Just a Birthplace, Not a Home

I don't remember my hometown. My family left when I was 4. I have a few vague memories of our apartment. Kitchen on the right. One small bedroom in the back. My crib in the living room where my parents also slept. 

So at the age of 32, my mom took me back to show me where I came from. We went from New York to Lviv, Ukraine. A city in the western part of Ukraine that nobody had heard of till recently when CNN correspondents used it to give the world coverage on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

We boarded our first class flight. It was my first time in first class. The reason was because my mom had a leg issue and needed to stretch out. But my reason was more that I wanted to give this to my mom. She left Ukraine just a few days before her 30th birthday. She left with her children, husband and in-laws. Her family had emigrated someplace else. I wanted her to have a triumphant return. Gone were the days of 1 bedroom apartments for 5 people, which wasn’t even that bad in the USSR as we had our own kitchen and bathroom. 

First we went to a more eastern part of Ukraine, where my mother’s parents were from. She had one remaining aunt there. The aunt, in her mid 80s herself, looked after her sister. We visited my mother’s father’s grave and her grandparents on both sides. A tour of 3 separate cemeteries. My family is filled with Borises and we visited the original Boris whose name has been passed down for a few generations. The tradition will stop with me. 

Walking through the cemetery on a hot day with its trees surrounding the area, some pictures that were painstakingly etched out on tombstones were scratched beyond recognition.  Unfortunate but all too well known acts of vandalism on Jewish cemeteries in the area. 

The golden domed churches of the orthodox church with its surprisingly vibrant colored interior reflected the sunny days we had there. We took a picture by a rock where the city was founded in the year 884 ADE. A shocking anomaly for my American mind. 

We said good-bye to my mom’s aunt as she thrust money in our hands from the rent she collected for the apartment that was my grandfather’s. As if we needed the money more than her. We hugged not knowing when we’ll see her again and now it is an even further away possibility. 

Onto the main event, Lviv. The center of the city, which I had no recollection of, was beautifully cobble stoned. Part of Austria Hungary then Poland and then the USSR, the center held up its elegance and didn’t have the soviet bloc architecture. The pastel colored fronts lining the city center cheerfully matched the mood of the town. Tourists from neighboring Poland. Delicious coffee shops. Themed restaurants that didn’t have the same kitsch as many US tourist traps. A mine for coffee. A Faust theme. And the pastries. Flaky. Soft. Fresh. Delicious. 

I came back to my city as a tourist. I felt no kinship. I felt some pride but it wasn’t my city. I didn't have family or an allegiance. Now more so my Ukrainian allegiance and pride is there but maybe only a smidgen more than the average American that is sympathetic to their current plight. 

My mom took me on a tour of my childhood. The apartment building we lived in did not ring a bell. But the swing I remember falling off and running to my mom all bloody was still there. My parents met in that apartment as teenagers. My mom took me to where she would meet my dad after his boxing training. No phones at that time so they just had to set a time and place. I tried to picture the courtship without texts and remembering my own annoyance with my now husband's text etiquette, thought it would be nice. No apps. No distractions. Just walking along a city together to get to know one another. 

We looked at the window of my grandparent’s apartment. With its beautifully large windows and iron gate balcony. The facade did nothing to jog my memory but I did remember the big red carpet they had hanging on the wall. To keep the cold out? For decoration? It made its way to America and fulfilled its duty on the floor of their Brooklyn apartment for some years after. 

I loved the city. It wasn’t mine. It was my mom’s. My mom’s childhood. Her time with her brother and mother, who she only saw a few times a year now.  It was her early romance with my father. Her college years. Her time as a young mother. She reminisced of trudging with our strollers up the stairs from the street that took us to our apartment building. Not the easy light strollers of today but the metallic strollers of 80s Ukraine. 

We went to Stryiskyi Park. One of the oldest parks in Lviv with its fountains and willow trees. We took pictures of the swans, one of which had bitten my brother as a child. I’ve heard the story often but it was nice to put a place and face (if it’s possibly the same swan) to the tale. 

That’s what this place was to me. Not a big revelation of homecoming but putting a place, a picture, a setting for all the stories of my early childhood. My parent’s childhood. This is where we celebrated birthdays. That window of that apartment building. This is where your father stood and I showed him a newborn you from the window since that was before men were allowed into maternity wards. This is the train station where we said goodbye to your grandmother, not knowing when we’ll see her again. 

I can take someone through New York and give them my tour. This is Ocean Parkway, where my grandma would walk me to my dance classes in the basement of a synagogue. This is the mailbox we’d take turns sitting on on summer nights waiting for the song of the ice cream truck. Sometimes past 9 pm, when our parents would be waiting with us to shepherd us back into the apartment. This was my parents house. Bought 5 years after moving to the US. It was blue. My favorite color. We spent over 20  years there. 

I can picture those places of my childhood clearly as my mom can picture hers. What it meant to show it to me, I may not understand till I have my own daughter and we won’t need to take a flight but just cross a couple of bridges to show her my childhood. 

I’m glad I saw Lviv. It wasn’t my hometown but my mom’s. My beginning. My origin story. It would only be a minute or two in the movie of my life but it’s where I was born. Where I was loved and where I began my journey through the world.