Sister Found

    Homesickness strikes in so many forms. For Nellie lately, it's shown up in her wish to reconnect with family and friends from Moscow and Baku.
    "I have a sister who went to teach at an institute in Vienna," she informed me one Tuesday afternoon, midway through tea. Russians use the terms "sister" and "brother" for every degree of cousinship, and I was pretty sure this time she meant a cousin. "I haven't heard from her in so long. How can I get in touch with her?"
    Nellie has an ancient spiral notebook, with loose pages falling out at every turn, scribbled phone numbers and addresses in no particular order, scratched out and re-written so many times it's nearly impossible to find anything. I was hopeful that perhaps she had this cousin's information somewhere. "Do you have her address? Or phone number?"
    She pulled out the notebook and started scrutinizing the pages. "Well, I thought I did. But I can't find it. Maybe you could ask the address table."
    I didn't think I'd understood correctly. "The what?"
    She said it again. "The address table."
    "You really mean address table?" I used the English words to make sure.
    "Yes, yes, you know...the address table. If you can't find somebody you ask them and they find them for you."
    I've read about sending mail to the local post office in a foreign country, to be held until called for. But that was in very old stories. I wasn't sure such a thing as an address table existed anymore. Or if it did, I wasn't sure how to find the one in Vienna. I wasn't ready to give up yet, however. "What's her name?"
    "Ira," Nellie answered, as if that was plenty.
    "How about her family name and patronymic? Do you know which institute she went to teach at? What year did she move to Vienna? Is she still teaching?" If I was going to have any chance at finding this sister, I'd need a little more to go on than her nickname.
    Nellie searched the recesses of her memory and filled in some of the gaps. "But how can we find her?" she wailed. "I don't know what happened to her address!"
    I didn't mention the possibility of an internet search, because Nellie has absolutely no concept of the internet. And if I were to fail, she'd probably fall into the depths of despair. But I intended to try. The next morning I typed the name she'd given me in a Google search bar. Guess who came up on the first page? Nellie's long-lost cousin, at the Institute of Vienna!
    I could hardly contain my excitement. Could it really be that easy? I sent a message to Irina, explaining that I was writing on behalf of Nellie. Irina immediately responded. Yes, she was Nellie's cousin, and she was so happy to find her again! Did Nellie have a telephone number so she could talk directly to her?
    We decided that I'd better warn Nellie before she got the call. Otherwise, as Irina said, "too much emotion, even good emotion, might be bad for her health."
    So I told her. "I have good news! I found Irina, and she still lives in Vienna, and she wants to call you!"
    Nellie was flabbergasted. "How did you do it? Oh, you good girl! But I don't understand. You just put her name in the computer? But that's amazing! And here I was all worried that I would never talk to her again."
    If only all stories had such a happy ending.