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It’s Like Christmas in July
Our things from St. Petersburg, Russia were finally delivered as one life ends and a new one begins
Today, a woman called my phone and speaking only Portuguese told me that our stuff would be delivered between 11 and 12 — please be home. My Portuguese isn’t that good yet but I picked out the keywords. My wife and I changed our plans and waited for the truck.
It arrived as promised and two palettes were removed from the truck and wheeled to the door of our house. My 30 years of memories had been reduced to one box. The other 12 boxes were filled with my son’s toys, photos, some of my wife’s stuff, and just random things from our life over there. I gave all of my clothes away to organizations in Russia that I know give them to people in need. The Russian Orthodox Church often sells such things and the priests pocket the money.
My paintings, there were about 70 done in a burst of artistic activity from 2015 to 2021, an assortment of other things like bikes, and 1500 books on a very wide assortment of topics were shipped off to the houses of friends, and to my in-laws.
All of my books about Nazi Germany were first covered with brown paper so the movers couldn’t see the titles. My father-in-law genuinely feared that someone might file a report to the police…
