Happy mommy

[janetlin]

Alan called back this morning, and I was home. *happy dance* It was _so_ good to talk to him again, though weird to not be in person anymore, and even though I _know_ he's okay, it's good to have outside confirmation. I don't know how wives/girlfriends of soldiers do it.

My drama from yesterday about not being able to get hold of him is resolved; I had seen him write an email to his mom while he was here, so I took a stab at what I thought I remembered the address being, and it turns out I was right. His mom wrote back thanking me for taking such good care of him while he was here, and gave me the address and phone number. Now, since _I_ don't know these folks, I might not actually call anyway (especially now that we've finally gotten back in touch and the urgency is lessened), but just having the information and thus knowing that I _could_ feels so much better.

So... *lets out a deep breath*

I also had a very nice talk with my former Spanish teacher from high school last night. We've stayed in touch over the years and he's always been very interested in how my life is going, especially (understandably) in regards to my education. And he's always held a very high opinion of my intelligence and potential.


Señor: evening .... busy ?

me: not really, just schmoozing around in email before heading to bed. why?

Señor: tell me what goes on in your life ... schoool work ... family of course, I know Morgan must be asleep ...

me: well, there is no school or work at the moment, so there's not much to life other than Morgan, and she's all right. The Twos aren't treating me so badly thus far

Señor: I don't believe I have told you how much I want you to be happy

me: *smiles* thank you

Señor: I want to know what you're doing about school

me: well, I had thought I'd go back this fall, but I've kind of missed the boat. While late registration is possible, the financial aid deadlines are all past, so I'm hoping to start in January, instead

Señor: SIERRA.... do not let school go ...

me: I won't. That's one thing my family will back me on 100%

Señor: yes... I know that, you know that. I think you need a kick in the butt ...

me: lol

Señor: lol. Well back to basics.. You are still a very naive sweet little young lady ...

me: I am

Señor: yes you are. May not be my place to tell you....

me: ?

Señor: I have nothing to lose by telling you what I think. However... the potential that you have to achieve is unmeasurable, and as your former mentor I feel compelled to bring it to your attention. The only limit between the sky and people like you is you alone. ... I may have opened my mouth longer than I wanted to. But you have the right stuff to become one in thousands...

me: *blush*

Señor: oh Sierra, I was so fortunate to work in Amador. Things did not work out for me but..... I MET GENIUSES

me: lol

Señor: it was not meant as a joke .... but I see the humor. I have done things that people under my circumstances would not have been able to deal with. However, I have done them by sheer willpower.... YOU have the intellectual capacity to do whatever you please... things that would challenge the border of knowledge...

me: if I can only manage to focus and channel it

Señor: "If"... was not a question when I met you

me: *nods* I don't know what exactly happened. The popular explanation is that it was pregnancy hormones, but I was already on the path to becoming this scatterbrained basketcase before I had Morgan. And now it's frustrating, because I _know_ I should be able to do things. I remember being clever and now I just can't make my brain do what I want it to do

Señor: let me ask... you went through pospartum depression, right ?

me: yeah. I never went to a doctor and it was never officially diagnosed, and it wasn't present 24/7, but yeah. Leaving my family and everything I knew behind to move halfway across the country when Morgan was 7 months old didn't help

Señor: you need to go back to a doc... they'll prescribe you something that will get you back to your old self...

me: so long after the fact? does it hang around this long?

Señor: yes.... Bella {his wife} is going through it... been a couple of years since Minuet {their daughter}

me: hmm, I thought it was only the first year after birth

Señor: I have been on sleeping pills and adhd medication to be able to achive what was once second nature. ADHD MEDICATION

me: wow

Señor: I am finishing my second Masters. Yeah... Don't take it often, but it makes me realize... how fragile we are

me: true

Señor: so.. don't disregard my unrequested advice... lightly

me: *smile*

Señor: well I wanted to tell you that and I had not mustered courage to do it

me: why would it take courage?

Señor: being afraid to offend you, insult you

me: ah

Señor: hurt your feelings, dunno...

me: I appreciate your concern, thank you

Señor: my unfounded concern... i dunno...

me: I wouldn't call it unfounded. You said yourself you're a former mentor. You have a vested emotional interest in my life turning out well. And it's good to hear such faith in my abilities coming from someone other than my mom

Señor: DIOS.... MUJER DE POCA FE!!!!!! {God, woman of little faith!}

me: in myself? Yes, very

Señor: I have bid whole bottles of scotch on students like you .... don't let them go to waste

me: Mom is always telling me things like what you're saying, about how I have something special and can do wondrous things with my life, but every mom thinks that about her kids

Señor: well your mom is a very lucky mom. You are one in a thousand... if I had youth, and the innate intellectual ability like you....GOD.... my name would be in the news often... in your case, I never thought you would get married or together with anyone until you finished your B.A.

me: I didn't think I'd be married before I was done with school, either

Señor: seeee

me: I very much wanted to have a husband and a family, though. Still do; especially a husband, especially now. Raising Morgan alone is killer

Señor: I know. Just don't get with anyone purely for Morgan's sake...

me: I won't. If that's all there were to it, I'd have stayed with Johnnie

Señor: a good man is waiting for you... time and patience will get you to the right man for you and morgan

Comments

[elven-alchemist.livejournal.com]

It's so nice you got the phone call this time. I can't imagine how people in the past centuries were writing letters to each other and the delivery was taking months, now we have phone and anytime you wanna talk you can just call and have the completly alive interaction. I was so happy when after coming to NZ I found that I can easily call my parents.

[janetlin.livejournal.com]

Yes, romantic as it is to have a stack of letters to keep under your pillow and read every night before falling asleep, phone calls are much much nicer for immediate gratification.

Plus Alan and I write _way_ too many letters to fit under a pillow. It's only been a few months and already we need a shoebox!

[janetlin.livejournal.com]

It occurred to me recently that "Lucy" is not a Russian name. Is it really your name, or is it anglicized?

[elven-alchemist.livejournal.com]

My passport name is Liudmila, and the nickname I've been called most of my life was Mila. I hated both those names terribly (though they always seemed ok when belonged to others, but in relation to myself I just hated them), and since I decided to move to an English-speaking country (almost 10 years before I actually did it:))) I wanted to take name Lucy.
Traditionally Lucy can be said to be anglicized Liudmila. However, the actual MEANING is very different. Liudmila is "loved by people, love of people, people's beloved", stuff like that. Lucy is "light".
Lucy is what I really associate myself with, and I'm now really happy to be called this name. That just feels correct.

[janetlin.livejournal.com]

I asked Alan, and he remembered from your graduation that your name in the program was something other than Lucy, but he couldn't remember what. Людмила is what I guessed, as it was the closest name I could think of. I've never really liked it, either, but I figured that was just my English ear (some names for women in German are really horrid, too). And aren't there two or three fairy tales in Russian where the beautiful princess is named Ludmila?

[elven-alchemist.livejournal.com]

The only one I know is "Ruslan and Liudmila" by Pushkin, a very famous poem, kind of fairy tale too, but not a folk stuff, so it's more about one author's ideas. The beautiful princess in Russian fairy tales is mostly called Василиса (Василиса Премудрая, Василиса Прекрасная), and most of modern slavic fantasy also use this name, though quite often it becomes evilly humorous, like:
"Vasilisa was kidnapped!"
"Vasilisa the Wise or Vasilisa the Fair?"
"Vasilisa the Fair."
"Ah, sure, Vasilisa the Wise wouldn't let to kidnap her"
Apart from princesses the other favorite female names in fairy tales are Аленушка and Настенька. But Vasilisa is just the classic one.
Slavic fantasy is very popular now, by the way. In Russia, I mean. It's usually based on fairy tales and былины (I have no idea how to translate this word, if you don't know the meaning- let me know).

[janetlin.livejournal.com]

Ah, Vasilisa. That's the one I was thinking of.

And my dictionary translates былина as "ancient Russian epic." Which sounds like it might actually be based in some truth, versus сказки, which are just fairy tales. Now that I look at it, my dictionary says that быль is "true story; fact" so yeah.

[elven-alchemist.livejournal.com]

That's a tricky one. About быль - yes, literally it's true story (as much as history can be true at all), but былина is someway different. It's about some real people, some real places, some real events, but also about completely fantasy stuff (that's probably it's main difference from сказки which are usually completely fantasy).
For example, былина usually speaks about князь Владимир Красное Солнышко who rules in Kiev, and is a great and fair ruler. On the other hand, he's often shown as not a positive person at all - coward and insidious. Both variants are not completely correct, though he was really a very evil person (та еще сволочь...) However, definitely a REAL person.
His great warriors (богатыри) are said to sometimes have real prototypes, which seem possible. But they fight monsters like Змей Горыныч and Соловей-Разбойник - which are hardly real:))) However, they fight many realistic enimies too - mostly половцы, печенеги, татары, хазары - all the real antagonists of Kiev Russia. Sometimes they fight warrior women who were usually called поляницы, they also existed, kinda russian amazons. At the same time many mistical and fantasy creatures, places, items were presented.
Ok, here we go http://books.swarog.ru/books/pesni/byliny/01-kiew/ - it took me some time to find as other sites presentes clubs and games based on this stuff (popular!). But on this site there are real texts of былины, so you can read it as it is.

[janetlin.livejournal.com]

Ooh, shiny! Thank you very much.

Alas, I am not yet good enough in Russian to read stories (I only studied for two years), but I will bookmark the site for when I _am_ good enough.

For instance, князь? My dictionary doesn't have that word.
Горыныч I'm assuming is ~ "fire-breathing."
Соловей-Разбойник ... nightingale robber?

And it doesn't have половцы, печенеги, nor поляница, though your description of an "amazon" makes sense for the last one.

[elven-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Ooops, sorry, I didn't really think about explaining... Ok.
Поляница is a warrior woman, usually an individual though sometimes they were described as fighting in groups (in some былины you can even meet descriptions of women kingdoms). These women are in most cases said to be very skilled warriors (sometimes they defeat famous male warriors:)).
Половцы, печенеги, хазары, татары - different nomad folks, they lived all around Russia and were a kind of traditional enemies for centuries.
Змей Горыныч - three-headed winged dragon, fire-breathing and always evil (traditionally, I mean, as in modern fantasy he's rather often a positive character:). He is attacking people, stealing treasures and beautiful women, kills heros as much as possible, and in general is rather mighty.
Соловей-Разбойник you translated very correctly. He's called like that because he waits on an oak near the road till a traveller appears, then starts whistling VERY LOUDLY. This whistle acts pretty much like tornado:)) Using it as a weapon Соловей-Разбойник robs a lot of people (until a hero comes and whistle him with a club between eyes:))))
Князь is usually translated as prince, but really it's not. He's a kind of ruler who is not a king as his territory is usually smaller, though it depends. In many cases one князь only ruled one city, but a big city, and all the villages around it. There were always lots of wars between rulers like these in Russian history. (I think the word itself means something like "rider ruler", "ruler who rides a horse" because originally it was "конязь" made of "конь" which means horse (male horse, to be precise). On the pictures made in ancient times you can see князь riding a horse and his warriors marching behind him.)
If you have any other questions like that in future I'll be happy to answer:))

[janetlin.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the clarifications!