’s nose wrinkles a little as she motions to her own nails. “This lady reached out and she said “Ugh the eggplant isn’t fresh. And I almost screamed at her to say ‘They have eggplant!’”
A sea of produce surrounded Mary and the 1999 Kroger’s walls seemed to be closing in. She longed for the small-stalled, open-air markets that she had shopped from in Russia. The woman’s hair was piled high upon her head, backcombed and plastered with hair spray, so unlike anything Mary had gotten used to in Russia. She’d just arrived back in the states– Denver, Colorado to be exact– and planned to be there for just a year or two, long enough to take a breath, get her feet under her, and get started on the next phase of life. Her eldest had just gotten married, the other had just started in college, and she’d just left behind the abusive husband in Russia; it was time for her to open up her next chapter.
But her heart ached for the motherland she’d left behind. The open-air markets, the everyday poets, the appreciation of life, making the most of what’s given.
Until quite recently, Mary had been a military wife who’s husband, after years of working for the military, moving the family from place to place, had taken a civilian job in Moscow. So Mary had moved the family– except the eldest who was at college in California– to post-Soviet Russia 4 years before. The family was no stranger to living in other countries and new places, but personal and societal tensions still ran high in 1995, a bomb went off behind the school where her younger son and many international students would attend school on the day before school started, and Mary found herself in a culture wounded from the whiplash of state communism to free-market capitalism.
They had a little apartment in an old estate home a few blocks away from the Bolshoi Theatre, where Mary planned to go often. The home had been through years of disrepair and communal housing. Since much of the space was communal, no one had picked up the responsibility of caring for the building which in turn took its toll, covering the beautiful architecture and soaring windows in filth and decay. Cheap plywood partitioned different groups’ living spaces and the home’s few bathrooms were shared by all. Each person ended up getting a few square meters.
That’s how it was when Mary had first toured it. Some army man had gotten two large diamonds, gone to London, and used that cash to buy up and renovate apartment complexes like those. Why, Mary didn’t know. “We learned not to ask the “w” word — why?” she’ll say with a chuckle. The army man in his renovation added a dishwasher. But there wasn’t any water connected to it; he didn’t know. Dishwashers were a thing of luxury that few had interacted with during the Stalin era. “Am I crazy for letting us come here?” Mary asked herself. But she ripped out the dishwasher and resold it. Taking that money and some of their disposable income, she redecorated.
“We learned not to ask the “w” word– why?”
She began frequenting a weekend market, Izmailov, that spread on for acres, so big that it got its own metro stop yet populated only by small shops, a family or individual, running them. She got beautiful old velvet drapes, so heavy they cracked the first curtain rod she got; a deep tan hue that made them a rare and colorful find for post-communist Russia. She got deep red antique Russian rugs. Mary would soon learn that red in Russian is “krasni” and beautiful is “krasivi.” The word for beautiful is older than the word red, red was derived from beautiful, and most lovely things in Russian were red.
But Izmailov, though beautiful, displayed tragedy at many stalls. During communism, religion had been illegal and so many families had worshiped and studied in private. Many families had created icons for this, put candles around them, and called it their “beautiful corner.” Now as so many struggled financially, they begged her to buy the icons with tears in their eyes. But Mary couldn’t bring herself to, because she knew they were such an important family relic.
လ
Izmailov was still a great place for Mary to practice her Russian. When she first got to Russia, when she was still learning the language and the culture, Mary would carry around a can of pepper spray in each pocket whenever she went out. She’d hold tight to them when she went to the market. She’d take them when she took her dogs out.
When she took her dogs out, they’d go right outside the building or a few blocks down to this almost-park that had a few trees and some dirt, occasionally blanketed in a patchy layer of grass. These little parks were sprinkled all over throughout Moscow and everyone took their dogs. People would come right up into her face and get animated, Russian words spewing out, and the only word Mary ever caught was “American.” She’d grip tighter onto the pepper spray in her pocket and smile tightly, releasing her breath only once she was back inside her apartment.
But over time she learned — through a course so hard and with such a different teaching style that she had to get a personal tutor and still struggled — and Mary learned they were excitedly asking where she’d gotten “those beautiful American dogs.” Dogs are generally deeply beloved across Russia. Mary had felt they stood so close because we Americans give each other comparatively huge personal bubbles of space, especially when we’re talking to a stranger. She’d almost sprayed the dog-lovers and thank goodness she hadn’t. An American, wife of a recently retired Ranger, pepper-spraying innocent Russian civilians out walking their dogs right after the Cold War ended? In her own words, “I would have started an international incident.”
But she learned Russian and as she’d learned Russian, Mary also got to know the old ladies — babushkas– who fed the stray dogs and cats outside their building. As she got to know the babushkas, Mary grew close to one in particular, a woman Irina, not much older than 65 but, like many others who had lived through Stalin-era and then Soviet Russia, carried many more years around in the deep lines of her face.
Mary would go over to her apartment every day and bring a box of macaroni and cheese; a military pilot friend of theirs supplied Mary with mac and cheese and other luxuries weekly when he came through Moscow. And Irina’s time was nearing an end. “You can’t die,” Mary would tell her. “I haven’t heard all your stories yet.”
Mary went to Irina’s funeral with another Babushka friend, Erna. They all rode over together on a ritual bus to an assigned plot– there were no family plots, at least not for most people in Russia. Men in overalls finished digging the hole as they arrived and took the casket, more of a flimsy cardboard box really, and plopped it down. The women screamed and fainted and 12 red (krasni) beautiful (krasivi) flowers got thrown in with the dirt piling on top. Mary learned that day that you only buy 12 krasni krasivi flowers when someone has died.
12 krasni krasivi flowers
Then they all piled back on the bus and went back to Irina’s room to drink vodka and celebrate her life. “The average Russian is a poet,” Mary thought to herself as they went around the room, telling of Irina’s impact on their life.
Tolstoy wrote in one of his books that “A Russian can do more with an ax than an artist can with a pen.” A friend of a friend proved Tolstoy true to his words and gifted Mary with intricate wood carvings of Irina and Erna. Small little figurines, carved with an axe, beautiful and recognizable mementos of Mary’s dear friends.
More than poets and ax artists, Mary realized that almost every driver kept an easel in their car. Many international or better-off families hired drivers rather than having a car of their own as it was cheaper to pay for a driver than to pay off the police. But many of the drivers would carry those easels and paints around in case they saw anything beautiful. One of her friend’s drivers, Mary remembers in particular. They turned on the radio and after a few bars, Mary wondered aloud which piece it was. The driver told her “Vivaldi’s Four Seasons” and which part it was. Mary was shocked. Was he a musician, she asked. No, he told her, he had just been in the military before becoming a driver.
လ
Mary’s own driver, Nicholas, became very close to Mary over the years. After she got settled in, she wanted to find something to do and Nicholas helped her get it set up. Everywhere she lived, she taught and volunteered, so Mary asked Nicholas to help her find a place at a school and an orphanage.
Nicholas got her set up at a school quite easily. Mary walked in, planning to come in once a month and tell about her life in America, answering any questions the kids might have about the other world power that had locked heads so ferociously with their country. She ended up coming in every day, and a few of the girls would run out each morning to see her. The head warned her not to waste her time on them. “They’re not nice girls.” Mary met with them and taught them English or did arts and crafts together.
Mary would also go to classes and lead discussions occasionally. One time, a boy asked her if it was really true that some American families have a car, if Mary had a car. Mary almost threw up. How did she tell this boy that many American families have more than one car? The head of the school didn’t even have a car, despite Russian culture highly valuing education.
Over the summer, Mary’s family took a trip back to the states and visited the older son who was attending college in California. Mary told her son about the school and the classrooms, how every student she met was so excited to be learning, but many of the classrooms were just not well equipped. Her son went back to his college and spoke with the science department. The college donated a few old microscopes and her son sent them over to Mary in Moscow. When she told the head of the school, she thought he’d be interested and happy, but Mary did not realize just how excited he would get. He told her to bring them to the beginning of the year ceremony, Knowledge Day, First Bell. She thought there might be a small group of parents, congregating at the school to celebrate the start of the new school year.
When she arrived, there were thousands of people. As with every year, military personnel who had attended school there lined up in rows, parents and extended family members arrived in their finest clothes, and all stood in the U-shaped courtyard of the school. In her broken Russian, Mary presented the microscopes to the crowd. Still taken aback, all she could say was “These are a gift to Mother Russia from a US college.” And the crowd cheered, a group of students stepping out to escort her into the science classroom.
“These are a gift to Mother Russia from a US college.”
Mary had a harder time winning over the orphanage. Understandably, the women in charge of the orphanage were slow to trust a stranger with the children in their charge, and Mary was watched like a hawk. At first, she could only rock the babies in a specific chair, and one of the women in charge of the orphanage had to be supervising in the room the whole time. Over about 6 months, Mary earned their trust. The women started bringing snacks to share with Mary; some of them were made with parts of an animal she couldn’t believe anyone would eat, but realized that standards change so significantly when someone’s living in poverty.
After she gained their trust, Mary started planning more adventures for the children at the orphanage. She could only start out small, like the dentist friends she brought in to take care of the kid’s teeth, most of their first time getting dental care. After a few years, Mary got to plan a trip to the Moscow zoo, which was a world-class zoo. Mary borrowed her friends’ most trusted drivers and a woman from the orphanage rode in each car, the kids crammed into the back seats. Mary made sure to equip each car with barf bags, as none of the kids had ever been in a car before. The whole ride over to the zoo, the kids were screaming with excitement.
Yeltzen, a candidate then running for president, had heard about the trip and sent hats for all the kids. While they waited for Mary to figure out all the red tape, the kids stood around with Yeltzen’s hats on and munched on cotton candy. The kids walked through the zoo in awe, the women in charge of the orphanage similarly in awe, and monkeys jumped overhead across the walkway. Years later, Mary would run into one of the boys from the orphanage who had gotten adopted to a family in America. He’d tell her, that trip to the zoo was one of the best days of his life.
⨇⨈⨇
And there Mary stood, surrounded by overwhelming excess in a Kroger, confronted by a woman decadently dressed and primped who complained about the imperfectly ripe eggplant.
After this, Mary turned back to working with kids. At first, she substituted for a Kindergarten class. “I tried to sub nicely for 3 days,” Mary reminisces with a faint smile, “but I’ve never been patient. And helping Kindergarteners put on their coats was not filling the void from Russia.” She chuckles. “And I just wasn’t nice enough.”
A friend then recommended she check out this school a little ways out of town that was always looking for teachers, a detention center. Mary thought “what the hell” and went to try it out. When she walked in, her jaw dropped. By sheer coincidence, she’d met the head in Russia when he came to tour schools, and he turned around and exclaimed “Mary? What are you doing here?” After they caught up, the head said Mary could shadow for 3 days and, if she didn’t run out screaming by the end, she could have the job.
And so, with a bit of wariness, Mary walked into that first classroom. The walls were stark white, with shiny, plain linoleum floors. This emptiness was broken only by a huge mural done in Pointillism (dots) that the teacher and the kids had done, as it was an art classroom and so one of the most decorated in the school. And Mary stood in the doorway, kids coming in past her in their matching turquoise light green scrubs and orange slip-on sneakers. One girl with long dark hair stopped beside her.
“I did not know,” Mary remembers, “that traumatized kids often do not have much of a sense of boundaries.”
And the girl said, “Ms. Sklar, I know why he did it to me, but I don’t know why he did it to my sister.” Mary’s stomach had curdled and her mind had grasped around for what to say.
“How old is your sister?” Mary asked.
“3.”
The girl had come across her mother’s boyfriend molesting her younger sister and snapped. She’d fought him. He’d won. The mother came in and sided with him. The mother called the cops. They took the girl away and she ended up in that detention center.
As the girl explained this to her, Mary thought, “My god, I don’t need three days. This is where I need to be.”
⨇⨈⨇
And so Mary stayed for two decades in the mile high city. She’d meant only to spend a few years in, enough time to recover, get her feet under her, and figure out who she was with her kids gone from the nest and having gotten away from her abusive husband.
The walls of her little townhouse are now packed full with memories. Memories from her time here in Denver, from Russia, and from so many places before and since. Mary filled the void from Russia, and she also filled a void for so many of her students at the detention center.
Mary retired about 6 years ago, after changes at the school made working there no longer an option for her. Her students were angry and hurt. For her last day, Mary had planned activities to reminisce and say goodbye, but one of the kids walked in and kicked a chair across the room. “You’re leaving us,” he fumed. “You’re just like everyone else.” Mary’s heart dropped but she nodded, scratching her plan for the day, turning off the lights, and putting up a movie.
Over the next few years, she wrote How Do We Teach Reach Those Kids, detailing what she’d learned in her years teaching at the detention center. Mary explored the unique teaching styles and activities she’d developed, including a leader board she wrote up that celebrated those who had done well in place of the standard list of those who had misbehaved. Every day, she started class by doing a specialized roll call where each kid stood and said their name and an affirmative quote. “My name is,” the kids would say, and then, “and as Nelson Mandella said, “What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.’”
“What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.”
Nelson Mandella
Now, staying busy as ever, Mary is engaged in several organizations, the one striving to build DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) in Denver and another supporting the Ethopian Home where she volunteered and taught years before I was born. During COVID, she’s run shoe drives and fundraisers to support the Ethopian orphanage as they build their second Home and strengthen their fostering system.
“In a way I’m selfish,” Mary had said while we peered at 2-D images of each other 15 hundred miles apart, “because this is what I’m really interested in.”
I grinned back and managed not to argue after reminding myself that she knows her worth. We kept talking and I kept thinking. Maybe Mary’s right that she’s selfish, since she does get something out of the service, social work, and good she does.
But I’ve decided that, in the end, what really matters is what she does, and what she does helps people both in big and small ways. Isn’t that what we should all try to do?
thoughtswords 