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LOOKING BACK...

When I think about the years of my youth, spent in two different high schools, many memories, images and various events pass before my eyes.

I remember how in June 1929, with great fear, I took my entrance exams from the primary school third grade to the first high school class. And how happy I was when I found out that I was accepted into high school.

For three years we studied with boys, though they were in separate classes. The high school was very full with day and night classes. And how happy I was when in 1932 a school was built for the girls – “white as a swan” – (a line from Salomeja Neris). We were very happy and proud of our modern school. Still in the big school, there were too many of us. Our class was special because we were the biggest and most unruly. More than 50 of us, and there were many talents, good and bad. We were full of different jokes and pranks.

Even when we were in the first grade with boys, we came up with pranks. Our language teacher, Mr. Kuodis, loved to stand by the white tile furnace to stay warm. So I remember when someone came up with the idea to put chalk on the whole side of the furnace and then when the teacher leaned against it, his dark suit became all white. He did not feel it and that gave us a lot of joy.

The second prank belonged to our little girls who sat in the first row. Since Mr. K was very tall, he sat on a tall chair with his legs extended to reach the desk of the girls. And the girls would write on the sole of his shoes. Two girls decided to draw on his shoe, again the whole class burst into laughter and the teacher would have no idea why they were laughing.

At the only girls’ school someone in the class came up with the idea to draw chicken feet with chalk and they would go to the foyer and start walking. Of course the whole floor of the foyer would look as if chickens walked there. And the teacher who was supervising the children realized whose footprints those were. She sent us all to the principal and asked us to tell who was responsible for that. And, of course, we were all silent like mice. And since there was no culprit, the whole class was punished and had to mop the floor.

On April Fools' day, our class decided to switch classrooms. When our teacher entered, he could not recognize the faces and apologized thinking he had made a mistake and left to look for his class. Same thing happened in the other classroom where the teacher did not recognize his children.

Since our class became so unruly, the teacher’s committee decided to split us up into classes A and B. We were anxious and afraid to be separated from our friends. It was the 6^th grade. The teacher wanted to break up the most active group but we were lucky that most of us stayed together and our class was 6B. This was the group that remained the most active until we graduated from school.

(...)

I cannot forget our beloved art teacher, Vaicechavicius. One time he gave us an assignment to draw “my dream”. I loved ballet dancing, and my dream was to become a ballerina. Somewhere in a magazine I saw a photo of a famous ballerina in a pose and I copied her figure and drew it. I drew the flowers and all the rest. All the girls drew their dreams. I remember one very gifted artist, Irena D., who drew a few small babies, bottles and nipples, cloth diapers hanging on a clothesline. It looked so real. Sadly, she only ended up having one baby while this dreamer ballerina had 5 babies, so she never became a ballerina.

(...)

In 1937, when I graduated from school, I left Panevezys and never came back but many years later, every time I visited Lithuania and got KGB permission, I would go there to even get a glimpse from far away into our “white swan”.

So that was the story of the “white swan”.

(...)

Years later I walked the town alone - although my relatives wanted to keep me company, I did not need them. I wanted to walk the path of my youth alone, to dream, to reminisce, to give in to my sadness about the life that is passing by so tragically, tempestuously, but always interestingly.

Alexandra Kazickas

October 22, 1992

New York