Today I read an article in the newspaper with this title: “Ina (23 years old) is chronically ill. The problem is that nobody sees it.” They placed a colourful photo of a pretty girl, out walking with a dog. Her problem is that she can do nothing — neither study nor work. There is no energy. If you told this now to my mama, who on 26 March is to turn 92, she of course would not believe it! I know what she would say: “well we survived in the war, teenagers worked round the clock, and still got a clip round the ear from mother if they did something wrong!” And now this girl is not alone in her problem. Young people are ill. ...

Well, for the first time I “ran into” such an un-Norwegian situation. And it was like this. Every Sunday we try to spend with benefit for health — to swim our lengths in the pool. And it is best to arrive there at opening, at 10 o’clock, while not all the people have woken up. True, at Aquarama (the water palace) there is enough space for everyone, but still we prefer to swim each our quota at a pace and quickly return home. This has already become a Sunday habit. ...

Today at dinner I asked Ivan whether he remembers his childhood. He said no. And I am interested! If only I could learn something. He says he remembers nothing. And why then do I remember everything? Probably because I live in another world, a very different one, which I am unlikely to come to know. I was about five when, being in Bolshevo at grandmother and grandfather’s, I once asked my grandfather a question. I would ask all sorts of questions when he smoked on the little terrace. He smoked strong cheap papirosy called “Dymok” (the name is inexact). Horribly poisonous. But this smoke did not bother me at all. Simply grandfather had a free minute and one could talk with him “about life.” ...

I have already written earlier about my grandmother Polina Vasilyevna (papa’s mother), who lived her whole life in a village in the Smolensk region. Apparently my grandmother lived so poorly after the war that nothing lodged in my memory, only the last trip to her, when I was already 10 years old, in 1964, in summer. Papa was then a serviceman and used the privilege of a free ticket once a year for leave in a compartment carriage. Before the trip we bought presents: bagel rings strung on a string (that is how they sold them then), biscuits, lump sugar, tea, and many caramel sweets. Papa decided to take the ticket at the station, not long before the train’s departure. We ended up in a general carriage “packed to the brim” with people. I can suppose that papa decided to get there more quickly; the journey took several hours in the evening. I had to sit on a suitcase, laying my head on papa’s knees, and I fell asleep. ...

Marya Grigoryevna did not instil in me a great love of reading; rather she taught me a responsible attitude to a book. But I loved to listen when my papa read to me before sleep. In the times of my childhood they issued a series of little books in a soft cover. It was called “My first books.” There were Krylov’s fables “The Elephant and Moska,” and Grigorovich’s “The Gut-ta-percha Boy,” and Kornei Chukovsky’s “Tom Thumb,” and the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. ...

I cannot even explain to myself where today’s memory came from, of my acquaintance with the school librarian Maria Grigoryevna, whom some children called Marya Grygorovna. I think today’s suddenly-in-the-morning-arisen thought is connected with my attitude to reading then, in second grade, and now, when I have to restructure myself completely to reading on a computer. But it pulls me now into my distant childhood, and as if under hypnosis all the sensations of that time… ...

Did I ever think, in my past life, that I would remember someone who had been of no interest to me at all. And it turns out the time has come to remember Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev. That he promised to build communism by 1980 and to provide all Soviet people with separate apartments — that I remembered clearly. I remembered the empty shelves in the “yellow” grocery shop on Yanvarskogo Vosstaniya Street in the city of Kiev, after they removed him from office. Very meanly the party people treated him then. After Khrushchev’s removal they arranged a famine for the Soviet people. Queues for bread…. and the famous Soviet white batons suddenly became grey, poorly baked. And at school they started handing out tiny white buns, the taste of which did not please me at all. How poorly we lived then! But what is most interesting is that we did not know it! ...

“For me this night is outside the law, I write — at night there is more darkness. I grab the telephone dial and dial the eternal 07. ‘Girl, hello! What’s your name?’ — ‘Toma. Seventy-two! I wait, holding my breath! It can’t be, say it again, I’m sure — he’s home! Ah, here they have already answered… Well, hello — it’s me!’ This night for me is outside the law. I don’t sleep, I shout — quicker! Why on credit, on a coupon, do they offer me the people I love? …… The telephone for me is like an icon. The telephone book is a triptych, the operator has become a Madonna, having shortened the distances for a moment. Girl, dear! I beg you, extend it! You are now like an angel — don’t come down from the altar! The most important thing is still ahead, understand, Here they have already answered… Well, hello — it’s me!” ...

I don’t know who said it, but just in case I put today’s story in quotation marks. I was struck, having read a post about the rescue of a family from a burning car in the city of Mykolaiv (in the south of Ukraine). Two men, hearing a child’s cry, without delaying a second, rushed to help. The driver was unconscious, and they saved him too, a minute before the explosion! Honour and praise to these two Human Beings! I was very struck by their act — a heroic deed. ...

It is not always possible to admire their beauty and grace. It turns out they can also be aggressive! And here is a little story that was posted on Facebook at Epiphany. In the little town of Drohobych (Western Ukraine) a man decided to wash away his sins by dipping in a pond where swans were swimming gracefully. And when he surfaced, he came under a swan attack! At first he tried to wave them off, but without success. He had to take up a threatening boxer’s stance right in the icy water, but even that did not save him. What saved him was running for the shore. ...