A Christmas Reunion

Usually, there is nothing for me to be excited about at Christmas. I have no kids, wife, or much of an extensive family to gather, celebrate, and get excited about the gifts under the tree. This year, however, Christmas can’t get here fast enough, and that’s because I’m getting the greatest gift anyone could give me: my mom.

My story begins in the former Soviet Union with the meeting, and falling in love, of a Rwandan student and a Russian woman. He was the son of a pastor, she was the daughter of a KGB officer. He believed in God and she did not. However, they both shared a spirit of independence and persistence.

Her father kept her under house arrest for six months to keep them apart, but they still managed to see each other during that time. My father was threatened physically, but my grandparents also saw their careers’ demise in their daughter’s involvement with a foreign, black person from a non-communist country.

My grandfather died a few months after my mother told him of her plans to marry my father, and she was blamed for his death by family, friends, and associates. Her mother told the director of the prison where she worked that she had no daughter, and refused transportation that he had offered to take her to my parents’ wedding.

Five months after I was born, my father’s student visa expired and he elected to go back to his native Rwanda, find a good job, and send for my mother, who still had a year left to finish her studies.

Twenty six years have passed since, and they never saw each other again. My father took me because he didn’t want his son growing up in an overtly racist society. They communicated for a while, but soon their communications were being intercepted. He thought she had left him, and she thought he had found another woman. Her friends, remembering my father, told her he had forgotten her with his drinking and womanizing.

Years passed, war came to Rwanda and I was separated from my father, too. I was eleven years old when I left my father and set off on a flight that has taken me through four African countries and the U.S. I have not seen my father since, but I’ve always hoped to see him again sometime.

A few months ago I received a message through an online social website about a woman looking for her son, and asking if I knew a man by my father’s name from Rwanda and who left the Soviet Union in 1983 with his son. I was dumbfounded. Everything was a haze for the next few days. I had so many questions, and she had so many tears. We tried to talk by phone but she was overwhelmed by emotions. We decided to chat online, instead.

She told me everything from the very beginning. About how they met, how they fell in love, and the hurdles they endured. She told me everything between then and now. About the death of both her brother and mother, and her mother’s prediction, before she passed away in January 2009, that we would meet again soon. My mother stressed her mother’s love for me, and I had no doubts about that.

She had already made plans to come see her friend in Los Angeles, but we agreed she would come to visit me in Upstate New York and her friend in L.A. would come here, too.

Meeting my mother is much more than knowing the story of what happened, however, it is about knowing where I come from and how that is manifested in my behavior. I learned things I had not bothered to find out in the past, such as my blood type and the fact that I’m anemic, which explains my constant tiredness. I learned my mother was as much a nomad as I was, constantly moving from place to place (I have lived in 14 residences, 8 cities, and 4 States in my 10 years in America). I also saw the similarities in the way we sometimes tilted our heads while posing for pictures.

But I also learned that I had a lot in common with my grandfather than I thought I never knew who he was or what he did until a year ago, but my interests were etched in his DNA. She also told me about my Ukrainian, Moldovan, and Polish roots. Facts I couldn’t have known otherwise.

All those years of not knowing and fear of asking seem so far away, their memory slowly fading with time, but they help enhance the feelings currently inundating my heart. Now I know I have a mother who’s always looked for me; who’s always loved me. I believe that’s what Christmas is about- an undying love- and I plan to give my thanks for all this year has brought for me- including my first Christmas with my mom.