Chapter 8 - Babby's homeland

Travelling with an 84 year old has some real benefits; we got seats right at the front of the plane and received the most attentive service. Babby was glued to the window the whole trip, telling me about icebergs and cloud cover for 14 hours. At one point she asked me to get her a hankie out of her capacious handbag and I got to see what was inside:
· six hankies
· one pair of wool socks
· cotton neckerchief
· four little boxes of Chicklets gum
· notebook decorated all over with pictures of kittens
· pocket diary promoting a brand of greeting cards on every page
· plastic rain cap - gold
· two full decks of cards and a spare joker
· three rolls of Life Savers (butterscotch, rum and butter, grape – her favourites)
· Paper serviettes
· a roll of toilet paper
· a silver plastic candelabra in two pieces that fit together with a snap.
The last item in particular had me stymied. I could only hope it was a gift.

Auntie Galina met us with enormous fur-coated hugs and a car, driving us to her apartment right in the centre of Moscow. Though dark, I could see the streets were crowded, and we took more than two hours to get what seemed a relatively short distance but Auntie Galina says this is a normal rush hour. Imagine having to do this every day!

The apartment is larger than I expected. I guess my reading material was pre-perestroika and so my views of what to expect were skewed. We are at the top of a nine-storey building with a glass elevator that rides up the outside to get to our floor. Auntie Galina’s daughter Svetlana, a carbon copy of her mother except pregnant, silent son-in-law Arkady who looks to be at least 9 feet 6 inches tall, and toddler Vasily met us with hugs and kisses all round. A dog named Anastasia met us with a more lugubrious expression. “Just like my Binky at home”, Babby cooed to it. A fabulous display of smoked trout, caviar, salads and wine awaited us. Babby professed she only wanted a cup of tea but far be it from me to pass up such a feast.


While we ate Babby kept up a non-stop chat interspersed with showing photos. “Betty came west because her dad had a bad stroke and was not expected to live. Pearl lives next door. Her husband has a little greenhouse but she is a few sandwiches short of a picnic if you catch my drift. Don’t the potatoes look good? I must spray them for flea beetle next year. Mogen’s wife Violet came from Saskatchewan. She dove into the beach at Jericho at low tide and died of head injuries. She wasn’t used to the ocean. No low tides in Saskatchewan you see.”

I’m sure no one was really taking in any of it, but that doesn’t seem to deter her. Or to matter. It will all get repeated, no doubt, several times during the next two weeks. It’s good to see her happy, seeing the family she’s never seen while she can still see. I am struck by the family resemblance. Second cousins once removed, but she and Auntie Galina have the same chins. And the same girlie laugh. I’m used to it from Babby, but it doesn’t seem to match Auntie Galina’s formidable personality. I asked Arkady to show me how to put in a call home as I knew Mom and Dad would want to know we’d arrived safely.

“Was Galina there to meet you? I’d heard she was unreliable. Was she late? Did you have to wait?”

I didn‘t rise to the obvious. “No Mom they were there on time and got us here just fine.”

“Have you eaten? Are they feeding you?”

“Yes we’ve just eaten a lovely meal. Caviar Mom.”

“Oh, well no doubt it’s as common as beans there. I hope you’re not letting your grandmother eat caviar. You know what fish does to her insides.”


“Don’t worry, she just ate bread and salads.”

“Salads? Do they have salads there then? Are they washed properly? Do they know how to wash salad properly? Is the water clean?”

“It wasn’t that kind of salad. It was cucumber, peeled. And potato. Cabbage. Everything is well cooked or peeled or pickled.” I rolled my eyes. Here she is commenting on others when she is always notoriously late and hasn’t eaten a vegetable that wasn’t in a can or frozen in decades.

“Good. You make sure she gets enough to eat. But don’t let her near fish. And make sure she gets to bed on time.”

“I will. We’re just having a cup of tea. I’ll give you the number here so you can contact us.”

“Oh my goodness don’t bother. It will be so expensive to call all that way and I know we couldn’t work out the numbers anyway.”

“Oh, so we’ll just call you then. On Auntie Galina's phone. The one who is hosting your daughter and mother-in-law." I tried to sound pleasantly acidic.

“Much better.”

Curses! She always wins!