Today is 19 December 2018, St Nicholas’s Day. And on this day in 1995 my grandmother Anna Vasilyevna died, mama’s mama. She was 89 years old. More than 50 years she lived in marriage with my grandfather Sergei Sergeyevich “not in peace and not in accord”! But the 50-year anniversary, the so-called Golden Wedding, they celebrated in a restaurant in Bolshevo, and of course the initiative came only from grandmother. Grandfather did not want to go to the restaurant at all, he had to be persuaded.
And when she looked into her Marriage Certificate, it turned out they had registered on the day of her 20th birthday. It turned out that in the restaurant they celebrated two events at once — grandmother’s 70th birthday and the golden wedding! That was 17 September 1976. I thought now, will there be such families with a 50-year record in our 21st century and in subsequent centuries? Precisely now this phrase came into my head: “not in love and not in accord” to live such a hard and long life!
The last time I came to grandmother was in August 1990, when I had already been a year without a husband with two sons of 7 and 10. And then she opened up to me, told a family secret. Now I too can write about this secret, because the heroes of those events are no longer alive.
My grandmother was born and grew up in a Ryazan village in a large family. She had three brothers and two sisters. She did not want to live in the village and went into service, in the Moscow region, in the settlement of Bolshevo. Being in service, she learned a great deal: how to keep house properly, wash well, iron, cook, clean. But such work did not particularly inspire her, and when the chance appeared to go to work at a weaving factory, she did it. Young Soviet country needed working hands in the 1920s of the last century. There at the factory one could also do public work, attracting and agitating new young women workers.
Having married, she moved from the hostel to live in the house with her husband (my grandfather). The parents allotted them a little room, and so her family life began. In 1927 my mama was born, and in 1928 Vera, mama’s sister.
Grandmother told that from the start there were many quarrels in the family and she had a desire to throw everything up and return to the village, but grandfather said that he would not give up Lida (my mama). And Vera grandmother often sent to the village to her relatives. And grandmother herself often travelled around the villages, recruiting people for the factory.
Her sister Polinka she first took from the village into her home, so that she would help her with the household. Grandmother worked at the factory in shifts, sometimes also on the night shift. So Polinka looked after the children and kept house, and at the same time “looked after” grandmother’s husband as well. My grandmother was businesslike, and Polinka soft and warm…. And… in 1940 Polinka gave birth to a girl, Lyusya… (I think readers have guessed from whom)
Then good night!