IVAN : a story by Noah Henderson (JR 230 NH 01)

IVAN
A story by Noah Henderson

Ivan was born in a small fishing village in Russia. He had two older brothers and an older sister. Life was hardscrabble there, and everyone had their place in sustaining the village. When he was two years old, he began to learn simple chores around the house, like helping to set the table. It wasn’t that he was much help, but it was important he learn his place in the family.

There wasn’t much for him to do, they lived by wood heat and kerosene light, but there was singing and his mother Lara read to him from her trove of books, mostly novels and short stories. She was a deft pianist too, with the large old upright piano filling the small home with sound like a cathedral.

Ivan gradually took on more chores and when he was four, he started school. It was simple enough schoolwork and Ivan progressed well. The school had all ages formed in small groups inside the large classroom. All there was to do for boys was homework and hockey, the latter being a matter of fierce male pride. Because the game was rough and Ivan was slight, rather than hockey he mostly curled up in a corner inside the classroom during recesses, reading. The girls could do crafts inside or play four-square and a genteel form of dodgeball outside.

Ivan did very well in his classwork but suffered from teasing and bullying at the hands of the older boys. When he was ten years old, he went to work on his father’s fishing boat, “The Pyotr,” named after his dad. He continued school and was eminently successful, but the taunting was not stopping and Ivan began closing down and withdrawing into himself. He felt like something was wrong with him because he was not accepted by the other boys. Life in a very small village could be unrelentingly difficult.

Ivan’s father sent him to live with an aunt for a summer when he was twelve and he went to school in her village, but he continued his habit of ignoring the boys and propping himself up where there was good light to read. He made a couple of friends and was able to get by, but he was small, nervous and quiet, keeping mostly to himself. After the summer, Ivan went back home, not much taller or broad-shouldered. Lara and Pyotr (mom and dad) worried about him. His sister was doing fine, but Ivan was holding himself back. One day his mother sent him to see a psychiatrist in Minsk. She packed him food for two days and off he went on the train. He came back saying the psychiatrist had diagnosed him with an “inferiority complex,” and told him that he would have it all his life and hopefully could learn to adapt. He gave his mom the psychiatrist’s letter. Ivan continued working on his dad’s boat and going to the local school. Finally, when he was fourteen, his mother and father had made a big decision.

Would Ivan like to leave, move to America and start a new life which could make better use of his abilities? At first he said no, no. But he kept thinking about it. There was a town in Massachusetts where friends of Lara and Pyotr had moved and they had invited Ivan to live with them and work in their hardware store and auto repair shop. Ivan was a gifted mechanic and liked tools, and he finally saw the situation as a benefit for his life in the long run. He certainly didn’t want to stay home with boys he didn’t like, working on his father’s boat and closely containing those other parts of himself that yearned for nurturing.

When he was fifteen, he said goodbye to his family and got on a train to France, took a boat to London and went on a ship to America. It took all their savings, but Ivan’s parents could think of nothing better than giving him a new life.

Ivan liked his new guardians and their family. He was grateful for the opportunity and pressed himself to do well. But he still missed his mom and dad in Russia. Ivan learned English in a few months and began (?) reading voraciously in English and Russian, though the libraries were full of English books and Russian was a little harder to find. There was a large Russian-speaking contingent in this village so Ivan got to hear stories of home and got to contribute some of his own. Ivan thrived, he loved the hardware store and was getting a fine reputation as an auto mechanic.

The house where he lived was huge, he had his own little apartment and they all had electricity. He couldn’t get over his luck! Ivan wrote often to his parents, and they wrote back.

One night, Ivan had met a girl he liked. They courted for five years and got married. A year later they had their first girl, then another, and finally a boy. When Ivan’s youngest was two, they went to visit his family in Russia. Pyotr and Lara were ecstatic!

Back home in the US, Mikhail, Ivan’s guardian, put Ivan’s name on the sign out front, “Mikhail and Ivan, Hardware and Auto Repair.” Surprise!
Ivan was happy, bursting with pride. He and his wife bought a small house near the shop, and Ivan was beaming. He had forgotten about his inferiority complex. He was not holding himself back any more. He was a man in full with a loving and happy family. Ivan wrote his first novel when he was twenty-three years old.

*author’s note
This is a story of resilience. Ivan had a situation which he could not fix, but he continued to do his best. All he had needed was some support and time to prove himself. Perhaps some of us need that too.