I brought two sets of dominoes. The first one is neat, white with black. I associate it with my grandfather, my mom’s dad, Anisimov Vasily Ivanovich. And the second set, more childish, with pictures, is associated with my grandmother, my mom’s mom, Prokhorova Elizaveta Vasilyevna. It even has her hand signed points for each picture, because we always kept score.

My grandparents were very important people to me. Until I was a teenager, I went to visit them every Friday after school and stayed overnight.

It was such a carefree time for me. I didn’t worry about anything there. Everything was there for me.

It was an apartment at 16 Pobedy Street, a simple, one-room apartment on the second floor.

I remember the feeling of serenity in that apartment. I remember the streetlight shining in the window from outside.

Two armchairs are pushed together, a thick plywood is put down. Grandmother puts a featherbed. It was very soft. I felt just… a queen in such a bed. And I remember that on holidays my grandmother used to make yeast dough and bake pies. And I always woke up early with her, at six o’clock in the morning. I would roll something out, help her, I liked it very much, and these pies were very tasty.

Grandpa was a very important person to me as a child. I can’t really say why. I can’t say that he spent a lot of time with me, or talked to me a lot. Probably the only thing we had in common was that he was very fond of reading. He read mostly detectives, and I really loved fairy tales as a kid. Maybe that’s what brought us together. When I grew up, I learned that not everything was so wonderful, and that my grandmother had a hard life with my grandfather,  he wasn’t a very good spouse. But he was very important to me as a child. And when he died, at the age of, probably, sixty-five, I was in my second year at the institute. My mother did not inform me, although there were already cell phones. She decided not to disturb me. But as if I felt it, I called her and she broke the news to me. It was the first time for me to lose a close person. I immediately packed up and on the nearest train came home. It was March, but there was a snowstorm, winter weather. I believe I was the only one who grieved for my grandfather so much. 

Ekaterina