Cooking Queens

Considering that I don’t like to cook, it’s amazing that I belong to The Cooking Queens, the rather whimsical title for a group of 5 ladies who meet every month and . . .cook.  Their love of cooking and common thread of having children who attend the Anglo-American School of Moscow, brings them together from points all over the world.  Barbara from Poland, Anu and Paivi from Finland, SoonDuk from Korea, Hein from Vietnam, and former members Junko from Japan, and May from Thailand. I was honored when they invited me to join, not only because they are such warm, friendly people, but because I felt included.  Similar to that middle school kind of excitement, when a group of girls you like makes a spot for you at the lunch table.  The fact that they didn't know anything about my cooking abilities when they issued the invitation, is what Martha Stewart might refer to as "a good thing." 

 When I say I don’t like to cook, I can list a couple of exceptions like making bran muffins and “macaroni” (pepperoni) pizza with our 3-year-old grandson, Luke.  And I’ve gladly done my fair share of cooking over the years for our family of three children.  I even had a system that at least one friend marveled at.  “You mean that you actually plan your meals a week in advance, what you’re having each night?  And you go to the grocery store once a week and buy everything you need for the whole week?” Yes, our children even penned the name, “Long Shopping Day” for our Friday, after-work-and-school trips to the store.  Coming home, I would put the groceries away and stick the menu on the fridge.  Heaven help the family member who suggested we switch Monday night burritos with Tuesday night spaghetti!

 I never learned to cook “formally”. . . with ingredients.  Nothing that resembles how our daughters, Elizabeth and Katherine prepare meals today.  They actually open a recipe book and follow a list of directions, sometimes a page long, to make their own spaghetti sauce.  Not I.  The only ingredients involved in my box of Kraft Italian Spaghetti mix are tomato paste and ground beef.  Using organic and locally grown fresh ingredients, they are teaching me how delicious and healthy dishes can be prepared.

 When it was my turn to cook for The Queens, I wanted to fix something typically American. I decided to rule out hamburgers and hot dogs, opting for something a little more suitable for a lady’s luncheon.  But what is “typically American?”  In Arkansas when we consider where to dine out, options include Los Amigos, New China, Michelangelo’s, Saigon Cuisine and Taziki’s Greek Fare.  Maybe The Dixie Café’s menu selections of turnip greens, catfish, meatloaf or macaroni and cheese might fit the bill.

 Yes. . . Mac and Cheese, a perfect choice! Not Kraft out-of-the-box for this occasion, but the homemade version, using real cheese.  I added a bowl of  Katherine’s gourmet salad, whipped up a batch of Southern cornbread, and sliced a dozen Russian apples for a warm apple crisp.  I was proud, and my guests were gracious.

 The lessons I’m learning from the cooking club, however, are not about food, but friendship, international friendship.  As I share meals with these ladies from a variety of cultures and backgrounds, my vision for world peace is strengthened.  Were our countries in conflict, I know that we could reach agreements over plates of Bulgogi, Celery-Blue Cheese Soup, Vietnamese Spring Rolls, Salmon Pie, Finnish Birthday Cake, and yes, Mac and Cheese. Government leaders, having lunch with “The Queens” would quickly discern that true power lies in relationships.

Lady in Red

“She’s over there!”  Ann says pointing in the direction of the fountain.

 

“Who?”  I ask.

“The lady in the red dress,” she answers over her shoulder as she hurries forward, reaching into her tote bag for a bar of chocolate.

“Yea! She’s still alive,” I whisper to myself, always hopeful, but never sure that we will find her each year when we return to Gorky Park for the Victory Day celebration.

A patch of dyed reddish-brown hair, the hem of a flag-red dress and matching patent leather flats are the only parts that peek through the circle of people surrounding her.  I hurry to join them. She hasn’t changed much, only slightly thinner in the face, but the same straight-backed posture, lift of the chin and firm handshake, all signifying that this is one tough lady.  She’s wearing the same knee-length, long-sleeved, pointed collared dress she’s worn the previous four years we’ve seen her.  Belted at the waist and buttoned up the front, it serves its purpose as the blank canvas to show off row after row after row of gold.  Dazzling! Impressive! WOW! There must be at least 40 medals, half of which are round and range in size from U.S. quarters to half dollars, pinned in place by red and gold ribbons. Others are stars, dangling from pendants, broaches with starburst centers, wreaths, hammers and cycles, and a couple of pictures of stern-faced military men, all with indecipherable inscriptions (to me), in Cyrillic, heralding their significance.

Lyudmila is a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, a title that strangely sounds loftier and less calculating than what non-Russians call it, World War II.  With the end of the war now 65 years behind them, the number of veterans returning to Gorky Park, and other parks around Moscow each May 9^th, is dwindling as age takes lives that the war spared.  For one day every year, they are treated as heroes and heroines, not by the president, marching soldiers and blaring military music on Red Square, but by children and adults, quietly and thankfully, one red carnation and chocolate bar at a time.

Questioned about her medals, Lyudmila, points to one on the left side of her chest as she shakes her head and repeats in an increasingly vehement voice, “Nyet St. Petersburg! Leningrad, Leningrad!”  Our friend, Andrei, translates as she continues her indignant narrative. “They gave her a medal with St. Petersburg written on it, but she didn’t want it. She insists that the city should still be Leningrad, not St. Petersburg.  She was a nurse there during the 900-day siege.”  When I venture to ask her to tell us something of that time, she says only, through Andrei’s translation, “no food, no food.”  Approximately 650,000 people died.    

Andrei nods and pulls out a picture of his father, Gennadi, who served on the Karelian front, close to Leningrad. During Andrei’s childhood, his father told him the story of when his platoon was given one loaf of bread per day for each eight people.  The denser end pieces were the most prized, so the commander cut the loaf into eight pieces, held one piece from the middle of the loaf and one from the end behind his back, then asked the soldiers, “Who wants to choose first?”  Andrei’s father said that when the Germans learned about the shortage of food on the front, they started teasing the Soviet soldiers, holding up loaves of bread from their trenches, yelling, ”Russian!  Who wants to choose?  In which hand do I have a piece of bread?”    

On this sunny day filled with balloons, music, eating, drinking and laughter, stories of death, starvation and inhumanity have a Once Upon a Time quality, so incomprehensible in reality that they just couldn’t be true. The Truth confronts us, though, as we greet the men and women who lived them, whose children re-tell their experiences. And for those of us fortunate enough to hear, we must pass them on.

Lyudmila with our friend, Ann Symons, fellow expat living in Moscow

A Parade in the Sky

If I had a facebook account, which our children keep encouraging me to do, or knew how to twitter, I would quickly grab my laptop and type, “Sitting on the couch in our Moscow apartment, sipping tea, and WATCHING RUSSIAN JETS AND HELICOPTERS FLY BY MY WINDOW!”  Not just a few, but formation after formation, probably 15-20 of them on a flight path from the airport to Red Square, practicing for the Victory Day celebration on May 9^th.  All I need is a pair of binoculars and one of those “How to Identify Military Aircraft” cheat sheets that I’ve seen guys refer to in war movies. “Coastwatchers,” I think they were called, who manned remote outposts in the South Pacific during World War II, courageously radioing in aircraft and naval sightings. In an infinitely safer position in our 10^th floor apartment than a tree perch somewhere in the Solomon Islands, I gather my own intelligence about the upcoming air show.  Without the advantage of the coastwatchers’ expertise, however, my descriptions have a rather generic flavor. . .

·      pointy-nosed, Top Gun planes which look poised to fly upside down or perform death-defying dives like the Thunderbirds

·      slender-bodied white planes, resembling the Concord without the “drooping” nose

·      hulking planes with over-sized midsections, capable of carrying a few dozen tanks, perhaps?     

·      average-looking gray helicopters, dressed up for the occasion with Russian flags hanging beneath them

They fly by at a parade pace above our neighboring tall buildings, and I’m tempted to wave as they pass by.  One group of the Top Gunners forms the number 65 to commemorate the 65^th anniversary of the end of World War II.  I count another group of 10, tightly spaced in a triangular formation.  Others form a single file and stretch far in the distance, disappearing as they head towards city center.  It is quite a show!  But not one that conjures up feelings of fear or foreboding. Rather than military might, it’s military remembrance that I sense from their presence, part of a grand celebration to honor the almost 25 million Russians who died in the Allied cause.

I’m sure I will see the planes again on Sunday as I look up at them from ground level, perhaps as I stand along the New Arbat watching the parade, or mingle among some of the remaining veterans at Gorky Park.  On this morning, though, I feel like a distinguished guest with a front-row seat to my own private preview.   

Ash Settles

As the ash from Iceland’s volcano floated through the atmosphere, some of the microscopic particles drifted down to earth and settled.  Settled, stayed for a while, came to a rest, stopped moving.  Exactly what more than a million travelers were forced to do last week.  Fortunately, Drew and I were not among them, even though we were traveling back from the U.S. to Russia one day after it erupted.

When our Delta flight left JFK for Moscow’s Sheremetovo airport, the pilot told us that our route would be altered, longer by 3 hours, so we could bypass the ash on a southerly route via Spain and Ukraine.  A three hour delay – another movie, perhaps, time to finish that book, or try again to fall asleep.  No inconvenience at all, compared to the 65 teachers, their families and 40% of the Anglo American School students who were days, even a week, delayed in returning from their spring vacations.

My story, (since this is my blog) is about where I settled during the Week of the Ash.  I re-entered an elementary school classroom at AAS and stayed for a week, taking over the duties of a 4^th grade teacher stranded in Paris.  As students like to put it, “Hey, are you. .  The Sub?”   Three years of retirement had blurred my memories of how it feels in your muscles, your joints, even your eyelids to be a teacher.  At the end of the first day, I was exhausted!  By mid-afternoon, I realized that I hadn’t been to the bathroom and had eaten my yogurt and cracker lunch while typing out a template for a research report.  This kind of dedicated, though rather obsessive, behavior characterizes most teachers I know.

 Interacting with sixteen 9 and 10-year-olds for a week reaffirmed an even more glaring Truth about teaching than the fact that it’s hard work.  It is a humbling responsibility.  Who doesn’t have a good teacher/bad teacher story that comes to mind immediately when asked for a memory of both?  My 8^th grade algebra classroom flashes to mind as my teacher is handing back an exam.  Passing by my desk, she tosses the paper to me with a bright, red D plastered across its top as she says, LOUDLY, “Twylla, I just don’t know what happened to you on this test.”  I wanted to race out the door, chasing my self-esteem down the stairs.  Contrast that with my 6^th grade teacher who greeted me every morning with a literal twinkle in her eye, kindly smile on her face and the words, “Twylla, I’m so glad to see you this morning!”  My self-esteem hurried to catch up with me every day as I climbed the stairs to my classroom.

A teacher’s influence is seen in the subtleties, the choices he makes hundreds of times during a day.  Choices to resist the sigh, eye roll, shake of the head, and words that deflate Self Confidence in a slow, often imperceptible leak.  Choices to embrace the smile, respectful tone, empathetic ear, and words that infuse the Spirit with inexhaustible energy. Choices that last a lifetime.

Staying put for a week as the ash swirled and clouded the lives of many, I experienced renewed clarity and gratitude.  Clarity of the incredibly influential role a teacher plays in individual lives and ultimately the world, as these individuals interact in the larger community.  And gratitude for Mrs. Hardman, Mrs. Shope and Dr. Anderson, whose choices to teach with dignity and respect, are still being felt in this individual life.   

Metro Bombings

The subject line on my husband’s email on March 29^th read, “Metro Bombings.”   This was the first news I’d heard of the deadly suicide bombings in the Moscow metro stations. Grateful for his safety, my thoughts turned to our friends, the students, staff, and parents of the Anglo American School of Moscow, where Drew is the director, and especially of the Russian staff whose extended families could have been involved.  I hastily opened the email and scanned to the bottom, “Everyone in our community is safe.”  I exhaled.  Typing in CNN, I read the grim details and watched a video of ambulances, stretchers, puddles of blood and people wandering, sitting, staring, in shock.

Park Kultury metro station, the site of the second explosion. . . I was there a couple of days before I left Moscow in December to return to Arkansas, just passing through, changing trains from the brown to red line, on my way to Sportivnaya stop, taking a friend to Novodevinchy convent.  One of thousands who enter and exit that station successfully every day.  But on the morning of the 29^th, some, tragically, did not.

When I rode the metro for the first time 6 years ago, I was petrified.  I gripped the black handrails as I eased onto the escalator step and looked below for the bottom, which was nowhere in sight, only a line of people, single file, ahead of me.   The brown line is the deepest, as far down into the earth as 126 meters, or about 414 feet. Claustrophobic, I wanted out!  My friend reassured me that I could to this.  “Keep talking,” I said.  Reaching the platform, I pressed on, opting not to do a U-turn and head back up the escalator. I squeezed inside the waiting car, grabbed an overhead strap and watched the doors slam shut. My mind swirled with worst case scenarios. . . an electrical failure trapping us in cars that wouldn’t open, an earthquake burying us with concrete from above, or a bomb blowing us in every direction.  

Interesting how my fears lessened over time, with familiarity, predictability and being in the company of other metro riders who look so calm, so comfortable they could fall asleep.  And some do, as the shaking of  the metro car on its rails, lull them into a quick nap. Others pull out books, magazines, crosswords and sukudos.  Eyes are glued to  phone screens; ears are plugged into ipods.  Most sit, looking straight ahead, with an inconspicuous glance left or right, playing a cat and mouse game of “no eye contact.” I now travel among them, from station to station, car to car, reassured by the faces of daily life…

A stoop-shouldered babushka in her black coat, black fur hat, carrying a recycled grocery bag

Three giggling teen-aged girls wearing Hanna Montana T-shirts

A graying, middle-aged man protecting his bouquet of red roses from the press of the crowd

A young couple gazing into the face of their sleeping baby

 We become a community for minutes only, a chance collection of people, inhabiting a common space.  The women bombers stepped into such a gathering of travelers and detonated their explosives, not knowing any of their victims.  As I hopelessly try to understand this senseless violence, I can’t help but wonder whether the bombers, even briefly, glanced at the person sitting or standing beside them.  Did they notice the face of the baby, the grandmother, the man by the door who might have reminded them of someone at home?

 For the sake of a hopeful world, I like to think that the humanity of one person connecting with the humanity in another, would spark something, at least a momentary hesitation or questioning. The results of their deadly actions, however, perpetuate the harsh reality that history has taught us. . . it’s easier to kill strangers, whom we hate unseen.