Did I Ask For Fries?

My grandmother is one of the most impressive people that I know.

I remember back in high school I had to write an essay on someone who I admired and I her picked her. If anything, the last 10 years have only increased the admiration I feel for her.

To describe her life story, I’d have to write a book. In fact, she herself has done that, buying an A4 notebook for each of her 6 daughters and filling it with her tale: growing up in a small village in the Ukraine, surviving the war by escaping to Austria then pretending to be Polish in order to be allowed to come to Australia, losing one daughter along the way and finding her 40 years later in Canada via Brazil.

Hearing stories of her life, and even the life my mum led, makes me feel like a spoiled brat. I wasn’t put into prison when as a school-teacher I dared to spank a naughty child. I wasn’t tricked into working for a socialist government by false promises. I was never tattooed on the arm with my prisoner number that remains there 70 years on. I didn’t have to leave my home country one night by sneaking onto a train. I didn’t have to beg a childless couple to pretend one of my daughters was theirs so we would be allowed to enter another country as refugees. I never had to cope with the grief of realising my eldest daughter had been put on a different boat, and not knowing what country she ended up in, or even whether the boat arrived safely.

Neither was I forced to leave school at 14 to look after my 4 younger sisters while my mum had to go to work because my stepfather was a useless drunk. I’ve never had to make all my own clothes for myself and my sisters because I couldn’t afford to buy them. I have never had to go into our backyard to milk my own cow (although I think it would be pretty cool), or to eat the same soup for lunch and dinner practically everyday. Then later I never had to share a small 2 bedroom flat in Sydney with 5 other females and a bathroom so small you can stand in the centre and touch every wall.

With all these circumstances ranging from difficult, to just plain devastating, I look at my mum and my Babushka, and see them as amazingly strong people. It makes me wonder what I would have done, how would I have coped, were I in their shoes. How will I describe my life to my grandchildren should I have any? Will my life be as alien to theirs as my mother and Babas are?

I watched Baba on Saturday, as we walked down the streets of Cabramatta where she lives. At 84 her only complaint is arthritis of the knees, which makes her slow to get up and start walking, but after 15 minutes she is ok. This meant that she linked her arm through mine for balance and support, a gesture which warmed my heart, and yet make me ache with the reality of her mortality. She is still a statuesque woman, but as age takes its toll, at 176cms we are now equal in height.

In the last year the Liverpool government has started a social group for the Slavic eldery women in their municipalty. Every Thursday they bring in speakers who can speak their language, or take them on outings or do some kind of craft. It has literally given my grandmother a new lease on life. She speaks of it with such excitement, how she has started writing poems and making things, how she has bought a camera, and showed me some photos of her group out at the zoo.

One lady who recently joined her group was actually on the same boat out to Australia as my babushka. Until this group formed they had not seen each other for 50 years. When this particular lady was told about the group she asked if there were any other Russian women in the group. The person she spoke to on the phone said that there was a Russian lady and a tall Ukrainian lady. Straight away she asked if the Ukrainian lady’s name was my grandmothers, when answered yes she knew it had to be her.

I wonder how many other size 11-shoed babushkas there are out there in Cabramatta?