Russia, Part 1: Packing

"The trouble with you," says my wife, "is that you don't plan ahead."

This is where she and I disagree. Let me give you an example.

I leave for Moscow in six days. That means I have roughly five and a half days before I need to pack. To me, this is self-evident, an a priori conclusion. It's a simple syllogism:

1) packing consists of tossing clothes and stuff in a bag
2) it will take me roughly ten minutes to put my clothes and stuff in a bag.
3) I don't leave for six more days
4) Therefore, I don't even need to think about packing until Friday afternoon (from 1, 2, and 3) and if I want to watch A-Team reruns all afternoon I will be perfectly justified in doing so.

Of course, the irrefutable nature of my logic does not move my wife. She shakes her head, giving me the same look she usually reserves for incompetent waiters and the Bush administration.

"The problem with your 'logic'," she says, making those little sarcastic quotation marks with her fingers, "is that it's based on a set of false premises."

I try to interrupt, mostly out a sense of self-preservation, but she holds up a finger and I stop, mostly out of a greater sense of self-preservation.

"In the first place, packing consists of so much more than 'tossing clothes and stuff in a bag.' Seriously, were you raised by wolves? Packing is an art, a transcendent activity. A well-packed bag speaks of the frailty and the nobility of the human condition. To toss some clothes in a bag and call it 'packing' is like tossing notes on a page and calling it 'music.'"

"That's me," I say, slowly backing out of range, "the Schoenberg of the suitcase."

She glares at me. "You can call yourself the Pollack of the Purse for all I care. It doesn't change the fact that you don't know how to pack."

She then goes on to assail my my second premise, claiming that although I can, indeed, throw random clothes into a bag in under ten minutes, I have utterly failed to account for the estimated two hours it takes to unpack those clothes, find the clothes I should have packed in the first place, wash them, iron them, and then repack the bag. I point out that since she is actually the one who does the unpacking, finding, washing, ironing, and repacking, it does only take me, in the most literal sense, ten minutes to pack.

This is not a wise thing to say.

There's no backtracking, so we both go our separate ways to cool down for a bit. She goes outside and tends to her garden. I stare in the bathroom mirror and wonder when my stubble began turning gray. I owe her an apology. I don't mean to take her for granted. When she comes back inside I'll tell her so. And in the end I will choose quality over speed, beauty over pragmatism. I will allow my wife to sculpt my luggage as she sculpts me, grinding down the rough edges and smoothing out the stupid parts. Because the simple fact is that she's really good at packing and I'm not, just like I'm really good at killing spiders and she's really good at standing on the dining room table and screaming. We each have our gifts. Neither of us can do it by ourselves. Learning this is one of the keys to a long, happy marriage.

So, you see, I am planning ahead, after all.

Russia, Part 2: Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Bought My Ticket

Shots. Five of them. In the arm.

I wasn't prepared for that.

It's not that I'm squeamish, or that I have a low pain threshold. It's just that that's a lot of shots, man. I suggest that maybe I could get some of them later; check myself into a little Russian clinic, disinfect the injection site with some Stolichnaya, and submit myself to the large but capable hands of Olga, the rather mannish Siberian nurse.

My doctor gives me a sidelong glance as he lays out the syringes.

"The Russian medical system oscillates between modern and medieval," he says. He chooses a syringe and frowns at it. "You never know what you're going to get. Now take off your shirt."

"But don't you think," I say as I disrobe,"that it's worth giving it a try? I mean, peristroika, glastnost, all that?"

He thwacks the syringe with his finger. "That was twenty years ago. Hold still."

So still I hold, betrayed by a country that can export cultural gold like Dostoyevsky and Yakov Smirnov and yet apparently not provide a tetnus booster. I am about to wax rhapsodic on the technological innovation of Sputnik when Dr. Cahn launches the first of five rockets into my arm.
I mutter and curse. I smite him with my eyes. I harbor evil feelings towards him. All the while, little Chernobyls are melting down in my tricep.

"Isn't there a pill for this?" I hiss, sending him as much bad mojo as I can muster.

He drops the empty syringe with a satisfied sigh and reaches for another. "Consider it pure joy, my brother. Now, for the love of God, stop squirming and hold still."

Yeah, right. Pure joy my приклад.

Russia, Part 3: The International Language

The lady sitting in front of me is yelling at me in Russian. I can’t understand most of what she’s saying, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the meal I just dumped on her head.

Let me put this in some context.

I’m somewhere over the Baltic Sea, halfway between London and Moscow. Dave, my traveling companion, is sitting to my right. He’s about my age, a social-studies teacher from the Poulsbo area, and he’s sound asleep with his mouth hanging slightly open. To my left is a young Chinese guy. He’s very cool: iPod, hipster glasses, Abercrombie wardrobe. He’s also asleep, but he’s cool enough to keep his mouth closed.

I’m in the middle, and I am wide awake. I wish this weren’t the case. I have tried using my tray table as a pillow, but it smells like fish. I think about leaning over and putting my head on Dave’s shoulder, but he twitches in his sleep, and probably wouldn’t make a very comfortable pillow. I briefly consider the hip Chinese guy but I quickly realize that the same rules that apply to high-school apply to Aeroflot: you don’t snuggle with your social superiors.

I’m about to resign myself to a sleepless flight, but then the stewardess comes by with dinner and it all looks so Slavic that I decide to eat. I have my choice of lamb or fish, and because the two look positively indistinguishable I just point to one. I’m pretty sure I’ve chosen the fish. I’m not sure though, because as the stewardess hands me my tray Dave twitches in his sleep, elbowing me in the ribs, and I drop my dinner on the head of the woman sitting in front of me.

This is when the yelling starts.

My one year of college Russian is limited to such useful phrases as, “I see the brown dog,” and , “What time is it in Minsk?” Nevertheless, it’s quite clear to me what she is saying. I smile weakly and try to help dab the tarter sauce from her hair.

It’s going to be a great trip.