Again stuck at the crossing,” sighed Klavdiya Petrovna, adjusting her woolen scarf. “Do you think, Anya, we might get lucky and find a gold bar on the tracks?”
“A gold bar, yeah right,” I chuckled, “all you’d find here is a frozen crow.”
The November wind was bone-chilling. I was returning from an evening shift at the station where I had been a cashier for years. The sky hung so low it seemed it might fall on our heads at any moment. The lamps along the railway lit up every other one, turning the path home into a strange dance of light and shadow.
After Nikolai’s death—three years had passed, but it still hurt to remember—I often lingered at work. Home greeted me with nothing but silence and a radio playing in the kitchen. Sometimes I wrote letters to my friend Tamara in Novosibirsk, but she replied rarely—she had three kids, after all.
That evening, I decided to take a shortcut through the spare tracks. My legs were buzzing from fatigue when I heard a sound. At first, I thought it was my imagination. But the sound repeated—a soft whimper, like a kitten’s.
“Kitty, kitty,” I called out, peering into the darkness between the sleepers.
The sound became clearer. It was definitely a cry, a child’s cry.
My heart skipped a beat. I rushed towards the sound, stumbling over stones and frozen earth. Behind a pile of old sleepers, curled up, was a little girl. In the dim light of the lantern, I saw her dirty, tear-streaked face with huge frightened eyes.
“Lord,” I gasped, kneeling down. “How did you end up here?”
The girl, about five years old, just curled up tighter and went silent.
“She’s completely frozen,” I touched her cheek. Cold as ice. “Come with me, we’ll have some tea with raspberry jam at home.”
She didn’t resist when I picked her up. So light, as if she were a feather.
“I’m Anna Vasilyevna,” I spoke as I carried her home. “I live nearby. I have a cat, Vasily. He’s naughty—always tries to poop in the slippers when I forget to feed him on time.”
The girl was silent, but I felt her gradually relax, pressing against my shoulder.
At home, the first thing I did was stoke the stove. While the water heated, I fed the girl hot soup. She ate eagerly but neatly, frequently glancing at me from under her brow.
“Don’t be scared,” I smiled. “No one will hurt you.”
After a bath, dressed in my old nightgown (I had to roll up the sleeves ten times), she finally spoke:
“Are you really not going to drive me away?”
“Really,” I replied, combing her tangled hair. “And will you tell me your name?”
“Lena,” she whispered. “Lenochka.”
The police were of no help the next day. No reports of a missing child had been filed. The officer, a young lad, sighed sympathetically:
“We’ll have to place her in an orphanage. You understand, it’s the procedure…”
“No,” I said firmly. “It won’t be necessary.”
“Anna Vasilyevna,” he hesitated, “but you live alone…”
“So? I’ll manage. I’m not young anymore.”
That evening, sitting in the kitchen with a cup of milk, Lenochka suddenly asked:
“Why didn’t you have children?”
I nearly dropped the ladle:
“Who said I didn’t?”
“There are no photos anywhere,” she shrugged.
“Smart girl,” I chuckled. “It just wasn’t meant to be. But now I have you.”
She smiled—for the first time in those days—and I knew: I would not give her to anyone. Come what may.
“Mom, why do you have such a strange dress in that photograph?” Lenochka held an old picture where I was in my best crepe dress.
“It’s not strange, it was fashionable. I stood in line for a year to buy that fabric.”
The guardianship paperwork dragged on for three months. Endless paperwork, offices, and skeptical looks from officials. “Do you understand the responsibility? What if her parents show up? How do you plan to support her?”
I just shrugged: “We’ll manage somehow.” At night, I counted pennies, figured out how to stretch my salary for two. I turned old curtains into a dress for Lenochka, tailored a jacket for her from my old coat.
Neighbors whispered behind my back: “Why does she need this? She has no children of her own, so she took someone else’s. What if the child has bad genes?”
Nina Stepanovna from the first floor was particularly diligent. Every time we met at the entrance, she sighed dramatically and rolled her eyes: “Oh, Anna, you’ll suffer with her…”
Lenochka once couldn’t hold back:
“And you, Aunt Nina, are just jealous. You have an adult son, and he doesn’t even visit you.”
I barely held back my laughter, looking at Nina’s elongated face. At home, of course, I scolded her for her impudence, but deep down, I was proud—she was developing character.
Gradually, life got better. Lenochka started first grade, I took a job as a janitor at her school—to be closer to her. Teachers couldn’t praise her enough: capable, quick to learn.
In the evenings, we often sat at the old dining table—I checked her notebooks, she did her homework. Sometimes she would suddenly look up from her workbook:
“Mom, is it true that they used to write letters differently?”
“Who told you that?”
“Some boy in class. He says his grandmother still wrote with ‘yat’ letters.”
“And what did you answer?”
“I told him that nowadays, the main thing is to write without mistakes.”
On rare weekends, we celebrated. Baked pies, made jam, and in the winter, we made dumplings. Lenochka loved this process, although she got more flour on herself than anything else. The dumplings were almost meatless, but still something.
“Mom, look, this dumpling looks like our school principal!” she laughed, showing me a lopsided lump.
“Give me that principal, or he’ll end up in the soup, and that would be awkward.”
There were, of course, difficulties. In the sixth grade, Lenochka got involved with a group of older students. She began skipping classes, talking back. I spent nights awake, wondering—where did I go wrong, what did I miss?
The culmination was her running away from home. A note on the table: “Don’t look for me, I’m not your real daughter anyway.” I rushed to the station—I felt in my heart she would be there. And sure enough: she sat on that very bench where we had first met. Frozen, tear-streaked.
“So, where were you planning to go?” I asked, sitting next to her.
“I don’t know…” she sniffed. “Just… everyone says you’re not my real mother.”
“And what does ‘real’ mean? The one who left you out in the cold?”
“I’m sorry…” she buried her face in my shoulder. “I won’t do it again.”
At home, over tea with raspberry jam (the same as on that first evening), she suddenly asked:
“Did you ever regret taking me in?”
“Did you ever regret staying with me?”
We looked at each other and laughed.
Time flew by unnoticed. Lenochka grew up, changed. From an awkward teenager, she turned into a beautiful young woman. After school, she decided to go to medical school—she said she wanted to help people. I was only happy: it meant all those years of teaching her kindness were not in vain.
I remember how she came home after her graduation—happy, with a medal on her chest. She sat down next to me on the couch:
“Mom, I keep thinking… They say there are no coincidences. Maybe it was fate—that you walked down that road then?”
“Maybe it was fate,” I smiled. “But I’ll tell you this: fate may be fate, but the choice is always ours.”
That evening, she first told me about her past. About her alcoholic mother, the beatings, how her mother brought another boyfriend home and he… Lenochka didn’t finish, but I understood. That day she ran away from home and never returned.
“I was afraid for a long time that you’d turn out the same,” she confessed. “But then I realized: real love isn’t about blood, it’s about the heart.”
When it came time for her to leave for university, we both cried. I packed everything I could for her: an old suitcase, a little money, a jar of jam…
“Mom, enough with the coddling, I’m not a little girl anymore!”
“You’ll always be a little girl to me.”
Then there were letters, rare phone calls from the call station, brief visits during holidays. Lenochka studied excellently, worked as a nurse at the hospital. I was proud of her and increasingly caught myself thinking: how good it was that, back in ’75, I didn’t just walk by.
I’m ashamed to admit, but there was a moment when I almost gave up. In the first year, when the money was completely gone and the salary wasn’t even enough for food. I was about to go to the guardianship authorities… And then the neighbor from upstairs, Maria Ivanovna, brought a whole bag of children’s clothes—her granddaughter had outgrown them.
“Hang in there, Anyuta,” she said then. “God didn’t just send you that girl for no reason.”
And I held on. Learned to darn, remodel, cut from nothing. Mastered unimaginable recipes from the bare minimum. Lenochka never complained, even when she had to wear remade clothes or eat potato soup for three days in a row.
I remember, we were sitting in the kitchen after her first internship at the hospital. She, tired but satisfied, warmed her hands on a cup of tea:
“You know, mom, I was thinking… Everyone complains about their Soviet childhood—there wasn’t this, couldn’t get that. But I only remember how we made dumplings while listening to ‘Theater at the Microphone,’ how you braided my hair and told fairy tales. Even that old dress made from your skirt was my favorite—you even added lace at the hem…”
At the medical school graduation, our entire station family gathered. Klavdiya Petrovna dressed in her best suit, which she saved for special occasions, Zina the cashier brought a huge bouquet of peonies from her garden. Even Nina Stepanovna hobbled over—she had a hard time walking by then.
When Lenochka went up on stage for her diploma, I caught a glimpse of our neighbors dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs. And I remember how they gossiped back then…
“Anya,” Nina Stepanovna touched my elbow, “forgive me, old fool. Remember how I nagged you—why, for what? And look what a daughter you raised—a doctor! You didn’t suffer with her, as I prophesied, but found your happiness.”
I watched as my girl, now Dr. Elena Anatolyevna, received congratulations from the teachers, and I thought: every wrinkle on my face, every sleepless night by her bedside, every darn on an old coat—none of it was in vain. Lord, how it was not in vain…
And Lenochka… she grew up to be a real doctor. “A gift from God,” colleagues said. But for me, she always remained that little girl from the railway, who one cold November evening changed my entire life.
And then she gave me a house! Many years later. Let her tell it.
I had long planned this surprise for my mom. Saved up, worked two jobs, took night shifts, invested money wisely.. I chose the house carefully—a one-story so mom wouldn’t have to climb stairs, with a big garden where she could grow her favorite peonies.
When I came to pick her up that March day, she was bustling in the kitchen, baking her signature pies:
“Lenochka, why didn’t you warn me! I would’ve tidied up…”
“Mom, forget the cleaning. Let’s go, there’s something to do.”
“What kind of business?” she wiped her hands on her apron. “My dough is rising…”
“The dough can wait.”
All the way, she tried to pry out where we were going. I dodged her questions, though my heart was pounding with excitement. When we turned onto a dirt road, mom grew wary:
“Len, you’re not taking me to some hospital, are you? I’m healthy!”
“Better,” I winked.
At the gates of the new house, she stopped dead. Spacious veranda, bright windows, apple trees in the garden…
“People live beautifully,” she sighed.
“Now you’ll live here.”
She didn’t believe it at first. Then she cried. Walked around the rooms, touched the walls, as if checking—it wasn’t a dream, was it?
“Daughter, how… It must have cost a fortune…”
“And you think why I slaved away in a private clinic for so many years? So you wouldn’t freeze in your old age in that Khrushchev-era flat?”
We spent another week in the old apartment, packing up. Every little thing held memories. Here’s the worn tablecloth where I learned to write letters. Here’s the cup with a chipped handle—I broke it on the first day when my hands were shaking from fear. Mom didn’t scold me then, just glued it and said: “Now it’s special.”
Neighbors helped with the move. Even Nina Stepanovna brought over her famous “Napoleon” cake:
“Don’t forget to visit us, Vasilyevna. Who will tell me the news now?”
In the new place, mom flourished. Started a garden, grew flowers. In the mornings, she sat in the gazebo, drank tea, and watched the sunrise. She said she had never slept so well—quiet, birds singing.
Only sometimes, I noticed how she secretly wiped away tears, looking at old photographs. Especially the one where we were by the Christmas tree—I was six, in a dress made from a remade curtain, so happy.
“You know,” she said one evening as we sat on the veranda, “I almost walked by then. It was dark, scary… And then I thought—what if someone needs help?”
“And how did it turn out, huh?” I took her hand. “You saved me, and now I’m saving you.”
“Goof,” she patted my head like when I was little. “You’ve already saved me a long time ago. From loneliness, from emptiness… After my husband died, I was completely lost. But then you appeared—and meaning returned.”
Recently, I took a leave from work, moved my office to an extension of mom’s house. I’ll treat patients here—half the town comes to me anyway. And most importantly—I can be close to her.
In the evenings, we still drink tea with raspberry jam. Only now, not in a cramped kitchen, but on a spacious veranda. Mom started a new tradition—baking pies for a nearby orphanage.
“Maybe,” she says, “someone’s fate is waiting there too.”
And I look at her and think: what a joy it is—to have the opportunity to repay the person who gave you life. Not the first, biological one, but the real one—full of love, care, and warmth.
And let them say that miracles don’t happen. I know: the main miracle happened on that cold November evening in 1975 when a lonely woman didn’t walk past a frozen child on the railway. Everything else is just gratitude for that miracle.
Now, every evening, I go into mom’s room, adjust the blanket, and kiss her on the cheek—just like she did when I was little. And every time she whispers:
“Thank you, daughter.”
“And thank you, mom. For everything.”
========
“Can you believe it, mom, my Masha is still carrying that old stethoscope. Says it’s lucky,” Lena adjusted the pillow behind her mother’s back.
“Of course it’s lucky,” Anna Vasilyevna smiled. “You listened to your first patient with it. I remember as if it were yesterday—neighbor Vitya when he collapsed with a fever.”
The last five years flew by like one day. After moving to the new house, life changed unrecognizably. Anna Vasilyevna, who had lived her entire life in an old Khrushchev flat, initially felt lost in the spacious rooms. Every morning she woke up thinking it was a dream—warm floors, large windows, a garden behind the house.
Especially the silence amazed her. In the old apartment, something was always buzzing, creaking; neighbors argued through the walls. Here—only birds sang and the wind rustled in the apple tree branches.
Lena, now head of the department in a private clinic, moved her office to an annex to the house. “To keep an eye on you,” she said. But Anna Vasilyevna knew—her daughter just didn’t want to leave her alone. Just like she herself once couldn’t walk past a freezing child.
Granddaughter Masha, a spitting image of young Lenochka, was in her third year of medical school. Came every weekend, brought textbooks, anatomical atlases. Spread all this wealth on the veranda:
“Granny, let me tell you about the nervous system?”
“Go on,” Anna Vasilyevna agreed, though she understood medical terms no better than Chinese script.
One day Masha brought an old photo album. In the yellowed pictures—Lenochka in a school uniform, first day at the institute, graduation…
“Mom, remember how you found me?” Lena suddenly asked, sitting down next to her.
“How could I forget that?” Anna Vasilyevna stroked the photograph. “November, terrible chill. I’m walking home from work, hear someone crying…”
Masha listened, mouth agape. She knew this story from childhood, but every time she asked to hear it again.
“Imagine,” Lena told her daughter, “if grandma had walked by then, there would be neither you nor our family…”
“Would I have walked by?” Masha suddenly asked.
“I don’t know, sunshine,” Anna Vasilyevna smiled. “Everyone decides that for themselves.”
That evening, after seeing off her granddaughter, Anna Vasilyevna sat on the veranda for a long time. She looked at the stars, remembered her life. Remembered how scared she was to take responsibility for someone else’s child, how she counted pennies, remade old dresses… It all seemed so distant—and so important.
And the next morning, Lena announced that she had signed up her mother for “silver” volunteers at the children’s home.
“You make such pies! You’ll teach the kids…”
“What can I do at my age…”
“Mom, you’re seventy-five—not two hundred. Let’s shake up the old times!”
And it all started spinning. Every Wednesday, Lena took her mother to the children’s home. They already knew there—if the “pie grandma” arrived, it meant a holiday. Kids swarmed around, reaching out their hands: “Can I stir the dough?”, “Can I add the filling?”
Sometimes, watching these kids, Anna Vasilyevna saw her little Lenochka in them. The same wary eyes at first, the same craving for love and warmth…
Lena found it increasingly difficult to juggle work in the clinic with caring for her mother. Patients increased—word of the doctor who not only treated but put her soul into her work, spread throughout the city. And then there was Masha with her issues…
“Mom, can you imagine, she wants to quit medicine!” Lena complained to her mother after another conversation with her daughter. “Says she’ll go into psychology.”
“What’s so bad about that?” Anna Vasilyevna calmly stirred the dough for another batch of pies. “She’ll still be helping people.”
“But don’t you understand! I put so much effort into…”
“How much did I put into you?” her mother interrupted. “And was it in vain?”
Lena paused. Remembered how she herself once feared to tell her mother that she wanted to go to medical school. Thought—she’ll be upset, they always had barely enough money.
And in the evening at the family council, Masha announced:
“I’ve decided. I’ll study to be a child psychologist and work in the same orphanage where grandma bakes pies.”
“God, granddaughter, half the kids there will be your patients,” Anna Vasilyevna laughed.
“That’s good!” Masha picked up. “We’ll heal souls as a family business. You with pies, me with talks, mom with pills.”
Lena just shook her head. After all, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree… She herself once longed to help people, not thinking about money or career.
By then, Anna Vasilyevna had become a staple at the children’s home. The kids called her “Granny Anya,” shared secrets, showed diaries. One girl, Sonya—quiet, with sad eyes—especially bonded with her.
“You know,” Anna Vasilyevna told her daughter one day, “when I look at her, I remember you as a little girl.”
“Mom, don’t even think about it!” Lena flustered. “You’re not twenty anymore…”
“And you’re not five,” her mother countered. “But did that stop us from becoming a family?”
Soon, Sonya began coming to their house—first on weekends, then more often. She helped Anna Vasilyevna with pies, listened to stories about “old times,” hauled apples from the garden. Once she confessed:
“Granny Anya, can I call you my grandmother?”
“You can, darling,” Anna Vasilyevna surreptitiously wiped a tear.
And life spun again—now for four. Lena grumbled for formality, but quietly prepared guardianship documents. Anna Vasilyevna glowed with happiness—as if years had fallen away. Masha and Sonya whispered about something of their own, girlish.
A neighbor popped in one day, surprised:
“Vasilyevna, why are you getting younger? Fallen in love in your old age?”
“Fallen in love,” she agreed. “In life. See how it is—just when you think everything’s been done, it throws you a new twist.”
That evening, when everyone had gone to their rooms, Lena sat down next to her mother:
“You know, mom… I’ve been thinking. Maybe this is our calling—to pick up souls that lack warmth?”
“Maybe,” Anna Vasilyevna smiled. “Just don’t say it like that. We don’t pick them up. They find us.”
Autumn was warm. In the garden, the last asters Sonya planted in the spring were still blooming. Anna Vasilyevna loved to sit on the veranda, watching the leaves fall from the apple trees. Masha’s dog—a big mongrel named Funtik, picked up near the hospital—usually settled next to her.
“Ba, remember how you first fed me pies?” Sonya sat down next to the old woman, laying her head on her shoulder.
“Of course I remember. You even asked—can I come back tomorrow?”
“And stayed for a lifetime,” the girl giggled. “Listen, is it true that Aunt Lena also…”
“True,” Anna Vasilyevna nodded. “Only she was by the railway, and you were in the orphanage. But the essence is the same—we met and understood: family. And now I’m your grandmother, you have a sister, a mom.”
In the evening, everyone gathered together—Lena came from her shift, Masha brought some papers, even Funtik scurried around, begging for treats. Sonya helped set the table:
“Mom, can I go to the movies with Katya on the weekend?”
Lena froze, hearing “mom.” After two years, she still hadn’t gotten used to it.
“You know what I think?” Masha suddenly said, putting aside her textbook. “We all saved each other. Grandma saved mom, mom—me from endless doubts, I—Funtik from the street, and Sonya… Sonya saved us all from boredom!”
“You chatterbox,” Anna Vasilyevna grumbled, but her eyes smiled.
Then they drank tea with apple pie. Sonya showed off an ‘A’ in physics, Masha shared impressions of her practice at the orphanage, Lena talked about a complicated case at work. Funtik laid his head on Anna Vasilyevna’s knees, blissfully closing his eyes.
“Mom, remember how scared you were to move to the new house?” Lena suddenly asked.
“Wouldn’t you be! I thought—where am I, old, to get used to. And now look—there’s room for everyone.”
“And love enough,” Sonya added.
“And pies!” Masha chimed in.
“And cares,” Lena grumbled, but then smiled.
In the evening, when everyone had dispersed, Anna Vasilyevna took out the old album. Here she is young, just after finding Lenochka. Here’s Lena with little Masha. And here are new photos—Sonya with Funtik, everyone in the garden, Sonya’s first birthday in the new family…
“Mom, why aren’t you sleeping?” Lena entered the room.
“Just thinking… Remember you asked if I regretted taking you in?”
“I remember. You answered a question with a question.”
“Otherwise, none of this would have happened. Neither you—a doctor, nor Masha with her psychology, nor Sonya…”
“Nor Funtik,” Lena laughed.
” Him too. You know, daughter, I’ve realized: a family is like a river. It seems to start from a little stream, but then it absorbs new streams and only gets stronger.”
Lena hugged her mother:
“You’re a philosopher. Let’s go to sleep, we have to get up early tomorrow. Sonya has a parents’ meeting, Masha has a test, I have surgery…”
“And I have pies,” Anna Vasilyevna added. “Kids at the orphanage are waiting.”
Falling asleep, she thought: this is happiness. Not in wealth, not in honors. But in the fact that even at eighty, you can still be needed by someone. And in the love you once gave away, which returns manifold—through years, through generations. The main thing is not to walk by.