Aging Wits

Nine years ago, one of the most beautiful things was happening to me. At that point I was far from realising it. On the contrary, the moment I found out the news I was terrified that the impact this would bring on my life would be somewhat unpleasant if not devastating. Certainly my life as I knew it would be shaken up.

At that moment, I could only see the immediate effect on me, my family and our crammed little living space. After all, a loud family of seven breathing creatures were sharing a two bedroom flat, somewhere seven stories up. That’s not counting the unborn baby on the way. My niece.

I was becoming an aunt for the first time.

The news was terrifying. I was already imagining non stop baby crying entire days and nights. Of course the arrival of the baby brought a lot of crying into our lives. Much more than most babies.

Nutza was not an easy baby. She cried and she cried and then when she stopped she would continue making these unbearable baby noises well into the morning. It was common practice that at 2am or 3am or 4am almost every night the baby was being carried around the house with bright lights on in an attempt to calm her down. At one point, running water was the new calming element.

What I didn’t know yet was that the biggest impact on our lives would be the amount of love that entered into that small apartment.

Looking back that was one of the happiest moments I’ve shared with my family. Our two bedroom apartment - shared by my parents, grandmother, my brother, sister in law, my niece, our cat Murka. All together, sharing lots of baby crying, quarrels, daily happenings and all that incomprehensible beautiful new love.

The year after my niece was born was the last year we lived together. I got a study scholarship and moved away. Oh, how I miss those noisy together days.

Our family apartment is now home for my brother and his family. My parents and my grandmother moved to their own house, luckily in the same city, a trolley bus ride away. My niece knows now that it takes exactly eight stops to get to them. The cat tagged along with my parents and is nowadays in cat heaven.

We’re now sharing Skype daily happenings, sometimes quarrels and lots of silent love.

Is there more beautiful love you can get than your niece displaying on Skype an entire album of colorful drawings? All in a patience only a child can have.

Many are the treasures of a long forgotten provisions room. They even go beyond the tens of three litre jars of jam one could find there. 

Sometimes, you can find things saved in a ten litre jar! 

Stored behind the door of the provisions room and away from prying eyes, my mom and I stumbled upon a mysterious ten litre jar. It looked well preserved and whatever was in it came in a dark yellow colour. 

Honey? Vodka? Oil? We barely opened the well-sealed lid and we had our answer - home made oil. In an instant, an entire sunflower field was released into the room. A smell sealed for over ten years moved powerfully through the room and danced in front of our ecstatic noses. 

My mom was determined to take the oil home, to the capital, about 230 kilometres away. But travelling on public transport with a ten litre oil jar, though admittedly a fun idea, did not seem all that practical. And so we agreed to pour the oil into big plastic bottles. In a Moldovan village, everything can creatively find its way into plastic bottles: oil, honey, vodka, wine, milk, gasoline and, why not, holy water.  

Ten litre jars are also not uncommon in Moldova’s villages. They are great for pickles, sheep cheese, wine or vodka and many other eatable things we humans want to preserve in big quantities. Because we’re always preparing to live for the future.

We were just seconds into filling the first plastic bottle as the ten litre glass jar - filled to the brim with oil - slipped through my mom’s fingers and fell on the concrete floor. There was no holding on to it or saving it from the fall. The jar broke into pieces and the sunflower field spread across the room. Oil was everywhere. Under the wardrobe, under the fridge, under our feet. It was there to stay in the house. 

We saved about one and a half litre of precious oil. What was a treasure of a decade old memory vanished under our feet in seconds. Old rugs came to the rescue as we cleaned the floor. The red painted concrete floor was shining and smelling heavenly. My mom, shaken and deeply saddened, did not say much on the way back. Once in a while, she sighed as she remembered the oil. 

If even a jar of oil is unpredictable, why are we so eager to always live for the future? 

All it takes sometimes in life is a matter of seconds. 

In one of her many travels to Moscow, something fascinating happened to grandma. 

As she was advertising her apples to potential buyers at one of Moscow’s many markets, a young lady stopped to carefully examine her apples. She wanted to handpick just a few good-looking apples to take back to her country - which could have been Georgia or Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan. As the young lady was admiring her goods, young grandma was admiring the lady. She was well taken care of: beautiful hands, good clothes, good shoes, nice perfume. Grandma’s eyes were however most fascinated by the cross she was wearing around her neck. Made of good quality gold, it was an undecorated and simple cross, which was exactly what made it so unique and beautiful. 

Grandma wanted one just like that. She asked the woman where she had bought it, only to find out it was handmade in her country. Grandma did not think twice. She offered to buy it from her. The woman refused, bought the apples and left to catch her train that would take her back home. 

A few hours later, when the market was about to close, the same woman with the beautiful cross came back running and begged grandma to buy the cross from her. Apparently her wallet with every single penny in it had been stolen later that day and she had no money left to make her way back home to Georgia, Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan. 

Grandma bought the cross for a generous fee. She gave it to her daughter. My mom gave it to me. Every time I wear it I get to think of both of them and the young lady that made this connection possible. I hope she got another cross handmade for herself. 

The provisions’ room was so small there was only enough space to put deep shelves on the left side of the door and smaller ones on the right side of the door. Nonetheless, those shelves were always packed with incredible amounts of homemade goodies. 

You could find walnut jam there, white and red cherry jam, sour cherry jam, strawberry and raspberry jam, quince jam, apricot jam, plum jam, all kinds of jam that grandma made from fresh fruit from her garden. The jam rarely came in jars of half a litre. Mostly it came in jars of one, two and three litres. Could you ever find in today’s supermarkets of Western Europe a three litre jam jar?! 

Next to the jam jars, there were marinated mushrooms collected from the local forest, stuffed sweet paprika, eggplant and tomato stew, tomato juice, apple juice, pork meat and fat, honey, everything and more of what one needs to survive a winter. Many winters in fact. All and every single winter of one’s life. On a special occasion you would open a jar with jam and bake some cones. When there was no time or energy for baking, grandpa would eat bread with jam. He loved sweets. And this is how winters passed in that village.

As a child, I was many times allowed into the room to choose a jar with jam. Filled with treasures, the room was simple childhood magic. A few decades later, the magic was still there. Except grandpa was gone. Grandma moved away while the mice moved in. No one left to choose a jar or to eat jam.

Last year the provisions rooms had to be emptied. The little house had to be cleaned. 

The room was as full as every single year that grandma lived there. During summer she would always make new stock: new jam, new vegetables, new meat. The stock from the year before would never really go empty. And so, with each year, the shelves got heavier and heavier. 

We took out more than 80 three-litres jars. Grandma used to always scribble on top of the jar’s cover the year it was made in. Some were my age, over 30 years old. Made in 1981 or in 1985. 

Some jars we emptied into the garden. Most went to my uncle. Those tasty, sugary and flavoured jams made pretty good homemade vodka. A work of a lifetime emptied in half a day. 

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Grandma used to be a strong woman in her young days. So strong that once in her many travels to Moscow she was called a camel. It happened at one of the train stations in Moscow. The rope that was holding her luggage together broke and several boxes fell to the ground. A young Russian officer jumped up to help her, only to realise he could not lift the heavy boxes on his own. In awe, he looked at grandma and asked: “Are you a camel?”. Grandma did not know the Russian word for camel, so she memorised it and when she came back home she asked her husband what it meant. They had a good laughter together and the story travelled on through generations. 

Those were the times when the entire north of Moldova was travelling to Moscow. Carrying heavy boxes filled with fragile and famous Moldovan fruit, families were trying to make a better living in the Soviet Union. It was hard work, not for the faint-hearted. Grandma and other women from the village journeyed to Moscow while the men stayed behind to keep the household running. For days at a stretch, at several of Moscow’s markets, they would sell their treasured hand-picked fruit. At the end of the trip, they’d stroll through Moscow’s shops to buy precious things for that time: good shoes, tableware, quality fabrics. 

Russians loved Moldova’s fruit. They still do nowadays, except fruit and love have become highly political. In the last few years, Moldova’s fruit has been banned on the Russian market. Official reasons - poor quality control. Real reasons - Kremlin’s desire to keep the former Soviet republics under its influence. In the meanwhile, impoverished Moldovans keep travelling to Moscow to find work. How many more generations will it take to not be defined as camels?     

In the last years grandma’s physical powers have considerably diminished. Her mental state even more so. Her life is now fully constrained to the small room she occupies in the house of my parents. The TV in her room is barely on. The window and the door have to stay closed most of the time. She doesn’t like the fresh air coming in through the window or the eyes of the inhabitants of the house peeking behind the door. She is more comfortable eating on her own, now that for some years all her teeth left her. The joys are few, the miseries big.

All her days that go by are filled with sadness, tears, half-remembered stories of old times, pain and constant pleas for death to arrive. On her bad days, she refuses to eat or threatens she will drink all her pills in one go. On the good days, grandma’s eyes give space to sparkle when her grand-grand children come by. If they would be around all the time, there would be less room for suffering.  

Since a while now, my parents have a dog. Rex is a stray dog that my parents took in from some relatives. He came as a gift to my mother, who in fact wanted a cat rather. The dog, a young and playful creature, is often allowed into the house to visit grandma. They play on her bed together. She treats him to whatever goodies she has handy. After a playing session, the dog goes back outside while grandma goes back inside, into her own world.

For the past four years all our attempts to get grandma to come out of her room, to step outside into the warmth of the summer days and to share the happenings of our world landed on deaf ears. 

Except on this late sunny August day, when after four years of self-inflicted lockdown in her little room, she came outside. Without much convincing, she suddenly agreed to try and walk outside. 

Step by step, supported by my mom, my dad, her shaky legs, clumsy stiff body and her old forgotten walking frame, she made it to the porch. She sat down and looked around. She saw the garden and commented on how things changed and what she noticed. She sat straight and did her best efforts to keep her eyes properly open. She was outside for over an hour. She was positive and seemed happy. We took many photos, four generations were in that moment truly together. We then sat in silence.  For some moments, grandma was back alive. 

The dog came to play with her. Now she was outside visiting him.

After 3 hours on the road we were almost there.

When the car passes the sign reading Lipnic and you’re driving on the road along the railways, then it’s no longer far. You take the first left turn, then the first right and there you are, on the wobbly dirt road that brings you home.

Though home is empty and there is a big chain and a lock at the gate, no one can take that feeling away from you.

My mom in the front of the car and me in the back, the silence only broken by my cousin, who manages to finally say something smart - “Home is close.”

We had a tense debate while driving. Politics. An ugly creature that divides families and relatives. The North of Moldova has become a red dot on the map. A bedrock for communist pro-russian supporters. Some so blinded by the aggressive Russian propaganda that they’ve come to believe in the nonsense they replicate. My dispute with my cousin was making my mom uncomfortable, even though she herself could not agree with his pro russian infatuation. The war in Ukraine, how it happened and who was fuelling it - a very inflammable topic obviously. More so, when your own cousin goes on about how Americans invaded Ukraine, how they are dividing the country and how Crimea was not occupied by Russia but merely returned to its cradle. Yet another reminder of just how powerful and efficient the Russian propaganda remains in many of its former Soviet republics.

This road that I took so many times with my grandpa seems much longer than I remember. In silence, my entire being gets overwhelmed, emotional. But for the sake of my mother, and myself, I do not dare say a word. This place that brings the best memories of my childhood and the most fascinating of dreams, is just minutes away. I sit there in the back of the car and think of my mom, who comes to an empty house. A house where she was once a child running barefoot, where her children grew up, where her parents grew old. 

This time we come to clean. 

When ten years ago grandma moved to my parents in the capital, her house and everything in it remained behind. All the same, untouched. The small house with one bedroom, one provisions room and one summer kitchen have not changed a bit. Still the same blankets on the bed, the same carpets on the floor, the same half empty perfume in the cupboard. The water bucket under the table. A pair of beautiful blue stone earrings in a drawer. Everything in its place as when grandpa and grandma were still living there.

I follow my mom everywhere with my new phone eager to take photos. My mom gets upset. She’d like me to help instead. But I don’t want to miss a thing, because next time I will be there, all the treasures of old times will be gone. The cupboards will be empty, the beds will have fresh linen, the provisions room will be entirely empty.

How can one keep their memories alive then?

Grandma is now well into her 80-s. 

After grandpa died she still lived for a few years on her own in the village. 

Then the calls to my mom came more often. 

First with complaints of all sorts. Her back pain was back. Her legs hurt. Her heart ached. 

Then little things. The key to the house would not turn. The house needed to be painted. The water well taken care of. The garden, the flowers, the trees. All and everything needed more attention than she could give them. 

After all, the garden, the house, the entire fortune one gathers throughout the life, is always too big when you age.

Having done everything near to perfection in her youth, it was tough for grandma to admit defeat. This was for her unimaginable. For the neighbours and for the village too. In fact, it seems an entire country has the right to mind about your business.  

A tradition so deeply rooted in a nation’s subconscious, it follows from generation to generation. You can spot it very easily when one builds a house and a fence, always bigger and higher than that of the neighbours. Or when one gives his entire miserable salary to a wedding of a distant relative. Or when you choose to cook all night for the visiting priest who will only stay half an hour. It’s in those moments that you can tell how hard it is to get rid of a nation’s bad habits. 

The neighbours, the village, the people - what will they say? Wondering what others would think ended up valuing more than making oneself and one’s family a priority. 

I’ve been a proud and hard working woman in my time, grandma used to say. Having gone through the hunger that followed the Second World War, she and all those around her worked hard and at times even harder than necessary to create and maintain a living. At the expense of one’s health and those loved ones.

But as years advanced, grandma had to admit defeat. 

My mom could not do the 250km road as often as grandma demanded. Taking a minibus to the village would take about four hours. The train did not improve much since Soviet times. It now took between six to seven hours instead of eight to nine. Twenty five years into the independence, the same Soviet train runs daily through the village on its way to Moscow. A train which if it could write, it would tell a history of humanity, poverty, hope and desperation. It’s been carrying lives and destinies across shifting borders. Its travellers still nowadays in search of prosperity, peace and freedom. 

One day it was time. Grandma had to move from the place she called home all her life to the capital, to live with her daughter, her son-in-law, her granddaughter, her grandson and his wife. All in one flat, seven storeys high.

She’s not seen her home in years. Except in photos, with tears in her eyes. 

One evening, we sat together to watch old albums, full of black and white photos with beautiful people, and meaningful faces. Grandma’s memories of old times were unexpectedly fresh. For almost two hours we looked at every photo. We talked, we laughed and we cried. It was the best time we had in years, as otherwise she is not doing well anymore. Most of her days are lonely, even the TV is almost never on. Trapped up in her body, her soul is searching for relief as she talks more of death than of life. She knows she will never get to see her home again before she dies.

If you have a grandma or grandpa alive, sit down and look back at their lives. Those memories will not be alive for long. Once gone, those photos will not speak for themselves. Those moments will not be turned back.

Grandma studied only four classes. 

Despite this, she can read and write both Latin and Cyrillic scripts. 

Those were the times of the Second World War when tiny Moldova would openly be the battlefield between Romania and Russia, between West and East. Things are not better nowadays as old habits die hard. 

It could have happened however that young grandma would have only studied one class. If it wouldn’t have been for the horse. 

Smart and fearless creature. A beautiful black being with a white, star-shaped, spot on his forehead. He had the mission to bring grandma to school and after school to bring her home. All on his own. And all on her own. He knew the way to school and the way home. Grandma’s father trained him just for this reason. 

The choice was simple. Either alone on the horse or no school at all. Time was too precious those days to be wasted on education. 

She learned to deal with the mockery that came from mean little boys. The horse successfully overcame other people’s attempts to ride or stop him.   

Nothing and no one stood in his way. 

Just like nothing stood in grandma’s way of seeing her education dream, which ended as the war intensified, come to life through her daughter - who went on not only to finish school but also successfully graduate from medical university all the way to becoming a doctor. To say that grandma and grandpa were proud is to say the least. 

Eight decades later, grandma still remembers the horse. His name was ‘the Gypsy’. 

A week has passed now since I am using this light-orange bathroom towel. In fact, it is not really light-orange. It’s a hard to depict light pastel colour slightly resembling orange. I’d probably not choose it myself, at least not at this point in my life. 

The towel is ‘brand new’ and has never been washed yet so of course it does not really do its job to dry me up. But I don’t dare wash it before I have written this text. Because once I do wash it, the smell it carries will be gone. I fear that together with the washed smell, the feelings it stirs up will be hard to recreate. I want to remember, at least for a little while longer, how powerful the smell of home is. 

You can recognise it anywhere. It can take you places that have long disappeared or the family home you left when you moved abroad.

It can take you to your parents’ house, into your mom’s wardrobe of nicely stored away things.

Things that have a price tag written in cyrillic from a time even before you were born.

The towel’s tag told me it was made in 1980, in Soviet Union. My mom gave it to me last year. She’s saved it for over 30 years. Because having a good towel had a lot of value those days. Nowadays you can buy them as cheap as just a few euros. They come in brighter, better looking colours, but they all carry the smell of the shops. 

I hope you all can find things in your mom’s wardrobe that your mom kept and valued for decades. They are incredible. Even after a week of using my ‘orange’ towel, I can still smell home in it. 

Thank you mom. 

My Dutch home now carries the number 67. My other home in Moldova’s capital is exactly the opposite: 76. Funny coincidence, I guess.

But have you ever lived in a house with no number? If you have, then you’re one lucky being. That’s where I grew up, in a house that carries the name of its inhabitants.

Even now, when empty for almost a decade, people still refer to the house by the name of its last living inhabitant. The entire village in fact is made of such houses: without numbers, but with names, people, stories, and lives.

In such a place people knew who their neighbours were. They knew their neighbours’ names, the names of their neighbours’ children and almost all their distant relatives’ names.

People knew when they could find you home. They could enter your courtyard and also your house without being afraid one would wonder what they were doing there. You could see through the fences around the houses, your gate and house would be locked only at night.

In this place you knew the name of your postwoman. She did not come very often, but when she did she would bring real mail. The kind you still keep in old envelopes.

I barely know my neighbours of today, even though our houses are in fact under the same roof and share the same walls. In that place with homes without numbers I knew all my direct neighbours and then also the neighbours down and up the street. And then some in the parallel street. And when you walked through the streets where you did not know anyone you still said hello to everyone you met.

It was just polite that way.

If you can find such a place nowadays, see if they have a house for sale. One that can carry your name from now on.  

#moldova my LOVE

Many years now the house is empty, though its last true owner is not dead yet. Grandma had to move, as life on her own was no longer manageable.  

When she moved, only the dog was left behind. At the mercy of the neighbours. We could not take him along, he was wild, most of the times gentle, but sometimes he’d sneak and bite even the hand that fed him. So, there he was, day after day, until years have passed by. Serving his duty to guard the house. Up until the moment when the freezing cold of the last winter decided it was time. 

When you live in a country where time stands still, choices are sometimes limited and options not so many. The village life provided little alternative for a decent dog death. He learned to eat the walnuts that were everywhere in the autumn, in the summer he’d feast on the cherries. When he was lucky he managed to eat a curious chicken or two. Water and bread was otherwise his existence. How did he survive so many of those long forgotten winters?

The house and the village did not change at all. The entire countryside barely did too. If anything, the roads are worse and the village is half empty. Dogs died, cats did too, many people that were once the soul of that place are no longer in their houses. 

When Soviet Union collapsed a nation was so eager to get rid of the past and embrace the new that old sturdy wooden furniture that could serve many generations for decades to come was replaced with cheap wobbly pieces with new looks. In the meanwhile the desire to move ahead seems to have stopped at the change of furniture.  

I saw it on the picture. The little room, with its three beds, it still looks as 30 years ago. Except without its residents. A miracle that survives as long as grandma is alive. The room carries with it a sense of belonging that is hard to ever get back. And even harder to build today.

It is no longer the same, the meaning of a house nowadays. 

Once in a while I take a little spoon of honey for my tea. Sometimes I indulge in walnuts with honey.

It’s been now more than ten years since he passed away, out of the blue. Heart attack on a beautiful and sunny spring day. No one saw it coming, we all thought grandma would go first. She was the one with heart problems, diabetes and then some. She’s still alive. Not great anymore, but still alive. 

But before he went, as never before, he made honey. A lot of honey. Honey to last us for decades. We shared it with friends, it went around as nice gifts, sometimes as sweet bribes. All those years before, grandma would always tell him: what a waste these insects! They take all your time and eat all our sugar to survive, but give no honey in return. How did they know when it was time to make up for those years?

He had a special love for the bees. The kind that one just has within. He learned how to go about bees on his own: by reading, by observing, by doing, and by suffering. No one in the family inherited his passion. It stopped with him. The bees moved across the street to the young neighbour, he took them together with their houses. Their relocation went smooth. I wonder if they noticed he was gone? 

I still have a bit of honey in my jar. I should get some more when I visit my mom. 

The two women were impatiently waiting for the three-wheeled sidecar motorcycle to return and bring them some news. 

It’s coming, they whispered as if with fear. 

You could always recognise when the motorcycle would come home. Its sound was specific, distinct from others in the village. There were just a few of these sidecar motorcycles passing through the village. Each of them with its own, unmistakable sound. As a child I found that our motorcycle made the least disturbing noise, it was on the contrary a somewhat pleasant sound. Gentle even. Grandpa coming home. 

The women opened the big gate so he could enter. 

And? How? How did it go? They asked in between tears.

At that moment, he uncovered the motorcycle’s carriage and there she was. Face all red from crying. Covered up in her grandma’s big light blue winter shawl. 

An adventure that would be a childhood of happiness started in that very moment. 

A four year old girl refused to get on the bus with her parents and go back to their home in the capital. She held on to everything she could: stove, doors, motorcycle, bus, just not to be taken back. Skinny and unhealthy at that point, she could not eat the very sweet kindergarten food anymore. Nobody seemed to know why she kept getting smaller and smaller until she lost all appetite altogether. The body of a four year old does not lie. It did not want to go back. It chose instead walking barefoot in the grass, the fresh milk from the cow, waking up to the energetic rooster every morning and falling asleep with goodnight stories of her grandfather. 

It’s obvious I never liked sugar that much. But as an adult you tend to forget listening to your body. 

If you could ever go back in time, would you not return back to share a small room with three snoring grandparents? 

In my dreams my childhood house always looks different, but the feeling in the dream is that perfect sensation: I was just there, back in time and everything stood still. Sometimes the dream comes often, then it is gone for months. 

In my memory, the happiest childhood ever. 

In that small village at the edge of that small country. In that small house with just one liveable room. With a grandpa, a grandma, a grand-grandma, those dogs who only eat bread and leftovers, the cat who attacks the neighbours’ dog to protect her breed, the cow with her big human eyes who knows exactly which gate she has to open when she comes home from the fields.

It’s now empty. 

The last dog died last winter. He’s lived there alone for several years, the neighbours brought him bread and water, when they remembered or heard him bark. I can’t recall his name anymore, but it’s probably Muhtar. There were several of them throughout the years. 

We sold the cow when grandpa suddenly died. I can see her walk out through the small front gate touching it with her hips, this big and very gentle being, white with black spots and humble intelligent eyes.

And the cat. Smart and proud creature. Well, it lived a long life. We say she was around for at least 22 years. Murka was just another typical name. You’ll find them in every little village. The name, not the cat. The little mop of hair made its appearance around the same time as one of the dogs. They’d play together, eat together, until one day when the dog decided otherwise. He’d never catch her, there she was up the tree. The cat lived long enough to meet the grand-grandma in her last years of life and decades later to meet her grand-grand-granddaughter who she never knew. 

The neighbours next door are still the same, just fewer. It seems life goes on the same way as ever before. Though in the meanwhile an entire Soviet empire has collapsed and a little country together with this village gained a fragile independence, filled with hopes and dreams of happiness. 

I now have my own house. 

A middle aged IT couple owned it for almost 30 years before us. It was just for the two of them, and their two cats, and of course their computers. All of them happily moved away last year. We kept the doorbell, the house number, the laundry ropes, and you can still see there used to be a hole in the back door, the cats’ entrance into the house. We got it fixed, but didn’t get to painting it yet. All the rest is vanished. There are new floors, a new bathroom, everything is freshly painted. Their wild, jungle-looking garden is also gone, together with the ponds, the salamanders, the decades old pine trees, even the frogs from under the ground had to relocate. Both the neighbours had to comply with our desire to have a wooden fence instead of green boundaries. The former owners stop by sometimes to visit the old neighbour next door for a game of bridge. Must be a sore sight for their eyes this new house we built. 

I still fear that one day the little house in the village will be gone too. The walnut trees, the water well, the toilet in the garden. And so will all the last things of my childhood.