Tag #129774 - Interview #89857 (Mira Tudor)

At the time when my grandfather died, my grandmother worked for a noble family in Ramnicu Valcea – the Otetelesanus, a famous aristocratic family. In those days, the seamstress or the embroiderer went to the client’s house and stayed there for a few months to get the job done. Their son went to the same high school as my grandmother’s eldest son, Lazar Sasson, who was 18 when his father died. Mr. Otetelesanu knew my grandmother was hard-working and honest – she had made countless items of dowry and piles of embroidery for them. So he offered to send Lazar to Paris with his son to study medicine and become dentists. He said he would pay all his expenses if he agreed to act as a sort of undercover servant of the young Otetelesanu. He was supposed to look after him and make sure he didn’t do anything stupid – at that time, many of the young men who went abroad got carried away with the flow, started drinking and frequented women with a bad reputation. My uncle performed this job in an exemplary way. However, the ending was [sad] for my grandmother: my uncle fell in love with the laundress who washed his clothes; young Otetelesanu came back and became a doctor here, while my uncle stayed in Paris to work as a dentist. Thus Grandma lost the son on whom she relied the most.