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By: Yulia Khabinsky
The mice-laden hardwood floors were cold and dusty. My brother, 8 at the time, and I, 6, slept with roach and mouse traps around our small bodies so we wouldn't be bothered by the rodents during the night. We had no beds and had to use clothes as pillows while sleeping on the dirty hardwood.This was not the life we had dreamt about.
Only a year earlier, we had left the Soviet Union full of promise. My parents wanted a better life for our family and had sacrificed everything to give us a chance to obtain the American dream. We left with only $360 in our pockets and eight small suitcases. That was it--some money and clothes, and no real home to call our own.
Leaving wasn't the hardest part, though.
Our journey to the shores of the promised land was filled with chaos and uncertainty.
In 1989, traveling to the United States wasn't as easy as hopping on a one-way flight from Moscow to LaGuardia Airport. Back then, families had to go through American consulate stations in various countries before being admitted into the States. At the final locale, Italy, families had to wait indefinitely for admittance into America.
We waited nine months.
After being thrown onto the streets of Rome with no money and no language skills, my parents had to figure out how to survive until we received our acceptance letter.
We finally found a place willing to take us in--a monastery in Santa Marinella, a village 40 minutes south of Rome. The nuns allowed my dad to work as a janitor and my mom as a dishwasher in exchange for housing. My parents used what little money they had left over to buy food for my brother and me. Both of them ate as little as they could and after a few months, they began to show signs of weakness and malnourishment.
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For my brother and me, though, Santa Marinella was magic. I remember the cascading cliffs and pebble beaches. After breakfast, I would race my brother to the water's edge and splash in the waves, making sure not to touch the icky-moss covered stones hidden under the tides. Every night I sat on grassy hills and watched as the orange sunsets ignited the small city and lit the palm trees on fire.
Though a part of me was sad to go, I couldn't wait to see what the next destination had in store. The uncertainty of it all was exciting.
Our first apartment in a dilapidated Brooklyn building wasn't much of a step up. After sleeping on the hardwood floors surrounded by mice and cockroaches, we slowly began to build a life for ourselves.
Though we were on welfare, both may parents worked and took night classes in order to learn computer skills.
We saved every little bit we could in the hope that we could get off welfare and start a new life somewhere.
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But even during those tough times, my parents never forgot that we were children and needed, even for a short time, to be able to act as such. They saved up money to buy us presents for the holidays. My mother even insisted that I throw a birthday party for my friends, complete with renting a Disney video and ordering a pizza--luxuries we normally never afforded ourselves.
After three years on welfare, my mother found a job as a computer programmer in Richmond, Va., and we moved into a suburban neighborhood. My life has since faded into the realm of ordinary, though I am still constantly reminded of the sacrifices my parents made.
"You need to appreciate where you are and how you live," my mother said recently, speaking more to the rest of the world than solely to me. "Some people constantly look elsewhere for happiness--they don't know how hard some people have it."
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