A City Girl

When I was 10, my mom wanted to introduce me to her side of the family in the south of Russia, so we took a plane from Moscow to see them. All her cousins and their children lived in one big village on the same street and each family owned a small farm. Being a city girl, I was really looking forward to seeing country life up close, with all the farm animals and huge fields.

We stayed with my mom’s cousin that she grew up together with. She owned a variety of cattle and birds, so I was quite excited to meet them all. Charmed, I started following my auntie everywhere with her daily tasks starting the next morning.

The first order of business involved milking a cow. I asked auntie to show me how it’s done, and then confidently tried it out. However, at some point I pinched too hard, so the cow turned around and angrily mooed at me. That didn’t discourage me, so I continued by trial and error, and the next time the cow kicked me in the leg, when auntie stepped away for a second. I dropped the bucket of milk and ran to her crying. I was hoping to get some ice for my hurting knee, but instead received a raw steak to apply to my bruise. It was my first shock from facing the countryside reality.

Then it all went downhill from there! I went to meet baby ducks and picked up one fluffy duckling to pet it, but didn’t realize it would be struggling and biting, so I accidentally dropped it back into the duck coop. Immediately the mama duck waddled towards me to vindicate her baby, grabbed the edge of my pants, and wouldn’t let go until my auntie showed up with a threatening branch and shooed the mama duck away. “You really can’t just pick up ducklings like this,” she explained. “You give their mother anxiety and her protective instinct kicks in.” I somehow didn’t feel welcome there anymore.

To redeem myself, the following day I offered my help watching the same cow from earlier grazing in the field. I was sitting nearby with a book and accidentally fell asleep in the sun. When I woke up, the cow was gone! I ran to the other side of the field and saw it join other cows from somebody else’s farm for a grassy snack. The poor animal probably wanted some company, but I was entrusted with bringing it home! I slightly pulled on a rope on its neck and then felt somebody’s intense stare. Oh no! There was a bull grazing nearby, and I was wearing a red dress. Its nostrils were flaring up, which didn’t seem to promise anything good for me. My stubborn cow just didn’t want to move so I rushed to the house in tears. Thankfully, my uncle helped me finish the job by bringing it home and didn’t tell auntie about another one of my blunders.

I was having higher hopes for the house cat. I tried to entice it with some sour cream and have it play with me, but it just ran away and came back with a mouse in its teeth. The cat shamelessly devoured the mouse in front of me and spat the bones right next to my feet, as a friendly gift. I burst out crying again. The country life was proving to be too wild for me!

I had to step away from the animals to humans for a while and spend more time talking with my auntie who entertained me with stories about being poor students with Mom and having to share a bed at a college dorm for a while. She was very funny and joked a lot, so we had already built beautiful rapport when this happened…

“Would you like chicken soup for dinner?” asked auntie nonchalantly one evening. I nodded yes. She asked me to come with her to the back of the house. I thought we were going to some big fridge to bring back some frozen drumsticks and wings to thaw, like we did at home. Except my auntie quickly walked up to a chicken coop outside, grabbed one of the roosters, brought it back to the kitchen, and cut its head off with one precise motion, using a massive sharp knife.

I stood there stunned and then broke down crying when I saw the headless rooster’s body shaking before giving up the ghost. Unfazed, my auntie grabbed it by the legs and started to remove feathers. I wept. “I don’t want this soup! You just killed this rooster in front of me!”

“Oh honey!” she chuckled. “How else do you think chicken gets into your freezer? Except here it’s all fresh meat. And we are simple people. That’s how we do things here, and that’s how life is.”

I felt like I suddenly became much older and mature after those several days. These people lived completely different lives from mine, even though we were the members of the same family. It sounded like I had been quite sheltered from certain realities of the world, not knowing how to deal with animals and run a farm, or just survive on what you raise and plant yourself, and that one week showed me a different angle on life.

My auntie died last year at 86. Thankfully I had a chance to see her right before that. She remained the same, that hospitable country woman, with a simpler way of life, taking care of her big family and telling me she couldn’t afford to die yet because they wouldn’t be able to run that big farm without her…