Goodbye

Yesterday my grandmother died. She was the last of my living grandparents. Her 97th birthday would have been next month. When I was 14 and Paul was 13 we went to Czechoslovakia to visit our relatives. Communism had recently fallen and we were able to visit our relatives in their homes. We spent the summer being handed off from one relative to the next. We met aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. We made the trek to the small village where my dad grew up and his parents still lived along with an aunt and some cousins. There was no bus service directly to the village so we had to walk a few kilometers from the next town over. I was a teenager and had enough clothes in my suitcase for the summer. It felt like a very long walk. This was before suitcases with wheels.

In 1991 when we visited the house had no indoor plumbing. There was an outhouse and a well in the side yard for water. I remember the kitchen being in a separate room next to the house. There was a garden there. Every single person we visited had a garden though. The quality of the food is so much better there. Chickens are butchered outside and brought inside to make soup. Chickens in America are treated poorly, given crap food, then rinsed in bleach before making it into our soup pot. The soup my grandmother made had an incredibly rich flavor. In fact, all of the things she cooked were delicious.

One of the more memorable parts of our visit to my grandparent's house (my grandfather died months after our visit) was our visit to the bar in town. Bars are not off limits to kids there so it was an adventure for us to go. It's not at all like American bars. I remember a big open space with a snooker table in the middle. It was a well lit space. They offered sodas as well as beer. It was more of a friendly place to relax than a trendy pick up joint.

My parents spoke Slovak with us from birth since it was their native tongue. When I started school I learned to speak English. I've always said I could speak Slovak like a 2 year old. My comprehension was well above my ability to say words. Unfortunately, my grandparents spoke a different dialect so I couldn't understand anything they said. At 14, I didn't know what a terrible thing that was but now that I'm older I realize the opportunity I've lost.

In memory of my grandmother. Oct 22, 1911 - Sept 11, 2008