What a Life!

I have a confession to make. I love to read obituaries and I'm not dragging my feet about going to funerals anymore. Sometimes I think it must be my age. I remember when my mother would phone me and tell me that someone dear to her had just passed away and that she and dad were going to another funeral. 

Hardy and I are going to a lot of funerals now. Many who pass away are younger than we are. My sister, whose high school graduating class is celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, told me that nine of her classmates have died. We were both shocked!  We are still living life to its fullest -- learning how to use our new iPads, encouraging our children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, enjoying our hobbies, celebrating birthdays (there are so many candles on our cakes now!) and happy to have time for all of this because we are retired!

About reading obituaries -- it's not because I'm a senior that I enjoy reading them. I am interested in how people lived their lives, often so well and so courageously. 

For example, there is the recent obituary in the Winnipeg Free Press from a woman who was two years younger than I am. She wrote her own obituary, without a word about her disability. Her first sentence tells me that she had a great sense of humour: "I chose to write my own obituary, as it gives me the chance to have a last word." She writes about her life as "glorious" and "full" (this from someone handicapped who lost her parents at an early age). She writes how she "survived" getting both her bachelor's and master's degrees but claims she learned more from children with disabilities and their parents (with whom she worked for twenty years) than she ever learned at university. She did a lot of travelling and at the end she says she hopes that "each and every one of you make the most of every minute." She asks that donations be made to a memorial fund that helps the disabled.

O Love, that wilt not let me go, / I rest my weary soul in Thee; / I give Thee back the life I owe, / that in Thine ocean depths its flow / may richer, fuller be.

About going to funerals -- Hardy and I recently attended two, one from each side of our family. The deceased were not close relatives but people whose lives had touched ours over the years. 
Hardy's relative lived to the age of 93 and died seven years after his wife passed away due to the ravages of Alzheimer's. His casket was surrounded by his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, many of them weeping. Each grandchild placed a rose on his coffin when they entered the sanctuary. This man was an accomplished musician and an avid fitness and sports enthusiast, in spite of the fact that he struggled with obsessive/compulsive disorder all of his life (something we were not aware of during his lifetime). His children and grandchildren had many lasting memories of wonderful times they had shared with their Papa and Opa.

O Light, that followest all my way, / I yield my flickering torch to Thee; / my heart restores its borrowed ray, / that in Thy sunshine’s blaze its day / may brighter, fairer be.

The relative on my side of the family whose funeral we attended was 81 and had suffered from Parkinson's for the last ten years of her life. She was born in Ukraine and at eight, while visiting her grandparents in another part of the country, she could no longer return to her family due to the turmoils of World War 2. She met her father and siblings fifty years later, but her mother and brother had already passed away. Her grandmother, aunt and other extended family members adopted her. In spite of such a difficult start in life, she had a wonderful sense of humour and never complained. 

O Joy, that seekest me through pain, / I cannot close my heart to Thee; / I trace the rainbow through the rain, / and feel the promise is not vain / that morn shall tearless be.

Life is sweet and I want to enjoy every minute of it. So do our friends Klaas and Hinke from The Netherlands. We visited them in 2011. Now Hinke has the beginning of Alzheimer's. They go for walks and bike rides and when the weather doesn't allow it they attend concerts and go to museums. He writes that strength and courage come from friends, their congregation and their family. Klaas is an artist and has sent us several of his beautiful water colours (postcard size).

O Cross, that liftest up my head, / I dare not ask to fly from Thee; / I lay in dust life’s glory dead, / and from the ground there blossoms red / life that shall endless be.

The pastor-poet George Matheson (1842-1906) wrote the hymn which I dispersed throughout this post. As a young teenager I found a book about him in a dusty attic shelf and will never forget it. I cannot remember the title of the book and have not been able to locate it. It was not a true account but a fictionalized version based in part on his life. In the story I read, a woman who loved him before he was blind meets him again after his blindness, still loves him and wants to marry him. He doesn't want her pity, but she finally convinces him of her true love. In reality, the woman to whom Matheson was engaged left him because of his failing eyesight and he remained single for the rest of his life.  He wrote this hymn when he was 40 years old. It was 40 years in the making but took only 40 minutes to write. He didn't let his failing eyesight keep him in emotional darkness because he knew of a greater light that made his days brighter and fairer.

Of Soup and Bones and Simmering Things

It's after Christmas and all day I have had the smell of a twenty-four-hour soup stock in our house. I roasted two chickens for our family Christmas dinner and decided to make soup stock from the leftover bones and gristle rather than discarding it the way I usually do. I saw a neat recipe in the daily newspaper and was intrigued. The recipe tells me to dump all the bones and skin of the chicken, together with some diced carrots, celery, onions, parsley, thyme, rosemary, and sage into a cheese cloth, tie it up, put it in a crockpot, fill the pot with water and simmer for twenty-four hours.

While my soup was simmering, I took some time to just relax beside the Christmas tree, something I really longed to do after all the activity of Christmas preparations and family gatherings. I have twin nieces who, like me, love to read and write. Their Christmas present to us was a story each of them had written. I decided this would be a good time to enjoy reading their gift.
To my surprise, the first story I picked up, entitled The Song Over the Bones, is about a grandmother making soup in her kitchen, while her granddaughter looks on. The grandmother has a habit of telling stories to her grandchildren while she works in her kitchen. She is wise and she knows that telling a story has its rules and so does listening to a story. Just like simmering the soup stock for a long time brings out the flavor, thinking at length about a story we have heard "keeps us asking questions" and brings out shades of meaning. The secret lies in the the long slow simmering process.

The grandmother emphasizes the fact that each of us, with the unique life we are living, is a story; a story only we can tell by living it. "When we sing the Song Over the Bones, we let our song loose into the world, we set it free. It lopes through the forest in search of other songs. A story needs other stories to hunt with, to howl with, to fight against, and to run away from."

Each person's Song Over the Bones is as different and unique as the person who sings it. 

The advantage of having lived a long life is that I can begin to see the shape that my story is taking. I can go over each chapter, one by one as I have lived it -- the successes, the failures, the delights and the tears. A friend of mine, older than I am, wrote in her Christmas letter about "the birth pangs of life stretching us into something new." We learn slowly, but that is not lamentable, it is how it is meant to be.

Slow simmering of the soup stock brings out the flavor and gives us a Song Over the Bones that is rich in texture and delicious to the palate!

The chicken noodle soup we had for supper tonight was very flavorful and I have more soup stock saved in a jar to share with friends over lunch.

Words, Words, Words!

"Annie's father discovered that there were words unique to each language, untranslatable words that cannot be expressed in the English language--and what one cannot express in language, one cannot fully experience. Without a name to nudge it into shape, a feeling always remains cloudy and dim, like a shadow hovering at the edges of one's peripheral vision. One can barely communicate it to oneself, let alone to others."

-- Sigal Samuel in "Words I Wish I Had" (published in prairiefire, vol.34, no.1)

Anyone who speaks several languages is very aware of the truth of the above statement.  I recall trying to convey the meaning of certain German words and expressions to my students at university and explaining the term "idiomatic expression." More often than not it was perceived as "idiotic expression," just because it was impossible to translate!

When my brain first took in words, there were three languages swirling around me. There was Low German (Plautdietsch) which my parents and my brother spoke to each other and to me; there was High German which was the language of school and church, and there was Russian which the local people spoke to each other. In Paraguay, where I lived from ages four to nine, I heard some Spanish, but very little. I heard more in the three months of our stay in Asuncion, when we were waiting  for our visas to go to Canada. Later, as a newly married couple, Hardy and I went to Brussels to study French for six months. During our years in Africa, I added  Kikongo (ya Leta = State Kikongo) and a smattering of Lingala to my linguistic repertoire. Some time after I learned Kikongo, I realized that a number of words I had learned were actually Portuguese. Kikongo is an African trade language and it liberally borrows words from other languages. I recognized the English and the French words, but not the Portuguese! It's no wonder that I feel most at home when I'm in a room full of people speaking several different languages.

Some people have done amazing things with words. I think of  Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani school pupil and education activist who is only 16 years old and has already experienced more pain than many of us have in our lifetime for having the courage to speak her convictions. There is Alice Munro, a beloved Canadian short story writer who, at over 80 years of age just received the Nobel prize for literature.  Margaret Atwood, another celebrated Canadian writer, paints for us word pictures of what our world can become when we treat it carelessly and with disdain. Recently I had the privilege of attending an interview with Atwood and CBC's Terry McLeod at McNally Robinson Booksellers. Atwood was in Winnipeg to view the premiere ballet performance of her 1985 novel The Handmaid's Tale, put on by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. My youngest daughter Heidi and I later attended this "wordless" production. It was a real treat!

Amanda Greene and Alexander Gamayunov in RWB's The Handmaid's Tale

My life's quest has been to do something significant with words. This might mean several things. I want to speak words of encouragement and love to the people around me. I want to read words to enrich my own life. I want to shape them and form them and make them into a work of art. Lately I have been encouraged by Shirley Showalter, who has just written her memoir entitled Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World. What I really like about Shirley’s book is that I can identify with much of what she writes. It helps me understand myself better and affirms for me the values I hold dear.

Shirley asked if she could interview me on her blog and we have done a virtual interview. If you are interested, here is the link to that interview: http://www.shirleyshowalter.com/blog/ 

"All of us can sing the same song, and there will still be four billion different renditions." 

(Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, p.181)

Remember when ... ?

Yesterday we went to Birds Hill Park and had a wiener roast at one of the campsites with our oldest daughter, Christine, her husband Mike, and our grandchildren, Kathryn (7) and Ben (13). The site we chose has a fire pit and a picnic table. There wasn't a soul around, except every once in a while a few horses and riders came by from the nearby equestrian training school. (We chose to picnic at the spot where the equestrian events took place during the 1999 Winnipeg Pan Am Games.)  

A weird feeling came over me as I was sitting at the picnic table. When I looked at seven-year-old Kathryn, it seemed as if I was looking at my childhood self. Her older brother Ben kept sending her to fetch the baseball he was batting and she ran after it, eager to please him, happy that he was playing with her for a change. Her blonde windswept braids were like mine when I ran with my older brother, always happy for his attention. I was somehow taken back to my childhood in Paraguay and I felt as if we were having a picnic there. 

Several things, other than watching Kathryn and Ben, reminded me of that time long ago and stirred my memory: The vast prairie and occasional scrub bush looked like the Paraguayan landscape I remember during some of my early years there (1947-1952, when I was four to nine); horses were part of our everyday existence, needed for survival; the place where our picnic table stood and where the fire pit was located had only dirt and no grass; we were sitting at an open fire and eating watermelon ...  Memory does strange things to people. When I shared this experience with my sister Irma, she suggested that my thoughts and feelings were perhaps due to the fact that I could finally relax after several very busy weeks and was now more in touch with my subconscious.

In his fascinating biography of his father, entitled The Constructed Mennonite, University of Winnipeg history professor Hans Werner writes about the tricks memory plays on us and how we play with memory: "Research related to memory suggests that the memories we store are fluid and amorphous and sometimes called up unconsciously by stimuli such as smell, sight, and verbal association. ... There is no single site for 'the memory' as if it constituted a discrete entity. Each act of recall is itself a new experience." (p.173).

During the Winnipeg Fringe Festival this summer, Hardy and I thoroughly enjoyed the theatre production Quilters, put on by the Shoestring Players. A grandmother is seen sorting through the many quilts she has sewn over the years. Each quilt rekindles a memory, representing some aspect of the hard life cycle of the pioneer woman, which the sixteen-member cast depicts in song. The subjects range from courtships and quilting bees to miscarriage and death; women of the time commonly endured ten or more pregnancies. Each block the grandmother sews becomes part of the fabric of a legacy quilt, gifted by the grandmother to her six daughters and grandchildren. I enjoyed the production so much that I enticed three of my sisters to come and see it with me again, and it became a family experience.

The recalling of memories included the celebration of the marriage of our niece Leanne Paetkau to Steven Saindon, on Hecla Island, August 24th. Leanne had tied small photos of her grandparents to the wedding bouquet, because she wanted these special people to be a part of this important day in her life.

My brother John and his wife Linda came from Texas for the wedding and requested to view a painting our family had commissioned as part of Ray Dirks' Road to Freedom exhibit, depicting my mother's side of the family. We call it The Three Katharinas. It tells the story of our great-grandmother Loewen-Epp, our grandmother Epp-Kroeger and our mother Kroeger-Neufeld. Ray used photographs and other memorabilia to create this work of art. He graciously consented to let us borrow the original painting for a brief time so family members can view it and call to mind the courageous women in our family. They endured great suffering through persecution, famine, loss of home and loved ones. In spite of all the tragedy in their lives, their faith in God remained steadfast. Our oldest grandchild is the only one of the grandchildren who has a vague memory of my parents (his great-grandparents). Our hope is that this painting will remind even the youngest of their family legacy.

(from left to right)  Ivan 6, Daniel 3, Markus 10, Julia 7, Sasha 5, Kathryn 7, Lena Kate 6, Ben 13

Magic Transformations

Recently I spent the morning making granola for our daughter and her family, baking two kinds of cookies (for a cookie potluck at church), and banana chocolate chip muffins for when the grandchildren come over. While I was busy with that, I listened to CBC's Jian Ghomeshi interviewing Michael Pollan who has written Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.

Pollan told Ghomeshi and his listeners some interesting things about cooking that I think I know intuitively but have never heard expressed before. In the past, everyone just sort of took for granted the amazing things our forebears (mostly the women) managed to accomplish through their cooking. Pollan says that cooking, above all, connects us to one another since it involves us in a web of social and ecological relationships. Cooking gives us our identity and our culture. It helps us reconnect with our family. Cooking requires patience, practice and presence. Cooking can become a political act: I can decide what kind of agriculture I want to support!

As we rely more and more on corporations to process our food, several things happen. We consume large quantities of fat, sugar and salt; we disrupt our link to the natural world; and we weaken our relationships with family and friends. "Taking back control of cooking may be the single most important step anyone can take to help make our food system healthier and more sustainable," argues Pollan. "Reclaiming cooking as an act of enjoyment and self-reliance, and learning to perform the magic of these everyday transformations, opens the door to a more nourishing life." Homemade food is much healthier than what you buy on the shelves. You can be liberal with butter and salt while doing your own cooking and it will still be healthier than the food you buy, claims Pollan.

I have enjoyed the culinary arts all my life. Growing up, my sister and I had to help Mom with the chores. I always chose cooking over cleaning. Fortunately my sister preferred cleaning! I never really thought about why I liked cooking but it began to make sense to me as I listened to Michael Pollan's wise words.

                       

Two new cookbooks I'm enjoying these days are Mennonite Girls Can Cook and Celebrations, both by the same authors. The recipes of the second book are divided into sections that celebrate passages of life, such as Birth, Childhood, Marriage, Family, Outdoors, Community, Hospitality, Milestones, Holidays, and Life. My husband and I and two of our grandchildren went to our local Ten Thousand Villages store for the book-signing of Celebrations and purchased a copy. Our four-year-old granddaughter Sasha, sitting in her car seat in the back of the car, was entranced with the gorgeous photos and didn't put the book down until we got home.

I've never really thought about this while preparing food for family and friends, but I read recently (on a page of the website <thirdway.com/AW/>) under 'Today's Stress Tip,' that "cooking is a microcosm of life." Cooking requires a number of skills that are actually survival skills in our world. Planning skills are involved, as well as knowledge, judgment and economy, as we think about what to cook and make our purchases. Our artistic ability comes into play as we plan the makeup and presentation of the meal. This all has to be done within a reasonable time frame and in a spirit of conviviality and graciousness. Cooking helps us develop the skills to succeed at pretty much everything else. 

... the magic of these everyday transformations ...

Ukrainian Hospitality

As a little girl growing up in a remote Mennonite village in the Paraguayan Chaco, I observed my mother baking bread almost every day. It was magical to see that pile of dough double in size after my mother added the yeast or starter dough, then kneaded and pummeled it and set it in a warm place. The smell of bread baking in the clay outdoor oven lingers with me still.

Eggs had their own magical qualities. Carefully gathering the warm brown eggs laid by our free-range chickens, I brought them to Mom in my apron. The white could be separated from the yolk with some careful maneuvering. Mom would beat the egg white turning it first into foam, and then, as it became stiffer, into a delectable topping for cookies and cake. She beat the yellow with sugar, and it became a tasty treat!

Watermelon harvest was a veritable feast. Watermelon could change its original shape, texture, smell and flavor – from juicy, sweet, and crunchy when fresh, to sticky syrup we could put on our bread and Rollkuchen (fritters), or to vinegar-flavored pickles.

Another transformation happened when our mother put sour cream into a large canning jar and asked us to take turns rolling the jar on our laps. It didn't take long and that sour cream turned into solid butter. Amazing!

A pig slaughter was always a village feast in which all participated; everyone stayed up later than usual. The women stirred the lard, harvested the cracklings at the bottom of the pot, and made head cheese. Meanwhile the men and boys ended up playing soccer with the blown-up pig bladder, and the younger children played "Hide and Seek." (It's another whole game when played in the dark!)

I ask myself, what memories my children have taken with them into adulthood that involve cooking and baking? What are my grandchildren learning about this important life skill? What am I teaching them about the magic of these everyday transformations?

Of Time and Change

Change and decay in all around I see;

O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

Time has delusional qualities. Everything changes with time, but this change is so gradual that it is almost imperceptible. If it were not so gradual, it would be frightening. In childhood it seems to move very slowly, in young adulthood and mid-life it feels like it's not moving at all, and in old age one has the perception that it's flying by. This is especially obvious when we trace the growth of our children over the years. The tiny baby changes drastically within the time span of a year, but we only notice it when we compare the photos taken during the course of that year.

People have very different ways of dealing with time. My father was always ready on time and waited for Mom who always ran out of time. My husband Hardy always wants to make the most of time and ends up being late for everything. I like to be early because I don't want to miss anything! 

Even the change of seasons has become unreliable. This winter it seemed like time was standing still! The winter just wanted to linger, even though it needed to move on and make way for spring. It is still snowing in May and it doesn't feel like spring will be making its appearance anytime soon.

Recently my mother's cousin, Arthur Kroeger, wrote a book about that reliable instrument that has helped us measure and keep track of time for centuries -- the clock, and specifically, the Kroeger clock. My sisters and I invited Uncle Arthur to our book club to tell us about it. Arthur himself seems timeless. He is 90 years old, but very spry and lively, both physically and mentally. He loved being the center of attention for five women, all much younger than he, although we are no spring chickens either!

Part I of the book, Kroeger Clocks, relates the history of the Kroeger clock makers. The Kruegers of Reimerswalde in the Werder region of West Prussia had made clocks since the 1700s. Some members of this clock-making family later moved to Ukraine, where they continued to manufacture them. Over time the Kruegers changed their name to Kroeger and the Werder clocks became the Kroeger clocks. My grandfather, Abram Kroeger, married a Loewen, a farmer's daughter with land of her own, so he left clock making and went into farming. Nearly two hundred years of clock making came to an end in 1929, although the Kroegers continued repairing clocks for some time. Beginning in 1874, Mennonites who left Ukraine for Canada and the U.S. often took their Kroeger clocks along with them.

Part II of Uncle Arthur's book is a treatise on clocks in general, beginning with their early history and going into some detail about the Kroeger clocks and how to recognize them.

Part III, entitled "Amazing Clock Stories," is the longest and for me the most interesting part of the book. One such story, 'The Reimer Clock,' tells how Agatha Reimer and her children were forced to flee Ukraine at the end of October 1943. Their husband and father was arrested by the Soviets in 1938 and disappeared from their lives. They loaded the family's Kroeger clock onto the horse-drawn wagon with other precious possessions. As they moved further into Poland they ended up walking for seventeen days through ice and snow to East Germany. On his back, in a "Rucksack" (backpack), seven-year-old Abram carried the heavy Kroeger clock. That same clock went with the family to Paraguay  in 1947 and then made its way to Canada in 1955. This year, in the week Arthur came to tell us about the Kroeger clocks,  Abram Reimer, the little boy who carried the clock on his back, passed away. Time now stands still for him, and drags on for his widow. The Kroeger clock on her wall continues to tick faithfully.

With the new electronic gadgets now giving us the time at the touch of our fingers, clocks will soon be obsolete and continue to exist only in museums. Another change ... easily accepted by the younger generation but a little more difficult to adopt by seniors who love their clocks!

Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?

Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

[Henry Lyte, 1793-1847]

In Memoriam

I write this in memory of Tillie Wall (1915-2012)

How can I capture in a few words the essence of a life lived every minute to its full capacity until the age of 97?

The British poet laureate, Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), attempted it when in 1833 he lost his best friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, very suddenly at a young age. Tennyson raved and ranted for pages and pages, and did so for many years, as he struggled to understand the meaning of life and death.  He finally completed In Memoriam (originally called "The Way of the Soul") in 1849.  Four lines from his long work stand out for me as I think about love and loss:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it, when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

Last November I lost my very dear friend, Tillie.  I got to know her at a very crucial time in my life.  She was to me a mother, a sister and a friend when I was far away from my family and friends.  Although we have lived separate lives for many years now (in the early 1980s she returned to California and I returned to Canada), for a few years in the early 1970s we lived across the hall from each other in an apartment in the provincial town of Kikwit, DR Congo.  Tillie worked in a TB clinic and as a midwife. When we arrived in DR Congo she had been there for many years, delivering thousands of babies.

My work at that time was adjusting to a new culture, learning a new language and birthing and raising my babies. To Tillie, every baby was an "angel," a very special gift from God. She was present at the birth of our first daughter Christine (delivered by emergency C-section) and very likely saved the life of our second daughter Anita, when she went into severe convulsions before she was a year old.  When Christine was bitten by a dog at age four, Tillie administered a series of rabies shots.  She joked and played and made it all seem like fun, so Christine was not intimidated by the needles.

Tillie once taught me a lesson I will never forget. She went on a three-week consultation trip and asked me to water her plants. I promised to do so and promptly forgot.  When she returned, many of her plants were beyond hope.  She was angry with me and said she didn't know if she could trust me again. I felt terrible because I had let her down.  However, the next time she went away she again asked me to look after her plants.  I knew she had forgiven me, and this time I did not let her down.

I think what I want to say about Tillie is that she lived a life of pure love.  She loved what she was doing with all her heart; she felt a strong call from God at a very young age and she never wavered from that path.  The Congolese people called her "Ma Wall" and when she went back for a visit after her retirement, they lined the streets reaching out to her and calling "Ma Wall, Ma Wall, Ma Wall"!  She was a mother, a sister and a friend to thousands of people, many of whom literally owe their life to her.

"Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you. 

Carve your name on hearts, not on marble."

                                                                                                                                              --C.H. Spurgeon