The Impact of History on the Lives of Women

Last year I read Robert K. Massie's Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. Massie specializes in writing about the Russian royals. He has a son with hemophilia and that inspired him to write Nicholas and Alexandra (1967). (The Russian tsar and his German-born wife also had a son stricken with the disease.) Massie went on to write Peter the Great (1980), The Romanovs (2011) and Catherine the Great (2012) for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. As I was reading Catherine the Great I kept thinking, this is an historical account, but her life reads like a novel; someone should write it as a novel." 

Shortly after I read Massie's book, I came across Eva Stachniak's The Winter Palace: A Novel of Catherine the Great (2012). I could not put it down.

Reading the historical account and the novel almost simultaneously was an interesting experience. However, there were certain things neither the historical version nor the novel fully explored for me. I really wanted to know more about how Catherine herself personally felt when her first husband rejected her and they went to bed night after night with no intimacy. Finally, after ten barren years, Catherine took a lover. Again, I wanted Stachniak to flesh out this relationship, and how it affected the empress. There were several more liaisons, one of which resulted in the murder of her first husband and Catherine's ascension to the Russian throne.

I don't know what prompted Stachniak to write another novel about Catherine the Great, Empress of the Night, but this second novel fleshed out all the missing aspects of the first one for me. One almost gets the impression that Stachniak felt she needed to rewrite the story from a different angle. It is written from Catherine's perspective instead of from the point of view of her personal servant Varvara, as is The Winter Palace. A review by Cheryl Girard in the Winnipeg Free Press calls this "the weakness of the novel." She writes, "Far too much time is spent dwelling on moonlight trysts and not enough on the historical accomplishments, politics and intelligence of the empress who was one of Russia's most influential female leaders." Perhaps the reviewer didn't read The Winter Palace, where Stachniak emphasizes all of that but neglects the emotional aspects.

Catherine the Great voraciously read the works of the French philosophers of her time and was idealistic enough at the beginning of her reign to try to emulate them and liberate the Russian serfs who suffered greatly and were treated like slaves. However, she was completely discouraged by her advisers from implementing these reforms and eventually gave up trying to do so. One wonders how history might be different had she persisted and insisted on these endeavors.

While I was still immersed in Russian history, someone alerted me to a fascinating memoir, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang (1991). The person who recommended this book was reminded of it after viewing a painting Ray Dirks did on his Road to Freedom exhibit of The Three Katharinas (pictured below -- my great-grandmother, my grandmother and my mother, all of whom were born in Ukraine and eventually found their way to Canada).

A blurb on the back cover of this book reads, "Wild Swans is a riveting account of the impact of history on the lives of women. This is a powerful, moving, at times shocking story of three generations of Chinese women ... ." -- Mary Morris

Wild Swans portrays a different aspect of Communism than the one with which I'm familiar. The author's parents saw the Communists as liberators from the oppressive Japanese, instead of as enemies as my parents did. However, even though Jung Chang's parents are completely dedicated to Communism, their view gradually changes as the novel progresses. The corruption rampant within the party offends their purist and idealistic version of Communism, which they have embraced with every fibre of their being. Because they are courageous enough to object to Mao Zedong's narcissistic style of government which is destroying their country once again, they are severely punished and the family experiences incredible suffering, as does the whole population of China. The courage and amazing resilience displayed by the author's mother and grandmother in the face of personal tragedy and great loss is almost unbelievable and a testimony to the strength of the human spirit.

Reading Massie's historical accounts of the Russian nobility, Stachniak's historical novels, and Jung Chang's memoir caused me to ponder my family's own personal saga. I was again struck by the two opposing forces so evident in history: the power to corrupt and the strength and stamina to withstand corruption. The main characters are these strong bigger-than-life women of endurance and great courage. They just never give up, no matter how terrible the circumstances.of their lives.

Remembering is a Way of Meeting

"Each time we embrace a memory we meet again with those we love, for the heart never forgets."

If someone were to ask me, "What was the saddest day of your life?," I would answer that question in a heartbeat, even though I have had many sad and many joyful days in the span of my seventy years.

The saddest day of my life was May 24th, 1969. That was the day we lost our first-born son, Harold Mark. It was preceded by the most joyful day of my life, the day he was born. Joy and sorrow, birth and death, so closely linked, so deeply experienced. "What is the meaning of it all?" I questioned sadly:

Blossom so white, so pure,

made to delight

with your lovely aroma and sight!

Why must you die

when you've barely started this life?

Harold Mark was born on a  cool dry-season day in Kinshasa, Zaire (now DR Congo), just outside the doctor's office, six weeks prematurely. We had one look at him just after he was born. Then he was whisked away to the nearby Catholic hospital and put into an incubator. Our hopes were high, but the next morning a nurse came with the words, "The sister was not able to save your baby." The saddest part about all of this is that I never saw him again. I never said good-bye. I never made closure.

Cut off too soon

from the root and the stem that bore you,

leaving it lonely and bare,

spilling its white sap-milk uselessly 

to the ground.

Our son's little grave was one of many fresh graves. Buried in this same cemetery were about sixty innocent young men, university students who had protested against the authorities and had been shot point blank. Every time we went to his gravesite, we were met by soldiers who looked at us with suspicion and asked us why we came there. I wondered if the mothers of these students were ever allowed to visit their graves.

Three months after our son's death, we moved to the provincial town of Kikwit. Friends of ours agreed to look after his grave.

We left DR Congo in 1984 and have not returned, but "the heart never forgets." Each time one of our three daughters left home, the sense of loss I experienced at the birth of our only son intensified. I knew I needed to make some sort of closure but I didn't know how.

It has taken a long time, but just recently the answer came to me and I acted on it. May 30th (my mother's birthday) dawned bright and sunny. On this day we remembered our son and our brother (who would be 45 years old had he lived) by planting a golden ash on our church property. Two of our daughters and their families as well as our care group and one of my sisters attended this ceremony. It was not a sad occasion, but a wonderful life-affirming time.

Our two strong sons-in-law and our oldest grandson helped our friend and care group member Edd lift the tree from the truck and brought cartloads of soil to pack around it.

The younger grandchildren sat around the tree and played happily, their bare feet digging into the moist rich soil. They were experiencing Harold Mark in their own way.

After we planted the tree, we had a short dedication service in which each of us had a part. We read the scriptures that were read at Harold Mark's graveside service so many years ago as well as a Bible passage that had become personally meaningful to us during that time. I also read a poem I had written; a sad little poem in which I questioned the meaning of this life-changing event:

Blossom, so white, so pure,

what were you meant to be?

Blossom, too soon you died.

The answer is lost to me.

Over the years I found that this life-shattering event could also be interpreted as life affirming and I could be at peace with it, but I needed something physical, something that I could touch and say, "This is in memory of someone who lived a very short life and might otherwise be forgotten." I don't want the event to be erased as if it never happened. Harold Mark is our son and part of our family and we want to remember that.

                    Together, our family vowed to remember:

                    At the rising of the sun and at its going down, we remember.

                    At the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter, we remember.

                    At the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring, we remember.

                    At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of summer, we remember.

                    At the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of the autumn, we remember.

                    As long as we live, you too will live, for you are now a part of us.

                                                                                    -- Gates of Prayer [Reform Judaism Prayer Book]


                                           

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?