sweet notes

My tutor had been asking me about myself and my life: standard topics for language learning. One question that kept coming us was about traditions, which, heathens that we are, we don't really have. The only tradition I can think of is bringing doughnuts to the last day of class each semester.

So for Friday's last lesson, I brought a selection of cookies from Lviv's "Veronika's," a pastry shop and restaurant of international fame. We felt a little shabby chic, with our jeans and chocolate-smeared toddler, among the Victorian lace tablecloths, stained-glass lamps, fashionably put-together ladies, and other overwrought details. The serving staff wear back-laced brocade bodices atop demure ankle-length skirts; their poker-face expressions reveal nothing as they serve the varied clients the most expensive pastries in all of Lviv.

I wasn't sure exactly what to bring to my tutor's; she kept offering me cakes and cookies at every lesson, while I brought bags of mandarins in self-defense. Neither of us wanted that much to do with the other person's offering, and after about a week of me taking smaller and smaller bites of cookies and her politely declining the mandarins because she was full, we both, in silent accord, quit offering food.

Still, a tradition is a tradition. So all week, I searched through the stores trying to find an appropriate last-lesson offering. A box of truffles? Cheesecake? A box of Baci chocolates? I finally settled on a selection of cookies from Veronika's--simply because they were beautiful (and consoling myself that, if we'd had an oven here, I could have baked her something myself). Cookies in hand, Mychal and Axel met me at my tutor's after my last lesson, as arranged. Sasha, her almost two -year old grandson woke up, singing to himself in the next room. We all sat on the floor, building block towers for the kids to knock down while my tutor made coffee and tea.

We all trooped into the kitchen where she had arranged the cookies on a platter; Sasha stayed in the room with his toys. I asked about Sasha, and she said he would eat dinner later. Crowded around the tiny table, Mychal on a stool, Axel on my knees, we made small talk as best we could between the three of us, while the boys traded stuffed animals and cars back and forth. No one touched a cookie: Mychal waiting for me, me waiting for my tutor, but no one made the first move. I felt awkward offering one to Axel, who could have been the perfect ice breaker, because I knew Sasha wouldn't get one. We were all frozen, while the four kinds of cookies waited patiently.

Afterwards, at home, Mychal and I couldn't work out the social rule: should we, as guests, have taken the first bite, or should she, as the recipient of our gift have taken the first cookie? As it was, none of us, not even Axel who looked but did not even ask, took the first cookie. But the heavy feeling in my heart tells me: we, as guests, should have taken the first cookie.