The Trees Remember

"The trees remember! The houses don't forget! The stones cry out!"

Our Polish tour guide Katia said this over and over as we looked at ancient trees, neglected houses, and broken gravestones.

This past September, Hardy and I spent time searching out our places of birth. Hardy was born in Danzig-Westpreussen (present-day Poland) in 1937 and I was born in Ukraine in 1943, and we both thought it was time to go back for a visit..

Although Mennonites lived for over 500 years in Poland, I have heard very little about that period of history. Russia's more recent dramatic and traumatic past is a more familiar story to me.

Katia, with her sparkling personality and her immense knowledge of Polish as well as Mennonite history, made our families' history spring alive for us. The many cemeteries we visited, where broken memorial stones lay scattered on the ground, prayers I still remember from my childhood etched on one side, names and dates on the other, spoke to us of a once vibrant community where our forebears lived lives that had meaning and purpose. They built the dikes that stopped the Vistula River from overflowing its banks and destroying the surrounding countryside as it had done since time immemorial. They built windmills and farms and churches and raised their children to respect God and community.

All this came to an end as the Russians invaded Poland and forced its inhabitants to leave everything behind; barns and stables full of horses, hogs, cattle and poultry, fields ready for harvest. Like Lot's wife, those who turned back were destroyed, but so were many who fled. It was a time of chaos and upheaval, leaving in its wake horrific suffering and loss.

Our bus drove down a tranquil tree-lined country road as Hardy told his story to the rest of the group of travelers. We were looking for a house he remembers vaguely. The family left in haste when he was only seven and had just begun school. He recalls running home from school, desperately afraid of a vicious dog at one of the neighbours'. As he told us this memory, we heard a dog barking fiercely and saw it running alongside the bus, baring its teeth viciously. "There's the dog!" we all cried out. "Now where's the house?"

       
                                           Photo credit: Karen Smeed                                                                                                                  

We stopped at a brick building now occupied by Polish people. The couple living there told us that this building used to be a school and advised us to go back about a kilometer along the road from which we had come. This brick building was the school Hardy began attending in 1944 (although he had no recollection of it).

The bus driver turned around and the excitement in the bus was palpable! Even if Hardy had not remembered his former home, the evidence was there; this building cried out to be recognized. On the front gable, in big, bold letters were the initials "JS" and the date 1921. Hardy's grandfather's name was Johannes Schroeder and the year they built the new stable (after the big fire) was 1921. The brick building facing the road with the initials and date on it was indeed the Schroeder stable. The house, that used to stand perpendicularly to the right of the stable, was no longer there. That is the house to which Hardy's mom (Anna Froese) moved when she married into the family and the place where Hardy spent the first seven years of his life.

People were living in this stable and the yard was obviously a lumberyard, with stacked boards and piles of firewood everywhere. Goats clambered over scattered logs and greeted us happily, but there were no people in sight even though it was evident that this was a residence.

Later we stopped at the Mennonite museum in Nowy Dwor [Tiegenhof]. To our surprise we saw a copy of the Plautdietsch Bible which Hardy had copy-edited in 2002 while he was with the Canadian Bible Society. It had found its way to the country of his birth somehow, a mute reminder of what had happened to that little boy running home from school so many years ago.

"The trees remember."

Of Geese and Guests

Since our move to Winnipeg four years ago, Hardy and I have enjoyed observing large flocks of Canada geese. They are our first sign of spring and also the sign of approaching winter.There are several small artificial lakes in our area, and it seems the environment must be just right for geese and ducks.

We've asked ourselves why the geese make such a journey twice a year. Frank Shaw, in his book Birds of Canada (1988), says this is like asking mountain climbers why they climb a mountain peak. They do it  because it's there and they love the challenge! The geese instinctively know where the best food is and they are equipped to find it.

When the flocks of geese began to leave us this fall, so did the many guests we had in August, and suddenly everything seemed so quiet. We can still hear the honking of geese in the sky above us, but the laughter and the voices of our summer guests are gone.

Hardy's cousin's daughter from Germany has a great love for the outdoors and the environment, and is especially drawn to the huge national parks we have in North America. Like Canada geese she and her family return because they just can't stay away. She packs all their camping gear into duffel bags and makes the trip across the ocean, husband and kids in tow. After their park adventures, the kids (two young teens) spend several weeks with us. They practise their English, get to know their Canadian relatives and learn about our Canadian way of life, while their parents go back home. The children's grandpa (Hardy's favorite cousin) also comes along for part of the trip and then accompanies them on their flight home.

Shaw tells us that Canada geese fly in family flocks because they don't have an inbuilt migration map. The young depend on their parents to lead them on their first journey south in fall and on their first return to the breeding grounds in spring. Canada geese mate for life, and only if one of them dies will the survivor take another mate. Shaw says such a strong pair bond is essential if the new season's youngsters are to be safely taught the lessons of route finding and the location of winter quarters.

Like Canada geese, our cousin's daughter and her husband and father are preparing their children and grandchildren to navigate the life journey they are undertaking. There are many obstacles and dangers along the way, so they need to be nurtured and taught carefully and well.

       

                           

It takes a flock to raise a goose and a village to raise a child!

The Ties That Bind

Recently, on a lovely summer day, my almost four-year-old granddaughter Sasha and I went for a leisurely walk around the lake close to our house. As usual, we enjoyed watching the geese and ducks paddling in the water. To our delight, a mother duck came swimming toward us, a whole string of ducklings in tow. We counted them. There were eleven. "She has eleven babies," I said to Sasha. Taking her soother out of her mouth, Sasha looked at me intensely with her big brown eyes, and I knew she had something important to say. "Oma," she said, "that is too many babies. She should only have two. Two babies is enough!" Such wisdom, from a child who still wants her soother! The world has certainly changed since I was that age.


A couple of weeks later, on a blistering hot summer day in mid-July, we found ourselves at the splash park not far from our house. It was filled to capacity and we had to stand in line in the hot sun, waiting our turn to enter. In front of us was a tall muscular man with three young boys. I found myself staring at him, unabashedly, not because he was so good looking (really!) but because I was fascinated by his amazing tattoo. Emblazoned across his broad back, just below his neck in large letters were the words The Ties That Bind. Adjacent to the words, and cascading down his left arm was a leafy vine. I couldn't help myself, I had to make a comment: "I normally don't find body art attractive, but your tattoo is lovely," I said. He turned around and I saw the name ISOBEL engraved on his chest. We chatted a bit and I asked him about his boys. He told me that he has eight children, four boys and four girls. (I knew what Sasha's opinion was about that!)  My mind was busily stereotyping as I formed a mental image of someone with probably three different women. Goes with the tatoos, right? Brazenly I asked him if his children all had the same mother. He proudly pointed to the name on his chest and said, "Yes, Isobel is their mother. We had ten altogether, but we lost two of them." "How old were they when they died?" I queried. He told me they were two months and four months. I was horrified and wanted to know how they died. Two of them in infancy? Were they crib deaths?  "No," he said, "they died in the womb." I was so impressed that what society usually calls a miscarriage and often dismisses as not real, were to him also his children. I had a poignant moment, standing there in the hot sun with a stranger, as I remembered  the child I birthed prematurely and never held in my arms.

This wasn't my only surprise on that day. Spreading a blanket right next to us was a young woman with twin boys, about two years old. She confirmed that they were twins. Then she dropped the bomb shell: "They also have twin brothers, seventeen and a half months older." She nodded in their direction. Sure enough, another set of golden brown curly haired boys! My daughter and I just looked at each other, our jaws hanging below our knees! Sasha and Ivan are seventeen months apart, and that is often more than enough work. The mother of the double set of twins told us that she has a  rare condition in which she will always drop multiple eggs, but she didn't know that until she had her second set of twins. "They could have been triplets or quadruplets," she said. She also shared with us that her first pregnancy never came to completion and that she and her husband are looking forward to meeting their first children in heaven and discovering if they are twins or triplets, or maybe even quadruplets!


"But how do you manage? Do you have help?" we asked her. She didnt look or act like she was falling apart! "Yes," she said. "We have hired a nanny who looks after them full time while I go to work. As soon as they go to school the nanny will be replaced by a housekeeper. She will be cleaning up a big mess!"


Our oldest grandson was four before he had any cousins and all of a sudden his baby sister and the other seven cousins came along in quick succession. When he was about seven years old he looked at me, shaking his head as yet another pregnancy was announced. "Oma, they just keep coming," he said.


I have to go downstairs now and clean up a big mess in the play room. Four grandchildren spent the day with us yesterday and they forgot Oma's rules!

Oh, the ties that bind ...

We share each other's woes,

Each other's burdens bear, 

And often for each other flows 

The sympathizing tear.

When we are called to part,

It gives us inward pain; 

But we shall still be joined in heart,

And hope to meet again.

(John Fawcett, Blest Be the Tie That Binds)

Shattered Dreams, Lost Lives

A couple of years ago, on our annual visit to Ontario to see our daughter and her family, we happened to go to the beautiful park in Stratford adjacent to one of the Stratford theatres. There is a lovely walk that takes you on a meandering path along Lake Victoria. During the summer season visitors can enjoy the sight of thirty or more swans, both Black Australian and the more widely know White Mute. Apparently one or two mated pairs hatch every summer. How fortunate we were to actually see a pair of swans in their nest just below a public walkway! I stood for a long time admiring the idyllic scene of those pristine birds, their long necks arched into a heart shaped curve as they bent protectively over their future offspring. I took a photo and it became that year`s anniversary card for our daughters and their husbands.

I was devastated when I heard some time later that a young fellow, probably intoxicated, stood on that bridge and heaved a rock into the nest, killing one of the swans. It dawned on me again, and in a new way, how quickly dreams are shattered and lives lost, not accidentally but wilfully and with evil intent.


This episode of the Stratford swans reminded me of my maternal grandmother and her horrific experience  in Communist Russia during World War II.
Recently my sister and I have been looking at old family photographs to prepare for an art exhibit by Ray Dirks, called Road to Freedom, which honours Mennonite aunts, mothers and grandmothers whose homes were no longer safe and who fled for their lives, small children in tow. Many had lost husbands and fathers. My sister and I came across a small photo of our grandmother. She gazes at the camera with not even a trace of a smile on her face. Sadness seems to ooze from her. Neither of us remembers her that way. In fact, my sister wasn't even sure it was her. We always thought of our grandmother as a strong, very self-confident woman. When we turned over the photo, it was dated 1938. Then we knew why she looked the way she did. That was the year our grandparents had a big rock hurled into their family nest. Our grandfather, a kind and gentle husband and father, was forcefully taken from his family under cover of darkness, falsely accused by Communists of planning to blow up a bridge. He was probably tortured until he signed a confession, and was never heard from again. He either died in prison or in exile in Siberia. Our grandmother, in her mid-forties, was left with five children to support. Their beautiful farm was confiscated and became part of a collective on which the family was forced to work. When the German army retreated from Russia in 1943, my grandmother, together with my uncle, my parents and my brother and me, made her way to Germany via Poland, then to Paraguay and finally to Canada.

Like the surviving swan in the Stratford park, my grandmother was left wounded. She found it very difficult to adjust to the new way of life in Canada, especially since she was separated from all her children and grandchildren in Paraguay for several more years. She felt estranged from her immediate family, who had emigrated to Canada in the 1920s. They could not identify with her experience and the resulting psychological trauma. Often she talked about her heavenly home and her heavenly father because it was easier to think about a home in heaven than about life here on earth.


Those of us in our senior years, looking back on a lot of living, know through experience that life has its share of tragedy as well as joy, and that we must learn to accept it and deal with it. However, when it is inflicted on us wilfully and with evil intent, it is much more difficult to bear.


In the late 1950s, my brother used to play guitar and sing in a group. The lyrics from a Peter, Paul and Mary song they sang (Where have all the flowers gone?) keep going through my head. It ends with the refrain, "When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?"

Beauty in the Commonplace

We almost didn't go and I'm so glad we did! Hardy said, "If we don't go tonight then we've missed it." It was cold and rainy, but we grabbed our umbrella and off we went to see the exhibit American Chronicles: the Art of Norman Rockwell.

I remember seeing Rockwell's paintings when I was a child. My brother collected all kinds of magazines and kept them in an old shed in our yard. I'm quite sure that's where I saw them.  Rockwell published his paintings on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post for forty-seven years. Although he painted many portraits of the rich and the famous he said, "The commonplaces of America are to me the richest subjects in art. Boys batting flies on vacant lots; little girls playing jacks on the front steps . . . the things we have seen all our lives, and overlooked."

"The things we have seen all our lives, and overlooked."

I'n not a famous writer, and am not comparing my skills to Rockwell's, but I think the subjects he painted are the kind of things I like to write about. I'm in good company too. I'm reminded of L.M. Montgomery who became known worldwide because of her Anne books. On our visit to Ontario, I saw a compilation of "18 newly discovered stories" by L.M. Montgomery. It was published in 1994 with the title At the Altar. The stories are delightful character portraits of women who used to be called "old maids" because they had passed the marriageable age.The comedic happy ending in each story is a literary tradition, but it also pleased her readers, guaranteeing her an income. It certainly captures the social circumstances of most women of Montgomery's time and how difficult it was for them to remain strong and independent.

I also think of Theodor Storm (1817-1888), that famous North German poet and novelist who wrote wonderful stories of ordinary life as he observed the people around him. It was a delight last autumn, during our trip to Europe, to visit the harbour city of Husum and the house in which Storm lived and died. The house is now a museum.

"The things we have seen all our lives, and overlooked,"

This spring Hardy and I observed a pair of robins in our backyard. Last year they built a nest and laid their eggs, but the eggs never hatched. In late fall, when we returned from Europe, I retrieved the nest from our cedar tree with the two beautiful eggs still intact. Perhaps our presence in the yard had scared off the robins. This year it was quiet in our backyard because we were gone for two weeks. The robins had built their nest in the same place and the three babies had already hatched when we returned. A few days later the robin family treated us to a free show. The babies sat on our bird feeder and on the deck railing, waiting for their parents to come and feed them. They balanced precariously, their feathers ruffling in the wind. Flying was still so new to them. The parents hovered nearby, encouraging them with chirps and worms. Sometimes the male brought the worms to the female and she fed the young. It was definitely team work!

It doesn't seem that long ago when we were feeding our young and now they are feeding theirs and we are watching them. We never realized what an amazing dance of life we were performing and neither do they!

"The things we have seen all our lives, and overlooked."

Where Are You From?

Exhibit at The Canadian Museum of Immigration, Pier 21, Halifax, NS 

"Where are you from?"

People ask this question often, possibly because I have a slight accent but it is not identifiable. That question poses a dilemma for me because it requires a lot of explanation. I usually ask them if they want the short answer or the long one!

I don't remember my country of origin (Ukraine), but I love listening to someone speak Russian or Ukrainian even though I don't understand it. Neither do I remember the four years our family spent in Germany, but I learned to read and write in German and eventually did my doctoral studies in that language. I do remember Paraguay, the way a child remembers. I grew up in Canada and that became my home, and English the language in which I felt most comfortable. My years as a young wife and mother were spent in Africa, and then we came back to live out the rest of our life in Canada. I have lived in three different Canadian provinces. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be born, grow up and die in the same place! Possibly that would have been my lot, had war not disturbed our rural Mennonite way of life in Russia.

Recently I attended a book reading by Miriam Rudolph. Miriam is an artist who has written and illustrated a bilingual children's book (English and German side by side), called David's Trip to Paraguay, the story of her grandfather's trip to Paraguay from Canada when he was a little boy.

 The author and her book fascinate me at many different levels. First, I identify with the child in her story. I feel as if I'm  looking in the mirror where I see myself but everything is  reversed. I had the same adventure, at about the same age, but left Paraguay to go to Canada. The brilliant colors of Paraguay stayed behind and I entered the Canadian prairies just as the autumn color palette gave way to the gray and white landscape of November. My adventure took place exactly a quarter of a century later than David's, and part of my trip was by airplane rather than by ship.

"Where are you from?"

Like me, Miriam too has difficulty answering that question   Her father is from Germany, her mother from Paraguay, she now lives in Canada and each of the countries she has lived in becomes a part of who she is. In her artist's statement she writes, "My paintings and prints are visual diaries that narrate my experiences and perceptions of different places I have been to. It is important for me to experience my surroundings very consciously, to be aware of details and render the essence of a place in my artwork. Beneath the narrative of memories lies the concept of my search for belonging that I experience after living in three different countries and cultures. My work shows places that I am connected to and serves to document, to evaluate and to remember."

I express myself through journaling and behind my desk is a shelf of diaries that tell of my life's journeys. I have begun the monumental task of going through them and transcribing them. I begin with a birthday book I received many years ago as a young teen, and the memories emerge one by one  . . .

"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.