Sharon Visits NY - Episode 2: Mamma Mia

Alexei’s mother is a redoubtable woman with a limited command of English, but as it far surpasses my command of Russian, a large part of our communication consists of her hovering over me wordlessly with various dishes in the hopes of tempting my recalcitrant appetite. She did, however, give me to understand that my consumption of food contrasted unfavorably with that of a bird, something she was sure would adversely affect my chances of bearing her a grandchild.

The language barrier has led to a little awkwardness in the past. Once, Alexei’s aunt, patting my head affectionately, told me in halting English, “You are a nice girl.” I, thinking to dazzle her with my mastery of the language and at the same time return the compliment, replied, “You are a nice babushka,” using the Russian word for grandmother. She seemed to take this with equanimity, but Alexei later explained that in the vernacular, my compliment roughly translated to, “You are a nice old lady,” which didn’t strike quite the note of flattery that I had been aiming for.

Alexei and I spent the bulk of the day with his mother, except for a stroll along the boardwalk near Alexei’s mother’s place in Staten Island, where we were staying. Alexei’s idea of a walk is to amble along at a relaxed pace suitable for someone with a wooden leg. As we walked, we were overtaken by a steady stream of the elderly and people on crutches hobbling past.

Photo of Brighton Beach showing its main street with subway tracks running above it. Every now and then, you hear a great rumbling sound as a train passes overhead, silencing all conversation.

After a stop in Brighton Beach, a mostly Russian-speaking area of Brooklyn, we all headed into Manhattan to catch the Broadway musical Mamma Mia.

Exchanges between Alexei’s mother and me have an air of old-world-meets-new about them. At a café before the show, she declined my offer of tomato eggplant soup on the grounds that she had borscht at home. She was similarly unimpressed with my field green salad with asparagus and sprouts, wondering at my eating what she termed “grass”.

With time to spare, we walked along Times Square for a bit. Alexei’s mother has a disconcerting habit of advancing boldly into intersections with all the brazen self-assurance of one driving a tank. This was the subject of some rather heated exchanges in Russian between Alexei and his mother.

Massive JDate ad in Times Square reads “Why Is This Site Different From All Other Sites?”

Mamma Mia is a play about a girl’s quest to find her real father on the eve of her wedding, set to the music of Abba. It’s been running so long on Broadway that if the plot was true to elapsed time the bride would have been celebrating the birth of her first grandchild by now.

The play’s conclusions – that fathers are to some extent extraneous, and that the institution of marriage is, while not wholly antiquated, unsuitable for persons of tender years who are better off cohabiting – is not likely to endear it to the family values crowd, but the singing and dancing was decent and the Abba score was terrific.

One of the many 9/11 conspiracy stickers dotting Manhattan (click for close-up)

Somewhere in the middle of the first act, I was struck by the observation that, with the exception of two of the more mature leading ladies, there was a lot of overhanging fat among the female members of the cast. It appears that sometime in the last twenty years the requirement was waived for female dancers in a Broadway production to be fit and slim (although not, spectacularly, for the male half of the production). Maybe it sounds petty, but having shelled out roughly $400 to attend this extravaganza, I felt entitled to a cellulite-free evening.

I also couldn’t help but notice that the bride’s beauty regimen on her wedding day consisted of her mother brushing her hair in what was clearly a poignant moment, and then spreading the wedding dress open on the floor so that she could step into it. For my wedding, it took a virtual army of dressmakers, colorists, stylists, makeup artists, and sisters to groom me to a point where I could be deemed sufficiently presentable.

And then, as we left the theater, it occurred to me that there was something else glaringly absent from the wedding – the bride’s mother-in-law.