Chapter 1
It’s on account of the jellyfish that I ended up in Siberia. That, and a can a Pringles, a volleyball and two very sloppy plumbere vanilla ice cream cones that ended up down the front of my Tasmanian devil pajamas.
But probably I should tell the entire story of how Chase not only talked me into moving to the backside of the world, where the snow crests off the tundra like whirling dervishes, where a person can literally freeze her nose off her face, and where people eat pig fat for snacks, but also how it made me reach deep inside myself to find more of me than I’d ever dreamed.
Definitely more than Chase ever dreamed. But we’ll get there.
I need to state, for the record, that I, Josey Berglund Anderson, never liked camping. At least, not my husband Chase’s definition of camping, which I’ve discovered is vastly different from my own. But that, in part, is what marriage is all about – discovering the definitions of our personal vocabulary.
Case in point – to me, camping is ’smores over a cracking fire, after a day of hiking some well-sculpted trail along a northern river while the sun sets above a perfect rose-gilded lake, fireflies twinkling in the indigo twilight. It’s watching the moon rise, and heating up coffee in a sierra cup as the night settles in around us. That much, I believe Chase and I can agree on. However, it is here where our definitions diverge and trek off into opposite accommodations. I retire to a cabin, with indoor plumbing, screens, and although I’m willing not to have a real bed, I do want to be on something padded and at least away from the creepy-crawlies that live in the dirt. In short, when I camp, I want to just add water. This, however, is not Chase’s definition. Chase likes to camp from scratch.
I should have known that Chase’s interpretation of camping might be different – after all, as an anthropologist – or former anthropologist – his greatest dreams are along the lines of living among the Nepalis, trekking up sides of mountains clad in only felt moccasins, sleeping in clay-covered huts and eating boiled dal-bhat, while playing the sarangi. I know, because he has a fifty-pound textbook on the subject. My Chase likes doing things like bathing in a glacial river and wearing the same natty attire for two weeks.
And you ask, I know, how we ended up together. Alas, the camping differences didn’t surface until long after our wedding day, even after the birth of our twins, Chloe and Justin. Perhaps Chase snowed me with his black motorcycle and the way he filled out a football letter jacket. Perhaps it was the way he chased me across the planet to get my attention and win my heart.
Or maybe, as usual, it was the way he backed me into a corner, one hand propped over my shoulder as he leaned into my neck to plant a kiss and whispered, “C’mon GI, it’ll be fun.”
Fun, yeah. As I’ve discovered, that word, too, has vastly different definitions. For example, I do not think it is fun to pack everything we own, including buckets for hauling water (aka, the kitchen sink), swim gear, sleeping bags, clothes, pots and pans, plates, cups, silverware, tents, blankets, a shovel, and enough food for ten days into backpacks, spend two days on a train from Moscow to Simferopol, Ukraine, then four hours on a bus, hike across the treeless rolling steppe to a cliff that drops 100 meters or so of sure death to the sea where we would have to erect our own shelter like some sort of nomads, all the while carrying two munchkins (who have their own backpacks, I might add).
I should have realized, as we stood on the high cliffs overlooking the Black Sea, at the waves crashing against the boulders below, across a pebbled not-so-sandy beach, that setting up camp in a still-rustic yet sturdy cabin hadn’t even been a blip on Chase’s list of expectations.
Which led to panic, and a softly breathed question. “Where are the bathrooms?”
“Outhouses.” Chase pointed to the shovel attached to his pack. “Do it yourself.”
Of course.
I stood there a moment, breathing in the view, trying to make it all better by focusing on the aqua-green bay under a cloudless sky, the way the beach curved as if cupping the water, rimmed by rugged, orange lichen-covered cliffs and lush, green brush. A road wound down to this Chasonian paradise from the cliff, and with a grin, Chase headed for it.
Justin and Chloe ran after him, as if he were the Pied Piper of Hamlin.
I sacrificed three things the day I gave birth to my twins.
1.. My waistline. I must have offended it with one too many peanut butter cookies because it hasn’t been back, something my maternity clothes are oh-too-happy to embrace. Chase says two children is enough, especially living in a high-rise two-bedroom flat in the center of Russia, but I’ve been holding onto my painfully acquired pregnancy wardrobe (yoga pants and all of Chase’s extra-large shirts) just in case. (At least that’s the story I’m sticking to.)
2. My sense of adventure. No longer do I run down the beach, the Ray Coniff Love Story Singers in my head, listening to the waves of the sea lap the shore and the seagulls cry as they soar above.
Instead, as we descended the cliff to the Black Sea beach, my mother’s eye saw broken glass, jagged beer cans, and old cigarette butts hidden in the sand like land mines. Three-year old Justin rushed into the water up to his knees, laughing, splashing. I stepped close to grab him in case he went under.
I’ll probably never enjoy water again.
3. My bladder. Which has decided that when it wants attention, it gets it.
Chase dropped our gear in an empty lot of dirty sand and dug out the shovel. I looked at it, looked at Chase, and tried not to cry.
I’ve come to expect a few inconveniences while living in Russia over the past four plus years. For example, I don’t really expect the electricity to stay on the entire time I’m cooking the Thanksgiving turkey. I know that the hot water will shut off from May until November, and that if I want a bath, I need to prepare at least twelve hours in advance. I have every public bathroom in Moscow plotted out and have rated them on a scale of good-idea to desperate. And I know that when Chase latches onto a new idea, it’s much like body surfing. Catch the idea at the right time, and you’re on top of the wave, enjoying the view. Spring too late and the wave crests over your head, saltwater up your nose. You land choking and gasping and even a little roughed up by the sand and shells.
I’ve been wondering, at what point, does a girl get to stand in the surf, let the wave crash against her knees, and say, Nyet!
Clearly, I’m not there yet. Which is why, now, I find myself one outpost in a sea of tents facing Russia and Ukraine’s idea of paradise, smack in the middle of Chase’s idea of a vacation. He’s been planning said vacation since we arrived in Russia, and I figure it’s his well-earned bonus for three years of dedication to WorldMar, his NGO (non-government-organization) in Moscow. Over the past four years, he’s launched and managed an entrepreneurial peanut-butter making company that’s created a new love for creamy spreads all the way down the Yalta.
Here’s where I admit to my evil master plan, the real reason why I agreed to set up camp at the edge of the world. The project has ended, and we’ve got two choices on the horizon.
Choice One: Head back to Gull Lake, Minnesota, buy a house, and enroll the kids in soccer and ballet lessons. Chase will work for my dad until a position at the school opens up, and we’ll finally get to live somewhere where the backyard isn’t a hazardous waste zone. (This is obviously my vote.)
Choice Two: Another NGO project, this time working with local, private chicken farmers.
Can you believe Chase is actually considering it? Not that I have anything against chickens. Rather, I’m thinking that maybe I did my time, and it’s my turn.
So, my thinking is, give the man a camping trip, he’ll give me Gull Lake. Because, well, four years into marriage I’m learning fast how to bargain. All that time in the market haggling over potatoes has made me a master.
Hence, this last adventure to the south of Ukraine. As far as the eye can see, tents – blue, orange, brown – dot the coast. All of Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe take a vacation in August, most cities emptying out to the sea where, although some make, uh reservations and stay at a resort, (which, by the way, has been my family’s livelihood back home in Minnesota for nearly forty years), others find a space of land and set up a homestead. With kitchens (portable stoves and campfires) and laundry facilities (buckets and clotheslines) and living rooms (tarps staked over cars and paddles and other makeshift walls). Kids run naked, or half-naked to the sea and back (my preschoolers are overdressed in their pull-ups, tee-shirts, and sunhats), the smell of fish and smoke taint the fresh air. Someone has decided to run the battery down on their boom box and picked up a radio station. I recognize a Machina Vremina song.
Behind all this chaos, about fifty paces, is another village – of outhouses. Most are made of driftwood or scrap lumber shoved into the ground and covered on three sides, some of them poorly, with an old sheet. (The backside is open to face…uh, nature.) Not ours. The American outhouse is made from four re-bars, a dark sheet secured on three sides, with a hanging door for privacy. Plumb and sturdy, I have a feeling it could survive a typhoon.
The fact that my backside is protected from flashing the world, even in the most dire of weather, is my one consolation to having to spend every waking moment sweeping out the tent, making sure our children don’t kick off their beach shoes or disappear forever into the sea, cooking another pot of potatoes, or lathering on another layer of sunblock.
Yeah, I’m having fun. I love camping.
Gull Lake, think Gull Lake. Three bedroom home. Swingset.
Dog. A black lab, or maybe a collie--
“Josey, look what Sveta and Vadeem gave us.” Chase comes tromping across the sand, all grins. Of course Chase is on a first name basis with the “neighbors.” Another day, and they’ll adopt him.
Okay, yes, I have some attitude issues. Although I came to Russia first, five years ago, learned to speak Russian first, learned how to negotiate the Moscow subway first, Chase was born to live in Russia. He even looks Russian, and he speaks it so well after three years that someone even asked him how he, as a Russian, managed to nab an American wife. That particular day, I didn’t have an answer for that.
Today I might. Because he’s looking tan and toned, his dark blonde needing-a-cut hair curly on his neck and shiny in the sun. He smiles at me, his blue eyes lit with mischief. Wearing a red handkerchief he’s tied in four corners on his head like a candy wrapper, a tee-shirt with the arms cut off, and a pair of swim trunks (the American kind, not Speedo-style), he crouches where I’m sitting, accidentally kicking sand and pebbles onto my towel. I have an eye on Chloe, who is standing just at the edge of the water with a plastic shovel, perhaps contemplating how long it might take to fill the hole she’s just dug with water. Her blonde hair is nearly white, curling out under her hat, like Chase’s. Justin is napping in the tent behind me, his lips askew, a fine bead of sweat along his blond brow line. He’s going to be a charmer, just like his dad. Someday his wife will wonder just how she agreed to live three billion miles away from her family and home in a country whose word for “hello” sounds like someone is clearing their throat of phlegm. Zhdrastvyootya? Please.
I’ll just smile. Because I know the answer. “What?” I ask Chase.
Chase plunks down a blue bucket – my blue bucket, formerly used to wash preschooler underwear in – “Flounder!”
I stare at the bucket, and my stomach responds before I do. Because the shiny, smelly – thing – is staring at me with both glassy eyes, his fins still twitching. “Both eyes are on the same side of his head,” I say, not sure what Chase wants me to do with it.
“That’s because he lies on the bottom of the sea, hiding in the sand, waiting to surprise his prey.”
Creepy. “Is he a pet?”
Chase laughs. “We’re invited to Vadeem’s and Sveta’s place for dinner. We just have to clean it.”
Not I, said the little red hen.
But before I can refuse, I’m distracted by a cry from Chloe. She’s wandered into the water and has picked up a bag, dripping, see-through --
“That’s a jellyfish!” I am on my feet, running toward Chloe, who’s laughing and flinging the fish around like she might her teddy bear.
Jellyfish abound in the Black Sea, so much so that the first time I waded out into the water, it felt as if I might be swimming through jello. “They won’t sting,” Chase, the jellyfish expert had assured, as I made a face and cleared a path back to shore.
Sure. Because they like me and want to be my friend?
Now, I grab the jellyfish and fling it out of Chloe’s hand. She’s startled and starts to cry. I sweep her up. Glare at Chase.
“I’ll clean the fish,” he says.
Ya think?
I dig into my mommy supply bag and hand Chloe a cookie. She takes it in her grubby little hands, grinning up at me through her tears. Yeah, I have her number. But I take one too.
The Black Sea at dusk is nearly magical, with the colors of autumn streaked as if watercolored across the western sky, slowly absorbed into a perfect, diamond-studded canvass that seems so close I could probably reach out and wrap my fingers around a star. The wind off the sea is cool and smells of bigness, of places it’s traveled. Sitting before the fire, as Sveta fries fish on her portable stove, listening to Chase converse with Vadeem, I’m reminded so much of Gull Lake and magical moments back home, melancholy finds me, wets my eyes. I love Gull Lake, the small town where I can walk down the street and know the names, even the secrets of everyone I meet. Where the Fourth of July parade circles the town twice and still only takes ten minutes. Where the most exciting article in the paper is the annual walleye fishing contest results. I miss fresh-brewed coffee and kringle, and my sister Jasmine, who just had baby number two. And H, my punk, now married lead-singer friend, who just cut her second album.
I am on the other side of the planet, eating creepy fish, drowning it down with watery orange sok, praying my children don’t pick up tuberculosis.
“Hey there,” a voice says, in English.
I look up, startled. Above me stands a dark-haired man, brown eyes, nice smile, wearing dark shorts and a white ‘Vote for Pedro’ tee-shirt, holding a tube of Pringles. (Who is Pedro, and what is he running for?) My gaze latches onto the Pringles.
Pringles Man sits next to me. “Want one?”
I am a Minnesotan. I long for a Pringle with everything inside me, but you’ll have to offer three times. That’s only once.
“No, thanks.”
He shrugs. “You look hungry.”
I glanced around for Justin. Chloe is sitting tucked into Chase’s lap, playing with his hat tassels. Justin is crouched by the water, a tiny dark outline against the indigo prairie.
“Justin, honey, come to mommy.” I see him stand, look back, start to toddle towards me.
“I met your husband earlier today,” Mysterious Pringle Man says. He crunches another Pringle. “He’s an interesting guy.”
I glance at Chase. He’s in animated conversation. “He keeps me on my toes.”
“You’re a good wife to let him drag you out here.”
Now he has my attention. I smile. Yeah, I am, I know. Mrs. Proverbs 31. “Thanks. We’re headed stateside after this. He needed one last adventure.”
Mr. Pringles crunches another one. “My name’s Marc.” He wipes his hand off on his tee-shirt. “I’m with “Voices International. We represent the Fourth World, researching their cultures. Are you sure you don’t want a Pringle?”
That’s two. My mouth is salivating. “No, thanks,” I say. “What is the Fourth World? I’m only aware of one.” I laugh at my joke. He doesn’t. Uh-oh, the Pringles might be in jeopardy.
“The Fourth World refers to the LDC, or least developed countries, usually within First or Third World nations. Namely, the indigenous groups who have been largely obliterated by the country in power. Currently, we’re working with the Russian Ministry of Indigenous people out of Moscow to study their various people groups. Like the Nanaiss of Siberia. There are over thirty different indigenous groups in Russia, and the government is starting to realize they need to figure out ways to help preserve them, rather than assimilate them.”
“You make the Russians sound like the Borg.”
He takes another chip. “It’s not unlike what we did to our First Americans in Canada, making them speak English, sending their children to boarding schools, obliterating their culture.”
“I think we did that in America, too.”
Marc nods. He digs a little well into the pebbly beach, sets the Pringles can inside. “Where’re you from?”
“Minnesota – a little town right in the middle.”
“My backyard, eh? I’m from Winnipeg.” He smiles at me, and the firelight reveals a twinkle in those brown eyes. For a second, the look in his eyes swoops my breath away. Not only is it aimed at still-pregnant-weight me, but I’m married, and I don’t see too many of those zingers these days.
I don’t know quite what to do. Is he…flirting with me? Gulp.
No, he can’t be. I glance again toward Chase, who looks at me and grins. I grin back. See, happily married, Mr. Pringles.
He seems to have followed my gaze, because he waves to Chase. Grins.
Maybe I imagined all that. For sure I imagined it.
“I can’t finish these. Are you sure you won’t have one?”
That’s three. Phew, I was starting to worry. I take the can, smile. If you insist. “Thanks.”
Heaven, in one perfectly formed oval chip. I crunch it with my tongue, letting the salt fill my mouth.
Marc’s eyes are on me, and he’s smiling with one side of his mouth. “Methinks someone is missing America.”
“Where did you find these?”
He lifts a shoulder. “Spotted them in a kiosk in Simferopol. Bought all eight cans.”
My eyes widen, and he laughs. “Yes, I have more.”
“Oh, no, that’s not—”
“I’ll bring you a can tomorrow.”
“No, I couldn’t.” But I could, I could!
I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t.
But it tastes so good, so salty, so home. And I want more.
“Are you on vacation?” I ask, taking another chip.
He nods. “I’m with a group of other researchers. Taking a few days off before we head to an international conference in Kazakhstan.” He stands up, dusting off his hands. “I came over to invite Chase to join us in a game of volleyball at our camp tomorrow. We have at least two Americans, and…” he winks, “lots of Pringles. Come with him.”
I shake out the crumbs into my hand. Look up at him. He smiles again, all white teeth and dark, friendly eyes.
I find myself saying, “What time?”
|
