Chapter 8 - homesteading in Moscow

We were both bleary-eyed this morning. Our night was interrupted often; Babby’s because of the jet lag and mine because of Babby tottering off to the toilet at what seemed a constant shuffle. When she did sleep she snored loudly and robustly.

Babby always was talkative, but travelling with her really puts it in the spotlight. As I write this she is going on and on about a mish mash of things – politics, birds, how pale Russian fruit is, her garden back home. No one else has said anything for twenty minutes, nor even really looked at her as they go about their chores, but she carries on cheerfully and undaunted. So different from her son. I now wonder if Dad is so silent because he never got a word in edgewise.

“Of course I don’t need to talk to you about the war. I wonder what Stalin was really like. I bet he didn't eat enough fruit. The apples we get at home are so red they’re black, these must be a winter variety. No scabs though that’s a blessing. I would have killed for fruit during the depression. Vegetables too, other than potatoes. Did you have fresh vegetables here then? Or maybe you didn’t have a depression the same as we did. Terrible drought. Our chickens dying left, right and centre. Oh look! A lovely little thing just flashed by. It has a white flash on its wing now what would that be? I have a chickadee at home that knows me – he always comes to eat the gumps out of the porridge pot. I call him Chucky Dee, Dee, Dee, Dee, Dee! Chucky Dee, Dee, Dee, Dee, Dee! I’ll call and there he is, hungry as anything.”


A silent Arkady sloped off to work early this morning and the rest of us enjoyed a leisurely breakfast. Babby offered to cook and I am happy to say Auntie Galina wouldn’t let her near the kitchen. Babby’s cooking is and has always been abysmal, worse even than Mom’s. Cookies like rubber. Tea thick enough to stop a bullet. Boiled meat. I remember hearing the story of when Sam was born, and Babby stayed at our house to look after the rest of us. Mom’s boss gave her five porterhouse steaks as a celebration gift. Five beautiful steaks. Steak was an expensive treat in our house and my mom sat in the hospital trying to decide how and when to cook those precious and rare bovine gems. But as soon as she stepped over her threshold with baby in arms, Babby patted her on the arm and said, “Now don’t you worry about that meat that was lying around. I boiled it up so there’d be no germs.” My mother’s heart turned cold at the sight of five grey, desiccated slabs sitting on a platter in the fridge. Dad always said that’s why there are only three of us kids, Mom couldn’t bear the thought of Babby in her kitchen ever again.

Far better she should sit and talk about old times, growing up on the prairies, her early life with Grampa, a traveling salesman during the depression who sold household items nobody wanted and no one could afford. His death, literally on the road, his heart stopping as he walked from one house to another, goods spilled out on the sidewalk like scattered weeds. Then her and all her children moving to the tiny farm she called the homestead. I always liked that word. ‘Homestead’ sounds so cosy. But I imagine in reality it was anything but.