Dearest Sophie,
Your arrival has been one of the most joyous and fulfilling experiences of my life. This is just a start of the long journey that would inevitably take you around some turns, sharp and wide. My desire is to prepare you for this journey around these turns, to assist in making your life fulfilling and curious. I would love to lead you in finding your own path that would make you stronger and more grounded every time you navigate new turns along the road of life.
Now, your personality, passions and pursuits are yet to arrive at their full blossom. This will take years of growing up, living through learning, taking and giving, developing your own views and sharing them with others. With all of this still ahead of you, I would like to share with you some of my life experiences that could, in time, provide some key answers and guidance for your own decisions and choices that will, in part, determine the future course of your life. The life that is still developing within the precious little bundle of tanned soft skin, baby powder smell and piercing famished shrills. Despite your early age, your character has already started its development, as it manifests itself in your particular interest in sleeping once fed and swinging in your musical swing once tired of our, at times, overbearing adult company of dotting parents.
I would like you to develop your character to be a great example of sensitivity, sensibility and amicability. I would like your character to follow the most important commandment for us to use toward one another – “love your neighbour as yourself”. This commandment is found in the most important text, from my perspective, that is available to human race – the Bible. I am sure that we will be talking a great deal about it in the future. However, for now, I would like you to take it at its face value and try to live it out, as you meet friends, come across strangers and treat those that ask for help.
There is no better commencement point along the journey of love side by side with your fellow humans than a well-grounded ability to understand other people, that is to be able to anticipate their interests, passions and pursuits with clear reference to their background. I did not experience much of such anticipation when I was growing up in the Soviet Union. You see it is probably extremely surprising to you that just about all people who surrounded me in my youth spoke the same language, ate the same food and had the same skin colour. I felt early on that the world offered so much more variety of tastes and colours, however, my understanding of other people and their customs and the way of life remained limited. This lack of understanding and sense of isolation nearly blunted my curiosity towards people that did not share my background. You see, my home town had a secret missile factory, which made the city closed to any foreigners even those considered friendly to the Soviet Union. When I visited my relatives in Moscow and St. Petersburg (it was called Leningrad then), I was entirely mesmerised by seeing anybody different whether it is skinny jeans clad Finn on a weekend outing to the Northern Venice or dark skinned Tanzanian studying in the Moscow University. When I first saw these people they might as well had just stepped out of space ship from a far away planet. Apart from my sighting of foreigners while visiting my relatives, I came across a number of different nationals from other Soviet republics such as Georgians selling roses and oranges on the local market or Ukrainian peasants selling garden produce. Despite this limited variety, our lives remained very closed, as contact with people from outside of the Soviet Union was unthinkable and interaction with other Soviet nationalities confined us to the single point of contact – Russian language – the language of the empire.
Only late in my teens I developed a strong desire to break the mould and master a foreign language – English. This decision has been one of the most pivotal of my life, as it ultimately led me to a different place – Canada. I had a privilege of meeting people representing nations all across the world along the way, including your mummy. My life has been tremendously enriched, my understanding of people deepened and my ability to relate and treat everyone on equal footing immensely improved. This has been a truly God given gift of new beginning for me. However, up to this day I regret of not starting feeding my curiosity early in life, of not being able to share the full richness of my current experience with people who left the most indelible mark in my life – my father and my grandparents. Your precious little story has already provided a rich canvass upon which to cast colours of your life journey. I would like to assist you in not repeating my partial use of bland colours that dot my canvass. I would like to guide your little hand along the rich rivers full of deep azure, forests breathing freshness of green and fields echoing splashes of late spring eclectic colours. I would like to fill your little ears with songs in different languages, I want you to touch people of many skin colours and fill your soul with sounds that span continents. The decision to love your neighbour is one of the most beautiful and difficult things to do in life. You will be the one to ultimately make this decision, however, I would like to do my best to equip you with sense and tools needed for this life long task.
Love,
Your Daddy
Your arrival has been one of the most joyous and fulfilling experiences of my life. This is just a start of the long journey that would inevitably take you around some turns, sharp and wide. My desire is to prepare you for this journey around these turns, to assist in making your life fulfilling and curious. I would love to lead you in finding your own path that would make you stronger and more grounded every time you navigate new turns along the road of life.
Now, your personality, passions and pursuits are yet to arrive at their full blossom. This will take years of growing up, living through learning, taking and giving, developing your own views and sharing them with others. With all of this still ahead of you, I would like to share with you some of my life experiences that could, in time, provide some key answers and guidance for your own decisions and choices that will, in part, determine the future course of your life. The life that is still developing within the precious little bundle of tanned soft skin, baby powder smell and piercing famished shrills. Despite your early age, your character has already started its development, as it manifests itself in your particular interest in sleeping once fed and swinging in your musical swing once tired of our, at times, overbearing adult company of dotting parents.
I would like you to develop your character to be a great example of sensitivity, sensibility and amicability. I would like your character to follow the most important commandment for us to use toward one another – “love your neighbour as yourself”. This commandment is found in the most important text, from my perspective, that is available to human race – the Bible. I am sure that we will be talking a great deal about it in the future. However, for now, I would like you to take it at its face value and try to live it out, as you meet friends, come across strangers and treat those that ask for help.
There is no better commencement point along the journey of love side by side with your fellow humans than a well-grounded ability to understand other people, that is to be able to anticipate their interests, passions and pursuits with clear reference to their background. I did not experience much of such anticipation when I was growing up in the Soviet Union. You see it is probably extremely surprising to you that just about all people who surrounded me in my youth spoke the same language, ate the same food and had the same skin colour. I felt early on that the world offered so much more variety of tastes and colours, however, my understanding of other people and their customs and the way of life remained limited. This lack of understanding and sense of isolation nearly blunted my curiosity towards people that did not share my background. You see, my home town had a secret missile factory, which made the city closed to any foreigners even those considered friendly to the Soviet Union. When I visited my relatives in Moscow and St. Petersburg (it was called Leningrad then), I was entirely mesmerised by seeing anybody different whether it is skinny jeans clad Finn on a weekend outing to the Northern Venice or dark skinned Tanzanian studying in the Moscow University. When I first saw these people they might as well had just stepped out of space ship from a far away planet. Apart from my sighting of foreigners while visiting my relatives, I came across a number of different nationals from other Soviet republics such as Georgians selling roses and oranges on the local market or Ukrainian peasants selling garden produce. Despite this limited variety, our lives remained very closed, as contact with people from outside of the Soviet Union was unthinkable and interaction with other Soviet nationalities confined us to the single point of contact – Russian language – the language of the empire.
Only late in my teens I developed a strong desire to break the mould and master a foreign language – English. This decision has been one of the most pivotal of my life, as it ultimately led me to a different place – Canada. I had a privilege of meeting people representing nations all across the world along the way, including your mummy. My life has been tremendously enriched, my understanding of people deepened and my ability to relate and treat everyone on equal footing immensely improved. This has been a truly God given gift of new beginning for me. However, up to this day I regret of not starting feeding my curiosity early in life, of not being able to share the full richness of my current experience with people who left the most indelible mark in my life – my father and my grandparents. Your precious little story has already provided a rich canvass upon which to cast colours of your life journey. I would like to assist you in not repeating my partial use of bland colours that dot my canvass. I would like to guide your little hand along the rich rivers full of deep azure, forests breathing freshness of green and fields echoing splashes of late spring eclectic colours. I would like to fill your little ears with songs in different languages, I want you to touch people of many skin colours and fill your soul with sounds that span continents. The decision to love your neighbour is one of the most beautiful and difficult things to do in life. You will be the one to ultimately make this decision, however, I would like to do my best to equip you with sense and tools needed for this life long task.
Love,
Your Daddy
3 comments:
Sweet. You're a cool father.
This one is heart warming Al.
Vince
Hey Cousin, just checkin' up on ya'.
This is beautiful, how old was Soph when you wrote this? Well there is a big old softy in that gruff exterior after all... you continue to amaze me. Sophie is blessed to have such a world-wise (if that makes sense)father. The things we Canadians have taken for granted such as all the nationalities here... how interesting to hear of your childhood perspective on other people.
I'll be sending my boys over Sat morns for language lessons, lol.
Keep up the good work.
Shell ( :
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