It has been a second summer as we (me & my parents) were trying to find the place where my mother was born. It was a very small village in Žemaitija (one of the five ethnographic regions of Lithuania), somewhere crossed by two rivers, Jūra and Lokysta.
Last summer a sister of my grandfather told us that there is nothing left there and unfortunately, she didn't even remember where we could look for it, only the main direction of the road. But this summer we insisted to find it. And we did.
My aunt was right, there was nothing left, only the ruins of the house and a wooden cross (the people, who described the way for us, also told us that the cross is exactly in that place, where the school was). So this was the place, where my grandparents and my mother have lived (the second picture) til the years of 1958. There was a school, where my grandmother used to work as a teacher and they used to live in the same house. Nearby we found a little chapel in the bushes (the first picture).
As I stood there in the empty fields, where used to lived the people I love, I felt magical. My grandma told me so many stories about that place that I almost felt like these stories were my own. And while I was standing there, it seemed that all those stories started going back as the pictures of their lives where rewinding.
And at that moment I started to wonder. In how many places I was, where I didn't see anything but a nice surroundings? And maybe some people see there the whole life running in front of their eyes? (probably it is not a coincidence that in Lithuania older people call their houses "lives").
xoxo,
Ak.
P. S. I didn't have my camera with me, so these photos are from my telephone..
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