grandma: later years & us

My parents and my grandparents

Grandma and Grandpa stayed with us so that mother could be free to work. I loved both my grandparents very much, but I loved grandma most of all. When I was growing up, I was convinced that she was the bravest and strongest person in the whole universe. My worst nightmare was losing her. It was a version of the little match girl with me as the protagonist. I was cold, grandma was gone, and I had to live without her (while my attachment to grandma was perhaps similar to that of the little girl in the story, I did have a loving family.)

After finishing her residency in Bucharest, mother started work in Alexandria, the capital of Teleorman county. Teleorman is a word of cumanic orgin that literally means the tick, shadowy forest or the mad forest (padurea nebuna). Both my brother, Mihai, and I were born in Alexandria. When he was young, grandpa spent some time working in Teleorman as a forest engineer. As he drove back with my parents, he recognized some of the forests he had planted, and measured the circumference of the trees to check how much they grew.  Tanti Luisa, a family friend who was a professor of art at the university in Bucharest, was inspired by the forests in Teleorman to paint a bridge that went from one forest to another with no inhabitants in sight, and gifted the painting to my mother (see picture below). The other painting next to Mihai and the grey kitten is also by Tanti Luisa. It represents the galaxy with what appears to be a black hole at its center with stars orbiting around it. It had been painted at Mihai's request. He was about 7 at the time (in the picture he is in highschool; we took it to prove to tanti Luisa that we still had her paintings).

Mihai with Tanti Luisa's paintings & our kittens

Grandma, me and Mother & Tusa Tavi (up the steps)

Our four bedroom apartment was on the 3rd floor of a building on Danube Street.   The apartment building had no elevator. Grandma would go up and down the stairs several times a day - often while lifting a stroller, one of us and a heavy bag with vegetables and other purchases. I still find it hard to imagine how she managed. She was 70 when I was born. Grandpa, who was 8 years older than her and had a shorter leg, could not help by carrying things, but instead read, talked and played with us. My mother hired a neighbor to do the standing in-line for milk and bread. The summers were spent in Lugoj, where my grandparents and Tusa Tavi had a beautiful house with a garden. Tusa Tavi (Octavia)  was grandpa's youngest sister and our great aunt. She did not have any children of her own and instead loved us like she would have loved her own grandchildren.


 

Grandma, Tanti Keti, Mihai, Tusa Tavi & Grandpa

Grandma and grandpa loved my mother and us more than they loved their own comfort. This is perhaps even more rare today. There were a few accidents, but even through those grandma remained strong. When Mihai was one year old, grandma fell on the stairs and broke her leg. It healed in a month. When father had to cut her cast open, Mihai failed to understand the procedure, and cried and begged him not to cut grandma's leg off.

My first memories revolve around her and grandpa. When grandma was cooking, Mihai and I would often sit on Grandpa's shoulders, throw his hat off, and play with the little hair he had left. In the beginning, he could walk with us on his shoulders through the living room. As we grew bigger and he grew older, he could only stand on the bed with us. He also enjoyed reading from the encyclopedia, and teaching us poems that often involved words that sounded similar, but had very different meanings that could be understood from the context of each verse. I only remember two of the poems he taught us. These did not involve homonyms - although, he must have insisted on them the most. One explained that we should drink only water and avoid alcohol and the other that smoking was bad.

"Bautura cea mai buna este apa de izvor
Ea este limpede mereu
O beau cerbi si caprioare
De ea capul nu te doare
 Nici nu lasa trupul greu"

(Credit: "Apa" de George Cosbuc; lousy translation: "Cold spring water is best/It is always clear/Deer drink it/It does not make the head hurt/Neither does it make the body heavy"). It also has two extra lines that encourage children to leave wine to their elders, but enforces that water is the best drink for everyone. The other poem explained that smoke comes from the chimney, and the chimney feels fine. Yet when people smoke, it hurts their lungs and causes chest pains.

"Cosul casei scoate fum
Si ma doare de tutun
Ici in cosul pieptului"

If there was a person near us in the train who was smoking, we would corner them and embarrass our parents by dutifully saying the relevant poem. Mother would quickly apologize for our interference, but we were proud of the effect we had. Some people would stop smoking temporarily, and some would even promise to try to quit altogether. We also knew about passive smoking, and explained that they were hurting us and other passengers through their choices. Grandpa left Alexandria when I was three. We only saw him in vacations for next three years. He was, however, very successful with this aspect of our education. Neither Mihai nor I smoke or drink alcohol. I  drink socially when I have to (once or twice a year), but I've never been drunk and I've never drank enough to get a headache. We were not curious about other drugs either.

The communist era was known for the many restrictions imposed on the population. My father installed three rows of glass at each window to keep the apartment warm. The power was on only part of the day to limit consumption and the heating was never on for long either. Hot water was only available once every two weeks on Thursday.  The TV was on for two hours each day, but then it would mostly show Ceausescu, who could not speak correctly. Mihai always noticed his mistakes, which was considered a crime. Mother explained that we could not mention that he was wrong to anyone else because this would send her and our father to prison. The car could only be used in odd days of the week.  The line for gas was always enormous. People would fill their car with as many recipients as they could fit in their trunk. Our car was mostly used to drive to Lugoj - where my grandparents' house was. For local trips we had bikes. I would ride on my father's bike, while my mom and Mihai rode alone.

In the pine tree forest

We loved the forests. Other than grandpa's forest, there was The Forest of The Chicken. It was named so because we had lost a chicken there. The chicken was a present from a family friend with a farm. Her legs were tied up. A few kilometers after leaving the farm, my father stopped the car and opened the trunk to see how the chicken was doing and offer her water. Instead, the chicken flew away so fast that we could not catch her. To prevent crying, mother convinced us that the chick became a successful wild hen and lived a happy life in her own forest. She was certainly spunky enough to escape us.

Then there was The Forest of The Fox. There we had found a fox burrow. It had many entrances and lots of bones around it from the fox's many meals. We each waited at a different entrance hoping to see the fox, but she decided to stay hidden even after my father tried to smoke her out.

There was also The Pine Tree Forest, which was planted around the time Mihai was born, and grew with us (see picture with us in the pine trees). I thought it was the most beautiful forest of all: full of live-Christmas trees.

Since mother often had to work at nights, Mihai and I slept in the same room as grandma. I shared her bed, and Mihai had an extensible armchair. Every evening she would bring us hot milk, and put it under our pillow in a special bottle.   I loved going to bed. It was a delight to discover the milk and drink it in the perfectly positioned blanket, and then to listen to grandma's stories. She would remember whole books by heart after reading them only once. So,  she would often turn off the light and tell us all the stories she remembered until we fell asleep. They sometimes ended with the ultimate attempt to keep us quiet: "mata moarta pe sub poarta; cine-o vorbi acum s-o roada de la cap si pana la coada" ("dead cat under the gate; the one who speaks will eat it now; he'll start at the head and end with the tail" - in Romanian it rhymes).

I did not spend much time in kindergarten.  Grandma would take me to kindergarten only after I woke up (after 10), and would pick me up some time before noon. The teachers said that I showed up rarely, and when I was there, I always arrived late and left early.  Although it was true, I remember my feelings were hurt whenever my poor attendance was mentioned.   I once asked why we (the children) were called "soimii patriei" (the falcons of the country).  My question was answered with a story of a little boy who betrayed his own mother to the special police because she spoke against the communist party. The special police arrested the mother. The father was also a traitor, and did not love the communist party. When they took his wife away, instead of feeling happy because the party got rid of a traitor, he became so upset that he threw the child off the balcony. The child thus became a hero and flew like a falcon (soim) to his death. In his honor and as a tribute to his bravery, children of similar age attending kindergarten all over the country were named "soimii patriei". Kindergarten gave children the unique opportunity to report any lack of loyalty that they saw in their own home to representatives of the party. Just like the little boy in the story, children were expected to be faithful to the party and the president above all else. Retrospectively, I do not believe the name could have been based on such a horrid story. However, the story impressed me enough that I could not forget it.

 School was different. We had good textbooks that had been translated from Russian. The text was short and to the point. We learned to read and write well and to solve math problems. I liked school, but Mihai told me that school was bad because it forced children to do things against their will. He also said that we were entitled to go to school later, but our parents insisted that we start early (at age six instead of seven) without asking our opinion, and so we had the right to revolt against the twice-perpetuated injustice. I teased Mihai about this when he won the Heraeus prize for being the youngest graduate in Germany. But at the time, I took everything my older brother said as God given. I bravely kept my side of the protest and cried when grandma would take me to school. She would respond by telling me the story of another child who made a fuss while walking diligently in the direction of the school building. When we finally got there,  I would beg grandma to stay in class with me.  She always sneaked out later on, and when I close my eyes, I can still feel the disappointment of finding her gone. I also remember that my food was plain relative to that of other children. I was not allowed to have fried bread with egg or bread with bacon. My sandwiches at school were simply made from two pieces of bread with a very thin layer of butter on one side. Sometimes she added very small pieces of cheese if we had cheese or rarely some tiny pieces of meat.  I later learned to appreciate her moderation and strong common sense.

My mother had been trying to move close to Lugoj, where my grandparents had a house with a garden, for many years. Finally, just after I turned six my father received the approval to relocate to Timisoara.  Mihai and I danced around the telephone after he told us the news. Around the same time one of my mother's colleagues was arrested for making a political joke over a game of cards. My mother had to cover his hours, while his children and wife hoped that he would be allowed to return home. He was tortured for months. He was released around the time the revolution started. He did not remember how to speak, and did not know his wife or children. He could only say three words: "I am guilty"  - without knowing what he was guilty of.   My mother sent us to live with our grandparents in Lugoj while she tried to obtain the right to enter the workforce in the Timis county. She received this permission in 1990 - right after the revolution.

We loved Lugoj. We felt independent and very happy there. My grandparents and Tusa Tavi owned a beautiful Victorian house with high ceilings. It had its own wood-based heating system. Grandpa would chop the wood into smaller pieces to prepare it for the fire. We carried it upstairs. Mihai also learned how to chop the wood himself. The ax still is his favorite tool for all repairs around the house. We had our own plot of land in the garden, where grandma and Tusa Tavi encouraged us to plant all the seeds we wanted. The pits of most of the fruits we ate were planted on top of each other there. We kept track of all the baby trees that grew in the garden, and did not allow any of them to be cut. We would also bring willow tree branches from the Timis river,  put them in water to grow roots, and plant them in the garden or in the yard close to the flower beds.

My grandparents had 4 to 5 chickens who laid eggs. A large part of my childhood was spent following them around. I quickly learned that each egg had a different shape, size and color, and each chicken a different personality. My best friend was a chicken called Zaparsta. I remember having long discussions with her. She grew into a white, fat hen with short, bent legs who ate everything. This thrilled me because I would mix various herbs and flowers and feed them to her. I did not play with dolls because Mihai told me they were like dead children. Zaparsta, however, was very alive. Neighbors would comment on why we did not keep a prettier, more colorful pet, but I loved her just the way she was and found her more amazing than any doll because she responded to my attentions. She also did not move much, and so we could leave her in the garden without worrying about her ruining the vegetables.

Zaparsta died a few years later on my birthday. To cheer us up, mother performed her autopsy. She explained that it was important to determine whether there was a contagious disease among the chickens. After opening up Zaparsta, we found an accumulation of fluid that was bigger than an egg in her abdomen. Mother explained that this is called ascites, and it is a common problem in cirrhosis when the liver fails. Zaparsta's only chance at life would have been a liver transplant. This was not an option for a chicken/hen (or people) at the time.

Every day grandma would wake up at 5 a.m.  She would then walk to the milk factory at the corner of the street, and wait in line until the milk came at 6. There she would hear the local news and various gossip. The milk she bought was poured into our own bottles and brought home long before Mihai or I woke up. It was always boiled to last longer. Grandma would bring us a cup of milk in bed, which was accompanied by a piece of bread with something on it, and then persuade us to get dressed.  There was no fire overnight and so she considered it easier if she dressed us in bed because the room was cold in the morning. Our typical complaints were "please, another five minutes" or "the milk is too hot". To deal with the latter complaint she learned to bring an extra cup and switch the milk between cups until it cooled a little more (at first she tried going all the way to the kitchen to cool the milk down, but this was deemed too inefficient to get us to school in time). Once we were finally fed, combed and dressed, we would dash out the door saying "why did you not wake me up earlier?" (instead of thank you) and often run all the way to school. When I beg Edward or David to get dressed, I try to remember what grandma went through with Mihai and me.

I was the last generation of school children to become "pioneers". I was very proud of my red cravat and black skirt because I thought it was pretty. It had also meant that I was among the top students in my school. The others never became pioneers because of the revolution. The protests began in Timisoara in mid December 1989. I was 7 and Mihai was 10. We were both living with our grandparents at the time. Mother called from Alexandria and asked how the weather was. She really meant to find out about the political situation, but she was afraid to ask directly because it was common knowledge that all phone lines were tapped. Political conversations were thus encoded to avoid prosecution, but the encoding was often done without a prior agreement. Grandma took the question literally and answered that it was raining heavily and there were thunderstorms. It was a rainy December.  Mother's anxiety increased further when she met a colleague who was part of the local communist leadership. He told her that the plan was to wipe Timisoara off the face of the Earth. Lugoj was 60 kilometers away. My father was working in Timisoara, but she first worried about us. So, she took the next train to Lugoj. The train station was full of people without luggage, who were gathering to protest. We were thrilled to see her, and very excited to help her block all windows with wood panels. However, the protests in Lugoj turned out to be largely peaceful: store windows were broken and two people were shot dead.

Grandma was the first to go downtown to evaluate the situation. She came back with two loafs of bread and told us that the protesters she met were a toothless old lady and a three year old child who were both stamping their feet and screaming of the top of their lungs "Jos Ceausescu!" (Down with Ceausescu). She did not find them in any way threatening.  And, yes, there had been some vandals who had broken the windows of the main stores, but Ceausecu's regime was careful to keep stores empty. So, not much was stolen. On the 22nd of December 1989 Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were captured. They had a mock trial on Christmas day. Since it was a major historic event, we were allowed to watch it.  It aired at 1 a.m. All his requests including his right to defend himself in front of the people (adunarea nationala) were  ignored, and both he and his wife were summarily executed. Nobody doubted that he was guilty, but he still should have been given a real, fair trial. Their execution replaced the nativity movie, which was usually aired over the Xmas period. The next day father called and asked my mother to bring him civilian clothes. So, mother left immediately for Timisoara.

After Ceausescu's death the revolution continued in both Timisoara and Bucharest until the new regime settled. The schools remained closed for months. Father was not allowed to leave the hospital in all this period.  As a military doctor, he received a gun and used it to arrest a number of terrorists who were shooting the protesters on the street. They were, however, released a few days later by his superiors. An officer who tried to report such crimes was murdered a day after my father signed his release from the hospital. He had mentioned being afraid for his life. A reporter who attempted to document the revolution asked father for a written statement. Father told him about us. He said he had two young children and wanted to live to watch them grow. The reporter was found dead two weeks later. 

Mother crossed the city to apply for the transfer to the Timis county during the revolution. On January 3rd 1990,  she was offered a position in Recas, a village near Lugoj.  She next participated in a nationwide contest where she was placed second. She could then choose a position in Timisoara. We moved with her there. Grandma stayed with us during the two school years that followed. It was easier to be closer to Lugoj, but she still fell once and broke her right arm when crossing the railways. We all practiced left-handed writing for a month. When I turned ten, she deemed me old enough to be alone when mother was working. She thus returned to Lugoj to care for grandpa.

Grandma and Grandpa

Grandma

A year later grandpa had his first stroke, which left him bedridden. He had just turned 89. The neighbors lamented that it would have been easier if he had simply died. I asked grandma if she thought the same thing. She strongly disagreed. Her style was to fight until the end. Under her outstanding care, grandpa recovered and started to walk and talk again.  He lived for another six months. The week before he died he gathered the family around him. He told us that he was sorry he had to leave. He kissed grandma's hand and forehead, thanked her, and told her that he loved her more than it could ever be put into words.  Grandma waved him away, and insisted he should stop talking nonsense. He told my mother he was sorry to leave her fatherless, and asked her to always take care of our father. It was one of the few times I saw him cry. He also said that we should never be afraid of him. If there was some form of life beyond the grave, he'll love us from beyond and only try to help.

When we came back next weekend after school, grandpa was in a coma. He had had a second stroke. I was 11 and Mihai was 14. We called mother and explained the situation. He died in Mihai's arms with grandma by his side when Tusa Tavi and I went to the kitchen to get something to eat. Grandma joked that he chose that moment to protect his little sister and the youngest child in the house.  Tanti Keti (long term family friend and neighbor) and grandma washed him and dressed him in his best suit. I put a flower in his chest pocket and helped with the final arrangements. Not knowing that he had already died, mother drove to Lugoj through the dark, stormy night as fast as she could. As she entered the living room, grandpa's face relaxed into a smile, and stayed like this for the next day. It hurt when the undertakers entered and asked "where is the dead body?". I wanted to answer back that he still deserved respect, but I did not.

Grandpa loved horses, and for his funeral my mother arranged for a carriage pulled by a team of beautiful, black horses. The funeral was on February 24. It was such an unusually warm and sunny day that we could wear short sleeves. As we walked behind the funeral cortege, grandma worried about us. She said that we should ignore customs: we were not to touch the earth from the family tomb. Her son was buried there. He had died of polio, and she did not know if it could still be contagious. We had been vaccinated, but she still thought it was best not to be exposed.

Last dance: me, grandma and Mihai

Grandma lived for eight more years, which was the age difference between her and grandpa. When I left home to study in the US, she cried as she told me I was going to a world dominated by men, where I would have to be as strong as a man or stronger, and that it was going to be very, very hard. I laughed, and joked that she should not worry because she raised me well. She explained that she tried to compete with the best men of her time, too, and that it is hard to be strong - she had felt so alone throughout most of her life and career and yet she had always been surrounded by people. She had been there for me up to then and was sorry that she was dying or she would come with me to help.

I did not see her again. She did write a few words on a postcard saying that she missed me so much that it hurt. She died 8 months after I left home. Tanti Keti had stomach cancer and passed away six months before grandma. She had already been sick when I left home. I remember grandma saying that she would give her all the days she had left if she only could.

Last time together: me, grandma, Tusa Tavi, Tanti Keti & Mihai

My mother told me that grandma was brave until the end. When the priest came to read her the last rites, she asked if she should get up. She did not want to offend by lying down. Grandma had the clearest and most beautiful mind I know. But close to the end she had a few moments when she was not quite there. It was then that she saw her father come with his carriage and their horses to pick her up. She was laughing, and seemed young and carefree again, and so happy and excited at the thought of going with him.

I once asked my mother if I will ever love anyone else as much as I loved her, grandma and Mihai. Her answer was that she did not know if I will find a husband to love quite so much, but she was certain I will love my children more.

My last dream of grandma was at Lugoj. I dreamed that house felt lived in again and was like it had been when we were young. Grandma was surrounded by all our pets: the chicken who had lived with us, the dogs, the cats, and Ciupi (the sheep). She told me that she and the animals had remained there to continue to look after us. She then said that she was proud of me and of Mihai, but that we did not need her any more. When I complained that we will always need her, she showed me pictures in the air of other children. She said that there were many she had to take care of, and that in every one of them there was a little piece of her. Then grandma and all the animals became transparent and lifted to the sky, and the house returned to its current state - it became neglected and full of dust again.

Note:
1. Grandma had never considered her life a drama. It was, instead, a life well lived in which she did her best at every turn up to the end. 

2.  I know that this post is hard to follow and far from well written. It is what/how I have time to write right now. I will try to write more when I can. The main goal would be to have these stories there for the next generation of children.

grandma - motherhood

Maria hoped to gain some stability through marriage (for the previous parts of the story see part 1, part 2, part 3). She had been single up to 32. In this time she would move frequently - typically every two years and often from one corner of the country to another.

Iulian's first job after they were married was in Targu Secuiesc - one of the three cities in Romania with a predominantly Hungarian population. In 1945 it was more troubled than the rest of the country because instigators poised people of one origin against the others.

Granma, her children and grandpa. This picture stayed near her bed.

 Iulian was charming, polite and fluent in Hungarian (he also spoke German and French).  He had been born before 1918 when the Transylvania had been part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. So, Maria and Iulian were hopeful when they set up their house there.  She was also pregnant with their first child. However, they were not well received by the local leadership. She was soon sent a copy of the city newspaper that said that they got rid of the mayor, and all that was left now was to get rid of the engineer. Iulian was traveling at the time. In that period their two pigs were poisoned. So, she sent the dead pigs to soap manufacturing. The woman who was sometimes helping her was also pregnant with a similar due date. Both she and her child died in child-birth. Maria also had a difficult delivery, and remembered being alone with the midwife who was encouraging her with the statement "push madam, push or your baby will die". But her child did not die then. She delivered a healthy baby boy, whom she named Teodor after her husband's father and brother. When Iulian returned, he was accused of insulting the mother of Vasile Baciu (a guy with some political involvement in the area), and promptly fired. Iulian had never insulted an old lady in his life. His Hungarian was good enough to use the most polite forms of address that the language has. Yet in that period fairness did not play a role. The reason was written on his work permit in red letters, and they had to go.

The next city they moved to was Beius, a beautiful little city in Transylvania that is still known for providing beautiful hiking trails, skiing, fresh water fishing (e.g., trout), and wild-boar hunting. Maria and her baby traveled alone to meet Iulian in a train reserved for cows that did not have heating. She succeeded in keeping the child warm with a blanket she had received upon departure from a kind neighbor. When recounting this story some 50 years later, she regretted not rewarding this woman more generously upon departure. 

Maria's brother Grigore was living in Beius, and Iulian and Maria found a house nearby. When Teodorita was 1 and 1/2, Maria had a second baby, a little girl they named Mariana. Grigore would look after the children when Maria was at work. When she returned home she would often hear him telling her little girl how beautiful and precious she was. Both children had Maria's big blue eyes. Teodorita had her mother's slightly upturned nose, and Iulian's ebullient personality, while Mariana was more quiet with her mother's perfect oval and her father's breathtaking smile. Grigore had married a woman of German origin to save her from deportation to the forced labor camps. They had a son of the same age as Mariana, who later became a Mathematics professor at the university in Cluj. Both Grigore and his wife were kind and caring, and their marriage turned out to be one of the most successful unions in our family.

In this period, people of German origin, and other individuals disliked by the system were sent to labor camps in Russia to work in mines. Many did not return and died of mistreatment, cold, hunger and sickness.  Soon local labor/extermination camps were built in Romania to emulate the Russian Gulag. Iulian's uncle Adrian was sent there for being an officer in the Austro-Hungarian and in the Romanian army. He had been educated in France, and went to school with Charles de Gaulle, but the borders were already closed and there was no external help.

Before their second child was one year old, Iulian and Maria had to move again. This time they moved to Timisoara where some of Iulian's extended family lived. Maria obtained a job in Lugoj, a city 60 kilometers from Timisoara. She left the children with their father and one of his sisters for a few months until she found a place to live. Teodorita, who was 3 at the time, missed her so much that he tried to reach Lugoj by foot. A stranger asked him where he was going, and insisted that he returns home. Once Maria found a place to live, she took her children and her husband with her. Her mother-in-law later came as well. The children were enrolled kindergarten starting at 1 and 1/2 (Mariana) and 3 (Teodorita).

Teodorita

Iulian left again for a job closer to the center of the country where there were forests and mountains, which maintained some resistance to the Russian forces in hope that the Americans would come to liberate them and to close the torture chambers and forced labor camps. Iulian was hoping that he would be treated more fairly there than in a bigger city. When they were separated, Iulian and Maria wrote to each other every day. I remember reading his last letter to her. He wrote how he missed her and that it was cold and rainy, but he would not feel any of it if his beautiful wife had been with him. She would generally write what the children were doing, and also describe her trials of finding him a job in Lugoj. Teodorita had inherited Maria's beauty and intelligence, and Iulian's outgoing, charismatic personality. At five he was quite popular with the everyone on the street and in kindergarten. In his last day at home he had attended a funeral of an older neighbor "to take flowers to God", and came home with a slight fever. There were no other symptoms. When the fever continued, Maria sent a telegram to Iulian to come immediately, and went to the hospital with her son. She worked with the doctor to procure antibiotics for him, which were very difficult to obtain in 1950. The aim was to rule out a pneumonia and potentially other types of infection. When he did not react to the antibiotics, he became a suspect of polio for which there was no treatment. The only thing that may have helped would have been the iron lung, but they did not have one in Romania at that time. The final diagnosis was polio that  caught the respiratory muscles.

Teodorita spent his last moments imagining he could talk to God. He tried to argue with Him and convince Him to spare his life "God, if you only let me live, I promise to bring you lots and lots of flowers every day." In the end he excitedly asked  "Mother, Mother, a carriage with angels has come to pick me up!  May I go?" Maria answered "Do as you wish, my darling", and in the next moment he was gone. She later wondered if perhaps he would have lived, if she had said "no!". Iulian arrived a few hours later. His sister, Octavia, went to meet him at the train station. He had been crying throughout his journey because he thought he had felt his son die. However, until he reached Lugoj he hoped he had been wrong, and when Octavia told him Teodorita was gone, he fainted. Both Maria and Iulian were depressed and could not laugh for many years to come. While a lot of the sorrow abated in time, their love for their son lasted their whole life.

Mariana at 8

Mariana in school

Iulian gave up his dream of planting and maintaining forests, and of making the world a more fair place. Instead, he moved back with his family. Maria succeeded in obtaining a job for him near Lugoj after she convinced an official to agree that it was natural for the husband to move where the wife was and not only the other way around. However, he was soon asked to sign that a known forest had never been there when it had been cut, and the wood had be stolen. He refused to sign, and went to court with all the necessary proof to win his case. However, the judge, who could not write and signed with his finger, refused to listen to him and instead preferred to spend the allotted time calling him names. Iulian was demoted from engineer to gate-keeper. By this time, he had developed paroxysmal tachycardia. Their family doctor recommended retirement. He thus stopped working in his field. Instead he taught Mathematics at the local Hungarian highschool. He and Maria started taking their daughter to the seaside in vacation for at least a month each year, and always made sure she knew how cherished she was.

Maria, Mariana and Iulian

Maria continued to teach until she reached the standard retirement age. For some years she was assigned to teach mathematics to a special class of students from the Orphanage. Many were severely mistreated there. However, at the end of each year, the students were tested and had to adhere to the same standards as those who lived in normal households without any extra help. She considered this public humiliation of herself and her students deeply unfair. Then every spring, summer and fall she participated in field work with students. They had pick corn, plums, etc. Additionally, she was assigned to visit the families in Lugoj by foot, and count the children in each family to ascertain that they were going to school. Then there were many meetings in the evening where they would be told of the greatness of the president and of the communist system. 

After particular harsh treatment from the school director, she was asked to respond. Instead of arguing her case, which would have been useless and potentially dangerous for herself and her family, she wrote a poem addressed to the director, whose name was Ana. She then read it in front of the other professors. It was considered an elegant response that was remembered over the years, and caused no repercussions. I only known the beginning. It started with:

"Ana draga

Scumpa fraga

De ciulin

Garnisit cu maracin.

Tu dai din coate

Si deschizi usile toate, ..."

Very rough translation

"Ana dear

Sweet thistle flower

With spines empowered

You elbow your way 

Through the door array 

Making all roads clear....."

Maria, Iulian & Mariana in 1975

My mother

After they retired, their life in Lugoj was quiet. They bought a beautiful Victorian house with huge doors and high ceilings together with Octavia and her husband. The joint ownership played a role in saving it from demolition. However, they always made it clear that the most precious thing on Earth for them was their daughter, and not the house, furniture or clothes they owned. They were so proud of her when she became doctor. She was truly outstanding in her work and later became an even more amazing mother. 

When my brother and I came along, grandma and grandpa loved us dearly. They (both of them at first, and later only grandma) lived with us until we were old enough to stay home on our own when our mother had to work. They wanted to help her be the best doctor she could be, while making sure we thrived as well, and they succeeded.

Grandma - marriage

The political climate in the 1930s was turbulent. Maria had no permanent position (see part 1 and 2 for the previous parts of the story), and would receive a new job every two years that forced her to move to some other corner of the country. She had had a number of marriage proposals. One was from a friend in her village, who had loved her all his life, but was the son of the village drunk. While she liked him, and thought very highly of his mother who had raised her children alone and sent them to school, she did not want to marry him. She was afraid that either he or their children would drink too much. When his mother asked her to finally make the decision to marry her son, she answered she could not.  I also suspect that even though he had been reported to be good looking, grandma saw him as a friend and was not attracted to him.

Another proposal came from a colleague in Bucharest, which she temporarily accepted and even settled a date for the wedding. However, he soon wrote how ardently he was preparing preserves and pickling tomatoes and cucumbers for their wedding feast. The letter was meant seriously, and she thought that focusing on such trivialities and writing about them showed that he was shallow and not very smart. So, she canceled the wedding. She later considered this a blatant show of immaturity on her side towards a man who was trying to write a nice letter to his sweetheart. I wondered if she had made a mistake in choosing a much harder life style instead of one closer to home or perhaps one where herself and her children would be put first. But then in the latter case maybe the pickles would have been put first. When I asked her if she had found her last suitor good looking, she described him as bald and male, and also 10 or 11 years older than herself, which left my teenage self very disappointed. Then there was a guy who would spend most of his time with Maria and her best friend. He was very close to both of them, but when the friend tried to make a pass at him, he became very angry and he never saw either of them again.

 Octavia was one of Maria's former colleagues from the university. She would take all the women professors to picnics in a beautiful carriage that was in the keeping of her brother, Iulian. Iulian was a very successful forest engineer who planted and maintained forests, and coordinated the building of relevant infrastructure. At the time, he had an astronomically high salary of 99, 000 lei per year, which was 30 times greater than the salary of a school teacher. He had a big nose, green eyes, a charming smile, and a shorter leg, which was a reminder of an accident from childhood. He also never saved or invested any part of his big salary, but instead gave it all away. In the Holocaust period, he held a position in Oravita, which is a town near border. There he could "hire" Jewish workers (they were free labor offered by the government) and later help them flee the country. His work in forests made the disappearance easier and less questionable than it would have been otherwise and his large salary helped in settling any resulting disapproval. However, he could only hire men, and so his mother and sister did their part by hiding women in various parts of the house. Grandpa did not like talking about this period. The only thing he said was that he was thankful when he found out that the people he and his family had helped reached safety, and that all the ones they had helped made it. This shows he was not shallow. He also never did care about the pickling process.

 Towards the end of the second world war, Maria had a position in Balti, Basarabia. Octavia and Iulian were also moved there. Basarabia was the frontier and the younger teachers and engineers were sent to help rebuild it. She spent her free time volunteering to field hospitals.  She was most impressed when children died in her arms with no external injuries. A young geography teacher fell in-love with her, but she did not feel it made sense to marry when there was so much to do to help save lives. Ion Antonescu himself came to thank volunteers at the frontier, and shook hands with Maria. She described him as short, perhaps even shorter than her, but with an obviously strong personality.  When Basarabia was lost, they had to flee back to what was left of Romania.

Maria's next position was in a village near Bucharest. While Maria and Iulian were attracted to each other from the beginning, at first he was not sure it was safe for him to marry.

Bucharest on April 4, 1944

In 1944 Bucharest was bombed. The city would glow at night from the many fires. Iulian, who had gone to Bucharest for his next contract, had to turn around and flee.  He stopped in the village where Maria was and asked her if he could stay there for some time, and perhaps return to Bucharest later. In the meantime, the landlady's sister also arrived from Bucharest. She had had two small children, but only the oldest lived through the latest bombardment. The baby had been about 8 months old, and the mother still carried him in her arms. She had smothered him accidentally in an attempt to protect him when hiding in the bomb shelter.  With this sudden heartbreaking turn of events, there was no room left in the house for people who were not family. So, Maria had to leave and Iulian offered to take her and her sister home in his carriage. There was no possibility to leave by train because the railways were being bombed.

As he dropped her off close to Curtisoara, he sheepishly inquired 'What would your father say if I came and asked for you hand?'. Maria responded proudly 'My father will say what I say.' 

After the war ended, Iulian returned to propose. It was spring, and her father was plowing the family land. Iulian enthusiastically took over, and plowed all the land himself, while using all the grain and corn in the stables to feed his own horses. Maria discussed her decision with her father; he asked 'do you think you are doing right in marrying this man? will he be kind to you?'. Her answer was practical as always 'Father, I am 32 years old, and I want a family.'  Also, Iulian's energy and enthusiasm was bewitching. He was outstandingly intelligent (although not quite as good as her at solving math problems for the olympiads; but she was too modest to take note of that),  had a big smile and an even bigger heart. She thought that she was ready to support him and the family they will create wholeheartedly. When discussing their future, she told him so, and his response was everything she had been hoping for.

Maria: 'You must understand that I have no dowry. I have my degree in Mathematics. So, when you will not be able to work, I will work and support our family.' 

Iulian: 'I only want you. I will buy you everything. Take nothing with you. ' 

Maria gave her last salary as an independent woman to her father to buy food for the family horses. She had been practical all her life, but for once, even while the whole world seemed to be collapsing around them, she wanted to believe in romance and happily ever afters. So, she left with nothing from her old life other than the clothes she was wearing. Her shinning deep-blue eyes laughingly held the pair of green eyes next to her, and she felt a sense of belonging and pride when watching the answering light in his eyes. They left in a carriage drawn by beautiful, big horses with a driver who was wearing white gloves (Iulian's official driver), and the people in the village temporarily thought that their brightest and strongest woman had been lucky.

The Cinderella part of her story lasted until they reached the nearest big city. There they searched for clothes to buy, but the stores were empty because of the war. So, Maria immediately sent a telegram to her father to send her the clothes she had left home. They then went to Iulian's office, where a bulky police officer was waiting for him claiming to want to break his good leg (the one that was not medically shortened) with a large wooden weapon. Maria hurriedly asked 'what is wrong? how can I help?'.  The response came in a gruff voice 'Who is this woman?'. The calm answer of the secretary 'She is the fiance of Mr. Engineer', made the man suddenly turn around and leave. He did not want witnesses. The incident was later blamed on a woman named Singureanca (mot-a-mot translation of the name: the lonely one) in whom the police officer was interested. He was reading Iulian's correspondence and viewed him as competition due to some letters that were sent by Iulian's mother. When telling this story, grandma would say that this was the first out of many times she had to protect her husband from serious injury.

After they married, he procrastinated going home, which left Maria confused. She and Iulian's sister had been friends in university. They had originally met through her, and she did not think there would be cause for concern. However, when they arrived, everyone in the neighborhood was crying and wailing as if she had brought Iulian home dead. The neighbors knew about the wedding from a friend who had seen them buy rings, and so everyone was prepared - not to welcome the bride and groom, but to judge and find fault. It did not matter that Iulian had married a woman who was intelligent, and beautiful inside and out or that she loved him. It was, of course, most important that she was from a different part of the country. Maria was from Oltenia, which was seen as inferior to Banat. Her clothes were not the latest fashion, and her presence obviously meant the potential loss of their main source of income, which came from Iulian. Up to then, he had spent all his time and money in helping the people around him with no previous thought to himself, and it was taken for granted that he would continue to do so without trying to build his own life. However, Iulian's mother, Ana, proudly stood up among the crying and gossiping women who came to her to offer their condolences and said 'E profesoara'. Everyone suddenly went quiet, and soon left for their own homes.

The extended family and neighbors had no real need to be afraid because Maria was just as kind as Iulian, if a little more practical. Furthermore, any sign of an era in which people of value were rewarded was gone, and communism began. As unfair and as criminal as the previous totalitarianism had been, communism was worse since it promoted unfairness under the guise of making everyone equal, and in the beginning, the Russian army was there to enforce it.  A network of spies and special security forces was built that kept the population under control with the treat of torture. People who dared to disagree were sent to be tortured in political prisons that destroyed them. Many young people were deported to Siberia,  to Baragan or sent to labor camps/concentration camps built under special instructions from the Gulag. 

Maria's prediction came true. Iulian was soon no longer allowed or able to work. While 'everyone' who worked received an equal salary, people who had educated parents were considered of 'unhealthy origin'. They were a threat to the new society. Maria did not posses the 'unhealthy origin' because her father had been a peasant and was more unobtrusive as a plain school teacher.

When communism destroyed their careers, Maria and Iulian considered themselves lucky. The two former engineers living on the same street as them had a worse fate. One was in jail for political reasons, and the other was carrying coal to atone for being privileged before. Iulian was demoted from engineer to gatekeeper after refusing to sign that a forest that had been stolen was not there to begin with. His position was taken by a shepherd who could not write and signed with his finger. The promoted shepherd spent his time facilitating various thefts and frequently insulted Iulian.  Iulian loved forests and their needless, wasteful destruction was hard to watch. He was diagnosed with paroxysmal tachycardia. Episodes of very rapid heart beat would occur when he was insulted at work or when their pig was killed for his meat. He was thus allowed to retire in his late 40s.

Maria, Mariana (my mother) and Iulian

Maria's salary was about ten times greater than Iulian's, and it was not large. He taught mathematics in Hungarian at a minority highshool in Lugoj. There were times when they had a hard time making ends meet, but she was used to living on little money and made the little they had last. Only after they both retired, the difference in their pay started to decrease.

I learned to count money on their pensions. Even then, grandpa's pension was about half that of grandma. Their money was always placed together under some towels in the closet. It never mattered who made what. Grandma was kind and generous, and grandpa was man enough to not care that he was bringing less money into the household than his wife. He was also never lazy. No work was 'below him'. He had the strength and patience to find enjoyment in us and in all the little things he could do to help around the house. He practiced Yoga, washed and wiped dishes, chopped wood, lit and maintained the fires in the house. Grandma and grandpa taught me that personal belongings come and go, but that family matters.

Grandma - young

Maria had a happy childhood in Curtisoara (for the beginning of the story see the previous post) which was spent playing with her siblings, and with the other children in the village.  The only cloud on the horizon was that her best friend sang in the village choir, while Maria was not allowed to sing. They told her she had no ear for music, which was very confusing for the child.  She pointed at her ears and argued that there was nothing wrong with them.
While not musical, she was enthusiastic in most of what she did. She and her friend once boiled the skull of a dead cat until the bones separated from the meat. They later cleaned the bones and gave them to their teacher to use for hands-on biology lessons. In addition to being interested in science, she also liked reading. She would read while guarding the family cow, and often closed her eyes to say poems by heart. At other times, she was tempted to group her cow together with those of other children. The children would then play together. The cow was generally good, but in one of these instances of neglect, she ran and hid in someone's cornfields, and was not found till morning. By then the damage was extensive, and her father had to borrow money to pay for it. 

One day an inspector came to test their teacher and appraise the village school.  He asked Maria to go to the blackboard and write: 'Ducandu-ma la scoala m-am intalnit cu mama' (Going to school, I met my mother). She wrote the sentence correctly, justified the hyphens, and explained the sentence structure. The inspector was very impressed and praised the teacher for his methods. The teacher recounted the episode to her father, but it did not stop there. From that day on, every time the teacher passed their front gate, he reminded Gheorghe (Maria's father and my great-grandfather) 'to send the girl to school'.

Sabina's home. Now the Ecaterina Teodoroiu memorial house.

Maria started fifth grade in Targu Jiu. One of her colleagues was Sabina Toderoiu, the youngest sister of Ecaterina Teodoroiu, a young girl who was both a nurse and a soldier in the first world war. All the other Toderoiu children died in the war. Ecateriana became national hero that is placed between Joan d'Arc and Florence Nightingale. Their home is now a museum that is still maintained by someone in their family.

After paying Maria's first year of school, her father ran out of money. So, Maria came home, and studied on her own from some old books she borrowed.  A year later she was walking the streets of Targu Jiu and crying in the rain. Since she had no other good clothes, she was still wearing her school uniform with the addition of a cap that partly covered her eyes. The director of the highschool passed by and stopped to ask her what was wrong. Among sobs Maria explained 'I want to go school, but ... father ... has no money'. At the suggestions of the director, the teachers  funded a special scholarship for Maria. She became 'bursiera comitetului de profesori'. They covered her tuition, room, and board in exchange for supervising the younger students when they did homework, and helping with their integration in school.

Gradma is the 1st person on the second row (left).

A few years later Maria finished highschool. However, the graduation exam was sustained in only a few centers in the country. She was expected to go to Turnu Severin (90 kilometres away), but had no money to get there or pay the local expenses. So, she sent a telegram to her father that read 'Vinde vaca sa dau Bacalureatul' (Sell the cow so that I can take the highschool graduation exam).  The cow was an important member of the family, and could not be sold.

It was close to election time. So, her father and the village mayor petitioned one of the two parties candidating. This resulted in funding not only for Maria but for all the poor girls in the county who qualified to take their highschool graduation exam. They were each awarded a stipend for room and board, while transportation was arranged in a big truck. Maria was examined in all subjects that were deemed important. In geography she was asked to explain the course of the Danube river. She started with its origin in the Black Forest in Germany and continued with all the other major cities it passes through forgetting only Turnu Severin, the city the exam was in. However, even with this slip, she did well on this exam and on the others, and even saved a little money from her stipend to bring back home.

After highschool, she enrolled in university in Bucharest with financial support from her oldest brother, Constantin, who had just started working. A few hundreds of students would start university each year, but only a hand-full graduated. One of her teachers was Gheorghe Titeica, who founded the Romanian school of differential geometry. Titeica had outstanding pedagogical talent, and cared deeply for his students. He had told Maria that his secret to teaching was that he still prepared his lectures, even through he was already experienced (and famous). He started every lecture by placing his pocket watch on the table, and always finished on time while succeeding to explain all the material clearly.

Another one of her notable teachers was Dan Barbilian (pen name Ion Barbu), also a mathematician. Although he was not as talented at lecturing as Titeica, she watched Ion Barbu become one of the greatest Romanian poets of the 20th century. His writing career started after a bet with his friend, the literary critic Tudor Vianu, where he argued that everyone had latent literary talent and could write, even himself. He further claimed that mathematicians would make the best poets if they had time to write, and successfully proved his point. His strength of opinion and unsmiling posture greatly intimidated his students, who frequently failed his exam in analytical geometry. Maria passed all exams in their first round. She obtained her degree in mathematics (primary specialization) with a secondary specialization in astronomy. A number of years later, she encountered Dan Barbilian again while researching the library where he worked due to the complicated political environment. With her now adult eyes, she saw him as a kind and polite little man with white hair, who helped her in her search. She thought that she and her colleagues had been very silly to be afraid of him. 

In the meantime, Constantin dies suddenly of meningitis. Maria goes home to help her parents and tries to hide Constantin's death from her mother, Ioana. She realizes her mother knows when she sees her carrying water. In Curtisoara, a person who loved the deceased was expected to bring water every day for six weeks to someone in need. This water is thought to appease the thirst of the dead in afterlife.  Ioana insisted to do 'the spring of afterlife' herself as a last show of love, even though she knew she was not well. Great-grandpa was the untrained doctor of the village, and he and Maria tried to help with medication from plants in tea, and baths, but the condition did not remit. She died six weeks later - as soon as she finished her last duty to her boy. 

The story remained that Ioana's heart could not be mended after the death of her first born son. Her own death left more heartbreak behind. Her youngest daughter was 11, and still liked to fall asleep close to her mother's breast.  Her youngest son was 13, and already away to school. The image of the young boy arriving home on someone else's horse to find his mother gone would stay with Maria until the end of her days. His forehead had been bleeding from the speed with which he hit the passing branches as he rode.

Maria became a mother figure to her youngest siblings.  She often had to get them out of scrapes. At one point she remembered receiving a telegram that read "Lost all clothes. What to do?". It turned out that her youngest brother had gone swimming, and all his belongings had been stolen. Maria immediately took leave from work and got onto the first train to deal with the situation. He eventually became an electrician in the navy, and lived his life close to the Black Sea, where we sometimes visited. After a severe bout of encephalitis, her youngest sister announced that she was moving in with Maria because the villagers did not believe in her recovery, and did not think she could be sane. Her father's only question before letting her go was "how will you get there?". She answered coherently and so he gave her money for the trip and his blessing to do what she thought was right. She stayed with Maria until she started college to become a Mathematician herself. She graduated from the university in Bucharest after her father's death, but still chose to become a Math teacher in Targu Jiu to stay closer to home. She raised her children there, and also helped raise some of her nephews and nieces. 

The next part can be found in the following post.

Grandma - the beginning

Grandma (2nd row, 1st person; left) & extended family in 1957

In telling stories from the past, I have neglected the wonderful, strong women who have shaped my life. This April there are 13 years since my grandma died. I loved her almost as much as love my mother. So, this post is about her. It offers me a brief respite from work on Easter. I can close my eyes and imagine that she is sitting near me and telling me these stories once again.

Grandma had a strong sense of duty and a wicked sense of humor; had she been here today, she would likely tell me to go back to work on my science and/or job applications.

traditional house from Curtisoara

She was born in the fall of 1912 in Curtisoara, a small village in the mountains that stretched on one long street.  Part of that village is now a museum that exemplifies life in the 19th century. I went to Curtisoara in the early 1990s. My great-grandfather's house was still there, and some of my grandma's friends were still alive. They were all living in houses that looked like the one in the picture and are now museum pieces.  They told us Grandma was the first woman in their village to attend university and study the hard sciences.  She obtained a degree in Mathematics with a secondary specialization in astronomy. So, I was not the first woman in the family with a scientific interest in stars.

She taught Mathematics at various levels throughout her life. In Lugoj she taught mathematics at the pedagogic highschool (after graduating the students became school teachers). She also taught a class of children from the local orphanage, and sometimes evening classes for people who worked and/or were not allowed to attend regular school due to their 'unhealthy origin' (children of intellectuals, of former officers in the army, of property owners, etc). She was a talented teacher who inspired her students through kindness, intelligence, quiet elegance and bravery. Her parents and siblings adored her, and she loved them back equally fiercely. Each went through their own struggles, and tried hard to make the most of their lives. Most had some innate talent and appreciation for mathematics that transmitted through generations. Her youngest sister is the bride in the picture above. She was the second woman in Curtisoara to obtain the university degree in Mathematics.

When we visited Curtisoara, grandma's childhood best friend told us that Maria (my grandma) should have married one of their boys. My mother tried to take this as a joke, and explained that we were there and we were so very good looking because our grandpa had been like us.  But they insisted that the other man had been more handsome than my grandfather and was still single at 90. And added that he had loved Maria all his life. The village and his family still blamed her and by transition us for ruining his life by not loving him back. Such a marriage would have kept her close to them, and likely given her an easier life that did not involve moving every two years across the country in various contraptions. The village felt very strongly about this. The younger brother of the man she 'should' have married almost attacked us with his walking stick. Of course, grandma had gone back to Curtisoara many times herself, but nobody in the village had had the courage to criticize her or her decisions.

Overall, it was an interesting visit.  I enjoyed seeing the house that my great-grandparents had built. Great-grandpa did not have the time and resources to finish the last room in the house, and all these years later it was still unfinished. The village itself still looked very much like it did a hundred years ago - only it had older people, a lot fewer children around, and cars instead of horses. It was easy to imagine grandma running up and down that street as a little girl.

A few days later we returned home. I quickly told grandma the whole story, and I explained how mad everyone was at us for her decision to marry grandpa. She took it lightly, and said we should have pointed out the obvious. There was no need to be upset because Maria was now single and ready to marry again, and would consider the wishes of the village this time around.

Every night Grandma would tuck me in bed with a cup of milk, and tell me about her life. I listened to her stories over and over again, and yet I find I cannot do them justice in retelling.  I also do not have any pictures of my Grandma from when she was young to help me. However, I will always remember a pair of kind, deep blue eyes, a slight upturned nose, and a warm smile set on a perfect oval with porcelain white skin that never tanned. She must have been stunningly beautiful, and yet funny, practical, brave, responsible, and hard working.

Grandma started life as Maria Diaconu in a family of uneducated farmers. My great-grandfather was the son of the former village mayor. His father died when he was two. My great-great-grandfather's first marriage had been arranged. His bride was forced to marry him when she had loved another. So, she attended the marriage ceremony to please her parents, but then ran up the hill to her lover.  My great-great-grandfather found another woman who agreed to live with him. However, in their village, a man and a woman could only marry in front of God once, and the church refused to dissolve his first marriage and allow him to marry his true wife. They had a number of children, but all of them died young other than Gheorghe, who lived to become my great-grandfather. After Gheorghe's father died, his mother was shun by the village, and her former husband's property was taken away from her by trustees until the boy became of age. His first memory was the trustees remark to his mother: "this one will die, too, and then you'll go to hell". Growing up, Gheorghe had been too poor to be able to attend school. Instead, he learned to read and write from friends. By the time he was 18, his father's fortune was mostly squandered. He fought for what was left in court, and was able to recover 2 hectares of land. In the meantime, he married Ioana, a beautiful, strong woman with blue eyes who already had a young child. He made no distinction between her first son and their other children.  When asked, grandma said 'Constantin was my brother; anything else is nonsense.' However, 80some years later, the village still remembered.

Ioana and Gheorghe had four more children before the first world war (WWI). Maria was the third. Soon after Maria was born the Balkan wars started. Gheorghe had to leave his young family to fight before Maria could remember him. On the front-line in Bulgaria he contacted typhoid fever and was declared dead. A letter was sent to his wife to announce he had died. The Balkan wars continued with WWI - also called 'the war to end all wars'. Men did not come home between the two wars. Ioana supported five children on her own, and still send her oldest son to school when she had little help at home. She could not read or write well herself, but she had the determination and strength of will to study with her child. They learned to read and solve problems in Mathematics together.

Maria was 2 in 1914. Her first memories were of Constantin and her mother studying and of the fear and hunger induced by the war. When the German soldiers first occupied Romania, her mother and grandmother put all their belongings in a cart and hid with the children in a nearby forest. The cart was pulled by their cow. Maria learned how to make balls that bounced from cow fur. The tricky part apparently was convincing the cow to not be unhappy about the hair removal process, and stopping her from getting angry or running away. They attempted to eat acorns to survive, but found they were not nutritious. Eventually, they had to return home. 

Her mother, who was still young and beautiful, covered her face in soot and gimme to avoid tempting the soldiers. However, when seeing four crying children clinging onto their mother's skirt, the German officer who came to requisition food exclaimed 'Kinder, Kinder' and left. A few days later their two-room home was used to host the troops. Maria woke up surrounded by soldiers sleeping on the bedroom floors and started crying. To stop her wails, one of the soldiers threw her a huge bread, and another a doll. She went to the kitchen to find her mother with her arms full. But they were afraid to eat the bread lest it was poisoned, and the doll was thought to impersonate the enemy, who had killed many men from their village and kept away the ones who still lived.  So, the siblings soon destroyed it. As she grew older Maria felt sorry for those soldiers on the floor because she understood that they were men just like her father, who had a hard time fighting on foreign lands.

Her most dramatic memory from that era was her father's return. He became unconscious when he was sick of typhoid fever while fighting in Bulgaria in 1913, and so he had been registered as dead. He was then thrown in a pit with other dead and dying soldiers. They covered them with lime dust to prevent the spreading of the fever, but there was no time to bury them. Gheorghe woke up in a mass grave surrounded by dead men, and crawled out. He walked to a nearby village. There he met two kind women, who saw him as a man in need of help instead of as the enemy. They cared for him until he recovered.  He then had to return to the front lines (otherwise he would have been declared a deserter and killed) and continued fighting for five more years.

Maria still remembered how happy they were when his first letter came. Her oldest brother, Constantin,  found it and came running and screaming 'Mama, Mama, father is alive! there is a letter! it's in his writing!' He was the only one of the children who had been old enough to remember him. Some months later Maria and her younger sister were splashing in a small basin of water in the the yard when they saw an unknown man arrive. So, Maria ran inside and told her mother that a stranger had come. The stranger was their father, and to the small child he seemed a legend who had come to life. He soon sat down holding his youngest daughter, whom he had never met before, on his knee and started telling stories. At six, Maria felt old and wise, and also a little envious that her father had not been there to hold her when she was four. After eating, she took his hand and hopped along on one foot to visit grandmother. On the way, he stopped to eat some berries from a random, dusty bush that grew along the road. This shocked the little girl, who had placed a dead snake in that bush only the day before. How could her father eat them? It was not safe to eat the berries of a snake.

On his largest plot of land (the 2 hectares), Gheorghe soon started building a house for his family. They moved in before the last room was finished when Maria was about 13 and already in school.  He never had the money to finish it, and so this was how Mihai and I saw it some 70 years later.

My great-grandfather's homecoming gave hope to the many women and children in the village, who dreamed that their husbands, fathers or sons will come home. However, the village was too small for another such miracle to happen. I can still see my mother's cousin sitting at her window every day and hoping that her uncle would come home. He had been sent to fight in the second world war in the first line of soldiers, and 'disappeared' when he was just 18. His family never gave up the hope that somehow he escaped until the last of them was dead.

Continued in the next post.

A letter from Berlin from 1923

At the height of the German hyperinflation (October 1923),  my grandfather was in Berlin trying to enroll in the technical school there to become an engineer. He had sent this postcard to his younger brother. The stamps on the postcard added up to 9 million Deutschmarks. He writes:

"Beloved Brother!!

Today I have to pack to move to another room, where I will stay until I leave Berlin. My host has already left. I remain with her old mother for the next few days until I receive the money from home. I want to get a passport to go to America. I have no interest in returning to Romania. There is no place for me there. In America I will make my own money.

Hugs,

Iulian"

This serious decision of departing for America was written on the back of a painting of two little girls fighting over their potty. The question under painting is "Whose is the victory?"

Grandpa - many years later

 In another letter he sent to his parents, he was so optimistic and so certain he will succeed in becoming an engineer that he signed with "Student Engineer Iulian". The picture he paints of Berlin is fairly bleak.  The factories were closing without being able to pay their employees.  A bread was 18 million Deutschmarks, and the value of the Deutschmark was changing from hour to hour by factors of 100. Initially he pays $11 (6 million Deutschmarks) for a coat, and by the end of the paragraph he had spent 23 millions on bread and 175 millions, which is now only $1, for a hat.  Since the Deutschmark was so volatile, in order to not lose his money overnight, he would keep them in US dollars. So, when he wrote home, he also mentioned the US dollar equivalent of his purchases.

At almost the same age as grandpa, Mihai left Romania to study in Berlin. He took this letter and the postcard above with him, and has been carrying them around the world since. They are still in comparatively good shape. I have scanned them to have them in a more permanent form.

The letter says:

"Beloved Parents,

By the grace of God I find myself healthy and in the same time at peace, and I believe that God also holds you healthy and in peace. Here in Germany I was not received in any factory. No factories function properly. There are two that are not closed, but even there people only work part time: 2-3 days per week.

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I have met an engineer who promised to help me here in Berlin. He will enroll me in the Technical School and in the Factory. I saw him on Thursday, which was today.  He wrote the request for my admission in the Technical School in Köln in Rhein, where I will certainly be admitted, and I sent it immediately. The engineer has purchased a society in Bucharest, and two mines in Banat [the western part of Romania]. He is now wanting to buy an Iron mine in Banat. He advised me to learn English. Without knowing both German and English, you cannot live. Everyone will step over you. He told me to study the mines, and get my degree in engineering. Then he said I could join his society and we could work together. He has a brother in America, who is professor at a university there, and a friend who is professor at the Technische Hochschule from Berlin. In April he promised to enroll me in the Technical School if I remind him with a letter in January or February.

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From Köln, I will reach Paris in 8 hours by train*.

I have paid to have a winter coat made, and one set of clothes with two pairs of pants. The coat was $11 (6 million Deutschmarks), and the pants another $10. The barber cut my hair for 11 million Deutschmarks. I did not pay for shaving.  Before I had borrowed a razor from my host, but I saw her mother did not like it. So instead for $2 I bought my own razor and also purchased some soap, a mirror, a small plate for shaving, and a belt. I have also bought bread (23 million Deutschmarks) and a hat for 175 million Deutschmarks, which was $1. Then yesterday I bought a lamp for 210 million Deutschmarks, which last night was a dollar and a half ($1.5), and a liter of petrol for 18 million Deutschmarks. I can send you my whole accounting if you want it. This evening I will register in the students' society.

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In 8 days I will receive an answer from Köln. Then I will leave immediately.

The weather is not favorable. It's foggy and cold. Tell Ghedeon [his oldest brother] to take his heavy coat when he leaves home. He must not leave in light clothes as if [he was] going to a wedding. I would not have had the winter coat made if it could be avoided, but it is so cold that it is hard to walk.

 

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Today in Berlin the factory called Stock has thanked the people working there instead of paying them because they had no money to pay them with. The businessman Wolf** said that he was leaving Berlin for Czechoslovakia because he can no longer live here.

Did you gather the grapes? How much money did you get for them? I have not eaten grapes since I left home. I have eaten plums given by my host. Today I had a soup with potatoes and carrots without meat or fat in it. It is a sad life here in Berlin. For a small piece of sausage, one pays 25 million  Deutschmarks.

What does Octavia [his youngest sister] say about school? Does she like to study?

I kiss you all thousands of times,

Iulian

Student Engineer"

*His older brother Teodor was studying law in Paris at the time. The distance from Köln to Paris is now covered in 3 hours and 18 minutes by direct train, and in a little over 4 hours with a non-direct connection. So, trains 100 years ago, were twice as slow as they are today.

**He may mean Wilhelm Wolf, a businessman who died in November 1923 as part of the Hitlerputsch, but I cannot be sure; if it's the same person, he did not made it to Czechoslovakia.
 

Epilogue

In the first world war Romania was part of the "allied powers", which included France and Britain. The Allies won the great war, and citizens of the "Allied" countries were disliked in Germany, where so much suffering arose because they had lost the war.  So, grandpa's stay in Germany soon after the end of the war must have been particularly difficult. Eventually, the hyperinflation ended and grandpa was allowed to work in a factory where he melted iron and other metals. We still have two pig-shaped ashtrays he  made there. However, he was not allowed to enroll in any German engineering program. He also earned too little money to buy proper food, and developed scurvy due to the lack of vitamins in his diet. The scurvy left him with a life-long dislike for potatoes. When I remember him, he was already in his eighties. He would eat potatoes out of respect for my grandmother and my great aunt's cooking, but always in smaller quantities than the rest of us.

Instead of going to America, at his father's insistence, grandfather returned to Romania in 1924. Had they all gone to the US like he wanted, perhaps more of his brothers would have lived to be old and have families of their own.  By sending each of his boys to a different country, and by trying to coordinate their lives from far away, my great-grandfather made it harder for them. Together they would have been stronger, but their father had thought that it was important for each of them to manage on his own. By 1923 he was already sick. He died in 1928, and his desire to bring his sons back to Romania so that he could see them from time to time is not something that I can blame him for.  Furthermore, retrospective judging is always unfair. They each did what they thought was best at the time.

After returning to Romania, grandpa studied in the Technical School in Bucharest and obtained a degree in forest engineering. He wanted to study mechanical engineering. However, a friend enrolled him in the silvic engineering degree program. After that, he had no choice other than to attend. The friend was well intentioned, and had thought that because of his former health problems, it was better for grandpa to be a forest engineer.

He was a very successful engineer, and earned a lot of money. He valued learning all his life, and after coming back from Germany he vowed to always make his living using his intelligence, and not his back. He had found physical labor in factories to be very taxing. The year he married he was earning 30 times the salary of a school teacher every month (99, 000 lei/month). However, he never kept the money he made, and had not owned anything of value beyond the clothes on his back until he was in his sixties. This kept him alive through the various turbulent periods that Romania went through. Working in forests that were close to the Serbian border, he was able to help people escape during the Holocaust. He also moved often - sometimes every year or sometimes every two years, he was assigned a new location where he would start building everything from scratch. He did not marry until after the second world war, when he was already in his 40s. After the war, his salary was always half that of my grandmother, and even his retirement allotment was much less than hers. However, they had enough to live on, and they were close enough that it did not really matter who made what.

Growing up my brother and I believed that grandpa had had the most wonderful job in the world.  We adored him, and we dreamed of becoming forest engineers ourselves.  When I was little he was already very old (78 when I was born, 82 to 89 when I remember him), and even then he was so full of life and energy. He did yoga, cut wood, washed dishes, and, in the beginning, he was able to hold us on his shoulders and walk around the room with both of us (I can now appreciate how hard that is).  He had a very strong personality that shone through, and a strong power of persuasion. He was also never lazy. We found him difficult to disobey, and had to write many letters and do lots of math problems at his suggestion.

Grandpa died at 89 and 1/2. At 89 he had a stroke that left him partially paralyzed, but he found the strength to recover from it and start walking again. Soon after he was well again, he had another stroke and died, but the week before that felt he was dying. So, he thanked my grandmother and told her that he loved her, and told my mother he was sorry he was leaving her fatherless. I remember him saying that one can honestly claim they have done everything they could for their children, and for the world only when they close their eyes. He told us to never be afraid of him or of his memory (we had heard of zombies and vampires at the time) because, wherever he'll be and in whatever shape, he will always love us.  I could not believe his eyes would ever close until the moment it happened. Even dead, his face had relaxed into a smile as if somehow he'd managed to control that. So, I have never been afraid of ghosts.

As children, we planted many trees and enjoyed watching them grow. Our garden became so full of trees that not much grew other than grass. After we grew some more, we brought a lamb into the garden. Ciupi was so pretty and white, and so much fun to play with. She ate everything that had remained in the garden (not the trees), but it no longer mattered much. We were busy studying and soon left home.

Mihai left Romania in 1999, and I left in 2001. My mother has always supported Mihai and me in whatever we decided, and still tries to make our life easier in any way she can. There were times when our parents did not see either of us for years (2-3 years), and they bore the separation without complaint.

Mihai did graduate in Berlin with a German Diplom, and we have PhDs from two of the best universities in the US, but we have never had to face a war-torn Europe. Grandpa had been through both world wars, and the 1989 revolution, which involved facing endless destruction followed by periods of more tragedy when the inflation/hyperinflation was expected. However, like him, we have traveled and became citizens of the world instead of fitting in a given place or country. In the US Mihai and I were 3000+ km apart (I lived on the East Coast and Mihai on the West Coast), and only saw each other once every few years. We have learned that it is hard to be 'alone against/in the world', and understood that it is important to love people more than places or things.  Even though we did not become forest engineers, I think that both Mihai and I have inherited some of grandpa's enthusiasm and love of life, and that we have passed some part of his unbreakable spirit onto the next generation.