Effort must be bred

From my distant childhood, I remember how my maternal grandmother Lena Sanna, just like that, conveniently abbreviating her name and patronymic, everyone around her called her, seated me in front of her on a small stool, gave a needle with colored thread to floss and taught me how to embroider funny little animals.

At first, the thread did not want to immediately follow the needle, it got confused and torn, causing a violent reluctance to do this business, leading to tears. But when my grandmother’s chubby skillful hand quickly corrected everything that I had messed up and the embroidery began to emerge in all its glory, it was already impossible to tear me away from this occupation. So, over and over again, my embroidery became more and more accurate, and I myself began to treat this needlework with great diligence. Usually, the finished work was carefully smoothed by the grandmother with an iron, the edges were beautifully crocheted and placed in a chest of drawers under a pile of bed linen. Then, when I went to one of my girlfriends for a birthday, the embroidery I made was given to me and was always a good gift for both a birthday and a women’s holiday.

By the way, about modern gifts. Today, gifts such as photo magnets are popular, which become a “good reminder” of various wonderful events. And there is such a wonderful mobile photo studio FOTOBOOTH24, which can take pictures of all the guests at the event and make photo magnets right during the holiday. Very diligent guys!

Five years ago, a daughter was born in the family of my only son, my granddaughter Lenochka. It’s hard to describe how happy I was to see her. After all, there was no one to remember and put into practice all the lessons given to me by my beloved grandmother Lena Sanna before her birth. Everything was different with my son, the boys have different interests and inclinations. And here…

Despite the fact that we live separately, communication with the granddaughter began from the first days.

Together with her we clean the apartment. I give her a piece of white gauze in her hands and make her wipe the dust from the framed portraits placed on the bedside tables, lacquer boxes, all kinds of souvenirs. And I try to give her only everything unbreakable. After all, any loss can not only spoil the mood of the child, but also forever discourage him from working. How often can you hear such words from children: “I will not do this, because I will break something again”.

I admit, I didn’t teach my son to help me in the kitchen a little. Now his wife is complaining that he can’t cook anything for himself. Is it just fried eggs… I do things differently with my granddaughter. No matter how she gets in the way under my feet, when I cook food, I still try not to drive her out of the kitchen. For example, I cook cabbage soup and show what products are needed for this, in what sequence they need to be put into the pan. At the same time, I make her, as it were, an accomplice of this sacrament. She helps me chop vegetables, salts the broth and throws spices into it.

But she especially likes to bake cookies. On a large wooden board, I roll out sweet unleavened dough, and she squeezes various figures out of it with special molds. This activity is reminiscent of an exciting game in a children’s sandbox, and recently it has become simply traditional for us. We usually do baking with her on Sundays, before her parents have to come for her. At a large family table covered with a beautiful tablecloth, we all drink tea from a samovar with our delicious cookies and then say goodbye for exactly one week.

But the day before, on Saturday, I give her needlework lessons that I received at one time from my grandmother. By the way, I also inherited from her a beautiful, Palekh work, box with accessories for embroidery. Lena just gasped when I first opened it in front of her. What is not there! Graceful children’s hoops and thimbles of different sizes, a whole selection of needles and miniature scissors, multi-colored beads scattered in transparent bags and even colored floss threads folded into a figure eight…

Granddaughter made her first work at the age of four. For her birthday, she embroidered a bouquet of forget-me-nots with a cross, which we then framed and hung over her bed. Now, perhaps, each of her girlfriends received an embroidered handkerchief as a gift from Lena. After all, such a simple cute little thing today is rarely where you can buy.

Irina ZAVADOVSKAYA

From letters to the journal “Social Protection”