The foreign language that changed my teenage son’s life

As Max grew older, his explorations became increasingly solitary, which led me to a new concern: his interests away of his fellow human beings rather than towards them. (To protect his future privacy, I will refer to him by his middle name in this article.) Max was always a shy child, slow to approach new people and content to spend long periods of time alone. The pandemic, which struck when he was 10, didn’t help. Academically, studying remotely worked well for Max, but socially it added to his isolation. When in-person classes started again, he kept to himself more than ever, quiet behind his mask. At home, with his family, he was thoughtful, funny and quick-witted, telling stories and asking endless questions. But when he arrived at school in the morning, it was as if a curtain fell between him and the world.

In the years of the pandemic, a new subject arose that once again captured his imagination: birds. Who knows why? Maybe creatures that could fly and hover were an attractive idea during endless lockdowns, or maybe birds were just a vast universe he could map. Texas, where we live, is home to 47 species of warblers alone, each with its own markings, songs and migration patterns to analyze and commit to memory. Max borrowed bird books from the library and lay in bed reading, absorbing facts and patterns and acquiring arcane knowledge. He went around wildlife websites, posting photos and trading IDs with bird watchers many times his age. He walked through the fields at dawn, binoculars in hand. Again he descended (or perhaps this time he ascended) and again I followed him. We spent many weekend mornings together walking along the lagoons of our local sewage treatment plant, looking for ruby-crowned queens and crested caracaras.

I also liked that watching birds connected him to other people. They are mainly people in their sixties and seventies, sure, but still: people. We joined our local Audubon chapter and took group walks through local cemeteries and nature preserves. While everyone else was looking at birds, I was looking at Max. When he and I were together in the world, I felt it was my job to serve as his translator, to stand up for him when he seemed shy or tongue-tied, and to push him forward when he withdrew. . But among his fellow birders, he began finding his own way into conversations, sharing observations, asking for help with identifications, and delving into the distinction between cliff swallows and cave swallows. On the way home in the car he talked to me about birds, and I talked to him about people: why they like eye contact, what questions you can ask them if you want to keep a conversation going. My work as a translator sometimes went both ways.

During the Christmas holidays, when he was twelve, Max’s curiosity led him in a new direction: he started learning Russian. I don’t know why he chose Russian, and if you ask him he doesn’t have a good answer either. Our family is not Russian. We have no Russian friends. It’s possible that the absurdity of the chase was exactly what attracted him to it. Whatever his motivation, he started practicing on a language app for an hour a day, sometimes more, and by the turn of the year he knew every Cyrillic letter, every backward R and N. Within a few weeks he could recite simple sentences. My wife and I walked past his room and heard him repeating Russian phrases on his iPad in a low monotone. It was like living with a twelve-year-old spy. He cycled to the main library downtown, picked up a Russian dictionary and cycled back a week later for a book on Russian grammar and a history of the tsars. Another deep dive was underway.

That fall, Max enrolled in a Russian-language school that met on Sunday afternoons at a Methodist church in Northwest Austin. Besides Max, the students were mainly children of recent Russian immigrants, and for them and their parents the school was a way to keep their culture alive in a foreign land. Every week their tribe gathered, a few dozen fair-haired, round-faced children playing chess and practicing Russian handwriting, while the parents set up steam tables and sold each other piping hot piroshkis, reminiscing about Moscow winters as they sheltered from the blazing sun of Texas.