Story of Anna part II

- Yesterday you started telling my mother's story, grandma. - reminded shyly granddaughter, helping grandmother to button up her lousy pyjama shirt on the back. The buttons often got tangled in grandma's great pride, impressive long and ash-grey braid, the last standing proof of grandma's long gone beauty.

- What did I say, my dear?

- You mentioned a red hair boy, and how mother presented my father to you after starting a new school...

- Ah yes, your father Dariusz. What a handsome man, he was, what a handsome man...

- Yesterday you said he was skinny and white.

- Not skinny and white, my dear. He was tall, slender and pale, just as an intelligentsia representative could be. But first, let me focus on my beloved child. I'll tell you dad's story a different night, you must understand, I'm very old . Once my brain starts wandering, I lose myself in a tale and never come back to the main plot. Where did I stop?

- My mother met my father, a math teacher, at a new school. You met him a couple of days later...

- Thank you, my dear. Yes... Proud, loud, daring Anna found herself an ideal man - a background to her life, a silent shadowy servant who was happy to serve loyally on every command, without asking questions, and - what's most important - without causing too much trouble. Until a certain moment, I want to say. At first, I found him a little cowardy and odd, not the best guest type you could wish for. That day, when Anna came home holding his delicate, little hand, he handed me a bouquet of lovely flowers, gave my husband a bottle of homemade spirit and didn't say a word for a good twenty minutes! Not only did he let Anna lead the whole conversation until we sat down to eat all together, but he also didn't interrupt her once, even when she mistakenly called his sister Marlena instead of Małgorzata. I thought his sister's name was Marlena until the day of their wedding. It wasn't the proudest moment of mine, when I cheered for Dariusz's sister, Marlena, believe me, my dear.

But, as I'm talking about your mother, she loved Darek the way he was. They complemented each other. She was very patient and sweet with him, as much as he was with her. When asking him a question - implying she would do ask, as most often she just carried away with whatever she found necessary - she was very respectful and gave him as much time to reflect on the matter as needed. I saw her thousands of times yelling at her youngest sibling Jan: 'Are you deaf or what, answer when I'm talking to you!'. As you know, uncle Jan's temper is quite... non-existent. But I never saw her behaving this way with Darek. She used to call him my treas, so fragile and dependenture and treated almost the same way she used to treat my father and her grandfather, Czesław - with a certain disarming tenderness and calm in her voice and movements. It reminded me of a way your uncle Jan behaved with newborn puppies. She used to put delicately her strong, massive hand on his thigh or shoulder as if he was built from the mist and could dissolve at any moment. Just as if she had instinctively prevented the future...

She loved your father with all her heart. 

Your mother was 18, a young, innocent and curious mind, promised by my husband to that cobbler from Denka. They were the same age and his father was happy to leave all his possessions to him, as he was the eldest and the only son. We tried to reason with your mother but she always pretended she didn't hear us. Rude, it was, very rude, but I do not blame her at all. After being promised to my husband and having lived almost forty years without having love towards my life companion, I didn't push her too much. I knew what she wanted to avoid, and she knew I knew. Though we never spoke about it, in one way or another, she sensed what was my marriage built on and didn't accept it. She dealt with that whole situation with what I liked calling Anna style- one day, after a Sunday mass, when all folk was leaving the church, she stopped for a second and very loudly, so everyone could witness the scene, and declared that she was in love with a gentleman from another village and was going to marry him, and if anyone forced her to marry the cobbler from Denka, she'd kill herself before the arranged wedding. No one dared to condemn her in public, and little did she care about what people murmured behind her back. I felt sorry for the cobbler but it finished well for him - got married two years later and is a proud father to six sons, all strong like bulls and smart like foxes.

Your father, instead, was a man of 33 years, intelligent, educated, with a quite rigid reputation at stake. Had been disrespected by the people, he would have lost his job from one day to another. What's quite significant, before having met your mother, your father was married to a graceful, kind woman named also Anna. I will tell you more about Anna and Darek another time if you don't mind, my dear. - grandmother wiped gently her face with an old handkerchief, feeling very warm and sweaty, despite freezing cold wind blowing outside the hut. Was she tired by another long day of her life? Did she feel nostalgic and missed her daughter?

- In one way or another, the folk in Żarna accepted Anna, and our folk accepted Dariusz, the math teacher. God blessed all and no one dared to threat their beautiful love. Naturally, Anna had to study math as hard as any other student, and they didn't show off at school. Two months after seeing each other, your father asked for Anna's hand. He arrived in our village with his old mother for an official dinner with me and my husband. I remember his proposal very well - his voice trembling and his jaw shaking, like a little boy who got caught plotting some mischief. I was asking myself how does he lecture his students? Anna, on the other hand, was all moving around on her chair like a wasp, waiting for him to finish his well-prepared, probably memorised by heart, speech. Once ended, she didn't let us speak. She jumped on his beloved and hugged him greatly, kissing and crying. She kissed his mother too, I think she truly liked her not as her fiancee's mother but as a person. As you know, your second grandmother died very early, before your sister was born. She and your mother knew each other for merely a couple of weeks but the time they spent together was filled with love and respect. She treated Ludmiła the way she didn't treat me that much.

- Do you know the story of my second grandmother, Ludmiła? I'd like to hear about her a little bit more.

- I do, my dear, I do know many stories. If you remind me, I will tell you Ludmiła's tale another time.

As mentioned earlier, your mother and father got engaged two months after having met, in autumn, and organised a modest but lovely wedding at our possession early spring. The folk gossiped the wedding was a cover for a bastard to-be-born but this was not the case. They just didn't want to live without each other. Your mother moved to Darek's house, the one you and your sister were born, near Żarna forest. He was working at school. Your mother, who graduated a special class, wanted to attend university to keep educating herself and become a doctor, but he didn't want her to leave. I found it very unfair, for he was able to work in his field of interest and she was stuck in that old ruin of your house with an old mother-in-law, who needed assistance all the time, my poor wild bird captured in a love trap, without a way to escape. She wanted to cure people so badly all her life, and yet so easily gave up on her biggest dream, let your father make her what she never wanted to be - a housewife whose world was as vast as a farmyard. When I saw her becoming more gentle and quieter, I realised that what I'd always desired - to see her this way - was wrong. I was losing her, losing my Anna. I also resented so much for all the trouble she cost me and my husband, for all sleepless nights and moments when she'd threated us and yelled how much she hated us. She didn't yell at her new husband and his mother, nor at his sister, Małgorzata, your aunt. She had no one to yell at; she gradually calmed her temper. Or was she just growing up? Maybe the latter. Or maybe, and it's only my deep thought, she was just bored by the repetitiviness of the daily routine of a housewife in Żarna with no friendly soul to yell at. After all, your father's family is an essence of sweet and loving Christians. Who would she quarrel with? Who should she yell at? Don't get me wrong, my dear, I was happy seeing your mother's nerves getting civilised. Truth is, I wasn't happy to know it happened after she had moved out. Had she calmed herself when living with us, I wouldn't have disliked her earlier and maybe our relationship would have been different. But it was too late now - time flying by, your mother changed and it wasn't my victory, it was theirs. 

- Is this why I remember my mother as sweet and gentle?

- Yes, my dear. Anna I knew died the day she married your father. Don't get me wrong, she still showed her character, took initiative and all decisions in her family, talked much and spoke with that loud, deep voice of hers. But she showed character, not bad temper, took initiative when necessary but not stole it from others, talked much but with excitement rather than with anger, spoke loudly but didn't yell. That summer, your grandmother Ludmiła died choking on a piece of nut and Anna had to give up on her work-related dreams, as the house needed a proper female hand. Not that grandmother Ludmiła was of any help, poor creature stuck on a wheelchair and without left hand, but at least she was a woman. All men in your father's family were well-educated, intelligent people who didn't put too much thought in that old, falling house and impoverished farmyard. Just like your second grandfather, all they cared about were books, math, physics and other whims I don't know why a human should dig into. Two years later your sister was born. Then, six years later, it was you. That's the story.

- No grandmother, this story is incomplete. It doesn't explain what happened before I have come to this world, what happened to my dad and my mother. Why don't you go into detail, paint them so I can see the colours, unveil more about the most recent events?

- My dear, dear child. If you want to know what happened next in Anna's life, you will need to wait until tomorrow. And now, hand me over some milk. My throat is swollen.