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Up early (6:30) to be ready for our big day - the annual family meeting (or reunion) and requiem mass - in Muskininkai, a bit north and a tad west of Vilnius. For breakfast, I try blynai with curd, which gets translated as cottage cheese but turns out to be like ricotta. Sort of a breakfast cannoli! Mom & I write our final draft of the U.S. portion of the family tree, to the best of our memories. Our new driver (a polite and friendly young man) brings Vytas and Elyte, who bring beer for our fridge. We leave through a cute crowd of Italian rugby players overflowing the lobby and playing on the mall.
We take the A1 towards Vilnius, then turn north into the countryside of lovely rolling farmland and along the Muse (Fly) river to Musninkai. This is the same road my great grandfather walked carrying (illegally) books in Lithuanian to and from Vilnius. He was a farmer, but also a magistrate. And quite a hero for preserving Lithuanian literature and culture in spite of Russian and Polish and German "ethnic cleansing". And my great grandmother provided herbal medicines and remedies for the local people, so she was a virtual doctor.
Musninkai is the village, with church, cemetery, stores, and all, of which Mama's sort of hamlet of Kaimyneliai belongs. Both are called villages, but (as with Antupiai and Suvalkai) the smaller one is just a group of homes. Perhaps each of the smaller ones was originally a manor. I know Mama's family were serfs until the mid 1800s.
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This is where Tete was hired as church organist and choir director. And where Mama sang in that choir. (Seems that church choirs in Lithuania were traditionally female.) And where they met, fell in love, and married. |  |
We wander around the village green in front of the church, admire the church gardens, and watch families drive by in cars or in horse-drawn wagons. Across the road from the green is the store, with a sign (as seems usual in villages) saying simply products. Neat, what more do you need to know?
The priest and (adult) acolytes arrive, open the doors, and let us in to explore the sanctuary. This is where my history really began. It's absolutely beautiful: gleaming dark wood floors and pews, oriental rugs, white walls that glow creamy, bright stained glass, gleaming brass chandeliers with cut glass and prisms twinkling. The perfect setting for our family love story: falling in love in church.
 The nave. Isn't it lovely? |
 The choir, where Mama and Tete worshiped and fell in love. |
 The altar (the one in the back) where they married. |
The requiem mass is quite moving, especially because Zita's mother Ona died only this summer. She was the daughter of Mama's sister Juze. But it is rather long, and two young children sort of pop in and out through the back. They are quiet and well behaved, but a normal playful boy and girl. And the woman organist is very good and sings the responses just as Tete did back in Lawrence. But the organ wheezes mightily each that time she starts to play. Mom & I agree that, had Tete stayed in Muskininkai, that organ would have been perfect!
| On the way out, we pass the confessional. No wonder many folks choose not to use this service and forego receiving communion! It's wide open, and the waiting line starts on the bench beside the confessor. |  |
We all gather outside the church and "reunion" a lot. Everyone chatters in Lithuanian, naturally. I try to figure out who they all are, but not too successfully. Mom tries to help, but is busy talking with them herself. This is really a big event for her. All these years, she has been cut off from her mother's family. Now she is surrounded by all the family she should have had. And they get along as if they grew up playing together here. Wonderful!
Then we drive up the road, which turns to dirt, to the cemetery. Zita, with her cousin Rasa and aunts Liuda, Regina, and Valentina, tends her mother's grave. We find Mom's grandparents' grave, at the front, overlooking the road. All the graves, including this, are lovingly tended. No small stone set in the grass mowed by huge machines here! This feels almost like a little village of its own. In fact, within the same plot, are the graves of Mama's uncle Mikalojus Jurkunas and Elyte's baby sister Aldute Kancleryte. And, of course, there are other family members all around. But it is the tending of these graves that impresses me. Each is planted with flowers and cared for. So the grass is not mowed like a golf course, as in our "condominium cemeteries". But what solace is there in putting a plastic bouquet on a tiny flat stone in a lawn (remember to remove it within two days) on special - official - occasions? |
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We leave the cemetery and drive back to the churchyard, this time to the parish hall behind. It's been a long morning, so I ask for the "toiletus". I'm directed to a sign on a sort of large outbuilding. The fact that the sign has both the male and female signs is no surprise. Often, this leads to a large lavatory room of sinks, with doors to separate toilet areas. Not this time. It's a one-holer (a drop toilet: indoor outhouse) with a stack of cut newspaper!
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Back in the parish hall, the women have spread out a "picnic". What a feast! Pork loin larded with prunes, meat wrapped around mushrooms, chicken with dried fruits, two different versions of sakai (branches) pastry. The man standing is the master of ceremonies. A Latvian who has been in Lithuania since the 40s, he rescued and hid Valentina when the Soviets were hunting her. This was quite a collection of heroes and heroines, from a number of independence movements. |
During the meal, we pause several times: for prayers, for a special greeting for Mom & me (unexpected and moving), and for singing, including the official Lithuanian state hymn (by Vincas Kudirka. The unofficial Lithuanian national hymn, by Maironis, is a strange experience for me. First of all, it is very emotional: these are people who risked their lives - and lost friends and relatives - in the struggle to liberate Lithuania from the Soviets. But I sing the hymn, following both the words (in Lithuanian) and the music. At the time, I assume this is because I have sheet music and a recording of the song. I guess I must have sort of learned it subliminally (us editors are notorious for remembering such things without even intending to). But, at home, I find that I have the one by Kudirka. So how was I able to sing this? OK, partly because Valentina was beside me, Liuda was near, and Vytas and Elyte were facing me. And I might have been sort of copying them. But there was something more. Some kind of Jungian racial memory? Some kind of inspiration? Magic? Whatever it was, it proved to me that I am Lietuva.
After the meal, I rolled outside to see the children and give them some trinkets from North Carolina. I gave the young (8-10 years old?) boy and girl cousins magnifying glasses from our science museum. Valentina's son-in-law, Arvidas, shows them how to burn holes in leaves! I warn them not to burn down Lithuania with American implements. Later, I see they have left the leaves and are burning "toilet paper" from the drop toilet! Is it Arvidas or I who is the bad influence?
| Help clean up, take some group photos, and then Vytas, Elyte, and I drive past the cemetery and turn onto a little dirt track. We go through a cluster of houses, where Mama actually lived. Then we reach the family house, now (since the 30s) on the farmland the family owned. I suspect moving the village homes onto the farmland had to do with breaking up estates. |  |
Mom, Vytas, & I wander around the yard, pestering a gazillion green frogs of various sizes. It seems somehow mythic that the grass is full of them. Although the family no longer owns the house, Elyte has called the new owner and gets the key - and the previous owner (the one to whom Elyte's father sold it). The new owner is a sculptor who is totally restoring the home to the way it was built! Even the original wood and clay tile floors will be restored. Which is fantastic for us.
 The front porch and main entry. |
 The side of the house, showing the construction. |
| The back door; the dark wood is the original exterior. This door leads to the kitchen and was probably the main family one, just like at our house. It leads to the gardens, barns, orchards, and fields. |  |
Elyte grew up in this house. Then, because her father was offered a prestigious job, the family moved to Kaunas (without permission from the authorities). They still used the home as a summer vacation place, even after Elyte's mother died. But, because it was unattended for long periods, vagrants often "borrowed" it. And one practically burned it down. Of course, the Soviets did not prosecute one of "the proletariat" for harming the property of a "rich" Lithuanian. After Elyte's father died (in 1984) she sold the house to a family from the village. It is a bit sad that the family home is no longer in the family. But it is great that it now belongs to someone who values it and has the finances to restore it to the way Mama's grandfather and his brother built it when they came here from Austria, almost 200 years ago.
 The house just before Elyte's father sold it. Yup, I combined two photos. |
It's hard to believe that we are standing in the house where Mama was born; the house my great-great grandfather built, the house where Tete visited the man he so admired and the woman he loved. He felt towards Mama's father just as Chuck's father felt toward Rose's (Chuck's mother's) father. That he met a man who was living the ideal life, who was intelligent and good and honorable and successful and welcoming and all that is right. I swear that each developed a respect for the father that equaled the love for the daughter. And it's so neat that the respect and the love complemented each other, because either would have been impressive alone. But that would not have resulted in two such amazingly successful marriages. I wonder how things would have gone if Mama and Tete had stayed in Lithuania. But then Mom probably wouldn't have met Dad, and (were I even possible then) I could have been hard pressed to meet Chuck.
 The formal side of the home, where Mama's family entertained and danced. |
 The kitchen, where the fireplace will be rebuilt. That open area will be a fireplace wall that adds heat to the rest of the house. |
 The front hall, looking to the formal room. Those "logs" were polished as smooth as a plaster wall by my great-great grandfather! |
| This is my favorite picture of the whole trip: looking from the kitchen, through the hall, across the front porch, to the garden and road. OK, I know the house has been moved, but the view must be similar. I can imagine Mama, as a young woman, standing here, helping her mother prepare the evening meal. She looks up from the table, out through the front door. And sees Tete, finished with organ practice and all, walking up the path, coming to enjoy the fellowship and conversation of the man he so admires and the family he has come to wish were his - and the chance to visit the woman he cannot help but love. | 
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I could stay here forever, lying in the grass (with the gazillion green frogs?). But we have to head home to Kaunas.
We stop just south of Musninkai at Kernave, the prehistoric capital of Lithuania. From Vytautas's church, we have gorgeous views to the Neris, over sort of hill forts. Evidently, each is a castle of one of the Grand Dukes.
 Me atop Mindaugas's castle hill. |
 Looking across the hill forts to the Neris. Those are people and cows at the base on the right. |
| We walk back to the car, past the statue of Gediminas's wolf. He heard this wolf howl in a dream. And it told him that his reign would extend as far as the howl was heard, Must have been a wolf with a speech impediment! But I love the metal sculpture. |  |
Finally, we drive back to Kaunas. Mom & I are both too tired to consider eating out. So I go off to access the Internet and do a bit of shopping. They young man at the Internet access is becoming a good friend. And being able to contact Chuck like this is so comforting. I'm not used to being apart from him so much. Guess I'm a true old fogey!
I leave the Internet place to watch firemen break into an apartment on the 3rd or 4th floor of a building just down the street. There are no clues as to why. A woman comes by and asks me about the whole thing - in Lithuanian. I am, obviously, no help. I never even see anything about this on TV.
At Media, I get more water and some ice cream cones wrapped like popcicles. Back at the Monela, Mom & I eat fruit, krusties, bread, cheese, and "Ledai" -the right kind. Then we try the beer in a plastic bottle that Vytas brought. Not much head, but quite good taste.
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