My Heroes

As children, my sister, my cousin and I often played that we were on a huge ship crossing the ocean. The large veranda of my cousin's house was always the ship.

I love the song "Barges," about someone sitting by the window watching ships sail by and longing to travel along with them [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF2i6RQUqAE].

However, sometimes travelling by ship can be a nightmare. I sometimes think about the Titanic, the British passenger liner that sank in 1912 the year my father was born. Then, in more recent times, we read stories of people, desperate for asylum, crowding onto small makeshift crafts without food or water, just looking for a place that is safer than the one they come from. Many die at sea -- either of malnutrition, lack of water, or by drowning. No one seems to care for them or about them.

Lately, with the onset of the Coronavirus, cruise ships have been the center of attention. People who just wanted to enjoy a holiday in an ultra-luxurious environment, suddenly find themselves stranded at sea with no place to go, hoping they will not test positive for the virus. Once they are taken off the ship, they still have to spend time in quarantine. For people who are accustomed to having everything they need and want, this is quite a hardship!

Our family also made a perilous journey by ship in February 1947, thirty-five years after the sinking of the Titanic. My father made sure our family secured passage on an old Dutch passenger ship, the Volendam, which finally departed from Bremerhaven, Germany for Paraguay, South America, with over 2,000 refugees on board.
Recently, Hardy and I viewed a new documentary about that experience, called Volendam: A Refugee Story. This is part of my story and that of my family.

I didn't see myself, my brother or sister on the cover of the video (nor in the film itself), but we were there, somewhere! I was almost four years old when I experienced what is probably the biggest adventure of my life, but strangely, I remember nothing about it. It must have stayed in my subconscious, thus my fascination with ships!

My parents did not talk much about this adventure when we were growing up, but I do remember a picture that I often gazed at because the people on it looked so beautiful. Their names are Elfrieda and Peter Dyck, a young couple, just married three years and working for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in war-torn Europe. For a newly married couple, they carried a lot of responsibility, helping to set up refugee camps in Germany for thousands of Mennonites who had fled Ukraine and other parts of eastern Europe.

These refugees were now in danger of being sent back to a country that branded them "enemies" and would send them to Siberia and other remote places where they would endure hard labor and starvation. Like the boat people of recent times, we had nowhere to go. However, we did have people who cared about us and MCC worked hard to find a solution. Paraguay was the only country ready to accept us, and people desperate to flee the Communist regime were willing to go there (even to the wilderness of the Chaco). Peter and Elfrieda were able to secure a huge Dutch freighter, The Volendam, and filled it to overflowing with refugees.

Elfrieda and Peter Dyck

The Volendam with C.F. Klassen, Elfrieda Dyck's older brother

Some of our family's passport pictures: My sister (right) is not happy. She was just having a meal when she was interrupted to have this picture taken. (If you look closely you can see she is holding a spoon in her hand!) She knew, from a very young age, what was most important for survival! I am the smiling girl in the middle.

Our family before boarding the Volendam

In the Mennonite Heritage Archives I found this photo of people on board the Volendam and I think I recognize my dad helping to move what looks like bales of some kind. This is symbolic of the life he lived, working hard to keep his family safe and happy.

In a previous blog post entitled Hunger (May 30, 2017), I wrote about the famine in Ukraine around the time my mother was born (1921) and how American Mennonites formed a relief organization (MCC) to help the starving Mennonites there. A young man by the name of Clayton Kratz (1896-1920), was one of the Mennonite relief workers. He mysteriously disappeared and was never heard from again; to this day no one knows what happened to him. He gave his life in the service of MCC. Without his willingness to help, at the risk of his own life, my mother, a toddler at the time, and thousands of others like her, would  have died of starvation. I and many others owe our lives to him.

Clayton Kratz

While doing some research for this blog post, I discovered that six-year-old Peter Dyck was one of the children who, like my mother, benefitted from the first MCC relief program in Ukraine and likely would have died had food aid not been available. His family emigrated to Canada shortly after. When he decided to work for MCC as a young man, he was simply expressing gratitude for the help he had received as a starving child -- by helping others as he had been helped.

My 12-year old granddaughter, Lena Kate, who lives in Ontario and likes to chat with me on the phone, recently asked me a question that made me pause and think for a while. She asked, "Oma, are you and Opa rich?" We chatted for a little while about what it means to be rich. From a global perspective we are wealthy because we have a home, a car, food on the table and clothes to wear. Lena Kate doesn't think of that as being wealthy because she takes these things for granted. When we were refugees, we weren't so fortunate. But we children never felt like we were poor because we had our parents, our grandmother and our uncle with us. They looked after us. And they had MCC, with people willing to risk their lives to help us survive. Yes, Lena Kate, Opa and Oma are rich! And you have a rich heritage!

Clayton Kratz and Elfrieda and Peter Dyck are my heroes!

... And of course my courageous dad, Bernhard Neufeld (1912-2005)

"My Life Flows on in Endless Song"

As the second-oldest of eight children and the oldest of five sisters, I grew up in a busy household. Our mother definitely did not play with us nor did she read bedtime stories to us. But when we were little, before our younger siblings came along, she would sit and sing to us at bedtime; she knew many beautiful German folk songs by memory. Four of us slept together in a bed that was wider than it was long, and the baby slept in a buggy. It was cozy.

I loved these songs and also the hymns we sang in our little church, located right in the middle of our village in Einlage, Neuland Colony, Paraguay. I clearly recall singing at the top of my lungs one day when my mother told me I should stop singing because I didn't know how to sing properly. She was probably annoyed because there was always a lot of racket with seven noisy children swarming around her while she was longing for some peace and quiet.

But the message I understood was that I couldn't sing.

I believed it because mothers know everything (at least that is what you think when you are a small child!).

As a result of my mother's criticism, I decided that if I couldn't sing I would do other things and I would do them very well. And so I became an overachiever and a person desperately afraid of failure. I worried what people would think of me and that they would judge me unless I was perfect. I always received accolades and compliments for poems I memorized and recited on church holidays such as at Easter and Christmas. I had no stage fright until we came to Canada and I discovered I spoke with an accent.
People at church were not accustomed to long recitations in German and, sensitive as I was to failure, I could feel them mocking me. Later on, in high school, I had problems with geometry. My mathematics teacher was one who loved to call his students to the board and ridicule them when they failed to understand what he was asking them to do. At the time I didn't realize that it was he who was a failure as a teacher and not I as a student!

Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It's vulnerability that breeds self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear, writes Michelle Obama in her book Becoming: A Guided Journal for Discovering Your Voice (based on her best selling memoir Becoming).

I did sing in church choirs as a young person, always making sure to stand beside my friends Donna or Katie who had strong alto voices, as I did not think I could harmonize on my own.

Just recently, in one of her sermons, our middle daughter talked about all the music we had in our home when she and her siblings were growing up. "Someone was always singing or playing an instrument or listening to music," she noted. 
It surprised me, in a pleasant sort of way, because I have never considered myself musical although I love to sing.  I found my voice again as a young mother. My mother's songs all came back to me. Babies who needed soothing did not criticize. Their father, Hardy, also loves to sing and often played his mouth organ. Our oldest is a natural songbird and when her teacher told me she had perfect pitch, something inside me glowed.  The three siblings often  sang together. I have a distinct memory of a fellow missionary "auntie" teaching them Peace is Flowing like a River and how much they loved singing it. During home leaves, they sang  in the churches we visited. When my mother heard them singing, she was moved to tears. For me this was an unexpected and loving gift from God.


   
        
  


I just finished reading my blogger friend Marian Beaman's memoir Mennonite Daughter: The Story of a Plain Girl. Without bitterness or malice, she shares about some very painful things that happened to her at the hands of people close to her who should have supported rather than punished her. We all make mistakes, even with the best intentions. And there is forgiveness. And there is healing in telling our story.

Michelle Obama again: If you don't see that your story matters, chances are no one else will either. So even though it isn't always easy, it's important for you to find the strength to share your truth, because the world needs to hear it.

Musings in Early 2020

After our family Christmas celebration, Hardy and I stood in our doorway and said good-bye to our children and grandchildren. You can still see their footprints in the snow. 

The old year 2019 is behind us and we wonder what the new year will bring. At our age we often look backwards rather than forwards. Many of our loved ones have preceded us in death, and the new year has already made its claims. 

The poem Winter Sleep, by American poet Edith Matilda Thomas (1854-1925), resonates with me. Here is the last stanza:

I know I must be dying (Death draws near) --

I know I must be dying, for I crave

Life -- life, strong life, and think not of the grave,

And turf-bound silence, in the frosty year.

When I check the dates of Thomas's life, it is small comfort to realize that I have already passed her age at death by five and a half years! 

I deliberately choose not to dwell on that thought. Rather, I want to be grateful for my good health and enjoy it as much as possible. Love is stronger than death, and in the words of Henri Nouwen

"Let us claim the truth that we are loved and open our hearts to receive God's overflowing love poured out for us. And living fully each day, let us share that love in all our wonderful and difficult relationships, responsibilities and passages."

Relationships do not get easier as one grows older, they just become different. We have more time together, something we craved in our younger years. Breakfast is a time when we share our thoughts and communicate with one another. This is not always pleasant, especially due to hearing loss and the frustrations that accompany that affliction. I remember my parents sitting close at the breakfast table, a look of concentration on my Dad's face as he tried to understand what Mom was reading from the Neukirchener Kalender (a German devotional calendar). Their roles reversed when Dad became hearing-impaired; he was always the one who read while Mom listened. 

In retirement, it's nice to be able to choose the time for an activity. For example, on our anniversary this week (52 years!) we went to a movie in the afternoon. It was one Hardy had already seen with our grandson a few days earlier and thought I would enjoy, and did I ever! Knives Out is a wonderful mystery detective story in which family dynamics play a huge role.

In the evening we often play Scrabble when we are at home. I, being a #3 on the Enneagram, am the competitive type. Hardy (being a #1) is a perfectionist. He takes a very long time to form his words, and I sometimes turn to my iPad while he ponders his next move. I keep a running score and right now we are even!

I cherish my reading hours, and I'm going to read my friend Dora Dueck's novel for the second time as we will be discussing it at our sisters' book club in February. This book is all about family dynamics from the perspective of an archivist, looking back at her childhood as a middle-aged married woman from a Mennonite background. Our book club consists of my four sisters and me. We tend to be passive-aggressive in our relationships, avoiding direct confrontation. I was not aware of this until after my marriage. My husband is confrontational and verbalizes everything, and that took some adjusting on my part!

I read something on a Facebook posting recently that rang true to me. I don't know who wrote it so can't give credit, but I thought it was rather profound. Although Hardy and I have been married 52 years, we never cease to learn and grow !

"A Little Child Will Lead Them

               Leopards will lie down with young goats, and wolves will rest with lambs. 
               Calves and lions will eat together, and a child will lead them.  [Isaiah 11.6  CEV]

This Advent season our church worship committee decided to use The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, as their focus, and encouraged all of us to read as much as we could of this children's classic. They set aside a time to decorate the sanctuary to look like the land of Narnia and we all made paper snowflakes to hang from the ceiling and the many trees. There was even a closet of sorts (coat racks on either side of the entrance to the sanctuary) through which the worshipers walked in order to enter  Narnia, just like the children did in Lewis's book.

Years ago I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe which is the main story in the series, and I purchased the book that had all the Narnia tales in it. This year I decided that for my Advent reading I would go through the whole series. Every night before I go to bed I read a chapter or two, and I'm about half through the book now. Hardy gets to hear about the stories the next morning at breakfast!

I have been surprised, no, astounded and amazed at how relevant these Narnia tales are to our world situation today! (The Chronicles of Narnia were first published in the 1950s.) Also astonishing to me is the foresight  Lewis had in emphasizing a part of Scripture that has been neglected for the most part: the instructions to care for our planet and all that is on it.

The young children, with the help of Aslan (the lion), restore the land of Narnia which had turned to ice and snow due to the curse of the evil White Witch. Lucy, the youngest, is the intuitive one who is able to hear and sense Aslan (the Christ figure). She reminds me of Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish teenager travelling the globe to get her message across that change needs to happen quickly if we want to save our world from disaster. Lucy's siblings, Edmund (the one who succumbs to temptation); Susan (who likes her comfort); and Peter (a natural leader), set out to rescue the creatures who had been turned to stone by the White Witch.

As I read these stories, the paintings of Olga Cuttell, never leave me, and I picture the various characters in Lewis's tale to look like her characters in the calendar hanging on our kitchen wall. (I buy one every year because I love how she combines nature with people in her paintings.)

One of our granddaughters, 11-year-old Sasha, loves these pictures too. Taking a small step in re-using and recycling, I decided to make a picture book of the Narnia series with the calendar pages and that will be her Christmas present. I bought a ring binder at the dollar store with a beautiful purple cover, a colour she loves.
My favorite stuffies, little hedgehogs who helped to relax my students of German, say they approve! 

Olga Cuttell's Paintings

         The White Witch                                          Lucy, in tune with creation 

Aslan, the Christ figure

It seems to me that Olga Cuttell illustrates through her paintings what C.S. Lewis expresses in words. She may not have read the stories about Narnia, but she intuitively feels them and communicates them in her own unique way. 

We have eight grandchildren, the pride and joy of our lives. Here we are enjoying a week at a cottage near Lac du Bonnet.

How are these beautiful children expressing their creativity? 

Some love to read and write, some enjoy drawing and sketching, some thrive on physical challenges such as running and gymnastics, some participate in theatre and drama, one is studying communication at university.

What kind of world will they inherit? 

We have cared more about our comfort than about the health of our planet.

How can we fix the mess our world is in now? 
We need Aslan's help!

Hardy and I wish you a Merry Christmas 

and a happy and healthy New Year!

   

November: Days of Contemplation

Yes, it's that time of year again!

I now go for my daily walk wearing boots with good treads, a warm hooded jacket and gloves I finally found hidden beneath other forgotten winter necessities.

The maple tree in our backyard refuses to face this reality. Its leaves still stubbornly cling to its branches, one broken limb hanging askew, wounded by the recent heavy snow storm which arrived, unbelievably, in October for us Winnipeggers!

Shortly after we got back from our annual October road trip to Ontario, it was nice to get together with friends at the home of Lester and Yayoi and enjoy a lunch of warm homemade soup and sandwiches. They are wonderful hosts. On the wall across from the table hangs a banner in Japanese script. Hardy, the language pro, was curious about the lettering and we all wanted to know what the words meant. Yayoi explained that because of its mixture of kanji (adopted Chinese) characters with syllabic kana characters, the Japanese writing system is considered one of the most complicated in use anywhere in the world!

When we asked Yayoi about the meaning of the Japanese saying, she translated it for us:

The benefits received after spending days in quiet contemplation are endless.

I took that thought home with me. November has always been a time of contemplation for me. Probably because it is the beginning of the dying season, with shorter and darker days, my thoughts often turn to loved ones who have passed away.

In his daily meditation for November 4th, Henri Nouwen writes (in part):

It is possible to have intimate relationships with loved ones who have died. Death sometimes deepens the intimacy.  . . .  Remembering them is much more than just thinking of them, because we are making them part of us, part of our whole being.  . . .  This brief lifetime is my opportunity to receive love, deepen love, grow in love, and give love. When I die, love continues to be active, and from [a time of] full communion with God I am present by love with those I leave behind.

November 12th is my Dad's birthday, so of course my thoughts turn to him. November is also the month of my parents' wedding anniversary. I recently went through several boxes of correspondence belonging to my parents. Dad was a romantic and gave Mom a beautiful card at every special occasion. Mom kept them all! I decided to make use of them for scrap paper. Now every time I use them, I am reminded of Dad's loving spirit and his kind ways.

Mom was a seamstress. When her eight children became adults and she had grandchildren, she used her sewing skills to create things that were not only practical but also delightful and playful. I notice a doll mom created, hanging limply from a hook on my study door, her pantaloons sagging because the elastic has worn out. I pick her up and prop her against my bookshelf. There she sits, as if she belongs there, looking for all the world like Anne of Green Gables with her carrot-colored tresses! When I look at her, I feel as if Mom is looking back at me and telling me it's okay that I prefer reading and writing to sewing and that these are also valuable skills and not a waste of time!

                                  

During my grandmother's time, at least in Mennonite circles, young women had to learn to sew and knit and mend for practical reasons, and my grandmother did that, but her inclination, like mine, was more toward reading and writing. I have her big Bible which she received at her wedding and brought with her on that long trek from Ukraine to Canada, and a little book in which she recorded important events and birthdays. In her bedroom there was always a table by the window where she sat and wrote letters and read her Bible.

I recall that she would use pictures from old coloring books and stitch them to make wall hangings with pockets for storing treasures. I no longer have any in my possession; they must have disappeared when our family moved from Alberta to Manitoba. But I do possess one handmade item which my Oma made when our oldest daughter, her first great-grandchild, was born. It is made of silky/satiny material, rather impractical for a baby blanket.

Two things come to mind as I sit and contemplate her hand-embroidered work of love: 

My grandmother (Oma) was just a year older than I am now when she stitched that blanket (our daughter was born in 1970)!

I know that Oma hoped we would speak German to our children. To her it was the language of God, and anything else did not measure up. She always gave us the impression that she understood no English, even after years of living in Canada. When I now stand and look at this blanket, I suddenly realize that the prayer stitched on it is in English, not in German! I think Oma is telling me that it is okay with her that we speak English and that God's language is the language of love.

The baby who received this blanket is now a mother of two almost grown children, and she leads a busy and fulfilling life. Her grandparents and great-grandmother look down on her and smile their approval. She gave me a wonderful birthday gift this year -- a bouquet of flowers once a month for a whole year! The beautiful yellow lilies below grace our kitchen table and brighten the grey days of November.

"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!