I’m back in Moscow(.id.us), and things have changed. I walked in the door around 10pm and smelled baking. I’ve always loved Mom’s baking so I stopped by the kitchen to see what delight she has in store. The smell, as it turns out came from freshly baked bread. Not the bread I knew and love as young child returning from school, but minaiture, tiny elven bread in wee baby, lillipution loafs.
Mom said that the bread was going bad in larger loafs, so now she makes little ones. Practical, I was forced to admit. Though it no means I have to eat twice as many sandwiches to reach satiety.
But the real shock came, though, before seeing the diminutive baked goods. Just as I walked into the kitchem I stopped.
“What, Mother, is this abomination?”
My parents, apparently, had purchased a microwave, for themselves, no less – for their own kitchen.
Now, I have a microwave (or rather, Greg does) and I use it frequently. However, it has long been my belief that my parents’ was the only house in Moscow without one. When I was younger, I would occassionally campaign for the purchase of such a useful appliance, but the response this generated was always “what would we need one for?” My mother was obstinate in the face of my bleatings.
However, as I got a bit older it became a small source of pride that my parents’ household was the last outpost of disdain for modern convenience. I recall times when friends I’d known for years first realized our kitchen’s crutch:
“What do you mean you don’t have a microwave?”
*walks over to kitchen*
“Where the hell is your microwave?”
*walks back to living room*
“How do you survive? You’re parent’s are American, right?”
No longer. And indeed, it was my mother who purchased the beast a few months ago. Both of my parents now happily use it as if they had had one for years, as if nothing in the world had turned upsidedown.
All my world shook. Everything I had known as a child came into question. Was the sky actually blue? It was night, how could I find out? Perhaps Scary Harry (rest his soul) was really a demon after all, and not the human being my mother claimed he was in spite of my own observations to the contrary every Halloween. Did morning snow actually come from the sky, as Dad suggested, or must it have grown up from the ground as I, far more naturally, believed as a young boy? And perhaps the really were called “Ice Pickles”, afterall, and my days since have merely been full of deception.
None can say. All I know now is that my parents have entered the modern era.
Man, if I’d known they’d ever actually use a microwave, I could have gotten them one for Christmas. Now I’ve got to think of something else. But first I’m off to eat half a dozen sandwiches.
