It is the night before my flight tomorrow afternoon—I am packing my luggage, listening to my “no title” music folder on iTunes and suppressing the lump in my throat. I get distracted and start going through my “Russia” pictures. Green picnics and careless walks in welcoming parks, orange, red and yellow seas of falling leafs, frozen lakes with sleeping ducks, unafraid of the snowflakes’ play. I go back to those same sceneries colored by the birds’ songs, the smell of freshly baked peanuts and the invigorating touch of the wind. And I cannot make myself leave this place.
All my other goodbyes were more or less easier. I used to prepare myself mentally for the next adventure and start making plans for my first food choices. But when my father called me 3 hours ago and asked me about my dinner preferences on Sunday, I just shrugged my shoulders and responded, “I don’t really care. Really.”
This goodbye is different because it might be my last goodbye to Pushkin’s motherland. Even if it isn’t, I will never again relive these same moments, that my 21-year-old naïve self experiences now. Naturally, this moment of realization holds true for every single place I visit. Although I leave a piece of my soul everywhere I go, I am now leaving most of it here, in the Soviet-time apartment buildings, in the shapeless Christmas light decorations, in the Neva river and in the hot borsht soup.
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