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Dedicated to our
60th
Anniversary.
November 9, 1955. The
first party of our University group. A boy with luxurious black
curls sits next to me and never again moves from this place.
From March 18, 1960 to March 18, 2020, - we are a husband and
wife. You can view pictures made on these dates. Don't you
think, this is the LOVE? Could you live without your arm, your
leg, your head even when you do not like them? Do you think,
there is no romantic in my words? But, how about 60 years of an
amazing life? Amazing life - because EVERYTHING was there.
Below is
the story about us: V. + L. (Vita and Leo)
It was written in Russian for a blitz tournament organized by
the Russian Literature portal in 2005. The name of the
tournament was:
”Is
it possible to enter twice in the same river?” My reviewer
called my story The One-Page Family Saga.
Once upon a time - were
V. + L. One
day they got
into a boat and sailed along the small
streamlet
called Life. It
flowed through the city of Kharkov
in Ukraine.
They had just graduated from University
and knew that the stream can become a full-flowing river, just
taking in the waters of other streams and rivers.
First there was the lake
Temir-Tau in
Kazakhstan.
On
its banks was built a large steel plant, which swallowed water
from the
lake
and then spit it
back there.
V. + L. with the same as they are
young, just
graduated
engineers, began to build a well-known
Kazakhstan
Magnitka. [1].
Difficulties of everyday life, work and
climate helped them to overcome the dissimilarity of characters
and views. The boat has not collapsed, but has expanded baggage
of acquired knowledge and life experience. Having also their son
on a board,
V. + L. came
back to the stream Life, flowing through the city of Kharkov.
That stream had already become a river.
As already mentioned, the Temir-Tau water, which filled the
river Life, was not the best quality. It had to be filtered.
V. + L.
made a stop at the city of Kharkov for 17 years, filtering their
river and keeping their ship (after all, there were already
three of them) on the dock. The river gradually cleared, but
become shallow. The ship was replenished by knowledge and
experience, but became worn-out
because of all kinds of storms and bad weather.
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Leaving the ship with their already adult son on
a board at the dock of Kharkov,
V. + L.
left to the shore of a
powerful reservoir
Surgut in West
Siberia
[2].
They wanted to
enrich the water of their river Life and
eventually solve the problem: “Into
where will the River fall in?”
Returning after 7 years with powerful tanks,
V. + L.
were ready to resolve this
issue, the 3rd time entering into the river Life , which flows
through the town of their ancestors. A new ship with a dock was
bought, because there were already five of them.
Everything seemed to be well, but event called Gorbachev's
Perestroika happened,
and the family became
actively involved in it. Sweet word ˮ Freedom!ˮ soon turned into
a tragic event: the nephew, who had a common business with their
son was shot, and
V. + L.
urgently sold the ship, dock, and everything
else in order to
send
a young family to the distant city of Montreal.
They were left alone, with nothing on the bank of the river
Life, turned into a small stream again.
The family had produced a rule: “You can go to where you can
return from to the city of Kharkov. However, after a year,
placing in one scale a son, but on the other – everything else,
V. + L.
chose the
son and flew to Montreal in order not to come back.
After landing at the airport in Montreal, they had no boat, nor
stream, nor even the idea of the
streams, by
which they can swim. It was only a temporary place in son’s
shaky boat. But, they knew the most important thing: the name of
the river, on which they must swim: ˮThe
New Life”. The creek began in Montreal,
replenishing and replenishing. There were many powerful sources
there, and
V. + L.
had the
experience of how to extract the water from them for their
river. V. +
L. soon
sailed smoothly, rocking on the waves of the river New Life.
This river is now flows through the capital of Canada, Ottawa.
The river is beautiful, clean, they are well fed and safety.
There are no dramatic rapids, storms, waterfalls, not even the
winds. Feeling bored? Perhaps, but
V. + L.
are able to entertain themselves and arrange dramas.
Will V. + L.
return to
the bank of the river Life, flowing through Kharkov again?
Periodically they plunge into it, but for good - I doubt it.
They are already 82,
and the
time when the river will fall in is already visible. Even it is
also known into where the river New Life will fall
in.
But, as Russian expression says: “It is not an evening yet…..”
Comments
[1] From
Wikipedia: “On
July 3,
1960
the first and only blast furnace in all of the Central Asia
and
Kazakhstan
was launched. That date was the birthday of
Kazakhstan
Magnitka
- the Karaganda Metallurgical
Plant. The young metallurgist Nazarbayev together with
experienced craftsmen took part in
first
Kazakhstan
cast iron smelting.” It is also about V. + L.
[2] Surgut is a center of Russian Gas and Oil industry. We
worked at Surgut Electric Power
Station,
the second-largest
gas-fired power station in
the world
(first is in United Arab Emirates). At that time (1980th) the
development of this region just started, and we lived first in a
railway carriage,
used as a temporary shelter,
just brought to the field.
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