A Few Moments of Spring (About the Meeting with the Classmate Emma Korneeva Many Years After…)

It’s easy and at the same time time it’s difficult to talk with your own schoolmates. Easy – because we understand each other with half-word : we are yet of the same age and grew up in the same environment.                                                                    

Difficult – because everyone of my classmates left a huge life experience behind each of our shoulders, so each and single one has developed her own character, one of a kind!

For, instance, Emma Korneeva who joined us at the 1-st Bryansk All-Girls’ School at Grade 6 when we’ve grown up a bit and acquired a little understanding in life.

Here is the photo of our class with the teachers and a separate photo of Emma.

That is what Emma told about herself:

“I was born in Siberia! In Chita region(now Amur), in the town of Tygda on March 11, 1940. Approximately at the spot where the Baikal-Amur thoroughfare runs nowadays. Parents: mother – Korneeva (Isaeva) Irina Leonidovna, chemistry-biology teacher; father – Korneev Sergey Ivanovich, physics-mathematics teacher, both graduates from Novozybkov Pedagogical Institute were sent to t. Tygda to teach, where we were born, my brother Korneev Leonid Sergeyevich and me, with the difference in age between us one year and a half.During the war my Daddy was sent to Ulan-Ude  as a teacher at Machine-Gun College, we followed him. At that time I was a bit bigger than 3 years old. Nevertheless I remember very well the hot summer, sun-baked sand along the frigid and fast moving stream river Selenga so I had to carry on my shoulders my younger brother to protect his little feet from sun burning.

After demobilization our father from the military forces in 1947 the whole family moved to c. Bryansk where my Mom’s sister and her family lived. Rented the private house in Kalinin street and in the same year I went to Grade 1 of the 3-d Junior High School and simultaneously – the Music School named after Chaikovsky in piano class. Mon started to work as a teacher at the School for Working Youth where she worked for the whole life until retired. Dad was appointed as a Principal of Officers’ School where completed the High School Education the officers who got through the war. Lived hard as everybody else in the country at the post-war time: in homestead there were chickens, goats, pigs. Graze goats – that was my and brother’s duty. I remember very well how Mom after getting her salary always dropped in Candy Store in Lenin Street (now it’s Fokin Street), perhaps at that time it was hardly the only one in Bryansk, and bought for brother and me the sweets “Mishka on the North”. The joy was beyond the limits and till now those are my favourite sweets. In 1953 the parents managed to build up their own house and I had to change the school close to the place of Residence. Starting Grade 6 I began my studies at the 1-st Bryansk All-Girls’ School.

Everywhere in the post are scattered the photos of “Mishka on the North” sweets, favourites of Emma and her brother Leonid.

This is the special music for Sergey Ivanovich and Irina Leonidovna Korneevs, Emma’s parents:

Isaac Levitan, Russian Landscape Panter and a beautiful song