Love Letter #77 to my life: Moscow, 1990

Remembering the beauty, joy and resilience of people in hard times

(We know the day we were born, but most of us do not know the day we will die. This love letter to my life is written each month on the day I've designated as my death day: the 17th of every month, and reminds me to be grateful for my joy-filled life. —Joyce Wycoff)

The world is full of people who have learned how to hold onto joy under even the worst of circumstances. It’s a lesson most of us middle class, white Americans have never had to learn. Fortunately, there are teachers.

Many years ago I had an experience that changed me.  It was the summer of 1990 in the USSR and change was in the air.  I was there as part of an international  SuperCamp,  bringing teenagers from the USA and USSR together for two weeks of accelerated learning.  

The camp was just outside Moscow and we spent our first days touring and meeting our hosts.  What I noticed after we left the charming and historic Red Square, was how utterly ugly the city was. Boxy grey concrete apartment buildings dominated the skyline and every building was a crumbling testament to function over form.

The camp was housed on a college campus that was just as grey and crumbling as the city. 1990 was a difficult time in Moscow. Grocery stores were empty: no meat, no fresh vegetables, no frozen foods, almost nothing. Hours-long lines for a loaf of bread were daily occurrences and impromptu swap meets formed along roadsides as people tried to find parts for their cars, as well as CDs and American jeans. Anyone with a car was careful to remove windshield wipers at night.

“Bleak” was a word we repeated frequently, although the people we met were incredibly kind and generous. From them we learned the art of "gifting," presenting people with small presents on almost every occasion.  And, one of my most memorable moments was when a dozen or more of us spent an evening in the tiny living room of one of the instructors.  We talked and sang and shared a plate of orange segments and a tiny dish of chocolates. In the midst of material hardship, they gifted us with the true warmth of abundance.

Outside the cocoon of our camp, change was everywhere. In the state-controlled apartment complexes, 3-generation families lived in their cramped spaces, however, people were suddenly able to talk freely about their lives and the government and we were able to mingle and move about freely.

Some of the standard features of SuperCamp required props to support the trust building and facing fears exercises. I was tasked to go with one of the teachers to a lumber yard for materials. 

It was a simple task … or might have been in the US. In Moscow, it was a frustrating adventure that made me wonder how the USSR had become our “enemy.” Years of top down control had apparently drained the people’s ability to make decisions and accomplish simple tasks. This one turned into an hours-long nightmare of inefficiency which made me question all I had been taught about the USSR.

I began to wonder if we in “the free world” had been lied to about the USSR being a superpower war machine. It led me to ask my partner in this task if she had been taught to hate the US as an enemy. She replied … “Oh, no, we loved the US. They dropped winter coats to us when I was a child.” It made me wonder if winter coats should replace some of our war weapons.

A moment of beauty and tears … beyond the spartan campus, there was a birch forest.

One morning, mid-way through our time there, I took a walk along a path that ran through a green forest. The birch trees stood slim and white, punctuated with black hash marks.  Soon I found tears streaming down my face and realized I was overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of that forest contrasting with the grey concrete that surrounded it. Nature’s beauty against the hardship of the daily lives of the people bewildered me.

As our flight headed home, the students broke into their own version of a song we sang frequently at camp. It was a peace song of colors … “Red is so beautiful, yellow is so beautiful … etc.” The student initiated version became “Capitalism is so beautiful ….”

I think a lot about those days of political change. Within a year, the Soviet Union had collapsed followed by a perfect storm of factors which led to one of the most severe economic collapses in modern history.

We here in the US are embarking on our own great change. Many of us are excited by the new possibilities, and many of us are fearful about the magnitude and wisdom of many of the proposed changes.

Only time will tell.

May our leaders be wise and the transition peaceful. And, may we learn to embrace joy and build resilience as we proceed into this new administration.