Margarita Gokun Silver, I NAMED MY DOG PUSHKIN (AND OTHER IMMIGRANT TALES): Notes From a Soviet Girl on Becoming an American Woman
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[0:41]Margarita Gokan Silver is the author of, I named my dog Pushkin,
[0:45]and other immigrant tales, notes from a Soviet girl and becoming an American woman.
[0:49]Margarita is a freelance journalist, essayist, and novelist.
[0:52]Her articles and essays have been published in The New York Times,
[0:55]The Washington Post, The Guardian, BBC, NPR, and The Atlantic, among others.
[0:59]Welcome, Margarita.
[1:01]Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss.
[1:04]I named my dog Pushkin and other immigrant tales, notes from a Soviet girl
[1:08]and becoming an American woman.
[1:10]Thank you.
[1:11]Thank you for having me.
[1:12]It's my pleasure.
[1:13]And in the book, of course, we realized that your name really was Rita
[1:18]and that it was supposed to be Rivka and then it went to Rita,
[1:21]and now even your parents refuse to call you Margarita.
[1:24]That is correct.
[1:26]Yeah, they still call me Rita.
[1:28]Yeah.
[1:29]So your collection of essays was a really funny, smart look at
[1:36]emigrating from the USSR and all the things that come along with it.
[1:41]And one of the most interesting things from the beginning at least was when you talked
[1:44]about when people would ask you if you were Russian, you would say,
[1:48]no, I'm from Russia because as you growing up in USSR,
[1:53]you never felt like that was actually your homeland because of the way they had made you feel.
[1:57]So it talked to me a little bit about that.
[1:59]So to be Russian in the USSR meant to have the Russian ethnicity,
[2:04]and you weren't just allowed to have Russian ethnicity if you didn't inherit it
[2:08]from your parents.
[2:10]And so if you were of Jewish ethnicity or, you know,
[2:14]in Russian, they called it Nazi or not,
[2:17]which would say nationality in a way if you translated directly into English,
[2:21]then you would do it.
[2:23]So in your passport in your school paperwork,
[2:26]in the teachers journal everywhere,
[2:28]they would write you out as Jewish.
[2:30]And so you weren't allowed to be Russian.
[2:32]And so when I landed in the US suddenly,
[2:34]I was Russian and it was just so bizarre to my ears.
[2:38]And I just knew that I could never claim that title.
[2:42]I never wanted to claim that title because I wasn't good enough to claim that title
[2:46]when I lived in the USSR.
[2:48]And so I kept correcting people.
[2:52]I think that stopped years down the road because it got tiring,
[2:55]but, you know, I just kept correcting people.
[2:58]Yeah.
[2:59]Because I was not Russian and could never be.
[3:02]And then when you came here,
[3:05]you said there was this one seen in school where they called you a Jewish
[3:09]Jewish and you didn't even know what that meant.
[3:11]And you felt like there was,
[3:13]there was a sense of difference right away and anti-Semitism that you confronted.
[3:17]Tell me where about that.
[3:18]Yeah. So I grew up in a very assimilated Soviet Jewish family.
[3:23]My parents were engineers, my grandparents were engineers.
[3:26]One of my grandmother was a doctor and nobody really practiced anything
[3:30]or knew anything about Judaism, except for my grandfather
[3:33]who still remembered something from the olden days.
[3:36]And so no one told me I was Jewish in my family because, you know,
[3:40]atheism was the state religion.
[3:42]And we just didn't think of Judaism as religion.
[3:46]We thought of being Jewish as something again.
[3:48]You inherited through your family.
[3:51]But nobody talked to me about it in my family probably because they figured that
[3:55]was not a good topic to unload on a nine-year-old.
[3:59]You know, because of so much baggage they came with it.
[4:03]And so one day it's cool.
[4:05]My classmates decided to find out what we got for either a mast test or some other test.
[4:10]And that was in the teacher's journal.
[4:12]So they snuck into the teacher's journal when the teacher was away.
[4:15]In the first page, I mean, you opened the journal.
[4:17]And the first page, I think one of the first pages is, you know,
[4:20]the information about the pupil.
[4:21]And you have the parents' names and phone numbers and the address.
[4:25]And right there, I think even in the second column, you have your ethnicity.
[4:30]And of course, everybody was curious and they went down the list.
[4:34]And I was the only Jewish child in class.
[4:36]And so, of course, immediately, you know, fingers pointing.
[4:40]And even though I didn't know that it was inherently not a good thing to be in the Soviet Union,
[4:46]you know, the way children treat you, you see immediately.
[4:49]That is not a good thing.
[4:51]And so I just kind of like, okay, something is not good here.
[4:55]I'm being uttered, even though that language was never part of my vocabulary at that point.
[5:00]And yeah, that's how I learned that I was Jewish.
[5:04]It was quite a shock.
[5:06]And you're so funny in your book.
[5:09]You have this long list.
[5:10]How did you do Jewish right?
[5:12]When you came away just a Jewish girl at the USSR,
[5:15]you had several concerns you dealt with on a daily basis.
[5:19]One, does my last name sound Jewish too?
[5:21]Does it sound more Jewish than this other guys in my class?
[5:24]Three, is he Jewish?
[5:25]Or is he just unlucky enough to have a Jewish last name without actually being Jewish?
[5:29]Anyway, it keeps going on and on.
[5:31]And you're so funny about all of it.
[5:33]But one thing that was not so funny or whatever was more poignant was when you talked about your husband
[5:38]and how he shared with your daughter.
[5:40]And I'll just read this passage.
[5:42]He said, if you're surprised that a nine-year-old Jewish girl didn't know she was Jewish, don't be.
[5:46]I'm surprised that this myself.
[5:48]Now, but that's because I raised my daughter to be proudly Jewish,
[5:51]sent her to a Jewish day school, and then to Hebrew school and paid for a large gathering of family members
[5:55]to witness her become a bat mitzvah, and then dance the night away on a dance floor filled with 13-year-olds.
[6:00]My daughter knew she was Jewish the moment my husband told her about the Holocaust when she was two.
[6:05]He didn't hold back either.
[6:07]Gas chambers were front and center in that story.
[6:09]I kid you not.
[6:10]For the record, I wasn't on board.
[6:12]I thought he could have waited until she turned three.
[6:14]In contrast, I didn't know I was Jewish until that boy pointed at me
[6:17]and shared my ethnicity with the whole class because he was proud he could read.
[6:20]And that information was readily available in the teacher's journal.
[6:23]So, you know, telling your daughter at two or at three about the Holocaust explained that.
[6:30]And what the ramifications are of that, and if you, you know, how you and your husband decided,
[6:36]I can't even remember when I told my kids about the Holocaust.
[6:38]I just like, I don't know.
[6:40]I feel like we talk about it a lot.
[6:41]I can't remember a single moment when I decided to tell them or not tell them.
[6:46]So, I think I exaggerated there a little bit for humor effect, but she was, I want to say around maybe four.
[6:52]And I don't know if we decided it or he just kind of told her.
[6:58]I can't remember exactly.
[7:00]But because my grandfather's one of the side of my family was killed in a Holocaust.
[7:06]And he was the only one that actually survived.
[7:09]I still get goosebumps talk.
[7:11]I came out of it because, you know, I mean, for a lot of Americans who grew up here, whose families grew up here,
[7:17]who immigrated maybe in the beginning of the 1900s, Holocaust was a horrible, horrible thing,
[7:22]but it didn't maybe touch them as close as a touch brush Jews who lost their families either fighting in the Red Army.
[7:30]My other grandfather was in the Red Army survived.
[7:33]Or, you know, having these stories just thrust upon us.
[7:36]My grandfather who lost his family, he didn't want to know anything about it until 91, I think.
[7:42]When he had decided to finally immigrate and join us, and he had to get a permission from his family,
[7:49]because in those days you had to get a permission from your family to immigrate.
[7:52]And so he had to get paperwork from your crane, signifying that his family was killed.
[7:58]And that was the first time he actually learned how they died.
[8:01]And so for us, for me, Holocaust is this ever present piece of my life, piece of my psyche, piece of my body.
[8:09]And I think for my daughter, it became this way not necessarily because he told her it for, but because of my family and what, you know, we carry in our genes and our stories.
[8:22]And she's very active now, obviously on social media, she's 21, so that's where she's very active on all sorts of antisemitism and the Holocaust history, etc.
[8:34]But she's still actually, she's still hesitant to go and visit a concentration camp or an extermination camp because she just doesn't know if she can witness it and be okay after it.
[8:47]So yeah, I think it's made an impression on her in that respect.
[8:52]Can you share what your grandfather learned about his family and what happened?
[8:56]So Americans think of Holocaust as Auschwitz mostly and Frank, so they think of Holocaust as Western Holocaust, Western Jewry, Eastern Jewry, and that is the Soviet Union Jews.
[9:07]We had different Holocaust, some people refer to it as Holocaust by bullets because there were no transports.
[9:13]Once the Germans went into the Soviet Union, they didn't transport anybody to Auschwitz or anyway, they basically just shot everyone.
[9:20]So there's a huge ravine outside of Kiev called Babi Yar, where I think within two days, I want to say 30,000 Jews were shot or maybe more.
[9:30]And so that's what they did. They were going to villages that would say, okay, who's a Jew?
[9:34]They were quite a few collaborators who would point out their neighbors, you know, people, they knew all their lives and they would just take them to outskirts of religion, they would shoot them.
[9:44]Sometimes they would burn them in, they would put them all in one house and set the house on fire.
[9:49]But most of the time they were just shot right there where they grew up after perhaps for a while being put in a ghetto and humiliated and tortured or whatever.
[9:59]All right.
[10:00]So yes, my grandfather's family was all shot
[10:02]and in that really small village outside of the reef,
[10:05]in fact, it was Poland before they packed
[10:08]between Hitler and the Soviet Union
[10:10]when they divided Poland.
[10:12]And it became the Soviet Union 39
[10:14]and my grandfather went to study in Moscow
[10:16]and that's how he escaped it.
[10:18]But the rest of his family stayed
[10:20]and basically perished as soon as they came in.
[10:24]I'm so sorry.
[10:26]And I'm sorry for, you know,
[10:27]early in the morning, you're delving back into this tragedy.
[10:30]It's really, you know, it's like I've heard so many stories
[10:34]and it doesn't ever affect me less.
[10:37]It's still completely unthinkable and hard to process
[10:41]the enormity of what happened
[10:44]and how that somehow was acceptable at the time
[10:48]that it was allowed to continue and be so pervasive
[10:52]and so cruel and awful.
[10:53]It like turns my stomach even now.
[10:55]Anyway, I'm so sorry that your family was involved
[10:58]in that way.
[10:59]Thank you.
[11:00]And thank you for sharing.
[11:01]I think it's really important
[11:02]to keep the stories circulating,
[11:04]especially as survivors, you know, I agree.
[11:07]And you know, just to point out,
[11:09]I've been sort of looking at this whole Eastern Holocaust
[11:12]difference and thinking of working on some of perhaps stories
[11:15]because it is so incredibly different
[11:17]from everything that we know about the Shoah.
[11:21]You should do that.
[11:22]Just call it the Eastern, hopefully in your spare time.
[11:26]Although you have such a, I'm so glad you wrote
[11:28]this essay collection though,
[11:29]because you have such a distinct and funny voice
[11:32]on the page, which completely comes through.
[11:34]So anyway, I'm delighted that you wrote this collection
[11:37]at least first, so I could get to know you better.
[11:40]And you of course have gone through so much in your own life.
[11:42]You referenced this one time.
[11:44]You said, that was the year I got diagnosed
[11:46]with breast cancer and then you put in all caps
[11:49]and it was all because of that tree
[11:50]and also because of the bracket gene,
[11:52]but who needs science, right?
[11:54]Because of the Christmas tree, which you just mentioned.
[11:57]You're very funny, and I keep saying funny,
[11:58]but maybe that's the wrong word,
[12:00]but you know, you do have such a sense of humor
[12:03]about all the bad things that follow you in this book,
[12:05]your miscarriages and your breast cancer and all the stuff
[12:10]is that how you've learned to cope with life?
[12:13]Or is that how it sounds in your head?
[12:15]Or is it in the writing of it that you find the humor,
[12:19]when does the humor come into the sadness?
[12:22]So I think it takes time to digest the sadness
[12:25]and the traumas and then to put a closure on them
[12:30]is when I use humor.
[12:31]So when I started writing this book,
[12:33]it was in a way putting closure on some of those moments
[12:36]in my life that were so traumatic.
[12:39]And I wanted to laugh at them
[12:42]so that they no longer have maybe a holdover me.
[12:45]And so I think it comes out mainly in writing
[12:48]because somebody's asked me,
[12:50]no, do you just stand up?
[12:51]You should just stand up.
[12:51]I'm like, no, definitely not standing
[12:54]in front of an audience and doing that.
[12:56]But it does come out mostly in writing from me.
[12:58]Interesting.
[13:00]Also, you mentioned at some point
[13:02]that you wanted to say live long enough
[13:05]so that your teen daughter at the time
[13:06]could get all the new models of the iPhone
[13:08]or whatever it would be used at the time.
[13:10]Tell me a little more about your relationship
[13:12]with your daughter.
[13:13]We had our, you know, two most years as many people do
[13:18]when she was, I don't know, between 13 and 16 and 17.
[13:22]But after that, it's been getting better and better
[13:25]and better.
[13:26]And we very close.
[13:27]We talk a lot about things.
[13:29]She did a, she made a viral TikTok video
[13:32]about how I bought her vibrator at 16 or something like this.
[13:36]And I think she actually got interviewed
[13:39]on some Canadian radio station
[13:41]because based of that, I mean,
[13:42]I might be Mr. Member, but anyway, yeah,
[13:44]I decided to do a full swing to the other side
[13:47]from my mother because my mother never talked to me
[13:49]about these things as those degeneration mothers
[13:53]didn't in the Soviet Union.
[13:54]And I decided, you know, no, I'm gonna talk about everything.
[13:57]So there were a few cringy for her moments
[13:59]when her mom decided to talk to her
[14:01]about various sexual related things.
[14:04]And then, you know, we read this book
[14:07]that was amazing girls and sex by Peggy Orenstein together.
[14:11]Not at the same time together, like not sitting together,
[14:13]but like I would read a chapter, she would read chapter.
[14:15]So, you know, I wanted her to have all of that.
[14:17]So it's why I bought a vibrator at 16,
[14:19]but we are really close.
[14:21]And this is an unfortunate piece of news.
[14:24]And I mean, you don't really have to include it,
[14:26]but my husband passed away two weeks ago.
[14:28]And yeah, and I write in the book
[14:33]that I wrote this book while he was being treated for cancer
[14:36]and he lost that battle.
[14:38]And so since then, my daughter and I
[14:40]would just been so incredibly close,
[14:42]like we haven't been that close ever,
[14:45]even maybe when she was a toddler.
[14:47]And it's really helpful to have her
[14:50]and to just have her as a companion,
[14:53]have her as a friend, have her as a daughter,
[14:55]go on during the times.
[14:57]And I'm looking at, you know, as you know, a lot more.
[15:00]So, you know, I know that she's going to be there for me
[15:03]and I'm going to be there for her
[15:04]as we sort of adjust to the reality.
[15:06]So, you know, I think I'm very lucky.
[15:10]I'm very lucky to have her.
[15:11]I am so sorry.
[15:13]I think I'm just so sorry.
[15:14]And that loss is so fresh and recent.
[15:17]And I'm sorry you've been doing this podcast now.
[15:20]I feel, but no, no, no, not at all
[15:22]because I just I, you know, for the first week or so,
[15:26]I just shut everything out.
[15:28]But then you have to resurface.
[15:30]You have to start coming out a little bit
[15:32]in these conversations and these, you know,
[15:35]sort of things that are outside of it help.
[15:38]And plus I wrote this book, you know, when he was around
[15:41]and, you know, there's a lot about him in this book.
[15:44]And it's kind of like, you know, my publisher said
[15:47]it's testament to him.
[15:48]And so yeah, absolutely.
[15:50]I'm really happy to speak to you about it now.
[15:53]Oh, gosh.
[15:56]Well, I am just so sorry.
[15:58]And I'm glad that this can serve as a distraction
[16:01]and getting back on your feet moment.
[16:03]But my heart is literally like hugging you from afar
[16:07]and just so sorry, you know,
[16:09]I'm sure you will dip into your humor eventually
[16:12]about these times.
[16:13]But yeah, I hope so.
[16:15]Yeah, although it's not particularly funny.
[16:17]But anyway, well, now I feel silly to speak like,
[16:20]and here's another line I liked in the book.
[16:22]No, no, please don't.
[16:23]I mean, I would love to because I haven't touched
[16:26]this book in a few weeks now and I would love to go back to.
[16:30]So yeah, let's do it.
[16:31]Well, another line that I thought was great
[16:34]was when you said every time my college age daughter
[16:36]fails to call me for longer than a week,
[16:38]I think my mother secretly rejoices.
[16:41]And I thought that was so great because there's so often
[16:44]this being caught in the middle feeling
[16:45]between the grandmother and the grandchild
[16:49]and being the mom in the way and wanting to change the things
[16:52]like you said with the vibrator
[16:54]and like not repeat the same mistakes
[16:55]and then you make new mistakes or at least I do
[16:58]and how you should navigate those two things
[17:01]and how, you know, everything you do sort of comes back
[17:04]at you through your child in some way, shape that word.
[17:07]And so how has your mother, how did that end up
[17:12]in this dynamic and you know, how has it been
[17:16]with that dynamic as an overlay to everything else?
[17:19]I can teach a book about being in the middle, I think.
[17:22]I actually, you know, can, I'm sorry, teach a course
[17:24]about being in the middle because the Soviet immigrant parents
[17:28]they feel like they need to be involved
[17:31]in every single step of their grandchilds by bringing.
[17:35]I mean, my mother used to call me every day
[17:37]to find out what Eliana was eating.
[17:39]And I kid, you know, this was just constant
[17:42]and I would, you know, sometimes he'll trepidation
[17:45]to pick up the phone and go to cheat today
[17:48]just having junk food and what am I supposed to say?
[17:51]You know, after school activities, everything
[17:53]they were so involved, especially my mom,
[17:55]that of course part of that enrollment was,
[17:59]well, you're not doing it right.
[18:00]We know how to do it better.
[18:01]So we're going to do it for you
[18:03]or we're going to advise you how to do it
[18:05]or myriad of things that went on constantly.
[18:10]And so when my daughter started rebelling,
[18:13]of course, that was my fault
[18:14]because I wasn't stripped enough
[18:15]or I didn't raise your knife or all of this.
[18:18]And so, you know, everything that she's ever done wrong
[18:22]has been my fault.
[18:23]And that's why, you know, this way, the line
[18:27]that if she doesn't call you every day,
[18:28]which a child is supposed to do,
[18:30]supposed to call you every day, no matter how old you are,
[18:32]no matter how old the child is,
[18:34]then you did it wrong, you know.
[18:36]So, you know, she's 21 now.
[18:38]I think this ended, maybe when she became 18,
[18:41]so for 18 years, I was in the middle.
[18:43]And actually sometimes now, my mother was like,
[18:46]well, she's doing her homework.
[18:47]And I'm like, mom, she's 21.
[18:49]She's in the last year of, I was a V of college.
[18:51]You asked me, ask her, why should I be responsible
[18:54]for her homework, but, you know, it still continues, yeah.
[18:58]Oh my goodness, so funny.
[19:01]I wanted to just quickly go back to your time at Yale.
[19:03]I went to Yale myself undergrad.
[19:05]And I also really did not like going to the Harvard Yale games.
[19:08]And I was felt like I was the only one.
[19:10]And I don't know.
[19:11]I didn't like drinking during the day
[19:13]and standing around at the tailgates
[19:15]and nobody wanted to even go into the game.
[19:17]And that was the part that I actually thought
[19:19]was more exciting would be to actually watch the football.
[19:22]But nobody even wanted to do that.
[19:23]And we just like stood around and everyone
[19:25]looked forward to it.
[19:26]And one time my best friend, who actually
[19:29]has since passed away, but she felt the same way as me.
[19:31]And we like snuck off and left down and took a ferry
[19:35]and went far away so we didn't have to go.
[19:37]But again, you're not supposed to admit that
[19:39]when you're one of those players.
[19:41]So I was delighted to see that you had similar feelings.
[19:45]Yeah, for me, Yale was, I think, out of world experience.
[19:50]Because I mean, here I was, it's 93.
[19:52]It was barely three years in the country.
[19:55]I'm going to this institution that is so well known and so
[20:00]and so respected and you know at that point I mean when the only Soviet there really I mean 93
[20:07]and you know I don't necessarily feel myself an American yet I feel some weird combination of things
[20:13]even though in the book I say I really wanted to be like a fully assimilated American
[20:18]but you know I didn't understand football to be perfectly honest I still don't understand
[20:22]I look at it no matter how many times my husband tried to explain it to me I don't I can't understand it
[20:27]you know there were certain things that culturally I just didn't get and it was a weird experience
[20:33]a very interesting but weird experience to to be a daily and now it's great because you get
[20:41]all the solemnized right everywhere that you can get that to it and say hi so yeah you know I
[20:47]think it would have been different had I come back now and studied that it would have been
[20:50]completely different but yeah you know I think what we go through builds us somehow so I'm sure
[20:56]it built me in some way that I may not my finger on now but yeah we were there at the same time
[21:02]because I got there at 94 and 78 so yeah we were I was there from 93 to 95 yeah oh there we go
[21:10]yeah we may have crossed we may have crossed that avoiding the the elbow so there we exactly
[21:18]okay spent more time at like Naples pizza than anywhere else I think Darfie's
[21:22]for his new garden all that but anyway I think I spent a lot of time in that cafe on
[21:27]on main store what has freed the prospect street or something you know one of those really known
[21:32]coffee houses what was the name of it I can't remember Atticus I really like yeah I love
[21:37]yeah yeah I was there a lot yeah yeah I was there a lot too yeah and and we bought a subscription
[21:43]to the drama series oh you know I'm from Moscow I grew up in on theater we went to theater all
[21:50]the time and when I arrived to the state so I was like what a theater how can I go to the theater
[21:54]or should please show me the theater but until yeah I lived in little towns there was no theater
[22:00]and so I bought a subscription every year that I stayed there oh it was really great yeah
[22:07]well I'm envisioning the two of us at tables not speaking 25 whatever years ago 30 years ago
[22:14]I know funny a little bookstore so there we go but here we are on zoom anyway okay so what what is
[22:19]coming next for you in terms of writing are you what are you yeah in terms of anything what are you
[22:25]thinking what's what's coming next in next few years I know this is obviously a time of a lot of
[22:29]transition for you now but yeah so well I don't know where I'm going to be leaving so that's the
[22:34]first one I have to figure out where I'm believe and then I am in a creative writing program at Oxford
[22:40]University and I'm writing a novel as part of my thesis so that's coming up for me my agent has
[22:46]another novel that I've written I'm gonna hopefully will go and submission soon and then
[22:51]you know I spent a long time being part of the Foreign Service with my husband and so I'm thinking
[22:56]maybe some collection of essays what it's like to be in the Foreign Service in the diplomatic
[23:01]core of the United States there are some really crazy interesting stories so that's a possibility
[23:08]and then I have some Sephardic background on my grandfather was originally from Spain I mean
[23:14]500 years ago originally from Spain and I'm fascinating with the Sephardic world so
[23:19]fascinated and so hopefully maybe something about that so I mean there's just so many ideas
[23:24]floating in my head I probably should stop somewhere and start one of those but yeah wow well
[23:29]those are great thank you I feel like I'm always jealous because Sephardic Jews can eat rice
[23:35]and pass over or something but not supposed to do that so it's just why we've always been doing
[23:40]this actually in my family we get to do that just because you are part of it but also because
[23:47]you know we vegetarian and it's really hard to fight yeah so we're food for libertarians you know
[23:53]like well if the Sephardic Jews can eat it I mean I mean who knows maybe even though like 99.9%
[23:59]Ashkenazi that's okay if you don't rice can't hurt anyway do you have any advice for aspiring
[24:04]authors just keep writing I mean you know I started writing really late and I write in the
[24:09]language that's not native to me I haven't graded to the states when I was 20 so that's when I kind
[24:14]of learned my my English so yeah just if if if a story is begging for to be told just do it it
[24:21]doesn't matter what anyone says just do it and then go back and edit it and edit it and edit it a
[24:26]hundred times because that's how it gets better but I guess don't listen to anyone telling you
[24:31]that you can or you won't or you won't get published it took me a long time to get this
[24:36]collection to get it published and interested in this collection so yeah just keep writing but
[24:40]I'm sure that's the advice that everybody says it gives right everyone has a unique viewpoint of it
[24:45]so you know not everybody writes a really funny poignant essay collection in a second language so
[24:51]you know bravo thank you thank you anyway well Margrina thank you for coming on and you know
[24:59]if there's anything I can do I know that's such a trite thing to say but I'm glad we had this time to
[25:03]talk and at least you're you know I spent time with all of your stories and I feel like I got to
[25:09]know you so well so that's been really a gift for me so thanks thank you thank you for giving me
[25:15]this opportunity and I love speaking to you fellow yaley and connecting even though it's online
[25:21]but for one day maybe we will sit at the same table and we'll know each other that would be great
[25:26]all right here again there okay bye bye thanks for listening to this episode of mom's don't have
[25:33]time to read books don't forget to follow me on instagram at zebi Owens and at moms don't have
[25:38]time to read books also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club
[25:44]and meet lots of authors on zoom every other week thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact
[25:48]texture sound for the sound editing and thank you to morning moon productions for providing
[25:52]this fantastic intro and out trim music