Growing Up
May 15th is International Family Day. I remember when, many years ago, the Ontario Premier declared February 21st as Family Day, a day for families to enjoy together. The Canadians have a fair number of ‘relax and enjoy’ days, unlike the Uzbeks. The Uzbeks have lots of days on their calendar commemorating this or that, but very few actual civic holidays when people can stay at home without having to make up the working time for it at some point. I was not aware that there is an International Family Day. I imagine that there must now be an International Day for all kinds of things, big and small. There’s probably even an International Day for People Who Ignore International Days.
This year’s International Family Day came to my attention when my co-teacher started asking our kids about their families. Soon, we were discussing Uzbek family values. I learned a lot about my students. There are very few single child families, but this was not an unexpected revelation. But what did surprise me was to find out that there are not many truly big families here anymore. Even in Uzbekistan, big families are a thing of the past. Even here, living is expensive, and the costs associated with raising children affect the birth rate. During our discussion one thing became crystal clear. The Uzbeks all value their families very highly.
The kids asked me about my family and, after I answered, it was my turn for a question. I was curious about the attitudes towards corporal punishment – that is, spanking. Of course, I had to rephrase it. “Are Uzbek parents allowed to give their child a smack on the bum?” I was met with blank faces. Were they shocked by my question, or didn’t they understand? I indicated the action of spanking with my hand and used the word hit. They laughed. “Of course!” several of them answered in unison.
“But not at sixteen,” added Asad.
“Sure, that is way too late anyway,” I laughed with them. And then Manzura, a very thoughtful girl who frequently surprises me with insights not expected from someone her age, asked me, “Do you think that it’s ok?” I answered truthfully that I believed it was acceptable for small children. Instead of trying to negotiate, explain, go on and on, a quick smack on the bum could deliver the message much more effectively. I am always honest with my students. If they should ever ask me a question that I am not ready to answer, I would deflect. But I would never lie. Another question followed. “When you were small, did your parents …,” a bit of hesitation followed as Mansura was trying to remember the new word, “… spank you?” That question certainly brought back a lot of memories.
When I was growing up, we lived on the fourth floor of a five-story apartment building. Our grandma lived in a small basement apartment in the same building. Yet, in reality, she spent most of her time on the fourth floor with us; Mom, Dadu and me. My father decided shortly after I was born that having a newborn around for the second time did not make the whole crying baby business any easier, and left for greener, less tired-looking pastures. Since mom was left to raise us by herself, I am sure that she appreciated having grandma’s extra pair of watchful eyes to catch any of our misbehaviours.
I would like to think that we were good kids but, in the early hours of the morning when I think back to those days, I have to admit to myself that I, compared to the more placid Dadu, was a handful. We were the only family on the fourth floor so, when we heard the sound of an elevator stopping at our floor, we knew without any doubt that mom was coming home. And so did grandma. If we had misbehaved during the day when she was in charge of us, the sound of that elevator acted as a trigger. The entire day she would be fine, occasionally complaining about our deeds, threatening us how she was going to tell on us when mom got home. But, while complaining, her eyes would remain surprisingly dry. It was only when she heard the elevator that she would start crying. When mom entered the apartment and saw her crying mother, she was led to believe that our grandma had endured the entire day with two horrible brats. As a child, I never thought it was strange. It was only later in life that it occurred to me how remarkable it was, that grandma had mastered the art of crying on demand.
I was a hyperactive child. Today any school psychologist would probably label me as ADHD and put me on some medication. But back then there was no school psychologist, so the teachers’ only recourse was to complain bitterly every chance they got.
“Zora did it again! She went through the window, (our classroom was the ground floor and there were no screens) and came back through the front door,” they would complain, leaving my mom baffled.
Why did I do that? I don’t know. Probably because I thought it was amusing, not to mention some fun exercise. But mom did not see it the same way. She had two tools at her disposal to mete out her punishment. One was an old rubber hose and the other a wooden spoon. It actually sounds much worse than it was. The worst part was the psychological torment we would experience when mom said, enunciating carefully, “BRING-THE-RUBBER-HOSE’ and we would have to go and get it ourselves from its hiding place in the closet. The wooden spoon was more readily available. She would just grab it as needed. I am sure now it would be certain cause for Family Services intervention, but back then it worked surprisingly well to keep us on the straight and narrow most of the time. All the kids I grew up with were in the same boat, so we didn’t think twice about it. We might have been physically abused, as psychologists would tell us now, but we were noticeably less anxious than today’s kids. I am not saying that a good smack on a bum would solve today’s kids’ problems. That would be a vast oversimplification, but it sure worked on me back then.
On the day Dadu or I would be especially hard to take, grandma would find comfort in her favorite activity. Reading obituaries. Occasionally she would remark, “You will be the death of me. Why can’t you be more like …” and she would use names of some distant relatives. No way to check how perfect they really were. Sometimes she would go on, “See, this lady was only eighty and she is no longer with us. I wonder if her misbehaving grandchildren had anything to do with her untimely death.” I was young then so, in my book, anybody over thirty was old enough to pass away. But I did worry occasionally what would happen if grandma should die. Mom worked a full-time job and Dadu, even though seven years older than me, did not seem a particularly suitable candidate to fulfill the role grandma had in our lives. Who would cook for us? Mom only cooked on weekends. On the ‘obituary days’ I would ask Dadu pointedly whether she had learned any new recipes in her home economics classes. She continued disappointing me, blaming her no-good home economics teacher for her lack of progress. But I suspected she just didn’t care enough to really apply herself.
One day though, I was forced to come around and admit to myself that she was probably trying. Dadu shared a room with me, which was not all together bad because she was tidier than I and would often clean even my half of the room. The drawback was that sometimes she would wake me up because her dreams used to be vivid and action packed. Occasionally she would act out her dreams in real time. Sometimes she also talked in her dreams. I came to believe she was trying her best on the culinary front when one night I woke up and listened to her reciting the better part of a muffin recipe in her sleep.
My grandma, with her tears on demand and ready ham and cheese sandwiches when I came home hungry from playing outside was one of the biggest influences of my young life. Children who have grandparents playing an active role in their lives are lucky indeed. In Uzbekistan, where families don’t move around as much, it is still more common than in the Western society to have grandparents involved. It’s not easy in our modern world to keep the family ties strong, but the effort is without doubt worth it.