Babka Žofka

She was my best great grandmother. She died when I was 4.

I visited her often. She made the best beans that I ever tasted. The bean was big as a £2 coin and all was organic because then there were no chemicals. I think chemicals were only used at that time in North America and the big farms in Europe. When I went to her family house she always had the beans in a huge black metalic casseroe on the table. I liked to touch the beans, the feeling was for me something beautiful. I loved the feeling of massaging the beans. When we were ready to go home she gave my mother beans and she would make me bean soup with carrots potatoes and sousages. I have never had a better bean soup than my mothers. Today the soup is still good but it is not the same as when my great grandmother grew the beans.

She had a two gardens one in front and one in back, where she grew a lot of fruit and vegetables. In the front garden she grew so many strawberries that I went there I ate all that I could find. She grew a lot of different berries (blueberry, redberry,blackberry,...), she also grew some apple trees, 3 or 4 plum trees, and plenty of raspberry plants. The vegetables ranged from potatos, onions and garlic, chives,... They grew in regimented rows.

I often slept at her house. In Slovakia TV had cartoons at 7pm for children which you would watch before bedtime on good night. She always watched the cartoon with me and after this we went to bed. When I started to learn how to ride a bike it was in front of her house and she saw how I rode the bike. A lot of things that I did for the first time she was there to see.

One memorable summer holiday my family was in Croatia for a week. When we were half way home we stopped at the petrol station. My father called my aunt. She told him that babka Žofka that day died. My sisters and I were waiting in the car. When my parents came back to the car, my mother was crying and I ask her what had happened, she did not speak to me and my father said that babka Žofka has died. I ask him, what does that mean and my mother, said with a tearful voice that I would never see her again. I started crying and asked why? She said that she went a long way somewhere where was much better for her. My mum and I cried all way home, my father cried just a little with my older sister. I think that younger sister cried because everyone else was crying. For the whole journey home there was the sound of tears.

And I never saw her again in real life only in pictures and in my memory.