1. First Things

I remember when Dima, my younger brother, was born. Nikolai, my father, and I went to the hospital to see Maria, my mother. I was wandering by myself around the hospital. It was so big. Down a hall to the left I saw a long table of people in white eating and I walked up to them. A doctor picked me up and started talking to me. I don’t know but I assume he was asking me if I was lost. 

When Olya, my sister, was born Nikolai and I went to the hospital again but they wouldn’t let us inside. We had to stay outside in the cold. It was December 25. There was snow on the ground. There was a playground next to the hospital and place to sit. Then Maria came to the door and leaned out to talk to us. It was too cold for her to come out. We went to the steps by the door. She asked what I had been doing with Nikolai. Then Nikolai and I went home. On the walk back to the village we saw a giant crane’s nest on the top of a power pole. I wanted to climb up. Was it warm in the nest? What did it look like from way up there?

I think I even remember coming out of a vagina. Inside everything was orange and I was floating toward a pink thing like a jelly fish. I was dragged out and it was very light. The next thing I remember is being next to Maria on the bed in the hospital. It felt like birth but you can’t remember your own birth. It had to be a dream. If it was a dream that dream is one of the first things I remember.