Categories: Liga Seikste-Deksne

Yes, actually, my grandmother was the only person, who had time for me in my childhood, since my parents worked – the father was a tractor driver, my mom worked with livestock, the brother was 10 years older than I was, he attended school and had his own friends. Actually, I spent all of my childhood with my granny. Let’s say, she seemed to be very quiet and even-tempered and she never intruded upon anybody with her wisdom and life experience, with advice that, so to say, people did not ask for. However, she always kept an eye on that all the preserves were made for winter, that apples were peeled, herbs for teas collected.

            I remember a small detail. I was 4 or 5 years old, and my mom was going to bath me in the kitchen. They brought in the bathtub, mixed water and my granny came into the kitchen and asked very angrily, “Well, do we live in a desert? The child will be washed in plain water. Doesn’t any grass grow outside?” She always noted such nuances, and the insertions of that kind were very frequently heard in her everyday speech – you can do like this, but God sees everything. And she wasn’t the one who would run to church or would keep to the dogmas of a certain confession. For her God was everywhere, God saw everything, it was some higher force, but at the same time, God was very personal. I never thought in that age to discuss whether God existed or not, who God was, what God was. Let’s say, what most philosophers do. It was something very self-evident and present in any action.

            I remember that I once asked my granny: “You always speak about God, but tell me, how can you learn the difference between the creations of God and those of a human?” Then she smiled a little smile and pointed at the flowerpot on the windowsill and said that it’s simple – you see, the flower was created by God, but the pot – by a man. And, maybe, that was the moment when I made it clear for myself for the rest of my life how this world is organized – in general.

Researcher: Dr. philol. Valentīns Lukaševičs, Daugavpils Universitāte