Dreams.

Every summer I spent at my table painting for days one picture after another. Usually it lasted about two weeks and a thick album was full of my attempts to relax. It was so charming process to put the paints on the paper and wait what kind of image would appear. If my sisters were great in copying so I was on the contrary  unable to create something enough close to the original, it was easier to use my imagination than any real things or images. While painting I felt absolutely free to invent a story about those people who appeared from the brush. My mother told, " Again your dolls!" I just traveled in time and painting a woman in the ancient dress pretended to see all her life. National costumes also gave me a possibility to look into the other people's life with different customs and traditions. Lack of alive people around me crowded my pictures over norm.

Sure I hadn't any special gift to art. It was just a kind of escape into the imaginary world. There were several persons around me who really could paint and studied how to do it, so I was free from illusions about my "creatures". But those few summer days spent with a brush and paints helped to step over the tension after exam marathon. History of clothes was a screen for my wish to look at the inner dream world. It is hard to say openly about the dreams especially when they are far from the real life conditions. For me it was always too dull to dream about possible things. Only impossible one had right to come to my picture. Dancing women, pregnant ones, mothers with children, weddings of course, all set of romantic nonsenses.

The dance was one of my favourite dreams. Last time I danced when I was 15 years, at the boarding school. Our medical sports instructor was an ex-ballet dancer and she showed us how to dance waltz. I still remember very clear that incredible feeling of flying while swinging in the fast waltz. The music wasn't necessary, the soul sang itself. It's enough to close the eyes and see me and my friend Lena repeating movements of the dance in the hall near our dormitory. Later when I had to forget about dances it was so easy to dance in dreams, just close eyes and see the picture.

Playing piano also was one of impossible things for me. From the kindergarten time a strange force attracted me to the black and white rows of piano-keys. When I was seven my parents found a music teacher near our home whom I visited with my friend. Only few lessons and then the doctors said to forget about studying music because long time sitting would be bad for my weak back. For ten years piano stood at my home without being used too much. I tried to play sometimes but my neighbour (a girl 4 years older than me, she went to the music school) teased me unkindly and I preferred not to give her an occasion to say offensive words. Sometimes my friends came and played piano but nobody else. My sisters hated it with all the passion. If something is allowed so it isn't interesting.

Distant countries and foreign languages were in the circle of my dreams. That one who is unable to go to the next park or just outdoor sure that person would dream about unreachable places. TV programs about travels abroad were among my favourites. The Soviet Union time made everything over the broad seems like a fairy land. The names of cities sounded as music. Paris, Roma, Venice, Madrid,Delhi, Vancouver, London... this list could be endless. Every language had its own charm for me, it took me into another world where people not only talked different way they lived absolutely new life. Again naive illusions. That time I started to learn French, Spanish, German, Italian, Polish. I'd found the text books of Czech and Bulgarian which remained almost untouched. Most of all I wanted to go by car to Europe and travel there as long as my soul would like without thinking about money, visa and place in hotel. To stay in small nice towns, find new friends, study languages.

Tasting dishes of various national traditions also was a very important part of that dream. After Perestroika hard times came. Just that period my interest towards cooking arose. Before I didn't pay attention to the long descriptions of tables and dishes in the books. But when the shops were empty and thoughts more often went to that subject I read such tasty places more carefully. One had right to buy ten eggs a month, two hundred grams of butter and other rations were so tiny. I dreamt about tasty things and was in shock when I had read in a book about war time about their hungry life. A woman hadn't much food so she took six eggs and made fried eggs for her husband and herself. Incredible thing! An egg for breakfast was the luxuries for me and they could eat so many at once. :-) My own cooking abilities weren't great alas. At present I'm unable even to cut salad or sandwiches, but in past I could to fry potatoes, bake biscuits, make various salads. Zero of practice and a lot of theoretical knowledge.

Another dream was about somebody who could love me, not a man, it would be even less possible than the fly to the moon, but a dog or a cat. At my home from time to time we had some fish but they were cold, wet, emotionless. I needed somebody fluffy, tender, loving. Alas, always only a dream. If to take away all my dreams what would remain? Oh, gosh! It would be Arctic desert.