Aufwiedersehen

Recently, when I went for my daily walk, I came across the pussy willow shrub I discovered a few years ago along the shore of the small lake near our house. The pussy willows had just burst from their buds. I've always loved them because they are one of the first harbingers of spring. I picked a few sprigs and put them in a vase so I could enjoy them at home. I took a picture and sent it to my sisters and one of them asked me, "What is it about pussy willows? Why do we love them so much?" We came to the conclusion that our Mom had loved them, so they were a reminder to us of her and of home. Mom passed away in January 2008, just as we were getting ready to leave Ontario and move to Winnipeg to be a bit closer to her (and my extended family) and to our children and grandchildren. It was a difficult time for us as we had to adjust to giving up our home in Kitchener (where we had lived almost 25 years) as well as the parental home we had enjoyed so much for a few weeks every summer.

The day after I discovered the pussy willow in bloom, I went for another walk and stopped at the same bush. I thought about my Mom and how much I loved her and what she meant to me. We always had such good conversations on the phone and such wonderful breakfasts together when we visited. I wished that I could have her with me again, even if only for a few minutes; just a small sign of her presence would suffice. I looked around me. Everything was very quiet. A few feet from the pussy willow I noticed a canoe. It was not tied to anything, just sitting there on the rocks. It was empty.

The next day I again returned to the same spot. I had brought my camera and took a few pictures. I noticed that the canoe was painted moss green, Mom's favorite color. That was the only connection to her that I could think of. Perhaps she was letting me know that she had come for a visit and parked her boat so that she could walk with me. Or maybe it was a sign that she had crossed over to the other shore, stepped out of the boat and gone to be with those who have slipped from their earthly bodies.

Recently my sisters and I and a niece who feels very close to her grandmother got together and reminisced about our Mother and Grandmother. We decided that maybe we needed to let her go. Maybe we were hanging on to her too tightly. Together we read some words from one of Henri Nouwen's devotionals:

There is a moment in which we need to give those we love the permission to return to God, from whom they came.  We have to sit quietly with them and say:  "Do not be afraid ... I love you, God loves you ... it's time for you to go in peace. ... I won't cling to you any longer ... I set you free to go home ... go gently, go with my love."   Saying this from our heart is a true gift.  It is the greatest gift love can give.

Reminiscing about all of this, I was reminded of Alfred Lord Tennyson's long elegy In Memoriam, which I studied and wrote about for my MA thesis. When he was still a young man, Tennyson (1809-1892 -- poet laureate of England), lost his best friend Arthur Hallam in a boating accident. Tennyson's elegy  is a celebration of a friendship as well as a mourning for the overwhelming loss of that friendship. It is a frantic search to somehow make contact with his dead friend, to assure himself that their bond is not severed after death. Tennyson worked on his long elegiac poem for many years. He laments that he could never achieve the goal of seeing his friend again or hearing from him.

                                             O life as futile, then, as frail!

                                             O for thy voice to soothe and bless!

                                             What hope of answer, or redress?

                                             Behind the veil, behind the veil.

In 1889, toward the end of his life, Tennyson composed that beautiful poem Crossing the Bar, about how he envisioned his own departure from this world. No doubt, even though his mind probably went back to his friend as he penned these words, he seems to have come to terms with his loss and is certainly at peace with the thought of his own death:

                                             Sunset and evening star,

                                             And one clear call for me!

                                             And may there be no moaning of the bar,

                                             When I put out to sea,

                                              But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

                                              Too full for sound and foam,

                                              When that which drew from out the boundless deep

                                              Turns again home.

                                              Twilight and evening bell,

                                              And after that the dark!

                                              And may there be no sadness of farewell,

                                              When I embark;

                                              For though from out our bourne of Time and Place

                                              The flood may bear me far,

                                              I hope to see my Pilot face to face

                                              When I have crost the bar.

The In-Between of Easter

Today I identified with the handful of Canada geese I saw when I went for my morning walk. They stood at the edge of the partially frozen lake, their slender necks stretched to capacity over their barrel chests, their wings shivering slightly in the chilly wind. Tentatively two of them began to walk across the slushy surface. After some time they turned around and began calling the two younger ones (their grown children from last year's lovemaking?) to join them. Their tracks formed a pattern on the snow. I could hear them squawking and I imagined they were telling their offspring that this is not how it is supposed to be! How much more pleasant it would be to sink down into tepid water, feet paddling furiously, head dipping in and pulling up a tasty morsel! Instead, they had to walk gingerly and carefully on an icy surface.

Life isn't always as it should be and as much as we would rather not, we have to learn to adjust. I think the geese are doing a pretty good job, better than I am! Hardy and I have found ourselves in a season that Julie Ellison White calls the "in-between of Easter" (Rejoice! March-May 2015, p.34). We have always enjoyed good health. In fact we have taken it for granted, just like we took our youth for granted. We are not used to getting old and suddenly we are in an immersion course we didn't apply for!

It began with hearing loss for Hardy. For a communicator like him, this was definitely a test of his patience until he was able to get appropriate hearing aids. A few months later, after a long  wait, he had to have cataract surgery in both eyes and I was the designated driver (I hate driving in Winnipeg, especially downtown!). Just as we got that all sorted out, something happened to my left knee over which I had no control. Without warning it seemed to turn out of its socket, rendering it immobile. When I tried to move, the pain was excruciating. Like the geese who arrived too soon, I walked very carefully and slowly. Just as I began contemplating what it would be like to walk with a cane, Hardy developed intense pain in his wrists. We are in the process of figuring out if it is rheumatoid arthritis or gout.

Perhaps you are rolling your eyes by now and will soon stop reading, bored by my litany of petty woes! Just hang in there for a bit so I can tell you something good. Just as suddenly as my knee refused to cooperate, it returned to normal. I call it a miracle, but it is the nature of osteoarthritis my doctor says! However, I no longer take my mobility and agility for granted and I have much more empathy for people who suffer. The expression, "I feel your pain," has taken on greater significance for me.

There are so many different kinds of suffering to which people are exposed. Physical pain due to illness, disease and accidents, like we are experiencing, is inevitable and thus easier to accept as part of living. The other kind, inflicted on us by people we love or people with evil intent, is more difficult to deal with.

I am in the process of reading two novels by authors who have experienced the death of a beloved family member through suicide.

Rudy Wiebe's Come Back describes the intense emotional pain of a father whose young adult son has found life so unbearable that for him it is not worth keeping. Like King David in the Bible, weeping over the death of his beloved son Absalom, the father cries out "O Gabriel my son, O my son, Gabriel!" The father's grief is so heartrending that it's going to be difficult for me to read another book about a suicide.
Miriam Toews' All my Puny Sorrows is the story of two sisters, one of whom is suicidal. The other sister tries to convince her to stay, but is not successful. It will be interesting to compare the work of these two award-winning authors on such a dark theme.

Some people are caught up in what Hannah Arendt calls "the banality of systemic evil." They are deemed not worthy to live by others who need to assert their dominance. I recently came across a review in the Winnipeg Free Press (Saturday, March 28, 2015) of a book that describes the horrors of the Nazi concentration camp at Ravensbrück, near Berlin. It was the only camp exclusively for women. In If this is a Woman, Sarah Helm describes the atrocities endured by the women and children at the hands of Hitler's henchmen. The Nazis tried to destroy all evidence of the camp and it was almost unknown to the Western world until Helm undertook to expose it through her research and resulting historical account.
This book will be difficult to read and I'm not sure I'm brave enough to tackle it. The book reviewer, Barry Craig, ends his review with the following words: "Any scholarship that strips naked the tyranny of extremism -- from Hitler's Nazi creed to today's Islamic State and Boko Haram -- is worthwhile."

I used to read Bible stories to my children when they were little, but thought the crucifixion was too much to handle for three- and four-year-olds and they might have nightmares, so I tried to skip those pages. I couldn't get away with it, however. "Mom, you missed those pages, we want that story," they demanded. And so we read that story and there were tears until we read the Easter story and they discovered the glory of the Resurrection. They understood perfectly both the sorrow and the joy of this momentous event and I too experienced it anew through the receptive hearts of my children.

                                           My Lord, you wore no royal crown;

                                           you did not wield the powers of state,

                                           nor did you need a scholar's gown

                                           or priestly robe, to make you great.

                                            You never used a killer's sword

                                            to end an unjust tyranny;

                                            your only weapon as your word,

                                            for truth alone could set us free.

                                             You made no mean or cunning move,

                                             chose no unworthy compromise,

                                             but carved a track of burning love

                                             through tangles of deceit and lies.

                                             You came unequaled, undeserved,

                                              to be what we were meant to be;

                                              to serve, instead of being served,

                                              a light for all the world to see.

                                                        -- Christopher Idle

"How to Win by Losing"

Recently I read that two of my favorite bloggers, Carol Bodensteiner and Shirley Hershey Showalter decided to collaborate their writing efforts. Both of them have written memoirs about growing up in the country (Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World by Shirley Hershey Showalter and Growing Up Country by Carol Bodensteiner). People who read their books told them so many stories about their own days of growing up in the country that these two authors wanted to provide a place for people to find each other and to share their stories. With the help of Iowa governor Terry Branstad, who signed a proclamation declaring March 18, 2015, "I Grew Up Country Day," they did just that, providing a Facebook page for people to share their stories on that day.

Our Family in Germany, 1947
(I am next to my mother)

When I read about this event in Carol's blog, I began to think about the fact that I didn't "grow up country" and that I wished I had. Suddenly I felt that this was my heritage too; an idyllic childhood had been stolen from me by Communism in Ukraine. Revolutionaries confiscated my grandparents' land and our family became refugees. It didn't seem fair and when I thought about it, it made me angry.

A meditation by Richard Rohr helped me regain my equilibrium. In "How to Win by Losing," Rohr explains the countercultural and paradoxical teachings of Jesus (Matthew 5-7). A story that begins with loss can be a very rich and can be told in many different ways, as Jesus so aptly illustrated in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus tells stories about a lost son, a lost coin and a lost sheep. 

I have to accept that I have a different story than Shirley and Carol and that it is in the telling of my own story that I will come to an understanding of who I am. I do tell this story as I live my life. I tell it orally to my children and grandchildren in bits and pieces, and I blog about it. Most often, however, it plays in my head and that's usually where it stays. I enjoy this ruminating, and so I love what April Yamasaki wrote in her book Sacred Pauses: "The blank page is not a rebuke to get busy writing, but an invitation to linger over your thoughts" (p.32). It makes the writing process inviting rather than intimidating.

I also like what columnist Jim Taylor (Okanagan, B.C.) says: "I write because I frequently don’t know what I’m thinking until I hear myself saying it. Thoughts swirl through my mind like a school of minnows darting through the shallows in a lake; I have to line individual minnows up in order to understand them. That’s the great advantage of writing. I get to see my words before anyone else does. I can parade them for my audience of one, straighten their lapels, even send them back to change into more suitable attire."

I'm grateful that I don't remember my family's losses and that I was too young to understand what was happening. It is only in retrospect that I begin to comprehend a little of what my parents and grandparents endured and how courageous they were. When they finally settled in that small village they helped build in the Paraguayan Chaco, I was four years old, and this was my first home! 

In Paraguay, 1948
(I am seated on the right)

Five years later, when I was nine, my family arrived in Canada. We lived in the country for only one year before moving into town where my dad found work. It was my great uncle who exposed me to what it was like to "live in the country." We went to his farm often and I "helped" with milking, driving tractor, taking the cows out to pasture, and playing with the horses. I also had several close friends who were "country girls"; they often invited me over to their place. These are wonderful memories for a small-town girl! So I did have my share of "growing up country" even though I didn't live in the country. 

Arrival in Alberta, 1952

Transformed

An interesting place here in our city of Winnipeg is Sam's Place, a used bookstore, cafe, and music venue, located in the Elmwood neighbourhood of Winnipeg. I love this place because I enjoy being surrounded by books. They are all donated and originally belonged to someone's library. I like to think that they were loved and cherished in the homes from which they came and still exude this atmosphere.

Hardy and I were both interested when we read that the focus for January at Sam's Place was MCC Manitoba's Low German Program. On January 14th we attended a special event there called "Low German Mennonites in the City -- Telling our Stories."

The event was hosted by Tina Fehr Kehler, who is fluent in English and Low German and works with MCC to help Mennonites arriving from Central and South America. Her special guest was Mari Loewen. Both Tina and Mari shared their struggle of growing up in a very conservative community where the lovely "worldly" things which attracted them were forbidden. If they wanted to wear jeans like their peers at school they had to wear them under their dresses. Makeup had to be applied in secret and all evidence of it removed before they returned home. Both Tina and Mari eventually moved to the city and after a huge time of adjustment they launched their own careers, Tina with MCC and Mari editing a very successful magazine called Anna. 

                      

This is where the story really becomes beautiful. Mari did not know what to call her magazine, until someone asked her what her mother's name was. Anna, her plain Mennonite mother, who cooked and baked and sewed and gardened, became the inspiration for the magazine's title. Mari told her audience that everything she aspires to in this magazine, she learned at the feet of her parents -- the ingenuity and imagination to invent new ways of doing things from the little that was available, the hard work required to keep a farm and family thriving, the stubborn tenacity to hang in there in spite of the odds against them. As an adult, Mari was able to set aside her frustration at her people's conservative mindset and recognize, appreciate, and make use of their positive qualities. Both Tina and Mari exhibit no trace of bitterness, but are able to laugh and make fun of things that had the potential to turn them against their parents and their community.

My reading these days has also broadened my perspective on what it means to be transformed from a young and somewhat naive person into a determined adult through extraordinary suffering and unimaginable circumstances. A friend gave me the book A House in the Sky, by Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett. Lindhout's memoir tells the story of her horrific experience as a captive for ransom by Somalian bandits. She was released after more than a year of captivity in which she endured torture that can only be described as evil personified. Through some mysterious process, Lindhout was able to have an out-of-body experience where she floated above her body, seeing "three people suffering, the tortured and the torturers alike." She came to the conclusion that her captors must themselves have undergone extreme deprivation and suffering and she was able to forgive them. After her release and subsequent healing of her body and mind, she actually returned to Somalia and founded the Global Enrichment Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports development, aid, and education initiatives in Somalia and Kenya.

This modern account of suffering reminds me of what some of my family went through just prior to and during World War II. I never heard them speak of it but have read several books about such experiences. These accounts are written in German and really should be translated for the next generations. All of us need to understand that the evil which occurred in the past is yet alive and well among us; we need to be prepared to meet it head-on.

Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hate. It is a power that breaks the chain of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness. (Corrie Ten Boom)

"It's a Small World After All"

We have a large map of the world hanging on our wall. Colored pins mark all the places where we have been. My travelling life began almost as soon as I was born. It was not a luxury of choice that caused my parents, my grandmother, my aunts, and my uncles to leave their home in southern Ukraine and travel the world when I was only four months old. They were forced to flee.

By the time I was four, we had fled via Poland and Germany, then crossed an ocean and ended up in the southern hemisphere (in the Chaco of Paraguay, South America). When I was nine we arrived in Canada. After high school I changed provinces; after marriage I changed continents and found myself once again in the southern hemisphere (in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo), where we lived for almost twenty years.

Travelling must have been in the stars for both my husband and me. He too fled his home (in the Vistula Delta of what is now northern Poland) with his mother and grandparents. He was seven years old. He too crossed an ocean. If I hadn't changed provinces in 1963, we would not have met each other! As it turns out, we did, and that is another whole story, left for another time.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to live in the same place your whole life; to be born in the same place where you die; to keep all your uncles and aunts and cousins and grandparents around you, always! That is not my story.

This January we will be celebrating our 47th anniversary. We are travelling again, but now we travel backwards more often than we travel ahead! Allow me that pleasure for just a moment.

It was a bitter cold day that January 13th in 1968, much like it is these days here in Manitoba. I felt like the winter queen in C.S. Lewis's Narnia series. I should have worn a fur stole and arrived in a sleigh drawn by horses!  Instead, Hardy's cousin Lothar chauffeured us and we had decorated the car with plastic flowers. Just recently Lothar and his wife Ruth celebrated their 60th anniversary and we reminisced a bit about our wedding day. Their daughter Karin was our candle lighter, together with my little sister. Karin is now a grandmother!

When I look at this picture of the beginning of our life together, I realize that, even though we are totally absorbed in each other, we were not alone in this venture. Lothar made his car available to us; my sisters and I made the flowers that decorated it; my Mom made my wedding dress; the women at the church cooked our wedding meal. 

When Hardy and I got married, we left our loving community but we never felt that it left us. We took with us what we had learned from community at home and in Africa we found another community -- fellow missionaries who helped us transition into another culture; other expatriates whom we met at our children's international school and at the international church; and finally, when we were more comfortable in our surroundings, the local people. They taught us their language, their customs, and their way of life. So, in a sense, we took our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins along with us and added many more to our community.

On this cold January morning of 2015 I realize once again how wealthy we are! We left Africa in 1984 and found a new community in Kitchener-Waterloo. In 2008 we returned to the place where we began our life together: Winnipeg, Manitoba. Some family members and friends have passed away. Others have moved on. We have once more transitioned to a new community, gained new friends, touched base with a few of the old ones. 

By loving forces quietly surrounded

Secure and sheltered I can feel no fear,

So I would like to live these days together

And go with you into another year.

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer penned these words [my translation] from his prison cell in December 1944, days before he was executed by the Nazis.)

How Can I Keep From Singing?

For me, November is probably the bleakest month of the year (February is a close second!). The autumn splendor has disappeared and there is a gray atmosphere, a mixture of rain, sleet and snow. The prospect of six months of winter does not appeal to me at all. 

The Titanic sank in November. A dear friend and her three-year-old daughter were killed in a car accident in November. 

But good things happened in November too, just like they do in other months of the year. My Dad was born November 12th. Today, as I write this, is his birthday. I miss choosing birthday cards for him and writing letters to him in November (following our marriage we never lived close to home). My parents got married in November and their time together lasted almost 65 years. They taught us eight children about genuine love and commitment and I am so grateful to them. 

In October 1952, our family arrived in Canada after living in Paraguay for five years. I was nine years old. My mother had told us about snow. She cut paper snowflakes for us every Christmas and they were beautiful. She told us about Christmas in Ukraine and Germany and sang the German Christmas carol "Leise rieselt der Schnee" (quietly falls the snow) on sweltering Christmas Eves in Paraguay. That November of 1952 she called us to the window with great excitement. "Look at the snow!" she exclaimed. "Soon it will be Christmas. Our first Christmas in Canada!" I looked and looked, but all I saw was streaks of what looked like rain. If that was snow, I didn't know what all the fuss was about! I was quite disappointed. Later in December and for the rest of the winter the fields were covered with snow and we had to wrap scarves around our faces to keep them from freezing as we walked to school. After a while the scarves felt like frozen cardboard. I did not enjoy this. Snowballs shoved down my neck by boisterous boys were not my idea of fun either!

Above is a picture of my Dad and my sister and me in southern Germany, about a year after we were reunited. He had been drafted into the German army toward the end of the war, just before my sister was born. 

Several years ago I got in touch with a woman who used to babysit my sister and me when we were refugees. A teenager at the time, she is now an elderly woman. She says what she remembers about us is that we were always singing. As children, what mattered most of all was that we were loved and cared for. That made us happy.

Recently Hardy and I attended a luncheon in honor of Edgar Stoesz, an American Mennonite we met on two travel tours, one to Paraguay and one to Poland and Ukraine. Edgar was the "story teller" on both of these tours. Throughout most of his adult life Edgar worked with Mennonite Central Committee and had many interesting experiences to share with his fellow travelers. In his book Like a Mustard Seed (2008), he tells the story of how my father and his friend, Hans Rempel,  shouldered the burden of forming a vibrant church in the new Neuland colony,  I had never heard that story before. 

                                        

Edgar's most recent book, Finding my Way (2014), is his memoir. Edgar is an octogenarian and has led a long and interesting life. He ends his memoir with Robert Lowry's hymn "My Life Flows On."

No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that Rock I'm clinging.

Since love is Lord of heav'n and earth,

How can I keep from singing?

I'm beginning to convince myself that I can make it through another November. I'll sing myself through it!

To Autumn

Of late I've been enjoying the "music" of the autumn season and have overcome my sadness and melancholy at summer's passing.  I mentioned the poets Keats and Rilke in my September post, and quoted some lines of lament from one of Rilke's autumn poems, which matched my mood at that time. Today my thinking is more in line with Keats who calls autumn a "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" in his poem "To Autumn."  When he laments the disappearance of the songs of spring he corrects himself and says, "Think not of them, thou hast thy music too."

In my last post I wrote about our neighbour's apples ripening on the tree and falling to the ground. My dear husband, who cannot abide waste of any kind, mentioned it to one of their teen girls and offered to pick the apples in exchange for a bag or two. The next morning when I opened the front door there were five bags of beautiful apples on the stoop! I spent a day processing one bag (coring, peeling, slicing, freezing, making apple crisp). It was enough to inspire me to be generous with this bountiful gift. I stored as many as I could in the fridge crisper and passed the rest on to my sisters and to friends at church.

Thanksgiving is here in all its glory! I am thankful for apples and pumpkins and squash and all the delicious things I can make with them to satisfy my physical need for nourishment. I am thankful for poets like Keats and Rilke who feed my soul. I am so grateful for places like McNally Robinson Booksellers and Jubilee Mennonite Church that give me the opportunity to take care of my soul as well as my body. We had an amazing thanksgiving potluck at church last Sunday, and when we go to readings at McNally Robinson we sometimes enjoy their excellent restaurant. Just recently we have attended several presentations by Mennonite writers such as Maurice Mierau (Detachment: An Adoption Memoir) which I mentioned in my last post, and David Bergen (Leaving Tomorrow). I am looking forward to reading Rudy Wiebe's new novel Come Back, about the loss of a child through suicide.

I am thankful for writer friends such as Dora Dueck who encouraged me to begin writing this blog. Her recent book, What You Get at Home (a collection of short stories), received an excellent review in the latest "Journal of Mennonite Studies" (Vol.32, 2014). In part, Frieda Esau Klippenstein writes:

As a Mennonite writer, there is something refreshingly different about Dora Dueck. The secret to success for many talented Mennonite novelists and short-story writers has been their audacity or shock value.  . . .  Dueck's writing is not within this genre. It is not at all outrageous, and is notably devoid of indignation or reproach. Rather than amusing or shocking us to attention, her strategy involves layers of perspective, with which she lures us to a place of empathy and new understanding. Her characters are so authentically portrayed that it is easy to believe that Dueck knows these people -- perhaps is some of these people. With this level of ease and confidence, overstatement is not necessary.

Last, but not least, I am thankful for friends who have sustained me along my life's journey. They live on in my memory even though we may have lost touch over the years. Just recently one such friend arrived at my doorstep. In grade twelve Carrie and I edited the high school newspaper together, struggled with math and science and had a crush on the same guy. Our ways parted after high school and we didn't see each other for fifty-one years.  FIFTY-ONE YEARS!  It blows my mind!  She came to Winnipeg to attend a Mennonite academic conference and we had one evening and a lingering breakfast together. Conversation flowed and on parting we realized we needed much more time! Perhaps I can return the visit and spend some time in B.C. where Carrie makes her home.

"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers."

-- L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables