By: Bozhena Johnson
My Childhood Hero My grandpa and I used to go to movies when I visited him in Mogilev Podolsky, Ukraine, in the 1980s. They had only one movie theater, simply called "movie theater" or "Kinoteatr" in Russian. This Kinoteatr was located right next to a local ice cream shop. We would see a movie, and then my grandpa would take me for some ice cream. We would go down the steps and towards the park. He would ask me at the end, “Is your soul satisfied?” directly translated from Russian. You could say that he was asking me if I was happy. I would have a huge smile and say yes. At that time, the movie theater didn’t sell food. Our culture didn’t combine snacks and movie watching. In bigger cities, like the one where I grew up, Kishinev. They sold desserts and drinks during an intermission. Grandpa would always ask me,” What movie do you want to see, Bozhenochka?” He called me that because it was an endearing form of my name. Usually, they only had one or two movies playing at a time. One movie played for two or three weeks.I remember watching a French comedy with grandpa. The man wanted to propose to his woman on a boat. That woman was actually a man dressed as a woman. At the end, that man admitted that she was a he. So the other man said, “We all have flaws!” It went out like that. We couldn’t stop laughing after the movie. We went to get our usual vanilla ice cream in a steel cup with chocolate shavings and cherry preserves. * * *Grandpa played a huge part in how I have turned out as an adult. He taught me how a man should treat a woman. Actually, I married a man with a similar personality to his. His name was Shaya, but he went by Alex. He grew up during communism and became a communist himself. Being a World War II officer, he couldn’t use his Jewish name. During communism, any form of religion was not allowed. Maybe that’s why I gave my son Shawn, a Hebrew name Shaya. We named my son after him. He never met my husband or his great-grandson. My husband says we should have named our son Shaya. I am not sure if it’s too close to home.
Shaya lost his right arm during World War II. He worked in a movie theater and was also a director of the local park. The city's population was around 50,000. The city ran along the Dnestr River, and we would go and catch boat rides, aka “Kater” all the time. I knew that Grandpa was already retired and that he and Grandma lived modestly. As a kid, I would always gladly accept things without thinking about the cost. My grandpa loved talking to me about the battlefield. As I later realized, that was his therapy. He would tell me stories about going into battle against the Germans. “One day, Bozhenochka, we would be covered in snow in the forest, facing the German soldiers. We would walk towards each other with our rifles drawn up, and then the shooting would start. “ Go on, grandpa, what happened then? Tell me everything,” I would say. I loved listening to him and asking him follow-up questions. I could picture him covered in snow, walking ahead with his rifle in his uniform. He would explain to me things that I couldn’t understand at the time. Hence, my love for history. Also, grandpa taught me to read by asking me to read a newspaper. What five-year-old reads newspapers? I didn’t understand most of the things I read in the newspaper. I don’t even remember the name of the paper I was reading. I have learned to read just like that using his method. I became very good at reading small print. When I came back to school, my teacher was surprised by how fast I was reading. He also tested my geography on a globe and maps. He used to have big paper maps. It was important to him that I knew the capitals of countries. He used to spin the globe and point at a country. I would have to tell him the capital. In the future, I always aced geography classes thanks to grandpa’s training. My favorite was when we built a fold-out table together. We had a piece of wood that took both of us to sand. We used tools to hang it on the balcony wall. We painted it brown. We used to play chess, cards, and dominoes on that little table. Grandma would play with us, too. My grandparents immigrated with us to Los Angeles, California, in 1994. My grandfather used to get up at six in the morning in his new apartment in West Hollywood and put on his 3-piece brown suit to go to the grocery store. In his day, men wore suits all the time. He never learned any English, but he couldn’t understand why Americans don’t speak Russian. It was mind-boggling to him. He continued to be independent, taking buses and shopping till the very last days of his life. When grandma passed, my mom would cook for him; that was one thing he had trouble doing with one arm. He moved into the same apartment building where my parents used to live. I lived with him on and off and helped him. We were still great at getting along, even though now I was in my twenties. I wasn’t a little girl anymore, but I was still Bozhenochka to him. Grandpa always respected me and boundaries. I lived in his apartment after he passed on. I didn’t change his furniture, even beds. I lived in the past. Hanging on to every memory. I felt like grandpa never left; he was still there with me. He died of kidney failure. My son never met my grandpa, even though he is named after him. He saw his pictures and was taken to his grave site. I feel odd that, now, to “see” my family, we have to go to the cemetery and look at the headstones. I try to create “things to remember” from my grandpa for my son. We also go to the movies together, and it just happened to be a Coldstone Creamery outside the movie theater. We get our ice creams and get a table together outside. We sit and talk, and it brings me back to the time in Ukraine with grandpa. I ask my son, “How is your ice cream? Are you happy with your choice?” I add to it, “So what was your favorite part about the movie?”
About the Author
Bozhena Johnson is an MFA student at Baypath University. She has been published in Sad Girls Diaries, "A True Hybrid"; Multiplicity, "Remembering Moldova." She is originally from Kishinev, Moldova. She speaks Russian, Moldovian, English, Spanish. She is working now on a biography of a Holocaust survivor. She also writes fiction, working on a romance novel now.
