Not having heat or electricity was an interesting kind of challenge for schools when I was growing up. It meant that the Fall semester ended sometime in late November and Spring semester did not begin until late February or early March. The rest of the time the students were given assignments to do at home: I remember my parents would go in weekly to exchange my completed assignments for the graded ones returned by the teachers. Occasionally, during the notebook dropoff the school would give out powdered milk allocations for each student. This was always a welcome treat – I didn’t particularly like milk, but the powder was sweet, and I’d just eat it as is to satisfy my sweet tooth.
Kerosene stoves were standard-issue classroom equipment, with the pipe going through the room and right out the window. Sometimes they would burp smoke into the classroom, which wasn’t great, but still better than trying to hold a pen with half-frozen fingers (back then mild frostbite was another thing that came standard-issue – pretty much all my classmates, including myself, would get it at some point or another). Classes ran short, only 25 minutes at a time, to prevent us from having to sit in the cold for too long. Teachers would tell us to go run around during the 5 minute breaks between classes to help keep us warm. Back in the classroom, coats, gloves, and hats never came off. We would pull our long benches around the stove and huddle together, rubbing our hands and occasionally stomping our feet to ward off frostbite the best we could.
The teachers were not getting paid. At one point they were owed more than a year’s worth of salary. They made ends meet (or didn’t) however they could. Some were fortunate enough to have family members with gainful employment, others taught private lessons or moonlighted at other jobs. One of my teachers was letting out one of her two bedrooms while she, her husband, her mother-in-law, and her adult daughter all lived in the other bedroom. Folks were figuring out how to do without. But they still showed up, still taught, still cared about the students, still assigned and graded homeworks. This was life as we knew it.
I was 13, which is an awkward age in any circumstance. In my case, it was made all the more awkward due to the fact that I caught lice at church camp the previous summer, resulting in an awful short haircut, and ongoing misgendering by shopkeepers whenever I went to pick up bread. I hadn’t grown much for a couple of years (I was one of the shortest kids in my grade and really hated bringing up the rear in gym class), but all of a sudden managed a growth spurt, effectively outgrowing all my clothes, including my winter coat. I had a hand-me-down jacket that wasn’t anywhere warm enough, but if I layered a short sleeve shirt, a long sleeve shirt, and a big sweater under it, and sat close to the stove, the classroom was manageable. Needless to say, I was not a cool 13 year old by any stretch of imagination.
My crush, on the other hand… I thought Ashot was the coolest. He was smart, witty, he always made me laugh (I still have a soft spot for people with whom I find myself laughing), and he had the kind of hair that I could just barely keep myself from touching. He loved reading almost as much as I did, and we’d often spend hours on the phone talking about the books we were reading. One day he’d shown up to my apartment with a white mouse in a jar as a present for me. I was scandalized by the fact that a boy had just shown up like that, uninvited. And I was terrified of the mouse. I shooed both him and the mouse away. But as soon as I shut the door in his face I just melted into mush of “he got me a present (nevermind that I was terrified of said present), maybe he likes me after all.”
Ashot and I typically did not sit next to one other in class but the huddling around the stove had changed that. I had figured out that I could just incidentally find my way next to him and then share a book with him or ask to look at his notes to get even closer. My heart would pound so loud, I always wondered if he could hear it. But I played it cool. Or at least as cool as my hideous haircut and 17 layers of clothing would allow.
One of our teachers had recently gotten a job working nights at a factory. Her husband couldn’t work due to chronic illness, and she didn’t want her daughter, who was a full-time student at the university, to get distracted from her studies. So after full days of teaching in freezing cold classrooms, she’d go home, make dinner for her family, and after dinner head over to the factory. She didn’t tell her students, of course, but we all found out anyway. Her complexion had sallowed, she often had headaches, and sometimes she’d tell us to read, and would doze off in class.
One day we sat huddled around the stove and took turns reading out loud. The teacher had fallen asleep. We tried being quiet and not disturb her, since we had found out why she’d been so tired all the time as of late. I had found my way next to Ashot. We shared a book, following whoever was reading. I noticed him look over at the teacher, making sure she wasn’t looking, take off his glove and reach for my hand next to him. If he hadn’t heard my heart pounding out of my chest before this, he must have at that moment. I took off my glove too. I wasn’t cold right then. His hand managed to keep mine warm anyway.
P.S. Ashot is still very much a dear friend, and I get to see him when I go home. He’s since married a wonderful woman whom I love dearly, even more than him right now (hi, Meta!). They have two beautiful children: a son and a daughter. Their son is going to be a teenager soon and he looks an awful lot like his dad. It’s a little disconcerting.
Packing List for Immigration 