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Dunrie Greiling Ph.D., Ann Arbor, MI 48105

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Family

An American Dream

January 18, 2014 by Dunrie

In early January, we had chicken paprikash (tocana de pui in Romanian), and we told stories of Dave’s grandparents. A perfect evening.

Cover of the Pofta Buna cookbook
Pofta Buna (Good Appetite): The Romanian Way of Cooking

Dave’s grandfather gave us a cookbook, Pofta Buna, sold as a fundraiser by a Romanian Orthodox church in Cleveland, OH. It has recipes for chicken paprikash and other familiar foods.

Dave’s grandparents, John and Olympia, seem to have lived the mythical American Dream. They came to the US young and with an entrepreneurial spirit made a life for themselves in Detroit and found happiness and success.

Born in the US, returned to Romania

The children of two Romanian citizens, Dave’s grandfather and his sister were born in the US, so they had both citizenships. Prior to John’s birth, Dave’s great-grandfather (also John) wanted to come to the US, but his then-wife preferred to stay in Romania with her boyfriend. Maria Beretei did want to go, and they went together, unmarried. When John and his sister Mary were born in the US, they were illegitimate. When the family returned to Romania, Dave’s great-grandfather got a divorce from his wife and married the mother of his children.

John and Mary grew up in a small village in Romania near the Hungarian border, Chiribis, in the commune (seems kind of like a township in our terms) of Tauteu, in the county Bihor.

Lost his Mother Early

John and his mother got Typhoid when John was a pre-teen, and the doctor came to their house and said that if they made it through the tenth day, they would live. John’s mother died on the tenth day, and John lived.

The Bondy family: Mary, John, and John
Tusha Mary, their father, and John.

John’s father’s first wife had lost her boyfriend, and since John’s father had lost his wife, the two remarried. Yet, the children of the intervening marriage, John and Mary, were resented and treated poorly by his first-and-third wife. Young John got out as quickly as he could, taking a tailor apprenticeship in the big city as a teen, promising his sister he would get her when he could.

Came to the US on his own, then sent for his sister

Near the start of World War II in Europe, John made an application at the American Embassy to return to the US. Although he spoke no English at the time, he was an American citizen. He came to Detroit, where there was a strong Romanian community.

John was making his way in the US, and his sister was still in Romania, unwanted in her family home. One of John’s best friends, Florian, liked the look of John’s sister in a photograph, and he knew John wanted to bring her to the U.S. Florian said that he would help bring her to the US and there would be no obligation to marry him. After her arrival in the US, Mary married Florian. And Florian doted on her, sure he’d hit the jackpot. And maybe he did.  I met Tusha Mary once, in her home in Dearborn, when Dave and I just started dating in 1994.

Making their Way in the US

John made his way with confidence and personality, befriending and influencing people with his charisma and strength of character. He had good timing, coming to the Motor City during a boom time, and he had the skills and drive to prosper. John met and married a woman named Olympia, who had made her way to Detroit from a different village in Romania. John served in the US Army, and would have gone to the Pacific front but the war ended before he was deployed. Olympia worked in an auto factory (Ford) and after their wedding, John and Olympia lived in a duplex next to Unciul Florian and Matusa (“Tusha”) Mary. John and Olympia had a son and a daughter. John eventually owned his own tailor and drycleaner shop adjacent to the Rouge Plant in Detroit. They moved their home and shop from Detroit to Dearborn, moving into single family homes from the duplex.

Photo of a Tailor and Drycleaner Shop, Detroit Michigan
Dave’s grandfather John (right) in his shop

Retirement in Florida

Eventually, John and Olympia retired to Florida. I met John and Olympia in the 1990s, well into their retirement. John was gregarious, friends with everyone he saw at Costco and other stores he frequented. He was a small man, and I’m tall, so I have a vivid memory of him sidling up to me on an early visit. He got very close to me, looked up, and asked me if I wanted a drink, eyes twinkling, loving to indulge his grandson’s girlfriend.

photo of me and John in his garden in Florida
Me and John, taking down some grapefruit from his garden in 2004

I remember John’s tailor training showing up in the safety pins he kept tucked inside the waistband of his trousers, and in the clothing he liked to purchase on sale and give to his son-in-law and grandson. He knew what was made well and worth buying.

I knew Olympia less well. She was starting to slip away from Alzheimer’s disease as I became part of the family. One of her repeated stories was how much John’s sister Mary was like a sister to her. Olympia would show me, or anyone, Mary’s photo and profess her love for her. Olympia lost her English before she lost her Romanian.

John turned from husband to caretaker before she died, attending to her first in their home and then visiting her every day when she was in the Alzheimer’s ward of a nearby nursing home. My digital photos of Olympia are all from the nursing home, and they do not seem to capture her personality so I am not including them here. 

Olympia passed first, then John got sick a few years later, and he passed away a couple of years ago now.

An Arc of a Life

A Romanian Orthodox priest presided at John’s funeral. And his burial was attended by an honor guard from the US Army. I thought about the funerals the Army honor guards must see, varying religions and ethnicities, coming together in the US and in the Army. I thought of John’s journey: from the US to Romania and back again as a youth, and then his path in the US, from immigrant to businessman to retiree, taking a turn through the Army on his way.

For me, I’m thankful for meeting John and I appreciate being a part of the family he and Olympia created. Like him, like his daughter, Dave and I love to entertain. So we carry on a few of the traditions, though perhaps keep more closely to the spirit of them than the specific details. We do offer people drinks and cook for them, yet unlike what is recommended in Pofta Buna, we do not boil our green beans for 40 minutes before serving them.

I appreciate the memories, which can be brought back now with a dinner or a shopping trip or some storytelling over a drink. John and Olympia, we miss you and are proud of you and we remember you. May we make you proud as well.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Family

Comfort in shared experience, even of grief

October 19, 2010 by Dunrie

I am grateful for Great Writers. They connect us to each other, connect us to ourselves, through voicing what is glimmering on the edges of our consciousness. By expressing these things, they bring them into focus and validate them.

grave
Grave, taken in Ellmau, Austria

My father has been gone for over a decade now. When I was a child, he “left” me once before when my parents divorced, so his death was a second loss of him. After that first loss, his commitment to me was clear. And somehow that experience of commitment continued after his death.

At the time of his death, I felt that the handful of people that would lay down in traffic for me had decreased, never to be replaced.

Although I do not feel his presence now in a specific way – we don’t hold conversations, he doesn’t haunt me – he is with me now in some ineffable way. I experience that his love for me has expanded and envelops me, like a warm coat.

So, I was interested to read just that experience described in a recent New Yorker article on Roland Barthes’ mourning for his mother. In William C. Carter’s Marcel Proust: A Life, Proust described the trajectory of grief to a friend this way:

“You will know a sweetness you cannot yet conceive. When you had your mother, you thought a great deal about the days when you would no longer have her. Now you will think a great deal about the days when you did have her.” Once [his friend] has adjusted to “the terrible experience of being forever thrown back on the past, then you will feel her gently returning to life, coming back to take her place again, her whole place beside you.”

That’s my experience. I was angry as he was dying, I fretted about his poor health and poor self-care, focusing on our impending loss. And now, after the initial shock, over the years, I have felt his presence, his love, expand again in my consciousness. Perhaps a trick of the mind, a self-comforting chimera, or maybe simply this is what adulthood feels like. No matter how this happened inside my head, I am thrilled to see it is not only my experience, but the experience of others, captured by Proust.

Even in the loneliness and isolation of grief, there is union or communion across the separation of time.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Family

House Blessing

November 29, 2009 by Dunrie

We moved into a new place in August. For a while there we were almost camping because we had the kitchen ripped out…it didn’t feel exceptionally homey.

Our fabulous Ann Arbor construction crew gave us a working kitchen in our bump out just before Thanksgiving. We moved our plates, spices, glasses, and cookware into the kitchen the weekend before family arrived from Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

And, then, with the help of Dave’s family cooking at the house, china plates from my family, delivered a few days ahead so we could wash them, mashed potatoes and appetizers from Fenton, sweet potatoes from Kalamazoo, and ambrosia fruit salad from Rochester Hills,  we had a great meal. The place was full – we had fourteen for Thanksgiving dinner. Six from the “Greiling” (Johnson) side: my aunt and uncle, my cousin and her family of  four (hubby, two kids, and one on the way), and three on the “Bondy” (Sopt) side.

And, because of lovely memories and shared traditions, several more people were there in spirit. My Grandmother Greiling, whom I never met, shared her china with us. Grandma Higbie’s pie safe held the desserts, and Dave’s Grandfather Bondy contributed beautiful flower arrangements. I wore pearls my father gave me, and a bracelet from my mother.

I am thankful for everyone who blessed our home that day – to inaugurate our kitchen and celebrate with us. Now, finally, after a few months in the house and a handful of days in the new kitchen, the new place feels like home.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Family, Gratitude, Home & Garden

Privileged Misfit – The Tall Book

August 1, 2009 by Dunrie

The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life on High
The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life on High by Arianne Cohen

I’m on vacation. And I read The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life on High by Arianne Cohen today. Just sat down and read it, cover to cover, with a break for a fishing trip and dinner. Very pleasurable. I read sections aloud to my husband, to explain why I was laughing out loud. I learned a few things (why it can take generations to attain a genetic height potential, due to environmental effects passed down somatically)…and I definitely recognized a feeling and a pattern or two in this straight talking and funny book. Oh, and I’m quoted on pp. 169-170 (excerpt from my tall blog post).

Arianne Cohen details how the tall and the super-tall are privileged misfits – commanding higher salaries on average, but unable to find clothes or seats that fit. I’ve always been a misfit – knees jammed into the back of the airplane seat ahead of me, not in any way average, despite my desire to blend in. Yet this book showed me lots of ways I’ve benefitted from this, and made me thankful for my own tall mom who showed me the ropes and who did not make me feel at all like a freak (who knew people gave hormone therapy to tall girls to keep them from realizing their height?!).

I’m going to need a stack of these to share with tall friends, mothers of tall folk, those who love tall folk, and other humans. Learn more at TallBook.com.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Books, Family, Gratitude

Rest in Peace, Barbara Greiling

May 15, 2009 by Dunrie

Christmas in Florida
My stepmom, Barbara Greiling

My stepmom, Barbara, died yesterday of liver failure. She was the mother of a son, a grandmother, and a great grandmother. She took care of my father in his illness and until his death. She loved to laugh and she loved her family, and she was generous and warm with me and my sister.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Family, Gratitude

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