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

Unprepared for the Journey

[ Note: This blog entry was originally posted in May 2012.]

I'm beginning another journey, but for this one I don't pack any bags or make any reservations. However, it requires a lot of organization, and the making of some difficult decisions, not one of my strengths. On this journey I will be travelling backward in time. It will probably be an emotional roller coaster. I'm tempted to just cancel my reservation.

My sister got me started. She brought over two large boxes of letters and cards that our mother had saved over the years and asked me if I wanted to go through them.

Our mother died in 2008.

I am tempted to push everything to the back of the closet and leave it there, because I'm really not ready for this trip. However, I have already started, by pulling something from the top of the pile and I am hooked. It is a gorgeous Mothers Day card, which was given to mom not by one of her eight children, but by my dad , who loved to give her cards at every occasion. I think she kept them all!

Next, a letter, written by me, when our children were young. It includes a note written by our youngest, who was seven at the time. There is no time limit on this journey, and I stay here for a very long time. My baby has learned to read and write, and in her childish scrawl she sends her Oma a poem. Now, when I read this poem I have reached the age my mother was when she received it, and I can read it with her eyes and with her heart.

Strange Tree

Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Away beyond the Jarboe house

I saw a different kind of tree.

Its trunk was old and large and bent,

And I could feel it look at me.

The road was going on and on

Beyond to reach some other place.

I saw a tree that looked at me, 

And yet it did not have a face.

It looked at me with all its limbs;

It looked at me with all its bark.

The yellow wrinkles on its sides

Were bent and dark.

And then I ran to get away,

But when I stopped to turn and see,

The tree was bending to the side

And leaning out to look at me.

I know this tree intimately. It has my mother's face, one of the last times I saw her, after she had a bad fall, and I hardly recognized her. The wizened face of age that pleads to be recognized, the one I don't really want to see, but it keeps looking at me, beseechingly.

Comments (received after original posting in May):

Marge:

Okay, so this is why we don't throw this stuff away. It's so that people like you, who have so much talent for the written word, bring us back to look with wonder at how incredibly blessed we were to have the life we had. How wonderful that we had a father who loved to go out and buy our mother beautiful cards. He couldn't afford much, but wanted to express his feelings and if he couldn't do it with his own words, then he'd do it through Hallmark. It doesn't matter, he did it and that's what counts. And a young granddaughter who at the time, probably didn't even see the significance of the poem she was sending. But, on some level, knew how important it was. And we read it now and think of our mother and maybe even think of ourselves growing old and hoping we can be even close to the woman she was. 

Elfrieda:

Thanks Marge, for your affirmation! Your last sentence expresses my sentiments exactly. I just pulled a photo out of the box of Mom wearing a baseball hat, which I can't even imagine her doing! Christine took the picture. I showed it to Ivan and Sasha and they both thought it was me! 

Dora:

I'm glad you're taking us along on this journey! 

"To be a healer you need seven wounds"

"To be a healer, you need seven wounds" (Wilma Derksen, Path of the Heart)

When you have lived as long as I have, it is not that difficult to find seven wounds. However, most of the ones I listed occurred when I was younger. I had the rest of my life to deal with them, to try to come to terms with them. Wilma Derksen, in her book Path of the Heart, writes, "Life continues to break us and those around us. The challenge will always be in the putting together of the pieces, not in looking at the completed [puzzle].”

I work hard at trying to put together the pieces, and then an enraged psychopath comes along and kills twenty elementary school children by shooting them at close range. It devastates me and I walk around preoccupied with the thought of evil.

"Every criminal was once a tender, innocent and defenseless child."

Organizers of an art display by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan made the above comment. Cattelan's work, which explores life, death, good and evil, is installed at the former Warsaw Ghetto, where thousands of Jews were killed or sent to their deaths by Hitler's regime. It features, among other items of art that try to speak about the situation of hidden evil everywhere, a statue of Adolf Hitler on his knees, praying. (Winnipeg Free Press, Dec.19th, 2012). Can you imagine this man at his prayers? What would be the content of his petitions?

It becomes easier when I picture him as a youngster, waiting in fear and trembling for his father to come home and give him a beating every day for no reason, other than that of venting his own frustration on a defenseless child! (For Your Own Good, Alice Miller)

Recently I heard a CBC broadcast that asked people to report on their feelings of revenge when they had been wrongly treated. The most powerful story came from a woman whose father had been bludgeoned to death by a schizophrenic neighbour whom the family had befriended. For a good part of her life she carried around thoughts of revenge. When she finally met the perpetrator, he talked about the devastating loss of his mother when he was four years old. Suddenly she could imagine him as a four-year-old, bewildered, alone and frightened. She pictured her four-year-old niece whom she loved dearly, and she forgave him at once. This woman was liberated from the burden of revenge she had carried with her all those years.

Wilma Derksen, whose pre-teen daughter Candace was murdered in Winnipeg in 1984, was the invited author at a supper book club meeting my four sisters and I held recently, after we had read her two latest books, Path of the Heart and Echo of the Soul. She shared with us that she and her husband Cliff made a promise to each other very soon after the police discovered Candace's body, that they would not be consumed by anger, bitterness, revenge and other negative emotions. Since Candace's murder, they have worked tirelessly helping others in similar situations to deal with their trauma.

In Wilma's above-mentioned books, many people need healing from what life has brought them and from their reactions to it. They come to an elderly woman whose only claim to fame is that she has seen an angel, and this made all the difference in her life. This woman takes time for everyone who asks for her counsel. Mostly she just listens, with understanding and compassion. The narrator of the story is her little granddaughter, who is also "wounded" and sits at the grandmother's feet listening to the people and learning from her grandmother's counsel; in the end she finds the path to her own healing.

Evil will always be a part of our world. It is so relieving and liberating when someone who has been victimized shows us by example how to not only cope with evil but how to become actively engaged in fighting it -- not with guns and other violent means but in a spirit of listening with love and compassion.

"The Road Leads On"

The Way

Friend, I have lost the way. —

The way leads on.

Is there another way?

The way is one. 

I must retrace the track.

It's lost and gone.

Back, I must travel back!

None goes there, none.

Then I'll make here my place,

(The road runs on),

Stand still and set my face,

(The road leaps on),

Stay here, for ever stay.

None stays here, none.

I cannot find the way.

The way leads on.

Oh places I have passed!

That journey's done.

And what will come at last?

The road leads on.

    On the road to the former Kroeger clock workshop (Rosenthal)

The above poem by the English (Orkney Islands) poet and novelist Edwin Muir (1887-1959) describes some of my feelings as we boarded an overnight train from Kiev to Zaporozhye on our Poland-Ukraine trip. This past October Hardy and I went to locate the places where we were born, Hardy in Poland (see previous post) and I in Ukraine.

In 1943, leaving all its worldly goods behind, the Neufeld family, like so many others at that time, fled from Ukraine to Germany, via Poland. The family consisted of a baby, a toddler, two young parents, a grandmother and an adolescent (my uncle). As a four-month-old baby, I of course remember nothing of this flight. We were fortunate to go by train, rather than fleeing on foot as so many others were forced to do.

On this trip, with TourMagination, I was going in the opposite direction, back to the place I was born, the village of Chortitza, on the Dnepr River near the Black Sea in southern Ukraine.

I wished so much that I could recall that first train trip out of Chortitza. I tried to imagine how everyone must have felt . . . 

My parents left behind a small but comfortable house my father had built when they got married in 1940. Mom loved that place. 

My grandmother (Katharina Kroeger) didn't want to leave. She had received new courage after her husband was cruelly taken away from her in 1938, falsely accused and imprisoned, never to be heard from again. She was growing and nurturing an orchard of plum trees. It was her birthday. She had just harvested new potatoes and was preparing a special birthday supper.

Her teenage son was surely wondering where all his friends were.

My two-year-old brother was probably restless, cooped up in one place, wanting to use his legs to run and explore.

The Neufeld family home in Chortitza before the Russian Revolution

                                             

 The house Dad built for his new bride in 1940

And what about me, the baby? I remember nothing. At least I think I remember nothing. However, memory is a strange thing, stored somewhere in the deep recesses of one's brain, jumping out when least expected, creating havoc with one's emotions.

When our tour group arrived in Zaporozhye (the city that now surrounds Chortitza) the next morning, everyone complained about the discomfort of this train ride. Even though all of us had sleeping berths, people had felt the jolts and bumps as the train stopped and started, had constantly awakened from the noise of the whistle, and were worried about getting the luggage out in time, etc., etc. I however had slept like a baby! The rocking of the train had made me feel comfortable and cozy, as if I was in my mother's arms in a rocking chair. Then it occurred to me: that is how I must have felt on that desperate flight out of Ukraine. Secure in my mother's arms, I blissfully knew nothing except warmth, comfort, food within close reach, the beating of my mother's heart and the rocking of the train. The memory had come back to me, triggered by the motions and sounds of the train!

Although my family was without a home for the first four years of my life, I don't remember feeling homeless, neglected or hungry. In fact, I have no memories at all until we settled down in the Paraguayan Chaco. I wanted to stay there forever, but "the road leads on" and my life changed again.

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."