My Ancestral Past and Russia’s Present (part 4)
The following concludes the excerpt in my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, published in 2006. It took place in Russia in 1998 during another time of financial disaster.
Years of traveling have made me unsurprised at the inconvenience and inefficiency of third world countries. I tried reading in the waiting room under a 12-foot ceiling with tiny lightbulbs. It was eerie being in an almost-empty airport. I eavesdropped on a conversation between a man from Hong Kong and a Russian passenger, each one stumbling over the English. They spoke of economic disaster in their respective countries, punctuating their conversations with “tsk, tsks,” head-shaking, and nervous laughter.
I thought in amazement of how much had happened in those two and a half weeks of my visit. I had filled in some of the gaps of understanding Svetlana better by living in her home and adjusting to the rhythm of her family’s daily life. I thought of our joy at being together again and of her amusement at my glee in taking pictures of St. Basil’s from every conceivable angle. Her father’s grave was also in Red Square. Russia had lost a hero when she lost her father. He had been a cosmonaut who died tragically at the end of a mission. She showed me a letter to her from President Nixon that she treasured. Penned in his own handwriting, he sought to bring comfort to her, a now fatherless 12-year-old girl.
I thought of her large apartment high above a tall, thick forest, and the peacefulness of picking berries and pulling our salad out of the ground at the dacha. I walked the forest again with her daughter as we searched for mushrooms to cook with dinner. I saw once again the lacey shadows as the curtains of the dacha were imprinted on the wall by the waning sunset.
I marveled at how we had fit in so many happy moments in a time of crisis. On the day I was leaving, when I had suddenly remembered something I’d forgotten to pack, she told me to go to the mirror and smile. When I wanted to dust off the shelves in the room where I’d been sleeping, she told me simply, “We never clean up the day a guest leaves.” I once again pictured the Russian custom of saying goodbye to a guest. The four of us had sat silently in the living room with our shoes on, which was itself unusual in Russian homes. After the silence, we patted our knees and rose to go to the airport.
Before we parted, I gave Svetlana what was left of my rubles. The sum was equal to more than two months of her part time teacher’s salary, about one half a full time teacher’s salary, or four small bottles of mineral water at the Moscow airport.
Tags: Russia in 1998 financial crisis; Russian customs; Nixon, Travel
