Elliot got back two days ago. There was about two weeks of radio silence, and Judy was a bit of a basket case. Turned out that he got stuck for a bit on an island called Ponta Delgada. The shipping freighter wasn’t going in the right direction, but his contact arranged for him to catch a second ship six days out.
Kaszmyric is staying with Judy and Elliot. He was very happy to get out of the USSR, but is worried about defecting officially. His knowledge is too important to the USSR’s space and energy science programs that if he shows up as a defector to the US, he’s worried about being targeted for assassination. Given what Elliot and I know about some of the possible applications of it, and the fact that he would have probably been disappeared and killed regardless of his allegiance, we tend to agree.
Elliot has not told him about what we’re hoping to do with his research, and unfortunately it has made him not very cooperative. We’ve tried to show him that we’re not some clandestine operation by allowing him to go out freely. But it will take a while to get him to be less guarded around us.
Elliot came by this morning, and we talked privately. He knows that today is a year out from my birth, and that there are less than six months left with my grandmother. I went and saw my grandmother two weeks ago, with Melanie. She got the diagnosis, and had a lot of questions for me.
“Michael, you told me that you would let me know when I got closer,” she chided gently.
The truth is, I don’t know whether telling her the date will be freeing or a burden, but I wanted to give her something.
“February 10th,” I said and she nodded. “Can you tell me the birthdays then? Of all my grandkids? Can you tell me yours?”
She had wondered for so long, she’d only asked the first couple of times we talked, but I knew she wanted to know. When we made our recordings, she mentioned it to my mother, that I was going to tell her before the end.
“August 29, 1984, I will be born,” I said in a whisper in the diner. “I will be 9lbs 13 ounces, and my mom says that it’s good that I’m a c-section, or Sam wouldn’t have been born.”
She laughed and cried as I told her all of the little details and things that I hadn’t been able to fill in before. By the end of the conversation we talked about making another set of recordings, and I agreed. We’ll do it after my aunt goes back to school.
She called me a few minutes before Elliot came over, and sang happy birthday to me. I didn’t tell Elliot that when he asked how I’ve been doing knowing I have less than 6 months with her.
Melanie wants to take me to see Return of the Jedi for my birthday. Now that Elliot is back, she wants us to have a little break from all of the dread. She knows that Vader’s Luke’s father, but she doesn’t know Leia is his sister. It will be nice to let her have a surprise.
Michael Christopher Cole 
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