Hunger

The first time I saw the statue at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, I gazed at it for a long time, mesmerized. A young girl, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, long braids hanging down her back, stands with hands clasped to her chest, holding a sheaf of wheat. Her arms and legs are thin and her eyes look hollow. The expression on her young face is that of a worried older woman. The reason I couldn't take my eyes off the statue is because it reminded me of a picture of my mother at about that same age. My mother has a serene look on her face and does not seem to be starving. However, the photo belies the situation and times were desperate.

         

When I review my mother's early life, I realize that disaster stalked her every ten years or so. She was born May 30, 1921. I recall her saying that she was born in the Year of Hunger: [Ich bin im Hungerjahr geboren.] It was a terrible time of civil wars in Russia. The Bolsheviks, the Whites, and the Anarchists, fought against each other. They seized food from those who grew it, gave it to their armies and supporters and denied it to their enemies. Drought aggravated the situation. Approximately five million people died of starvation. Finally, Lenin allowed relief organizations to bring aid to the starving population. Because there was a large population of Mennonites in Ukraine, word got to American Mennonites, and they formed a relief organization that later became known as the Mennonite Central Committee. A bun and a cup of cocoa or milk every day saved the members of my mother's family from starvation. 

Just before my mother entered her teen years (1932-1933) another famine erupted. The Ukrainians call this the Holodomor. It was caused by poor harvests due to natural disasters, combined with increased food demands due to collectivization, industrialization, and urbanization, as well as increased grain exports by the Soviet Union.

During this time my mother's youngest brother Gerhard was born (August 1932). Almost two years later, in June of 1934, he died of dysentery. No doubt it was caused by the poor conditions in which the family found itself. My mother always said the day of Gerhard's death was the saddest day of her life (except for another day four years later when her father was forcibly removed from the family and imprisoned, falsely accused of having planned to blow up a dam; the family farm was confiscated and she never saw her father again).

Forward another ten years. My parents married in November 1940. The Germans invaded Russia in June 1941. They were happy with the German occupation and provided lodging to two German soldiers in the small home my father had built. Two years later the Germans were defeated at Stalingrad and in October of 1943 pulled out of Russia. They urged our family to join them on the trains going west. That was the beginning of years of refugee life for us. 

We made our way from Poland into southern Germany. In January 1945, toward the end of the war, my father was conscripted into the German army. My mother was highly pregnant, with two little children in tow. Her widowed mother and adolescent brother were with her as well. German farmers in Bavaria were compelled to take them in. My sister was born in March in the barn where we all slept. Life was sustainable but barely. My father returned two months after my sister was born, looking so emaciated that he was hardly recognizable. 

Before boarding the Volendam, 1947

When the war ended, our family had to find a way to avoid being sent back to Russia. Again, with the help of MCC, we were able to board a Dutch freighter at Bremerhaven in February of 1947. There were over 2,000 refugees on this ship.

When it docked in Argentina, we learned that there was a revolution happening in Paraguay and we had to set up a tent city not far from Buenos Aires for several months. However, because our mother was about to give birth, our family left almost immediately for the Fernheim colony (which had been established in Paraguay 25 years earlier). There my mother gave birth to her fourth child, a second boy. A few months after Bernie was born, our family set out with other refugees to establish another Mennonite colony in the Paraguayan Chaco which they called Neuland. The refugees were divided into villages, making their own bricks and building straw-roofed homes, digging wells, and making clay ovens. It was a pioneer existence. Everything was done by hand and foot. 

My mother's work never ceased, especially as she had two more babies, a boy and a girl. My father was often in other villages, helping the women who had lost their husbands in Europe, and preaching in villages where there was no pastor. It took five years of hand-to-mouth existence before our family was able to emigrate to Canada in October 1953. 

That makes ten years of refugee life, before our family settled in Canada. Two more daughters were born. Again, the beginning was tough, but my mother was so happy to finally put down her roots. My grandmother had arrived four years earlier, joining her family which had already immigrated to Canada in the 1920s. 

What does all this have to do with hunger?

Hunger stalked my mother from an early age. There was physical hunger, yes. Always on the edge of existence, scraping the bottom of the barrel, never sure where the next meal was coming from or how she was going to get it. This was the case for years, until we arrived in Canada. And it was not of her own choosing or of bad decisions she had made. It was the choice of people in power who thought only of themselves and their aggrandizement.

Then there was psychological hunger. My mother lost her beloved father when she was a young adolescent. He was taken from her by force. As a result, throughout her life, certain things such as open closet doors triggered panic in her.
She was an only daughter, with five brothers. One day my mother overheard her mother declare that she would rather have seven sons than one daughter.

My mother yearned to have a sister, and she always managed to find friends that became surrogate mothers and surrogate sisters. She was so delighted when her second child was a daughter, and so happy for every girl baby that came along. (There are five of us!) Her grandchildren are mostly girls (she had three grandsons and seventeen granddaughters). This was her gift from God and she loved them fiercely, and everyone of them is totally devoted to her. 

When my mother turned 80, my own family was still living in Ontario. I decided to send her flowers, but instead of sending them directly to her, I decided to send them to the church she and my dad attended faithfully every Sunday and where they served as deacons for many years. I wanted her to be honoured. 

To my surprise, my mother hated that publicity. She told me that she put the bouquet of flowers on her walker and went home as quickly as possible. She didn't have a desire to be respected and honored in public. She just wanted to love and be loved by her nearest and dearest.

She got her wish. My daughters and her other grandchildren think about her daily, and tell their children what a wonderful grandmother they had. 

50th-wedding anniversary celebration (with all the grandchildren), 1990

I may cry and I will die,

But my spirit is the soul of every spring.

Watch for me and you will see

That I'm present in the songs that children sing.

                                                                   -- Maya Angelou

Spring Ritual

I have a little ritual. I only do this once a year. It has to be in spring, just when the weather begins to turn mellow and there is that lovely fresh smell in the air. I'm not even sure why it has to be in spring, but that's when I have a craving for it: I make potato salad for lunch! Just for me. No one else in my family likes it, so I never make it. Except once a year. In spring. I've done this for a number of years.

Today was the day! Birds singing, trees leafing, grass greening.

[Note chickadee in opening.]

No one was at home but me. I boiled two eggs and a few potatoes. When they had cooled, I got some green onions from the garden (yes, the green onions have to appear before I make it) and chopped them up, together with some bread-and-butter pickles. I combined sour cream, mayonnaise, salt and pepper, and a bit of pickle juice and poured this over my chopped potatoes, eggs, pickles, and green onions, mixing it well. A cup of hot tea to accompany my salad and I was set.
Everything went out onto the deck, including today's paper which I had not yet opened. I had a lovely quiet hour and felt all was quite well in my world, in spite of what I read in the paper ... all that "trumped" up stuff in the news, people writing to the advice columnist about horrible problems, sadness and grief ... somehow it didn't bother me. It was spring and I had potato salad out on the deck!

Of course, I had to go for a walk after indulging myself. It was dusk before I found time to walk around the nearby lake. The sky was a beautiful slate color with a hint of pink, just after sunset. Trees were in various stages of leafing, and a bird was just going crazy, singing its heart out at the top of a tree.

I noticed a sea gull swooping down and saw it had something in its beak. I wondered what it was. Moving closer, I noticed it was a small fish, about the length of my hand. I wanted to take a picture, but I got too close and it fled to the other side of the lake. There it stood and gorged itself. Kind of like me with my potato salad, I thought. 

On my way back, just as I was about to cross the road, I saw an elderly man wheeling a barbecue down the sidewalk. I silently hoped that he would not be eating the meal he was planning to barbecue all by himself. The sea gull and I could have joined him with our potato salad and fish! What a hilarious time we would have had! And what stories we could have told each other! But that's for another time. Today was my day for me and my potato salad!

Spring has sprung!

Footcare

A memory I cherish from my childhood is that of my great-uncle John helping us children with a bedtime ritual. He and my widowed grandmother lived together out in the country and came to visit us in town once a week. Before we children went to bed (we only had baths on Saturday evening), he took a towel and lovingly washed and dried our feet. I'll never forget his respectful way of handling my dirty feet. 

Growing up as the second of eight children, another memory is that of my mother complaining about how much her feet ached. Small wonder since she was on them most of the day! Mom often spoke of a burning sensation in her feet. She also suffered from bunions (a bone spur at the base of the big toe) which she had inherited from her mother.

In her later years, my mother went to a reflexologist to have her feet massaged. I suspect that it was just as much about actually sitting down and having someone else look after her in a gentle and caring manner as it was about getting treatment for her feet. 

Wikipedia defines reflexology as "a gentle manipulation or pressing on certain parts of the foot to produce an effect elsewhere on the body." It also makes the statement that "there is no convincing evidence that reflexology is effective for any medical condition." Perhaps there isn't. I do, however, remember how much better my Mom felt after one of these reflexology sessions. Elda Rempel, her reflexologist, spoke Mom's heart language (Plautdietsch). She also had a great sense of humor and a very loving and generous heart. After she massaged Mom's feet, she cut Dad's toenails!

I too have the misfortune of having inherited the bunions, and I now know what my mother was talking about. I first began to notice my aching feet when I visited New York City with our middle daughter about 15 years ago. We were on our feet all day long ... and I should have had better footwear.

Today, Hardy and I also go to Elda for reflexology treatments. We always leave her place feeling rejuvenated, relaxed and refreshed. Elda has a way of making people feel that way, and it's not just about the feet! It's also the listening ear, the sense of humor, and the personal touch.

I recently read an article in the Winnipeg Free Press about a nurse, Kirsten Bourque, who volunteers to care for the feet of inner-city street people. 

"Every second Wednesday, she provides basic foot care in a non-judgmental manner to anyone who stops by. She also teaches foot care to people who are at risk of amputations due to diabetic foot complications."

The 36-year-old says, "There are hundreds of people who do volunteer work in the inner city. I just show up, drink coffee ... and cut toenails."

I wish that I could meet more people like Uncle John, Elda, and Kirsten, in the medical profession!

The Bible speaks to us of washing one another's feet:

"On the evening Jesus was betrayed, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him ... . 'Do you understand what I have done for you?' he asked them ... . 'Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet.'" (John 13.5,12,14).

I'm inclined to think that if we all took care of each other's feet, this world would become a better place!

Season of Farewells

Let me just start with a confession:

I have too many books. 

There, I've said it! They are well organized in our bookshelves according to author and subject. Most of them have been read and many are marked up. I always read with pencil in hand. 

For me there can never be too many books, but there will come a time when they will be a burden to someone else unless I take care of them. Also, the bookshelves are getting too full.

It is time to do something about it.

We gave away many books when we moved here from Kitchener in 2008, and now we must do it again. The last few weeks we have been sorting, boxing, and emailing to try to find new homes for our treasures. There is room in the bookshelves again; hopefully we can keep it that way!

As I cleared out my shelves, I recalled the time when I was a student at the University of Waterloo. One of the retired professors, who still had an office in the department he had chaired for many years, had passed away. Within a day everything in his office was gone. I remember the shock I felt at how quickly a life passes into oblivion.

We spring up like wildflowers in the desert and then wilt,

transient as the shadow of a cloud.  [Job 14.2]

Just recently the world lost someone special who entertained many with his gentle humor and wit --Stuart McLean, the storyteller on CBC's Vinyl Cafe. I remember so well how our family used to listen to him on our way home from church. One morning, as we got into the car, Hardy couldn't locate his glasses. One of the children actually saw them lying in the snow a few feet away. He had put them on the hood of the car and they had slid off as we began driving away. He had lost several things that way and we all thought that, with a bit of embellishment, this would have been a good Stuart McLean story! Stuart's memory lives on in the stories he told.

Another tug at my heartstrings is the imminent closing of the seventy-year-old Mitchell Fabrics on Main St. in Winnipeg. My mother was a seamstress and that is where she went to get her supplies. Etched in my memory is the day she and I went in there to purchase the material for my wedding dress as well as for the dresses of my attendants. She was going to sew them all. We chose a dark blue velvet for the bridesmaids' dresses and some beautiful white silk with flowered appliqués for my wedding gown. I was the first one in our family to get married, and we were all new at this. 

                                                                                                                     

Two of my sisters in their blue velvet gowns

Today, every time Hardy and I drive by Mitchells, we remember our youth and our young love, and we look at each other in wonder: 

Has it really been that long? Where have all those years gone?

Forty-nine years ago we made a promise to each other

Hardy and I have just returned from a trip to Ontario to visit with our middle daughter and her family during spring break. We had a rollicking good time with our four grandchildren, ages 7-14. On our last morning, when it was time for them to go back to school on the bus, they begged us to stay longer. They clung to us. "We will see each other again in spring," we told them. "Just stay until spring, don't go," they cried. "But we must go, and you must stay," we told them. 

We wonder what their lives will be like, and how much of what they experience we will experience with them.

                 

I have decided not to be too sad or melancholy about the disappearance of things dear to my heart. Instead, with Winnie the Pooh, I say:

"How lucky I am to have something [or someone] that makes saying goodbye so hard."

Canadian Values

Just recently, while buying groceries at Superstore of all things, I realized once again why I'm so happy to be Canadian.

I was waiting at the checkout for Hardy, who was not quite done shopping. On the bench beside me sat two elderly gentlemen, engrossed in conversation, possibly also each waiting for someone. One of the men had a rather heavy accent, the other one spoke a good English. The first man was telling the other all about Portugal. Listening attentively, he asked a few questions, then began talking about Vancouver and why he liked it so much there. It was obvious that they didn't know each other previously, but were simply enjoying a good chat about each others lives.

Across from them, on overturned bins in front of the produce aisle, sat two young women, obviously enjoying each other's company while eating sushi very expertly with chopsticks. They were not oriental, and my curiosity got the better of me. I went over and asked them where they had learned to handle chopsticks with such expertise. They smiled and one of them told me that their teacher in high school had been to Japan and had taught her class how to use them. 

Our Superstore is a good place to experience Canadian multiculturalism in an informal setting. Two more formal events Hardy and I experienced recently have also made me proud to be Canadian.

The first one took place at the Legislative Building in Winnipeg on a cold January Sunday afternoon. Ray Dirks, a Mennonite and an artist, has been working for several years on a project called Along the Road to Freedom, which recognizes the sacrifices made by Mennonite women who brought their families to safety through war-torn Europe during the two world wars. Over twenty-five paintings illustrate the individual women and their stories. These paintings were hanging in the legislative building during the month of January.

At the Sunday-afternoon event, Ray invited six women to tell their stories. Three of them were related to the Mennonite women in the Along the Road to Freedom project; three others featured more recent refugee women who had found their way to freedom in Canada. Ray had also invited some Aboriginal drummers as well as the Louis Riel Gentlemen's Choir. Ray explained that we all need to be thankful to the Indigenous people who occupied this land before we did, who had invited us so many years ago to share it with them. For the most part we have been unkind and thankless to our hosts, not even remembering that we are on their land. That needs to change.

The Brown Bear Spirit Singers drumming

Six refugees tell their stories

I tell a story from my grandmother's (Katharina Epp Kroeger) diary.

 She is the middle person in the painting. 

[It is the story I shared in my November blog post (about her son, Dietrich).]

The second event I want to mention took place at the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery where Ray Dirks is the curator. This gallery was one of only three galleries in Canada to host Synagogues in Germany: a Virtual Reconstruction. This multimedia exhibition was brought to Canada by Dr. Mark Grellert of the Darmstadt Technical University.

During Hitler's Nazi regime all Jewish synagogues in Germany were destroyed. With the help of the computer-assisted design program CAD, 16 synagogues from 14 German cities have been virtually reconstructed. We are no longer able to enter these beautiful places of worship with our bodies, but we can view them again and appreciate them, thanks to the work of some very dedicated people under the sponsorship of the German government.

An example of a virtually reconstructed synagogue

For me this became a beacon of hope in our dark times where destruction of sacred places of worship is so very prevalent, and where people at worship are gunned down, as just happened recently in Canada, the country I love.

Our church has recently sponsored a refugee family, and Hardy and I visit them weekly so they can improve their English conversational skills. We have come to love and appreciate each other. Knowing this is happening all across Canada gives me reason to rejoice. We can share our Canadian values and learn from another culture in an atmosphere of freedom, acceptance and love. 

Asma loves to draw and color. She was a baby when the family arrived

Habibah and Jismabibi. 

Jismabibi was born in October in Winnipeg; she is automatically a Canadian citizen.

Everyone has a need for some sense of significance, and if we can't make that possible, or even probable in our society, then it will be obtained in destructive ways. The challenge before us is to find ways that people can achieve significance and recognition so that destructive violence will not be necessary.  

[Rollo Reese May, 1909-1994]

Something Old, Something New

Perhaps you will have a hard time believing this, but I have never roasted a turkey for a family dinner, neither for Christmas nor for Thanksgiving, until this year. We spent many years in Africa where there were no turkeys available, and we had free-range chickens for our festive dinners. When we returned to Canada we continued this tradition. We found chicken to be juicier and more flavorful. 

This Christmas, however, we had turkey. The reason for this change of family tradition was that one of my sisters received a free turkey for making a large purchase at a local grocery. She asked me if I wanted it since they already had turkey for Thanksgiving. I accepted it with thanks. The bird turned out to be quite delicious and we had enough left over to make a turkey noodle soup to share with friends over the holidays. 

That is my story about something new I did this Christmas. 
Now let me tell you about something old, which I consider to be my favorite Christmas present. It came unexpectedly and was actually regifted to me.

When we moved from Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario to Winnipeg almost nine years ago, one of my biggest tasks was to go through all the books we had accumulated over the years and reduce their number. This was difficult for me, but I knew we simply owned too many. I managed to cull quite a few but we're still left with a good-sized library.

Among my books I found a selection of German titles I received from my grandmother for Christmas when I was a preteen. I had begun my schooling in German and became an avid reader as soon as I knew the alphabet. We emigrated to Canada when I was nine and I soon began to read English books. My grandmother knew that I would always be happy to receive a book as a Christmas present. She did not want me to forget the German language, so she supplied me with German books which she ordered directly from Germany. To me it did not matter whether I was reading English or German; I wasn't even aware which language I was reading!

When I looked through our books before we moved to Winnipeg, I once again felt that tug of home. The books took me back to Christmases past. I noticed there was a book missing from my collection. It was probably a favorite of mine, and I wondered what had happened to it. I could still recall the story and how much I enjoyed reading it. I even remembered the title: Luthers Singerlein ("Luther's Little Singer") and I felt sad that this book wasn't there. It was probably the first historical novel I ever read and one of the best, written especially for children. Its story takes place during the time of Martin Luther and the central character is a young girl who loves to sing and play her violin. She is not validated for her gifts because, according to her aunt who raises her, these are not suitable for a young girl who should be working on her home-making skills. Also, her hair is black and curly, not typical of a German girl. Martin Luther, who lives in the same city (Wittenberg) and notices her musical ability when he visits her school, affirms and validates her gifts. 

When I learned English I read Anne of Green Gables, another story about a girl who doesn't really meet the expectations of the people she lives with. The theme of this book is quite similar to that of the German book my grandmother gave me. The characters in both these books thrive when someone appreciates them for who they are and convinces their loved ones to do the same.

Recently my sister went through some boxes my parents had left in their garage. Several of them contained books, and she gave them to me to sort and dispose of. To my surprise and delight, when I opened one of the cartons, I discovered the book I had been missing all these years. The next Sunday afternoon I took time to read it again, and I must say I enjoyed it as much as I did when I was a child! I identified with the main character because I too had gifts that were not "productive" in the eyes of my Mennonite mother. She wanted a daughter who could stitch and sew and be her right hand in the house, taking care of the younger siblings. I just wanted to read and play with words. 

As an adult taking university courses, I finally felt validated for my love of reading and writing. One day, in a telephone conversation with my mother, I told her that I actually got paid for reading books and writing about them! She said she was proud of me because I had raised a family as well as pursued a career. In her eyes, I had gone about it the right way, by having my family first. I valued and appreciated my mother's words of affirmation (even though I didn't necessarily agree with her assessment about the order in which the events in my life took place.) Her words mitigated the childhood message I had internalized that the gifts I had been given were of less value than others. However, the fact that I can put a delicious turkey meal on the table as well as read a good book would make my mother happy. We won't talk about my sewing skills.

A Christmas Letter

Because it is the Christmas season, the thought of writing a Christmas letter came to mind. Not an electronic version, but one written by hand with pen and paper. Hardy and I discussed it. Most of our friends are on the internet, but we did come up with a list of about twenty-five names that would not be receiving anything unless we wrote a letter by hand and actually mailed it. Those people will be getting a handwritten greeting from us. Family will also receive a Christmas card at our family gathering. I decided my December blog post would be my Christmas greeting for those of you who follow it. I hope you don't feel somehow cheated!

Living in Zaïre/DRCongo, Africa for almost twenty years (1965-1984), letters were very important in our life. Hardy was there alone from 1965-1967 and our courtship was done by mail. 
After we got married in 1968, we lived in the provincial town of Kikwit for eight years. During those years we could not use the telephone to communicate except for emergencies. We did not have our own phones but had to go to the post office in the capital city, Kinshasa, and there we often had to wait close to ten hours before we had access to one. Never mind that it took us several days to travel to the capital city, some of it by road and some of it by cable ferry.

Computers were not yet in use. So we wrote letters, lots and lots of letters. Most of them were in the form of aerograms. One small sheet of thin light-blue paper, folded twice and then sealed along the sides. If you wrote very small you could get quite a lot of information on this piece of paper, and I usually poured my heart out.

                                                 

When we returned from Africa in 1984, Hardy continued working in Bible translation with the United Bible Societies and then with the Canadian Bible Society. This necessitated that our family settle in the Kitchener-Waterloo area of Ontario. Our extended families lived mostly in Manitoba and that meant we were only able to see them once a year, usually in summer. It was certainly easier to communicate with them from Ontario than from Africa. There was good phone service but I still wrote a lot of letters and sent birthday and Christmas cards. Our parents sent packages at Christmas.

About three years after we returned to Canada, on a snowy December afternoon, I was walking across an  empty lot when I saw something in the snow. I bent down and picked it up. It was a Christmas card. Inside the card was a letter. This is what it said:

There was no cheque, just the card. The letter made me sad. It sounded like a man who was lonely. It seemed to me that his children did not care much about him. They had taken the cheque and discarded this loving letter from their father. It was left lying in the snow. I decided to pick it up and bring it to them, since the address on the letter was not that far from where we lived. I was hoping they had dropped the card accidentally and would be happy to receive it from me. However, I received no warm reception and no thank-you for having retrieved the card. Although they didn't verbalize it, I felt like I was being told, MYOB.

Before I took the card to the family, I copied it as a reminder to myself that family is precious and that there are lonely people in the world especially at Christmas. I have discovered that sometimes, when I feel rejected or left out, it helps me to do something special for someone else who feels abandoned and is much worse off than I am.

Mary and Joseph, in the Bible narrative (Luke 2), must have felt lonely so far from home, particularly with a new baby. However, angels came to their rescue, and made sure they did not feel as if no one cared about them.

I leave you, my friends, with this Christmas greeting: 

May the beauty, joy and blessings of the Christmas season be yours to share with those you love!