Tag #148349 - Interview #95620 (Mera Shulman)

When we returned to Riga from Livani in 1925 Daddy at first rented a small two-room apartment in a large house. There was neither bath-room, nor a room for servants. Therefore we could not employ a parlourmaid. We lived there 13 years till 1938. By that time in our family there were already three children. Therefore we moved to a three-room apartment, where there was a nursery for me and my sister, a bedroom, a dining-room, a kitchen. The house was worse than the previous one. There was water supply, but no bathroom again. There was stove heating and (a sign of that time) woodsheds in our court yard. Furniture in our apartment was good as always. Of course! Both grandfather and father were professional furniture-makers! And one more: Daddy realized very well what it meant to have two daughters. We had two pianos for me and my sister, two sleeping sets: one for us, and the second one for our parents. At home we never had pets: my father did not like them at all. Because of his professional duties he had to visit many houses. You see, he was engaged not only in sale of new furniture, but also in buying up old samples for the subsequent restoration. So, after his visits he told us ‘So, I come to perform the order and see a good girl sitting, doing her lessons and having a cat on her knees. And this cat strikes her copybook with its paw and the copybook becomes dirty!‘ My father with all his respect for studying and education could not imagine anything more awful, than to spoil a copybook.

We had no garden: it was impossible to have it living in the municipal apartment.