More intimate moments with Baba Valentina

Today is fogged and dark and has me in a slow, “I am just going to watch The Piano and weep” mood, for which I blame the 7^th formers – savages, savages, barely even human – and their mangled, poorly written textbooks. Luckily, I have a baba who can always cheer me up.

There’s something about having all of your boundaries violated that just becomes an endless source of hilarity. I just have to accept whatever horrifying situation is at hand – today, for example, telling myself, “OK, this is happening right now, Baba V is taking her pants off to go pee,” in the bathroom where I had been brushing my teeth. Or a couple hours later, when she didn’t close the bathroom door and I blundered past. Well, she’s seen me naked as the day I was born, and a number of times at that, so I guess we’re even.

Like all babas, she’s very concerned that I get enough to eat. I am pretty sure that I could eat an entire ham in front of Baba V and she would still furrow and fret and proffer yet more grease-sodden potatoes at me. After asking me five times if I wanted to eat more apples today, she came into my room with a plateful, repeating, “Eat apples, eat apples.” (Ukrainian and Russian don't have the equivalents of "the" or "is," and their terseness usually terrify me into obeying whatever command's been issued me. And who was I kidding, of COURSE I was going to eat the apples!)

She also informed me that if I don’t eat meat, or at least fish, I will get tuberculosis. She is going to buy fish for me at the market so that I do not get tuberculosis. I know what this means. It means I am going to have to cook something with a face. They sell FISH WITH FACES at the market. I will look it in the EYE as I peel the flesh from its millions of tiny pale bones. At least if my TB vaccine somehow falters, she's got me covered - after all, Baba knows best.