Home is the place where
Our story begins

A metal wind-up alarm clock rings in a chilly farmhouse. Granny’s metal bed springs screak. She dresses up, steps into her gumshoes and shuffles to the kitchen. Takes a bundle of brushwood, tears a piece of a Soviet “Tiesa” newspaper and opens a loud squeaking doors of a cast-iron stove. Her concerned eyes are watching the combustion process for a while.

It is quiet. Firewood is flickering. Small red dots, escape through the tiny slit in the door of the stove and romp around playfully on the floor. Even now (after 25 years) remembering it invokes a pleasant morning slumber. I know that granny went to the barn through a creaking snow. There she poured some mash to pigs and rained some grain to chickens. Dropped some straws for the horse. She pulled a few beetroots from the basement and threw them to the animals as a dessert. Then she went to the deep well (14 curbs), fetched some water and gave it to all animals.

“Hey, kiddies, get up, potatoes are served on the table”, a jolly and loud voice of the granny casts the slumber away. It is one of our favorite dishes that nobody else can cook so well even at home (in the city). We rub our eyes, sprinkled our faces with ice-cold water and rush to the table. Take the potatoes and juggle them from hand to hand, blow at them until they cool off.

“Here’s the butter”, she passes us a plate with freshly made yellow, aromatic and salty cone of fat. She sits down in the corner between the refrigerator and observes how we, with mouths grinning, try to bite the potatoes and avoid being burned at the same time. “Scratch off the coal first”, says she taking a potato away from my brother and quickly, using knife cuts away the burnt parts of the potatoes. She sits and accompanies our every move with her warm and caring look. Those were the most wonderful mornings at our granny’s place. Yes, granny. Not grandmother. Grandmother was an alien, urban word to me.

She did not believe in God. Showed no support to any party. She never took sides. She just patiently and stubbornly took care of the house. The house where we always felt safe and loved. That house will always remain in my memories. I hope to create such house for my children and I wish you to have such house too.