I intensely dislike crowds. I hate parades. Any huge public gathering – with one exception of my beloved Gogol Bordello concerts – pains me. Yet, I remember with great fondness how my father used to take me to the May 1st Parade on the Palace Square. We went every year because we lived in a communist country and he was a big boss at a military plant, so he had no choice but to attend things like this, no matter how passionately he despised the regime.
I remember this amazing feeling of holiday that you can only feel when you are a child. You wake up with this tangible anticipation of something big about to happen, possibly even something magical. It was always sunny and warm on May 1st in Saint-Petersburg. It could be snowing the day before, but on May 1st the Gods of Communism provided good weather, no matter what. My mom liked to “take advantage of the day” by cleaning the apartment (although it still beats me how this can be considered “taking advantage”), and when I woke up the chairs were already overturned onto the table and there was this distinct smell of water in a floor-washing bucket – very fresh yet always with a hint of mold or dust, all floor rags inexplicably start smelling this way eventually. The bucket would be in the middle of the room with half of the floor looking cleanly wet and the other half untouched – my mom would clearly be somewhere else, either cooking breakfast or washing sheets, she has a habit of forgetting to finish one thing before starting the next.
The room would be empty but it radiated presence of my parents at home. Both my dad and my mom worked a lot and we never really had a chance to spend much time together, so every weekend was really precious, and occasions like this were triply precious because May 1st meant almost a whole week of festivities (May 1st is when they celebrate Labor Day in Russia and May 9th is the Victory Day to commemorate WWII, and we usually had almost all this time in between off).
It also meant guests! My parents loved to entertain and threw fun parties that I was always allowed to attend although I was almost always the only child in the crowd. It was fascinating being around adults. I didn’t even mind enduring the initial humiliation of having to recite some long poem or play the piano “for the guests” – that was my entrance ticket to the secret world of adult conversations, adult jokes, adult gestures.
And it meant visiting! One thing I loved even more than receiving guests in our house was visiting my parents’ friends at their houses. I cannot explain this obsession but I enjoyed it tremendously. And even though some houses gave me total creeps and I wanted to run away screaming, I would be sure to show up there again and again because I was invariably pulled by some invisible magnet of the possibility of exploration. The differences of homes puzzled me. Some made me feel perfectly relaxed and comfortable whereas in others I would be afraid to sit down without permission.
My mom never joined us for the parade – she had to continue “taking advantage of the day” and wash everything there was to wash in the apartment including windows (May 1st also signified the beginning of spring, at least in our household, and so did the cleaning of windows). I was secretly glad she "couldn't" join because I had always been embarrassed by my mother. Plus, I was pleased to have the undivided attention of my father. She must have sensed it because before we left she would make sure to sufficiently torture me with tightly braiding my hair and putting huge bows in - festive. This part would always threaten to spoil my day, but if I avoided looking in the mirror before leaving the apartment, I could quickly forget how ridiculously I look and dive back into my happy excitement.
And then I don’t really remember anything. Not our way to the parade, not the parade itself. I very vaguely recall this sensation of being in the middle of an organized demonstration carrying some kind of poster and periodically shouting out some communist songs, feeling proud to be walking with my dad, feeling safe among all those unknown men and women just because he was next to me. I can never get a grip on this feeling, it’s always so elusive. But I’m so glad I can still remember – if not fully feel – this unconditional happiness, this openness to anything that brings you to adventure, this state pure being, this sense of life just beginning… And is it possible that I dislike crowds now just because my father is not here to take care of me during the parade?..
P.S. A historical note on the holiday
The official name of the May 1st holiday is International Workers’ Day, but we call it Labor Day in Russia. Interestingly, the day is supposed to commemorate the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago (workers demonstrating for the eight-hour work day, etc.), and yet in the States Labor Day is celebrated in September. Apparently, it is because the American president at the time – Grover Cleveland – didn’t want to associate the Labor Day with commemoration of a riot.
In Latin America May 1st is the Great American Boycott Day, a general strike of illegal immigrants against some immigration legislation they felt was draconian. In Latin America people “celebrate” this day by trying not to speak English or buy anything American.
P.P.S. A ridiculous piece of information found on Wikipedia.org
In 1955, the Roman Catholic Church dedicated May 1st to “Saint Joseph The Worker”. The Catholic Church considers Saint Joseph the patron saint of workers (fine), craftsmen (excellent), immigrants (all right) and… people fighting communism (REALLY?).
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