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Every morning for two weeks now, my 2-year-old son wakes up, runs to the living room, stops to stare at the folded sofa sleeper, and asks for his Babushka Zoya. "Oya!" he says. "Oya!" I show him a picture of Red Square and tell him that Zoya's flown home. "Moscow!" he says. "Moscow!" My son's maternal grandmother lives two continents, an ocean, and 11 time zones away. A few months back, she flew into town and glided into our home, arms gesturing musically at the palm tree out the window and the crisp blue air and the little blond boy who was playing shy. Our town was like a resort and our boy was golden and my wife and I looked like a pair of movie stars, and Babushka Zoya, after telling us so, smiled and hugged us and said how wonderful it was to be in our home. Boy, I thought, is she in for it. The first thing that happened? The entire household took ill. One morning I failed to put socks on my son, and my mother-in-law explained that that was why the entire household had taken ill. Once you catch a good strong foot-cold, it's hard to shake. Babushka Zoya knows a thing or two about cold weather. My mother-in-law has perfect posture and perfect Russian diction and perfect manners. Her shoulders are broad and strong and she walks with athletic grace and her face is open and lovely and incapable of hiding feelings. Such an incapacity sometimes bumps up against her perfect manners. She'd like not to instruct us in our own home with our own child, but the shiny chestnut eyes flash recognition of our missteps and the Katherine Hepburn jawline flexes and betrays her every time she tries to bite her tongue. She's a guest, a relative, a pal; she tells long evening stories in dim lamplight and we listen, rapt and thoughtful. But she's also a lifelong teacher, and how can such a creature resist teaching? My son's cold progressed and his stopped-up nose refused to start. He'd never slept well; now he started sleeping less well. Five times a night he came to our room and roused us both and led us to the fridge. Babushka Zoya would sit up in the sofa sleeper and ask if she could help. We lied and said we were fine. By week five, the weather had gone foul and the little palm was inexplicably brown and the golden boy had a recurrent moustache of dried golden slime and the movie-star parents stumbled through the day exhausted and aimless and unkempt and only Babushka Zoya seemed to be holding up under the dual assault of winter viruses and sleeplessness. She looked at her pitiful brood and hugged the croup-coughing boy and sent the rumpled folks to the movies. The gesture felt unlike pity and even less like a proclamation that we deserved a break. What it felt like was an invitation to get out of the way and let someone who knows what she's doing take over. This disturbed us, but we went to the movies anyway. I set my cell phone on vibrate and checked it every seven seconds. Nobody called. Nobody at all. Surely there was trouble at home. Surely Babushka Zoya needed us. Didn't Babushka Zoya need us? Babushka Zoya didn't need us. The boy, who generally required an hour of storytelling and 12 minutes of lullabies and another half-hour of his mother's silent embrace, had fallen asleep immediately. He was, as we returned, in his third hour of uninterrupted sleep. Zoya sent us to the movies again the next night. Soon enough, our son was hooked on Babushka Zoya. He asked her to carry him, to rough-house with him, to play hide-and-seek. He went from being a howler of inarticulate sounds to a precise pronouncer of Russian verbs. He learned to hide a small wooden dog under the couch cushions and command us, Ishii! ("Look for it!") We went to the mall one Saturday and he threw pennies in the fountain, and with each thrown penny he looked up at me and said, Yeshchyo! ("Again!") When he'd had enough of something, he told us, Vsyo! ("Enough!") The night before Zoya left, he spied her bags by the door and rushed to his room and reappeared with a wooden briefcase full of blocks. We told him he had to stay with his parents. Babushka Zoya had made a Russian out of our boy. Had she been able to stay a while longer, I suspect she'd have made a fine young man of him, too. Instead it's up to us. Of course, we can always dial across those 11 time zones and ask her advice. She won't mind at all. Greg Blake Miller of Las Vegas has completed his first novel. He is a regular contributor to this column. For comment in our Letters department: OCFmag@aol.com or ocfamily.com. |
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