Chapter 8
Bad and Good Experiences at the Turn of Millennium
I think I focused lately to my work and the environment where I did it, but still I had also my private life at the same time. At home there was a certain shift in responsibilities, especially between the younger persons. After our return from the Big Neighbour my son and daughter-in-law found jobs and were building their careers. My son worked for a commercial company as storekeeper until that company began to diminish because of poor management. He succeeded in collecting a few new but un-saleable items and saving them from discarding by taking them home. When he lost his job he tried to get another one, but had to go on jobless pay. He wanted to get work, but didn’t succeed. He utilized that leisure time for upgrading his PC and slowly managed to do it. Also he secured a dial-on Internet line – at first my wife didn’t know what made our phone bill so high. He wanted to establish a business of his own in the digital music and film field.
My daughter-in-law, Claire, had found a work for herself too. She had become an insurance agent, first she had had to take part in a training course and then had been doing her work well. Then she had gone over to another employer and there she completed a course for accounting. She was doing well at the time I am writing about.
My health was restored after the urinary problems I wrote about and I could do my tasks both at home and in my job. At the same time, my wife began to experience a hard clump in her left breast and went to the doctor. There followed a few weeks I don’t wish even to my enemies to have similar times. It was determined that she had a tumour and later confirmed that it was malignant. She had been working among health specialists for about thirty years and for this reason she could not expect too much good. Some women among her colleagues had died for having cancer.
She followed the route that is usual in such cases. When all examinations ended she went to the hospital and the operation took place. During the two weeks when she was in hospital I went to her every day after work. She lost her breast, but it was confirmed later that all went well and, although she was to take a kind of medicine for years and to be checked regularly, she has healed. At least physically. Her psyche could not have been the same since. It was late autumn when we began to live our normal lives again.
At the beginning of September there was something new in my daily routine. The housing estate the house belonged to in which our office was situated had an elementary school, and from its kitchen lunch could be taken away also by outsiders who paid for it. I had seen it many times as my woman colleagues took it to the office and consumed it. I decided to help my family to a healthy way of life and began to take home food in a dinner can. It made my life a little more complicated at the beginning, because it coincided with my wife’s hospital time. First I had to go home and leave the food there, and then to go to the hospital. When my wife came home it became simpler. This practice of taking home food for all of us I have never left since.
In the autumn there was a great event organized for people considered part of the cleaning industry. The theatre renovated in the practical phase of the masters’ examination prepared its new season and for the first night of one of the plays all prominent people of the sector who could get into the auditorium had been invited. This play was the Legend about the Horse by Leo Tolstoy. I have been summoned there too as the new general manager of EFCI was also to be present and my translation was necessary. I think even the Belgian gentleman who didn’t understand a word could enjoy that performance, it was excellent. In the lead playing the horse was Dezso Garas. Also other outstanding actors played different parts one of them played there the last time before his passing. About one year later that event would be repeated with another play, at that one two guests would be present from abroad, the same gentleman and the European representative of ISSA.
There was another thing that is worth mentioning. As long ago as 1976 I was named an expert of justice by the chairman of the municipal court in the field of shipping and shipbuilding. At that time the system was rather feudal, my chance to get that assignment was Otto, my colleague I wrote about then, who recommended my person. In the first few years I got very few orders from different courts. Also, in two cases from 1979 to 1981 and again from 1990 to 1995 I suspended my activity because of working abroad. However, being an expert of justice took another turn with the change in the political system in 1989 and was also made more complicated by the creation of a chamber for the experts of justice. That chamber had a very hard delivery and when at last it was born the parliament passed a law (in 1995) about experts of justice and all circumstances that contained a detail: without being a member of the chamber of experts of justice it was illegal to give such expertise.
The annual fee was not excessive at first, but as bureaucracy grew within the chamber, it was raised to a sum about twice as much you could earn by a study of expertise. It was not worth doing this work as I had only one order in every second year. I was considering my retirement from that assignment, but, as it is usual with Murphy, in a short time I had to prepare papers in three cases. That time I came across once more with the name of that colleague of mine from the Technical University I mentioned a few times. He was a good practical professional, but had no theoretical background. Anyway, I got almost always cases after he had already gave his expertise and someone was against it. Later I would meet him in person too and had to establish that experience can actually substitute theoretical knowledge.
At last the end of this year came near and the millennium was going to be celebrated in its time all over the world. We in our family had something more to celebrate. In Christmas Eve – it is customary with us in this country to celebrate the event in the eve – the young came up to our flat to eat the usual fish and makos guba (a traditional poppy seed-based dessert) and to change gifts, when Clair pushed a cassette into the VCR and on the TV screen there appeared a special image. It was the ultrasound image about our grandson. Both my wife and I said that it was the greatest present for us in our lives. From that time on my wife was always sparing the pregnant daughter-in-law from hardships.
My working place didn’t work during the holidays, but as soon as we met I couldn’t keep the news secret. We celebrated Christmas before and drank to a successful future. Now the boss opened another bottle, although I asked them not to celebrate anything too soon. It would remain a hot topic in that ‘family of colleagues’ until my grandson would arrive.