Women

When I spent last spring in Lunca Ilvei, I had come fresh from various religion or history courses which covered male and female roles. Historically, women had a strictly defined space, physically and in their role in life and in the family. I had all of these various cultural and historical male/female situations in the back of my mind as I observed life in the village. I found in the Romanian countryside that men and women interact in the home and outside the home fairly freely, and I came to the conclusion that, well, life is tough in the country in general, and men and women trudge through together. 

However, the first time I went back, I felt sort of a shock observing close at hand (since I didn't have the new, plush guest house with all sorts of Western amenities to return to after a few hours of visiting peasant neighbors!) the life of a peasant woman. 

It seems to me now that the reason things run so smoothly is because the women simply accept and dutifully carry out their role in life. On Saturday night when I went out, I noticed a dearth of women at any of the small bars in town, which only intensified the attention I received. To me, it's nothing to go out with a group of male friends, or female friends, whatever works out, on a Saturday night.  I've pretty much concluded that this is not at all the norm in the village. Only men go out together late at night, and women are stuck at home with kids and pigs while the men consume in plenty. And make gratuitous passes at the young American woman at the next table. Actually, the women may very well relish the mens' absence in these instances. Women do their socializing throughout the day, stopping in for a coffee while drawing water from a neighbor's well, sitting for a small tuica while walking by someone's house. I'm fairly certain there would never be an instance in which only women go out at night. Even the younger, unmarried girls don't go out unless accompanied by a boyfriend. 

When a man is at home, all of his needs are attended to, promptly. Drinks are poured for him and any friends he brings, and beer is continuously refilled. If work colleagues show up at 7:30 in the morning before heading over to the timber processing plant, a women quickly adds more wood to the fire to brew more coffee and serve each man. He feels no qualms leaving without drinking anything, though, if something occurs to him and he has to leave just as coffee is being served. 

As a sort of unique guest, I certainly don't fit into the typical women's roles, nor are any of those sort of expectations placed on me at all. The first days I stayed, I would try refilling my plate myself, or carrying my dirty dish to the stack of used plates and immediately, Cornel insisted I stop, while Reghina jumped up to do whatever I needed done. It is an overwhelmingly generous hospitality. When I show up at a house, I am offered a tuica, a beer, a coffee, juice, whatever I want.  Men imperiously order that my glass should be refilled, that food is served to me, that a chair is offered to me, while the women quietly attend to these commands. 

I suppose this is how hospitality is demonstrated. A man in his home needs the chance to display his role in offering me hospitality by issuing an order to distribute things to me, and then the woman carries out the task.

A woman's day begins before anyone else's, when she rises early to restart the fire in the heating stove. On a weekday, she is up at 7 (or earlier in some of the other households, I would imagine), starting the fire, making coffee. By the time the husband rises, the coffee is hot and the room is no longer chilly. On a weekend, a woman may wake up much later, but still before everyone else. She starts the fire, makes coffee, starts preparing food. The husband will stay in bed until lunch is served, and then spend the rest of the day lounging and watching TV. The day's tasks may go on and on, too. Once when I was visiting a neighbor's house, my cup was kept continuously full of tuica fiert while I sat with the husband, sons, a son's girlfriend, and another neighbor. The phone rang, and it was the wife calling from a neighbor's funeral where she was helping the family serve food and wash dishes. She asked the husband not to forget to take care of the cow. 

When she showed up an hour later, he had gone out and given the cow water, but had perhaps found himself too tired/tipsy to milk the cow. She came in the door, was about to undo her headkerchief and asked, did you do the cow? He casually mumbled, no, and poured everyone some more tuica. Without even sighing, she went right back out and came back in with a bucket of milk a few minutes later. I can only imagine this interaction in the West.

"Honey, did you fix that leaky pipe like I asked you to?"

-Husband has eyes glued to the game while he and 5 buddies drink beers and have bags of chips and pretzels strewn all over the living room-

"FRED! Did you take care of that leaky pipe?!"

"Huh? Oh.. uhh.. no YES! INTERCEPTION GO!"

-Wife stands in doorway, stewing, and sighs dramatically and irritated. Once buddies leave, or perhaps in the middle of the game, wife demands husband apologize, chews him out, throws a fit about his uselessness-

Also, when the woman came back with the milk, one of the sons offered some of it to me "Laura, do you want to take some with you? Sure, of course! It's good, have some!" I didn't need any at home at that point and would have felt bad taking some anyways, since I was sitting in her kitchen doing nothing while she was running around working constantly.

The men don't seem to appreciate the difficulty of the women's tasks in the house, like able-bodied son who let his mother do the household and the farm chores while he sat around, and the shepherd whose house I was invited into last time I was in Lunca.

I had no way of knowing this man was pretty much the village drunk in a town that sees nothing wrong with being drunk. I was invited in, and the young son of my host family didn't warn me. I went in and sat and the shepherd, probably about 30 years old, sat at the kitchen table with a bottle of tuica diluted with sugar water. The room was drafty and there were things that should have been done around the house. His mother immediately welcomed me, poured me a coffee and told me how darling I was and told me to stay. I asked how she was and she said she was fine, just her back was hurting her. I sympathized and said, "From working all the time, huh?" The drunken son slurred "She doesn't work!" Half an hour later when I finally managed to remove myself from his tuica-diluted attentions, I scurried out the front door with the two boys and we hustled past the house as I wiped off a sloppy goodbye kiss that had certainly NOT been the typical two-kiss on the cheek salutation!!! Bleh! His mother was out in the yard, feeding the pigs, cleaning things up, gathering eggs. Apparently that's not work. What does a woman know, anyway?

Spring time involves typical household chores and also helping in planting or harvest, and then serving food to all the men with whom she works. Rodica is the sweetest woman. 

These clothes were probably washed by hand in the river and then are hung to dry.

A woman's work continues well into old age. Here, a 60 + year old woman works next to the hay she has scythed in the previous days.

This mother has 4 children, with Ilina being the youngest and the only girl. Here Ilina's 'nice' dress is being put on so I can take some photos of her. She was darrrlliingg.

Reghina works near the stove, which takes up a significant portion of her day, everyday.

While everyone else drank and celebrated her son's birthday, Rodica and her sister were hard at work washing dishes and preparing the 2 am drunken snack food.