This photo was taken at our home in Moscow in 1989.
This is my mother Anna Vaisman photographed by one of friends just for the memory.
In 1943 my mother defended her diploma and went to teach at school. My mother graduated from University brilliantly and was offered to start her postgraduate studies, but she had problems with her eyes. I told her: 'Mother, you won't be able to read this pile of books'. She could not write much. When she wrote me letters later it took me a while to guess what she wrote about. With her handwriting she couldn't write articles or reports.
She went to teach history in school # 12 [In the USSR schools had numbers and not names. It was part of the policy of the state. They were all state schools and were all supposed to be identical], where children of 3rd-rate chiefs studied. They were capricious and spoiled children.
One came to the second class, another one came to the third, but they liked my mother's classes. They gave her pictures on historical subjects, she managed to arouse their interest in history.
She worked there until 1948 and then her eyes got worse and she retired. She was allowed to retire due to her poor sight. Then she went to lecture in the association of blind people and made new friends there.
They visited us on New Year, my birthday or my mother's and we often celebrated on of my friend's birthday at our place. We had joyful and noisy parties.
Since I was plunged into my creative work my mother cared about our simple life at home. It happened so that I never got a family of my own. My mother was my only close person.
My mother was ill for a long time before she died. She was bedridden for 10 months. I attended to her and my friends were helping me. I wasn't alone. I wouldn't have managed it alone.
My mother died in 1993. I buried her in the Khovanskoye town cemetery in Moscow.
