The wood of childhood memories

I always talk with great pleasure about my childhood vacations in the countryside, with my grandmother on my mother's side - mamaia as they say in Muntenia - whom, although she was a real "gendarme", I loved very much. The other day I was on a visit and I was talking again about my "country", about the summer kitchen with the burned brick peasant oven, where they baked custard and apple pies and where corn was boiled on the pyros in front of the oven. I went home wrapped in these memories and kept thinking of that country life, where everything was done with effort, the water didn't come from the tap but from the well, the heat didn't come from the pipe but was made over time, chopping wood, taking the ashes from the stove, building the woodpile in the stove so that it burned well and waiting for the stove to warm up. But how nice that warmth smelled.

The beautiful wooden objects of childhood

As wood is always in my thoughts, I started to search my memories for my grandmother's wooden objects. I remembered how she used to wash laundry with rainwater and homemade soap in a wooden cup (albia), placed at an angle on a special stand also made of wood. I can't describe the whiteness of those washes, which were finally washed with water in which he put a little sineala (natural blue dye). It was perfect!

I remember the well where my grandmother used to beat the butter. The big wooden box with short legs, which she called a barn, where she kept the flour in one compartment and the flour in another. The little wooden washstand next to the water pump where the dishes were washed and drained. The table under the apple tree, made of unfrosted planks, where we ate lunch in summer. Of all the wooden spoons, teaspoons and wooden sucteurs, of the melted bottoms from so much use, of the little cup (copeietta) in which she kneaded the bread, the hull for the pies or the cozonac.

I also remember the spindles with which my grandmother would spin the wool at night, in the little house, by the light of the gas lamp, and how I would fall asleep in the sizzle of the spindle. The loom where she wove carpets, quilts, bedspreads, doormats and doormats, the war sweaters, the sieve where the hemp was beaten after soaking for a month in the puddle. The barrels, the grinders and the corn threshing machine in the storehouse.

I was reminded of the wooden beds with high wooden headboards, the cupboard that had glass doors at the top, painted and repainted over the years, a real exhibit shabby chic; of the simple shelf, with 3 poles resting on turned elements, on which my uncle's books stood; of the painted "big house" chest of dowry, in which my grandmother kept her dead things that she had carefully collected over the years and which she always showed me so that I would not forget; the little three-legged little table on which she used to spill the porridge and the little chairs around it; the old icon, painted on wood, which has watched over several generations, with the towel above it sewn with peasant patterns.

They are dear memories and fortunately, they are not the only ones. They represent a part of my life, of our past life, and I think it is good to remember them from time to time. We can build on them, we can and must improve life in the countryside, but I believe that the roots must not be cut. And if possible, let us keep objects from the past and integrate them into our present life. And above all, let us not forget.