As Max grew older, his explorations became more solitary, which led me to a new concern: that his interests were pulling him Away from his fellow men rather than to them. (To protect his future privacy, I’m calling him by his middle name in this article.) Max was always a shy kid, slow to warm to new people and content to go long distances alone. The pandemic, which hit when he was 10 years old, didn’t help. Academically, the remote school worked well for Max, but socially, it exacerbated his isolation. When private lessons began again, he was more alone than ever, quiet behind his mask. At home with his family, he was thoughtful and funny and quick, telling stories and asking endless questions. But when he arrived at school in the morning, it was as if a curtain fell between him and the world.
A new subject emerged in those pandemic years to recapture his imagination: birds. Who knows why? Maybe creatures that could fly and soar were an appealing idea during endless lockdowns, or maybe birds were just another vast universe for him to map. In Texas, where we live, there are only 47 warbler species, each with their own signs and songs and migration patterns to analyze and commit to memory. Max borrowed bird books from the library and lay in bed reading them, absorbing facts and patterns, gathering secret knowledge. He hung out on nature websites, posting photos and trading IDs with birds many times his age. He was walking through the fields at dawn, binoculars in hand. Once again he descended (or perhaps ascended, this time) and once more I followed him. We spent many weekend mornings together walking by the lagoons at our local sewage treatment plant looking for ruby kings and crested caracaras.
I also liked that bird watching connected him with other people. Mostly people in their 60s and 70s, sure, but still: people. We joined our local Audubon chapter and went on group hikes to local cemeteries and nature preserves. While everyone else was watching birds, I was watching Max. When he and I were out in the world together, I felt it was my job to serve as his translator, to speak for him when he seemed shy or with his tongue, to push him forward when he hung back. Among his countrymen, however, he began to find his way into conversations, sharing sightings, asking for help with identifications, considering the distinctions between rock swallows and cave swallows. On the drive home, he would talk to me about birds, and I would talk to him about people: why they like eye contact, what questions you can ask them if you want to continue a conversation. My work as a translator sometimes went both ways.
On Christmas vacation, when he was 12, Max’s curiosity took him in a new direction: He started learning Russian. I don’t know why he chose Russian and if you ask him he doesn’t have a good answer. Our family is not Russian. We have no Russian friends. It’s possible that the absurdity of the chase was exactly what fascinated him about it. Whatever his motivation, he began practicing a language app for an hour a day, sometimes more, and by New Year’s he knew every Cyrillic letter, every backward R and N. Within weeks, he could recite simple sentences . My wife and I would walk past his room and hear him repeating Russian phrases into his iPad in a low monotone. It was like living with a 12 year old spy. He cycled to the central library downtown and took out a Russian dictionary, then returned a week later for a Russian grammar book and a history of the tsars. Another dive was underway.
That fall, Max enrolled in a Russian-language school that met on Sunday afternoons at a Methodist church in Northwest Austin. Except for Max, the students were mostly children of recent Russian immigrants, and for them and their parents, school was a way to keep their culture alive in a foreign land. Every week their clan gathered, a few dozen blond, round-faced children playing chess and practicing Russian calligraphy while parents set up steam tables and sold each other hot piroskis, reminiscing about Moscow winters while sheltering from the blazing Texas sun. .
