Today is just like any other Sunday. Any other Sunday when we aren't away on holidays, or when it isn't Easter or Christmas, even though these occasions still bring certain similarities. The large brick house is perfectly symmetrical and level, nestled on the curve of a private road. Inside the timber shell the rooms sit next to one another almost like a perfect doll house--Mother, Father, Daughters, Grandmother, cat, dog. Today things are going along as normally rehearsed. Only today, rain drops fall from the outside gum leaves and roller coaster down onto the glass surrounding the window seat. On the large royal lounge lies Babushka. Her legs tucked are tucked up underneath her and today she is wearing a blue sweater with black slacks and her normal sheep skin slippers to keep her wrinkled toes warm. She has even combed her hair today and is quietly reading a Russian romance novel, the Danielle Steele of early 20th Century USSR. On the three seater adjacent the cat is curled up in the corner in a position she won't recoil from until at least the afternoon, when she will stretch out and run outside for dinner leaving a trace of tabby fur on the upholstered furniture, a sign she is getting older, a lot like Bubushka.
It's 12 noon. Mum comes around the corner from the kitchen almost on que. Now she asks in broken Russian if Babuska would like some lunch, some tea, some biscuits. "Tak", Babushka replies. This was in the written character dialogue. Babushka takes her seat at the kitchen table, the same table that has small consecutive dents in it from my sisters and I stabbing it with forks on every other night before we each reached ten. Mum is wearing her red tracksuit, the one she washes every sunday night and puts it aside until the next week. It looks as if she has been to the gym, but she hasn't. Her body also looks like she has been to the gym all day every day for her whole life. Her face is gaunt and her arms scrawny. Her hip bones jut out and she is the thinnest woman I have ever seen at 54. Although she now lives a life close to luxury her appearance lets out a secret. It lets out a secret of a previous life of hardship and poverty, one where nothing gave in easily.
Without a word she walks to the kitchen pantry, and plucks out from a selection of gourmet foods a small tin of sardines. The tin looks like something that would be a prized possession of a bower bird. Shiny, silver and blue. However, even a bower bird and his finds were more exotic than this lunch. The wood fire burns in the next room and Mum inhales it's breath to almost calm her fast forward pace. Her fine bleached blonde hair cut into a blunt fringe does not move as she hurries around the bench tops. Just at the right time she switches on the kettle and digs into the bread bin for some rye that has been harbouring in their for a good few weeks amongst our sunflower and poppy seed, sourdough, 9 grain and tip top white for Isabella the youngest. She arranges the selection on the plate plucked out of the cupboard underneath the kettle and places it in front of Babushka without just one more word.
"Moloko? (Milk)".
"Tak".
Outside the green grass stretches for acres. It is almost a romantic setting to describe--horses, stables, a large swimming pool, an outdoor wood fire pizza oven for entertaining, a boat parked for leisurely use. Mum's enthusiasm does not stretch so far though. This routine is weary and is not a part of the week she particularly enjoys. I get the feeling this is a snapshot of her whole early life in Australia. "I would have to do all the translating, all the chores, have all the responsibility...", Mum would tell me behind closed french doors, "...They thought we were weird...wogs". Just after I finish recalling these accounts in my head the hybrid conversation of two languages begins again. Babushka speaks in complete code to me however Mum pits her sentences with words I understand. "Yes Mum, yes Mum, yes Mum", she says. The voice gets gradually louder and louder until the tone becomes uncomfortable. Mum shuffles around her after a few minutes and delicately picks up the plates. Although she is always hurried she is always gentle and her manner almost frail. The plates clank in the sink and she help Babushka back to the warm spot on the lounge.
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