Yesterday I went to see my other grandmother and the grandfather that comes with her. What began as a conversation about questions of the universe (why is the Earth where it is? How come one flower will not be pollinated by another's pollen if they are next to each other?) turned into a discussion on how it is possible to spend much of one's life thinking about difficult questions and trying to figure out answers, but only once you accept faith, do all the answers become blatantly simple. Maybe calling this a conversation is an over-statement.

This kind of conversation was the reason I had dreaded this particular encounter.

She told me about how there is this videotape at her church of two angels flying out of a house and into the heavens. Several boys were standing outside of this house, when they noticed something emerging, rising. Fortunately, they were properly equipped for a miracle - they had a video camera. Afterward, they walked up to the house and knocked on the door. The woman who opened it, informed them that her grandmother had just died. What they had seen was her angel passing into heaven.

My grandmother said that the first time she watched the video, it gave her chills. She says that while she is sometimes inclined to doubt it, she doesn't see how this could have been faked.

I muttered, "double exposure, movie magic."

We got off the electrical train and walked 2.6 kilometers through fields and a forest. As we would pass a plant, she would ask me what it was, I would say I did not know, and she would tell me. I didn't realize that potatoes had flowers, or that there were two insects named in honor of the United States that destroy crops. Everything bad comes from the United States, that suggested.

When we arrived at the dacha (house in the country with produce and flower gardens), my grandfather gave me a huge hug. The first thing I thought was, "his eyes look blue." The first thing he said was, "Where did you get such dark eyes!" He kissed me three times, alternating cheeks with each kiss. As my grandmother went to cook lunch, we sat down on a bench and he said, "Life is a stupid joke." I read the connotation of stupid to be more like silly, or whimsical, or ironic.

"You are young, then you get old, and others are young - it's the cycle of nature." He pulled some herbs off a bush and ate them.

He briefly mentioned being stationed in Poland when my father was born. My grandfather was part of the Soviet Army, and at the time of my father's birth, the Soviet's were occupying Poland.

He mentioned that when my father was first born, he had to sleep in a crate because they didn't have a bed for him yet. He said life was hard for them - World War II, Perestroika, Soviet Union, the Collapse - but he said the people were better, more empathetic. Today, no one would go out of their way to help you for no reason. Today, old people are just left to die, he suggested. My grandmother's words on religion seemed to reinforce that. My grandfather turned 83 on June 19. I couldn't reach him by phone because no one told me that they had disconnected their house phone a year ago.

He asked me if I remembered the time when I was three and they had just painted their floors. I ran into the room and fell flat on my butt. They had to repaint the floors, clean me up, clean my pants up. I didn't.

My grandparents grow peas toward the entrance of their property that they hand out to little kids. He picked off ten or fifteen of the fullest pods, and handed them to me. We didn't have much to say or enough time for the conversation to happen naturally, so we didn't try.

We each got a bucket and went to pick berries. I got the strawberries, the raspberries, and the berries he called "czar's berries" because no matter what you have to lean down to pick them, like bowing. He picked one bucket of black currant, and went off to start another, because he didn't think that was enough for me. He filled it about a third of the way before it started raining. The currant bushes by their gate have currants a centimeter in diameter on them. My grandparents no longer pick them because there are too many, and every season they grow, they mature, and they fall off the tree. No matter what, the following year, there are more. My grandfather was looking for the fullest berries, but said that they would only be their sweetest in a month.

We ate fish and crepes, two each. He got himself another one, to which my grandmother tried to insist that he was doing it wrong and should use a knife instead of a fork to pick it up. He looked at me and asked me if he could get me another. I agreed, and again he reached for the fork, and again she was upset at his choice of utensil. I held the frying pan handle and said it would be fine.

My grandmother told me about her sister's death and how they never told her her diagnosis. She told me she died really well and only took two aspirin the entire time she was sick.

She told me there were a lot of religious coincidences with the date of her death, and the ninth day after that, and the 40th day after that.

I left with a big bucket of berries (they gave me the bucket as a sort of collateral), a big jar of pickles, and several red lilies. My grandfather pressed several pea pods into my hand and I began to walk away. I turned around, realizing he wasn't following, and walked back up to him. I hugged my grandfather goodbye, and he gave me three more alternating cheek kisses. Then he looked at me really intensely, kissed my nose, and hugged me tighter. He looked like he was going to cry.

My grandmother gave me a polite hug.

I got into their neighbors car, and we drove to Minsk. The neighbors remembered when I would come there when I was three or four or five. They said I still looked the same: dark and round faced. In their car, a picture of Jesus was glued to the glove compartment: Just-in-case-Jesus.

Just in case they ran out of gas.

Just in case life really was just a stupid joke.

Just in case they got old at a time when people had lost their empathy.