What a motherless & numerous family can teach us, and what we can teach back
10 lessons from a motherless poor family
#1 We don’t know better
We don’t know better than what we’ve seen. Strange accidents of imagination rarely leave room to desires and dreams about what we could do or how else we could be. But until that moment, we are nor sad, nor happy for more than an hour maybe. It’s all good somehow. We live within a sort of grace that spontaneous photography may catch better than the merciful eye who sees possibility and impossibility, poverty and chance, help and lack or deficiency.
What MOGA’s eye saw
That’s what Moga saw, the 2m tall photographer with a heart as clear as a child’s, when he went to visit Andreas’s family in a small Eastern Europe village called Miercurea Sibiului. Life in a cubicle, a rural universe, whose borders were as close to the skin as the walls of a small room full of people. Chance was a TV show, and water nothing than nature’s spoil.
Alina, the young lady who met this 11 member family still remembers they called “sink” the washbasin in the yard where water came only when it rained. It seemed normal and almost sufficient when they said it. That’s what I call the grace of not-knowing better.
#2 Strangers can be friends
Andreas’s family is made up of 3 daughters and 3 sons, 2 grandsons and 1 granddaughter, 1 daughter in law, and a dog. His wife died of heart attack few years ago and they don’t know what made that happen. They remained a motherless family. He’s also a breathing pile of illnesses that took his power to work. On one of her visits, he took Alina outside and told her how worried he is for them when he’s dead.
Alina met the family thanks to an Easter lamb. Well, it may sound as a predestination if you think “hazard” or “accident” is just a clumsy name for destiny or compatibility of chances. She had gotten a lamb as an Easter meal gift, and since that was not part of her Easter menu as a ritual, she thought of giving that to someone who really needs it. A work colleague mentioned Andreas’s family, so that’s how Alina got to Miercurea.
#3 Love has nothing to do with one’s economic resources
The house they live is so small and crippled that only a loving family can make it a home.
#4 One needs a spin-around space to live
It’s not how much space you’ve got, but how you use it that makes the whole difference. So, living outside the house is inevitable when you have so little space like Andreas’s small community.
#5 When mother is not around, we look for a mother
Cristian is only 4. His mother left on a mission to escape. No one knows clearly where she is. She stays a memory in their stories. But Cristian is a smiling and playful child who finds a mom in all the women in the house. Does that make him lucky?
Alina is 14. She is one of Andrea’s daughter and a high school student. A beautiful girl haunted by her age and a rebel as any intelligent creature would be in her situation. She quickly got attached to Alina, the visitor, due to their common name. One evening she even called her on the phone to promise she would try to handle things wisely at school and with friends who court her. Andreas believes Alina, the benefactor, would be a good god mother for his rebel child, as if the match is natural, and her presence a protective one.
What if the mother has a severe handicap like Ioana’s mother, Erica (37), Andreas’s elder daughter. Does she have the hug and strong words of a mother? Is she a real mother for Ioana? Or do they share the same womb silence they once shared? Who knows…
#6 Everyone needs a role. Age is an excuse
Mihaita is 14, and Iohan is 20. They are the providers of the house in an age of weakness. If for many kids school holiday is the Saturday of the their childhood, for Mihaita it is the Monday of his work week. That’s when he works as a shepherd in the field, along Iohan, who didn’t have much of a chance to choose what we call a vocational path, a career. No one probably asked him what he likes to do, the horizon of education was not on his free-will menu. Yet, they got this field freedom in the middle of nature, they didn’t ask for, but they assume.
#7 Education is the best chance
Young Alexandra (10) is a secondary school student. Despite the conditions she lives in, she once whispered to her visitor, Alina: “I like reading.” In a universe with no laptops and Internet, she is among the first in her class and pretty proud of that. Once consciousness makes room for knowledge and self-esteem, there’s no way back.
#8 Smiling is nature’s way out when we don’t oppose it
Cristian, the 4 year old one, has no mother around and no father. He only met his mom at birth, and maybe somewhere deep inside his soul, he can still recognize her smell and voice.
His toys are functional objects he finds around, or any waste that doesn’t belong to anyone in particular. Except for the teddy bear he shares with the others.
#9 The sense of property & the low dose of selfishness
Talking about owners and belongings becomes ridiculous in a house where everything is shared. From space and food to air and water. It all belongs to the small community and the large family. Possessions get the same status as the books in a public library. So, then, I just wonder what are the limits of selfishness, if any?
And then compare this with a high consumerism we live on in the urban areas. What value do things have for us when we buy them just because we can afford them?
#10 Dignity
When Andreas talked to Alina about his near death, while shivering and trembling all the way up and down his body, his voice was clear, his mind lucid and responsible. He didn’t ask for medicines and medical tests, and didn’t put on a victim’s face on.
And then I think of all those moments I myself practiced victimisation so elegantly for tiny aspects that would be so easy to handle otherwise, if it weren’t for the beliefs attached to a thought. What happened to his ego?
4 lessons we can teach them
- People are neighboring souls and can empathise
Alina has been visiting the family for 2 years, and continues to. I watched her actions on Facebook. She dressed one of her friends in Santa Claus and brought Andreas’s children gifts on Christmas. She determined the tough guys in her motorbike club to donate their sponsorship funds, as well as give up some beer pocket money for children’s sake. And so they did.
2. Little + little = a lot
From times to times, she brings them school objects, food and clothing. Friends add their tiny contribution to support.
3. Those who help have been there before at some point in their lives
When I met Alina in a bar one evening, the anonymous benefactor who started it all, I asked her “Why?”
The question lingered in my mind from the beginning of our talk. Why is she helping them? Why are many of her friends helping them too? How come she can empathise with their situation? I thought she may reveal the secret of a hard life in materialist terms. Instead, she modestly told me: “They have so much love there. I felt that!” Then I could read her story between the gaps.
4. It doesn’t matter how you start your life, there are possibilities to grow
Alina is one of those who stopped and stepped in from nowhere. She’s a civilian of charity. She’s part of no organisation. She and her friends continue to assist the family on personal grounds. She gathered pencils and notebooks for the children, and encouraged them to go to school. She is a role model for them, even if they’re not mentioning it. Her presence, and the visits of all her friends who came along contributed little by little to showing them better.
We can help too
What they need at this point is firewood, food and diapers. Also, the house is falling apart, so building materials would be more than welcome. A fridge is also something they don’t have yet. Money would also cover for Andreas’s medicines and other personal needs for the children.
If anyone is willing to help will find a way. The best thing is to address Alina directly: alina.mitrea83@gmail.com
P.S. Bad intentions will be spotted immediately! So, don’t bother.
