From those places came photographs of uncles and cousins one had never seen, and letters, and sometimes the uncles themselves.
These uncles were just like people in Polotzk; the people in Russia, one understood, were very different.

In answer to one's questions, the visiting uncles said all sorts of silly things, to make everybody laugh; and so one never found out why Vitebsk and Vilna, since they were not Polotzk, were not as sad as Russia.

Mother hardly cried at all when the uncles went away.
One time, when I was about eight years old, one of my grown-up cousins went to Vitebsk.

Everybody went to see her off, but I didn't.
I went with her.

I was put on the train, with my best dress tied up in a bandana, and I stayed on the train for hours and hours, and came to Vitebsk.