The Day I Was Born

My mother was a three-time Olympic Russian gymnast. She won a gold medal, once, in Munich. She was fifteen. The ribbon raised welts on her neck where it touched her skin, and she cried silently through the entire medal ceremony. When she returned to Russia, she had it made into a lapel pin, and she wore it through the streets of her little Russian town like a war medal.
My father married my mother the day she turned seventeen. The wedding ring was too small, so my father pushed hard. My mother’s finger was swollen and bruised for the entire wedding. It lasted a week. By the end of the wedding, my mother could barely stand, but her mother told her to be proud that she and her new husband had enough liquor to go around and enough devoted friends to stay that long. My father was twenty-two when they were married.
The story goes that my grandfather made a drunken toast and, with eyes as cold as marble, asked that my mother kindly not shame the family and beget a male child.
My brother was born first. I was born second. On both occasions, every male citizen of the USSR smoked a big fat cigar.