School Starts and Old Memories fade

School started last week. They had Thursday and Friday, then the weekend off and back to it yesterday for the first full week of School.

  This time of year is the start of new beginnings and for me a time to look back at where this family has been. I'm sure Teri, ever the forward thinker would consider thinking about the past a luxury for People with too much time on their hands. I would agree with her. She doesn't have that luxury working twelve hour days,
   I on the other hand have more time and

I'm a melancholy sort of person and I must admit I wallow in it like I accuse others of wallowing in their hyphenated existence. No One is just an American any more, except me. Everyone is from somewhere else and America.
My Wife is an Italian-American, except she is at least a quarter Dutch. If I was to become a hyphen I would be, in no particular order an English, Irish, Dutch, German, Italian, Turkish American. I'll just stay with Joe.
  What started the second part of the title is Elena was asked to do a short essay about what she was like as a kindergartner. Tears come to my eyes as I think back to both of them as skinny little kids and what I imagine was their existence. I told her she arrived at the orphanage at about four years old and I asked her what was it like when you were in Birobidzhan? She said she couldn't remember. I don't know if it is from wanting to not remember or if she really has forgotten.

  We sat down in front of the computer and I typed a few sentences about how I remember her as a small child of seven. She was quite. When someone yelled at her she would look straight ahead and almost shrink before your eyes and not talk. Imagine her not talking today. Then I used a little imagination had Elena wrote her version of what I wrote. Lastly I told her to write some of her friends names down and she could not remember. I don't know if it is sad or just normal to forget the past, for her it is half a life time ago.
  On that bright and cheery note this is the first full week of the school year. We are still getting into a routine. Elena goes to bed at 9:30 and Nastia goes to bed at 10 pm, I don't think it has happened that way yet. Nastia gets up at about six. I want it to be six-fifteen, Teri says what happens if she needs to go to the bathroom, so we are working on it. I have been going to bed earlier then before because I have been getting up around five or so and not being able to go back to sleep until I have to get Elena up at about seven-thirty.
  The good of this new arrangement is Nastia gets to spend sometime with her mother and she gets a mother's touch on all those things like make-up and clothing that I never did or would fight with her about.

  Elena gets up after all the others have gone and so far I have driven her to school all four days because it gets me out of the house and I do my job some and it makes me feel like..Oh, you didn't hear about my job? Its really nothing and I mean nothing. It is a full commission job and I have yet to be paid, though today I did make a connection that in a few days hopefully will be my first sale. If not then it might be the Nyack Water company. It is really a great importunity, but it is shift work and as I told a friend who owns Bagel Boys in Suffern, I'm fifty-seven almost I don't want someone looking over my shoulder asking me what I did all day. I have evolved beyond all that now I have become a superior human being, I just wish they paid more for the job.