Tag #133767 - Interview #78503 (Katalin Andai)

I knew my grandmother, Mari Perl, because she lived almost a hundred years. She was born in 1841. She might have had basic schooling because she could read, and she did read, mostly the prayer book. Just like a country woman. I was shocked by the fact that if she couldn’t eat something she said it would be good for Mari. And the servant ate the food she left. There was nobody else but the servant, a farm laborer’s wife who helped out if needed. But she raised her daughters to know how to run a house, and they could cook and bake, and they made all kinds of decorated fancy-cakes and sweets when their suitors came calling. My grandmother was a hard, energetic woman, but she had to be like that [in order to get on with housekeeping, the children, and the land]. But she read the prayer book night and day, and knew every prayer by memory. I can’t remember her ever reading anything else. I remember that she didn’t have glasses, she read the prayer book with a magnifying glass; I can still see her reading with the magnifying glass, but I could only see Hebrew letters there. I don’t think she was interested in anything else. Come to think of it, though, she was interested in gossip.