#hungarianmemories

[koorimeyu]

Ungherese nostalgia 💕 #ungheria #goulash #hungarianfood #hungariangoulash #hungary #hungarianmemories #quarantena #covid19italia #covid #covid_19 #quarantine #hungariandinner #food #foodporn #foodphotography #foodpornhungary (presso Verona, Italy) https://www.instagram.com/p/B9um6_JI22f/?igshid=1f8ik20wqmmh3

[biborvarazs]

🇹🇯 3 a magyar igazság, +1 a ráadás. 🇹🇯 www.biborvarazs.etsy.com www.facebook.com/biborvarazs www.biborvarazs.meska.hu #magyaros #hungariandecor #hungariansouvenir #magyarosajándék #hungariangift #hungarianmemory #hungarian #magyaros #magyarosdísz #biborvarazs #freeship #decoupage #decoupageart #artisan #bottleart #magyarosüveg #címeresüveg #díjmentesszállítás #meska #meska.hu #etsy #egyediajándék #kézművesajándék #meskakincs #meskaalkoto #meskánvettem #meskaboltomvan #veddamagyart #hagyományőrzők #meska #magyarcimer https://www.instagram.com/p/B9ZIJb0hKgD/?igshid=11qs9eh914v0r

[hungarianmemories]

My Youngest Daughter

     My daughter Sofia Elisabeth is my youngest daughter and my youngest child.  She is nine years old and the light of my life.  I have three other children, the first one being grown up at 19 years old, and the other two more grown than not at age fifteen, a boy, and thirteen, a girl.  So I am acutely aware of how fast my little girl will grow up and move away from me, emotionally and physically too, when she'll want to spread her wings and join the world.  It's a scary thing.  Knowing that will happen.  Right now I cherish hearing her little girl voice call me "Momma" and ask a million questions a day.  I love that she hugs me, really buries her little body into mine and I feel her squeezing arms, hear her breathing, and feel her warmth. ��I bend over and kiss the top of her head and smell her hair.  I love that she loves hugging me.  I love that she loves me just because I am her mother.  I miss having a baby in my arms.  To feel that lump of flesh in your arms...again...is an ache that won't go away. No one can forget what that feels like.  And if they do, then they've already lost so much.

     Sofia is still at that age when there's still wonder in her child eyes about the world around her. She wakes up happy to greet the new morning and the first thing that she does is come into our bedroom to say good morning. Her sleepy eyes and soft swollen face meet my squinty look from my bed.  No matter, she comes over for a kiss and a hug and to take the iPad and play her games on it.  The charger is in our room only so this electronic distraction can be refueled for our daughter. So it's not just that she gives me a hug. If only it were that.

     After dinner time we went for a bike ride in our neighborhood that includes a golf course of eighteen holes and Lake Morey so we have many pretty places to bicycle. It's May and the first flowers are just popping through the hard ground left by a very long and gray winter that seemed to challenge even the oldest Vermonters.  Grass is turning that lovely green of Spring and birds are chirping and singing and fluttering from tree to tree.  The world is a great place for a nine year old girl on her bike.

[biborvarazs]

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[biborvarazs]

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[biborvarazs]

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[biborvarazs]

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[biborvarazs]

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[biborvarazs]

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[biborvarazs]

I ❤ 🇭🇺 Traditional hungarian decorational kitchenwares. I ❤🌶 I ❤🇭🇺 Tradícionális magyaros dekoráciojú konyhai dísz-és használati tárgyak. I❤🌶 www.facebook.com/biborvarazs www.biborvarazs.meska.hu #traditional #hungary #hungariandecor #kitchendecor #homedecor #folkart #hungariandecor #redpepper #hungarian #decoupage #handmade #handpainted #giftidea #hungariangift #tradicionális #magyar #magyaros #pirospaprika #fűszerpaprika #paprika #népművészet #hagyományörző #kézművesajándék #magyarországiemlék #hungarianmemory #egyediajándék #magyarosajándék #magyarosdekor #freeshipping #ingyenesszállítás #biborvarazs https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn9PrVUBbX0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=c8c5oi0mgu8v

[hungarianmemories]

everyone’s moving so fast...

I was leaving work at MGH sometime around 3:30 in the afternoon. I talked to my brother earlier in the day and he said that he’d pick me up at work. He said that he had a doctor’s appointment and would take me home afterwards. I was rushing down the crowded wide hallway to where he’d be waiting for me because if we left too late then we’d get caught up in a tangle of slow moving traffic.

I caught a glimpse of him sitting on a bench. He was wearing a wool hat, like men from the 1940s. sitting slightly hunched forward with his eyes looking upward at all the people brushing past him. He looked so old in that moment. And it took him a few seconds to see me walking towards him. I quickly sat down next to him and he just sat there amazed at how fast everyone was walking to somewhere else. As if realizing for the first time ever, he mused that “boy, everyone is walking so fast, so fast” as he shook his head in disbelief. In that moment my brother realized that he no longer was a part of that hectic speed of life. His had slowed down to that of a man with congestive heart failure at a relatively young age. His speed was that of an ejection fraction of 15% and whose life expectancy was six months. 

Those drives home were when we’d get to talk and spend time together. We’d talk on the phone everyday, always checking in and asking the same simple questions: “Hi, how are you? How’s Momi and Daddy? How’s your appetite? Feeling better? And then if it were Sunday night, we’d remind each other to watch “Antiques Roadshow” on PBS, our favorite show. I haven’t watched it since my brother died in 2000. It’s still on the air too. All the fun was gone because Geza and I loved the thrill of “the find.” Oh my God, we’d gush about the 16th century Milanese ceremonial helmut that was in someone’s attic for thirty years, or the painting worth millions, etc. As avid collectors of other people’s junk, nothing would be more fun than perusing the aisles of an antique fair. Where would our treasure be found?

I miss those days of hanging out with my brother because I didn’t have a lot of that when I was a little girl. Since my brother was nearly 20 years older than me, he was already grown up and out of the house when I came along to disrupt my mother’s and father’s mid life. Suddenly they had to care for a premature baby that they weren’t planning on having. A miracle, a gift, my sister said. More like, WTF? if you ask me. It had to be, sort of like the gift that felt like a curse too because how can you love something so much and then at the same time feel so burdened by this gift. Babies. That’s what they’re all about-a confusing bundle of soft, sweet smelling flesh and tireless energy to vex you and seduce your better judgement into falling in love. And there you have it: why we have babies. None of it makes sense and yet my arms ache for that small bundle of flesh. And they do grow up. Mine almost all grown at 11, 15 and 17 with the oldest being the know-it-all at twenty one. 

[hungarianmemories]

Silence

Silence. It’s something I hear too often, and too long, from my sister. She suddenly disappears from my life like she fell off the face of the earth. Then, after a time, she reappears as if nothing had ever happened and she was there all along. I don’t know why this happens or what it means, all I know is that it happens. One time my brother and I had a running bet as to how long it would be before our sister picked up the phone to call me. I think nine months had passed. The entire length of my pregnancy. It was an experiment then, twenty two years ago. She had heard from our father that I was pregnant so she called on my due date November 10th, to ask how I was doing. My son was born on November 16th and I saw my sister at the hospital on the 17th. It’s inexplicable. One time I had asked her about it when I was waiting for her to respond to my email and she said that her husband had commandeered the computer to watch missed TV shows from years before. She just doesn’t get it.

I guess she doesn’t have a strong sense of how what she does or doesn’t do affects her family or friends in her life. But it does, in a big way. I have often felt rejected or somehow neglected by my sister when I knew how much time and energy she spent on nurturing her friendships. Hence, the birth of that “experiment” so many years ago. I once gave some thought to the idea that after our father died that I would never see or talk to her again. My sister likes to believe that it’s not her “fault” and that it was all out of her control and that she was blameless, as if the universe conspired to make hardship for her when I’ve confronted her about why she didn’t call for so long or keep in touch with me. There’s something to be said for accepting responsibility, your role in the outcome. I admit that it was much easier for me to delve into my own world and not ask her about why she was absent from my life. After that, moving forward begins from a new slate and not one bogged down by half truths and deceptions. Maybe that’s why we have so many troubles, me and my sister. It’s hard to recognize where the truth hides and how to uncover the tangle of lies we tell our selves about what we want to believe. Maybe that Hungarian pride keeps us apart. And feeling unwanted is hard to shake off. 

[hungarianmemories]

Geza and Erzsebet with baby Geza Miklos early 1944, Budapest, Hungary

[hungarianmemories]

Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Memorial in Liberty Square, Boston, MA

It was a cold October day in Boston during the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution in 2006. We were there together with my father who was 90 years old! My kids were still too little to really appreciate the magnitude of this event and what it meant to their Papa. Sofia was a new two year old, Sierra was 6 years, Jeremy was 8 and Ryan was just about to turn 12 years old, just one year younger than my brother was when they defected from Hungary during the revolution in 1956. So sad that my brother didn’t live to see this day too. Amyloidosis took him from us at the age of 56 on July 24, 2000. 

[hungarianmemories]

Camp Kilmer in NJ

This was the camp that my family first arrived to in the United States in January 1957.

[hungarianmemories]

Camp Roeder

This is what the camp looked like in the 1950s when my parents were there as Hungarian refugees seeking asylum to the United States