Tag #140081 - Interview #78016 (rimma rozenberg)

My mother was appointed chief of the psychiatric department for men in the clinic in Kanatnaya Street. Since we lived across the street from there she went there on call at all times of day and night. Some patients didn't want to eat when she was not sitting there beside them. My mother also attended to patients in a psychiatric clinic in Slobodka [a neighborhood on the outskirts of Odessa]. The trams commuting there were infrequent and she had to walk most of the time.

My mother had very little time left for me, but there was friendship and love between us. I didn't have secrets from my mother. She was a wonderful person. She had a strong will, although she was very soft with her family, but first of all, she was devoted to her profession. She wasn't particularly interested in what she was wearing; she just thought she needed decent clothes to wear. If she wore fashionable hats, it was because she believed that she had a certain status and couldn't wear a kerchief like the clinic attendants, her subordinates. My mother didn't have many clothes, but all of them were good.

My mother didn't have time to do housework, and my grandmother was ill, so we hired a housemaid to do it all: cleaning, washing and cooking. Her name was Manya. Manya was a kind and decent old Russian woman, who was very religious. She lived somewhere near Odessa and commuted by a local train every day.