The Thaw

The whole time I've been in Moscow, I've had a hard time getting a grasp of what normal weather for the city actually is. In the autumn, I recall Volodya telling me a joke that circulates in Russia, to the effect that the country has only two seasons: the one where you go around bundled up from head to toe, and the one where you go around bundled up from head to toe except for the very top button of your coat. To Volodya's mind, this October was apparently unseasonably warm, which for him meant that there was as yet no frost on the ground.

Winter too, variously people told me, was warmer than usual in Moscow this year. Too busy avoiding the black ice I seemed to encounter everywhere, I failed to notice--though in retrospect, it says something about my time in Russia that I never felt compelled to buy the thermal underwear I was told was an absolutely necessity in the Russian winter.

On the other hand, my banker, Gulia, lamented the snow that was falling as we had our lesson about a week ago. Snow in April, she told me, is not usual, and she suspected some sort of climate change was responsible. I told her my mother had once had her thirtieth birthday party ruined by a sudden blizzard, in the comparatively balmier United States. Whether she believed me, I could not tell.

Right at the moment, however, we have just gotten through the period Russians call The Thaw--the time when winter comes to a messy end. For about three weeks, the streets in Moscow were awash in mud and melting snow. The thaw comes on abruptly and goes away just as abruptly, but while it's in full swing, it's impossible to miss. Piles of snow that seemed permanent features of the landscape suddenly vanish. Green grass appears in places you would never have guessed it could be. Life begins to resume.

And then, all of a sudden, there comes a day that's actually, well, almost warm. That day came today. A couple of months ago, when the zipper came off on my nice, thick winter coat, I couldn't find another coat equally thick--the season for them must have been over in the minds of store managers, even if it clearly wasn't in mine--and settled for something resembling a spring jacket with a removable lining. The day I first put that jacket on, it was barely warm enough. Then for a long time, it was as "just right" as Baby Bear's porridge. Today, suddenly, I had an urge to unzip it.

The Thaw is a common metaphor in Russian literature and, indeed, in Russian life. Most famously in the West, the term is used for a period of de-Stalinization that occurred in Krushchev's time. But it is also used extensively to describe sudden periods when anything gets better.

Lately, I've been in the midst of my own Thaw. Having resolved on attending Penn in the fall, I am more hopeful about my future than I have been in a long time. Oddly, I don't find myself agonizing over this decision, the way I agonized about going abroad in the first place. I know I will find a way to make Penn work for me. The degree I intend to puruse will open up a lot of avenues in my career and, I hope, in my wider life.

I also can look back on the past eleven months--my goodness, I've really been here eleven months!--with a certain satisfaction. I've built up a solid base of friends here. I have students who really seem to like me. I've learned that I have the ability to establish rapport with people and win them over--something I would not have thought myself capable of until I came to Russia and had to do it in my work, again and again.

For whatever comes next, I am ready.