Have you ever thought of what life would be like if you could do it all over again? I have. I know that I would have asked more questions for sure. My first questionable memory was when my parents asked us not to communicate with my grandparents in Soroksar, when I was about 7 yrs old. Our belongings were placed in the garden of the house where we lived. My parents asked the newspapers to photograph the mess as to how we were displaced from our home.
At the time we had no idea as children that my parents only rented the housing we lived in from my grandparents. At some point, my mom must have had an argument with my grandparents which led them to do what they did. The initial reason for the commotion was that my grandparents objected to my mom who was Svabish, marrying a Hungarian man from Fenyeslitke. You see, my grandparents had already picked out a man who my mother was supposed to have married of Svabbish decent. One thing is for sure, they are very hard working and clean people.
The term Swabian Turkey (German: Schwäbische Türkei, Hungarian: Sváb-Törökország) describes a region in southeastern Transdanubia in Hungary delimited by the Danube (Donau), the Drava (Drau), and Lake Balaton (Plattensee) inhabited by an ethnic German minority. This present-day minority, the largest German-speaking minority in Hungary, primarily lives in the counties of Tolna (Tolnau), Baranya (Branau), and Somogy (Schomodei) and are regarded as Danube Swabians.
Many years later, my grandpa explained why the eviction occurred. He even wanted me to get in contact with the witness who saw the occurrence.
We would walk on different sides of the street, and were no longer allowed to visit my grandparents from my mom's side.In any-case there, was a legal battle going on between my parents, and my grandparents. I was told also by my mothers former friend who helped us to immigrate, that in order for my parents to escape from all the financial obligations to pay the lawyers, they sought to defect, and leave the country. There were also charges pending for handling/smuggling foreign currency. The pretense was that my moms grandparents, my great grandparents were deathly ill. Evenso, for the entire family to get on a train, with visas was unheard of, because under the communist regime, they would always keep some of the family members behind.
This extreme tension between my relatives, marked the rest of my life. My mom wished that my grandparents would go bankrupt and spend their monies on medicine. She detested them for making her work so hard on the fields, tending after the horses, and hosting my grandpas Catholic parishioners. As a young woman who barely had money to feed her own children, she had to work hard on the corn and potatoe fields in order to provide. Though she was an excellent seamstress, my fathers wants, including a foreign car called the Taunus, at the time made her resentful. My dad always had an eye for the beautiful, and the delicious. My parents of course felt that they left the house they lived in, in much better shape, by having built a garage, etc. We vacated and left every belonging we ever knew in that home, including beautiful furniture. To this day, I don't know if it belonged to us or my grandparents.
This unforgiving disposition in my mom, compounded with her then yet undiagnosed bi-polar, made life difficult at best. My father was the peacemaker who always tried to soothe relationships that were often on the cusp of a meltdown. She would entertain friends and then find fault with them. Friendships were generally brief in nature. I wish I had a mom who truly looked out for my interest. Instead her words would always echo, it is your life, you do what you want. I lacked the guidance, and the affection that a daughter longs for. So I married young, which is of course a big no, no under my circumstances.
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