Not long ago, a friend of mine was saying that her mother and father never once told stories about their childhood. Not one story.  This seemed odd to my friend and certainly odd to me, for I grew up on my parents’ s stories of their childhoods — or lack of childhood, for back then when they lived, their lives were all about survival and work and not play.

The following two vignettes are the first two of a series about my mother and father that I wrote many years ago. The first two are about my father. This series starts with me, the writer, as a very young child from the point of view of a four-year old probably who wouldn’t yet know how to write:

My daddy draws a duck on the top of the Jewish paper. The duck is standing. It has two sticks for legs. My daddy’s hand hides the duck.

The sunlight comes through our curtains. They are lace. The sun shines on us. It melts the snow. We sit at our dining-room table. It is Sunday morning. We live in America. I am my daddy’s little girl.

I see my daddy when he is a little boy in Russia. I see him inside my eyes. He doesn’t have toys. No crayons. No colored pencils. No paints. No clay. No cars. No trucks. He doesn’t have toys.

I see him in Ladi near Smolensk. I see blue sky and shining sun. I see big round moon and blinking stars. Ducks quack.

I go inside his house. I see the cows and sheep that keep his house warm in the Russian winter. It’s very cold in Russia. I see my daddy’s mother’s face. I see a big dark bread on the wooden table. “Daddy,” I say, “tear a piece off fast before your brothers take it all.”

My little boy-daddy goes outside. He picks up a stick. He draws a duck with it in the dirt.

I open my eyes. My grown daddy holds a pencil. He is drawing with it on the white edge of the newspaper, covering it with his hand.

“Wait a minute, Daddy, I’ll be right back.”

I run to get my box of colored pencils. I keep them in the cubbyhole next to the fireplace.

My colored pencils are named Mongols. The colors have names too. My sister taught me their names. I like their names. I have thirty-two Mongols with names. They live in a cardboard box. I got Mongols because my sister says they are the best colored pencils. I cried, and I got Mongols.

I run back to the dining-room table. I climb back up on the chair close to my daddy. I open the box like a box of candy. “What color do you want? You can have any color you want.”

“No,” my daddy says.

“Go ahead, Daddy. Please.”

He shakes his head. “No, my drawing—it’s not good.”

“Yes, it is. It is. It is good.”

I grab a handful of Mongols the same way my daddy grabs bread in Russia. “Here’s blue, Daddy. Purple. Red. You like red.”

He shakes his head no. He pulls out his jackknife. He cuts the duck out of the newspaper. He doesn’t want anyone to see it. He holds it up and looks at it again. He wears glasses. Then he hides his duck in his blue sweater vest pocket. It is a knitted vest. It has two pockets.

***

Another Sunday, and my daddy tells me again the story about his first night at night school in this country. He is all grown-up when he goes. The nice American lady teacher puts him ahead to the second grade. The second grade! He is afraid the nice teacher is making a mistake,. My Daddy never goes back to night school.

“Daddy,” I say to him, “I’ll go back to that school with you. I’ll tell your nice teacher to keep you in first grade.”

My daddy shakes his head.

“If she still says you have to go to second grade, I’ll go with you. I’ll help you with your work.”

My daddy shakes his head.

I can slip into that one time my daddy went to night school. I hug my daddy. I tell him, “I will go back with you and tell her.”