A Birthday Trip to Remember

My earliest childhood memory is from when I just turned 3. It’s patchy and vague, but I remember it because it was such a unique and memorable event: my father took me on a train ride from Bishkek (then Frunze) to Moscow. The Soviet Union was huge, so that trip took three days and three nights one way. I remember the rhythmic and calming sound of the train, which I love even now. I still prefer traveling by train over a plane or car.

I remember lots of people around my father in our compartment: he was a generous narcissist, who liked sharing his food and wisdom with strangers he wanted to impress. Besides, there’s not much to do on the train except for eating and telling stories to your accidental sojourners. My father was an excellent storyteller, which only vaguely registered in my head on that trip. I also remember him signing me lullabies on the train, with his face so close I could feel his breath smelling of pickles and vodka.

But most vividly, I remember the famed "Central Children’s World" toy store in Moscow that my father took me to. It was 1973, the Soviet Union was already feeling shortages in everything but of course Moscow was the display window of socialism, so it had to have the best of everything. That store looked like a dream castle to me and entering it felt like magic. I always relive that moment when I watch Home Alone New York, when Kevin walks into Duncan's Toy Chest.

To me, the store seemed like a kid paradise. I remember there was a huge toy giraffe ridden by monkeys that moved its head up and down (featured on the right in the story cover pic), and a big installation with a ship and an alligator sitting next to it well above my head (on the right in the pic below). When the alligator opened its mouth, it was lit from inside like it was a fire-breathing dragon, making its eyes red. I was pretty fascinated and scared at the same time.

I remember that my father lost me in that store, under that installation. To be more precise, I of course was not lost, I just froze there, completely mesmerized, while my father moved on in search of something he needed to buy. To me it was just moments, but there must have been some time before my father found me because when he came back, he was pretty scared and pissed off at the same time. He bought me a big plush giraffe toy and said, “Don’t tell mom I lost you.” I promised on the toy he gave me that I wouldn’t.

I don’t remember much else from that trip except that every day in Moscow my father would put on his dashing police uniform (he was a handsome, albeit short, man, but of course he looked like a giant to me at the time) and drag me to some boring place where I’d be just sitting for hours at a desk next to him, flipping through my children’s books and drawing.

I distinctly remember that I didn’t really want to be there but I had no choice and didn’t protest much. Besides, my father also promised to buy me ice cream every day on that trip if I behaved well. I was a very obedient and disciplined child around other adults from an early young age, my mother told me. And there were a lot of other men in police uniforms at that place, so I was on my best behavior. At home, I could be an incredibly stubborn tomboy, which often got me into a lot of trouble with my mom.

All in all, those were happy memories of a unique trip that obviously left a deep mark on my identity and self-image. My mom told me that I was boasting about that trip to my daycare classmates for months afterwards: “My father took me to Moscow by train!” “What’s a Moscow?” other kids would ask, and I would proudly explain to them that it’s a biiiiiiiiig city, and far-far away, whole three days by train. To a toddler, three days by train might as well be an eternity, and my friends were impressed. They were even more impressed with the plush giraffe that I brought with me to daycare every day, telling everyone who’d listen that my father gave it to me because he had lost me at the toy store in Moscow. I can only imagine the conversation my mom had with my father about that.

Years later, my mom and I were sitting in the kitchen of her apartment, chatting after dinner, catching up on our life’s events. It must have been after I came back from my doctoral research trip in Bishkek. Mom pointed out to me that I always loved to travel, and I said, “Yeah, I remember that my first birthday trip, must have set me for life as a restless traveler.”

“Which birthday trip?” my mom asked, slightly confused as she remembers most details from my life better than I do. Seriously, I sometimes call her to reconstruct my own memories, that’s how good my mom’s memory is.

“The one that father took me on, to Moscow, when I was three,” I said. “Best present I ever got from him.”

My mom’s jaw dropped. “You think it was your birthday trip?” she said, incredulously.

“Yeah, was it not?” now it was my turn to be confused.

“My poor child,” my mom sighed with a feigned concern. “It would break my heart to break that illusion of yours, but you are a grown-ass woman now. HE TOOK YOU ON THAT TRIP BECAUSE HE WAS STUCK WITH YOU!” she said emphatically.

“What do you mean, he was stuck with me?”

“He went there for a one-week police training course. Everything was centralized then, training courses for the next rank were often done in Moscow, and he begged me to go because it was, as he said, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for him.” My mom took a pause, as if trying to remember and re-live the details.

“So?” I probed, intrigued.

“So I told him he could go only if he’d take you with him. He of course didn’t want to, tried to send you off to my parents in the village, but I was firm. I knew if he’d go there by himself he’d just be drinking with his new buddies and getting dirty women to his dorm room,” my mom concluded the sentence with disgust. As a side note, my father left us when I was 5, and my sister was 2. He never paid any child support and died of alcoholism before I turned 25.

“But why couldn’t I just stay with you???” I asked, still not putting the puzzle together.

My mom smiled at me and said, “Do your smarts work on demand only? Think about it. You remember it was on your birthday, right?”

“Right,” I confirmed.

“When is your sister’s birthday?” my mom asked, now just obviously playing with me.

My sister and I are exactly three years and three days apart. It suddenly daunted on me.

“Oh, no!” I said, face-palming myself in embarrassment.

“Yep,” my mom said, “while you and your father were having your birthday fun in Moscow, I was about to give birth to your sister. You came back just one day before she was born.”

END SCENE.