Lived to Tell: Three Generations of Dreams and Reality: Volume One

By Elizabeth Wright

In Romania, times were tough back in 1919. As Cecilia and her husband, a preacher, went through many unwanted and unexpected trials and tribulations, Cecilia ended up having to drop out of seminary school, which devastated her. Cecilia, being a mother to many children, also had plenty of dreams. Those dreams helped and showed her how to cope and what to expect in the future. Patricia, one of their daughters, had her own problems. Patricia also was blessed with dreams that not only came true, but they also encouraged her to live and to not give up.

There came a point in time when both Cecilia and Patricia thought that they were going to die. With their faith in God, they managed to still keep a smile on their faces and to keep their heads up. Take a look inside to see what happened back in the day. This book is just the beginning of their story. This story was translated from the Romanian language into English.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645317210

Book preview

The Beginning

Superstitions were quite common in Romania, especially during the period of 1919. During September of 1919 in a small town in Transylvania, Romania, Nina gave birth to a daughter named Cecilia. Their religion was Lutheran, and they were farmers as they owned plenty of land.

During the long rich harvest in the fall, the plums were ready to be picked; the boiler/caldrons made from copper were ready for making the plum marmalade. The ducks and geese came waddling with their gizzards filled to the brim, one behind the other, respecting their hierarchy. As the roosters started to sing their nightly songs, the chickens started to get in line, one behind the other to start walking toward their home to go to bed. As the sun started to set and color the sky with all the colors imaginable to man, the cows came home singing as well (in their own voices) from the pasturage land, walking slowly and extremely full, taking a short pit stop at the well to fill up with fresh water that was just taken out of the well and put in their barrel/small cask, and then they went to their individual stalls for the night.

Nina left the house with a kerosene lamp to go to the stables to milk the cows. Victor (her husband) got the fire started in the brick wood stove for the milk to boil and to prepare the supper. Nina came back with the milk and strained the milk in a cheese cloth and put the milk on the stove to boil. Nina then cleaned the vegetables for food, and when she was cutting the vegetables, she started having birth contractions.

She told Victor to finish boiling the milk and the food and then to go get the midwife. She then went and lay down on the bed, waiting for the midwife and praying that she will have an easy birth. As Victor was finishing up the milk and food, he started to pray, and as soon as the food was done, he took the kerosene lamp and started running around town to get the midwife.

He finally got to the midwife’s house, out of breath, and he told her what was happening at home and then they both started running back to Victor’s house. In the end, the birth was easy with no complications because both Nina and Victor had two older daughters named Aurica and Patricia. Nina named her newborn daughter Cecilia, who was very beautiful and healthy.

Later that night, Nina had a dream where fate told her that Cecilia would be extremely beautiful, smart, and that she will get married with a pastor and have lots of children, and she will die drowning in America. Nina woke up shaking as she started to remember her dream. and then she started to pray as she went back to sleep. The next morning when Nina woke up, she forgot the dream completely.

Three years later, Nina had another daughter named Angelica. Then five years later, Cecilia now turned eight years old, she was very helpful around the house in doing all the chores that her parents had given her. That included milking the cows, cooking, cleaning, sweeping the floors, knitting, weaving the wool for rugs, sewing patches on old clothes, etc., all the while going to school as well.

One day, Nina called Cecilia to her, and she gave her the glass pitcher and told her to go into town to get drinking water out of the well. Cecilia loved that pitcher because it was so beautiful and sparkly and shiny but still very fragile. She kept hearing the saying that the pitcher does not go to the well that many times. She then kept thinking to herself about that saying, and she could not figure out as to how or why the pitcher would break.

After many trips to the well, she filled the pitcher with water, and she thought, What would happen if I let go of the pitcher and it breaks because mom keeps telling me to be careful to not drop the pitcher and break it because the pitcher does not go to the well that many times?

Now Cecilia was extremely decisive to try this experiment. She slowly took the glass pitcher out of her mom’s hands and carefully went into town, excited and laughing hysterically. At the well, she filled the pitcher full to the brim and started walking home. She looked around to see that no one was there, watching her mid-afternoon. She started to swing the pitcher from front to back along her side and then she stopped and lifted the pitcher as high as she could and she let go of the pitcher.

The pitcher broke into millions of pieces, and the water splashed everywhere. The noise from the pitcher breaking scared her very much, and she instinctively bent down to pick up the pitcher, but when she saw that she could not do that because the pitcher was all in tiny little pieces, she ran home crying. She told her mother that the pitcher slipped out of her hands and not dropped it.

Nina told her that the broken pieces bring good luck, and in another way, people working in the factory need to make a living too. Nina promised Cecilia that she would buy another pitcher the next time she goes into the city.

Cecilia was now about fifteen years old; she was tall, lean, and looked like a modern-day model. She finished seven classes in the neighboring town with straight As. Her older sisters have all now been married and with children. Though she never thought about boys at all, she worked, read the Bible, and believed in God and especially never thought at all about ever getting married. She saw from her older sisters that they had to go out into the field, pick the grain with the sickle, and pick the corn all day long for food and then go pick the garden and cook and clean and take care of the children and their men. She was very talented in sewing, and she became the seamstress of the town.

She was extremely spoiled from her parents because every time that she asked or told her parents something that she would like to have, they did their best to get it for her. One day, she told her dad that she wanted to go to the Women’s Seminary School in Bucharest, Romania. He thought as to how Cecilia would be able to go to this school because he was so proud of her, and he agreed to the idea. The next day, Victor and Cecilia went to the city hall to send an application letter (that was telegraphed) to the Women’s Seminary School in Bucharest.

Around the same time, there was a girl around Cecilia’s age in town that had asked Cecilia to teach her how to knit. Cecilia agreed to help her and showed her all the steps and techniques in knitting. She started teaching the girl, but the girl could not by any means understand or comprehend knitting; the girl knitted a long piece, and she forgot how to subtract to make the side of the vest under the arm. She again and again showed the girl how to add and how to subtract the yarn to make the vest. The girl got so upset that the girl told her (Cecilia) that she does not even want to go to heaven anymore and see her there. Cecilia started to pray for the girl.

Cecilia liked to do girly things and not to work out in the field like the boys (though some girls did enjoy doing those things as well). She liked to knit, cook, sew, and memorize poems for church. There was not one girl that was as beautiful, smart, and talented like her in seven nearby towns.

Her dad after a while came to her with a telegraph that came from the Women’s Seminary School, and it stated that she was accepted and very welcomed at the school. Her dad then made the decision to start preparing her (making the list) for the school.

Her dad loaded two carriages with sacks of wheat that were being pulled with four bulls each. He took Cecilia to the neighboring big town to the market. She drove one carriage, and her dad drove the other carriage. At the marketplace, they sold the wheat, and with the money they made, they went shopping. Now Victor let her decide as to what she wanted to buy for school. So she went and bought extremely fine materials to make herself lingerie, then other material for dresses, then wool felted material for making long coats and hats, then she got high-heeled shoes made from snake skin, leather winter boots, and leather suitcases. Then they both went home.

When they arrived home, some people from the town found out that Cecilia was going to go to the Women’s Seminary School in Bucharest. They started talking, and some even had the courage to go and talk to Victor and tell him that both him and Nina were crazy to let Cecilia go to that school when they need all the help they can get to work the land with the farms and that she needed to get married and have children to help as well. Though Victor said that he was happy and proud of Cecilia and that what the problem of her going to the school was if she qualified and was accepted. They could not convince Victor to change his mind so in the end Cecilia still was going to go to the school. She started to take all the material that she bought at the market to make her clothing. By next year she was all packed and on her way to the seminary school when she was sixteen years old.

On the day of departure, her parents assisted her in packing the carriage in September and taking her to the next big town where there was the train station. She said her goodbyes and got on the train, and off she was to school.

In Bucharest, there was a carriage waiting for her when she got off the train. When she got off the train, she was introduced to the driver, and the driver of the carriage took her to school where she was then introduced to everyone that oversaw the building where she would be staying, and she was then taken to her room to unpack. Though when she entered the room, she found out that she would not be living in a room by herself because she saw all the other beds and all the other girls that were about thirty to forty girls in total.

The next day, there was an assembly where everyone was called in a huge room, where all the professors/directors introduced themselves, and they explained to the girls the schedules and everything about the school. Then off the girls went to their classes. She understood everything they told her, and she loved it from the beginning. All the other girls started to become jealous of her because she had all these expensive clothing and things and that she was doing extremely well in all her classes. She was very neat and clean, and all her things including her clothes were all pressed and placed nicely in their place. She had to wash all her clothes by hand and to press them. Every time that she felt that one of the girls started to be jealous of her, she would talk to her very calmly/nicely and told her that she would become the best missionary and that she is extremely beautiful and that God will help her. Then she departed and said that she had to go and study or whatever reason to leave, to not upset the other girl, and to end the discussion in peace and quiet without upsetting the other girl.

The director of the school got married with an American missionary woman who came to Romania to stay with him. She took over the girls’ seminary school while he took over the boys’ seminary school. The new director appreciated and loved Cecilia because she was the best in the school.

The new director proposed to Cecilia that she (Cecilia) should go with her to America and do missionary work after she finished the school in Romania. She was extremely pleased to hear this, but after some thought, she told the director that she did not want to leave her country and she wanted to take care of her parents. The director told Cecilia that she was the best in the school and that she had time to think about the idea and that she did not need to decide now, and when she was ready, the director would be there to continue the discussion.

Seminary Banquet

Cecilia now was seventeen years old. She finished her first year of the seminary school with straight As. The school announced a big banquet with both the girls and the boys of the seminary school that will be coming up soon. At the banquet, where all the girls had a chance to meet all the boys, there was one boy named Lucian who saw and spoke with Cecilia, and he told her that he would like to see her again some time.

She was very shy when speaking with Lucian, but Lucian did not give up, and he insisted in asking her what part of the country she was from. She responded back, saying, I am from Transylvania. Then she ran off and disappeared in the crowd because she did not even want to think about boys/men especially when she read and understood what the Bible said about abstinence.

Now the winter months started. One day, Cecilia had just gotten back from her long day at classes and took a shower. She went back to her room with wet hair and tried her best to dry it with the towel she had with her and then she put a head wrap on and her night gown on and went to bed that was right next to the window. Back then, there were no hair dryers to assist her in drying her waist-long hair. Her head lay right by or under the window as she slept in her bed. After the long day and taking the nice hot shower, she fell fast asleep.

During the night, one of the girls in the room that tended to be constantly warm woke up and opened the window that was right by where Cecilia had been sleeping and then went back to bed. As the night got colder, snow started to fall and the winds started to pick up and then snow was being blown inside the window on Cecilia.

In the morning, Cecilia woke up freezing and covered with snow. Some of the girls thought that this was extremely funny, so they laughed at her and went on with their business, while some of the other girls did not think that this was funny at all and ran to her to consult her and try to help her out because they understood what it felt like to be freezing cold.

She got out of bed and shut the window without saying anything to the girls laughing at her and making fun of her. She then continued to dry her hair, got dressed, and went to class. On her way to class, she figured out exactly who the girl was that opened the window last night, but she did not go and report the girl to the director’s office. But instead she just started to pray for the girl who did this to her.

After some time, she started to cough. It was a dry cough, and she started having pains in her lungs. The director recommended to her to go see the doctor that was at the seminary school. The doctor looked at her and he told her that she had pneumonia and he gave her treatment for it. After the treatment was completed, the doctor X-rayed her lungs.

The doctor looked at the X-rays and saw that there were shadows visible in her lungs. Her lungs still hurt, and as time passed, she started getting weaker and weaker. So she went back to the doctor, and he told her that she was not going to live long and to just go home, eat good food, sleep, and enjoy her last days.

The director heard this information from the doctor, and in the spring, the director sent a telegram to Cecilia’s parents letting them know of the awful news about Cecilia and that she was going to be going home soon. Later the carriage from the seminary school took her to the train station, and her parents were waiting for her when she arrived back home at the train station.

As Cecilia was going home, she sometimes thought of what the director told her about going to America to become a missionary. This thought followed her for the rest of her live. At the train station, her parents took her back home.

At Home

Back home, Cecilia was depressed because she was not able to finish the seminary school. She did not want to accept the idea of her dying, and she felt deep down in her soul that God himself had another plan for her life. Then the entire family and the whole town started to consult her and pray for her, and they all convinced her to see the local home remedy doctor.

The doctor told her to take lambs fat and spread it on her back (like butter) then add a thin layer of kerosene on top of the fat and then put a white shirt made from flaxen on top of the kerosene and to lay with her back toward the sun as long as she could stand the heat from the sun. Then later to take off the kerosene because otherwise it would burn her skin. The doctor also told her to take one sugar cube and add two to three drops of kerosene on it orally once a weak.

Cecilia’s younger sister assisted her in putting the kerosene on her back every morning and afternoon when the sun’s rays were not so intense (or hot). Cecilia started to eat fresh meat from the backyard with fresh vegetables from the garden and fresh milk from the cows off the farm and with a small cup of homemade wine that the family made from fresh grapes.

Toward the end of the summer and the beginning of fall, she had a full recovery from her pneumonia, her weakness, her cough, and her pain in her lungs. Now she started to go back to work as the town’s seamstress. Any physical work made Cecilia very tired so the whole family took over the physical work while they let her rest and do easy tasks around the house.

While she was at home during the summer and getting well, Lucian had heard that she had to go back home because she was sick. When he heard this information, it made his feelings go sky high for Cecilia because it was love at first sight. He then finished the seminary school for men, and he wanted to go and be the preacher in the same town where she was no matter how sick—or well, she was—and it also did not matter to him what other people thought.

When Lucian graduated from the seminary school for men, and the director gave him his diploma, the director told him that he would be working in another part of Romania (this was nowhere close to Cecilia). When Lucian heard this, he waited patiently after the whole ceremony was over, and he was the last one left in the room. He calmly went to the director and spoke with him and told him that he wanted to work in the area where Cecilia was living, and if he did not get that area, he would give back his diploma and leave.

In the end, the director had no choice but to give Lucian the area he chose because he was so stubborn-headed.

Lucian

Lucian was born in May of 1908 in the northern part of Romania. His parents had eight children of which he was the youngest. They lived on the mountain side; the father was a hunter and a miner because they had lots of land where he could go and hunt, and at the same time, they owned part of the mining land. His mother was a housewife and took care of the children.

When he was four years old, his mother taught him how to pull the soft part of the feathers off the quill/hard part of the feather and other small tasks that he could do. After the mother left the house and everything was quiet, he jumped on the windowsill and left the house to go play with his friend who was the same age as he was. They both then started running toward the forest, and they then went into the forest. Since the forest was so close to their homes, this was their favorite place to play. They started to pick some mushrooms and all the while kept playing.

His friend found a wasp nest on the ground, and he went looking for Lucian. When his friend found him, his friend took his hat and started running this way and that way, not telling him anything. But Lucian kept saying, Give me my hat back repeatedly while running after his friend.

His friend finally found the wasp’s nest again and threw the hat on top of the nest. Lucian, not knowing, picked up the hat and put it on and started running after his friend to continue playing.

When Lucian found out later that there were wasps in his hat, he immediately threw the hat down on the ground and started running.

So his friend, to be brave and to show Lucian that there was nothing wrong with the hat, picked up the hat and put it on. His friend then screamed after him and said, You were scared for nothing, you scared-y cat.

Lucian stood out of breath, hiding behind one of the trees in the forest, and he did not want to get near his friend due to the wasps he saw. After some time, his friend took off the hat and put it on the ground, and he sat right by the hat on some moss, waiting for Lucian to come back to keep playing with him. When his friend was sitting very calmly on the moss with the hat next to him, waiting patiently for Lucian, it was then the whole nest of wasps came and attacked his friend because he was the one who disturbed the nest and not Lucian.

The wasps bit his friend from head to toe relentlessly. When Lucian saw what was happening (hiding behind the tree), he started praying the way his mother taught him to pray.

When he was done praying and opened his eyes,