Trekhprudny Lane

Well, maybe I asked for it, tossing off political remarks, fretting aloud about the rent and the color of the tap water. There is a lot to worry about here, from pollutants and expenses and sick strays to simply finding a way to understand and be understood in situations more and less urgent. But we're not huddling scared in a corner. We are trying to cultivate some normalcy. Right now, for instance, it's Saturday morning, and after a foraged breakfast of oatmeal with squash, pomegranate seeds and raisins (OK, not so normal), A. and the girls have walked to the park to see the swans. I have to locate a Phillips screwdriver next, so that I can assemble an IKEA clothes rack and finally get A's office shirts off of the floor. I don't know what the rest of Moscow is doing this morning (apart from the construction guy upstairs)... I'm trying not to worry about it.

The ubiquitous dinginess here (familiar from elsewhere in Eastern Europe) can be very scary at first; to American eyes it suggests present dangers and murky past crimes. Some train stations make me want to flee. I've experienced this many times before. I'm at my most alarmed now, and I'm sorry to have spread that fear, because I expect it to fade with time. I understand that some real dangers will not fade: Lula might ingest a certain quantity of lead paint in the coming months, EB might catch a tapeworm from the sandbox, and I hope we manage to survive the half-dozen street crossings we must make each day (a seriously risky business). But we're here, for now, and I am determined to get us through one or several Moscow winters so that we may have -- at long last -- a plot of green grass in some clean and comprehensible country, before the girls get too big.

We all feel a bit raw, probably, but my most beloved ones, Mom, Mark, Eve, Scott, everybody, I'm not going to turn off the comment function, because I live off of your responses, they are like food for me. So I'm going to keep putting up these bulletins, and I hope you'll stop by to read them, and most importantly leave your own two cents (or zloty) from time to time. Let's just keep going; I really need this.