Farewell my Babushka

Today I moved out of my apartment where I have lived the previous six months. I spent almost 1% of my life thus far there.  I am now living in a hotel for a few days waiting to move to the new campus in the mountains.

How many houses and apartments have I lived in during my life? I am afraid I've lost count. My apartment in Bishkek wasn't as historic and dramatic as the medieval castle I called home for several years in the Netherlands, it wasn't as small as the tiny apartment in the suburb of Osaka I lived in that didn't seem much bigger than a bread box, nor was it as filled with mayhem and wretched housekeeping as the ultra-cheap lodging I shared one summer with three alcohol abusing, philandering college students while I was a graduate student in upstate New York.

On balance, though, my apartment in Bishkek was a nice place, that actually resembled home on certain days. Yes, there were problems with the hot water and the internet and there were power outages and the old woman who lived above me enjoyed playing loud classical music on her piano at all hours of the day and night, missing notes here and there as she pounded away on the ivory keys. And there was the elevator. That tired grandmother of a contraption, to whom I gave the name "Babushka." Poor Babushka, who more often than not, was out of service, out on her feet. And even when she did work, she moaned and groaned as if she were carrying the weight of the world inside her.

Today, as a final gift, Babushka came through for me in the end. She managed to somehow work as I brought my suitcases and bins of possessions down to the front door of the building to be transported to the hotel, sparing me the misery of trudging up and down six flights of stairs in the summer heat.  Interestingly enough, after I completed my early morning move, I arrived at work only to find the elevator there broken down; even more interesting was the fact that the person trapped inside was one of the same women who had been stuck in that exact elevator when it had broken down two months prior.  The work elevator must be a niece of Babushka's.

It's funny what peculiar things leave an impression on us as we go from one place to the next. So, farewell my Babushka. May you continue to confound and frustrate future generations of tenants as time moves onward.

Babushka, during one of her rare working moments