A True Hybrid | Bozhena Johnson

There are two hundred steps on the staircase in the Valea Morelor Park, Kishinev, Moldova. I’m ten years old. It’s 1986, and I walk with my mom, dad, and younger sister at the top of the staircase. The staircase looks to me as long as life.  You get down the stairs, and you end up at the lake. I  love to come here, and it feels so fancy and festive. My parents are in their forties, and I feel happy to be together. Mom and Dad dressed up in their nice clothes. They dress us up in lovely dresses and pantsuits. We walk around and make a day out of it. We stop and get some ice cream, which is a great treat.

The ice cream stop at café “Liner,” made out of an old plane. In 1972, due to several air crashes, the An-10 model aircraft were decommissioned. Most of them went for scrap, some were modified into the new An-12 model, and several of them were given a second life in various cities of the USSR. Inside one of them, the "Liner" cafe was opened in Chisinau. It served an exceptional taste of ice cream, which you could enjoy right inside the plane (Unknown Chishinau Site info).

We go inside and get little aluminum cups on a stem filled with two scoops of vanilla ice cream. My favorite one is with chocolate shavings topping; the second one is with the cherry jam topping. I liked the jam topping now, but I liked the chocolate topping as I got older. This park has a giant fountain, a lake, and those gorgeous stairs. I love how the stairs are framed with wide cemented railing. It makes me feel like royalty. They are wide, too. Every step I take gets me closer to the lake. At times, they have events. I left when Valea Morelor, Valley of the Mills, was called Komsomolsky Lake during the Soviet Union. Kishinev is now called Chishinau. My family immigrates to the U.S. in October of 1994.

I am a hybrid. Fast forward to my new hometown in California.  I immigrated from Moldova here, and I have considered it my American home since I came from Moldova thirty years ago. Due to the prosecution of Jews in Moldova in the mid-90s, I won’t ever go back to Moldova. Despite this, I still have a lot of Soviet values that are looked down upon in the Russian-speaking community for political reasons. I would say my cultural values made me who I am and made me stronger. I don’t know what life will be like in Moldova in 2025; I’m not there. I know they try to copy the West. I have spent the majority of my adult life here. I became an Angeleno who won’t ever leave LA. 

Los Angeles doesn’t have much public transportation; to survive here, you need a car. Freeways and highways connect little towns. You can go to Little Tokyo downtown and wind up in Little Armenia, just a few miles away. I have spent my entire life driving back and forth on freeways and highways. My trips take between thirty minutes to two hours, depending on where I go. I always have coffee and a bottle of water with me. If my ride is longer, I also have fresh fruit, pretzels, or carrots.

My mom makes our food at home daily. She makes chicken soups, borscht, jarkoe (meat and potato dish), golubtsi (stuffed cabbage leaves), and stuffed bell peppers with ground meat and small pieces of fried onions mixed in. She also makes cakes during holidays, pies, perogies, and fancy holiday salads like olivie, mimosa, seledka pod shuboi (a herring dish).  I learned how much work it was when I became a married woman.

I went on my first date in Moonshadows with my future husband, the restaurant overlooking the ocean in Malibu. We sat on the patio of the restaurant. It was the middle of November 2006; we were dressed in warm jackets. We decided to sit outside because we wanted to watch the waves crash. Before this night, I would drive down to Moonshadows alone many times and order clam chowder and iced tea. It was pricey for a student, but it was my escape from home at the time. When I went to Moonshadows on my own, I would bring my notebook, write poetry for about two hours, and look at the ocean. The windows in Moonshadows were glass from top to bottom, and they also had a large patio outdoors. This restaurant hung on the rocks, and waves crashed into the rocks just below the restaurant. Walls, chairs, and columns were made out of wood. At the entrance, there was an aquarium.  Later on, we came here with my whole family and celebrated my sister’s birthday and, at times, mine. My mom was still living, and we were a complete family.  Mom has been gone for thirteen years now, but I can see myself in Moonshadows as if it was happening just last week. Moonshadows burned down to the ground in the Palisades fire.

We drive to the forest in Moldova, and on the way back, my dad stops at a restaurant. This is the first time with my family at a restaurant.  They serve borscht, mamaliga, which is like polenta and mitetei, a meat dish. There are carvings and towels on the wall. It’s like a fairy tale, but being in that restaurant with my family makes me feel grown and mature. My parents have red wine. Moldova, just like France, is famous and known for its wines. My mom asks for a sweet red wine; she also loves champagne on New Year’s Eve.

Lake Shrine is a park of five religions. The entrance is free. I would come here on many days, bring my family and my friends. When I got married and had a child, we started coming here as a family. I liked taking pictures next to the roses in the rose garden and meditating in one of the meditation rooms. My husband, who was born and raised in LA, enjoyed taking pictures of the temples and trails and the lake. It does have a beautiful lake, temples, a windmill by the lake, swans, a small waterfall, and meditation rooms. On Sundays, they provided services to members of the Self-realization fellowship. One time, when it was open to the public, we would go all the way up to the service temples, sit inside, and observe our surroundings.  Lake Shrine didn’t burn down during the fires. It stayed intact thanks to the help of the neighborhood, which provided water and hoses. I spent many weekends there meditating and writing.

Lake Shrine has a beautiful rose garden and a lower level with lush greenery. A gift store with different souvenirs and jewelry. It always smells like incense in the store, and I love it. A trail with many benches surrounds the lake itself. I am so glad that the park survived the fires. I always relied on my faith to carry me through and help me go on. I have many memories of coming here by myself, with my parents, and even my own family as my son got older. Despite all of the devastation that happened in Palisades during the fire, some essential historical places were able to survive.

It is 1993. I’m a teenager, and I meet my classmates at the Valley of the Roses in Moldova. We bring picnic supplies, and some even bring wine. I’m in medical school. Sitting around a fire, we talk and joke. Alla, my classmate, is funny and sharp, but she always drinks quite a lot. She starts pranking people as we sit around and eat. I also come to Valley of the Roses a lot with my best friend, Stella, who I meet at age seven and will become a lifelong friend.

My first visit to Paul Getty was thirty years ago with my ESL teacher and students from Evans School located downtown. As far as I remember, our ESL class wasn’t too diverse; we had a large clique of Russian-speaking people, and we hung out together during breaks.  Paul Getty Villa is a unique art and architectural treasure. I would say it’s a pearl of Malibu. It combines antique pictures and statues with modern technology—a gorgeous pool surrounded by statues in the front of the property. At that time, I had never seen anything so fancy in my life, and I was overwhelmed with the exhibits at the property. According to the LA Times, when the fire got close to the Paul Getty Museum, the Brentwood office location activated emergency response operations remotely to save the exhibits. The Palisades fire didn’t damage the property or the precious exhibits inside, thanks to hi-tech technology that the museum had built prior. Getty had a high-tech protection system, and so did my life. People who were in charge of Paul Getty's property, even from a distance, were able to protect the museum from burning down. I feel just like that about my life because I believe in God, who is remotely operating my life and helping me to survive.

I used to attend a community college in Santa Monica. It was 1996, and the school was not far from the Pacific Palisades. I also had a friend who lived in Pacific Palisades as a student on a visa, and she stayed with an American family.  The lady that my friend lived with passed away years later, and I am not sure what happened to her home. Pacific Palisades, just like Beverly Hills, was an exclusive and elite neighborhood. Lots of beautiful architecture and many houses were painted white and off-white with impeccable gardens. Going up and down the streets in your car, you will see many palm trees. The center of Chisinau reminds me of Palisades, a lot of architecture, fountains, and lush lines of trees. Even though the center is very European-looking, it has a structure of richness, history, and architecture, just like the Pacific Palisades.

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Bozhena Johnson grew up in Moldova. She speaks Russian, Moldovan, English, and Spanish. She is a student in an MFA program for creative nonfiction at BayPath University. Currently, she is working on a biography about a Holocaust survivor. Another passion of hers is writing poetry.