Today and Tomorrow are becoming rarer words, filled with bigger meanings as each moment expands to fill the whole scope of time, and plans are executed on a scale of hours instead of days, and every second becomes important. Tomorrow isn't just Friday, it isn't just Christmas, it's the last day that I will wake up and go to sleep in Russia. It's my last full day on this continent, in this country, and this beautiful city, and although I've had it in my sights for months my eyes still don't quite know how to focus on it.
With an open suitcase looming in my 17th floor den--a pile of things to sort into "с собой" or "не", trash bags bulging with already stricken homework assignments and ticket stubs and receipts--I'm taking the obvious course of action and avoiding it, sitting instead in a corner at the Republic of Coffee, where the waitresses don't come out from behind the counter so as long as I don't approach them, I don't have to worry about being asked to order something. Reading about the "Massive Christmas winter storm" and the "landmark healthcare reform bill" that comprise big news in the USA, trying to brush up on Western Hemisphere current events before I find myself plunked down in the middle again.
Everything from my past few weeks is mingling together, the slow panic of essay writing, the appearance, then disappearance of the sun, the triumph or exams and the savage slicing winds scraping the windows of the Primorskaya high-rises, the snow like dirty flour piling up, piling up, the mess in my room piling up, piling up as I sped out the door to dinner, to the Hermitage, to Nevsky Prospekt, to my photography exam ("if you continue studying photography, you won't turn out half bad!" said Professor Igor Lebedev, who never in his life has given out an A--"Such people just don't exist."). Mornings dark and afternoons dim, evenings dark again but filled with sparkling lights. Ice on the Neva, broken and frozen-over again in crinkled sugar-crystal formations. Cross-country skiing at Krestovsky Island with people dear to me (guys!), throwing bottles onto the ice at the bay of Finland, and the frustration when they skittered away hollowly and refused to break.
It's one big slideshow and it's tragic, leaving it all behind. I'm going to miss the six-story metro escalators, the tiny grocery stores on every corner, the absurdities of daily apparel. The tall, elegant Uzbek man with the squinty-eyed smile who sold me bread at the market, the clunk of my shoes on the splintery floor in the entryway of Yuri's studio. The "Осторожно--двери закрываются" we all memorized after a week of riding the metro. My people! The faces I've grown accustomed to, the people I adore (and you're probably reading this!). One last hurrah on Christmas day.
St. Petersburg! Our Piter! When will I see you all again?
Yet I feel a soft and slow relief when I imagine the warmth and comfort waiting for me in my homeland, in a little snow-shouldered house in Ithaca, NY. Even in the face of the nightmare of navigating New York City public transportation with my suitcase, hiking pack, violin, and guitar in hand (and on back, and rolling beside me). Even though I am, as of yet, not sure where I'm spending my first night back, or my second. I understand now the loyalty my father described, when he packed his life into a suitcase and set off with the intention of leaving this country behind--his head went dizzy and his knees weakened, and he lay on his front lawn waiting for his eyes to clear, fully aware he just couldn't leave his home. The relief I feel at coming home isn't just about clean tap water I can bathe in or Greek yogurt or being able to explain what I'm looking for to a librarian or cashier or policeman. It's about coming HOME.
So tonight, Christmas Eve, I'm going to a drag show at a funky bar on Sennaya Ploschad with my friend Cait and toasting my triumphant return as a wiser, freer, more determined person, awake to the opportunities life may present me and ready to work to realize them.
Cheers!
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