Реклама. ООО «ЛитРес», ИНН: 7719571260.
Prologue
1. I Beg A Saint for a Miracle and He Hears Me, but Still I Can’t Get a Simple Certificate
2. I Conduct an Experiment Raising My Daughter, and My Son Shows His Needs for the First Time
3. A Hydra Attacks, But We Win
4. I Am Saved by the Cross, But It Gets Too Heavy to Carry
5. Problems Begin Banging on the Door, But We Blithely Take No Notice
6. I Hate Being Part of the System, But I Try to Get My Son to Fit In
7. Tim Finds a Friend in a Crack in the Wall, and the Commission Finds He Has a Developmental Delay
8. I Tear Out a Page from My Past, and I Am Offered a Fresh Start
9. We Cannot Find My Son’s Jacket, But We Find Some Good People
10. We Find True Professionals at School, and Tim Is Rescued from His Cage
11. We Meet a Sagacious Elder Who Promises Tim a Career as an Artist Once He Himself Becomes the Minister of Finance
12. I Fight Against Injustice, But It Turns Out I Defy the Whole System
13. I Am Speechless When I Discover My Son’s Singing Talent
14. I Perform Another Maternal Feat, and My Son Becomes a Local Celebrity
15. I Dream of My Son Singing in the Columned Hall, but I Take What I Can Get
16. I Am Trying to Prove My Son Is No Suitcase, and He Has an Academic Leave Instead of Academic Vocal
17. I Do Not Want To Remember But the Memories Ignore My Wishes
18. I Have to Find Simple Words to Explain Complicated Things, but Real Problems Still Lie Ahead
19. Tim Dreams of Studying Abroad, But So Far Travels as a Tourist
20. We Receive an Offer That We Can’t Refuse, But We Let It Pass By
21. I Say Farewell To an Entire Era, and I Shall Never Forget the Blue Stone That Still Lies Somewhere
Afterword
Appendix 1
On Cosleeping
Appendix 2
On Waldorf Education in Russia and the CIS
Appendix 3
On Asperger Syndrome
Appendix 4
A Chapter From My Son’s Book «Incorrect English: A Mischievous Guide for Overachievers»
reviews
Bibliography
I often try on other people’s lives. I like to look through the windows. Through other people’s windows. When I sit in a bus travelling through the city in the evening, my eyes follow every window glowing in the dark. What kind of people live there, I wonder, and I come up with stories about them. Just now, a shadow flashes in a window, and I already know that she is a single woman and she has come to draw the curtains. She will now take off her slippers and make herself comfortable in her armchair. She will drink hot tea and read her favorite book. Or perhaps she will watch a movie. An old one, from the Soviet era, or maybe a Hollywood one made before the war. Her apartment is so cozy and quiet as though angels themselves were flying under the ceilings. So what if she is single, who cares? Personally, I envy her…
Oh, Lord, what am I talking about? What if a real lonely woman, who’s cried into her pillow many a night, heard me now! No, I am not being ironic, I am hiding behind these stories. And it’s not their lives I am fantasizing about – it is my own one, so that for a short time, for the few seconds when I see someone’s silhouette there in a window, I could live this invented life so different from mine. I am drifting in the darkness like an ice floe that’s broken away from the mainland. And now someone else’s life is moving away from me, to the other coast…
.....
I shook my head in disbelief, «They will never let us. There is a queue to adopt such sweet babies.»
So I didn’t dare.
.....