We reminisced about our fifteen years in the same government
schools but different classrooms, and what our parents tried to do to help us
survive and even in some cases, make our existence better. Her life was much nicer,
we did not understand why at the time, but we gathered around her mother’s tiny
kitchen as often as she would allow us.
Maria* told me that her dad used to be the communist apparatchik in the factory where he worked. As payment, for reporting on what
other workers said during casual conversations at work, and for his efforts to
indoctrinate others during daily discussions and weekly mandatory “syndicate” meetings,
he received a monthly monetary stipend and rations of food from special stores
dedicated to the loyal communist party members and activists.
Not all workers were permitted to be members of the
communist club, they had to earn that distinction. And having an unacceptable
background that was considered “bourgeois” was not exactly a ringing
endorsement for membership in the rarified club of Bolsheviks. It did not take
much to be considered “bourgeois,” a larger plot of land, or a nicer home
inherited from parents and grandparents who worked hard to build it.
Bolsheviks welcomed snitches and convincing activists like her
father who sported grey hair at an early age, making him look more distinguished,
like a wise sage who could be trusted. When he died of old age, Maria threw away
all his rubbish books he had in his communist activist library.
Maria had a rare rotary dial telephone in her home, something
we only dared to dream. Most apartments had to wait 14 years to have a phone installed
and bugged. Maria had better and abundant food, nicer clothes, medicine and
proper medical care, finer furniture, and a black and white TV long before our
parents were able to afford one.
Today, 33 years since the “fall” of communism in Romania, we
were able to talk openly about our lives from long ago and laugh about it. That
is not something we could have done during the oppressive socialist republic regime.
Another friend who lived on the same fifth floor as my
parents did, right across from our apartment door, had a better life than ours as
well, thanks to their father, a trucker, who lifted items regularly from
whatever shipment he was hauling that day, and brought them home to feed his family.
When he had an excess of whatever was in his cargo, he bartered with others. Decades
later, his son, with a sweet but toothless grin, was still living in the same
apartment with his family and elderly mom.
As kids, we did not understand the implications of why those
two families’ lives were better. We just saw more food and we were hungrily
envious. Nobody brought food to our door but, as we played games or did our
homework in her apartment, sometimes we would get morsels of whatever desserts
the lady of the house prepared for her family. The wonderful smells would waft
up the concrete block’s stairwell and people knew who was cooking tasty food
that day.
My daddy, an honest man to a fault, despised these people
who stole to survive. Daddy knew bartering with stolen food was against the law
and punishable by long jail sentences, but these people were desperate to keep
their families alive any way they could in the absence of welfare. One neighbor
went to jail for several years for simple theft at his factory. Daddy always said
that he would rather we starve than steal from the oppressive regime that kept
us so thin and dependent on their food rejects and bones scraped off meat that the
inept communist party economic planners brought to the market daily.
My mom always shook her head in disapproval at how much food
Americans squandered each day, not realizing how close to food shortages they
are. In the end, the abundant system in this country failed her just as
miserably as the communist system in Romania had failed her decades ago. Mom’s
favorite phrase for everything not run properly was, “this is a village without
dogs.”
*This is not her real name
Your father and mother had a high code of honor; a very rare thing. While you were naturally envious of your neighbors’ lives, you walked away with something far more valuable; a high standard of moral conduct which you have carried into your own life.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Marianne Sanders, for your observations.
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