My grandfather Semen was a wanderkind when he was a child. It is clear that in a distant Siberian village did not know a word of this, but the child, reading the Bible by the nose and composing six-digit numbers in his mind, surprised everyone. Travelling merchants, checking the boy, lost the boy's father a considerable amount. The wealthy worshipped, worshipped and took the seeds with them into the city.
Ten years later, the boy returned with a bunch of books and notebooks. At that time, he was already a student at the seminar. The parents, illiterate peasants, watched their son with horror, not coming out of the readhouse.
The customs were then simple: it was decided that the guy would marry, so that he would not go crazy for books. Marry so that you don’t get rid of it.
Semen comes home, and there, blinking the eyes, the bride, Avdotia, is already sitting.
Now about the grandmother. She was beautiful. But this is why such a prominent bride until the age of 24 was in girls, no one will tell me, but I think so because of the character. Grandma was very nice. Because of this hereditary family norov my father suffered, and our sister and husbands remember the grandmother with a bad word, although the term of her was not seen.
She looked at the bride and disappeared. Where the 18-year-old boy was to resist the brown eyes with a rope, and a high chest.
He left his grandfather at the seminary, and became a simple baker, but he did not abandon the books. His exalted soul demanded a way out. He repeated poems, songs, prayers and even in the most forbidden years he sang in the church choir.
The family grew, children were born, 12 daughters! Semen and Avdotia worked without laying hands. In the 30s, they already had a strong farm, horses, cows, sheep, gardens.
My mother remembered that when they went to bed, her father was still at work, and when they got up in the morning, her father was already at work.
In the collectivization, the grandfather was crushed, loaded with a gun with the children on a cart and sent to the taiga near Tomsk. Of the 12 children, only four survived.
The powerful and working grandfather Semen did not disappear and in the exile, he began to mow skin and make sheep. He planted a crying wife and girls for the sewing of shoes, so they ate.
Slowly began to survive. But a new trouble arose.
I had already said that grandmother Avdotia was a beauty, but her eldest daughter Matrina surpassed her mother in beauty. I didn’t know Aunt Moth as a young, only an old old lady. But, it used to be, the lips will be painted, the proud look will be thrown from beneath the shoulder eyebrows - the outstretched Bystritskaya, not worse!
The empty guys blinked their eyes at grandfather's bump, looked out at Matrina, but the local chairman of the colloquium acted in his own way: while the grandfather was not in the village, he pulled out the backward girl and locked up with her in his house. What to celebrate with them.
Matthew returned home pale but calm. She said that the chairman promised to put her on an easy job and to make relief to the family, to correct the documents. Then she grabbed her younger sisters and cried.
Always gentle and kind grandfather Semen grabbed the knife. But his wife and children hanged on him and stopped him.
That same night, with the children and the embarrassed daughter, Semen left the settlement through the taiga.
My mother remembered that they were walking, spending the night on loans, making fires. Grandfather hunted, caught fish, mocked, cold, but stubbornly led his family.
They came out of Taiga in a distant country, and settled there.
The second grandfather's daughter, Catherine, married out of great love. My mother once said, “Oh, and beautiful these Kazan Tatars!” There are no photos of the son-in-law, but I believe the mother's word: apparently there was a couple.
In the Great Patriotic Husband and Matren and Catherine went to war. Both did not return, they died at Stalingrad.
In these difficult years, women worked in forestry, small children had to be left home alone. In the summer drought, Katie's house burned, and her four-year-old son walked out the window and ran through the forest to his mother. Only a bloody shirt from him is left – wolves.
Katya touched her mind and was taken to the hospital.
Grandfather Semen walked through the ashes without a hat, tears flowed on his face. He decided to build a new home for his daughter.
For three months, the sixty-year-old tossed bars, raised bars, and laid walls. All alone, all alone. I laid the floor, put the doors.
I remember this house: a tiny kitchen and a room, shiny. The courtyard is paved. In this house my aunt lived all her life and the house did not crumble, no donkey. The masterpiece was Grandfather Semen.
In the last way, the grandfather was accompanied by the whole village, crossed his mushroom hands on the chest, placed with him his seminary Bible, on the forehead a sacred tape - the road to heaven.
And where else could he go, this great worker, the cradle and the land of our country. Not broken, not humiliated, not melted. Persistently reborn like a bird Phoenix from the ashes, not betraying his beliefs, his faith.
We are talking about the winners of the Great Patriotic War. His courage and sacrifice. But they were raised and raised such seeds. They put their sons on the wing and they flew up to the feat.