Peasant Woman

The Peasant People have been sick. Peasant Woman and her Peasant Brethren all down for the count, all those years of cigarette-smoke-smothered rooms taking their tolls on chests and lungs and bodily parts and things. Because in Eastern Europe, where Peasant Woman is from, there's no talking or eating or visiting if it's not in a smoke-filled room. Eyes burning, you visit each and every relative for a full day of sitting and talking, alternating shots of plum brandy with sharp little cups of Turkish coffee for eight hours at a stretch, no escape in sight.

And that's just Day 1. Multiply this by the number of extended relatives you must visit (89) in the short time you've set aside during your trip to the Mother Land. God help you if you're hoping to sight-see on your own. It is simply Not Allowed.

Rule #62: Peasant People Travel in Packs

You see, Peasant Relatives function under the belief that you must be together at all times, probably to generate body heat. So be prepared to set aside that hotel room you were coveting. Somewhere, there's a six-year-old whose shared bed has your name on it.

A few years ago, the Peasant People set up camp in Colorado, which, as some of you may or may not know, is not the original home of the Peasant People. Nor is it especially hospitable to Peasant People or their Peasant Functions.

But that's all changing now that we've had three blizzards in three weeks and a land blizzard (I'd never heard of it, either) yesterday. Being stuck in the house has really brought back the good 'ole days: of pulling out the handmade wool socks; of cooking large pots of stinky cabbage; of washing it down with cup after cup of coffee; of watching Mexican soaps; of being quarantined with increasingly-crazed relatives. All we need now is some Peasant Valium before we lose our Peasant Minds....

Peasant Woman hates President Bush. She is traumatized by him, his speech, his mannerisms--any appearance or mention of the man. She is especially traumatized by his latest speech, the one that overtook prime-time viewing last night.

"I keep turning channels and there he is," she says, "monkey face. I can't escape it!"

"I came to this country to escape Communism," she says. "And here it is, again, following me."

Peasant Woman says:
"It's Communism that made me rebellious."

So the crazy thing about having a baby and being sleep-deprived is that you often don't even realize just how sleep-deprived you actually are. Like the day that Zubs was just a few weeks old and I was driving somewhere when Kimo (my husband) suggested I pull over so he could drive.

We're having another one of those days.

Another day spent driving around the countryside trying to get Mali Zubs to fall asleep. Praying to the Sleep Gods for a good hour of rest (even though I should have been praying to the God of Teeth for some motherfrigging zubs! The Mad Teething continues unabated...). Driving around deserted Colorado highways while looking at the gorgeous mountains and trying not to drive into oncoming traffic (not as easy as you'd think). Wondering what tricks my eroded vision will play on me next....

Oh Zubs. And he's just so goddamn sweet. Hard to stay mad at him when he looks at you with his crazy little madman grin.

So if you're a certain variety of Eastern-European, you'd know that tonight is the crazy night where you wish upon a light that appears outside your window. That's right. And not just any light--the Heaven-Sent Light (whose name I'm of course forgetting at the moment -- it's amazing how quickly your memory goes when you're sleep deprived) that appears once a year.

So here's the deal: when you see a flash of light in the middle of the night, you make a wish. And the wish--if you can catch the light before it disappears--comes true.

Only hardly anyone ever catches the light.

Trust me, I tried. Got myself good and ramped up every year, did everything I could to stay awake on January 20th, but I never saw the light. And when the sun would wake me up the next morning, I'd feel sad, knowing that I'd missed my chance and would have to wait another year before I could try again.

Then, as I got older, I began to wonder if, after all, maybe The Light wasn't even American . Because the only sighting I'd ever heard of happened in The Old Country, to my Aunt Anja, who apparently was so flustered by the light that she wasn't even able to make a wish before it disappeared.

So who even knows if it really exists. For all I know, it could be another one of those stories told to children to Make Them Behave. Like Santa Claus (Be Good and You'll Get Your Presents); Go to Sleep, and You Can Wish on The Light.

I know what I'll wish for tonight: more sleep.

Bogojavljenje, that's what it's called.
And it's on the 19th of January, not the 20th.

Yikes. Guess that's the PeasantWoman.com version of a correction....

Last night, Kimo and I went out to dinner (a Mali Zub-less dinner, mind you) at Black Cat, a new local restaurant. We were looking forward to it because:

1. It had gotten a great review in the local paper,
2. It was our first baby-free, date-night in almost two months,
3. It reminded me of Emir Kusturica's film, Black Cat, White Cat. (Emir Kusturica is one of my favorite directors.)

So anyway, we really wanted to like the place, in part because it was owned by a local guy we wanted to support. But the problem was that the place was just too stuffy. From the college-aged waitstaff putting on airs to the endless replacing of silverware, to the interminable wait between courses. Kimo got the tasting menu, which just about killed us (both in cost and time). By the time the final course rolled around, we were already half an hour late for the babysitter, and we had to ask for the bill before shoveling down a few bites of dessert and bolting out the door.

The food was pretty good, though, especially a beet and mache salad. But the problem for me is that it was really meat-heavy (in that oxtail kind of way). I know, you'd probably think that Peasant People would be staunch meat eaters, but, I've got to admit, there's just something about pork belly that really turns my stomach.

And that, I've decided, is the problem with some of these new-fangled chi-chi restaurants: too much meat. Frasca, an even hoity-toitier local restaurant, was the same way when we ate there. Kimo, meat-eater that he is, was in seventh-heaven, but I just remember eating some weird kind of corn-chowder and thinking, This is the best you can do for us frigging vegetarians?

Not that I'm an all-out vegetarian. I'm just looking for something besides oxtail and buffalo. Ugh.

So the thing I forgot to tell you about The Light is that it appears right before the day of St. John the Baptist, our family's patron saint.

Why, I wonder, don't American families have patron saints?

St. John the Baptist's Day (January 20--also known as Slava) was another one of those crazy holidays that kept us home from school as kids (no complaining on our part). A holiday that followed American Christmas (December 25) and our Christmas (January 7), so that by the time the end of January rolled around, our elementary-school teachers' eyes were bugging out of their heads each time we showed up with another parental note in our hands.

But back to St. John the Baptist. And I'm definitely not your biblical scholar here, nothing close--just like introducing you to our Peasant World and the strange sound of having a headless saint to guide your family through life.

Anyway. Every January 20 we bake bread and a wheat dish called zito, have them blessed by the priest, then top it off with a huge feast and celebration. They're filled with the good, clean fun of extended relatives and neighbors drinking way too much and dancing crazily around the living room, Eastern European Gypsy music blaring from the record player. Prime training ground for the youngsters, who are busy siphoning liquor and mixing cocktails in the basement.