10/29/2006 - Looking for a Bride?

Women in my grandparent’s neighborhood had to go to the well to bring water in heavy buckets. Water was needed for everything: laundry, cooking and bathing, regardless of the weather. That was why my parents finally decided one day to move into the city - they didn’t want us, girls, to grow without the comfort of the urban life.

My grandmother placed the old fashioned yoke between two empty buckets on the floor in the kitchen, bending her bony body over the wooden yoke to grab each bucket handle with the yoke’s hook. It was so neat to watch my grandmother’s movements especially when the handles acted stubborn, slipping from the hooks.

"Oi, ti mneshen’ka!" - My grandmother complained on her old fashioned village dialect, which meant something like "Oh, my God!"

She would repeat her attempts over and over until she was ready to place the yoke around her neck. Grandma looked always like Christ on the cross when she stretched her arms toward the ends of the yoke to secure the buckets. Then grandma would turn her right side forward to get through the door on her way out.

When I turned ten, I came to stay with my grandparents in our old neighborhood for a few weeks - I loved to visit my grandparents and stay in their old house.

I liked to wake up early in the morning and get out of the house to breathe in the smell of the farm. The smell of the freshly plowed soil mixed with dung was my favorite. Walking around my grandparents’ property, I always checked the barn where a cute cow blinked at me with her long eyelashes. "Moo-o-o-o-o-o".

I found vegetables in the garden and pulled out a bunch of fresh slender carrots. The easiest way to wash freshly picked vegetables was to dip them in the rusty canister filled with rain water that my grandfather set on the back yard to collect water. I never tasted carrots that were juicier than those crunchy orange sticks with green leaves, sticking out of my mouth, when I took the first bite.

Grandmother had already baked fresh pies in the Russian oven and waited for me in the kitchen with her face flushing - she had been too close to the greedy flame the whole morning.

Finally, my grandmother allowed me to go to the well. I proudly processed through the neighborhood with empty bucket hanging down below my knees, hitting my legs every step I took. Noticing how people tried to avoid me on my way to the well, I remembered that with the empty buckets I was bad luck to anybody who came my way: to see empty buckets was bad luck. I filled my buckets full - four gallons in each - and repeated my grandmother’s ritual, placing the bucket on the left hook first and then another bucket on the right hook of the yoke. 

Now, I am no longer bad luck for others, but I was bad luck for myself if I splashed any water on the ground: the belief was that the best bride is the one who walks so gracefully that she doesn’t splash a single drop.

I walked very carefully, but the full buckets were too heavy for me.

As soon as I took the first step with my left foot, at least two cups of water splashed out of the buckets. Right foot - same result. I tried to make my steps shorter just to see that it didn’t help - another puddle.

"Come on, girl! Let us see how good you are!" The neighbors cheered me up just to make me splash even more water and hardly made it home. To my embarrassment, I came home with buckets half empty. Nyah! I was not ready yet to be the best bride in the neighborhood.