Senior Moments: Sharing stories of the past with a brand-new friend

I love it when nice people drop into my life unexpectedly. Such a lovely surprise awaited me on my first day home from rehab.

“Bunin is a popular Russian name,” the attractive, dark-haired woman said as she walked in my front door. “Are you related to Ivan Bunin, the Russian poet?”

This was not exactly the question I was expecting from the Medicare nurse who had come to evaluate the in-home services I would need for my hip recovery. Had I known her in another life, I wondered as we chatted with the ease of old friends.

Before we even left my entryway, we were talking about Russian literature. She was tall and slender with a charming Armenian accent, and her eyes and voice were expressive as she spoke. Before we even got around to discussing my physical condition, I was showing her my grandfather‘s accordion that he’d brought with him when he immigrated to the United States from Russia.

My grandmother’s copper cooking pot sits on a bookcase shelf next to her husband’s music maker. She had this and her brass Shabbat candlesticks and little else to start their new life in New York.

I told my new friend that while I used the candlesticks fixed regularly, I have never figured out what to possibly cook in the copper pot because it is shaped like a pitcher. With a twinkle in her eyes, my new friend came up with a few possibilities.

It made me wonder if my Grandpa Abraham played music for Grandma Sarah while she was cooking dinner in that pot. I could picture them, young, poor and laughing as she stirred a Russian Jewish supper on a wood stove in a small village in Minsk.

Anna had similarly treasured stories of her Armenian/Russian family, which she shared as I walked her around the house, stopping to point out my Ivan Bunin books. I may not be related to him, but I do love his writing. I told her.

“It is good to share the stories of our different backgrounds,” she noted, “and yet how alike we are in many ways.”

She bent over my walker to hug me goodbye. It was a good day back home.

 Email patriciabunin@sbcglobal.net. Follow her on Patriciabunin.com