And you know what? I wrote this text on FaceBook during my break at Starbucks. Sitting in the hall during training, I’d finished my mooooo-uuuu-rni ng – properly grieved my self-chosen immigrant rootlessness. And then J appears. With flowers. With Easter gifts for the kids. Looking gorgeous as always: perfectly styled, with his ideal haircut, perfect teeth, perfect abs, and everything else just perfect (the guys and girls around blushed and started whispering).

Now, J showing up isn’t unusual (he loves making these dramatic surprise visits to my workplace), but this time he wasn’t alone. He brought his mother. And not just any mother – she’s spectacular: beautiful, cheerful, the same bottle-blonde, similarly eccentric and adorably clumsy, with this wonderfully expressive sense of humor.

J brings his amazing mother to my workplace – and like someone released after years in a labor camp, after isolation and separation from family, like a madwoman exhausted from completing some emotional triathlon, I hug her with my entire Russian soul, with this relentless immigrant longing I chose for myself and no one else. I hug her fiercely, even kiss her without asking permission, completely drunk on warmth and joy. And she laughs, delighted, not the slightest bit awkward – not at all. She’s special. Wonderful. J laughs too because we’re so alike in our unfiltered emotional authenticity.

My morning blues and immigrant nostalgia get temporarily overridden. Colleagues and customers freeze, watching this cinematic scene unfold on late Easter morning. One more move and they’d probably burst into applause without even knowing why.

I think about how desperately I needed that exact warmth in that moment, and how in immigration we create family not by blood but by choice.

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While preparing for our Easter (May 5th this year) through Navokov – I found this quote: 

“The émigré community in Paris resembles the squat, lopsided remains of Easter “Paskha” that on Monday one tries (with little success) to reshape into pyramids.” 

The feast is on Sunday, but when the joy fades, you try to mold what’s HERE into what was THERE, piecing together clumsy imitations of past life – though sometimes it doesn’t work… Though sometimes it turns out even better.

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J, of course, reads the air and anticipates what hasn’t happened yet but certainly will. He understands my moods better than I do, preparing us both for coming storms. By the way, we’re not even Facebook friends and have no idea what’s on each other’s pages. So that’s how it is 🤭