All the Bread.
One plate of sandwiches, one phone call, one speech – and thirty years of being ashamed to eat at other people's tables.
The inventory of the scene is small: a dacha outside Moscow, a table laid by her grandmother's friend, and one thing on it a seven-year-old with allergies could actually eat – bread and kolbasa. She ate it. What followed was a phone call, capital letters – she ate ALL THE BREAD – and a speech about disgrace. The residue lasted thirty years: ashamed to eat at anyone's table, eating last, eating least.
Two things make the post more than a grievance. The first is the claim she distills from it, plainly useful to anyone raising anyone: watch what you say to children, and don't unload your own quirks onto them – a sandwich makes no one poor. The second is the tone: no anger left. She worked the wound through until what remains is only the wish to go back and stand up for that child – held lightly, because, as she says, then it would be a different story. The Healer makes the underlying point: no one else could have done that closing for her.
Thirty years to say it out loud. Some sandwiches take that long.
When I was little I would come for the summer to my grandmother's dacha. Back then the Rublyovka wasn't yet the Rublyovka. And I'd spend the whole summer there. By the way, my entire memory of my grandmother is how she always called me “insolent”. Now I understand she was 100% a narcissist, which clarifies a lot of her behavior for me. But that's beside the point – the story isn't about that.
One day she had to go somewhere, and she asked her neighbor-girlfriend to keep an eye on me. I was about 7–10, I don't remember exactly. By the way, since early childhood I ate very few foods. Mostly pasta with sausages, and bread with kolbasa. I'd been allergic to a lot since birth, and anything new scared me. So, lunchtime, and this madam laid the table – and of everything on it, the only thing I could eat was bread with kolbasa. Which I did.
It's important to note that I grew up a very obedient child: they told me – I did it. Which, of course, I later worked through at length with a psychologist))) So I ate those sandwiches and went on living my childhood.
But that evening, or in the next few days, I learned that I was a very ill-mannered child. The friend had called my grandmother to complain that I had eaten ALL THE BREAD AND KOLBASA and what an ILL-MANNERED child I was… The palmhead meme would fit well here.
And then the long speech from my grandmother about how ill-mannered I was, how I had disgraced her and so on.
And ever since, I was always ashamed to eat when visiting people – it felt like I was eating them out of house and home. I tried to eat almost nothing, or to eat only after everyone else had, so as to be sure not to EAT TOO MUCH of what was theirs.
Ever since, I couldn't stand that girlfriend – the sight of her made me shake. All in all, maybe she was even joking, and my grandmother, as always, twisted everything – but both filled me with negativity.
It is very important to watch what we say to our children, and not to unload our own quirks onto them. And children are allowed everything – a sandwich won't make us poor🤭
And here I am, 34 years old, and I still remember that situation. I'm not hurt, I'm not angry – rather, I would like to go back and stand up for myself. But then it would already be a completely different story
Thank you for reading.
If her words reached somewhere mine don't – good. That's what this blog is for. Take what fits and leave the rest.
– Jan