My Sergei (22 page)

To Moscow?

They said sure. Of course. So we called home, and when my mother picked up the phone, Sergei said, “Hello, Grandma.”

“Already?” she cried. She wasn’t coming for another week and thought she’d be there in time to explain all these things about
having a baby to me.

Daria weighed five pounds, four ounces, and was in perfect health. But she was by far the smallest baby in the observation
room. And every other baby in there had a full head of hair. The fact that she had no hair drove me crazy. I don’t know why.
That first night I was so upset that I cried all night long. I was thinking, I did a bad job. I didn’t eat properly, I skated
too long, and that’s why Daria has no hair. I was such a sad, funny little mom, and very far from home.

S
ergei went back to the condominium from the hospital
and drank an entire bottle of champagne. Then he called everyone that we knew. All night long he made phone calls, telling
people that Daria was going to be a tennis player, because she was so interested in watching the U.S. Open that she came early.

He brought flowers and gifts when he visited me the next day, and when, three days later, I went home from the hospital, he
was all the time hugging me and kissing me, all the time taking pictures of me and Daria. I had never seen him so happy. And
every time I suggested someone we should call—Yegor or Fadeev, maybe—he’d answer, “Oh, Katuuh, we don’t have to, because
I’ve already called them.” He’d rung up a very big bill.

We were both looking forward to my mom coming to stay with us, because I was still unsure at times what I was doing. There
were no problems, fortunately. The breast-feeding was going fine, and Sergei and I had watched the nurse change the diapers,
so we were able to try this delicate procedure together. When I left him alone a couple of times with Daria as she slept,
he asked me nervously what to do if she woke up. I told him I didn’t know. And I didn’t.

It was a big load off my mind when my mom finally arrived. I was still worried about Daria being so small and having such
red skin and no hair. I started complaining to her about Daria’s appearance, and she told me to be quiet, that I was a scarier
looking baby than Daria. She said that Daria was just beautiful.

Mom showed us how to do everything: burp Daria, give her baths, change her clothes. When Daria was crying sometimes, Mom would
peel a grape and put it in cheesecloth, and she would let Daria suck it. This always quieted her down. Every day there was
some small change. One day she’d move her eyes. The next day she’d move her legs. The first bath. The first smile. All the
time we were thanking God that He had brought us such happiness.

Twelve days after Daria was born, on September 23, Sergei took me to the gym to work out for the first time, and we started
going back every day. So when Jay Ogden came to the condominium to find out if we were going to be ready to skate that season,
we told him we would. Rehearsals were starting in a month.

Sergei wanted me to ask Jay for more money. “Ask him, Katuuh,” he prodded. I tried, but you know, I can’t ask these questions
about money. The words actually wouldn’t come out of my mouth. If Sergei had been the one to speak English, he would have
done all our negotiating. But he didn’t, so it was left up to me. I finally managed to say something like, “Do you think it
might be a possibility to consider letting us earn a little more money now that we have a baby?” Jay listened to this question,
then reminded me that IMG had a choice of which pairs skaters to invite for their tour, and hoped that we would accept their
offer. That was the note we left on. We didn’t decide anything then.

A family of three.

In the end we agreed to return for the same money we’d been making before. On the thirtieth of September I finally skated
again, nineteen days after Daria was born and about six months since landing those double axels in my last practice in Halifax.
I was falling down every time I tried to jump, and I was also having some back pain. But it was a thrill to be on the ice
again.

Our new, small family was so happy. It was beautiful in New Jersey in the fall, and we took Daria for walks in the nearby
park. When she was one month old, we had her picture taken for her American passport. The poor little thing could not even
hold her head up for this photograph, and you can see, in the passport photo, Sergei’s fingers propping her head up from behind.
In his big hands, she looks like a tiny bird. Daria will remain a dual citizen of Russia and the United States until she is
eighteen, and then she has to decide.

Rehearsals for Stars on Ice were in Lake Placid that year. They began the nineteenth of October, and before we left New Jersey,
we had to decide what to do with Daria. We didn’t want to keep her in a hotel, where IMG had gotten rooms for the skaters,
and no one suggested to us that we take a condominium or rent a house in Lake Placid. In future years, we insisted on this,
but at the time we didn’t think of it. No one said to us, “Would you like to bring Daria, too? We can find a place with a
kitchen.” We should have asked, I know. But we didn’t. We were just happy Stars on Ice took us back, and it was very important
that we didn’t lose another year of skating. So we decided we couldn’t take Daria with us because we had to work.

This is why most skaters don’t have babies. Very few do while they’re still performing. You have a year off the ice, and it’s
difficult to bring your body back. Then you’re traveling all the time without your baby. If Daria had been born in early summer,
we’d have had more time to be with her after she was born. Or if Sergei had been a singles skater and had been able to make
money by himself, maybe I’d have been able to stop skating and concentrate on being a mom. But he couldn’t skate without me.
And my dad was retired, living on a pension. And my mom had very limited possibilities to earn money.

So my mom quit her job and told me, “I’m at your disposal; I still have enough energy; I will take care of Daria. Now you
can go back to work. You’re young, and you love your work. Better that you should miss Daria than that she has to follow you
around the country living in hotels.”

That was the thinking, but it was driving me crazy that I wasn’t going to be a mom to my baby daughter. What choice, though,
was there? We could quit skating to be with Daria, have no money, live like all Russian people back in Moscow, and someday
coach. Or we could skate and let my mom raise Daria. That was the choice.

My mother decided that she would take Daria to visit Terry Foley’s family in California while we were in Lake Placid. That
way she wouldn’t be alone in New Jersey. We weaned Daria from my breast milk and put her on the bottle, and on the seventeenth
we drove my mom and Daria to the airport. She was just five weeks old.

It was okay until they had gone. But afterward, when Sergei and I sat in the car, I never had such a terrible feeling before.
It was like half of my heart had gone away. It was the same with Sergei. We didn’t talk. We didn’t say anything to each other.
Then we realized we were driving exactly the wrong direction home from the airport. We were seeing signs for Atlantic City.
It didn’t matter, we both felt so empty and sad. When I made the decision to let my mom take my baby, I didn’t think it would
be so terrible. And when we got home I just lay down on my bed and cried.

Irene Ersek

Back on the ice after Daria’s birth.

My mom called that night. She made me feel better by telling me they had arrived safely and that everything was fine. There
were lots of toys at Terry’s house for Daria. So I was in slightly better spirits when Sergei and I drove to Lake Placid to
start rehearsals.

Every day we were on the ice from 10:00
A.M.
to 6:00
P.M.
I was still very weak, but we were both hungry for skating. Sergei’s shoulder felt good, and the lifts were going okay. Michael
Seibert, who’d been an ice dancer with his partner, Judy Blumberg, was creating two new programs for us, and it was the first
time we’d worked with Michael. He could lift me without a problem, and would show all these dance lifts to Sergei. He also
gave us lots of new steps to learn. It was fun for us, and I began getting stronger. We even started doing our triple twist
again.

Jay Ogden came to Lake Placid that fall, and we agreed to be paid the same money as the year before. Then he told us that
for the World Professional Championships in Landover in December, he could get us an appearance guarantee of twenty thousand
dollars from the organizers. The prize money at these championships was forty thousand dollars for first, thirty thousand
for second, and twenty thousand for third. Four pairs had been invited, all Russians: Elena Bechke and Denis Petrov; Natalia
Mishkutenok and Artur Dmitriev; Elena Valova and Oleg Vassiliev; and us. Sergei told Jay, “We don’t need this guarantee. It’s
impossible for us to finish lower than third.” You should have seen the look on Jay’s face. He thought he was doing such a
great job for us. But that’s how confident Sergei was that we were once again healthy.

I was still heavyhearted from having left Daria. I was worried that she wouldn’t remember me as her mother, that she’d forget
me entirely, even. All her life, I have worried about this. I missed holding her. I spent all my free time shopping for her
and sending her things. I knew that she would probably grow up loving her grandma more than me, but short of giving up skating,
there was nothing I could do about it. That is the life that we chose.

It was the same with me when I was a little girl. I never had a baby-sitter. I didn’t know what the word meant. When my mother
was away at work for a year, my grandmother was the one who raised me. It’s not easy for three generations to all live together
in the same house. There were some problems between my father and my grandmother. Just as now, there are sometimes problems
with me and Daria and my mom. Sometimes Daria doesn’t listen to me because she is listening to my mother. But I have to handle
it, because I’d rather Daria be with her grandmother than with a babysitter. I’m lucky to have a mother who is so wonderful
with my baby, and I think this connection between generations is important. You learn about family history. You learn about
responsibility between generations. Already I feel a responsibility for my parents, and it’s a nice feeling. It isn’t a hardship.
How can I be mad that my daughter loves my mother so much, when I remember how much I loved my grandmother? Besides, I love
my mom, too.

My mother took Daria back to Moscow in November, though Sergei and I had two days in a hotel with them in New York before
they left. I didn’t expect Daria to have grown so much, so fast. It was great to see them, but I also knew they were going
to go away soon, so I wasn’t able to be completely happy. I was also nervous about how Daria would be at home with Veld, our
Great Dane. Veld loved my mom very much, and I feared he’d be jealous. But as it turned out, he used to stand by Daria’s crib
and guard her. I missed Daria every single moment that we toured that fall, but I also knew it was no life for a little baby
to be in the hotels, airplanes, and buses.

Later that month we went to Ottawa to visit Marina so she could look at our programs before the professional competitions.
She made the
Nutcracker
a little fresher and teased us that we should begin to train for the 1994 Olympics. She said a lot of professionals were
going to compete in Lillehammer, and she was planting a seed in our heads. But I was still having trouble with my jumps, so
I couldn’t take her seriously.

The Landover competition was December 9, and I was very nervous, without much confidence. I thought about Daria all the time,
and I kept asking myself, Should I skate or be a mom? This struggle didn’t give my mind any rest. But Sergei took my hand
to calm me down before we took the ice, and wonder of wonders, I finally landed the double axel that had been giving me so
many problems. We defended our professional title just three months after having a baby, which made me proud.