Parenting ROI

An invisible thread connects my son and me. As he grew older, it held, even as the distance between us grew. In 2000, when Art was twelve, he was diagnosed with asthma. It shook me. Thankfully, he qualified for a three-week stay at a pulmonary sanatorium on the Black Sea shore. It was February, no sunbathing, of course, but far warmer than snowy St. Petersburg, Russia. We took the train, two nights, one day, and arrived in the morning to Anapa. The sanatorium was outdated, t

When Art turned eighteen months, I had to return to college, so I put him in daycare. It was not a smooth beginning. The teachers ran a tight ship, and one of their rules was absolute: no pacifiers. Art still relied on his for comfort, the specific, nonnegotiable comfort of a toddler who is not yet ready to let something go. The teachers responded by making him stand in the corner upon arrival; every morning he came in with it, until breakfast was served. He cried. I cried i

During our first summer in the US, my daughter spent two weeks at a horse camp. She fell completely in love with the horses, the smell of hay and leather, and the rhythm of days organized around animals. Since the camp was far from home, I stayed nearby during the day, close enough to be there but far enough to let her be. One morning, during a break between sessions, she came running to me, her eyes carrying something urgent. “Follow me,” she whispered. We stopped near a s

Becoming a mother at eighteen, I had no grand parenting philosophy. What I had was practice. My younger sister had been born when I was thirteen, so by the time Art arrived, I already knew how to feed a baby, rock one to sleep, and change a diaper at two in the morning without fully waking up. The mechanics were familiar enough. The principles? Entirely absent. I knew one thing with complete certainty: I wanted to do some things differently than I was raised to. This was not

I don't drink soda. It's simply too sweet for my taste, so it's a rare guest in our house. When my daughter brought home an energy drink and poured it into a glass, I got curious about the bright blue color. "Can I try it?" I asked. She nodded. I took a sip. Yeah, unbearably sweet. And without thinking, I said, "That's disgusting." She looked at me, and I watched her smile disappear. "Mom, what did you just do? I was excited to drink it, and now you've ruined it. If you don't

No doubt your family has its Christmas stories. The ones you tell again, the ones that become shorthand for something larger. This one is ours. In Eastern European countries that follow the Orthodox Christian calendar, Christmas arrives later, on January 7th, not December 25th. The real holiday stretch begins on New Year's Day and unfolds slowly through the first week of January, a long exhale of winter celebration. As a child, I loved this about our calendar. The world outsi

A year ago, just before Christmas, a friend of mine, a life coach, invited me to a holiday gathering she hosts for her clients. The plan was to create a vision board. I waved it off immediately. "Darling," I said, "vision boards are for young dreamers. I'm a little past that phase." She didn't argue. She smiled and said I was welcome to come anyway, for conversation, snacks, and a glass of something warm in good company. That part I liked. When I arrived, I saw a few women ci

You don't design your future in advance; you discover it through thoughtful experimentation. Yesterday I disappeared into a poem. My poem. Three hours passed as I translated it into English, slowly and attentively, listening for the moment the words stopped sounding correct and began sounding true. I don't remember deciding to do this. The day simply opened, and I stepped inside. One rhyme led to another, one syllable insisted on being replaced, until the English version bega

These Midwestern cities panic at snow. Schools close, roads empty, people photograph it like a rare animal. For me, born above the Arctic Circle, it feels like a time machine. Suddenly, I am seven again, tunneling through drifts that reached second-floor windows, building snow fortresses with numb fingers, staying out for hours in temperatures that would send this city indoors for a week. Snow here feels like a gift. A private one. Alina and I met in the kitchen this morning,

I became a mother at eighteen. In January 2004, right after the New Year, Art, my sixteen-year-old son, and I flew to Goa, India. I was thirty-three, freshly out of a long relationship that had ended the previous fall, and badly in need of something to look at other than my own thoughts. A year earlier, I had moved to Moscow and taken a mid-level role in a large international company, which opened the door to travel. I loved it and embraced every chance to see the world. This