How Can I Keep From Singing?

For me, November is probably the bleakest month of the year (February is a close second!). The autumn splendor has disappeared and there is a gray atmosphere, a mixture of rain, sleet and snow. The prospect of six months of winter does not appeal to me at all. 

The Titanic sank in November. A dear friend and her three-year-old daughter were killed in a car accident in November. 

But good things happened in November too, just like they do in other months of the year. My Dad was born November 12th. Today, as I write this, is his birthday. I miss choosing birthday cards for him and writing letters to him in November (following our marriage we never lived close to home). My parents got married in November and their time together lasted almost 65 years. They taught us eight children about genuine love and commitment and I am so grateful to them. 

In October 1952, our family arrived in Canada after living in Paraguay for five years. I was nine years old. My mother had told us about snow. She cut paper snowflakes for us every Christmas and they were beautiful. She told us about Christmas in Ukraine and Germany and sang the German Christmas carol "Leise rieselt der Schnee" (quietly falls the snow) on sweltering Christmas Eves in Paraguay. That November of 1952 she called us to the window with great excitement. "Look at the snow!" she exclaimed. "Soon it will be Christmas. Our first Christmas in Canada!" I looked and looked, but all I saw was streaks of what looked like rain. If that was snow, I didn't know what all the fuss was about! I was quite disappointed. Later in December and for the rest of the winter the fields were covered with snow and we had to wrap scarves around our faces to keep them from freezing as we walked to school. After a while the scarves felt like frozen cardboard. I did not enjoy this. Snowballs shoved down my neck by boisterous boys were not my idea of fun either!

Above is a picture of my Dad and my sister and me in southern Germany, about a year after we were reunited. He had been drafted into the German army toward the end of the war, just before my sister was born. 

Several years ago I got in touch with a woman who used to babysit my sister and me when we were refugees. A teenager at the time, she is now an elderly woman. She says what she remembers about us is that we were always singing. As children, what mattered most of all was that we were loved and cared for. That made us happy.

Recently Hardy and I attended a luncheon in honor of Edgar Stoesz, an American Mennonite we met on two travel tours, one to Paraguay and one to Poland and Ukraine. Edgar was the "story teller" on both of these tours. Throughout most of his adult life Edgar worked with Mennonite Central Committee and had many interesting experiences to share with his fellow travelers. In his book Like a Mustard Seed (2008), he tells the story of how my father and his friend, Hans Rempel,  shouldered the burden of forming a vibrant church in the new Neuland colony,  I had never heard that story before. 

                                        

Edgar's most recent book, Finding my Way (2014), is his memoir. Edgar is an octogenarian and has led a long and interesting life. He ends his memoir with Robert Lowry's hymn "My Life Flows On."

No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that Rock I'm clinging.

Since love is Lord of heav'n and earth,

How can I keep from singing?

I'm beginning to convince myself that I can make it through another November. I'll sing myself through it!