That is the title my brain dictated to me late at night. Well, it was hard for me… For 18 years, starting from the end of 1989, I had lived independently, raised two sons and brought them up, and had pedagogical experience in my country, and having arrived here, into a family, it seemed to me (and so it was) that I had found myself “out of work.”

Ivan had taken upon himself all the responsibility for the growing generation and for me, arrived from another world, in which I had been an Octobrist, and a Pioneer, and a Komsomol member (I was forced to join in the 10th grade, otherwise they would not have taken me into the institute) and had even managed to become a pensioner. And here I suddenly fall under such masculine, fatherly guardianship. Nothing to do — only walk in the fresh air with him and the dog, ride in the car, and, at my wish, study Norwegian on courses.

Breakfast he cooked himself. He “boiled” a litre of tea in an electric teapot, made toasts, spread them with butter, always cheese, yoghurt, scrambled eggs with bacon, jam, sometimes herring with boiled eggs (herring with potatoes is eaten only by “us,” from the fraternal CIS). And also for breakfast they have cod roe in tubes and brown cheese of a taste very unaccustomed for us, a “purely Norwegian traditional product.”

And I had arrived with my own taste habits and economy options. After all, the main item of expenditure for the greater part of people in my country is expenditure on food, and I was used to reasonable economy, i.e. cooking and making homemade baking. And here…, if something is not eaten up, straight into the rubbish bin!!!

At first Ivan made sandwiches for the daughters for school, which they did not eat. I started telling him that throwing food away is not good, especially bread. Well, they sort of “listened”… I then started collecting bread in a paper bag myself and going to the pier to feed the seagulls.

In general I tried to put food in order, and when we went to the supermarket I tried to explain to Ivan how much and of what “we need for a week.” With time we “figured out” the food, put it in order, one can say, for the two of us. The daughters did not fit into our regime at all. That is, they did not eat normal, freshly cooked food. They accepted only a modern diet: Coca-Cola, pizza, meatballs in sauce (ready-made tins), chips. Sometimes the younger asked to order food to the house from a Chinese restaurant, and also periodically they ordered hot pizza. The eating of the greater part of the food for them fell on the evening and night. Plus also their friends who stayed overnight.

Ivan mastered the dishwasher to perfection. He had his own ritual: every evening at 9 o’clock he would start cleaning the kitchen. He told me that his mama had trained him to this. In their well-off family there were three brothers, Ivan the eldest, and he, as the eldest, always had his duties, which he carried through his whole life and was not going to shift onto anyone.

Then I asked: “If in the family they trained you to certain duties, then why do you now not even try to train your children to the elementary?” My question “hung in the air” forever.

To be continued….