All our Homes

B is for Barn and Books and Bales
A world of memories each entails.
How to decide which to bring to the fore?
A formidable task for this child of yore.

The barn stands tall and red, a sentinel looking out over the Sawatsky family farm. Through the years, the barn has meant many things. For us who grew up within yards of it, the dusty loft provided hours of play. It housed the chores that taught us responsibility and ownership. It held lessons about birth and death and kittens. It was the test of a true and persistent painter. Newly red and shiny, our barn presented itself as a sizable curiosity piece to be proud of in front of our city cousins. Our eyes were drawn to it on all those walks home from Uncle John’s. One Christmas, we were treated to a splendid sight as we turned the corner of the lane. Dad had fashioned a perfect star on its gable; a tradition was born. The old barn now sports a modern roof. It doesn’t smell the same as it did in its “hayday”. But it’s still the same barn that has welcomed us home for more than fifty years. We hope it stands forever.


Dear readers,

While clicking through my “files from home” that (miraculously) transferred to this new computer, I came upon a page from a book that the Sawatsky siblings collated for our parents some years back. What warm memories I have of the folks perusing the pages of that project, savouring every entry on the 26 pages that correlated with the exact number of people in the family at the time --- one for each member of the alphabet in fact! We’d have to seek a different alphabet by now, as our numbers have grown considerably. Well, one could get extremely sentimental over here across the ocean, and there have been a few moments of longing for the family and all that comes with it, including the barn at the end of the lane I still call “home”!

Our home out here is looking a little more “lived in”, what with the acquisition of a Romanian carpet, Romanian dishes and a few other artifacts. We continue to find shopping an extraordinary experience. I must share Marlene’s reference to the Romanian people surely being “intrigued with the foreigners and their SILLY ways!” (Who would even THINK of putting star anise in soup!)

Bucharest is anticipating a major event next week. The Francophone Summit is coming to town, and it appears that this occasion will dominate city life for a few days. We have had numerous urgent missives regarding impending traffic snarls, should we decide to drive at all. In fact, buses have been designated for teachers and students, and we expect large numbers of students to stay away from school. Whereas in Manitoba we have “snow days”, here we have “traffic days”. Ed and I have had a few experiences in traffic. You know the kind--- where you arrive at your destination at the same time as the person you kept passing. Only he was walking.

Then there are the really delightful moments that we enjoy over and over in our reflections:
- Enjoying a Sunday afternoon concert in the park where the soprano rendered every popular piece from her musical theatre library, all in Romanian! (How does ‘’The Rain in Spain’’ work in Romanian?)

- Buying 15 beautiful tomatoes, a big bag of potatoes, a huge perfect head of cabbage and 6 gigantic apples from a village baba who wanted only 4.5 lei, or $2 in our language, for the lot! I gave her closer to what it would have cost us in our country. We’re encouraged not to do that. I couldn’t help it.

- The note that our dear housekeeper left us after I suggested she help herself to lunch with what she could find in the fridge: “I have today a little time so I eat 2 red bowls with soup. Is very good and tasty, I hope is not too much. Please do not throw away, leave for me, I will eat.” She is a sweet, conscientious girl, putting herself through school with the money she makes from her cleaning jobs. As she would say, “I go at school.”

- Little Idan from Grade 2, who just can’t leave school without hugging all his teachers one last time …
“Miz Meellee, I hop’ you hev a good evening!”

- “Hob-nobbing” with the downstairs doorman in Romanian. “Buna ziua! Che mai facit?” we say (proudly), to which he replies with a crisp “Please!!”, pointing to the elevator. He knows darn well that is the sum total of our pretending. We are taking Romanian classes every Thursday after school. It’s not working.

- The lady who left her own store to walk us all the way across the mall to show us where I could buy a watch battery. We continue to find the people here very warm and infinitely helpful.

- Finding that the frozen soup bones that I victoriously bought had, upon thawing, morphed into three beef hearts. There is now a new and not-so-improved recipe in Millie’s book – Beefheart Borscht. Of course, she tried to get this by Ed without telling him. She surmised that it wasn’t working when the usual “Ode to best soup you ever made” was kindly replaced with “Boy, this sure isn’t like farm beef, is it? This is almost rubbery!”

- Listening to Maria, my Romanian teaching partner howl over our weird turns of phrase. "A basket case?" she muses, "Thees expression I do no' know, whaddiz to be a basket caze?"

- Never, ever hearing a Romanian parent raise a voice to a child.

This morning AISB students, staff parents and friends are gathering at school for the Terry Fox Run. This is a huge annual event for the school and takes place on Saturday to accommodate all the people who want to participate. I have felt twinges of “Canadianism” all week as we have prepared the students for this day. It was neat to be able to relate my own memory of Terry’s run all those years ago.

Thanks to all who are hanging in there with us and our experiences,