A version of Snow White

 I've always been the serious grandfather -- the one who built houses and repaired things, but did not have time to tell stories. Now that I sit or lay in bed all day long, stories are dearer to my heart than anything else. I spend my days listening to the radio and remembering the times when I had everything and did not quite realize it, and I remember my family. It occurred to me that so many stories are disappearing with each person who dies. 

My favorite story has been Snow White because it seemed to me she resembled my mother. My mother had black hair that had blue lights in it, a red mouth with a smile that captivated the hearts of children and adults likewise, and beautiful white skin. Like many mothers, she worked hard to keep the house clean, and to care for the people in it. She made sure we studied, and helped each of us follow our passions. But there was more to the story that resemblance. Her grandfather's parents died young -- likely from a epidemic similar to the one we face now, but where the press did not have the ability to capture and spread madness over the whole globe. They were Bulgarian and left behind a son who should have inherited everything. I don't know what everything was, but it was enough that his relatives hired some Romanian shepherds to get rid of the child. The shepherds left Bulgaria with the boy, and crossed into Romania. 

My grandfather and my grandmother

 

 

My grandparents

They kept their part of the bargain in the way they saw fit. As he grew, they refused to tell him the name of his parents, but did not try to kill him. The child was intelligent and learned to count on sheep, and later to read and write with what appeared to be little effort. Eventually, he landed a job as a tax collector. He never tracked his ancestors, but he lived and had children and grandchildren. His son became a tax collector as well, and build the nicest house in the village of Rogojeni -- some 70 km from Galati -- where I spent the happiest years of my life. 

 

my sister and me

 I had some talent in Mathematics as well -- when my colleagues were preparing for the Math Olympiad, I simply went and took the test, and the only prize from my class. However, I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to help people and to be able to take decisions that helped my family. Some people take family history seriously. I never did. But when my children took the 23 & me test, the Bulgarian part still stood out. 

So, in some sense, I can say that I am the great-grandson of Snow White, but that Snow White was a boy in my family. There is no reason why she'd have to be a girl. And, of course, stories where the surviving children were killed, or sent to prison (e.g., the princes in the Tower) are common throughout history, and most do not have a happy ending. Stories like Snow White's survived because we identify with them, and because they occurred over and over in different families and different settings. The best part of the story is missing, though -- there is no magic mirror and no obsession with beauty, at least not in the same way. Beauty is seldomly something we obsess over until, perhaps, after it's gone. Then we try to re-create some of it and mostly fail. I think the lesson should be to value life more than money and power. That's also the lesson from Easter and, even moreso, from Christmas. Somehow we hear it over and over again, but it never makes it home. It's simpler to want to destroy the child, and to take everthing away than to raise it and love it, and share with him/her whatever is available.