From Alice, on memories -

The yellow brick house with the green metal gate. The squeak of the hinges and the unmistakable metal clang of the latch always stirred excitement. Someone has come to visit or dedushka Kolya was back from the market. 

The pink peonies blooming reliably every year after they were lovingly planted by my babushka Masha, one of the first springs they moved in. Before that everyone lived in a communal apartment. This was the first place they could call their own. 

The grapevine growing over to the right of the porch never produced grapes because of the short growing season, but it felt like a magical tunnel into the garden every time I visited my grandparents in the summer. A row of dilapidated sheds stood along the side, almost like old friends holding each other up while taking a nap. The smell of drying herbs and flowers hit you as you entered these weather-worn shacks. When you were bored you could go on an adventure just digging through all the things that were being stored, or maybe a little forgotten in those sheds. 

Just beyond that were a couple of apple trees which shaded a raspberry patch below. The patch had been let go to grow a little wild, yet every summer would provide pails upon pails of raspberries. These raspberries were then expertly turned into dozens and dozens of jars of jam to be enjoyed through the winter. Babushka Masha would let me eat as many fresh raspberries as I wanted until I ate a whole pail and broke out in hives. After that she would only let me eat the sweet foam she would skim off the top of the jam during cooking.

The majority of the plot was used to grow potatoes. Another fun activity was looking for the stripy potato bugs along with their bright orange eggs and alien-looking larvae in order to squish them between the leaves. All-natural pest control and an education on the lifecycle of bugs all at once. On the side of the potato patch, the neighbor had a green gooseberry bush, which would only get ripe at the end of summer. If I was lucky, I got to snag a few early berries before having to head back to the big city.

Dedushka Kolya, or Nikolai if you are being formal, would always be experimenting growing interesting fruit plants like cornelian cherries and sea buckthorn. The grapevine came from one of these experiments. Not many could survive the harsh winter, but he would always manage to get at least one crop out of them, and I was the number one taste tester always reporting for duty. 

Closer to the house grew parsley and dill, cucumbers and tomatoes, green onions, radishes, and beets. During the summer, all the crops were used fresh, eaten as zakuski, sometimes just standing right there in the graden. As the season came to a peak, the vegetables were preserved in a jar filled with brine and spices, a black currant leaf, and a dill flower or two. It was time to start preserving when the dill started to flower because winter was just around the corner. The pickled tomatoes were my favorite, looking like juicy little jewels in their jars. 

Just to the side of the porch was a corrugated metal roof and a wooden door, which led down to the root cellar. That’s where all the preserves and pickles would go to spend their winter, and the potatoes after they were dug up. It was lit with only one lightbulb dangling off a cord, which was a little spooky, but the chilly dampness was most welcome after pouring hot brine into pickling jars all day, or weeding the garden in the sun.

This is the house my mom grew up in. She left for Moscow to attend a specialized science and math high school which eventually fed her into Moscow State University. That is where she met my dad, and I was born. Although I was born in the big city, all of my most precious childhood memories were from the yellow brick house.

My babushka Masha, Maria Pantuhova née Chesnakova, passed away from cancer in the spring of 1998, just before we left for Canada. The green metal gate with the familiar clank of the latch was heard when dedushka Kolya came home from the hospital for the first time without her. The pink peonies she planted are still there, blooming year after year.

I hope that Dom Zakuski will be like those pink peonies, and like that yellow brick house with a green metal gate. A reliable space for us all to hold our most precious memories, whatever they may be.

Alice