one of the exciting things about motherhood is an honorable and at the same time terrifying responsibility to create someone’s childhood. and while doing it for your offspring, you get a chance to relive and revive the tiny precious memories and almost forgotten episodes of your own childhood. it’s like time machine that allows you to walk the streets of your own childhood.
so what is the first thing that comes to your mind when someone asks you about your childhood? i think of the bedtime stories my mom used to tell me (my favorite being stories from her own youth), and books my dad read to me. one of the books, “Ugomon” (“Mister Calmdown”), a poem by Russian writer Samuil Marshak, became my favorite, i learnt it by heart by the age of 3 and still remember it word by word. Leo has inherited the book (which I only pretend to open to read the poem), and the very same poem became his lullaby now as added a simple melody to go with the line for better sleeping effect.
when i think about my childhood i also remember my favorite cartoons, and it’s a real time travel experience to rewatch them now, all available in a freefall online. as a grown up, i enjoy them immensely. i am fascinated and proud to rewatch the masterpieces of graphic design and illustrations, of beautiful music and artistic voice-overs, as well as profound, grownup life philosophy, all created by soviet animators decades ago. no wonder that re-make of “Masha and Medvedi” (“Masha and the Bear”) is such a big hit right now all around the world. apart from that one, i can also recommend my personal favorites: “Bremenskie muzykanty” (“The bremen town musicians”), “Ostorozhno, obezyanki!” (“Monkeys, caution!”), “Pes v sapogah” (“Dog in the boots”), “Nu pogodi!” (“Just you wait!”), “Tay’na tertiary planety” (“The mystery of the third planet”), “Maugli”, Russian “Vinnie the Pooh”.
my childhood was also about the quiet and meditative drawing time.color pencils, honey-based watercolors “st.petersburg”, endless blue-ink pen drawings on rolls of toilet paper.. for some reason my parents were very upset to find that i draw my best creation at that time – “Petrushka” the clown – on the toilet paper piece instead of the decent art paper we had in abundance at home.. now, thinking back about it, i wish they didn’t restrain my creativity to the conventional choice of materials. “Petrushka” indeed was a little masterpiece, my personal Joconda of some sort. i tried replicating it on the right paper but it never came out as good. now all my art tools and materials (even that very watercolor i liked to lick so much because it tasted sweet) are awaiting leo in one of the drawers at my studio. to make amends with the past, i think i will offer him a roll of toilet paper in his starting art kit.
and toys of course – how can you create someone’s childhood without them? i was obsessed with toys. i still am. and i was a lucky kid to have many beautiful toys at the time of harsh deficit in Soviet Union. so i never ever took it for granted. my toys were always more like collectables to me rather than items of play and (eventual) destruction. that’s why they have survived through all the years and Leo will have a chance to play them too. earlier i wrote about my hand-made doll Tutsi; she was one of many beautiful stuffed creations by my mom. when i was older, i actually started sewing toys myself (there is a little emerald frog with a checkered brown school rucksack and tiny books inside it which i made all myself, as well as a caterpillar i made out of the old tights of mine) my mom saved them all for her future grandchildren, and i can’t wait for Leo to grow big enough to meet my very own childhood friends.
0 Comments