After two weeks, bronchitis was still nagging her. So I bought a kilo of oranges and headed to her building. The elderly Russian woman, alone in the world for the past 30 years, had become a grandmother of sorts to me when I lived next door to her last year. The least I could do was to bring her some fresh fruit that she could ill afford on her ruble pension. Whether induced by the climate or Russia's difficult predicament, a weightiness presses against the head and sits heavily on the shoulders.
Some foreigners say the weight lifts only when they leave the country.
Reaching out to others also helps dissipate the weight. I think that's what I had in mind when I bought the oranges. Over the past three years, Russia has flung its doors wide open. Good riddance to the Soviet Union and its mystery, hypocrisy, and stability. Hello to the orgy of freedom of expression, the chaos of decentralization run rampant, and a ruble that is worth fifty times less than its value in 1991.