It was the summer of 1996

My grand aunt Polya took me to the store to buy me icecream, Plombir. This was our thing, she was my "sweets grandma". After that, she took me to her place. "So you can live, really live", she said.

She lived outside of the village where my grandparents lived, on a farmyard which belonged to our family for generations. I spent a lot of time there during summer break. I helped bringing out the goats, picking eggs from the chicken coop, I crawled into bales of hay to discover newly born kittens, learned to drive a combine, helped during the harvest.

In the morning the rooster woke me up. Outside, chicken were clucking, the dog was chasing some of them across the yard, cats were meowing. A new day, new adventures! Who knew what lay ahead?

For breakfast I had to have a salted raw egg "so you can grow strong", a glass of fresh goat milk and some freshly baked bread from the clay oven. Oh the bread! The toasty-sweet smelling fresh baked bread, with some sunflower oil and salt was heaven. During the day, I picked apples in the orchard so I got by and in the evening, aunt Polya baked some pyrozhky (pastry) filled with coleslaw.

I was free.

Free to roam the hills around, as long as I stayed away from the big road a few kilometres away. It was a lush, green pasture, surrounded by forests and dotted with cows from the surrounding villages. This was my paradise, my place, where I learnt, what it meant to be home.

To be loved by family, to be always welcome at the neighbours for a lunch or a quick drink of fresh water from the well. To look around and only feel love.

My aunt Polya, as well as her neighbours, didn't have much - just enough farmland to get by on their own and a little spare for the bare necessities of life. They were happy, nonetheless. They had fun, they had parties and get-togethers. When all the family gathered, the yard was chock full with kids running around, parents laughing, grandparents singing merry and sad songs, accompanied by a harmonica.

Some of their houses were made of clay, freshly painted white every spring, with roofs made of reet. It was a place that fell out of time - we had electricity, but were otherwise disconnected from the modern world.

Inside, there were two rooms - one kitchen/gathering room where the clay oven was, one bedroom. Above the oven there was a tiny nook, just big enough for me and the dog to hide in, with a tiny window. During winters, I was comfortably warm with a hot tea, some books and a lot of time. Outside, father frost painted the window with beautiful patterns, huge snowflakes turned the landscape white.

I was free.

A few days after, I returned to my grandparents home, covered in soot, oily and dirty, just two white eyes and my teeth shining in utter bliss. "I helped working on the motor of the combine, grandma" I said. With a sigh, but smiling, my grandma hugged me and put on the kettle to heat some bath water. She brought in the brush and washed me. Black water running down, she couldn't stop laughing as to how dirty I got.

I told her about how I climbed on a tree, got hold of a rotten branch and fell clutching it. I told her how I helped with the cows on the pastures. Actually, I mostly caressed them and talked to them. They didn't seem to mind. Finally, washed up and clean, grandma sat me at the kitchen table in front of a huge skillet with roasted potatoes. The smell of salo (bacon) and dill filled the whole room. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.