Memories of one teacher

By Gospava Petrović

"This book is a great novel based on a true life stories of one teacher. It is

divided in a few chapters, and each of it is about different part of her life. She

talks about her childhood, adult age, mature age and years in retirement. It is a

great book with a high recommendation of all critics and reviewers. It teaches

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ukiyoto Publishing
• Release date: Nov 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9789360492649

Book preview

Introduction

I

t was a simple spring day. My daughter begged me to write one short story for her. I wrote a few sentences about my and her childhood and sent them to her.

Nothing awarded me that some happiness would happen when my daughter said: Write Mom!, What to write, my daughter?, I asked. Write stories, Mom. What stories?, I asked. Write stories from your memory, memories of your childhood, characters and events from your life, about your students, about your homeland.

And I got a wind in my back, I started to write stories! So in that moment, I got a joy for writing like cheerful light weaving.

...

I write about my childhood, about a child in me, about the homeland and beauty of nature, about the childhood of my daughter, about characters and events from my life, and also about children that came on my life path and those that I intervened on their paths. By writing about my childhood and everything related to it, like I don’t leave it, I want to stay a child forever. In that way, I relive memories of my parents, and other dear people and events.

My childhood is past, but through my everyday meeting with children it never ends, it is not only the past, it is still present. From my childhood, the childhood of my daughter, life of my characters, where there are a lot of dramatic and joyful moments, I took ideas for these stories. I rummaged through my thoughts, trying to find a strength in it…

For my characters, I am emotionally related, to my heart, love. They did not try to praise but for me, it is a joy of their finding out. I travel into memories, sometimes I tie a knot when I come to a painful place. A child is living in me, a child that I awake, and all thanks to that child.

…

I talk about those stories for years, reliving characters in my mind. I am fighting every day against the biggest enemy of today- oblivion. Until this moment, every story was a part of my life, and only those people who are part of my life. I consciously entered the risk by moving these memories from my heart and mind, on paper, all those things that were hidden, kept for only those special individuals who were introduced in my life and history of my village- a small alley under mountain Majevica slopes.

Most of these stories I wrote in front of my small house, inspire me and open my sights. Old, white walls of the small house, hills and mountains, fields and orchards, sunsets and sunrises, a smell of linden and mowed grass for me are not just a part of the moment, then the window into a past and future. When I return to my memory of the homeland, my thoughts are relived again and I see a children's game, a mother who makes lunch, goes into a garden, and a father who mows the grass. At that moment everything goes again and again.

These stories are just small attempts to save from oblivion all those that can be saved. There were memory stops and pauses, feelings moving on, feelings that filled gaps in time, and gaps that were made for some unknown reasons. Revealing secrets of that authentic, vital, that remains to glow between some debris that came together with everyday life, those small things help me to raise over the problem. Life shows us only one way, but courage and love can find many and many paths. Courage stands in front of the fear and wins…and gets the blessing.

And so I got a blessing to write these stories.

Family Tree

The family tree is beautiful like a tree, a root is deep inside the Earth and branches rise high in the sky.

Мy Ancestors

W

riting about your own life is not so simple. It is not possible to write about yourself and avoid that story to remind yourself of past, present, future, and ancestors. However, it doesn’t seem to just write a story, and then try to look into the past so that we can learn something for the present and future.

Because the future can always fall on the stone that was uncarefully left there from the past!

Why are we related to those past times, do we look so much in the past? Maybe we don’t have enough strength or capacity to search and look into the past, and the present is all movable. Only the past is stable and it is not moving. However, we could stand still and firm in the present. And to run with more courage into the future.

….

Well, now, what is the past? Is it necessary to talk about long-lost characters and events? It seems that everyone will stop for a little when someone mentions a story about the past especially when man is already mature. On the other hand, the past is already there somewhere in us, and it becomes present for a moment at least when we talk about it. Epic poems are in centuries inspired generations to preserve, to fight, to move forward. They expressed spirituality. Through these songs, there is the age-old pursuit of freedom. These poems were star leaders for freedom. And they were singing together with gusle…And nowadays?

Memory is- a very wide and deep word, and it depends a lot on it. Yes, yes, it depends on how we would find in ourselves time to become those bearers that we were in the past, and that it should become the future.

I will start a story about my past with my ancestors. My grandfather was Marko Petrović, the ancestor from whom my ancestors also come and whose surname we overtake. That grandfather had four sons: Petar, Obrad, Milovan, and Radovan, so they made four surnames: Petrović, Obradović, Milovanović and Radovanović. They came to this area from Herzegovina, trying to run from Turkish cruelty.

They brought the patron saint, Saint Lazarus- The resurrection of Lazarus.

Petar Petrović had a son, Marko. Marko and his wife Petra had a son Cvijetina, who was my grandfather. Cvijetin and his wife Goja gave birth to my grandfather Cvijan- his real name was Cvijetin. Cvijetin's wife Jelka gave birth to my father. Our parents have four daughters.

My Christianity was transferred from knee to knee- from father to son. However, my parents did not have a son, and with that, this tradition of transferring from father to son stopped. I have a daughter.

My ancestors with whom I will introduce my confession were serfs, farmers, and miners and they were all Orthodox. In the sweat of his face, they made those that they needed to feed their families and take them on the real path.

No, then to fight with life obstacles, to raise their families, and most importantly to save their morality and cheek. They left generations after them, to light a candle on their graves. Because the light of the candle is not just a simple tradition, so to repay, that moment or two, to spend when we visit their eternal places, it is a duty, so that our life, is lighted with faith, kindness, and peace…That is our repayment.

Yes, many people will say what kind of life was: field, hoe, barn, wage…very often poverty, just one pair of shoes on so many children. But every drop of their sweat has its weight in front of God. It should live and survive, and save every inch of land, mountains, hills, and valleys, to plant a fruit and survive. Isn't this enough?

Life od my ancestors was not for nothing. It had its own sense and beauty woven with love…

...

The story about my homeland, village, and street- Sarije, is at the same time a story about the life of my ancestors from increment to increment. My ancestors left villages and fields, homes and graves, but in their firmly closed mouths they brought a tongue and there where they poured words that they understood with their full depth, there was their homeland and life.

If I return in the time before moving my ancestors I see a few travelers with a fez on their head. Orthodoxs lived under big Turkish oppression. Sometimes in my mind, I return to those ancient times and I see just Jablan city, hills and valleys, a river that divides Sarije on that one under Jablan city and the other that was called Mezgraja.

Sometimes I think that whole the past of my ancestors lies down on my back some kind of unexplained and destined secret., like a nightmare in some dream, but the wish is to wake up from that dream and to take the burden off my back.

I know that with the generation renewal different characters mixed, and my ancestors survived the time of Turkish oppression, the Austro-Hungarian government, riots, uprisings, and The First and Second World Wars. But I still believe that they had hope and confidence to survive and overcome it because it was a different time, they had faith in a good ending, a good ending at the end of all ends.

They must have had different natural disasters, but there