 |
| The set of the three dolls in their original arrangement |
 |
| and Aretousa's free style arrangement |
Of course "nanna" has now gone and Aretousa is missing her. This happens every time either of the grandmothers come to stay for a bit. Aretousa seems to make a connection between the people and the things they gave her or the things they handled the most. So that even for months afterwards she points at those objects and calls the person's name. I sometimes wonder what she will remember of her grandmothers when she grows up.
I grew up with my mother and my grandmother, but as my mother was always at work it was really my grandmother who brought me up. My grandmother was a very simple person at first sight; she never finished school because of the war and never worked at an actual paid job. She needed very little and somehow was very "self sufficient". She was very patient and spoke slowly with a most clear and melodic voice. It is so strange that I rarely think of her, even now that she has passed away, because somehow it feels like she is always there. When I think of her I remember the stories she used to tell me about the little village in Crete where she grew up. She was somewhere in the middle between nine children and there were the most amazing everyday stories that she told me, not all of them with a happy ending. Standing out amongst them was a story during the war, where a small regiment of German soldiers were posted there to keep an eye on the village. It must have been between 1942 and 1943. From my understanding they were there just as a formality and were actually on talking terms with the locals. Amongst them was a very young German boy with straw-like golden hair that really liked my grandmother. She said that he used to come and find her in the olive fields and used to sing her a song called "rotermon". My grandmother sang me this song in German in the most melodic and trembling voice that it used to make me cry. But I still asked to hear it and the story again and again. One night during a local religious festival the Germans joined in and had a bit too much to drink and the young boy leaned against an old balcony railing, fell off head first and died instantly. My grandmother sang this song right till her death in 2007.
Years later when I was a student in Newcastle, a friend of mine had a German boyfriend to whom I told the story and he said the song was called Roter Mohn and meant red poppy.
My grandmother was suffering from a neurological condition and the last fifteen years of her life was confined in a bed with no muscle power from the waist down. In spite of that she was always in great spirits and never got sad or frustrated. I find this amazingly inspiring. She used to read poetry and memorise by heart really long and difficult poems. She loved Kostis Palamas, Giorgos Seferis and Dionysios Solomos. I was never into poetry, as I found it confusing, but listening to her was most relaxing. She owned only a handful of records, amongst them the Cretan legend Nikos Xylouris, Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte and a cassette by Joe Dassin. She had the annoying habit of selecting a particular song and playing it again and again throughout the day. She had the most amazing memory and when a friend of mine came to visit she remembered their birthday, their parents' names and dates of birth and other really strange details. She used to draw with a very particular style of her own, a bit like a naive a painter. She drew her village roads from a view from above but the houses from a side view and the people from the front. Her lines were faint, trembling and repetitive, but the finished drawings were so sensitive, delicate and ethereal, they resembled a dissolving embroidery.
My grandmother loved listening to the radio. She listened to a variety of stations, some political, some with geological and natural history documentaries and of course her favourite religious station. She had a great faith and remained deeply religious till her death. Some years before my grandmother passed away, my mother received a free small TV -as a gift for putting a large order through for her shop- with an external aerial which we put in my grandmother's room in order to "broaden her horizons". As we lived on top of a mountain that hosts all the aerials that feed the whole of Athens with all sorts of signals, using an external aerial brought with it some complications. My grandmother would watch a documentary and suddenly there would be interference and the channel would change; then I would hear "Natalia, Natalia run quick, there is porn! porn on the television! run quick I tell you!". So the TV had to eventually go as I was not able to fix it.
As this technique of setting a public deadline for finishing a project has worked, I had a good think and found many projects that have been left unfinished. A couple never got started at all. There is a three dimensional advent calendar in the form of a house that I did not manage to finish for this Christmas just gone. So I am setting myself a month to finish it, from today.
No comments:
Post a Comment