Borrowing Trouble

Nellie called me on New Year's Day. Although New Year is a big deal for Russians, however, there was no "Snovim Godom!" (Happy New Year) greeting from the other end of the phone line. Instead, after she fumbled for my name as usual, she launched right into an account of how a mutual friend had cut her hand on a broken mirror in her handbag. Making appropriately distressed noises as I tried to figure out why Nellie was telling me this with such urgency, I realized that she wanted to know if I had a small mirror myself. "I might have one, maybe. I'll have to look. Do you want me to bring it for Diana to replace the one she broke?"

            "No, no, no!" Nellie was nearly frantic. "Do you have it in your purse? A little makeup mirror that you use when you're out somewhere?"

            "Oh, no. I don't carry one in my purse." I was a bit bewildered.

            "You don't have one that could break and cut your hand too?" Finally I understood her concern...at least to a point.There was no need to worry, I assured her. There was no danger of my cutting my hand on a small mirror in my purse.

            Nellie let out a huge sigh of relief. "Okay. Goodbye."

It's Good to be Remembered

I have a large family, and Nellie is continually fascinated by all my brothers and sisters (whom she's never met). One afternoon I mentioned Elizabeth, the youngest girl, in some anecdote. "Elizabet..." pondered Nellie, "she is the last of your sisters?" I answered in the affirmative. "And who are the others?" she asked. I named them in order--Audrey, Katherine, Amy, Elizabeth. Nellie held up her five fingers and tried to name them back to me. "Elizabet..." her pinkie finger went down. She wiggled the others and tried to remember. "One is a very short name, right?"

            I touched her ring finger. "Amy," I reminded her. "And one has the name of a Russian queen. Katherine." I pushed her middle finger down so that only the thumb and index finger remained.

            She thought very hard. "Katerin, ummm...Ami, Elizabet. The other name is strange, I think." I reminded her of Audrey's name and she tried to repeat it. "Ahndrei...she's a girl? What a funny name for a girl. And then there's you," waving her thumb thoughtfully. "And you are...you are...."

            I laughed out loud. "You don't remember my name, do you?" I've only been going to visit her every week for about five years.

            "Of course I do! I know your name...it's...it's kind of like your husband's name, isn't it?" Well, they do both start with the same letter. I gave her a little more time to think. Finally she shook her head. "I don't know," she admitted. "What is your name?"

            "My name is Jessica," I giggled. "Will you remember it now?"

            "Oh, yes." Nellie held up her five fingers again and then lowered her thumb. "You are Jessica...and [putting down her pinkie once more] the youngest is Elizabeth...and...and...the others I don't remember."

Very, very hot.

It had been a really ridiculously hot summer. I mean really hot. Usually Oklahoma has ups and downs, a few days of scorching heat interspersed with a couple only moderately oven-like and even a day or two of overcast coolness. But this year I think we went a good month and half without seeing a high temperature under 100. That's 100 degrees Fahrenheit, of course. And therein lies a tale.

Nellie knew it had been hot; each Tuesday when I came from work, she could tell (when she paid attention) that I was fairly weary from the heat. One day she asked me just how hot it was. It happened to be a record-breaking week, and I told her the temperature was 112.

"What is that in Celsius?" she wondered. "I'm still not used to that other system."

I never have been very good at remembering the exact conversion formula, so I gave her my best guess. "I'm not exactly sure," I told her, "but I think it's somewhere around 45 degrees in Celsius."

"Oh, surely not!" Nellie exclaimed. "That would be really, really hot."

"Well," I assured her, "it is very hot."

"Yes," she nodded, "but surely not that hot. Why do you Americans use that 'Fahrenheit' temperature, anyway?"

Before I came to visit the next week, I happened to see the time and temperature on a local bank: 109 F, or 43 C. I stored away the information to share with Nellie, and accordingly, when I saw her on Tuesday I told her what I'd learned. "So 112 would be about 45 Celsius," I concluded, just a little pleased with myself for being pretty close to right.

"Oh, well," Nellie waved it off. "That's not all that hot."

I was a bit nonplussed. "What? But last week you said it was really, really hot."

"Oh, it's warm, to be sure. But not all that hot. I remember when I was a girl, and the temperature was 60 degrees Celsius. That was really, really hot. We opened all the windows, but I could hardly breathe. Forty-five isn't that bad."

For the record, I checked: 60 C works out to about 140 F. I don't believe, somehow, that Nellie ever had a 60 degree summer in Russia. But what do I know?

Bees

            I dreaded telling Nellie that I wanted to start keeping bees, knowing that she would, in common parlance, "freak out." Still, when the time had almost come for my two three-pound packages of bees to arrive in the mail, I gathered my courage and explained my plan. As I'd expected, she was horrified; frantic gestures and wild exclamations made it clear that she was sure I'd die, and why in the world would I want bees, and maybe it wasn't too late to change my mind, and, for goodness' sake, I should certainly have consulted with her first! I stood my ground, hoping by my own calmness to soothe her fears a little. Gradually she began to take more than a morbid interest, and I described the fascinating life of bees as I'd learned so far from reading everything I could find. Little by little, she began to admit that perhaps, although she never would have thought of it herself, it wasn't an altogether insane idea.

            "They don't want to sting anyone," I assured her. "The only thing they want is to find nectar, make honey, and raise new bees. If I move slowly, gently, quietly around them, they shouldn't be afraid of me and they won't have any reason to sting."

            "Well," Nellie conceded, "you are quiet. But where will they get nectar? Will you let them out of their home?" I've been surprised at how many people have asked me that question. I had assumed that everyone knew bees flew around gathering nectar from flowers, but apparently that was not the case. Since I could see where this line of questioning was headed, I hurried to explain.

            "Yes, I have to let them out. They'll find flowers--all kinds of flowers--and gather nectar from them. They help the flowers, too. They'll help my garden grow better. Every plant has some kind of flower, and the bees carry...[here my Russian failed me, for I don't think I have ever known the word for "pollen"]...powder from one flower to the next to help it grow."

            Nellie shook her head in astonishment. "Amazing! I never knew. But they'll stay in your yard, right? They won't fly away somewhere else and sting someone?"

            Oh, dear. I couldn't guarantee that no one would ever get stung; in fact, I expected that, sooner or later, I myself would suffer a bee sting. Since I wasn't actually worried, however, I could downplay the danger. "No, they'll fly everywhere to find flowers. I read that to make one kilogram of honey, bees travel about fifty thousand miles! But all they want is the nectar, so they'll go right to the flowers and then come back home. They don't want to sting anybody, remember?"

            It was almost time to go, and Nellie was almost reconciled to my beekeeping dreams. Still shaking her head, she looked at me in a kind of dazed wonder. "You're such a strange girl. Now I know why you weren't interested in earrings. All this time I've been trying to get you to pierce your ears, and you've been thinking about bees!"

            The next Tuesday her first words were characteristic: "Did they bite you?"

            I was a bit confused. "Who? What? Did who bite me?" My bees weren't the topmost item on my mind, since I'd been at work all day wrestling with photos of bracelets and necklaces.

            "The bees. Did they bite you? I've been worried sick all week!" Of course she had. Holding out my un-stung arms for inspection, I assured her that my little girls were just as gentle as I'd expected. No casualties, no wounded--except for my foolish dog who, in her excitement to see what I was doing, stepped on one poor bee who stung her paw. But it only happened once. After that one time, Maggie knew to stay well away from the beehives.

            "Ohhh..." Nellie sighed her relief. "All week I've been so afraid. Have they bitten anyone else while they're flying around?"

            Not a soul. Most people in our neighborhood haven't even noticed the existence of forty thousand or so buzzing insects. They really are singleminded little creatures, traveling in fairly straight lines between flowers and home.

            "That's good," she declared. "I was sure that they would fly to someone else's flowers and sting one of their children, maybe, and then the father would be very angry and come to your home and say, 'Why did your bees hurt my child?' and then the police would come and you might have to pay a fine or go to jail for having bees in the city and..." she trailed off as I looked at her in amazement.

            "You thought all that? Nellie, Nellie, you worry too much!" I chided her. "Before I even ordered the bees, I called the police department to make sure it was alright. They said there is no problem, no laws against bees, no codes...I checked everything first, to be sure."

            "Such a clever girl!" Nellie chuckled, both at me and at her own worries. "You think of everything."

The Battle of the Ear Holes

Nellie really, really wants me to pierce my ears. I'm not sure why it seems to have become the one great goal of her life--earrings can't have been terribly important to her because her own holes have long since grown closed through lack of use--but to hear her go on, she will die empty and forlorn if she cannot talk me into getting my ears pierced.

            Let me try to say this clearly: I have nothing against pierced ears. I do not have a deep-seated aversion to earrings. I am not afraid of the process. I like to see people wearing earrings. My mother and sisters all have pierced ears and look lovely in their various distinct styles. I simply have never felt the inclination to get my own pierced. Nothing more than that--I just don't want to.

            All this I have explained to Nellie...again and again and again. She cannot fathom my refusal. When I tell my adopted babushka the simple truth--that I just don't want to pierce my ears--she shakes her head adamantly and insists that such a thing is impossible, illogical, ungrounded. If I do not have a better reason that that, then I have no reason at all. She can be very stubborn. So can I.

            And so, though I've left nearly in tears from frustration several times and though she's said at least twice that she will let the subject drop, Nellie keeps coming back to the battle of the dirochky (ear holes). One day I noticed a small white box on her dresser, covered with a piece of paper. Soon Nellie directed me to look inside, and there on a bed of cotton batting lay a pair of blue and white beaded Southwest-style earrings. Very nice. Not something I'd choose for myself, but pretty enough in their own fashion. "Aren't they beautiful?" Nellie demanded. I politely concurred, trying to maintain the right blend of agreement and non-interest, dreading the argument I feared would follow. To my surprise, however, Nellie motioned for me to cover them up again. "What a pity you're ears aren't pierced," she lamented. I could hear the conniving in her voice and knew the matter was not finished.

            Sure enough, over the course of the next few weeks her plan became clear: repeated exposure to the exquisite earrings was inevitably going to break down my resistance and finally I would promise to pierce my ears so I might have the privilege of wearing them. The only thing Nellie failed to take into account was that, while I like the beaded baubles well enough in their box, I don't really want them at all. To her dismay, I wasn't even tempted.

            Recognizing that I was not going to beg for the earrings no matter how many times she held them enticingly before my eyes, Nellie changed her strategy again. One afternoon, after yet another look under the paper cover, she sighed dramatically and said, "I so much want to give these to someone!" I sighed sympathetically back but refused the bait.

            "I'm sure there's someone you can give them to," I offered helpfully.

            "But I really want to give them to you!"

            I knew that. Still, I had to be firm. "But my ears aren't pierced," I reminded her, "and I'm not going to pierce them."

            Her bafflement showed clearly on her face. "But why? I don't understand! Every other woman in the world has pierced ears! Your mother and sisters have pierced ears. Why don't you want to be like everyone else?"

            I tried to keep my frustration from bubbling out. "So do you want me to be just like everyone else? Why is it so important to you?"

            "I just want to give these earrings to someone who will enjoy them. Right now when people see your ears they think, 'Oh, nothing special.' But if you were wearing these marvelous earrings, they would exclaim, 'Oh, how beautiful!'"

            "Well," I shrugged my shoulders, "since every other woman in the world has pierced ears, maybe you should give the earring to one of them."

            "But I want to give them to you!" Nellie wailed. Having no more arguments (and very little patience) left, I hugged her and shook my head. "I guess I'll wait," she concluded resignedly. "This year you're thirty-four and you say no. Maybe next year when you're thirty-five...."

            It was only a few weeks later that Nellie, with a smug little look on her lovable face, pointed at her dresser where the earring box no longer sat. "What's missing?" she asked me.

            "Umm...the earrings?" I guessed, wondering what new plot she had in mind for me.

            "Yes, the earrings. They're gone. A girl came to visit me and I gave them to her. She liked them a lot."

            "Wonderful!" I was delighted. "I'm sure she did like them. They were very pretty. I'm glad you gave them to someone who will use them."

            "You're not upset? It's okay that I gave them away?" Nellie seemed to think she hadn't heard me correctly.

            "Of course, you funny lady! Of course I want somebody to enjoy them. It just won't be me."

Epilogue to the "my roommate never talks to me" episode

The very next Tuesday as I sat with Nellie, preparing tea and taking down Christmas lights, Mrs. Hooper wheeled slowly out of the room, calling back in her quavery old lady voice, "I'm going down the hall now--see you later, sweetheart!"

            I raised my eyebrows at Nellie. "Look--she said something!"

            "Oh, she's always saying something. I don't know what she's taking about." Her tone indicated that she'd much rather her neighbor just kept quiet.

            I couldn't believe my ears. Well, to be truthful, I could believe and had suspected that this was the case all along, but I couldn't let Nellie get away with it. I lifted my hands in a gesture of confusion. "But last week you told me she never talked to you at all!" Just as I'd expected, she had no answer. She only ducked her head guiltily and giggled.

"My Roommate Never Talks To Me"

            Nellie has a new roommate in her double-occupancy nursing-home room. The old one, Ruth, irritated her to no end (though not through any fault of Ruth's except for old age and senility), so when Nellie decided to move two doors down the hall I hoped the new neighbor would be a good change. And as far as I can see, Mrs. Hooper is a perfectly pleasant lady--elderly and slow-moving, but that's to be expected. Granted, she doesn't speak Russian, but Nellie gets along just fine with most of the attendants in spite of language limitations, so there's no reason the two couldn't be at least amiable acquaintances. It took me rather by surprise, then, when one afternoon after Mrs. Hooper had just returned to the room Nellie began railing to me in much more than a stage whisper. Sometimes I'm inexpressibly grateful that no one has a clue what she's saying.

            "She never says anything to me! She never greets me or anything! She just goes right on by! Why?"

            I tried to soothe her. "Probably because she only speaks English and you only speak Russian. She probably doesn't know what she could say that you would understand."
            Nellie was not to be mollified. "But she never says anything! Just scoots her chair right past me--nothing."

            This, by the way, was not strictly true. I've been there myself on a few occasions when she's told Nellie she'll be out of the bathroom soon (Nellie went into fits about how her "soon" is always an awfully long time) or made some small comment  like "Oh, you're having tea." But I wasn't going to argue that point.

            "Well," I began hesitantly, "do you ever say something to her? Hello, perhaps?"

            A look of blank astonishment covered Nellie's face. "Me?" The idea, apparently, had never occured to her. "No..." she said, bewildered.

            "Maybe...just maybe, if you started it, she might realize that you could understand each other a little and then she might begin talking to you." For a second, Nellie sat silent, digesting the idea. Then the thoughtful furrow in her forehead smoothed itself out and she waved her hand dismissively.

            "Oh, I don't want to. It's too much bother!"

            I shook my head in disbelief and laughed at her. "Well then," I scolded, shaking my finger at her, "you shouldn't be offended!" Sheepishly, like a child caught in some small fault, she grinned and hugged me with her one good arm.

Babushka

I first met Nellie about six years ago when a friend who worked at her nursing home introduced us. Having spent a couple of years in Moscow, I knew enough Russian to muddle through a conversation, and Nellie had lost what little English she used to know when a stroke paralyzed her right side ten years earlier. Now this eighty-something-year-old little lady only knew the Russian language of her youth, and made life quite...shall we say, interesting...for the nursing home staff who did their best to comply with her incomprehensible demands. Nellie, as I learned, is lovable and generous and cranky and irascible and opinionated and quirky, all rolled into one wheelchair-bound bundle.

So I began visiting her, most Tuesday afternoons, with my electric kettle and tea paraphernalia, for I knew from my years in Moscow that Russians love a good chat over a cup of hot tea. Nellie decided that, though I didn't speak very well, I was a pretty good little girl and would do nicely as a granddaughter--vnuchka. And that is how I find myself, years later, with a Russian babushka (grandmother) who calls me periodically to ask me to bring a bar of soap or "that thread, you know, for that shirt." Or to warn me about cutting my finger on a broken mirror which might or might not be in my purse...but that's another story.