There was a peach tree orchard in front of the window. The trees were short and skinny with few narrow leaves; peaches were huge – pink, white, and yellow globes that separated easily from the pit.

Some summers, there would be so many peaches on the trees that skinny trees couldn’t bear the weight of the fruit and branches would break. We would wake up early in the mornings, run into the orchards, and quickly pick peaches up from the ground. They were pleasingly cool with velvety skin. Their strong scent would “wake the dead from the grave,” my mother would say. My father would arrive from work and would put the trees back together, tying them together with a rope, or at times with a bed sheet. Miraculously, the trees would heal and bear us peaches in the summers to come.

The orchards extended onto vineyards, then fields, then the river, and then the road. Far just on the horizon line, there was the majestic Caucasian Range. On clear days, we saw the mountains stack above each other, with peaks and valleys. These huge mysterious hills were commanding. And yet, they seemed to be within strolling distance. Sometimes they would turn into shades of blue and gray, with white tips of snow peaking above the clouds; from our balcony, they seemed to hang in the sky, extraordinary shapes wrapped in snow blankets. Early mornings, the huge golden sun would rise from their left and make its way all over the range, ending the day in the purple circles behind mountains streaked with purple-red paths.

We loved watching cars on the road zigzag their way under mountains, cars as small as matchboxes. From the balcony, we counted them. Sometimes we waited 10 minutes between cars. At night, just their tiny, diamond lights reached our enticed eyes through the darkest blue, mimicking the stars that shone brightly. The earthy smell of wet soil permeated the air, the summer rain just passed by.

Grandmother – Tata and we – three girls sat at the harvest table in the open loggia. We were still kids. I was into “The Three Musketeers”, by Alexandre Dumas, which shows how young we were.  Now I know that grandma was still young, coquette blood; but back then, for us, she was an old woman. Petite but forever a beautiful woman; light skin intensified her blue eyes framed with golden curls. She was very particular about coloring her full hair. Every morning she rose at 4:00 am and spent about 2 hours in front of the mirror dying her hair with freshly brewed tea. She waxed her eyebrows using the same strong tea. She dyed her eyelashes also. She allowed no one to witness these beauty secrets. We all believed she was a natural blonde. She wore 1930s clothing – beautiful silks and damasks subtly revealing her décolletage against round collars woven at her neck. Her curls fell to her collarbones. One would notice her beauty – were it not for her fierce anger.

As we set at the table, Grandmother told us a story about a man who was our grandfather, a man we neither met nor knew. Grandmother choked with tears. With childish sensitivity, we wanted to hide our tears, but they kept rolling slowly down our cheeks.

It was much past our bedtime; our parents were not home, so we stayed up late for the treats she gave us and talks.

“They came at 4:00 o’clock in the morning,” – she said. They always came at this time of the night. Whether to hide themselves from others or to put even more fear into people’s hearts, we do not know. They took him. With him gone, all we had was gone.” “Your grandfather’s brothers visited him the night before with a fat stack of cash, begging him to take cash and run. He thought that their alarming conversation had no grounds. He said: “Beria and I, we are friends, we graduated from the same university, we lived in the same dorm, we are neighbors, how could he possibly do this to me?” – Grandmother continues. His brothers answered: “Constantine, because you graduated from the same university, because you lived in the same dorm, because you are neighbors, you should be the first one to run.” He did not believe it; he stayed, innocent in his beliefs.

Lives were ruined, families torn apart. “I was pregnant with your father,” she faced my sister and me. Then she cried until she wailed.

“He was dead. He was dead all the time I carried food to the prison. Every Sunday morning, I would prepare food and walk to the prison. I would hand it to the guards after standing in line for hours. They took it, week after week, long after he was dead.

I squinted my eyes to imagine her standing in a sunny blue kitchen with her blond curls and blue eyes, in a ruffled apron. At the stove, she carefully blended fresh eggs with sweet butter and cream, after chopping aromatic parsley and marjoram from her garden and gently slicing tomatoes warmed by the sunlight. One by one she layered each ingredient into a baking dish with precise care. She sprinkled a final dusting of cheese before placing it in the hot oven to bake. Grandmother was making her now classic baked egg dish Mona Lisa Eggs. The irony is my grandmother was a terrible cook, all she knew was how to make eggs!

She created this dish in the years back when she was a professor’s wife, living in a beautiful sun and light-filled apartment, where they lived when they were newlyweds. At the time, Grandfather was a prominent and published geophysicist, a well-known and respected professor. Their lives were lovely and magical then, or so they seemed to her now.

“They kicked us out of our apartment and put us in the basement. It had one room separated by cloth hanging between the kitchen and the rest of the room” she continued.

This time I squinted my eyes even harder to see how she went behind the hanging cloth to change into her once expensive and beautiful clothes. There was an iron bed in the room with an iron spring. It made a squawky noise every time she sat on it and bounced up and down. She sat for a minute to take a breath and relax her tightened stomach. She bent over to put on her silk stockings. She lay down while dressing several times to gather her strength and thoughts. My aunt was all ready and waited at 7 years old back then. Mona Lisa’s Eggs were ready; she put the egg dish onto a basket and climbed the tall steps that led toward daylight out of the basement with the gracelessness of a pregnant woman. She carried the heavy basket in one hand, held my aunt with the other, and walked her way across town to the prison. Sunday after Sunday…

Eventually, Grandmother received a letter “explaining” the reason for the arrest and death. Grandfather was arrested for the small book he published about oil wells in the southern part of Georgia. They dug for oil and no oil appeared. So, he, his family, and his unborn son were all labeled “the enemies of the people.” He died of “pneumonia” – the same cause of death given to all prisoners killed in 1937-1941 by the Communism regime.

I spent years and years trying to understand the unfathomable. Now I know they were young, and the country was young. Everybody had this newfound feeling of pride similar to the American sentiment felt when reciting “The Pledge of Allegiance.” Like witnessing the birth of a child; discovering a new land or flying for the first time. They thought they discovered it “This New Land.” They thought they had everything. When one has no ability, no resources, no means of travel, when one has no foreign books, no tourists coming or leaving, one lives in a cocoon. They had no basis for comparison. They did not compare at all, just satisfied with what they had, what they were told was all that they needed. I eventually figured this out somehow for myself.

But how my grandmother and later my father made such a distinction line between Stalin and Communism – I still cannot understand. How could they, until the very end, believe that Stalin was evil, whereas Communists were good? How could they not see that Stalin was a byproduct of Communism and the Soviet Union, and vice versa? What Stalin did with “cleansing” – he did to nourish and flourish Communism and the Soviet Union. He did not just get rid of intelligent, bright, promising people, but he also put fear in the ones that were left alive. So brainwashed and scared that all they could do was just “hurray” the Soviet Union.

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and life in the whole world, even in Georgia, changed forever.

I was just about to say – now I live in the USA, but it is not true. Now I live in Mexico in beautiful San Miguel de Allende, building a new life for us again from scratch (lost count). No matter where I go, I feel my father in my heart, and my grandparents live there too. I still feel the emotions of those warm lazy summer nights with the smell of damp soil at our country house, which fuels my desire to put it all on paper. Perhaps my grandkids will read it one day, or maybe not…

Or maybe someone else’s grandkids will do if not mine.