winter how-tos
Everywhere we go, Axel and I, or more precisely, I am told: Girl! Put his hat on! Are you blind? He's freezing!
So I comply, because that's what you do in an eastern european state where it is the community's job to keep incompetence at bay. And just as quickly, Axel yanks it off. We go this upwards twenty times a day. And the judging isn't reserved for head-wear; I am also informed by well-meaning women, as Axel sits on my knees on the tramway, that his ankles, made naked by his jeans riding up, are freezing, how could I not notice?
It brings back the scolds I got when I was seventeen, during the winter in Kharkov while sitting on the cold stone benches with my friend: Girls! Don't you know your ovaries will freeze? Get off those cold benches or you'll never have children!
Equally funny to me is that I'm still "Devochka!" Nearly twenty years have passed, yet I'm still "Girl!"
Today, we found the park which, as dusk fell, was filled with bundled up children and clusters of parents talking on cell phones. Axel situated himself ably in the first recognizable situation (aside from the tramway and trolleybuses) and tromped through the snow to play on the swings and see-saws and suspended bridges. I listened to the parents' conversations and noticed that they, too, were just as familiar.
So I comply, because that's what you do in an eastern european state where it is the community's job to keep incompetence at bay. And just as quickly, Axel yanks it off. We go this upwards twenty times a day. And the judging isn't reserved for head-wear; I am also informed by well-meaning women, as Axel sits on my knees on the tramway, that his ankles, made naked by his jeans riding up, are freezing, how could I not notice?
It brings back the scolds I got when I was seventeen, during the winter in Kharkov while sitting on the cold stone benches with my friend: Girls! Don't you know your ovaries will freeze? Get off those cold benches or you'll never have children!
Equally funny to me is that I'm still "Devochka!" Nearly twenty years have passed, yet I'm still "Girl!"
Today, we found the park which, as dusk fell, was filled with bundled up children and clusters of parents talking on cell phones. Axel situated himself ably in the first recognizable situation (aside from the tramway and trolleybuses) and tromped through the snow to play on the swings and see-saws and suspended bridges. I listened to the parents' conversations and noticed that they, too, were just as familiar.
posted by aelis at 9:30 PM
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