A memory

I am 17 years old and it is summertime. My family is spending 2 weeks on the Volga River, sailing from Moscow to St. Petersburg. My mother caught a cold on the flight over and has given it to the rest of us. Not knowing we'd all be sniffling and hacking up our lungs, we only packed a couple of emergency doses of cold medicine, not nearly enough for all 4 of us. Since I am hacking up the most phlegm of all of us (graphic!), I am designated as the family drug mule, and my mission is to pay a visit to the ship doctor in order to score some medicine for us all to share.

The doctor's name is Mikhail Gorbachev and I'm pretty sure I've seen him smoking on the deck a couple of times. He has a weathered, doleful face and curly brown hair. He is age indeterminate.

He examines me and then shakes his head mournfully.

"I'm afraid this is more serious than we thought."

I am terrified--have I caught some kind of scary foreign disease? Have I managed to contract tuberculosis again? Will I be wasting away in my cabin for the rest of the trip, pale and coughing into a lacy hanky as my mother tries to get me to take a sip of beef tea?

After that dramatic proclamation, it turns out to only be bronchitis. Unfortunately, Dr. Mikhail Gorbachev doesn't supply me with cold medicine for my ailing family, but I do get antibiotics and this really delicious cough syrup called Doktor Mom, which I'm pretty sure had opium in it or something.



We all start feeling better pretty quickly. I obliged Dr. Gorbachev's request that I get plenty of fresh air by frolicking around on Kizhi Island, where hundreds of little yellow flowers were blooming and the sky was brilliant blue and the grass was vivid green (am I remembering this through an opium haze?).



By the way, this church was constructed with no nails. One of the most incredible things I have ever seen.