My father, Serge Sorokin Sr., was born in Tajikistan in 1958. The climate in Tajikistan is very similar to the climate in New York. It gets pretty hot in the summers and pretty cold in the winters.  In his childhood, televisions were already becoming popular and something that many families possessed. Although he had a TV, the shows during the 60’s were either not always running or dull and for adults so like most of the children his age, he found different forms of amusement.

My dad once told me a bedtime story many years ago and I still remember it to this day. He and his mom were walking home from the store and they were walking past a toy store. In the window my dad spotted a model military plane and instantly fell in love! The next week his mom came home from work and she was hiding something. After a minute of anticipation, she took out the plane and gifted it to him.

At that moment, a natural pilot was born. After having played with that model plane and many others in his childhood, he began to pursue his passion in airplanes. Long story short, he went to school for many years, trained countless hours, and finally became acommercial pilot for Baltic Air.

After moving to the United States in 1996, he gave up his passion to support our family in the new place we called home. Only 3 years ago, Serge Sr. began to fly again by getting his private pilot license. Now, every few weeks, my dad and I take our friend’s plane up and either circle around Manhattan or fly to any random place in the near by vicinity.

I interviewed my grandfather about his experience as a soldier in World War II. Throughout my childhood, he was always reluctant to reveal any details regarding the war, however, after a lot of begging, I finally persuaded him to discuss “the worst experience of his life.”

When my grandfather was only 18 years old he heard a knock on the door. He peeked outside and saw two man dressed in army uniforms waiting for someone to answer. He quickly jumped up to answer the door and they told him that they were here to draft his brother Leon to fight in the war. This visit was extremely unexpected and they tried to face the fact that he was needed in battle. Leon was the provider for the family and without him they wouldn’t have enough money to put food on the table. Realizing this, my grandfather jumped in front of his older brother and requested that they take him on Leon’s behalf.

After a couple of months of training my grandfather finally went to battle and was in charge of driving gas trucks to refuel the tanks. “On one hand the job wasn’t too exciting as being on the front lines. However, on the other hand it was extremely dangerous because one shot to the gas tank and I would go up in flames.”  During one particular trip he received directions to drive the truck to a certain base, however, he noticed that there was something wrong with the path and chose an alternate route to get to the base. When he finally arrived he heard devastating news. His sergeant told him that a different truck that followed those directions was ambushed by some of the opposing forces and was blown up. If it wasn’t for his intuition, him and his partner wouldn’t have made it out alive.

After a couple of months, his platoon was being sent to Japan to embark on the second part of his tour. While aboard the General J.P. Breckenridge ship he received the exciting news that the war was finally over and that they were being sent back home. He described it as “the happiest day of his life.” His whole platoon was singing and partying and they were so excited to rejoin their families . This experience changed my grandfather’s life and it really turned him into the man he is today.

I interviewed my mom about her childhood and the neighborhood she grew up in.

“My family was the typical family that you saw in the TV shows from the fifties and early sixties. My father went to college, thanks to the GI Bill, and worked as a manufacturing engineer. My mother was a homemaker who raised five children into responsible adults. We all sat down to eat as a family at 5:00 pm.”

“I grew up in the Town of Poughkeepsie, NY, which is about halfway between Manhattan and Albany. . My neighborhood was also like a fifties and early sixties TV show. It was very suburban, middle-class.”

“I hadn’t noticed it while growing up, but we lived in a rather segregated area. I had never given it any thought until I saw the Black students sitting separately at a table in the cafeteria. It gave me pause to think that they were separated from the rest of the school merely because of the color of their skin and for no other reason.”

“I started to think about the races — something I did not do much of because we were so segregated. The other thing I thought about was why we were so overwhelmingly white in the community in which I grew up. How did it get that way?”

She concluded the interview with the advice that “keeping an open mind and looking at situations from different perspectives will help you to better understand our racial and ethnic differences. Just going to school in NYC is opening you up to much more diversity than you would ever experience living anywhere in Dutchess County.”

A long, long time ago, in 1958, my godmother was born! Christine Wong grew up with her siblings in Malaysia. To our bewilderment, her and her siblings didn’t have computers or television 😯 . Her neighborhood was a mix of Indian, Malaysian, and Chinese children who spent much of their time outside. My godmother’s family conditions were poor, so her parents couldn’t afford games or toys.

  “We used to chase chickens to pluck their feathers so we could make the feather balls to kick around.” The feather ball is similar to the american hacky sack game. “You used to chase and pluck chickens?!” It sounds pretty fun, actually.

“We climbed tress and made kites and paper dolls. You know the cans, like the Campbell cans? We would attach string to that for the telephone game, but the girls would also turn cans into high heel shoes and walk around in them.”

She also played marbles, a game where you drew a circle on the floor and placed 10 marbles inside. Using your finger, you would flick the marble outside to try to knock it out. “We made jump ropes out of rubber bands because we couldn’t buy a real one.”

Before screens were widely used, it allowed for a more creative hands on childhood/lifestyle that technology nowadays takes away. There is a great surge of creativity when things aren’t simply handed to you and you have to work with what you have.

Like many countries around the world, India was a colony of the British Empire and only achieved its Independence on the relatively recent date of August 15, 1947.

Picture Source: http://www.udaipurthoughts.com/2011/08/story-incredible-india/

My grandparents have vivid  memories of the day, especially my grandmother who fondly recalls the day as one of joyous celebration and patriotic pride.

Photo Source: http://www.shreedarshan.com/independence-day-india.htm

     She only wishes that she had realized the true significance of the day at that time but as a young girl, only 8-9 years old, she did not understand the full meaning of words such as “independence” and “colony.”

Whenever she talks about her experiences on that day, she tells us how incredibly lucky she feels to have been alive during that momentous day in her country’s history.

“What do you remember most about your childhood Jie Jie?” I asked my older sister as she sat at her desk doing her work.
“I don’t remember much from my childhood but afternoon tea with the family. It was consistent almost to the point of being a bit dull, since it was lunch or brunch for us. But I still enjoyed it for some reason.”

I stared at her bewildered, “You liked going yum cha(afternoon tea)?!”
“I think it was the family unity that I liked. We would order as soon as a woman pushing metal carts filled with dim sum stopped at our table: steamed buns, dumplings, rice noodle rolls, and egg tarts. The adults would talk and we would talk amongst ourselves while sharing the food. Now that we’ve grown older we don’t do it as often. I feel that despite spending so much time together we still don’t know too much about each other.”

I realized that what my sister said is true-afternoon tea brought family unity. After moving away from the neighborhood we grew up in most, Flushing, our family is not as interactive with one another as we were during our childhood. Now I can see why my sister always suggests going yum cha with the family at any given opportunity.