"Thursday’s child has far to go"

One of  the "Nanas” by the French artist Niki de Saint Phalle

 in the Historic Grotto of the Herrenhausen Baroque Gardens in Hannover, Germany

I have finally read Miriam Toews’ book The Flying Troutmans, after it has languished on my to-read shelf for about two years. In spite of the dark topic of mental illness, the miserable situation in which the characters find themselves, and the vulgar language they use, I caught myself laughing a lot as I was reading about this family who gains a new perspective when they go on a long car trip. Trips will do that to you!

Reading Toews' book got me thinking about all the travelling I have done in my life. I think I must have been born on a Thursday! The first trip I ever took was even more miserable than that of the Troutmans. It lasted four years (1943-1947) and began when I was just four months old. I have no memory of it, and perhaps that's a good thing! My parents, my two-year-old brother and I, my grandmother and my teenaged uncle fled for our lives from Ukraine through Poland to Germany and finally to Paraguay. A sister was born en route.

The Paraguayan Chaco became our home where we settled for five years. For me, these were wonderful years of living in a small village where we all knew each other. When I was seven years old, I went to school -- a one-room building right in the centre of the village that also served as a church. Here my father preached on Sundays and we went to Sunday School. I learned to read and write, recite poetry, sing and talk about God. It was my small, safe world.

For my mother, the Chaco was a place of backbreaking labour, living in crowded makeshift quarters, battling insects and sandstorms, and birthing three babies in the midst of it all. Mom was overjoyed when we finally left for Canada, where her mother’s family had settled in the 1920s. That was the first of many airplane trips I have taken. The smells, sounds, and texture of things I had never before encountered linger with me still.

As a nine-year-old, I found life in Canada hard at first. For one who communicated so naturally and easily in both Low and High German, I had to learn to speak again, and when I did, the words came out wrong. I wore the wrong clothes and took the wrong food in my lunch box. My classmates were younger than me, but seemed smarter. Lying in bed at night, I thought about our home in Paraguay, and I so longed to go back there that many times I cried myself to sleep.

That was a long time ago. Since then there have been many trips and each one has changed me, gifted me, taught me, and prepared me for something else in my life.