 Family Connections and the Role Traditional Elders Play in Some of the Overseas Cultures){kind=link}
In Memory of Mitka Angelova (great-grandma Mittie)
Family Connections and the Role Traditional Elders Play in Some of the Overseas Cultures based on the Bulgarian great-grandmother Mittie’s interactions with her great-grandchildren.
Do you remember your great-grandma? How did she call you? Did she read stories to you? Or she told you stories?
Great-Grandma Mittie Wrote Letters To Her Great-Grandchildren
In Bulgaria, when living in the same city, grandparents and great-grandparents often interact with their grandkids. In the case of Mittie’s family, they all live nearby in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Mittie and her 5-year-old great-granddaughter Dara would take Dara’s dolls for a stroll in their neighborhood park. When tired, they would sit on a bench and chat. One of these chats inspired Mittie to write a letter to Dara to which Dara replied, and so the series of letters started.
ABV publishing had been fortunate to work with Mittie and her family for the last five years and published three of the four book series called Great-grandma Mittie’s Letters: The Space Adventures of Dara, Vesko, and Borko (Parts 1-3, From the Clouds to the Stars; Of Atoms, Gravitation, and Rays; Of the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon, respectively). The Letters are designed and illustrated by Mittie’s grandson Angel Dimitrov, the dad of the two boys, who are the boy characters in the books.
In 2023, at 91, Mittie left this physical world but not before completing Part 4 of the series. Our team is translating the last batch of letters and plans to have Part 4 (Visiting the Planets, the similar to the rest of the books in the series, available in all three formats – digital, paperback, and audiobook.
Family is very important to majority of Bulgarians and to Mittie. A traditional Bulgarian family is usually a close-knit unit, and grandparents often help raising the grandkids. They are very close to the kids, especially grandmothers and great-grandmothers; they call the kids sweet names and can regularly be seen hugging and kissing them. In The Letters, Mittie calls her great-grandchildren: my dearests, amazing, wonderful, my favorite great-grandchildren! She often exclaims: My goodness, how beautiful they are! And my smart little scientiets! When taking the kids on an imeginary flight to explore the constallations, she calls the kids: my precious constellation of grandchildren.
Grandma Mittie Explains
Mittie explains the solar system to the young kids by talking about family unity. Similar to their big family, she tells them, where they all stay together because they are tight and close to each other, in the solar family the Sun attracts the planets, so they orbit it, stay together, and form the solar family.
Being a retired university instructor and applied nuclear physicist, Mitie likes to teach science to her young great-grandchildren. She explains scientific terminology and the universe through family stories and games. One of the science games is the Atom game, and Mittie and the kids pretend to be gas atoms, followed by turning into atoms of a liquid and of a solid. The kids float and flutter when Mittie turns the imaginary heat up and get closer and closer as she turns it down to a point that they all get attached, hug each other, and are connected, pretending to be the atoms of a solid object.
Great-grandma Mittie finishes all but one of her 21 letters with Hugs and Kisses – XOXO. She finishes The Letters with a heartwarming farewell message and a blessing to all:
Summary!
Farewell to all of you, my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren!
With infinite love, I hug you tightly, and kiss you gently!
May you all be very-very healthy and happy!!!
When you grow up to be a great-grandparent, what stories and messages do you want to leave for the kids in your family?
P.S. To learn more about ABV publishing and to read The Letters and other books, please follow the links above.
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