Sarah and Buko Pizanti on Lazar's Day

This is a picture of my mother, Sarah Pizanti, nee Lidgi, and my father, Buko Pizanti, taken on Lazar's Day - 25th March 1921 - in the village of Gradets. The photo was sent to my father's mother, Mazal Pizanti. These Bulgarian folk costumes, which were worn in Vidin region, were preserved for a lot of years in my family. My parents knew each other from early on, because they were neighbors. They dressed like the others. My mother told me that her brother bought her cheap high-heeled shoes. The other sisters wore slippers with heels. My mother was raised by her brother, who also raised his other brothers and sisters. The shoes she was talking about were a bit above the ankle, with laces. Once she cut them from top to the bottom with a knife and he made her sew them together again. Then she continued to wear them for quite some time. Uncle Yako, her brother, bought my mother her first nice pair of shoes when she got engaged. That made her very happy. My father was a firm communist whereas my mother wasn't a member of any party. She was always afraid for him. She would tell him in Ladino: 'You will eat us out of house and home and ruin our children.' The house, the family, the home - that was my mother. She sewed clothes on a sewing machine so we were always neatly dressed. My father went to the synagogue, but he was an atheist. My mother was very strict on rituals. Everyone at home spoke Ladino, but my parents talked to each other in Turkish when they wanted to say something that the children shouldn't understand. They knew Turkish perfectly. Naturally, they knew Bulgarian as well.