I love freedom

Not a very sophisticated story title, is it? But how else can I describe one of my life’s biggest passions? When you tell your partner “I love you”, it’s simple, right? It’s like that with freedom. I love freedom.

The other day I was exchanging messages with my Mom. These days we are fortunate to speak in person on many days — I got my Mom out of Russia soon after the war in Ukraine started and now we’re together in the US. But I travel a lot, spending my time between Florida and California, where our oldest son is finishing high school.

So there are days when I exchange messages with my Mom. We make sure we’re all right (I have four kids so there’s always something to talk about when it comes to my family), and we talk a lot about Ukraine and Russia. There is no love when we talk about Russia. We hate, yes we hate passionately, Putin and everything he’s done to both Ukraine and Russia.

But this story is not about the war in Ukraine. Well, everything is a little about the war in Ukraine these days.

Sometimes we reminisce. A couple of weeks ago we discussed Gorbachev.

I messaged this

Translating from Russian:

I recall my childhood, that epoch, school — for different reasons, right from an early age, I was growing up a free person, and with age, it’s all multiplied.