The Teacher, Remembered
A celebration of my departed wife on her day of birth...
Today is Olga’s birthday. She would’ve been 62.
My loving, serene, gorgeous wife departed this world a little over 13 months ago. In the Russian, Orthodox Christian tradition, after a person passes, there is a 40th-day remembrance often held by their family and again on the anniversary of their passing. Unfortunately, neither of us has much family in our lives. Her parents passed on, and her brother, who lives in remote Russia, has struggled with health and mental issues his entire life. I got a chance to meet him. Lovely man. Kind, considerate, handsome—just not very capable.
I’m fortunate enough to have my parents still around, but they’re in their late 70s; my father has Leukemia, my mother suffers from arthritis, etc. I have a very cool younger brother, but he’s dealing with his own life and recently married wife. He works as a nurse in hospice care, so he travels quite a bit. The time he DOES have, he generally wants to spend with his wife. I don’t blame him. I was the same way with Olga.
I also have some interesting first cousins, albeit we’re all estranged from one another.
All of this is simply to say that I didn’t have the emotional energy/strength to put on the remembrances on the 40th day and the anniversary.
During Olga’s illness, I had the fortune of having a tough, strong, French caregiver named Terry watching Olga while I worked. Work was the only thing keeping me sane at the time. Terry was the most important person to me for a long time because only she knew what Olga and I actually went through while Olga was suffering from the damned disease. She bore witness to our passion if you will…
Terry was in our house five days a week. She saw the things I did and the torture Olga had to endure. Terry has been a caregiver for over two decades. She’s seen things. But, according to even her, what happened to Olga and me was the most dreadful and beautiful thing she’d witnessed in her lengthy, storied career (along with some other amazing experiences that she shared with us).
Technically, Terry wasn’t the only one who understood what was going on in caring for our Olinka’s aggressive ALS. Her old friend, Marina, flew out from Russia and stayed with us for nearly eight months, taking care of my girl (and giving Terry a much-needed respite). But as the illness progressed, it proved too much for Marina, and she gracefully exited back to Russia. It must’ve been incredibly difficult for her to leave Olga. The two of them were like sisters growing up. But she could see the writing on the wall, and Olga had long stopped being able to talk, so it drove Marina mad. God bless that woman.
Olga was my muse, and I was hers. She was my favorite person. Honestly, I couldn’t care less what anyone else thought of my stories or ideas. I just worked at amusing/impressing Olga. It was an audience of one that I wanted, and I got.
A year later, I feel healthy and good enough to put together this short photo collage of my departed wife, Olga Aleksandravna, celebrating her amazing life as a daughter, sister, friend, wife, and teacher. I now enjoy seeing her old photos and videos, whereas, in the past, they would trigger an emotional response from me that would ultimately bring on a state of sustained depression. And what better day to do it than her birthday?
The remembrance collage is at the end of this post if you want to scroll to it.
But if you want to keep reading, in the next sections, I’ll tell the story of how Olga and I came to be a couple and ultimately married...
The Chamber
It was at the LA Chamber of Commerce that I first set eyes on Olga. I know what you’re thinking— “how romantic.” #heehee. But read on, dear reader…
For about four years or so, I worked with most of the secondary ESL teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, preparing them to teach reading and writing in English (something they’re not trained for as secondary teachers) as well as to provide them with training on cross-cultural language and academic development techniques. Basically, if you were assigned to teach ESL in a middle school or high school, or vocational school, you had to go through this experience with me (and a core team of six other “experts”).
That’s a lot of teachers to have worked with. The worst was that the seminars were required, by State law, believe it or not. So thousands of teachers had to come and sit in a room with me for 40 hours over a five-consecutive day period. Then, they’d have to come back for an additional three-day period to learn and deepen their understanding of language acquisition techniques further.
So because of this, LAUSD needed multiple, centralized spaces to hold these sessions; downtown hotels and halls to rent nearby.
One such hall was the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. And it just so happened that, in the summer of 2003, I was assigned that hall to facilitate several initial 40-hour seminars (as opposed to other spaces that we also used). Olga, a new employee at LAUSD, was one of the teachers being trained by me (unbeknownst to me at first) there in the chamber.
That’s right. I was her teacher.
I recall a few elements about that particular session, believe it or not. Remember, I’d been doing them for well over a year by that point, and so it was just another class of teachers to me. But not that session.
You see, I was dabbling with music quite a bit back then. I had connected with one of the custodians at a school I worked at named Andre. We were trying to lay out some R&B tracks together. During the week I was working on the seminar Olga was at, I invited Andre to the Chamber of Commerce while the teachers were out on their lunch break. We were hot on finalizing some tracks, so he swung by with a demo melody he’d recorded over a bass line I’d sent him.
Now, not ALL of the teachers would leave the hall during lunch. Several would stay back because they’d brought their lunch, or wanted to meet with the teachers from their school over the lunch break, etc.
So, when Andre and I started to sing a bit (I was murmuring some potential harmony lines—he was doing nearly ALL of the singing), some teachers turned their attention toward us. In fact, by the end of the lunch period, Andre had put on a bit of show for the ladies. It was cool.
The reason I know it was that week that Olga was at the seminar was because, years later, after we’d gotten married, she was telling the story of how we met, and she included that little tidbit with “this guy started singing,” which threw me for a loop. Of course, I remembered the event. It was during that week that Olga and I were in the same room…
The other thing I recall about the seminar was that it was a larger group of teachers I was working with. Something on the order of about 100. The largest I’d worked with in this capacity was nearly 600 (in a downtown Hilton ballroom). The average group generally comprised about 25-35 teachers. So, because it was a larger group, I didn’t take particular note of any one person. With one exception…
She was sitting all the way in the back of the hall. This blond-haired woman. She was too far away from me to get a good look at her. But her hair was eye-catching. It popped right out at me on the Thursday of the seminar (day four). The next day was our last day. I was a decent educator of adults back then, so the week would usually end with lots of hugs and thank yous, etc. (albeit, NO ONE wanted to be at the seminar—remember, they were mandated to be there by law. Lot’s of fun. Let me tell ‘ya…).
I was answering some last-minute queries from the various teachers as the hall cleared out slowly. I began to make my way out of the hall when, like a scene from an Ingrid Bergman movie of the 40s, I saw that same blond-haired woman slowly sauntering toward me. What appeared to be a sea of teachers (but was probably more like six or seven) seemed to part and make way for this…this…angel to approach me. I say, sauntering, but it was more a strut—one leg over another, eyes locked on mine, like a steely-eyed missile man. I didn’t know what to expect. But I knew that I was not prepared for what was about to go down.
I smiled and introduced myself formally. She smiled and flashed those crazy blue eyes at me—and that’s all it took, folks. I was mesmerized.
I asked her what I could do for her. I remember the very first sentence out of her mouth. With a beautiful Russian (almost German) accent…
“You sound like an American who knows what he’s talking about.”
“I am (gulp). I am an American who knows what he’s talking about.”
And that was the first time I heard her laugh aloud. It was mellifluous.
Then, she introduced herself. She was a teacher at Hollywood High School. She had just emigrated to America about nine months or so back. She looked like she was in her late 30s, which was shocking because she told me that she had been teaching English in Russia for 24 years! I didn’t have time to dig into that because right away, she dove into her questions.
Now, usually, this would’ve annoyed the hell out of me. I was answering side questions up at the podium for, like, 30 minutes. I was on my way out. NOW, she wants to talk? But this wasn’t a normal thing. She was a bombshell of a woman. And, even though I was in a relationship with a long-time college friend of mine at the time, the intrigue that Olga was steeped in was palpable. So I put my books down to give her my undivided attention.
She dives in with some REALLY heavy-hitting questions—questions that NO ONE had asked in the past. After all, she was a serious, award-winning teacher with decades of experience. Seventeen of her former students had become English teachers themselves, all over the world!! Questions about linguistics, language-acquisition theory, pedagogical philosophies, historical practices in teaching language—I’m tellin’ ya, man. She knocked me off my feet. And I wasn’t backing off, either. For every boom she’d hit me with, I’d come back with a bam! Then, I’d inquire about a concept she alluded to, giving her the floor to express her divinity—I mean, explain her thinking.
After what seemed to be only a few minutes, I glanced over to the doorway to the hall entrance, and there they were. All of the ladies on the team I was working with spying on me. What, were they worried that I would be inappropriate or something? Were they just checking the exchange out because it seemed like some flirtation was happening? I don’t know. But I got the distinct sense that we were being watched.
The conversation was so fluid that I don’t recall thinking prurient thoughts about Olga at the time. I simply didn’t want the exchange to end. I rarely EVER got a chance to talk with someone about language and literature at a scholarly level. And yet, POW—there’s this awesome, highly educated, and well-read woman who is ALSO interested in the stuff.
It was about five o’clock, or so and so, on a whim, I asked her if she’d be interested in having dinner with me.
She said yes.
It was at this point that I turned my mind into a tactical machine: how was I going to get passed the ladies at the hall entrance without seeming like I’m taking this lady home to…well, you know. I didn’t want to say anything about it like, “Yeah, this is Olga, we just met, and we’re just going out to have some dinner. Hope y’all have a good night!”
So we made our way toward the entrance—but the ladies had scattered. It was so strange. We went to the elevator, down to my car in the garage below the building, and went on our way. Olga hadn’t driven to the Chamber of Commerce that day. She was picked up by one of the other teachers from the school. So I was to drop her off at her apartment after dinner.
This is when things took an unexpected turn. On the drive out of downtown LA, we got to talking, and, it turned out, she was married. No ring. She told me about how her husband had won the immigration lottery in Russia, and the two of them came out a little less than a year ago because of said lottery.
Sigh.
I figured, “I can’t take a married woman out to dinner. I don’t know anything about her. But she’s beautiful, interesting and knowledgeable about English linguistics. So hot…I mean, cool, she’s cool. But what if she’s one of these crazy ladies that like to piss off her thug Russian husband by sleeping around with unsuspecting dudes, only to lead said unsuspecting dudes to a hospital somewhere. Or worse! To jail!!”
So, I took her to Starbucks instead. Yup. That’s what I did. We went to one that was near Hollywood High School, which is where her apartment was located; nearby. We went in, had a wonderful conversation, and then I drove her to her apartment off Sunset Blvd and Highland Ave.
And that was that.
It wasn’t until the following year that we spoke again…
Runyon Canyon
The woman that I was with during that time and I split up. We had first been friends, then lovers, and nearly engaged. But as we got more serious, she began balking. She just wasn’t capable at the time of the sort of commitment that we were headed for. And maybe I was moving too fast. Who knows. Regardless, we ended things. And sadly, the friendship ended too.1
I recall driving back to my apartment in North Hollywood from my then-girlfriend’s house, thinking about how hard I worked to keep our relationship afloat. It was just so tiring. And was she making things difficult on purpose? I was over it. Our conversations had devolved. She was being more erratic. Something wasn’t right. And it was then that I recalled how right things were with that woman from a year ago from Starbucks.
So, I gave her a call. No answer. I left a message on her answering machine.
Well, Olga was walking in a park up the street—Runyon Canyon Park— from her apartment. According to her, she was balling her eyes out on the hike. Things had deteriorated with her husband over the past decade. The man was a nervous person by nature. But now that he lived in America on people’s couches and in an expensive Hollywood apartment, he couldn’t speak English and couldn’t find work suitable for his level of education (he worked in metallurgy and engineering in Russia); he was miserable and making life miserable for his wife.
That day, as she was walking back to their apartment, crying, she told me that she recalled wondering whatever happened to me—that guy from the Chamber of Commerce who she had coffee with at Starbucks (even though he’d asked her to dinner #payforthatonelater). She told me that as she walked into her apartment, she heard me say the last line of my message on her answering machine and hung up.
She was elated, overjoyed, to hear my voice—on the same day, she was reminded of me. Later that night, she called me, and we arranged to meet the next day—this time for actual dinner. Her husband had agreed to divorce her and move back to Russia. Plus, she had told me some things about their relationship that made me no longer give a crap that they were technically married. We played the rendezvous game. We were both Romantics, after all; she was a Pushkin/Turgenev/Checkov lover. I was a trained “Shakespearean” actor. Match made in heaven itself.
The sequence of events simply seemed so perfect that we knew there was something about us that had to be explored.
Ameoba Records
Our rendezvous became more romantic than either of us had thought possible. Usually, she would walk down to the Guitar Center near her home, and I’d meet her there. We’d walk to my car in the back parking lot and take off to wherever we were heading for the time. I was really happy with Olga. She was stimulating and elegant. She wasn’t flashy, but she had a sense of fashion that was deliberate. I dug that. The most attractive thing for me was how she was looking after me. It was obvious to me that this woman knew how to love. She wasn’t just a fantastic cook, baker, or stylist (she decorated our homes exquisitely). She was a coach and caregiver too. Just an all-around amazing human being.
And she was keenly aware of my personas. As such, I was more comfortable trying to reach back to my authentic self with Olga than I was with any of the loves in my life. She saw my personas as wounds. She encouraged me to allow folks to see the more serious side of me, to shed the personas. Quite a turn-on for a guy; stranded —a stranger in a strange land.
But it wasn’t until we met one day at Ameoba Records on Sunset Blvd. that I knew she was the one. We were pulling records together and discussing them in one of the aisles when we had a romantic moment if you will. But for me, this one was different. When our bodies were still facing each other after an embrace but apart, I sensed a physical pull toward her. The sensation was one that I visualize as being like a magnetic ripple pulling my entire body closer toward her. I wasn’t moving. I just felt the pull. My body was drawn toward her. I’d never experienced anything like it. Sigh.
That’s when I set my eyes on marrying this woman. And I did it. I got her!! Sixteen years of unimaginably magical matrimony. Who could ask for anything more?
Images of Olga
Thanks in large part to her closest friend, Olga L., I’ve put together a simple collage of images as a way for those of us who loved her and were touched by her to be reminded of how wonderful, kind, and caring a woman Olga Aleksandravna Scherbina Ahangarzadeh was. My teacher.
Years later, we reconnected. Today, she is one of my closest, most intimate friends—without the hanky panky, of course.