First Memories

I remember very little from my earliest childhood. Only a few isolated images remain, as though cut from an old film in which I no longer always know what I truly saw and what I was told later. Yet some of them have a surprising clarity, as if time had spared them from oblivion.

In those years, my world was first and foremost the house. Not a house understood as an architectural space, but as a collection of rooms, smells, voices, and short, repeated journeys between the places where people worked, cooked, received guests, and watched over a child. At the center of this world stood Mama Linica, my grandmother, who carried almost everything connected with the family’s daily life on her shoulders.

Christmas with the Giant Tree

My first clear image is of a Christmas when I was two and a half years old. It was probably the first Christmas celebrated with a certain degree of splendor after the war, as far as that was possible in those troubled years. The real disasters were still to come, but for a moment the house seemed filled with light.

In the large room belonging to my great-grandmother Lina, an enormous Christmas tree had been installed, reaching almost to the ceiling, which was more than four meters high. To the child I was, that tree must have seemed like a vertical forest. At its top was a special ornament, pointed like a golden arrow, from which emerged a tuft of silver tinsel. On either side of the arrow hung two small bells, also golden, embossed so that they would catch the light more effectively. When touched, they gave off fragile little chimes, almost metallic whimpers, which I have retained in my memory more clearly than many important events that came later.

I kept that tree-top ornament for years. I carried it with me through all the homes in which I lived, even after I stopped putting up a Christmas tree. It was one of those small objects that, although they have little material value, come to hold an entire vanished world within them: my great-grandmother’s house, the large room, the family gathered together, the smell of fir, and the excitement of the child waiting to see what would happen.

Beneath the tree, my family had gathered gifts for everyone in the house and for the guests: relatives, family friends, and several children from the courtyard. My father had dressed up as Father Christmas and handed out the presents only after making us recite what we had prepared for the occasion. I no longer remember what I said then, whether I managed to finish it, or whether I became confused. I remember only the solemnity of the moment, the mixture of fear and joy, and the feeling that everything had been prepared especially for us, the children.

Mama Linica and the Summer Kitchen

Another clear memory is connected with my grandmother, Mama Linica. During the first years of my childhood I was almost entirely in her care until my mother returned from work. Grandmother had to look after me, care for her own mother, my great-grandmother Lina, keep the house in order, and prepare food for everyone. To do all this she was constantly walking between the house and the summer kitchen, where the cooking range stood.

That cooking range remains in my memory as a massive, almost monumental object: a kind of large cast-iron table with burners of different sizes, covered by heavy lids. The lower part had two compartments. In one, wood was burned, split by Alexandru, my grandmother’s trusted helper, and stacked in the shed beside the kitchen. The other compartment was the oven, with a heavy door held shut by a spring. That was where the sweet breads were baked and the lamb roast was browned at Easter and Christmas.

Morning Visitors

The summer kitchen was not merely the place where food was prepared. It was also a kind of small morning sitting room. It contained an iron bed with a high mattress, where my grandmother’s early visitors would sit. They were usually her brothers, who had come to see their mother, Lina, to hear the latest news and exchange a few words with Grandmother. She listened patiently while continuing to work at the cooking range, lifting the cast-iron lids, turning the meatballs, or watching the roast. I sat on the bed beside the visitors, listening open-mouthed to what they were saying, without understanding everything, but sensing that something important was taking place there among the steam, smells, and voices.

When the meatballs or roast were ready, Grandmother urged the visitors to taste the food while it was still hot. The pieces were speared on a fork, and those being served had to blow on them until they had cooled. At other times, when such a Vorspeise was not possible, Grandmother served them a teaspoon of jam on a porcelain saucer and a cup of chickpea coffee. All this belonged to a household ritual, modest and generous at the same time, which today seems to me one of the most natural forms of hospitality in those days.

The Road to the Great Market

I also remember a morning when Grandmother had to do the weekly shopping. Her market was not the one near the house, but the Great Market, now called Union Square. It took about ten tram stops to get there. Grandmother got off in front of the courthouse, the Palace of Justice, crossed the broad street where, before the Dâmbovița River was covered by the platform extending from the Senate Bridge to the Șerban-Vodă Bridge, the Bridge of the Poor had once stood, and entered among the stalls where peasants or local producers displayed their goods. To buy meat she had to enter the “hall,” an immense building dominating the center of the intersection, a place that had long been one of Bucharest’s most important urban junctions.

After buying everything that was needed, Grandmother returned to the tram stop carrying two enormous shopping bags. She climbed aboard with difficulty, helped by the young people around her. On the tram she always found a seat, however crowded it was, thanks to courteous gentlemen or schoolchildren on their way to class who gave up their places. At the stop in front of our house she got off under the watchful eyes of my great-grandmother Lina, who was waiting at the window of her room. She often kept me there as well, a captive beside her, until Grandmother returned.

From a certain point onward, especially when the weather was mild, Grandmother began taking me with her on these shopping trips. She said I had to help carry the bags. It was obviously a pretext, since I could carry very little. My great-grandmother was probably unwell and could no longer supervise me. That is how I came to know this weekly adventure of my grandmother’s, and why I can recount it now.

A Sudden Illness and Childhood Diagnoses

Yet perhaps even these outings would not have remained so clear in my memory if one day I had not suddenly felt ill just as we got off the tram in front of the courthouse. I was overcome by faintness accompanied by terrible nausea. Frightened, Grandmother sat me down on the courthouse steps, where I vomited. After a short while I recovered and was able to accompany her through the market, but Grandmother held my hand tightly and kept looking at me anxiously.

Medical visits followed, of course, along with all kinds of diagnoses. My liver was the main suspect. People spoke then of a “pre-hepatic condition,” an alarming yet rather vague medical expression that remained in the family vocabulary for a long time. I believe these events coincided with my grandmother’s decision to hire some help. In those difficult years it was not easy to find someone trustworthy who would not leave from one day to the next.

And so it happened that, after applying to the employment office, Grandmother found Ileana, a Russian woman who had emigrated to Romania after the war. But that is already another story.

Files Related to This Period

Episodes

• Ileana the Russian Woman – Biographical File
  Stories from after I was born.
• My Neighborhood
  Memories of the neighborhood of my childhood.

Files Extending Beyond This Period

• Great-Grandmother Lina – Biographical File
  Stories spanning her entire life.
• Mama Linica – My Grandmother
  Stories spanning her entire life.
• Grandmother Maria – My Father’s Mother
  Stories spanning her entire life.
• My Parents – Biographical File
  Stories from before I was born.
• Draga – An Unfulfilled Life
  Stories spanning her entire life.
• Anca – My Aunt in America
  Stories spanning her entire life.
• Radu Niculescu-Cociu – My Grandmother’s Brother
  Stories spanning his entire life.