You are a bit late
My parents emigrated from the same city in Ukraine in 1977. Though they only lived a few miles apart, they had never met.
My dad, Victor, left with his parents and his younger brother, Greg. My grandfather was a highly skilled machinist at a factory with several thousand workers that made parts for Soviet tanks. When you entered the factory, you were greeted by a portrait of Lenin, then the current Soviet premier, then the factory administrator, and then my grandfather.
For more than ten years, my grandparents had been waiting for a private apartment. They finally got one.
About a week later, my grandmother delivered some news.
“Greg is supposed to enter the army soon. It will kill him. We need to emigrate.”
“The apartment?”
My grandmother informed him he was free to stay. She was emigrating with the kids.
The apartment never came up again.
“Leaving the Soviet Union” was easy to say, but leaving the Soviet Union was another matter. Because my grandfather made tank parts, the family needed permission from the KGB, which was not especially easy to obtain.
Fortunately, my grandmother had a coworker who was the mistress of a KGB colonel. Permission was somehow granted.
They still needed someone in the United States to sponsor them. My grandmother had an aunt who had emigrated before the Revolution. They knew she had ended up in Philadelphia, but that was it.
My dad wrote to a classmate who had emigrated the year before.
About a month later, the aunt’s son came home from work, cracked open a beer, and sat down to read the classified ads, as he had done nearly every day of his adult life. On this day, he saw something unusual:
LOOKING FOR AUNT FEGEL
They had their sponsor.
It was much easier to get permission to leave if you didn't say you were going to the United States. So people declared other countries, left the Soviet Union, got to Italy, and applied to change their destination to the United States. Italy was full of Soviet émigrés waiting for permission to go somewhere else.
My mother arrived there alone.
She had planned to emigrate with her mother. They both hated communism and the Soviet Union with a burning passion.
Just days before she was supposed to leave, her mother had a stroke and died.
Her nine aunts and uncles were devout communists. Her favorite uncle sat her down.
“You have no idea what the West is like. It’s full of criminals and drug addicts. You can’t go alone. You don’t know a single soul. You’ll be like a drop in the ocean.”
My mother was undeterred.
She left. Alone.
On her own in Italy, my mother began to enjoy her newfound freedom. Her first week in Rome, she got on a tour bus and sat in the first row. The seat next to her was reserved for Victor, the tour guide. Victor was in no rush to get going. He was outside the bus, flirting with a group of Italian women.
People boarded. One after another, they tried to take the empty seat beside my mother.
“Sorry. This is saved for Victor.”
Eventually my grandmother got on the bus and tried to sit there.
“This seat is saved for Victor.”
My grandmother turned around and called to my father.
“Victor! This girl is saving you a seat.”
My mother glanced at the tour guide. One of the women touched his arm. He would not be returning anytime soon. She let my father sit down.
That’s how my parents met.
They went on a few dates in Italy. My father shaved off the enormous beard he had been growing for years. He wore a suit for the first time in a long time. But they both knew it wouldn’t matter. My father and his family were going to Philadelphia. My mother’s sponsors were in New Orleans.
Before they parted, she gave my father a letter addressed to one of her childhood friends, who had left the year before and lived in Philadelphia. It explained that she would be living in New Orleans, with instructions on how to reach her sponsors.
My father put the letter in his suitcase. The family left for Philadelphia. On the way, the letter sifted down and settled near the bottom.
Meanwhile, my mother was flying to New Orleans. She had a layover at Kennedy. When she got off the plane, the same childhood friend was waiting at the gate. It was the 1970s.
During the layover, her friend tried to persuade her not to continue to New Orleans.
“You don’t know anyone in New Orleans.”
You don’t know a single soul. You’ll be like a drop in the ocean.
This time she listened.
She left the airport with her friend and went to Philadelphia.
My father was settling into his new life. About a year later, he finally emptied the last suitcase he had brought with him. At the bottom was the letter.
Блядь.
He forgot. He went to the address on the envelope and knocked on the door.
My mother answered.
“You are a bit late.”