This is me. This photograph was taken in 1990s. It shows me in the country (Yaroslavl region) at my niece’s dacha. I started spending time their after my brother’s death in 1986. It was a wonderful place: a lot of trees, berries. Children of my niece swam in the pond nearby. Unfortunately I can’t swim. Later the dacha was burnt down.
In Moscow there lives my niece Natasha (my brother's daughter) and her stepbrother (an adopted son of my brother), because my brother married a woman with a child. That my nephew visited me on my birthday.
Here in St. Petersburg I have another relative: a son of my second cousin sister. To tell the truth, he helped me to get an opinion of a surgeon regarding my diseased leg. He is a dermatologist. He calls me sometimes. He has got a family (a wife and several children).
Recently my niece and I brought 6 bags of books to the library named after Pushkin. The bags were very heavy. I hand over my books to the library at regular intervals: it is impossible to sell them now. Sometimes my visitors (foreigners) ask me 'What do you usually read?' I answer that I read love stories. I find them in the library. But now I like crosswords. I buy a magazine (for example, Interesting Crossword). I usually buy two magazines: one of them I give to a friend of mine (she comes to my place and takes it).
This year my niece visited me twice. For the first time she came to visit her friend from Tallinn and came to me. Then she was going to Riga and invited me to visit their place. I agreed and asked her to take me with her on her way back from Riga. But she came from Riga in haste and I had to spend a certain time packing food from my fridge somewhere, therefore I refused.
Last year on my birthday my niece Natasha and I went to Kronstadt. [Kronstadt is a fortress on the Kotlin Island in the Baltic sea near St. Petersburg.] I was able to go there! And at present I already see the angel of death.
When I worked, people held me in respect. For my 90th birthday people from my factory came to my place and brought me a congratulatory address, flowers, and verses. They were nine.
I often recollect it. Besides all these congratulatory addresses I keep this newspaper, which everybody pays attention at. It has already faded. There you can see me among my coworkers. They called me Polina. For my 70th birthday they presented me fabric and I made an overcoat. You know, I have been wearing that overcoat more than twenty years!
I remember that when I was young I had only one pair of shoes (sports style plimsolls) and only one dress. I did my best to earn money: copied and drew for money.
When Daddy died in 1966, I was fifty two years old and he was eighty two. Since that day thirty nine years have passed in a blink. We use to plan this and that, but at last we understand that it was nothing, everything is in the past and we are among the has-beens.
