Somebody in our building caught on to our network-squatting, apparently, and so, having no password, we have no wifi at home. A "technician" (one of many to visit us this week, since the title applies to everybody from plumbers to electricians to cable guys) is expected tomorrow and then, fingers crossed, we'll be connected once more. I am haunted by memories of the toenails of the technicians who have come so far, all of whom naturally remove their shoes inside the front door, and none of whom seem to have wives interested in darning. A lot of things in Russia seem to have come straight out of a folk tale (the Grimm kind: simultaneously whimsical and harrowing), and those gnarled purplish claws were no different.
It's sunny today. What a profound difference that makes.
At each sink and at the tub we have a gear-stick temperature control... not two dials, one for hot and one for cold, on either side of the faucet, but that one, fully moveable shaft behind the faucet, a stick handle that goes up/down for more/less water pressure and moves left/hot, right/cold... know what I mean? You probably have the same thing. The plumber-technician who came this morning explained that we've had no hot water because we've been using the handle incorrectly. One cannot slide the handle, he said, over from cold to hot in one motion... one must turn off the water after cold, move the handle to hot, and turn the water on again. I bore you with this long description simply because it seems to be true! How is that possible?
More folk tale elements of this new life: Lena nodded approvingly when I brought home a geranium plant (bought in the rain from a babushka at the Metro station, planted in real clay, and growing out of the sawed-off lower half of a plastic soda bottle). When one of the girls has an earache, she explained, she'll pinch off a few of the leaves and insert them into their ears to give them relief. Another day, she advised drawing a cross in iodine on Lula's chest to help her cough. Let's try it, I said; who knows? Benadryl is problematic too.
Mom, you were exactly right about the sewing machine: every single day I spend a few moments wishing I had it and all my notions and supplies. This weekend I'll go to Gorbushka, a sprawling market of kiosks selling legitimate and pirated CDs, electronics, and appliances, and try to find a bargain on an older German machine. Our apartment windows face dozens of other windows around a courtyard (euphemism alert) and they require privacy curtains I cannot afford to buy readymade. I love the Russian penchant for all-day smocks, too, for children... not just bibs at meal time... the little aprons save clothing and laundry time. I'll make some for both girls.
A. and I are arguing a good deal of the limited time we have together (less than two hours per day, which makes up about ten hours per week plus weekends). I am jealous of his integration, jealous of his professional identity (he urges me almost daily to develop one of my own), and I feel guilty and stupid for being a housewife, and with paid help, here where every woman works double time and with apparent grace. This feeling is weeks old and not going away. I wonder what I can contribute and how I can keep learning, in the largest sense. Yes, the girls. Why can't I be satisfied that is enough? Perhaps because mothering seems to require deep reserves of only a few strengths. It's not a very diversified endeavor. With children this young, in any case, you need truckloads of patience, the ability to scrub things and to stay somewhat organized, and a commitment to daily routine. A fondness for repetition helps. I'm working on all of those. There are so many qualities that don't seem necessary or useful when you're wrestling a small chubby body into two sweaters or trying to cajole EB to eat by herself... creativity, aesthetic awareness, being articulate, being reflective, curiosity, wit. Motherhood requires all of those skills, it draws on all one's talents, one could reply. Nope, not really. It comes down to physical facts: getting the laundry into and out of machines, getting the food into the child's stomach, getting the spills off of the floor, getting both girls onto and off of the subway without causing a passenger pile-up. No subtlety of thought required.
This surely will sound simplistic later (probably as early as this afternoon), but I often feel that a programmable robot could do the job I've got. Stir, wipe, scold, repeat. Food goes into the wire shopping basket, into the fridge, into the pot, into the babies, into the trash. Every day. The feeling has nothing to do with Gloria Steinem and company.
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