"Old Things"

Shortly after Hardy and I retired and moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba from Kitchener, Ontario (where we lived for 24 years), our oldest daughter gave me a stitching made by one of the seniors at the day club where she works. I loved it and put it on the dresser of my walk-in closet where I would see it every morning. The poem is written by Karle Wilson Baker (1878-1960). She lived to be 82 years old, the same age as both my grandmother and my great-grandmother when they passed away.

When I think back to my childhood, the oldest person I can remember is my great-grandmother, Katharina Loewen Epp (or Grossma as we called her). I met her for the first time in 1952 when I was nine years old and she was 80. Our family had just emigrated to Canada from Paraguay.

Grossma lived with my widowed grandmother, her oldest daughter, in a small blue-tiled house on the farm of her youngest son. Five years earlier she had suffered a stroke and could no longer walk. She sat in a big stuffed chair on wheels. There was usually a half-empty, milky-looking glass of water beside her. I wondered if she drooled when she drank from it and I was paranoid that I would accidentally take a sip and get sick. Maybe I would become like Grossma and have to sit in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. Canada was experiencing a polio epidemic that year and I was very frightened that I would get polio and never walk again. This was one of many fears I dealt with as I tried to come to terms with the upheaval happening in my young life due to change of language and culture.

Grossma always asked us grandchildren for a “tuppa” before we left. That was her word for a kiss, and we dutifully had to put our fresh young lips against her wrinkled cheek. I pursed my lips and braced myself for the impact. Grossma smiled and patted my smooth cheek. Her cheeks looked like some of the apples our grandmother (Oma) had in her cool cellar. They kept well down there, each wrapped in their own blue tissue, and I loved to sink my teeth into the crunchy skin, relishing the new taste on my tongue. Occasionally there was a wrinkled or spotted one and Oma told us not to throw it away. She would use it for making her delicious Plautz or Vrenetje.

Of course, Grossma was not always like a wilted apple. She was still strong and upright in June 1923, when she and her mostly grown children made a huge, life-changing decision: they would leave their home in Ukraine and emigrate to Canada. There were very good reasons to do so, and, looking back, the family made the right decision. Four years earlier, just before Christmas 1919, they had lost their father during a typhoid epidemic. At the beginning of 1920, my grandmother lost both her in-laws to the same disease. Civil war ravaged the country after Czar Nicholas and his whole family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Roving bandits brought lice and diseases with them. Anarchy reigned and the independent Mennonite farmers became victims of the revolution, branded as Kulaks (rich landowners). 

In spite of all this, my grandmother, Katharina Epp Kroeger, the oldest child, decided to stay in Ukraine. Her husband, my grandfather, Abram Kroeger, was an only son and had inherited the family farm. They had two little children. Had they been able to see what lay ahead for them, they would not have remained in Ukraine.

(See an earlier blog post of July 2012, Shattered Dreams, Lost Lives -- 

http://ens-intransit.blogspot.com/2012/07/shattered-dreams-lost-lives.html .)

The Epp family, just before they left Ukraine in 1923

My maternal grandparents, Abram Kroeger and Katharina Epp Kroeger, are second from left in the back and front rows. They are a young married couple with two little children. My grandmother is holding her daughter, my mother, on her lap. My mother's brother is standing beside her. My mother would not see her grandmother (my great-grandmother) or her aunts and uncles again until she was 31 years old; her brother and her father never saw them again.

Below the poem by Karle Wilson Baker I have pictures of my Grossma and me side by side at about the same age, in our mid-fifties. Her hair is still dark on top but graying on the sides. Mine is just beginning to grey. I wish we could sit and have a cup of tea together and a chat. There are so many questions I would love to ask her!

Transience

So you should view this fleeting world --

A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,

A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,

A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

The above quote comes from the oldest printed book in existence, The Diamond Sutra, produced by Wang Jie (a Chinese printmaker) in 868 A.D. via block printing. It suits my mood these days as I sadly face the reality of summer's demise.

Centuries ago, Wang Jie, of a culture different from mine, also had these thoughts and is remembered for them. Like him, I've come to the realization that life is fleeting and transient. I don't like the thought of everything dying, even though autumn is a beautiful season and I know with certainty that spring and summer will come again. 

This time of year brings me face to face with my own reality. I do hope to welcome spring and summer again, as I am in good health, but I am experiencing the autumn season of my life and must become familiar with the fact that some day, in the not-too-distant future, this life on earth will end for me. How do I prepare myself for that moment?

This morning's devotions by Henri Nouwen brought me up short:

   I have a deep sense, hard to articulate, that if we could really
   befriend death we would be free people. So many of our doubts
   and hesitations, ambivalences and insecurities are bound up with
   our deep-seated fear of death that our lives would be
   significantly different if we could relate to death as a familiar
   guest instead of a threatening stranger.

In a way I think I have been practising this. Every morning and evening when I walk the path around the lake close to our house I pass a bench. It's different from the other benches placed there because it has a plaque with a name on it. A loving husband dedicated it to his wife, who enjoyed this lake walk like I do. I sit on this bench often to enjoy the view and wonder what her life was like. Her husband wants her to be remembered, and I try to honor that even though I didn't know her.

Earlier in spring, Hardy and I noticed a fairly large black butterfly hovering over the parsley and dill growing in one of the pots of our deck garden. I also saw black specks on the parsley when I went to pick it for a summer salad. Over time, these little specks turned into large green, black and yellow caterpillars.

I thought they might be monarchs because the coloring was like that of the monarch caterpillar, but our son-in-law Chris told me they were black swallowtails. Oh yes, that explains the black butterfly! 
I've seen lots of monarchs enjoying the nectar of our flowers, but no swallowtail yet. 

As I observed these various stages of a butterfly's life cycle, it struck me how brief and how fragile it is but also how beautiful and productive.

               

Three years ago Granddaughter Sasha and I illustrated the life stages of a butterfly. She was only eight at the time and now she is 11, just at the cusp of her lovely life while mine is drawing to a close. I hope that my life is giving meaning and purpose to hers in some small way.

Grandson Ivan found an injured butterfly at the edge of their swimming pool. It later revived and we watched it proceed on its joyful journey!

To Those Who Came and Went Before Me -- a Great Cloud of Witnesses

While working on my memoir I have been looking at family photos. The photo below is probably the oldest one our family possesses. It depicts my paternal great-grandparents, Katharina Dyck (July 20, 1843 - October 16, 1888) and Johann Pauls (April 17, 1840 - November 26, 1917).

For some reason this photo fascinates me and I return to look at it again and again! 

My great-grandmother was born 100 years before me. Mennonites had left West Prussia (now Poland) and settled in Ukraine at the invitation of Catherine the Great in the late 1700s. By the time my great-grandmother was born, they were well established on their farms and in their villages.

"What was she like as a little girl?" I wonder. "What were her dreams and aspirations?"

In contrast to his wife's serious, almost dark expression, my great-grandfather looks relaxed, with a half smile on his face.

Another question comes to mind: "Why is she standing and her husband is sitting?"

I notice how well dressed they are. Katharina is wearing a two-piece outfit: a long billowing skirt and a 3/4-length top with at least a dozen buttons down the front. She has a small scarf around her neck. There is a frilly bonnet on her head. Johann is wearing a three-piece suit and a collared shirt under his vest.

My great-grandparents married in March of 1865. Apparently, it was not customary to take wedding photos, and this picture probably dates from later that year. It appears that my great-grandmother is pregnant, probably with the first of their nine children (six girls and three boys). According to our family's genealogy chart, their first child, Katharina, was born a year after they were married, in March of 1866.

I ask myself: "Why did they have their picture taken at this time?"

A mystery: "The genealogy chart shows that a second child was born to them that same year, in October. Either there is a mistake in the chart, or Katharina got pregnant immediately after their first child was born, and this second child was two months premature. It hardly seems plausible but it could possibly have happened.

In 1871, my great-grandmother gave birth to a set of twins, Abram and Justina. Abram lost his twin sister in May of 1873, at age one and a half. That was a sad year for the family, as they also lost their first-born, Katharina, who died four days before her seventh birthday, in March of 1873. Perhaps there was an epidemic of some kind which took both of these little ones. I wish I knew how they died, but the chart only lists the bare facts -- the dates of birth and marriage and death.

The couple named their seventh child after Katharina, their eldest. This Katharina was born two years after the other two sisters died and was two years older than my grandmother, Margareta, born in 1877, the second youngest in the family. I like to think that Katharina and Margareta might have been close as sisters, especially since they were at such a vulnerable age when they lost their mother. Katharina was 13, barely in her teens when their mother died at age 45; Margareta was eleven. They had two older sisters -- Maria, age 22, and Helena, age 19, at the time of their mother's death. Maria and Helena probably took over their mother's role of raising their younger siblings. Interestingly, my great-grandfather did not marry again. He was 48 when his wife died; he passed away at the age of 77.

Now that I've studied their photo and our family's genealogy chart, I at least have an idea of what life was like for this couple gazing so earnestly into the camera, not having a clue what was in store for them, as none of us do when we set out on life's adventure!

Somewhere, my love, there will be songs to sing

Although the snow covers the hope of spring.

Somewhere a hill blossoms in green and gold

And there are dreams all that the heart can hold. 

Someday we'll meet again, my love,
Someday whenever the spring breaks through;

You'll come to me out of the long ago
Warm as the wind, soft as the kiss of snow.

Till then, my sweet, think of me now and then;
Godspeed, my love, 'til you are mine again.

Maurice Jarre and Paul Francis Webster

(also known as Lara's Theme, from the movie Dr. Zhivago)

https://youtu.be/YrRMQsnSvAE

Nature’s Healing Power

The healing power of trees:

In our little backyard in south Winnipeg we have a maple tree right in the corner. Its branches and leaves take over at least half of our yard and a large part of the neighbour's yard. When I take a chair and sit in the opposite corner of the yard, looking up into the branches and leaves, my whole body relaxes. I feel at one with this amazing tree.

Femme rooting by Jessica May Rita Kohut in fight on, by M. H. Clark

My memories of trees goes back to Paraguay where I lived as a child from ages four to nine. My father was a pastor in our Mennonite village. There were a number of villages without pastors and he would walk there and spend several days counselling and praying with people who were traumatized by their refugee experience during and after WWII.

Our mom knew which day dad would return, and on that day my sister and I were allowed to go beyond the fence that surrounded our property and right to the edge of the forest where we waited for dad. It was often quite a long wait as we didn't know exactly when he would return, but if all went well it would be before dusk. I remember a tree that had large seed pods the size of my hand. When I opened them I could see the small seeds underneath a white, transparent membrane. I imagined that they were little babies under a blanket and I never tired of playing with them until our dad arrived. The first sign of his arrival was the white handkerchief he wore over his head, knotted on all four corners and dampened to keep him cool.

After emigrating to Canada we lived in a small Alberta town. We often visited our widowed grandmother who lived in the country. A grove of trees separated her little house from her brother's farm and I loved to walk through the trees, listening to the wind whispering in the leaves. There was a grove of trees on the other end of grandmother's property, just beyond her large garden. We sometimes had picnics there. We ate apples which she stored in her basement in a wooden box, each apple wrapped in blue tissue paper. We saved that paper to be used for practical purposes in the nearby outhouse.  

Years later, in Africa, we encountered many exotic trees, but I especially remember one majestic tree standing alone in a field. Late in the afternoon my two little girls (preschoolers) and I usually walked down to the main street of the provincial town of Kikwit to meet their dad in his Bible translation office and drive back home with him. It was quite a long walk on a hot and dusty road. When we passed that tree, we knew we were half way to our destination and we were encouraged to continue.

Recently, another tree, planted in memory of my brother John who passed away this past April, reminds me of the beauty, but also the unpredictability and brevity of life. He was the middle child in our family, but the first to go. 

The healing power of flowers and insects:

Just a few weeks ago our family (three daughters and their spouses and children) spent a week in a cottage near Lac du Bonnet. The owners of the cottage have a flower garden that attracts insects such as butterflies and bees. One of our sons-in-law is an environmentalist and I followed him around because he sees things I might miss. One morning, on a brown-eyed Susan, he saw a caterpillar that would soon become a monarch butterfly.

Before long, it did, and since it had just come out of its pupal stage, it moved slowly and did not fly away when we approached it. We were able to photograph it and I was inspired to sketch it and add a page in our cottage notebook that we have kept over the years.

We saw many dragonflies. They hold a special memory for me because when we buried our father on a hot July day in 2005, there were many dragonflies at the cemetery. I felt them bumping into me the whole time we stood at the graveside. At the cottage I was able to observe one very closely because it had a broken wing. One of the grandchildren scooped it out of the water and brought it to me. It too became a page in our cottage notebook.

 

The healing power of birds:

We have seen sandhill cranes in Michigan, but did not know they made their home in Manitoba as well. We observed two of them in a field across the road from our cottage. They are elegant, almost stork-like but with a different coloring. They have quite a harsh cry. I added another page to our notebook:

I have always reminded our grandchildren that when we are outdoors we are in the living room of the insects and birds. This is their space and we are the visitors, so we have to be respectful and act like guests. 

Sometimes it's nice to bring the beauty that is outside into our own living space:

Back home from the cottage, I return to our tree and our small yard. It is so quiet here after having eight boisterous grandchildren for two weeks. I will miss them but now I have time to meditate and savor the memories of the last two weeks.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.-John Keats

The Hansi Stories

Hansi was my little brother, the youngest of the three I have. He will always be my little brother.

Hansi left us very suddenly, the first of our eight siblings to go beyond the veil.

“Where is he now? What is he seeing?” I wonder.

My grandchildren have heard many stories about him, and whenever we go to visit them their favorite bedtime stories have been the Hansi stories. “Oma, tell us another Hansi story,” they beg. When I tell them I have no more, they want the old ones retold.

“Tell us about the time Hansi laughed because the moon was naked, or the time he wanted fried eggs at a funeral, or the time he saw old Tuk Tuk. Tell us again!” So I tell them again.

On our most recent visit I told them that Hansi had died and their eyes got big and sad. But I said that the stories I tell will keep him alive in their hearts and minds because they will always remember him.

So I tell them the stories again. And I'm thinking, "Now that Hansi is gone, I need to write these stories down."

Hansi's story begins like this:

When Hansi  was born our mother was going through a hard time. Most likely she had post traumatic stress syndrome, although at the time there were no words to express what she was experiencing. Many other women had lost husbands and children -- her family was intact. But she had lived through four years of refugee existence, fleeing Ukraine with a toddler and an infant and birthing two more children en route -- one while her husband was gone (conscripted into the German army just months before the war ended) and the other just after they arrived in Paraguay. Now the family lived a hand-to-mouth existence in the Paraguayan Chaco and she found herself pregnant again. 

A fifth child. It was too much . . .  .

Doesn’t she look happy and so proud of her healthy baby? 

Of himself, and of the three sisters who came after him, Hansi is known to have said, "We were unwanted but never unloved."

That was our Hansi. Always deriving something positive from a difficult situation.

It is Time . . .

This morning, as I look out my kitchen window, the sun is finally shining again, but we have had too many days of bleakness, grayness, sleet and slush this April. “Why snow? Why now? You have the wrong season! This is not the time!” I mutter to myself.

My mood matches the weather. Sadness washes over me at times as I grieve the loss of my youngest brother who passed away unexpectedly at the beginning of April. The biblical account of Mary and Martha who lost their brother Lazarus takes on new meaning. Martha asks Jesus, “Where were you when my brother died? If you had been here my brother would not have died!” (John 11).

I see the promise of new life all around me in spite of this dismal spring weather. The ornamental plum tree already has buds; tulips and daffodils are coming to life; a pansy is almost blooming! The robins are building nests in their accustomed place under our deck.
I go for a walk around the lake close to our house and stop at the pussy-willow tree where I often reminisce about my mother. My heart leaps when I see it full of buds!

Returning home, I think about my life. In a second, in the blink of an eye, it can all be gone. I look around my house, at the things I value and treasure. Who will know what they meant to me and why?

I am not a collector or hoarder of things. Our years of travelling to Congo and back made that impossible (except for books and diaries that I can’t seem to part with).
For some reason, however, I have kept beautiful boxes given to me over time. I display them on a shelf above our bed and they contain knickknacks and small items of jewellery -- nothing of value except sentimentally. When grandchildren come for longer visits, they love to look at them. The thought came to me that maybe I should give each of the grandchildren one of these boxes and tell them how I got them and why I treasure them. There are nine boxes and I have eight grandchildren. “Which one will not be chosen?” I wonder.

Granddaughter Kathryn, now 13, happens to come first. When I tell her she can pick one to keep, she looks at them all very carefully. She likes the little homemade box my sister gave me years ago which has a picture on the lid of Kathryn's mom and aunt peering into a window when they were two and four. She says it smells “old.” (Later, when I open it, I see that some mold has appeared in it and it needs a cleaning.)

Not yet understanding the value of antiques, Kathryn decides instead to claim the biggest one that is a real jewellery box (with a fancy mirror, a pull-out drawer and a red velvet tray). It has a gold turtle for a clasp.
I tell her that it comes from Korea and was given to me by one of my students. Wise for her years, she asks me to write down the story of the box and put it inside. One of the items stored in it is the first watch I bought with my babysitting money when I was 15. It lasted a very long time! When I look at it, I still feel the pride of ownership it gave me. Of course, I had no idea how fleeting time really is, since my whole life stretched before me.

I wonder what life on earth will be like when I am no longer here. Watches will, no doubt, be redundant. [There is an app for that !]

I do know that spring will come and I will enjoy as much of it as I possibly can!

I Lost My Brother

A long time ago I lost my brother.

Hansi (John) was born in Paraguay in February 1949. Two years before his birth our family was part of a group of Mennonite refugees who had fled war-torn Germany to arrive at one of the most sparsely inhabited areas in South America, the Paraguayan Chaco. Together, these Mennonites built a number of villages there under extreme pioneer conditions.

Hansi was a heavy baby. My sister Irma on the left, carrying the brunt of the burden while I pose for the photo!

When Hansi was two years old, my mother was expecting her sixth child and had an over-whelming work load every day. My sister Irma and I were six and eight years old and were in charge of our two little brothers, Bernie (4) and Hansi (2). We just wanted to play with our dolls and our dishes, and the boys kept spoiling our fun! Finally, I was exasperated and had a bright idea. I suggested to Irma that we tie them up so they would stop bothering us. She went along with the plan. I don’t remember what we used or how we managed to do this, but somehow we did and then happily played, ignoring their cries. After a while we went to check on them and they were gone. When we couldn’t find them, we had to go tell our mother who was very upset with us. When she asked us where they might be, we had no answer. It reminds me of Cain’s response to God’s question about where his brother Abel was after he had murdered him: “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4.1-9)

Although we sometimes felt like doing so, we had not murdered our brothers! Everyone was relieved when they were finally found wandering around in the kafir field, well hidden among the tall stalks. The four of us learned to play together with our dishes and our dolls. We had treats (raisins and cocoa powder mixed with water and sugar) and the boys were the dad and the big brother. Hansi especially loved treats and we could get him to do almost anything for a sweet reward.

There was a streak of mischief in our Hansi. His big green eyes would twinkle and his whole face would light up. Sometimes this happened at very serious occasions. I remember a village funeral which we all attended. Hansi decided he was hungry and began to demand his favorite food, fried eggs!
Some of the women put their fingers to their lips and shook their heads with a very stern look on their faces. He was not intimidated but imitated them exactly, furrowing his brow and shaking his head. They had to laugh in return and some benches shook inappropriately.

Hansi was three and a half years old when we arrived in Canada in October of 1952. When he was just beginning school, we almost lost him again due to a burst appendix. He spent weeks in a big city hospital away from his family. Doctors and nurses became his best friends. When he returned, he caught up to his classmates in no time and easily rose to the top of the class.

Hansi, front left, ready to go back to school after his near-death experience

As an adult John became a successful businessman, but he always had a big heart for his employees. Children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews loved their Dad, their Opa, and their Uncle John.

In his senior years he retired in Texas. The neighbours all knew the friendly man who went for a walk every morning. Then one morning he didn’t show up. 
On Wednesday, April 3, John woke up unwell and spent the day in hospital; doctors and nurses frantically worked to get rid of blood clots, but there were too many and by evening he was gone.

I lost my little brother again but this time he’s not coming back. In birth order John is number five and it feels like some of us should have gone before him.
I picture him, running through a field of kafir, mischief in his green eyes.

Farewell Hansi! I will see you again!