Part 7: Dogs Are Only Human Too It was a beautiful, warm Sunday. As always, we children had to put on our good Sunday clothes. For me, these were shoes, white knee socks with colorful pompons and the hated sailor suit made of a blue wool, with the big sailor collar that scratched so terribly, and I hated it.
Part 6: My Friend The Hairdresser Apart from a few septic tanks and cesspools, the sanitary and hygienic conditions in the village were catastrophic. There was no sewerage system, and no sewage treatment plants. Most of the village’s sewage ran down the streets and gutters into the creek.
Part 5: A Little Sibling It was in this very parlor that I woke up one morning. My grandmother had woken me up and told me that I now had a little sister. Probably my father had carried me into the room, because in the night with my mother the labor began.
Part 4: Pentecost Traditions Less noticed, the feast of Pentecost already began a few days earlier. There, the ordered Pentecost May – young birch trees – were distributed by horse-drawn wagon in the village. For this purpose, the Pentecost boys had divided themselves into several groups and drove from house to house.
Part 3: Harvest Moon In summer, the Polish harvester came with their families to bring in the harvest. The grandmother – the babushka – stayed in the barn with the smallest children, where everyone slept, and took care of the dinner.
Part 2: An Unexpected Encounter It was just another day. I was playing alone with my pink rubber doll in front of the house where we lived for rent. I liked the doll very much, because when you pressed on her belly, she made a funny squeaker.
Part 1: First Memories There are things and experiences in life that you remember decades later. To the outsider, they may often seem banal, but to the person who has experienced them, they are of extraordinary importance because they are deeply and indelibly etched in the memory.
