Sociological Autobiography

Sociological autobiography

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This autobiography belong s to my grandmother in her own words. I have already crossed the ninety-year milestone. How long the Lord will keep me in this world is only in His jurisdiction. Therefore, I decided to describe, if I have time, at least my childhood and youth. Often, when I speak with annoyance about some events of the present, my grandchildren notice that "now there are different times and a different morality." I think that the laws of morality are the same for millennia. “To be a person is, first of all, to be free from and to have your own, to have your own inner core. It is a way of separating from, isolating from, a way of becoming equivalent or stronger than the surrounding nature, inner nature and social environment. Inside this path there are also different branches and options, different visions of development directions”( Elder & Rockwell, 2009).

I remember myself from about the age of three. We lived in a house at a school near city. My father was appointed a teacher back in 1990, after the First World War he was lucky to return to his school. The school stood on the edge of the road, opposite it is a temple, almost at the very river is the priest's house. Then it was my whole world. School near the border, across the river. In that meadow by the river, my mother and I gathered flowers.

In front of the temple was a large area. There, every evening, border guards held evening prayers. I really liked that. They stood beautifully in the ranks. They sang evening prayers and a hymn. And at the end of the line, usually (when it didn’t rain, of course) we, two three-year-old girls, I and the priest’s daughter, “taking under the peak”, stood even though we didn’t have such a peak. On my head was a white panama with red fields. Mom later told me this. She also said that the border guards stood in line and were waiting for us. The boss allegedly said: “Ladies are somewhat delayed today. We should wait. ” In any case, everyone laughed for a long time.

Various funny stories happened with the border guards. I remember how a lot of marmalade was brought to the shop and in all his houses they ate with bread. In our house, too, I didn’t take this marmalade in my mouth, I really didn’t like its color, so I didn’t even try it. Mom was upset, and I was stubborn. But one evening, on the way to school for dancing, one border guard looked at us and, seeing that I was once again giving up marmalade, he corrected it instantly: he squeezed me with his knees and smeared the marmalade on my face with a spoon. Then he let me go and went to the dance hall. Embarrassed, I hid behind the doors, cried a lot there and, apparently, accidentally licked my lips, quickly went into the hall, found this border guard and pulled him behind his uniform (he was dancing). He apologized to his lady and turned to me: “Well, how?” And I reply: “Anoint me again!” “Again, everyone laughed heartily. So I am laughing at them all.

In winter, the school was noisy, in the summer it was quiet. I played with the sons of a priest. They were older than me, but they treated me well. Their sister, my girlfriend Verochka, died of diphtheria. I was immediately taken for vaccination. This was my first such long trip - as many as ten kilometers. In the summer, his relative, a girl of about seven or eight, visited the controller. She came to me to play almost every day. Together we went to the meadow behind the school and to the rye field to collect cornflowers, which I especially liked. Mom allowed us to walk only along the clearing so that we would not get lost. The rye seemed high, tall. Later, when I was growing up, I made such walks alone. The rye field was not so big. Then I saw in my dreams more than once that I was walking along a rye field, where cornflowers grow here and there, and a blue-blue sky above the field. To be a person is, first of all, to be free from and to have your own, to have your own inner core. It is a way of separating from, isolating from, a way of becoming equivalent or stronger than the surrounding nature, inner nature and social environment. Inside this path there are also different branches and options, different visions of development directions. “Life paths are winding, but the main question is who defines it. Usually, if you do not define it, your life path will be determined by others”( Turmel, 2004).

There is another strange dream that I saw in early childhood, and now I no longer see. It’s like I’m in some closed courtyard: there are white stone walls and an abandoned house around, not a soul around, only birds chirp and insect. And on a white stone wall, red roses curl. And above me is the blue sky. It’s strange. I didn’t see anything like that at that age. When I grew up and told my dream to my mother, she decided that I saw the village of our distant ancestors - the Crimean Tatars, who were expelled for anti-state activities. My grandfather even had documents for a family estate in the Crimea, which, of course, was destroyed during the revolution. Alas, I was not destined to see the land of my ancestors, although I really wanted to. How, are you not a person? Well, what are you ... And we have long been, and even advanced (Silverman, 1996).

Vivid memories of how I first performed on stage. It was 1921 and 1922 was coming to an end, I was three years old. I know this for sure, because my brother has not yet been born (he is four years younger). There was a Christmas tree at school, they put “live pictures”. On the stage on a stump sat a boy in a fur coat and fur hat, with a beard of tow and with the inscription on his chest "1921." Someone recited something. I was elevated. I was wearing a dress made of white crepe paper , With white socks on my feet, a golden paper crown on my head and a golden rain in my loose hair. I have the inscription "1922" on my chest. Mom brought me onto the stage and, when I played my "role", took me to our room. Obviously, there was no money on either the dress or the shoes. But I was very pleased with myself, and people also liked it. I still remember all this clearly. If you look at my children's photos, I have homemade slippers on my legs. And in that photograph, where my parents are in a coat, I only have a woolen blouse, and not at all my little coat and boots ... In the summer in those days, the children even ran barefoot, they wore shoes or boots only to the temple. I went to the temple often, and if something happened there - a wedding or christening, or even a funeral service this was a kind of event. A personality can both grow, build, develop, and fall apart, degrade. An even more common option is to simply function, simply to go with the flow of life, without degrading, but also not in growth.( Dermott, 2014).

My dolls were homemade, but there was one porcelain, with blonde hair, that opened and closed my eyes. My father brought it to me from Riga and put it next to me in my crib. This doll had beautiful lingerie and a red velvet dress. When I woke up in the morning, I saw a sleeping “creature” next to me and exclaimed: “What kind of someone else’s little girl is in my bed?” I was very proud of the doll and her dress, I even took it with me to the temple until the priest made a remark to me, I didn’t do that anymore. To my question “why?” He patiently and very sensitively explained that the doll is so beautiful that parishioners look at it and not at the icons, and in this way, I distract their attention from prayer. The doll's name was Tamara.

On the road between the school and the church, an “honor gate” was built. A gig drove up, the bells rang. Archbishop John stood in front of the gate. He was met by the local priest Boris Raman and several priests who arrived. I remember a priest from Karsava and father, we lived for ten years next door to him. Bread and salt were brought to the Lord by the warden of the parish. Then a solemn service was held in the church, then there was lunch at the priest’s house, and later all the priests, together with the Archbishop, went out to the river through the priest’s garden. How the shrine is kept in our house, the photo of the Lord with an autograph - he gave it to my father. I did not meet with Bishop John again. When we moved to Riga, I participated in a requiem in the country, where he suffered a martyrdom. The archbishop was brutally murdered on October 12, 1934.

I learned to read early (at the age of four). A brother was born, and so that I did not interfere, my father began to take me to class. I should have sat on the first desk next to a very neat girl, "do not spin, do not chat and do not indulge." I was given a slate. It was possible to draw on it, and if there was no more space, wash it with a damp sponge suspended on a cord. And sometimes I listened to how my father teaches children. Although no one taught me, by the middle of winter I was reading. At my request, I was given a book, the same as that of other children. The book did not have a cover, as well as a beginning and an end, later I found out that it was called "Living Word". After my education , I join teaching for entire of my life.

Life passed away fast and I crossed my youth, and now entered at an old age. A few years ago I had the opportunity to calmly, without fuss, visit the "paradise" of my childhood. I again went to the places of my childhood. The temple, chapel, priest’s house are preserved. The school building was almost destroyed, only its small part remained: our apartment of two rooms, a kitchen, a pantry and a corridor. This pilgrimage trip made a deep impression on everyone. My colleague Sylvia traveled with me, for whom everything was new, unprecedented, she said that she could not even imagine such beauty.

References

Dermott, E. (2014). Intimate fatherhood: A sociological analysis. Routledge.

Elder Jr, G. H., & Rockwell, R. C. (2009). The life-course and human development: An

ecological perspective. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2(1), 1-21.

Silverman, L. K. (1996). Developmental Phases of Social Development.

Turmel, A. (2004). Towards a historical sociology of developmental thinking: the case of

generation. Paedagogica historica, 40(4), 419-433.