My Baby

I don't know why I suddenly started posting so many little stories about my life, but here you have it.

My younger sister was born when I was six. Our parents worked a lot, so I was entrusted with taking care of her. I would come from school, get her home from daycare, feed her, play with her, take her for walks, etc. We both loved that. Once, when I was about 12, I left her at home (which in our country is not a big deal at all, so let's have no drama about that) and went to the store to sell back empty bottles. In the Soviet Union, a school teacher and a philologist who worked full time had trouble making ends meet, so it was important to sell back all the bottles because every coin mattered.

The line at the store turned out to be much longer than I'd expected. After 40 minutes or so, I got tired of waiting and told people in line, "I think I'm not going to keep waiting because I have a kid at home and she must be getting hungry." People looked at me with mute horror. I was a very small and skinny 12-year-old with an angelic look. "Let the poor child go to the front of the line, comrades," a kind lady said. "She has a baby to feed." 

When I moved to Montreal at the age of 22, my sister came to live with me full-time. After a few years of living together with her, I would often say to my colleagues, "OK, guys, I have to run because I have a kid waiting for me at home and I need to feed her." 

"Oh, we didn't know you had a baby," people would respond. "How old is she?" 

"My baby is nineteen years old," I would say proudly and everybody would look at me like I was insane.

My baby had a baby 17 months ago, so I guess I'm a grandma now.