These guys did not get the concept of social distancing.
Ocean Beach in San Francisco was almost empty. The wind was howling, and the COVID-19 epidemic of early 2020 had the city in lockdown mode. We were all keeping at least ten feet distance, which was easy on this vast expanse populated mostly by birds. I became fascinated with the crows that were fighting the wind, took a few pictures, and posted them on Facebook.
I noticed that my friend Susan, a sketch artist, had also posted images of crows. Could it be a random coincidence? No. Her group was sketching them because their Latin name is Corvid—so similar to Covid. I looked it up on Google, and that’s how this story started.
When I was in grammar school, my best friend was Tania. Of course. It was the most popular name of my Russian community. And the San Francisco I grew up in might as well have been deep in the heart of Russia. Our lives were entwined around Russian School, Russian Church, and, most important, Russian Scouts. A key aspect of our scouting life was the granting of a forest name. My older brother Alex was a wise owl, and I couldn’t wait to learn who I would become.
The wind had them performing funny gymnastics.
Tania’s mother, Lydia, who was the head of our Girl Scout division, thought I was a bad influence on her daughter. She was probably right. We would sneak away to dens of iniquity like the nearby bowling alley, a serious no-no. We certainly never told her about the man in the park who waved his member at us, a display we were too young and naïve to understand.
But I got my just desserts. Lydia got to pick my forest name. She chose soroka. It was many years before I knew what that word meant in English. There was no reason to translate; this was part of my Russian world, which had nothing to do with Americans. I knew this animal in my heart and soul. Why would I think about translating it?
In our world, a soroka was a loud, ugly, argumentative black bird with no redeeming features. I had never seen one, but it was a well-known character. I was mortified and would’ve shot anyone who called me by that name. My best friend’s mother destroyed forever something I had looked forward to with anticipation and excitement. Then the Russian world conspired to free her daughter of my bad influence.
In the early 1960s, the Russian community built a huge new cathedral on Geary Street near our house. Known as Joy of All Who Sorrow, it brought me only sorrow for a long time. Tania’s family was very prominent in the Russian community and got enmeshed in a major battle about cost overruns and financing. They fled the conflict and moved to Washington, D.C. As a result, I lost my best friend. I missed Tania with all my heart. In those days before email, before the Internet, before Facebook, she and I eventually lost contact.
But my forest name lived on. On top of everything else, there is a well known children’s poem in Russian about a Сорока who cooks porridge and says to one young boy: А тебе ничего. You have been bad, for you nothing. And of course those were the words my grandmother used in anger when she would give Alex a little treat—and for me, nothing.
“I’m gone.”
My first American boyfriend had me look up the translation. The bland word magpie had no connotations for me. Greg explained that magpies are beautiful and very smart. It didn’t work. My self-esteem was not powerful enough to shift the image of a soroka. Deep inside, I knew I was argumentative and loud and ugly, and I deserved the name.
And of course now I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I look up the Corvid family and find out that not only the crows I was so fascinated with at the beach are members, but so is the magpie.
While I’m online, I decide to look up Tania as well. I am stunned to find a video of her mother’s 100th birthday celebration on March 8, just two weeks earlier. Her brother George, as handsome as ever, plays virtuoso piano while an older but vibrant Lydia sings and dances, and a gorgeous dark-haired Tania joins in the fun. Just a few days later the pandemic had locked us all down.
I dig a bit further and find that Tania and her husband run a meditation center. I send a note and hear back from her within hours. She tells me I must have been reading her mind. Somehow, she had found and read my book, was reminded of our common backgrounds, and was planning to reach out to me. Joy permeates me.
And finally it sinks in. After sixty years, my soroka—my Corvid—has granted me a magical gift. A gift of connection in the middle of a distancing global crisis.
I go back and play a birthday party video where everyone sings a song for Lydia. It is a song about a bluebird. At the end, a young man, perhaps a grandson, explains the connection: bluebird was Lydia’s forest name. That’s how deep this concept of a forest name was.
The beach was mostly empty of people, but those who were there spaced themselves carefully and connected with smiles.
Lydia celebrated her one hundredth birthday with a song about a bluebird. If I should live to be one hundred, please, please, do not sing about magpies.
Sending lots of love and peaceful thoughts,
Tania, or Soroka