I am anxious….. I am thinking….. 2009… that was our last trip to Moscow. I did not want to go. Mama rings and says: “I’ve taken two tickets for the train, in platskart, side bunks, by the toilet…” She presented me with a fact, adding, at her expense..
“Well, and I — ‘how am I related to your Moscow?’” — “You’ll accompany me!” There was, of course, a reason to go. There was an invitation. A nephew, on Grandfather’s side, was gathering all the relatives for the anniversary of his mother’s death.
Why was I so categorical about the trip? The thing is that with the death of my grandmother, Mama’s mother, in 1995, it was I who lost the connection — however pompous that may sound — with the Motherland. I think many in our country (meaning the unbreakable Union even after it was broken) encountered an unfair, not-kin-like, not-human division of the parental inheritance. That is what happened to my mama. The door to the parental home was closed to her forever.
This trip was to good people, but I understood how hard it would be for Mama to be there, next to “the house that is not.”
To be continued….