It just occurred to me that I wanted to begin Mama’s travels with airplanes — but no! Mama’s first journeys were short, but hard. She was born in the near Moscow region, in a place well known to many today, in the settlement of Bolshevo. And of course her first trips were to Moscow, to the theatre. That was rare, but very festive.

And then the war began….. And Mama’s childhood ended. She was 14 years old; her father went to the front as a volunteer. Sergei Sergeyevich Dorofeev was 40. Only quite recently did I think about the age of my grandfather, who went through the whole war — really went through it, and in the song they sang “we crawled all of Europe on our bellies.” He did not like to talk about the war.

They summoned him to the military commissariat, and the commissar, looking straight into Grandfather’s eyes, asked: “Will you go as a volunteer?” I immediately remembered a wartime poster with the question “Have you signed up as a volunteer?” There was no alternative (by the way, that modern word means “a choice”). For no one! “Everything for the front — everything for victory!”

In that hard time a journey was called evacuation. My grandmother, remaining in the family home with two teenage girls (Mama also had a sister, Vera, who was 12), firmly decided to stay and evacuate only if the Army was retreating. Mama began working at the post office at Yaroslavsky Station in Moscow.

Around the clock, 24 hours at work, a teenager, with a short break for sleep in a paper sack, and back to the conveyor, to sorting — don’t sleep! Don’t sleep! Don’t sleep! The boss yelled only in swear words. It was dangerous: the sorting machine could pull in a hand if you fell asleep… Work for a food ration card.

And at home? A kerosene stove that had to be filled with kerosene, which had to be brought somehow — carried; a stove that had to be lit with something, and soup or porridge cooked from something. I think now: and if there was nothing in the house? And water still to be fetched from the well… Grandmother also worked at a factory. How much of all this fell on my mama? And what to wear?

Mama had a cousin, Genka, the same age as Mama. He worked at a plant where they made cartridges. It happened that there was no driver to deliver a load to Moscow. And Genka took the driver’s license of his father, who had died at the front, and sat behind the wheel of a truck. At the checkpoint they checked the documents, let him through, but the duty officer said “don’t do that again.”

Genka asked to go to the front when he was 17. He was a tankman, reached Germany. And then his compulsory service in the Soviet Army began — three years in liberated Germany. Handsome, young, athletic, talented. He fell in love with a German woman, Lucia. An irreparable misfortune for a Soviet soldier — to fall in love with a German woman.

Once he was on leave with a comrade; they “had a bit to drink.” His comrade hassled a German and took his wristwatch. The German came to the military unit, complained, identified the comrade, and Genka went before a tribunal as an accomplice. They gave him 10 years in the camps.

I don’t know whether he served the full term or was amnestied, but at that time he could not return home to the Moscow region, only to “the 101st kilometre” from Moscow. Those were the laws. And Lucia gave birth to a son he never saw…

When the war ended, Mama was already 18. She wanted to study! But there was no way to enter a technical school — she had no certificate. She had to go to the school for working youth. Work by day, study in the evening. She wanted to eat and sleep; she had to study and work to help her parents rebuild the house.

After finishing school, Mama, on her parents’ advice, applied to the Moscow Technical School of Light Industry, to the faculty of design and sewing of outerwear. In short, they taught sewing and cutting. At that time it was considered a good profession, which guaranteed earnings for “a piece of bread,” as they said then.

In those days, after finishing an educational institution, there was so-called compulsory assignment — a posting to work at an enterprise or institution. Mama had a choice: a Moscow factory sewing fur articles, or a factory sewing underwear in the city of Blagoveshchensk, in the Far East.

And my mama set off on a romantic journey by train across the boundless expanses of our Motherland, 10 days on the road!!! Through all the time zones! Mama always recalls it as something incredible! The sensation of day and night! You don’t have time to adjust to the time. And also the fellow passengers… one young officer offered her “his hand and heart.” He too was going on assignment to a military unit.

At that time it was hard for officers to serve in a unit and be without a family. And many tried, after graduating from military school, to get married quickly. She always laughs when she tells this episode… All the same she reached Blagoveshchensk and became a shift supervisor.

And at the factory the staff was entirely female. And when they worked the evening shift, they would run to her for a headache tablet. She was in charge of the first-aid kit. At some point the “headache” tablets ran out, and she decided to consult an older employee: “I don’t know what to do, the headache tablets have run out.” And she said: “If they ask, give the one that’s in the kit.” Well, Mama did just that! The main thing is that she didn’t harm anyone.

Blagoveshchensk at that time was “terrible backwoods.” She went to the theatre — the public in boots, felt boots, padded jackets. At the dances, no other options either. But there was no desire to quit and leave. She didn’t want to go back to her parents in an unfinished house.

To be continued….