The Gift

The image of Matrena's great-grandmother remains in my memory as frightening, even alien, as if I had realized in my infancy that we had different paths. Although I think Matrena wanted her great-granddaughter to follow in the "witch's" footsteps.

Perhaps she sensed a certain power in me, and before she died, she wanted to increase it by passing on some of her own. They say that witches can't go to the other world without it.

I unconsciously resisted such a "gift". My inner voice whispered: don't go near it, don't take it, find your own way!

But since the gift of witchcraft has been passed down to the women in our family for centuries, someone had to take it. And it seems that my great-grandmother gave it to me in a tricky way, through a toy.

After that, I either had to continue the magical line and start influencing the destinies of the people around me, or turn the energy I received into creativity, which is also magic in a way. I like to think that Matrena hoped I would choose that path.

The Power of Creativity

Why am I so sure?

I have heard that all my great-grandmothers - witches - grew up as creative, sensitive children.

They sang, drew, wrote poetry, played musical instruments (echoes of these talents still burst in their descendants today). But in the village society, the creative talent of children was not considered a blessing, but rather a pampering, and therefore was not taken seriously. Painting, singing, composing, how much good can come from that?

A large family required large expenses, which meant a reliable source of income.

In the villages, people valued the land and physical labor, not art.

So girls who had been taught from childhood that creativity did not bring much money, that it was all "bullshit," wasted their talents and devoted themselves entirely to household chores. They married, had children, and worked from dawn to dusk on the farm and in the fields.

But the spark of God, how can you hide it? It smolders in the chest, poisoning the heart and soul. How can one not be angry when the burning within is so great?

As a result, a woman begins to assert herself, to take revenge on the household for her creative impotence. And if she curses in her heart, wishes someone harm, then trouble is inevitable - this is how she frees herself from negativity.

And woe to the one who gets into this "dirty" stream. At best he will have a headache, at worst he will become seriously ill or even die. Especially if he is not in the best shape, sick, weakened, upset or depressed about something.

Only a strong, healthy, self-confident person is invulnerable to any curse. But do we know many such flawless people?

Witches cry too

Before my great-grandmother Matrena became a "witch," she earned her living as a laundress, washing other people's clothes. Grandmother Luda worked as an agronomist on the collective farm, although both mother and daughter were good at drawing and, I think, dreamt of a very different destiny.

A similar story happened to my parents and my younger sister.

My mother had a beautiful voice, she was attracted to the stage, to the theater. At school, teachers praised mom's abilities to literature, painting, foreign languages.

Father in his youth was a good painter. He wrote poetry. Sang guitar. Played in an amateur theater group. He was also a promising athlete.

Neither my mother nor my father had the urgent need to survive like their ancestors, but they both gave in to parental pressure ("Live like we lived!") and gave up their dreams. They went to work in a factory doing boring mechanical work.

My sister is a different story. Her whole life, starting from birth, seems to me to be a chain of continuous failures. It all began before Tanya was born. But I'll talk about that later. For now I'll return to the self-expression of personality.

I see it this way: those who have betrayed themselves and their destiny, who have chosen the feather in their hand over the bird in the air, their trapped energy begins to "sour". Resentment, envy, and anger arise, which over the years can turn into some kind of addiction or disease.

I think it is no coincidence that great-grandmother Matrena and grandmother Luda were paralyzed at the end of their lives.

Health as a gift

The gift I received unexpectedly from my great-grandmother did not manifest itself for a long time, or maybe I just took it for granted.

Not only did I write poems easily and draw well, but as great-grandmother Matrena, I was able to avert other people's eyes and share my power with people.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I first tested it on a young man I was secretly in love with.

I was 13 years old and he was 18. One day the boys in the courtyard told me that my beloved had kidney problems, and that he was not even accepted for military service because of this illness.

It seemed terribly unfair. Wow, I thought, he is so young and already so sick, and I decided to share my health with him.

I wouldn't spare anything for a good man! Besides, I had plenty of health (or so I thought at the time).

I made my decision responsibly. I even performed a kind of ritual in which I imagined my energy flowing smoothly into the young man's body and healing him.

For a day or two after the ritual, I felt a slight discomfort, but it soon passed and I was awake and full of energy again.

And six months later, my beloved was drafted into the army. The doctors found the young man absolutely healthy and declared him fit for military service. Whether my intervention helped or the disease receded on its own is unknown, but the news of the miraculous healing made me very happy and inspired (I don't know about the recruit himself, I suppose he didn't want to serve at all).

Once again I gave a piece of my health when I was studying in Nizhny Tagil.

I had a favorite teacher who usually spent most of the school year on sick leave - she had a weak heart.

As in the case of the young man, I felt that her illness was unfair and decided to help her.

Again, I arranged for an impromptu energy transfer session. But this time my health deteriorated immediately and severely. For almost two months I was plagued by a severe runny nose. No pills or powders could bring the fever down. It was not the flu, not an acute respiratory infection, but God knows what! I shrank, turned pale, almost green. I felt that this strange illness was somehow related to my giving my energy to the benefit of the suffering, and it was time to stop this charity.

Indirectly, my suspicions were confirmed by the fact that the teacher had never taken a sick day in all that time, and unlike me, she was in full bloom.

I realized that I couldn't take it a third time.

Blind Spot

But my experiments didn't stop there.

That summer, my friends and I liked to spend time in the spare parts warehouse, where our nineteen-year-old friend Dima worked as a part-time guard during the holidays.

After lunch, the warehouse was empty and closed. Dima was bored sitting alone on duty, and he often called his friends to keep him company: to drink tea, to chat, to watch TV. We would sneak into the warehouse through a hole in the fence and run excitedly around the huge area, past the iron hangars. We gawked at the machinery, the seeders, planters, tractors, climbed into the cabs of combines, pressed buttons, turned the wheel.

Someone suggested playing hide-and-seek.

It fell to Dima to be a leader of the game.

We played with excitement, just like when we were kids. Everyone wanted to stay out of the leader's sight as long as possible. But Dima had a sixth sense about who was hiding where, and he methodically caught the players.

It seems that two or three of us were still uncaught when I decided to change the hiding place. I waited for Dima to enter the brick gatehouse, climb the stairs to the second floor, where he could take a wide-eyed look at the courtyard from above.

I jumped around the corner and ran!

Only Dima came to the balcony faster than I expected.

I froze in the middle of the courtyard. The game was over for me. Of course he saw me! He couldn't help noticing me.

His behavior seemed strange. He searched the yard with his eyes, gradually narrowing his field of vision to where I was standing.

I was standing right in front of him, like in the palm of his hand!

His eyes were fixed on me. I waved my hand as if to say: I give up! But his eyes passed over me indifferently and continued to scan the courtyard.

I couldn't believe my luck. Without taking my eyes off Dima, I moved slowly, sideways, toward the iron cistern. Dima still did not react to me, as if I were invisible. While he was going down the stairs, I managed to get ahead of him and "unlock" the other players who had been watching us with bated breath all this time.

Then we had a long, passionate discussion with Dima about why he had not caught me.

Dima took offense and seemed genuinely confused as to what he was being accused of.

It seemed that he really hadn't seen me.

Test for lice

I have been able to "avert" other people's eyes before.

I remember that in the sanatorium named after Yuri Gagarin a case of pediculosis was detected - a common thing in schools and pioneer camps of those years. The doctors raised the alarm.

And although no one in our class had lice, on bath day all the girls had to be disinfected. After showering, we had to rinse our hair with a weak solution of vinegar.

I didn't want to use vinegar for two reasons - first, I didn't have lice, and second, the acetic acid gave my black hair a green tint.

Some of the girls were about to refuse the humiliating procedure as well, but there was a nurse sitting at the exit of the shower room. She was counting towels and sniffing our heads like a dog. There was no way to sneak past her - she would turn you back.

It was just the two of us left in the shower room, me and another girl. Ira splashed a ladle of vinegar on herself and walked forward, and I followed her, not even looking in the direction of the smelly tub. What I hoped for was unclear, but I believed that something would happen.

The nurse quickly examined Ira and was about to turn her attention to me, but then it turned out that Ira had mixed up the foot and bath towels, throwing them in the wrong pile.

While the nurse reprimanded her and checked and counted all the towels, I took advantage of the hiccup and slipped into the locker room unnoticed.

Some of the girls tried to snitch on me to the nurse, but I think my stern look spoke louder than words, and the sneaks decided not to mess with me.

On the train

There was another case when my husband and I were returning to Moscow from Crimea by train.

At night, Ukrainian border guards entered our carriage and began to check the documents of passengers. There were three border guards, and they checked thoroughly and meticulously, waking those who were asleep, carefully comparing photos with the original. In the next compartment, a top shelf was empty, but the crumpled bedclothes indicated that the owner was somewhere nearby.

The men in uniform did not rest until they found the "deserter" in the toilet.

And then I remembered what happened in the warehouse and in the shower. Why don't I pretend to be invisible again? - I thought mischievously. Would it work this time or not?

I had nothing to hide, nothing to be afraid of, so I didn't care about the result.

Andrei motioned for me to get my passport ready. But I didn't even bother to get it out. I lay down on the top shelf and pretended I didn't exist.

The border guard came in and checked the documents of my husband and his neighbor. He took the passenger's passport from the bottom shelf, ran his eyes over it, and turned to me. He looked at me for half a second, maybe less, and then, without a word, he walked out and continued on his way.

I cheered. I did it! Yay!

To be continued