Chapter 18
Private Life
I accelerated on my memories in the office life so intensively as if there had been no private one for me during that time. It goes without saying, my most important issue in the family was my grandson. My daughter-in-law remained at home three years after childbirth as the boy wouldn’t stay in the nursery, and we still had our jobs, both my wife and me. During that time it was her task to look after her son, and she did it properly. I hadn’t stopped taking the lunch home every weekday, it was mainly for the youth and me, my wife didn’t need it.
My son couldn’t get a proper job for himself and it was around that time that he realized he had to go alone and establish himself a private business. He liked car repair, especially body rebuilding of older types, but was also a fan of information technology. It was not clear yet, which one he wants to spring on. For the former he wanted to extend the store at the back end of the site. The latter he began to shape, he purchased all the units of hardware for a good PC and assembled it. At first he used old operation systems, but then got all he needed. I did all I could to help him and until we didn’t have an Internet connection at home, T. let him search my official PC in the late afternoon hours.
Also my activity as an expert of justice began to grow. Actually I didn’t like that kind of work too much as more assignments also meant that the antagonism between the claimant and respondent got more acute, that was further stressed by the lawyers, who wanted to win at any rate. Any rate even meant that more than once the lawyer whose client didn’t like my expertise proposed to deprive me of my licence. Also, I didn’t like being summoned to the court to be questioned by the lawyers. However, it was my professional pride in question, and I didn’t want to run away from offensive people and I always did my best.
There was the reappearance of J., my friend in New York. When I was on the other side of the ocean she wasn’t in the city, she wrote in her last letter or fax before that she was going to Washington, D.C. for a time on business. After my return from the New World I hadn’t had any news from her, but then she sent me a card and we started to send e-mails to each other. Then it was already time for everyone in the office to have an email address. Alas, my hard drive had been formatted once to put in another one and those mails had been lost for me.
As soon as we went to the new office she sent me a book as a Christmas present and I liked it very much, it was the famous Da Vinci Code. That time she was in search of her luck, tried to get her citizenship, she moved all stones. She had an employer that used her talent well, she travelled a lot. Sometimes she was lost for months. After my PC became fine again I received a mail from her telling that she had been home and just returned to America. That was in August 2004. From that time we have been in correspondence, although it would only come years later that she got her citizenship and could establish a much more stable living.
Around that time my employer reached a tipping point, but about it I give you account in the next chapter. I was prepared that any time soon I would stop going to work, it wasn’t terrifying me, during the previous four years I was able to inflate my bank account a little. My son asked me to settle official issues with a moderate construction work – plans by an authorized architect, building permit, overseer – as he wanted to make a veranda from the open terrace at the backside of the house. Actually he needed a place where things could be stored during the time he would extend the store. Things and gears were stuffed into the store and making a veranda first would make it empty.
I had become skilled in the usage of CorelDraw, thus I made a drawing first and my son could see how it would look when finished. He liked it and I found a young couple of architects in our street. The man checked the environment and took the task on. He even organized the application for permit, on my cost of course. This business is not a very fast one, in the meantime I also designed a new electric wiring in the lower flat, as always there was something wrong, the original aluminium wires reached the limit of their life span in the thirty years since construction. He studied the electric schemes carefully and with his brother-in-law – one of several, who was an electrician – consulted. Then with the other one – his friend in their teenage years – he purchased the necessary materials and tools, it went on my expense. They almost finished the electric work when the building permit for the veranda arrived.
This construction needed no big investment. Timber had remained from the construction of the upper flat ten years earlier. So did slate. To do masonry work there were enough bricks collected at different places from discarded rest. Only cement and sand as well as lime was to be ordered. However, neither of the young men had done such work up to that time. They had to learn all, the first part of the wall reminded me actually of fortresses in the Middle Ages. But, as they progressed, it became much better and they worked enthusiastically. When the roof structure was finished I had to show them – I myself learned it from the carpenters a decade earlier – how to cover it with slates. The roof even had a panel of glass in the middle to give some light to the kitchen that had been shadowed by the new veranda. As there was in the family also a cabinetmaker – no more, we buried him recently – the windows (all unique as the builders couldn’t make openings of equal size) originated from my leftover planks and with cousinly work.
When the cold weather came in my son was working inside the finished veranda on the inside wall surfaces. During the different physical activities he neglected his PC, but as soon as the veranda was finished and the material and cardboard boxes were moved there from the store, he resumed his second hobby. And something more changed. He needed the Internet, but it was only possible by dialling-in. It has two disadvantages, first, it was slow as a louse, and second, it was very expensive. For this reason he shifted his working time to the late hours, as it was faster and also cheaper. Nature wants what belongs to her, so he began to get up ever later and work ever longer into the night.
At the beginning of the summer my daughter-in-law began to organize her return in the job she left when the boy was born. It was a small private company and, although she had been replaced by someone, her place was kept. The maternity leave must have been complemented with a few weeks of unpaid leave as the summer holiday just started in the kindergarten and my grandson had to stay at home. But in the remaining time I could be with him as I hadn’t been able to take my days of paid leave, thus I had a lot of them to be taken (we were sure already that our company would be closed and the employer wanted us to take it). Almost all summer I spent with my grandson, even it became my habit to sit him into his carriage, take the dinner can and fetch the lunch.
After lunch he went to sleep and I could do my other tasks. Soon his grandma arrived home from her job and she took him under her wings.
During leave I sometimes visited the office with my grandson and checked my emails. That was when I got the mail from J. and I replied. I didn’t know anything about her for a time and it was good news. In another mail she made it clear that she was away and this was the reason she neglected me. I had a general notion about how difficult it could be for her and always tried to be polite. I informed her about the construction my son was doing and also about my attempts in vain for the publishing of my selected travel stories. And, of course, about my becoming a sewerage professional – I haven’t mentioned yet that simultaneously with the construction activities of my son I did all the work for the connection of our in-house drainage system to the municipal sewerage network – from designing to digging and laying the pipes.
In her mails she always related me her most important issues, mainly about her family. I hope it was good for her to be able to speak about her concerns to a person she trusted (I hope so). What she could least bear was the same I had felt in the teenage years of my son: all the same parents want to do good for their children, it is in vain if the children don’t want to follow their guidance. She complained about her son’s negligence of the importance of linguistic skills. Besides, of course, about hardness in getting enough means to support him and her mother.
I tried to express my sympathy and informed her about the similar concerns of mine. In a mail I wrote: “For you life is mixed blessing too according to the popular saying. It comes from your nature, you have always been ready to take all problems of the family on yourself, for this reason I don’t wonder that your problems don’t go less, but multiply. I cannot throw it out of me either. Otherwise, it is a hopeless case to try to convince young people about your opinion, I had been inconvincible too, I only learn on my faults. And it is in vain to try to convince my son about things we judge from a subjective point of view, even it is possible he will have been proven right. I only want to be able to see that they will leave a little place in my garden also for my plants, leave the only twig unharmed that bears fruit on the little tree.”
Those mails came and went. And there was another aspect. She began to dislike coming home and being entangled in the complicated family life, where her main role was to supply the necessary funds. On the other hand, Russia was a great thing for her. She wasn’t able to think about Russia as I did, keeping in mind both fine and inconvenient memories. She saw only the pleasant when she looked back. Maybe, it was for her like Ethiopia for me. She did visit the country a few times and spent her time with her former neighbours in the country. It is true that rural Russia has a certain attraction also for me. She had a great dream, i.e. to travel along the Trans-Siberian Railway and she tried to persuade me too to go with her.
Sometimes she asked questions about common acquaintances from Moscow, such as the former husband of my late niece who had married again a short time ago and Joe S., my companion in the Moscow office. With the former she had had some negative memories, she had never valued him high. The latter had been her countryman, although they got to know each other in Moscow. I tried to inform her, but about Joe nothing was available. Because of feud in the ministry where he had been working, he had troubles and I think, he has been low since. Anyway, she was not to be convinced of such things.
It happened around that time the publishing agent wanted to send me back my manuscript and CD-ROMs with the photos. She knew her phone number and asked for the sending costs. However, J. had no great opinion of her already and said her just send them to her. I told her I would rather leave them with her, it can be a gift of an old friend. Since that time I have always got emails when she mentioned this or that chapter as interesting. I hope she liked it.
My grandson started his kindergarten course with a little problem: although my daughter-in-law did everything right, the boy couldn’t stay all day there as someone made a mistake with the payment for lunch. As I was still in my job my wife had to organize her work to fetch him at the kindergarten at noon. At first he liked to be there, but there was a time soon when he didn’t. However, Clair could always convince him that it was the best thing for him to be with children. Soon it turned out the opposite: in a closed group of about twenty children there is always a virus lurking, and there came the period as it had been with my son at that age, he stayed one week in the group and two weeks at home. My paid leave as well as that of my daughter-in-law was used up for this purpose.
On days when he was well without fever, only there was severe cough or cold, and the weather was fine, we went together to fetch lunch and before that we did long walks. One day we just started to saunter to the bus stop when a big truck driving in the opposite direction stopped and someone in the cabin asked something in a foreign language. He wanted to know where a certain street was to be found. I began to explain it in Russian as they were Ukrainians, but, as it was the place we were just going, I told them, let us in and I would show them where it was. It made no problem, the four of us would be comfortable in the great cabin. My grandson was lifted in and I climbed the four steps, as it was a large Renault Magnum.
Arriving at the place I stopped them and wanted to get out. One of them stepped off and helped my grandson to get out and I wanted to do the same, but forgot that it was the big truck. My step came out too high and it caused me a great pain in my knee. When the truck drove off to the proper direction I could hardly walk, my knee hurt me terribly. Slowly it became better, but about two months it was swollen and every move made me pain. It would become better only in the next year when I would go to the orthopaedic specialist.
I carried on working on my technical book on shipbuilding. In the office I could search the Internet for books in this field and I found Barnes and Noble in New York. There I found three such books first that were complementing my own knowledge from the university and practice, one of them a used one, rather old, but still up-to-date, the other two fresh publication. I ordered them on my MasterCard and soon I could read them through. Of course, the topic was not completely new for me, but my knowledge had worn out a little, and besides I hadn’t completed tasks in all fields of the trade. As I tried searching once more I found a true treasure: a 1943 edition of Taylor’s evaluation of his experiments in the model towing basin. I ordered it too. Still I had only my old PC, but all the same, one page after another, details began to take shape.