Tag #125099 - Interview #89859 (Estera Sava)

My parents’ marriage was a true love match. This is how they met. My father lived in Bacau and was as good as married. The legal marriage had already been performed and the wedding was to come in three weeks. He happened to pass by the small town of Valea Rea. He was friends with my mother’s cousin. And my mother was there, in front of the butcher’s shop. So he sees her and tells his friend: ‘Sofico, who’s this sweet girl?’ – ‘That’s my cousin!’ – ‘I’d like to meet her!’ And my mother’s cousin says to him: ‘Why on Earth would you want to meet her? You’re getting married in three weeks! I’m having a dress made for your wedding…’ You see, my mother’s cousin had been invited to the wedding. ‘It doesn’t matter, I want to meet her’ – ‘Get out of here, mind your own business. If he [her father] hears about it, he’ll chase you around with an axe in his hand!’ Her father was a butcher, and these are rough people! But he says ‘I’m not leaving this place until I get to meet her!’ And so he did. He got divorced, and he never had his wedding, although he had nothing personal with the other woman. And, four years later, he married my mother. This is another story, because my maternal grandfather was always against this They went to a wedding, and it was winter, and my mother, who wore a low-necked dress, caught a bronchopneumonia. You see, 90 years ago, this was a serious lung disease! It was no joke. They called the doctor, because that small town had its own hospital. And the doctor said: ‘She’s got a bronchopneumonia, it’s quite complicated’ and things like that. ‘Well’, my grandmother said, ‘that’s it, he got my daughter suffering from a lung disease, let her marry him, because he’s the one she loves!’ And she wired my father, who came to Valea Rea. No sooner did he get there, than my mother’s fever began to vanish and she felt much better before the day was over. So they let her get engaged with my father and marry him.