Childhood Stories (I)

My childhood was one of the most memorable and happy periods of my life. I was free and rebel, experiencing everything around. The decision of writing about me as a child came after I realized that these days aren’t what was used to be, and my children will never ever have part of the same liberating, joyful and memorable childhood as I had. Therefore, I thought to recall all my memories and to write them down with the main purpose of not letting those memories to be forgotten.

I spent my childhood at my grandma’s house in a village around 25 min away from the city where my parents lived and worked. My grandma didn’t seem to enjoy the time, because we were four cousins and she was “tired” to take care of us, while we were so disobedient and rebellious. I bet that was very hard and challenging for her, nevertheless today we all share the same stories and it is a lot of fun when we meet and recall on our summer adventures. So, we would go to school from September to June (May 31st was the happiest day of the whole year) and from the first day of summer we would go to my grandma’s village and we would not return till the first day of school. I remember those days when we would prepare for the summer, we would take books to read, clothes and we literally pack for a long trip. We were four, me and my sister, and my two other cousins, a boy and a girl, children of my mom’s sister.  Once arrived at the destination, everyone would choose a room. I, being the oldest, took the biggest room, we used to call it “the big house”. My sister would sleep with my girl-cousin, while the boy would choose the small-last room in the house.

This is how we spent three months of summer, three months of games, joy and adventure. Our parents would buy us small chicks, goslings and pigs and we would take care of them. We would feed them, clean the place where they slept, before night we would gather them in a safe place to sleep, and soon they became our pets. Sometimes we would go with our grandma on the field to pick up grass that our little animals would engulf with pleasure. Near to our house there was a river, where we would take the goslings to swim and to graze. We would meet other children that came to stay with their grandparents and play at the river different kinds of games, like cards, hide and seek, tree climbing, cat’s cradle and many others. We would spend days like these, and would not realize how fast the summer was over.

Our parents would come and stay with us for the weekend. Every Friday was the cleaning Friday, because we needed to get the house in order and ourselves too. They would bring us sweets and fruits, and we would behave the entire weekend. My mom taught us how to prepare stewed fruit or how we called it – compot, my favorite was from grapes and peaches. I and my sister would pick up the fruits from the garden, we usually used our own fruits for compot, and my mom would prepare the glasses and my father would start a fire in the courtyard to boil the compot. Our family would work together on Saturdays, so that we would have tasty compot during winter.

It seems that we were obedient kids and we would listen and do everything our parents and grandma would ask us to do, but then where is the fun? I remember this moment when grandma was calling our parents at work every five minutes, and begged them to come and pick us up. She would say that we are crazy and we do not behave, that we broke stuff (which we really did) and that she can’t anymore. Aghh, she made herself a stick from a branch, so when we were really mean she would beat us, but that was impossible because we would run away very fast. I can’t believe she was so strong and kind and that she looked after us all the time. My grandma is the highlight of my childhood, because she was present there for me, always teaching and scolding with kind words.Sometimes we’d get in really big troubles, for example when we stole roses from our neighbor, or when we lost our chicks we supposed to take care of, our parents would get mad and punish us for real, and guess who was the person we’d run to, exactly…grandma.

I am happy writing about my childhood, because it was a memorable adventure and there is much more to tell about. Therefore I decided to share short stories about it, so that never forget those times, which were outstanding for me.