2023-04-18 08:19:29
Bridge of memory
Justin ADOMAITIS
“Love your children, but your husband more,” said Magdalena Vaičiūnienė, who was in her 10s from the village of Aukštoj Balbieriškis, as her great-granddaughters called her mammoth grandmother, to her granddaughters, “the children will fly away, and you will have to end your life with your husband.” While her Mikutis was alive, when they left to go to church, to their daughters or neighbors, they would kiss at the gate of the homestead. The same thing happened when he came back. It was strange to see the feelings of what seemed to us then to be old people.
Magdalena Vaičiūniene around 1930
Before the amelioration pandemic, residents of Daržininkai, Dargupis or Ringėnai, returning from the town or district center on foot, often visited the old man’s homestead. Some wanted to have a drink, others – to consult, others – to talk, talk. I remember the conversation of a respected person who lived in a neighboring village with my grandmother. I didn’t go to school yet, but the grandmother’s question stuck in the child’s memory: “Aren’t you going to let your son marry that neighbor girl”? To this the guest replied, “When the hair grows on my palm.” Grandma’s warning was fateful. The son did not ask the father and made his life miserable for decades.
The grandmother was related to many cousins (“several lines”), and the women of the nearest villages called her either aunt or uncle – she was invited when waiting for the birth of a child, when someone was sick or to watch and pray at the dying person’s bed. Grandmother had a real pharmacy in the attic (“upstairs”) of the house – she tied bunches of medicinal herbs into bundles: yarrow, chamomile, fenugreek, red clover, mint, valerian, fennel. My grandmother used to take me when I was not even ten years old to collect some medicinal herbs. You had to get up very early, as soon as the sun came up, and bite off some plants with your teeth while kneeling down and holding your hands behind your back. Then it seemed like real magic. Much later, nearing the age of a century, my grandmother used to talk about the tricks of girls and women in seducing a man. He also knew “antidotes”.
Relatives and neighbors appreciated grandmother Magdalena’s ability to listen, advise, comfort, and help in whatever way she could. She remained like that until she was 99 years old. She told those around her that she was a bed of diseases, but as far as I remember now, it was her clever outer protection. Everyone in the family and village was good to her. She once said about Smetona’s time that the family had everything then, but they worked very hard. Grandma used to keep silent about the war and post-war. When the land reclamation began, her diplomatic skills showed. The engineer in charge of the works planned the ditches in such a way that they bypassed the Vaičiūnai homestead.
When my brother and I had a fight, my grandmother used to say: there were eight of us growing up, we caught each other in the air, we didn’t say a bad word, and you can’t find an agreement between the two of us.
Grandmother Magdalena Kamičaitytė-Vaičiūnienė was born in 1889. May 10 In the village of Gelčia, in the family of Ieva Kuncaitė and Antanas Kamičaitis (in addition to Magdalena, the Kamičaičiai raised Morta, Katre, Kazimieras, Juoza, Jurgis, Elžbieta, Ona). She was introduced to her future husband Mykolas, who lived in Balbieriškis jurisdiction, by a neighbor after indulgences in the Balbieriškis church. The three of them went to the Jew’s inn across the church, took a small bottle of beer. The girl tasted such a drink for the first time. The head is dizzy. Maybe from the beer, maybe from the words of an unknown young man. Mykol’s father Sylvester died in 1897. September 17, mother Marijona – 1909 January 1 The wedding took place in 1909. October 21 The young woman was 20 years old, the young man was a year older. Grandma had a hard time until she taught her husband to eat in Lithuanian before going to bed – Mykolas was from the town and spoke Polish in public and in church. The first daughter was born in 1910. November 22, died a week later on December 3, baptized Mariana. For this reason (the mother buried her child), the grandmother did not eat apples all her life until Žolina (August 15). The second daughter, baptized with the name Magdalena, was born in 1912. December 23 (recorded January 5, 1913).
A young family was born in the village of Aukštoj Balbieriškis. There is not much land, one beautiful Trakehner horse, one working horse, a cow, a few sheep. Money was needed for a fuller life. In the town, a local Jew promised to take care of Michael’s trip across the Atlantic for 200 tsarist rubles. Sister Petronėlė in 1913 at the beginning of the year, accompanied by the same business Jew (also for 200 rubles), she sailed to America through the port of Latvia. Mykolas followed his sister via Hamburg in 1913. in September. His wife and 9-month-old daughter remained at home.
At the age of eighty, the grandmother still kept a cow.
Grandmother told about the sign of impending disaster – a bloody cross in the sky. The First World War began. Fleeing from the enemy, the tsar’s soldiers forced all the inhabitants to retreat to Russia. The grandmother and the girl hid in the forest in Balbieršgire. When they returned to the homestead, the German soldiers came and demanded to hand over the horses. The grandmother gave the work, she hid the trachea.
There were few residents left in the village, but hardship united and strengthened the people. Grandma knew the meadows, especially in the marshes near the homestead. In Balbieršgire, there were famous marshes, called palaitai, which had a connection with Žuvinto palia, abundant with cranberries. Grandma not only knew the plants of meadows and swamps, but also knew what they were good for and what ailments they treated. She prescribed a lot of herbs for the treatment of women’s diseases, she said that men were the cause of all of them. When “walking with a child” (pregnant), a woman had to be careful of everything (“väktuot”), not to be afraid, not to look at ugly people, not to talk down to others, not to take possession of anything foreign, not to be jealous. Dozens of warnings to the expectant mother, which the latter used to strictly adhere to.
In several villages (Aukštojos Balbieriškis, Dargupis, Ėuolai) the Christmas lady was considered to be a resident, but the grandmother also took part in assessing the newborn, taking care of the mother. They used to say that “for seven weeks the mother grabbed one leg”. If a child was born weak, they immediately tried to baptize him in the church so that he would not die with sin. Grandma used to say that she had lost count of how many children she had baptized (the former “kuma”).
When her husband Mikas (in America his name was shortened to Mykolos) returned home in Aukštasi Balbieriškis, daughter Magdutė was a grown-up – at the age of nine. She was running away from the well-dressed stranger’s uncle.
The dollars brought back from the American man turned into building materials, farm implements, and land ownership. Two boys were born one after the other, both died shortly after baptism: one – John, the other – Petruk. Doctors in Kaunas reassured the grandmother that they would raise only girls. Onutė was born in 1923, Petronėlė in 1926. The grandmother was helped to raise her daughters by her sister Onutė, a seamstress, who never chose a husband, who earned her bread by sewing women’s clothes. The girls grew up calling their aunt Mama and their real mother Mammoth. This is how the grandmother was called in the family. In those days, Mikas Vaičiūnas had a beautiful farm of 15 hectares, and he was also an “American”. Such belonging was evidenced by the tin roof of the house. Galvanized sheets were brought from England.
The whole life of the family revolved around the kitchen, which was also the common room, which had an unpainted floor of wide planed boards. In the corner, a stove made of red bricks spread warmth and coziness, which had three floors: “shoulders”, “prežeda” and “pamin”. In one part, there was a Suvalki “machine” – with two holes for placing viralo pots, behind them – a bread oven with a massive “pecia lid”. In the other part of the stove, there is a “machine seat” on which one could stretch out to one’s full height and dry wet outdoor clothes, and on the top, there is a “pezpečkis”, where the girls liked to warm themselves, especially when they went to school, and read books by the kerosene lamp. After the “mashinsuoli” was called “pečelius” – deep hollows, in which in winter, during extreme cold, they kept and fed newly born sheep and piglets for a week.
Mikutis was a holy person to her grandmother. “Father, has the firewood been brought?” – she asked, sitting on the “car seat”, and immediately continued, – “have the cows been fed, or have the chickens been fed”?
Grandmother taught her grandchildren, relatives and neighbors to be careful with words, not to use them unnecessarily or mention something with bad intentions. “Don’t invite disaster,” she used to tell her grandchildren when they reported seeing a skunk. When a thief was caught in the village, the grandmother surprised us by saying that he was innocent. This mother, “walking on it”, untied the neighbor’s rope, and the child was reborn.
Grandma’s speech attracted me with its wordiness and ethics. For example, she called the toad, which is considered the biggest Lithuanian swear word, “basic”, and the devil – “bad”. In general, she avoided using negative words if she could replace them with alternatives. They used to say – as you shout, so will you answer.
She loved her grandchildren, who had six, waited for them, knew what each one liked to eat. For example, the eldest loved sour milk whipped, the eldest granddaughter – carefully scooped out of the pot, “piece”. Although she herself did not eat grated potato pancakes or buns, she always greeted her grandchildren with such feasts. The herds would just swim in the cracker sauce, and the grandmother would make up for it – “the doctor forbade me.” Grandma didn’t eat freshly baked bread or cake either because of the same doctor. But his other advice was remembered. “You woke up in the morning – eat at least a poppy seed, don’t go to work on an empty stomach,” grandmother taught her granddaughters. Already in her old age, she got up in the morning, washed, combed her hair, threw the hair from the comb into the “machine” (daily oven), then cut off a slice of the cake baked the day before, spread butter so that the eyes of the cake were visible, put cottage cheese on it, and poured coffee with milk. This was her breakfast. Lunch was eaten here and there, and dinner was not needed. “It’s important to trick your stomach,” she used to say about her nutrition.
For the daughters, sons-in-law and grandchildren living in the city, who visited almost every weekend, the grandmother had a full pot of waiting. During the collective age, she was allowed to keep one cow, and her grandmother took care of her until she was eighty years old. Thanks to Karvutė, there were always cups of melted butter, dried and layered cheeses in a tub with salt in grandmother’s trays. Grandma didn’t eat bacon or smoked sausages, but she always had them for guests.
The grandmother herself followed, taught her daughters and grandchildren to follow the sequence of thought, word and action. At home, she prayed from the “Golden Altar” prayer book, bought back in the year of the press ban. The same age was also her “puppet” rosary. One Sunday, a grandmother in her nineties forgets him in the church “lomka”. “With whom will I be honored”? – this was the most painful question. Sunday services went one after the other, and the “kukavinis” did not appear. A grandmother dreams that a woman from the village of Ringėnai found her rosaries. When met the following Sunday, she confesses and returns the jewel.
“God has forgotten me,” the grandmother used to say when her grandchildren passed by and asked about her health. However, she still wanted to be needed. When everyone at home was already asleep in the evening, the grandmother would wake up with a question – “Are the chickens hatched yet?” This was the main work of the grandmother while living in the homestead of her daughter and son-in-law. It was nice for all the housemates to know that the grandmother, who is approaching a century, still feels needed and important.
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