English version by Anca Șovagău
Original version in Romanian by Natalia Luncaș Ionel, available here: Bunica Zina
Photographer: Vlad Bodarev
“I hope I will get to see my grandchildren having a better life. I believe that’s why they came to Ireland.”
We arrived in Maynooth earlier than we planned. I hoped to walk more on the street, but the rain wave scared me, and I rushed towards Grandmother Zina’s house. Truth be told, the rain only lasted 5 minutes, but either way, I was glad to get to know earlier the lady who kept repeating on the phone: “Off, but I didn’t get the chance to finish, to work on my teeth. Only in summer. How will I interview like that?” My father wears dentures and I know well of this argument of “I am not able to laugh with all my teeth “, so it wasn’t hard for me to convince her.
“I told Natasa (Natalia) that I am not doing this for myself, but for Lorenus and my other grandchildren. That I won’t live forever, but I will be happy if they will remember me like this”, tells my grandmother Zina, visibly nervous when I was fixing her collar.
Zinaida Arvinte, 66 years old, originally from the Republic of Moldova. Born in a family with seven siblings in the village of Bobletici, county Singerei and transferred later for work in Balti city. She worked 43 years as a seamstress at one of the biggest factories in Moldova, parallelly raising 2 girls: Alina and Natalia. She is the grandmother of two boys and one girl, all her three grandchildren were moved to Ireland with their families. “If I had known that I would raise my girls so well, I would have had more children, but I had no time because I was working always a lot.”
The nickname Lorenus is the first sign that the little 8-year-old girl, daughter of the Irish Lauren and the Moldovan Natalia, is raised with love in a house where Romanian language is at the front of the table. I say this as I see that in the same family, they speak three languages at the same time: Romanian, English and Russian. Asked how she manages to communicate with her Irish son-in-law, grandmother Zina remembers amused how she tried to tell him something using Google Translate. But probably the translation was wrong because her son-in-law first blushed and then started to laugh and he laughed all day. She does not remember what exactly she wanted to say to him, but since that day she understood that would be better if they used sign language.
-Natalia:” How do you feel in Ireland?”
–Grandmother Zina:” I am very well. On my children’ side, I am very well. I have no one left at home. My parents and my husband’s parents passed away, so I have no reason to live there anymore. I would only guard the walls of my house. I still have siblings there, but here I have my girls and I couldn’t resist without them. It’s true that hurts me when I see how much they get to spend on us. They take us out, they buy us a lot of goodies. They also took us to France and Spain. They spoil us all the time.
At the same time, I would like to be able to do this with my parents because I never took them anywhere and this is a big regret I have. My mother lost her mother when she was 7 years old. She had me when she was 22. I was the second child of the family and after me, another 6 siblings followed. My parents never knew what the rest was. They didn’t have the chance to see other countries and their well-being was every time we visited them. In a certain way, I am happy that I have such a peaceful way to get old. After our parents pass we become other people, we get to have other kinds of thoughts about how it would have seemed appropriate for us to do, and we realise that we weren’t able to show our parents all our gratitude for their efforts in raising us. It is hard for me in Ireland because I don’t know English, but how should I complain if I am beside my girls?”
Grandmother Zina came to Ireland in 2017. Initially, she had no plans to stay. She came here only to bring her oldest grandchildren whom she had in her care for 2 years. And after one week in Ireland, she understood that she couldn’t live on her own in Moldova.” I brought them over, I left them, and I went back but when I entered my empty house, I felt a big pain in my heart! Who needs an empty house? And I told my husband.: Fedea, we need to do something. Without my girls or my grandchildren, I am not able to live. Especially since Natasha was always asking us to go to her. There was no day that she wouldn’t ask us if we didn’t change our minds.”
The decision to move to Ireland was also influenced by their financial situation, about which the grandmother spoke with sadness. We both worked all our lives, but our pension is extremely low. I have a little bit over 1000 lei per month (the equivalent of €51), but Fedea, after 45 years of working in construction started with a pension of 850 lei per month (the equivalent of €44) It is very insulting. He worked as an electrician for apartment blocks with 9 -12 or even more floors. It is an extremely hard job. But in the year that he retired in Moldova, they voted the law to only calculate the last five worked years to people’s pension payments. The problem was that in those last five years, my husband had two surgeries on his heart, so he didn’t have many salaries to be calculated and that’s how he ended up with the insulting low payment that he got. The money wasn’t enough not even to pay our bills, not to talk about anything else”.
After arriving to Ireland, Grandfather Fedea tried again to work in construction but because of some new complications in his heart, he had to get another heart surgery. He previously had done two implants in Moldova for which he had to pay 800 euros. In Ireland, with a medical card that he obtained thanks to his medical problems, he got all the interventions for free.
Note: The age to retire in Ireland is 66 years old. (Source: Citizen Information), in Romania is 63 years old for women and 65 years old for men (the source: CNPP) and in the Republic of Moldova 60 years and 6 months for women and 63 years old for men/source: CNAS)
The daily routine of Grandmother Zina is her granddaughter’s routine. She takes her to school in the morning, then she prepares lunch. She picks up the granddaughter from school in the afternoon, and they all spend together the entire evening. Exceptions are the days when the parents are taking the girl to different extracurricular activities. Sometimes she goes to the restaurant together with the family and she seems so sad when she says that she doesn’t see Elena, her older daughter, that often. What does not seeing her daughter very often mean for Grandmother Zena? – Once every two weeks.
– “How lucky are your girls because they managed to convince you?”
– “Yes, I let them convince me because I was thinking that maybe all this love, I couldn’t share it with them when they were small, and I have the chance to do it now. At least now I can be as much as I can with them, to show them how much I love them, and what they mean to me. Sometimes I regret that I have always been so busy working or with other things, but… Once you cross the heel, there is no going back.”
– “You have three grandchildren you raised them all. In your opinion, what do you think is grandparent’s role in their grandchildren’s life?”
– “You know, sometimes I look at them and I can’t believe they are my grandchildren. Even Laurenus – she is so like Natasa that I see her like my own daughter. Is like God giving me another chance to be Natasha’s mother again, but this time with much more time to offer and with the chance to fix what I have then done wrong. “
– “That’s so profound. I find myself in this continuous rush and my conscience scolds me enormously. I feel guilty about it. What is exactly the difference between Zina, the mother and the grandmother?”
– “There is a significant difference. When you are a mother and you have small children, you also have a lot of problems: work, house, creche/school, a family to support. Yes, you love them, but you are not able to give them all your attention, or at least all the attention that they deserve. And this is when the grandparents come into the picture. I educated my girls the way I was educated. I was strict as a mother, I wouldn’t allow them everything they wanted, or I would raise my voice at them. And, you know, I believe that the age also counts a lot. I had Alina in January when I wasn’t even 21 years old, but I look now at my girls who married later in life, they are more prepared emotionally for having children, and they seem to make them present and dedicate themselves more to them.”
“Now, I can honestly tell you that I love my grandchildren more, even more than I love my daughters. My daughters already know it. I seem to be a mother once more, one more time, with much more free time to share.”
– “Thank you so much. You made me think about many things with this approach I have one last question and then I will let you do noodles with. What is the greatest wish of Grandmother Zina? It doesn’t necessarily have to do with your grandmother’s role. Maybe you want to visit any special country on Everest Mountain?”
– “A wish to end up somewhere I don’t have. I got where I had to. and I am happy with how I lived my life. But I have some regrets: I couldn’t say my last goodbye to the people I loved as I wasn’t able to be with them in their last moments. My father died on the 25th of May. I went to the funeral and came back the following Tuesday because my daughter Natasa had to go to the United States. So, on the Sunday of the same week, my younger sister also passed away suddenly. I regret terribly that I couldn’t go back for her, and I have to carry this regret with me every day. But thank thankfully, I can live beside my children. I am glad that they are well and I am. There’s nothing else that I wish for. Just for my children to be healthy and to reach two levels further than us in life. We had a better life than our parents, our children are better than us and I hope to get to see my grandchildren with even a better life. I believe that this is the reason they came to Ireland.
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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.
