Grossma lived with my widowed grandmother, her oldest daughter, in a small blue-tiled house on the farm of her youngest son. Five years earlier she had suffered a stroke and could no longer walk. She sat in a big stuffed chair on wheels. There was usually a half-empty, milky-looking glass of water beside her. I wondered if she drooled when she drank from it and I was paranoid that I would accidentally take a sip and get sick. Maybe I would become like Grossma and have to sit in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. Canada was experiencing a polio epidemic that year and I was very frightened that I would get polio and never walk again. This was one of many fears I dealt with as I tried to come to terms with the upheaval happening in my young life due to change of language and culture.
Grossma always asked us grandchildren for a “tuppa” before we left. That was her word for a kiss, and we dutifully had to put our fresh young lips against her wrinkled cheek. I pursed my lips and braced myself for the impact. Grossma smiled and patted my smooth cheek. Her cheeks looked like some of the apples our grandmother (Oma) had in her cool cellar. They kept well down there, each wrapped in their own blue tissue, and I loved to sink my teeth into the crunchy skin, relishing the new taste on my tongue. Occasionally there was a wrinkled or spotted one and Oma told us not to throw it away. She would use it for making her delicious Plautz or Vrenetje.
Of course, Grossma was not always like a
wilted apple. She was still strong and upright in June 1923, when she and her
mostly grown children made a huge, life-changing decision: they would leave
their home in Ukraine and emigrate to Canada. There were very good reasons to
do so, and, looking back, the family made the right decision. Four years earlier, just before Christmas 1919, they had lost
their father during a typhoid epidemic. At the beginning of 1920, my grandmother lost both her in-laws to the same disease. Civil war ravaged the country after Czar Nicholas and his whole family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Roving bandits brought lice and diseases with them. Anarchy reigned and the independent Mennonite farmers became victims of the revolution, branded as Kulaks (rich landowners).
In spite of all this, my
grandmother, Katharina Epp Kroeger, the oldest child, decided to stay in
Ukraine. Her husband, my grandfather, Abram Kroeger, was an only son and had
inherited the family farm. They had two little children. Had they been able to
see what lay ahead for them, they would not have remained in Ukraine.
(See an earlier blog post of July 2012, Shattered Dreams, Lost Lives --
 |
| The Epp family, just before they left Ukraine in 1923 |
My maternal grandparents, Abram Kroeger and Katharina Epp Kroeger, are second from left in the back and front rows. They are a young married couple with two little children. My grandmother is holding her daughter, my mother, on her lap. My mother's brother is standing beside her. My mother would not see her grandmother (my great-grandmother) or her aunts and uncles again until she was 31 years old; her brother and her father never saw them again.
Below the poem by Karle Wilson Baker I have pictures of my Grossma and me side by side at about the same age, in our mid-fifties. Her hair is still dark on top but graying on the sides. Mine is just beginning to grey. I wish we could sit and have a cup of tea together and a chat. There are so many questions I would love to ask her!
The wrinkled cheeks, the glass with milky fluid, and the contrast of Grossma’s “oldness” to fresh apples make her seem so real. Then too, I remember well the polio scare of the 1940s and 50s, fearing we wouldn’t make it through unscathed, feeling sorrow for the children and adults afflicted.
ReplyDeleteI cherish old stitching as well. The first thing I see when I wake up each morning is Aunt Ruthie’s embroidery of “My Mother’s Garden” encased in an ornate Victorian frame. Thank you for this fond reflection from Ukraine, so much better than the crazy stuff reported about this country in American news these days.
Thank you, Marian. It was pretty crazy in Ukraine from the time the Tzar and his family were murdered in 1918 until after WW II when so many innocent people were slaughtered by Stalin and his henchmen, or sent to Siberia to do slave labor—a bloody history!
ReplyDeleteThanks Elfrieda for keeping our ancestors alive. I love hearing the stories - some new to me, some not so new. I could hear them over and over again and not tire of them.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Marge. I feel their stories need to be told!
ReplyDeleteYes these stories need to be told, over and over. My family came over around 1856-57, and always suffering and great sacrifice to make the change from the Poland area, where they were forced to flee without hardly any belongings, and no money. They were at the mercy of the Mennonite Resettlemen Committee in Moundridge/Newton area, and now these many years later, I too wish to have sat down and heard the stories, I heard only through bits a pieces, like one hot summer day my Grandmother(Paternal) told me that when our people settled on the plains of Kansas not a tree in sight, and her Mother mourned the loss of the Linden Trees of Europe. Today, outside our condo, there is a giant Linden tree, and every time I see it, I remember that my Great Grandmother mourned the loss of something so precious as a tree on the prairie of Kansas. Thank you always for your wonderful stories. Donovan.
ReplyDeleteDon. thanks for your encouraging comment. I hope someday my grandchildren will read the stories I’ve posted and be able to fill in some of the blanks
DeleteI agree with Marge Elfrieda...I never tire of hearing family stories either.So grateful for our family and for you for keeping our ancestors "alive" through your blog😍
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ruth. They are part of our DNA!
ReplyDeleteThis is such an interesting story about your great-grandmother.
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