| In Russia one's roadnoi dome, or family home, is the refuge one returns to when, as they say, "the soul was without a place to rest". However small, space is made at the table for whoever shows up at the door and a place to spend the night if need be. At eight, the morning light pours through the front windows of #7 Vasilovskaya Street turning the geraniums transparent. The first armload of wood is brought in for the banya and the blue-rimmed plates are put in a little stack at the center of the breakfast table. Against the long winters, life is lived warmly here and people take care of each other -- and strangers. Against the demands of life there is only patience. Here you still cut wood by hand, still till your garden with a horse and plow, walk a half mile to the river to get drinking water, and wash the clothes by hand. At the end of the day the banya awaits you and then your small cot into which you fall and sleep as you did as a child. |
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