English version by Anca Șovagău
Original version in Romanian by Natalia Luncaș Ionel, available here: Bunica Olga
Photographer: Vlad Bodarev
“You communicate the way you want, but myself, I will talk to my grandchildren in Romanian because I want them to know where they come from and what is their identity.”
(Intentional misspelling follows to preserve the authenticity of the dialogue.)
– I know that you speak Lomanian in Iland. I speak Lomanian as well, my mom too, and my dad and my grandmother”.
– “That’s right, – I answer I talk Romanian as well. What’s your name?”, I continue to talk with the feeling that I’ve known this girl forever.
– “I’m Sophia and she’s my sister Freya, and this is our grandmother. Did you come to meet her?”. Grandmother’s cheeks blushed when she saw us. She waited for us with food on the table, and she wanted us to taste at least one bit of her Transylvanian and Moldavian dishes. “My son-in-law is from Romania. I already know by heart how Transylvanian chopped pork is made”.
A big house with granddaughter’s drawings exposed all over the kitchen and with the living room converted into a gym for both the little girls and the grandmother Olga – suddenly the house is filled with a hum of happy people.
Olga Cernat – mother of Rodica and Elena, grandmother of six grandchildren, having her origins in the city of Ialoveni, Republic of Moldova, of a professional accountant, in September, she will be 69 years old. She has been living abroad for over 21 years. One of her biggest regrets is that she couldn’t spend more time with her older grandchildren and that’s the reason why she dedicated herself 100% to the small ones. Her youngest grandchild is ten months old.
ITALY
She lived in Italy for 18 years. She didn’t want to go there at all, but she was struggling financially too much. “I was thinking of going there before the time I did, but I want to wait a little for Elena to be bigger. – my youngest daughter and at the same time the oldest one just had her first baby boy. Rodica was asking me to mind my grandchildren and allow her to go instead. But now I told her, you can’t take the shepherd away from his sheep for us to feed ourselves. Especially because Elena was still in school.
Grandmother Olga is part of the generation of Courage it is what I call the ones that crossed thousands of kilometres at the beginning of the 90s in extremely difficult conditions just to get into a country where they will be able to live not only to survive. She didn’t go to Italy just seeking a new adventure/change/out of curiosity, like it happens today? Grandmother Olga left to be able to feed her family. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, from 1991 till 2022, the population of Moldova reduced to 1.5 million of inhabitants.
“If you would know how sorry I am that my first grandchildren were raised without me. It is very painful. I could see that other women working with me in Italy were making the same mistake: we were trying to fill in our presence to ease the love longing by sending them money. But no, they (the grandchildren) need the warmth of their grandparents. Only if I would have had a choice….”- her grandchildren living in Ireland must know all this when they talk about their identity, Grandmother Olga doesn’t finish her thoughts as they interrupt her, anxious to bake a pizza together.
IRELAND
She has three grandchildren in Moldova and 3 in Ireland. In 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, she decided to come to Ireland to help Elena with the kids. Sofia was almost three years old, Freya – one year and a half, then Adrian was born and that’s how her timetable got filled pretty quickly. She has an evening part-time job, but her main responsibility is her grandchildren.
“I have been a mother myself and like all mothers, I was always busy. I had no time to spend with my kids. I even worked in three separate places at the same time. Today, as a grandmother, I would give all the time in the world to my grandchildren.
Grandmother’s routine is pretty much the same every day: get dressed to feed my family, take the girls to school (in case Elena and Adi are not able to) and then work around the house holding Adrian. Evenings or weekends: the time to read stories. The books in Romanian she buys them from Moldova whenever she goes to visit either from her daughters-in-laws from Romania or from Irish libraries. She says that through reading she manages to connect with her granddaughters the best. Well, through cooking also.
When Vlad and I arrived at their house, little Adrian (10 months) had a fever and even though the grandmother was incredibly involved in our discussion she kept taking small breaks from it just to check how Adrian was feeling. I wonder, did grandmother Olga ever think that at almost 69 years old she would take care of a baby?
Asked to tell me which, from her point of view, would be 3 mandatory things that her grandchildren from Ireland should know when they talk about their identity grandmother listed:
- The origin: that we are both Moldovans and Romanian.
- Romanian language, regardless of their accent.
- Romanian and Moldavian traditions: The food, the clothes.
Three times I asked Sophia (6 years) from which country her parents are and the three times her answer was the same:” My mother from Moldova, my grandmother from Moldova and my dad from Lomania.” It was then clear to me that without the grandmother, the family would not be complete. In a country where only one street with 15 houses, there can be at least 15 nationalities.
In the case of the grandchildren born abroad, the grandparents don’t only enter their lives through those powerful emotional connections, but also through the direct connection with the roots of the nation in which they were born.
“Today as a grandmother I would give all the time in the world to my grandchildren”.
“You know my granfathel has in Lomania a lot of snails, a lot of plants and a lot of trees”, says Sophia enthusiastically.” “Yes, my cat from Moldova has kittens”, continues Freya meanwhile, on the eyes of both girls, you could read the excitement when they talk about the other world.” Elena and Adi talk mostly in English with the Kids and I told them: no, you communicate the way you want, but I will talk to them in Romanian because I want them to know where they came from and what is their identity, says the grandmother, firmly.
With snowy hair and hard-working hands, she tells me proudly that in September she will be 69 but the age is not an obstacle at all for the compulsory gymnastics each morning.” If I don’t do at least a little bit of exercise, I cannot find my place”, yells us the grandmother while she was preparing to show us some of her favourite exercises.” I wonder, could you convince my dad to exercise as well? He always complains of back pain, but never exercises”, says Vlad, the photographer, visibly surprised by how energetical our 69-year-old grandmother is. After two hours of nice noise and a great meal, we had to say goodbye. Grandmother Olga remained with the same red cheeks, same tender eyes and Freya and Sofia were just as curious as when we got there. Them – the girls, raised by two mothers: them, the mothers of the daughters.
I am not sure if the little girls are aware today how lucky they are that they have Grandmother Olga by their side, but what’s certain is that all these years spent together are like a fairytale story just because they have a “fairytale grandmother”.
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This interview is part of the longing campaign “Like Grandparents in Fairytales” – a project initiated by Natalia Luncas Ionel in partnership with the photographer Vlad Bodarev, the Embassy of Romania in Ireland, and the non-governmental organization Romanian Community in Ireland. The purpose of this campaign is to honour all the grandparents from the diaspora, not only the 10 ones participating in our interviews and at the same time thank them for the huge impact they have on the identity of their grandchildren living in the diaspora. Being as present as possible, our grandparents reconfirm the roots of our entire nation. On the cover of this magazine, you will be able to see where the 10 grandparents we discovered this year, started their journeys and where they are today. The next objective is to “spread” on our grandparent’s map as many stories as possible.
All copyrights belong to Natalia Luncas Ionel.
