Introduction: Where It All Began

??A loud explosion went off. "We have to run now!" Klara said. Another barrage of explosions started and it felt like the world was on fire. Klara grabbed her 4-year-old daughter, Genya, who could barely make sense of what was happening. It was the beginning of World War II. Without having time to grab anything, they ran out into the night along with thousands of other people. As they ran, they saw Zoya, a young girl Genya's age, who was running around screaming; her mother had just hung herself after finding out her husband was killed in battle. Klara grabbed Zoya and all three of them fled.

Klara and the two girls came to an open field. They had to cross the field as low flying fighter pilots dropped bombs on them. There was chaos everywhere, and Klara lost the hand of one of the girls. Faced with the choice of all of them getting killed and saving herself and one little girl, Klara and the other girl continued on to safety. Eventually Klara and the girl got to a train station. The train traveled over a river when another explosion went off and the bridge the train was on was destroyed. The train and all of the passengers plummeted into the cold dark water below.

They crawled over dead bodies until they emerged from the water and walked and hitchhiked their way to Tbilisi, Georgia, where Klara's sister Sonya lived.

Klara Taxer, who only had three years of formal education, found a job as a waitress. They were desperate to find a place to live, and a woman who was renting a 10-foot × 15-foot room in a complex agreed to let them stay with her. Klara and her daughter rented a corner of the room where all they had was a bed. They lived out of their suitcases, which were kept on the floor. The restrooms and kitchens were all communal.

Klara worked double shifts at a restaurant to make a few rubles a month. At night Klara was harassed by the men who frequented the restaurant. Nobody protected her or stood up for her as the men made passes and grabbed her body. Every night after work she would come home and cry. Sometimes Klara would bring home leftovers that other patrons didn't finish so she and her daughter could eat. Genya was alone all day every day until late at night. She had nowhere to go so she would sit in a Catholic church every day because it was safe even though she was Jewish. Genya became friends with the priest, who told her that if she wanted to keep visiting the church she should get baptized, so she did even though she was only five and didn't understand what that meant.

During WWII there was a syphilis scare so the USSR, which Georgia was a part of, mandated that everyone who worked in a restaurant get their blood tested. Klara took her daughter and they went to the home of Alexander Drampov and Nina Egeazarova, an Armenian couple who never had any children. Nina liked Genya so much that she invited her to come over whenever she wanted. Over the years, Alexander and Nina became Genya's unofficial foster parents because Klara worked so much and was never home.

In college, little Genya became fascinated with chess and won a few tournaments. She graduated with a master's degree in history and philology, which is the study of language.

One day in college, a friend of Genya's told her she wanted to set her up with someone who worked at the circus, a Jewish cello player named Alex Begelfor. When Genya first met Alex, she didn't really like him or feel connected to him. But as she and her friend were leaving the circus, a few guys started harassing them. At that moment, Alex was also walking out with his cello and he defended them, then walked the girls home. A few years later they married and had two kids: Ella and Irena.

In the late 1970s, Klara, Genya, her husband, Alex, and their two daughters had to make a tough choice to flee the Republic of Georgia. Under the communist regime, they didn't feel safe or free. This wasn't easy because Alex loved Georgia. He was known in all of the entertainment circles, had lots of friends, and belonged to a huge community. But, he wanted a better life for his family.

They left Georgia as refugees with no money, no possessions (which were all stolen or confiscated), no legal documents, and without speaking a word of English. The only thing they were able to take out of the country was a few hundred dollars and a half-carat diamond that they snuck out in the handle of a knife. My grandmother still has that diamond in a ring she wears.

From Georgia they went to Italy, which was a transition zone for people leaving Georgia. To make money they sold chachkies at a local flea market, but they barely made enough money to afford eating macaroni and spaghetti for dinner. Genya met a handsome Georgian rugby player while they were both in line at an immigration office. Genya introduced David Mamisashvili to her daughter Ella and eventually they got married.

From Italy they ended up in Australia where Alex and his wife Genya worked as cleaners in a chocolate factory. Eventually Alex became a taxi driver and formed his own string trio, and Genya became a Russian teacher for politicians and officers at a naval academy. Ella and David had two sons: Jacob (me) and my brother, Joshua.

Klara was my great grandmother, Genya is my grandmother, Alex was my grandfather, and Ella and David are my parents. To this day my grandmother doesn't know if she is Genya or Zoya, Klara never told her which girl was lost during the bombings in Ukraine.

When I was young, my parents relocated to the United States; my dad was obsessed with the "American Dream." He changed his last name to "Morgan" to sound more American because nobody was able to pronounce his real last name, Mamisashvili, over company loudspeakers. He moved to the United States first to set up a life before my mom and I joined him from Australia. For several years my mom and dad communicated with each other by sending letters in the mail. He learned to speak English by watching the Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin shows with an English-to-Russian translation dictionary. He would spend hours each day looking in the mirror and trying to mouth out English words properly while he lived in low-income housing in New Jersey. My dad's mom was Sara Bagdadishvili, a stay-at-home mom, and his dad was Yasha Mamisashvili, a store clerk. I never met Sara but I did meet Yasha once when he came to Los Angeles when I was very young. Coming from communism where everything belonged to the government, Yasha couldn't beleive that his son (my dad) was able to create a good life for himself. He thought that my mom and I were actors pretending to be his family and that the house and all of his possessions were owned by the government. My dad showed Yasha an old home video to which he replied "my god, they found me." He believed he was being monitored and followed while in America. Eventually my dad convinved him of the truth. Yasha passed away a few weeks after his visit due to cancer. He just wanted to make sure that his son was happy and was able to make a life for himself.

Although my dad doesn't talk about his past he will, on very rare occasions, share a story with me. Like the time he went from Georgia to Czechoslovakia as a 21-year-old foreign exchange student. A group of students from Georgia traveled with a chaperone who would keep an eye on their every move. My dad loved classic rock and one day while he was exploring Czechoslovakia he picked up a Jimi Hendrix poster. One of the other students on the trip ratted out my dad to get the poster confiscated. To avoid getting in trouble, when my dad was confronted about the poster he said it was actually of Angela Davis, an American member and supporter of the communist party. My dad was lauded for his apparent dedication to communism and was allowed to keep the poster.

My dad just retired from the corporate world after working for decades as an aerospace engineer where he commuted an hour and a half to and from work each day (during COVID he worked from home). My dad sometimes still makes the commute just to play soccer with some of his coworkers. He's 73. My mom is one of the top marriage and family therapists in Los Angeles, and they live 15 minutes away from me.

When you've had to survive like my family, there is no room for weakness. You have to be strong and tough. My mom has always been more open and encouraging of vulnerability and emotion, but ultimately I grew up watching and emulating my dad, who doesn't believe in a trophy for a second place. I remember one time after a soccer tournament my dad and I drove to the coach's house to pick something up. I must have been about 10 years old. We knocked on the coach's door and he handed my dad and me a trophy. My dad looked at the coach and said, "What is this trophy for; they came in last place?" The coach said that they were giving participation trophies so kids wouldn't feel left out. My dad chuckled and said, "That's bullshit. You can keep the trophy," and we got in the car and left. This was an important life lesson for me and it taught me the importance and value of hard work. Life doesn't give participation trophies, and it doesn't care about your problems.

My dad always told me that the world is a jungle and that as a man you always need to be strong and highly competent. Never show weakness under any circumstance, nobody cares about your problems so don't share them, and always be good at what you do, or more specifically, try...