I clearly remember the cold spring morning. The sun was still weakly warming, and the huge stones of some large temple gave off their winter cold and made me toiling and shivering. The church was empty. Somewhere in the distance, endless reading sounded faintly. Dad went somewhere ahead, and I sat alone for a long time near two or three strange old women. They sent me outside to bask in the sun. I went out, inhaled the pure aroma of spring with pleasure, but the cold wind pierced through me. I remember how my father came out to me, covered me with his clothes, tried to warm me up and asked me to be patient until the end of the mass. I did not protest, my soul was so bright and joyful that I remembered this day for the rest of my life.

In the following years, when we were schoolchildren, that is, before the war, my father no longer went to any church. His favorite churches were closed one after another, and the Pope called the remaining ones "Living Church" and did not go to them. At home, the icons were also hidden in a closet, fenced off with curtains. But my father prayed for a long time, both in the morning and in the evening. Mom forbade us to disturb my father, she said that he was resting or studying. Then we began to peep through the keyhole. If there was light in the room, we would quietly enter and often find Dad on his knees with a prayer book in his hands. Mom asked my father to lock the key, but he categorically refused, saying that children should always have access to it.

"Only he who does nothing is not mistaken," says the proverb. Therefore, in our upbringing, our parents made mistakes. I am writing about this to warn other parents and so that readers know that the "Dissertation" [Pestov N.E. Modern Practice of Orthodox Piety. - St. Petersburg: "Satis", 1994-1996] by Nikolai Evgrafovich Pestov is not the fruit of reflection, but really a life experience.

Dad spoiled us a lot. In the evenings, we looked forward to his return from work, because he gave us something every day, which my mother was very indignant about. Kolya's dad gave new postage stamps, me - an art postcard, Seryozha - a plywood animal.

For some reason, toy animals soon became Seryozha's property. He arranged them neatly on his shelf, he did not yet know how to count them, but he put them so close to each other that he immediately noticed if any toy was missing. "Empty space!" - he shouted, nervous and cried, because Kolya and I sometimes stole animals from him and forgot to return them to their place. Seryozha was capricious and very sickly, he suffered from a lack of appetite. When we were given sweets, Kolya and I immediately ate our share, and Seryozha hid his. He had his own wooden box, which we called "chest-locker".

Seryozha carefully pasted his "chest" with candy wrappers, colorful pictures and took it with him in the summer even to the dacha. The presence of this "chest" was the source of evil and sin, which early overwhelmed our weak children's souls. The "chest" was not locked, stood on the floor and was always filled with both fresh and dried, already two- or three-month-old sweets. Kolya and I, of course, sometimes wanted to eat, but we knew that it was forbidden to steal, and it was useless to ask Seryozha: he was greedy and only occasionally gave us small particles of sweets from the "chest". His mother praised him for this: "He is a good boy - he gives you his own!"

The presence of a "chest-locker" developed Seryozha's pride and greed, and Kolya and I, on the one hand, honesty (how else did we not steal?), and on the other hand, envy, condemnation and anger at our brother. "Miser, greedy!" - we teased Seryozha. "And you are gluttons, envious eyes!" - he answered us. These bickering turned into fights. But soon (I was then four years old) my parents entrusted our upbringing to strict, but fair governesses, and they themselves went to work. This had a beneficial effect; We became calmer, because the teachers did not single out any of us, but treated all three of us kindly and attentively. One of them was with us for a year, the other for more than three years, and we loved these women very much. They spoke German with us, and by the time I was eight years old, like my brothers, I was fluent in this language.

My father taught us to recite prayers by heart very early. It is precisely "to read," but not to pray, for prayer is the elevation of the mind and heart to God. And with our minds we were not yet able to understand anything about the invisible God, and our hearts were no longer pure, but stained with sinful feelings of anger, envy, etc. In the mornings and evenings we were placed before images, but these moments hardly brought us closer to God. I condemned the brothers for hastily and carelessly pronouncing prayers, and Seryozha was still very clumsy and could not read better. Kolya, on the contrary, seemed to boast of the correctness of pronunciation and the fact that he could rattle everything like a tongue twister. I was outraged by this, and I read slowly, with a feeling that the guys were annoyed. Each of us read the prayer assigned to him, but if someone began to dream, then the other, sometimes, would take and read after his own "someone else's" prayer. Thus, following the troparion to the Martyr Natalia, I hastened to read the troparion to St. Sergius. When he came to, Seryozha pounced on me with a roar and tears: "She read my prayer!" Mom and dad calmed him down: "Well, read it too." "No," Seryozha cried, "she's already read it. How dare she? This is my saint!" In vain the parents went into explaining that anyone can pray to any saint. The theory had not yet reached us, and I was jubilant. "Yawn, yawn more!" I teased my brother. Our parents forced us to kiss forcibly, but this did not change the feelings in our souls for long. Thus, even before the age of seven, Satan hastens to remove from God the foolish souls of children. But both mother and father fought for our souls, pleasing God: my mother did an extraordinary amount of good to the unfortunate poor people, and my father did not bend his knees and diligently bowed, begging God for salvation not only for his own soul, but also for the salvation of the children's souls entrusted to him.

Zagoryanka

Our parents said: "Children should have a joyful perception of life." And they tried with all their might to fulfill it. For five years in a row, at the first signs of spring, we were taken to the Moscow region, to the wooded Zagoryanka. A teacher remained with three children, and young Yulia ran the household. She was one of the "dispossessed" who fled to Moscow. My parents visited us only once a week. But they spent their vacations with us. Those sunny days were forever imprinted when we went to the Klyazma River. Dad took the boat, deftly steered, and Kolya and I tried to row. Winding shady river banks, white lilies, yellow water lilies, large shells on the sand... We carried all this home, let it float in plates, and there was no end to our joy. And right behind the fence, made of old broken boards with holes, there was a dense spruce forest. A little further away are slender pines, under which a carpet of strawberries spreads. In the mornings - walks, and in the evenings - merry games of croquet, twelve sticks, tennis, etc. Dad demanded that they always play fairly, so that there were no quarrels or fights. And so it was through his prayers. In the summer, we lived amicably.

In front of the windows of the dacha stretched a green clearing. If you walked along it, in five minutes there was a light fence on the left, behind which there was a spruce forest. And in this forest, a simple dacha was adapted for a temple. Only a small cross, drowning in the branches, showed that there was a church here.

Here we ran without paths, through the forest, invariably crawling through a hole in the fence.

The iconostasis fenced off the altar. The church was served by a nice old woman who lit the lampadas. To our great delight, she trusted Kolya and me to go during the service for the plate collection. We beamed with happiness and invariably bowed low when someone put money on us. During the reading of the commemorations, we were allowed to go outside. Then we ran under the spruce trees and collected bunches of strawberries, beware of eating at least one berry. After all, then it will be impossible to take communion! Our friends Lucy and Vera Eggert took turns running under the window of the hut to listen to the singing. They made frightened, frightened eyes and shouted to us: "Cherubic, and we are here!" Then we rushed to church, approached Aunt Varya, our teacher, and gave her our bouquets for safekeeping, so that after Holy Communion we could receive them back to eat.

I remember one memorable evening. Usually the church was completely empty that evening: an old woman at the entrance, two singers and I. And outside the windows the trees rustled, the rain drizzled, and it was already completely dark. I felt so good that I didn't want to leave. I didn't want to go home. I admired the faint flickering of the lamps (there was no electricity anywhere in Zagoryanka yet), the familiar voice of old Father Peter quietly pronounced prayers. I was five or six years old, I did not yet understand the meaning of the words, but I listened to the prayers with pleasure. "If only I could stay here for a century," I thought.