Sunday Morning

Sunday Morning

There was a time when Grandma's main purpose in life was to disrupt my sacred Sunday morning sleep with excessive questioning. "Wake up, Marissachka," my mother would call to me from the bottom of the stairs. I swiftly flipped my body to face the wall so that my mother would believe that I was asleep. I thought to myself that nothing could remove my relaxed body from under my plush down comforter. Still in a dream-like state, I knew what was coming. Although I feigned a deep slumber, her stern voice commanded me to wake up. If I failed to remove myself from my soft sheets, I knew my then aggravated mother would come and tear them off of my body leaving me with the shivers. Before slowly trying to remove my nearly lifeless limbs from my bed, I quickly reviewed several generic Russian phrases, anticipating another failure. From as far back as I can remember my Mother had forced me to speak to my Russian grandmother every Sunday morning. Groaning under my breath, I would drag myself over to the receiver and mumble, "Da babushka, cak dele?" On the other end there was a soft voice correcting me, "Da babushka, cak dela?" The minutes that I spent rummaging through my brain for vocabulary felt similar to an eternity. The conversation would continue for several minutes before I would run out of simple, generic Russian phrases.

The next year we traveled to Russia to meet my grandmother, thus allowing those Sunday morning conversations to become a daily ritual. Because my Russian was not quite polished, I avoided speaking to her as much as possible. However, one night before we were to leave, I sat with my grandmother in her room watching a Russian film. Because I could barely pay attention to the mundane and difficult to understand plotline, distracted, my eyes slowly scanned the room. I strained my eyes as I focused on the items throughout. The only light that shone upon the details of her room was the gray glow from the dated wooden-paneled television. I caught a glimpse of the many different culturally Russian knick-knacks displayed on each wall. Some of what I saw reminded me of the souvenirs that today lie in my attic, never to be put on view throughout my house. My eyes focused upon a beautifully painted Matryoshka placed between several handmade dolls. Seeing these reminded me of my room as a young girl. Before the modern artwork and high school sports trophies, my room had displayed delicate Russian dolls from my grandmother. I felt sad thinking that I had grown out of them and hid them in my attic from fear of humiliation of my own background. With these thoughts running through my mind, I sat upon the wooden floor that felt similar to an icy frozen pond. Yet, my grandmother rested comfortably above me on the plush, warm couch. Slowly turning to face me, my grandmother asked if I would be more comfortable sitting on the sofa with her. Gladly, I picked myself up off the bare floor and positioned myself on the welcoming cushion. My body felt differently. I was now physically closer to her and less disconnected from her. We sat beside each other for a while in companionable silence. The extraordinary feeling of comfort that filled my body was suddenly overcome by heartache. At the end of this week, my grandmother and I would be separated for years.

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