Dedushka

There they were, the devoted babushkas and dedushkas, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers of Bobby’s companions, lugging their bags, their bulging packages and bundles.

More than anything else, even the health of my dedushka, I dreamed that he would invite me to the sixth-grade dance.[…]If I squinted my eyes, I could see the slumping form of my dedushka, standing at the bus stop, amidst young mothers, bored siblings, and Polish nannies.

“My grandparents are back. They’ve been roaming in the most remote parts of our territory.” Ethan examined her face with the trademark intensity she was coming to expect from him. “They know I exist?” “If I know my dedushka, he already has your entire background.”[…]“He and my babushka took an angry and confused teenager and taught her how to build herself up into a strong woman.”

A mere five blocks later my dad pulls into the parking lot of my grandparents’ subsidized apartment complex and double parks. Without looking up he asks, “Can you get them? Try to make it quick.” He starts typing something on his phone, a new “smart” one that is almost a computer.[…]“Quick?” I ask him, with exaggerated shock. “Have you met your parents?” “I said try.” “There is no try, only do,” I say in a gravelly voice, then laugh. It forces my dad to look up and attempt a smile, but only for a second. Immediately after, he starts typing again. It makes me a little sad. We watched that entire movie series together, and now his phone is more interesting to him than me. At least my dedushka is happy to see me.

Yet, much as I loved to listen to it, standing there in the heat of all the lighted candles and dressed in my heavy shuba and felt boots, I invariably, halfway through the service, would begin to feel an intolerable pain across my shoulders which would spread across my back, gradually getting worse, until in the end I was forced to go to the back of the church and find a corner on a bench especially placed there for all the old babushkas and dedushkas who were also unable to bear the strain of standing throughout the whole service.

The babushki and dedushki bring the flowers in from their garden plots on the outskirts of town.

Whether I wanted to or not (I did not), the teens kept pushing me into a comparative mode to measure one kind of “thing” (person, country) against another. They urged me to tell them—“typical Russian teenagers” in “typical Russian schools”—about “typical American teenagers” in “typical American schools.” […] Could I compare the metal detectors blocking the entryways to some inner-city schools to the babushki and dedushki guarding their school doors?

And I’m telling you that he left Nikitkin and passed by some dedushka. The [dedushka] said: “Take me where I’m going.” And he sat that dedushka [down in his cart]. And so, they drove and drove, he says, heading somewhere. Then, he says, “The dedushka got lost somewhere and I was alone. And I went everywhere.”[…]A horse is coming. On it is sitting a dedushka.