Aunt Roza's Courtyard

My aunt Roza also had a very big courtyard with beautiful green grass. The river flowed on both sides of the courtyard. In the summer we bathed in the river; in winter, when the river froze to ice, we enjoyed ice-skating on it. I joyfully recall how we once took off all our clothes and splashed about naked in our backyard river, with the people outside staring at us! In the spring, when the [akac] tree was blooming, we kids would climb on it and taste the fragrant white flowers.

I remember even in the winter climbing high up our [Eper] berry tree - my mother's jam sandwiches tasted best there! We marveled at every flower we saw. With our skinny hands we would find a little hole in the barbed-wire fence to tear off sweet smelling flowers and enjoy their fragrance. Then we would run after butterflies with their hypnotizing colors; when we were lucky, we would catch one.

All those little things - how happy they made us feel!. We sometimes busied ourselves by catching frogs; how could I touch them? But then it was interesting. We kept them in matchboxes so that they would not jump away.

Some gentile people would "borrow" Aunt Roza's courtyard for their horses or goats to graze. One afternoon, when no grown-ups were around us, my little gang took a small dish, and pulled a goat inside the storeroom. They milked the goat and declared that I had to drink the milk, because milk is for girls. Since I was the only girl in our gang, I drank it! People never again brought goats to our courtyard to graze. Of course we were reprimanded.

© David Muskal, 2001