I practically grew up in grandma's garden. I would spend the long summer breaks mainly reading, laying on a blanket under a plum tree devouring adventure novels. Mainly westerns and Jules science fiction.
My grandma never went to school but she always valued learning. She would never let my mother work the field. She was raised in my grandma's village, somewhere in southern Romania, and only left it later to go to Medical School . My mom became the only doctor in the village.
Later, when I would go to spend the summer breaks there she would not let me lift a finger.
"You just read your books, Cipri! We'll do the work."
Back then I was too young and self-involved to understand the situation, let alone feel guilty about it. But now my grandma is no more, and I realize how much she sacrificed for me, and for my mother to have the luxury of reading and learning.
Grandma died ten years ago, while I was in the US and I was unable to come to her funeral. I wrote her a note that my sister read at her funeral.
She died the death she had asked for just two weeks earlier, without any external signs of an illness. At 74, she just fell down while she was hanging clothes out to dry, in her garden. Our garden.
