We have been eating uncertainty for breakfast. If the sky was falling, that would be easier to deal with - you just try to somehow run away from the sky, and find shelter. This is different. I don’t know if we are running towards something or just dodging imaginary raindrops that are harmless. Living in Moscow for fifteen years was a lesson in stagnation. Nothing but the sheen of things changed, but the roots remained the same. No headlines came as a surprise, it was all expected, just a lesson in waiting for the other shoe to drop. I remember various people telling me in the early days that Moscow can be a good mother, if you let her, if you tuck your face into her embrace and surrender to how things work there. Something in my resisted, probably because my own mother is not a person to be trusted, more a random collection of acts that never made me feel known, or safe, or that someone was looking out for me. I cannot erase the moments when I would call out “Mom” and get that salty reply, “I’m not your mother.”
(looking for) the good mother
(looking for) the good mother
(looking for) the good mother
We have been eating uncertainty for breakfast. If the sky was falling, that would be easier to deal with - you just try to somehow run away from the sky, and find shelter. This is different. I don’t know if we are running towards something or just dodging imaginary raindrops that are harmless. Living in Moscow for fifteen years was a lesson in stagnation. Nothing but the sheen of things changed, but the roots remained the same. No headlines came as a surprise, it was all expected, just a lesson in waiting for the other shoe to drop. I remember various people telling me in the early days that Moscow can be a good mother, if you let her, if you tuck your face into her embrace and surrender to how things work there. Something in my resisted, probably because my own mother is not a person to be trusted, more a random collection of acts that never made me feel known, or safe, or that someone was looking out for me. I cannot erase the moments when I would call out “Mom” and get that salty reply, “I’m not your mother.”