Summary

It is May 1934 and Nabokov and his wife Vera have an infant son, Dmitri. Nabokov recounts, with distinct detail, his baby’s hands, the parks they visited, the toys he played with, the tender moments he shared with his wife as they watched their son watch for trains. A conflict that both Nabokov and Vera struggle with is raising their boy with the very little they have when they were raised in such opulent households.

But, Nabokov mentions that even the best nurses and governesses didn’t provide such pure food for him, or give him baths nearly as tender. He recognizes that Vera’s mothering is better than anything he received as an infant, despite their poverty.

He thinks back to when he was a boy and how he liked to manipulate his surroundings by digging and making towers, destroying and then building...