place2place

We load cases of flour amd cooking oil onto an old gurney. I'm on the monthly trip with the American Women's Club to help stock the Ronald McDonald House Foundation kitchen. I'm hoping the flat of sugar and tea somehow offer a tiny bit of comfort to families staying with their children while they undergo treatment at Moscow's largest cancer clinic.

A nurses carries a 1950's-looking syringe in the air as she walks into a room. After we stock the kitchen, the AWC group distributes little gifts to the kids, juice boxes and candies and puzzles and bubbles–a playful distraction from the pain and boredom that cancer treatment looks like. A student studying in the hall, a baseball cap over his shaved head, after some prodding, shyly reads his English homework to me, "I. like. to. swim." Another teenage patient sits in the hall reading Pushkin.

The little guy in the photo above, Zahar, had a six inch incision up the back of his head where, a month ago, they removed a brain tumor. The tumor had affected his ability to learn to walk. Like most parents with kids in this clinic, the mom left her job so she could stay in the hospital with the baby. The papa says Zahar is already taking steps now. 

Some of the newer chemotherapy medicines these kids need aren't provided by the state and must be paid for by families themselves. Apparently, cancer cures aren't free.

In the kitchen, a mom is cooking potatoes in oil. The families, biding their time in the clinic, have enough toys and magazines. I'm sure you are already contributing wherever you are, however you can. In the CLO office, I'm putting some money in the plastic container that goes directly to buy medicine and equipment for children at this clinic in Moscow. Let's keep it up. This month, a teeny boy in tights had brain surgery and then learned to walk.

If you are so inclined, as one amazing commenter was, you can donate by paypal at the Nastenka website, a foundation that supports the children's oncology clinic.

Zhenya, the yoga teacher, left to have a baby and I begged the gym to bring her back. I finally showed up today, more than a week later. Then, I had to borrow a mat, and then I walked out of today's class to go look for a hair tie, but I'm totally into it.

The classes I went to this summer, in Davis and in Santa Cruz, shocked me. The teachers are so nice. In Santa Cruz, I walked in on a class during the quiet rest at the end, and no one yelled at me. I came to class late and the teacher ran over asking "Are there any positions you don't like to do?" and "I like your ring!" At the end of class, she sang us awake. I was disappointed that after class she didn't pass out cookies. It felt like pre-school for grown-ups.

Zhenya has a different approach. She was obviously previously a professional dancer or maybe a juniors champion gymnast. She lifts her chest so beautifully, she turns on her hands as easily as her feet. She positions her little arms like a ballerina. She does things with her hips and joints that I can't even describe, but it's worth going to class just for the sexy and athletic show she puts on. She's sort a one-woman no-frills cirque de soliel. But mean.

Her warm up excercises are fast, turning your arms inside out, outside in, or slapping your knees on the ground, one two, one two. People at tennis lessons here and those working out at the track stretch to a similar fast cadence, boing, boing, boinging their arms, an unfamiliar rigor for my "let's do a long, easy stretch" American body.

Zhenya moves us through the familiar poses, but not in the familiar order. And she's talking, talking, talking in Russian, and all I understand is sabaka "dog." I have to look to see if it's downward or upward facing. But it doesn't matter because I can never do a sabaka like she can. Her form, post-partem, is more beautiful than any other teacher I've ever had. She comes over and tells me to stop trying to straighten my leg so much. I'm American. I should hold my leg at the knee and leave the leg-straightening to the Russians.

She tells us to breathe. "Do you feel a stretch here?" She asks in English, "I feel a pain in my thigh," someone says. "Yes! Isn't it great?" she says with a rare smile. She speeds up motions that are slow at home, and makes us hold poses we would, in California, slide through. A warrior balance drops into a pigeon pose. Never in the US would someone do those back to back. It would be a sacrilige. And isn't it great?

I can't wait to go back on Tuesday. Unless I forget to go.

My wow-can-she-write friend Erica blogged about the class here: http://bit.ly/bed8Sg