“Lelya! Home!” My mother’s voice floats high above corn and sunflower stalks bordering neat patches of blooming potatoes, beds of carrots and beets, rows of ripening tomatoes and bell peppers, pumpkin and cucumber vines. It mingles with the falling dusk and sweet smoke of wood fires rising from the chimneys—all over the village women are preparing supper. The cattle are returning home from the day of grazing in the distant clover meadows by Gitalova Hill. The herdsman, Ivan Silantyevich, simply Silych to everyone, even kids, carries a rope whip over his shoulder. He looks sunburned and tired but content, anticipating a hearty meal of potatoes boiled in their skins, pickled herring, brown bread, and a salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions from the vegetable garden tended by Ivan’s wife Pelageya Martynovna. The thought of his darling baba brings a smile to Silych’s parched lips; maybe Pelagesha will be benevolent enough to allow him a shot or two of Stolichnaya from the bottle she keeps under lock and key in the kitchen cabinet next to the icebox.

“Coming!” I yell in response to my mother, but stay where I am—outdoors, on the top step of the tall wooden ladder leading to the stuffy attic where cobwebs hang from the beams and dark shadows reside in dusty corners. Lingering for the last impressions of the fading day, I take in the magic of changing colors, sharpening scents, and muttering sounds. The desire to sing overwhelms me, but no song I know of can convey the degree of my elation at life and my gratitude for being able to see, smell, and hear. Giving in to the joy, I compose my own song and sing it out loud in a strange language. I sing it to the sky and the setting sun, to the lake, glistening on the horizon like a steel razor blade. I sing it to the vegetable gardens, divided with geometrical precision into neat patches, to the cows with bulging udders, hurrying to their barns. I am six years old, and for the first time in my short life, I am consciously, acutely aware of the profound happiness of being. Suddenly, some magic force lays out my entire life in front of me, a succession of rolling hills, sunny valleys, and shady groves. They run as far as the eye can see, all the way to the horizon, and even beyond that illusory line, they go on and on into the cosmic infinity.

The first timid stars lighten up in the sky. They hang so low; I can stand up on my toes and touch the prickly wonder, scratch my finger. For a few last moments, the sunset smolders in the west above the lake and goes out like a candle.

“Lelya! What are you doing up there?” Mother is standing at the bottom of the ladder looking up at me, her face—a pale circle in the darkness. “Wait. I’ll help you to get down.”

But before she even lifts her hand to grasp the step, I’m half way down the ladder. I have climbed up and down it so many times, I can do it with my eyes closed.

Together we go inside where all the rooms are lit and the crystal dangles of the heavy, old-fashioned candelabra in the living room toss miniature rainbows on a whitewashed ceiling.

After the ritual of a bath performed in our kitchen in an old, dented zinc tub, I’m ready for bed. Yearning and struggling to keep my eyes open, I, nevertheless, try to negotiate for a few more minutes of sentience. I do so out of habit, knowing in advance that the favor will be denied. (I’m not sure what I would do if it were suddenly granted.) The world around me never ceases yielding its wonders and secrets—what a shame it is to sleep through some of them! Going to bed every night is like dying. The only thing that makes me slip under a cool cotton sheet and succumb to the darkness is exhaustion and the thought that, somehow, I’ll be reborn the next morning, the moment the sun reaches my window and places its warm, soft paw across my face.