I had been dreading this week for months. Nune, my housemate, has gone to Moscow for ten days to visit her two newest grandchildren, twins born to her youngest daughter (who is only a few months older than me) in September. And she’s left me home alone with our tatik.
Nune and I live alone, on paper. But in reality, we also share our home with Nune’s mother-in-law, the tatik (grandmother) of our household. (Nune’s own mother lives a block away in a big house with one of her brothers, her son, her son’s wife and their family.) Tatik has her own house, but it’s a big sprawling house with three bedrooms and a living room that you could play most sports in. Translation: it cannot be heated economically in the winter, especially not on her measly pension. It makes no sense for the family to split resources when she can just come over in the evenings when it’s cold and sleep on the couch at her daughter-in-law’s warm house.
I’ve never minded our tatik’s company, honestly. Compared to other tatiks, especially one of our neighbors who is a more… opinionated tatik (I can’t walk down our street sometimes without her commentary: “Why are you wearing black in the summer? It’s too hot!” or my favorite “Have you gained weight?”) ours is relatively laid back. Compared to the last tatik I lived with, she makes no demands or criticisms of her daughter-in-law and they actually seem to get along most of the time, which is refreshing.
Still, I imagined that ten days, in close quarters with each other and no Nune to act as a social buffer may be taxing. Honestly, it has been.
Nune, as more of a friend and a housemate than a “host mother” never criticizes me or even questions some of the weird things I do. If I want to drink 3 liters of water a day, eat weird packaged noodles, do yoga, never wear makeup, and spend all day reading then it is no business of hers. Tatik on the other hand seems more interested, still quietly thank god, in what I’m eating and how I’m spending my time. She’s more likely to comment that I need to “stop working so much” and “enjoy my life” more – meaning… I’m not sure, but definitely stop reading and typing.
Still, I’ve found some surprise joy in this past week. While we don’t have much to actually talk about – aside from whether or not the house is warm enough, when I’ll be going to or coming home from school, and light small talk about school – we have laughed a surprising amount together.
Most nights we watch a competitive cooking show on TV together (the name sort of translates to “Mom’s cooking – another way” kind of?) where a young helpless Armenian girl tries to cook a dish with coaching from her teammate on the side – usually her mother. This past week, one young contestant kept getting distracted by the funny and charming male host and got so absorbed in talking she waited until there were three minutes left to start her rice! Tatik burst out laughing, “three minutes! You can’t cook rice in three minutes! It won’t be cooked!” and contagiously, I got caught up laughing too. For once, I was in on the joke! We watched and laughed as the show’s judge chef tried the rice and declared that “it’s not cooked” and the next night laughed as a young person served the TV chef a full, unpeeled, unwashed cucumber. “Well, it’s a cucumber,” said the judge chef, clearly a bright fellow.
Tatik, like a lot of old women of all nationalities, likes to shout at TV politicians. She likes to shout a lot in general because her hearing’s not that great. And sometimes she’s hard to understand due to the generational-language barrier and also dentures. She likes to watch really annoying soap operas. But she also likes to watch the news everyday, which I like as well because I find it’s been really helpful for my Armenian and my sense of connection to Armenia as well.
A lot of people here have had the idea that tatik is staying with me because I can’t take care of myself alone, although I cook my own food anyway and know my way around a woodstove just fine, but to be honest it’s been nice not being alone for more than a couple hours everyday. It’s nice to not have to bring in the water and light the fire and force me to speak and hear Armenian. It was nice to trade off guard of Nune’s house, especially since it allowed me a guilt-free trip last weekend to Yerevan.
It’s even nice to occasionally be offered a snack. Slightly less nice when that snack is dense pastries and you’re not being offered so much as forced and it’s not just once but three times a day. And it’s just great to be interrupted in the middle of your work by an old woman’s cell phone ringtone turned up to 11 and the shouting volume she feels the need to maintain on phone calls… but oh well, Nune will be home in tomorrow.
Alyza in Armenia 