My grandfather was born in 1927.  After two baby girls, he was the long-awaited male heir to a family who owned most of the land in an area irrigated by the Danube river in Bulgaria’s north-west.  Unlike its current underdeveloped status, a century ago that region boasted some of Europe’s most fertile soils for wheat and sweet corn and had a flourishing agriculture sector and bustling direct trade routes with Western-European capitals. 

My grandfather’s elder sisters would pursue medical degrees in Vienna, an education that taught one lifestyle and class in addition to professional skills.  Through history’s wicked turns, that education, it turned out, would be denied to many of the following generations, but also to my grandfather and his younger sister.  World War II was around the corner and with it the significant social and political turmoil in the years that followed.

My grandfather was a boy when the war started, but it did impact his life immensely.  His sisters were called in to return to their homeland, his father was declared an enemy of the communist state that was installed subsequently and my own grandfather’s higher education was under question due to his family members’ unfavorable standing.  His father, my great-grandfather, had fought for his country for seven years in three consecutive wars (the First and Second Balkan Wars and World War I) only to find himself blacklisted by the state during his retirement.  Nevertheless, through perseverance, agile planning, and some luck my grandfather managed to obtain approval to enroll in a university in Sofia to study veterinary medicine that he completed ahead of schedule and practiced wholeheartedly for decades to come.

A young professional of an unpopular background that he was upon graduation, my grandfather’s first assignment in the mid-1950s was in an area off the beaten path that was then Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, as far away from his family as the country’s borders then allowed.  He was put in charge of state-owned agricultural establishments and over the years became the only veterinary doctor to oversee an area of some 10+ villages on call duty for any livestock emergencies and routine procedures.  Those were days without much romance in veterinary medicine when the day was spent speeding on a horse-drawn cart over muddy pathways from one farm to another.  One day, storming out of his practice, he was hit by a bike.  A frail, delicate 18-year-old girl, daughter of a local fisherman, was learning to ride a bike and looked up shyly at the man she didn’t see coming.  With his sense of humour and a caring heart, he smiled at her and his exile location became his haven for life.

History can have as many readings as there are individuals recalling it, sometimes even more.  For all of the subsequent dramatic historical moments my grandfather witnessed over his lifetime, he led a long, fulfilling life and peacefully passed away earlier this year at the age of 95.  His dignified life was celebrated by his young bride that my 82-year-old grandmother was to him until the end, his children, grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.  The priest at his funeral spoke heartfelt words of respect and admiration, not forgetting a pinch of humour in his eulogy, something that my grandfather would have so much appreciated.  

And just as the soul and memories are so immaterial and fleeting, so did everything material related to my grandfather become a relic, overnight: the wooden stick he had carved out as a soldier in training during his adolescence with the year and the names of his fellow soldiers; his professional microscope that mesmerised me as a kid; his carefully kept crosswords cheat sheet in his precisely metered handwriting.  But a keepsake that I never suspected existed 94 years later is something my grandmother and mother discovered hidden away in a wooden wardrobe with long-forsaken textiles – his enlaced baby clothes. 

In a small nylon bag there was a textile item that didn’t promise any story of the past or value for the future.  Still, I took it out and unfolded it carefully.  There in front of me were three items – two tops and one bottom – of a textile baby set.  Sitting next to me, my grandmother instantly remembered that those were my grandfather’s baby clothes that her mother-in-law, my great-grandmother, had bequeathed to her.  Years, decades, almost a century had gone by.  The fabric was tarnished, but it was still there, beautiful and delicate, whole and complete, unlike my grandfather whose body was unforgivingly proven ephemeral.  Through these tiny fabrics, I could feel my grandfather’s presence, the promise of his young life through the care and love that still transpired through the handwoven fine cotton and handstitched lace sewn by his mother.  

Just as the foundation is critical to any physical structure, the solid roots that we grow through experience and sensations in our early years are integral to our ability to withstand the trials of life later on. I carefully restored the baby set.  Through some unfathomable laws of life, it is the breathless part of us that will live on and be a token of our generosity and kindness.  My grandfather obviously had a loving, caring mother who was a strong pillar in his life for much more than enlacing his baby clothes. The resilience with which my grandfather built his life time and again in all of the dramatic turns of his country’s and his own story was to a great extent rooted in the strong foundation his parents gave him and this baby set was an embodiment of that.

I had the baby set framed and put up at home.  Busy with the everyday we may never think of all that it stands for.  In challenging times, however, it is there to remind me that with a strong foundation of care and love one can endure and shape the story of their life and it is through these solid foundations that we live on.