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Titled: Memories of My Grandmother part one Get the Fiction category RSS Feed

Memories of My Grandmother part one

Article Summary: Time goes by, this nobody can prevent even if there intensions and will wish it were not so and as much as I in my thoughts am longing to reenter the past I can not for the past is not a place nor a time but images of things that have transformed themselves in to the present.

As for myself, I am 82 years of age and so much time has passed between that winter in which started me to being what I always knew myself capable of being which is a man of internal fortitude. It seems strange to me that the number of years separating me from the joy and love I learnt of from my grandmother are not so many but the events that have transpired since suffice to make it all seem as if in another lifetime.

My grandmother was my great love as I was hers fore it was she who out of desperation for warmth let me see what my age forbade me from experiencing in a way that was not incest even if she was my grandmother. She was my grandfather’s wife and by virtue of that position I considered her to be my grandmother even if she was not my father’s mother who in fact died without my ever knowing her or ever seeing neither photograph nor painting of her.

Maria Anna Grekowa was her full name and she was born in Russia (in the year 1900) before it became the Soviet Union that took away everything she and her family had worked so hard to earn as it was the “October Revolution” that brought not only the Soviets to power but caused her family’s exodus form their country of birth. How much her family had lost I could imagine as she often though with neither a sense of loss nor boastful intensions did she talk about those majestic parties that had been held in her family mansion near Saint Petersburg. Grand her life must have been I thought to myself as her tales created paintings in my mind of the stories it was bringing to life fore hers were such colorful descriptions that it was as if she were telling an adventure we had both shared. Once she even told me that she would not have discussed such matters with me if she felt that I did not come from the same kind of family like hers which put so much value on those things that make one noble.

With regards to Maria’s relationship with my family it started in the year 1928 (the same year I was born in and the year of her arrival in America) when John Smith, a close friend of my grandfather introduced her to him in the hope she might become our governess which our house was very much in need of specially since my mother had died in the act of bringing me in to world.

By the time Maria was 30 years of age she had spent some time first living in France and then in England where she first got and held on to her post as governess for 3 years until she met John Smith (a friend of my family) who convinced her to come to America where he knew of a family which was more in need of her and had better financial means to provide her with higher wages. In reality it can be said that John Smith was indirectly responsible for her ever reaching the United States as he was the one to convince her that her talents as governess would not only be more appreciated by a family like mine not only in the monetary manner but also in every other. He told her that my family had suffered a great loss as my mother had died in child birth leaving not only a child motherless but a house in disarray with need for a refined lady’s touch.

It was with this knowledge that she accepted to cross the Atlantic to a country which she had never had the slightest inclination of visiting, always believing it to lack that grace she had known in her native Russia and all the other places in Europe she visited.

Looks wise I describe her with fear that my adoration for her might not permit me to see her with neutral eyes but how else might her beauty impact on my being? She as far as my memory takes me, had hair a red as fire which she kept long till her dying day always wearing it tied up and never releasing it unless it was in her own privacy or that of whom she wished to share with. It was this curly shoulder length hair that was my delight to gaze upon and run my fingers through when I was a child and later when our relationship turned carnal. Hers was not only hair for she had a face that had all the features I had in years of childhood always associated with motherly affection. Eyes a light green which told me how much of me she could see and this above all was what made her face special to me as the rest though pleasing to the eye with a nose and mouth that only fit to match her eyes were mere companions in the delightful portrait that was she.

Maria’s body however was one that I did not take a notice to at least till adolescence when the opposite gender was what preoccupied my mind for at first she was my mother in the way she was the one I looked to play the role. Naturally I was always made aware that she was not the one who had given birth to me but it was hard for me see this as a factor that should dissuade me from thinking of her in the manner other children my age thought of the person who took care of them. She despite all her motherly care perhaps for the reason she was not entered me eyes through a whole new light when puberty approached me as her tall slender body became more apparent to me. How much added worthiness did those shapely mounds gain when my age arrived at the point where I was able to appreciate them along with the rest of her womanly features which contrasted mine so nicely.

Naturally it was not Maria who had changed but my perception of her given the development my body was undergoing due to the period of my life I found myself in. She at that point in my life had become a woman as she had also become one to my father who started a courtship of her that would end up in marriage.

Now, if it is about myself that I must speak of I will say this, my name is Tom Faust and I am average in height standing at 5 feet 6 inches. This being a height I reached at an early age in life and never went beyond with weight that is well proportioned. I really can’t say much about my face as it neither provides me pride nor shame as I do not consider my looks to be outstanding in anyway but what I will describe is the vague details such as my eyes which are blue, nose which is not straight but small with lips that are just that.

With regards to my family it was my father, grandfather and grandmother who were the ones I grew up with at least till the age of 14 when during the summer of 41 my grandmother died leaving a sadness that my grandfather never really got over. Financially speaking most people would classify my family as being wealthy though we really were not as much as most people who saw our estate thought. It being true we did have more then most or enough to have household servants but we never really did recover to the monetary position we held before the “great depression”.

My life began with the death of my mother I am sad to say but despite this I can not claim to have had a sad childhood as it was spent in a big house in the country that allowed me when ever I was not being occupied with school work or the many chores my grandfather kept me busy with to live out my childhood fantasies. How many an hour would I spend on the lake rowing the boat my father gave me believing I was traveling the world looking for adventure.
So much did I experience in this house that I would be hard to imagine that my childhood could have taken place any where else under any other set of circumstances.

There is not much I can say about my mother in the way she died before I had a chance to even see her with eyes that remember let alone spend any time with but I can not help but wonder when confronted with the memory of the many pictures I saw of her how she must of loved me. She gave birth to me and lost her life doing so knowing their was risk which she faced bravely for me or perhaps because she wanted a part of her to out life her. Who knows but what I do hold certain in my knowledge is that I loved her even though I never met her. It was only through what my father and grandfather (not her father) that I learnt of how she took care of the family and helped it along that we were able to not loose all that we had in the way so many families had during the depression.

It actually seems strange to me when I look back on how my mind associated Maria with the stories I had heard of my mother in a way that made them seem as if they had been about her. I of coarse knew it was not she who was being described but still it was something my mind could not avoid doing fore it was she who was playing the role of my mother.

My life was for the most part joyful, living in a big house in Long Island with my grandparents, father and Maria or at least till my grandmother died of a cause I was never informed of in the summer of 1941. It was not that my family was foreign to loss but my grandmother’s death transformed almost all in a way that made my father see that he should find another mate in life as what sense was their in living out the rest of ones life in mourning.

My father had basically thrown himself in to his work and the family business since the death of his wife as much for the sake of having less time to think of his wife’s death then as a way of increasing the family fortune but his was a lonely life. He wanted and needed someone but who? He had me, his son, who would be suitable? Maria had been suggested by my grandmother before she died as a possible candidate for my father to take to wife as she had been with the family for a long time and was cherished by all.

We all knew it would be the best thing but it was my grandmother who argued on her death bed not that my father needed all that much convincing that Maria would be ideal for him as she had not only accepted his son but had already taken care of him since his birth having gained not only his affections but having replied to them with her own. Another reason why I gathered my grandmother supported the view that my father should wed Maria was that she knew Maria wanted a child of her own but unfortunately was not in years that would allow her the luxury of being able to wait much longer. I don’t doubt my grandmother’s words had their influence but I also don’t think my father was the kind to marry a woman whom he did not feel something for despite what anybody might have said.

With regards to being in love this is something I did not understand or know much about at the time so this is why it would be hard for me to say if it was love or perhaps a longing to legitimize her position in my life as a relative if not a mother. Of coarse with time I even came up with other theories of my own that saw my father getting married to Maria due to his longing to in a way give her something for not only all she had given his family but lament for how much he felt life had taken away from her.

My grandmother’s death came at a time when my country, the United States of America was on the verge of going to war as talk was every where about how it would not be long before we were at war with Japan, Germany and Italy. I even believe that this was another reason that lead to my father’s decision to wed Maria as he who had not had any sort of romantic life
after my mother’s death wanted someone to come home to at a time when he decided to rejoin the Navy.

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About the Author:
Gianni Truvianni
My name is Gianni Truvianni and as some of you may know I am a writer who simply adores the opera. This is something that I do not believe could have escaped the attention of anybody who has read either "Little Opera Singer" or "New York’s Opera Society" which are two stories on this website strongly connected to opera. "New York’s Opera Society" is the 1st chapter of a book which I have just completed by the same name which is available on www.new-york-society.com/nyos_salespage.htm so for all of those wishing to see how this story unfolds I recommend them to buy my book.