Cooties and DPs

Homemade cootie catcher from 1966

When I was growing up, back in the sixties, DPs and cooties were synonymous. DPs, aka displaced people, were marked as different at school because of their possible cooties. While the ethnicities of displaced people may have changed, cruel childhood prejudices haven't stayed behind in the backwoods of the post-war period. 

Unfortunately, the displaced people of today still face stigma and prejudice. Our own ignorance makes us afraid of anyone different. In spite of globalization and a Canadian pride in being open-minded along with our generous immigration policies, kids continue to shun those who look different, worship different, and speak or eat different. And, sadly, the cooties we tried to avoid in childhood, continue to contaminate our adult lives. 

Here’s a link to creating cootie catchers. Maybe by interacting with each other through child’s play, we can catch those nasty, invisible cooties that lurk like viruses throughout our lives. If not educational, cootie catchers can be fun and fun always helps to bring people closer together.

Six blog posts left until Waltraut launches! Pinch me!  Pre-order from your favourite bookstore now and she'll be incredibly grateful!

1960s, Winnipeg, Immigrant Family

Inspiration behind Waltraut

So this is me and my little brother, circa 1965, dressed up for photos or for church … maybe both. Lord knows I didn’t dress up for anything else. My parents worked hard for every penny and our clothes were often homemade.  

I had an aunt in BC who could sew whatever I’d point to in a fashion magazine. Summer holiday visits with her always resulted in an improved wardrobe. She tried to teach me and I did manage to make myself some  clothes back in my teens. That was the only way I could afford to be ‘in style’… even sewed my fancy grad dress. Sadly, I’ve not kept up my sewing skills. They seem as foreign to me now as my lapsed accordion skills.

Truth be told, even at 10 or 11 that girl in the photo would much rather have been reading a book than learning how to stitch a hem.  Now she’s much older and living her dream … reading and writing to her heart’s content. She’s the inspiration behind my newest book, Waltraut, coming out in early September. Now what will she wear?

Lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer

Ah, the scent of sun-dried sheets!

It’s my first summer with air conditioning. How did I ever allow myself such an indulgence? Not sure I deserve it. I’ve managed quite nicely, all these years, without. But when I had to replace the furnace this winter … something I can’t live without here on the Canadian prairies, I had the opportunity to upgrade to AC and thought it might help in selling sometime in the future. 

Before this, I relied on shade trees, closed curtains and fans to get me through the most extreme heat.  I'd reflect that human beings have survived centuries of heat while doing strenuous physical labour … surely I can sweat it out for a few hot days. But here I am … one of the privileged ones … using up more energy while expending less of my own. However, I still hang my sheets outside. That remains from my childhood and I'll continue to indulge in this privilege. The scent of sunshine-dried pillow cases has yet to be imitated.

Star Weekly, August, 1945

Meanwhile … war rages throughout summer in other parts of the world. How can this be? How can humans destroy blue summer skies with dark smoke and missiles? How can this be happening now …in 2024? Haven’t we learned anything from our violent past? I re-read a Star Weekly from the summer of 1945 … the first summer of European peace … even while the grueling Pacific war continued.  

In North America, people were heading to lakes, while in ruined Europe, women, who became known as 'trümmerfrauen' were cleaning up the rubbled cities. Meanwhile, both my parents, still unknown to each other, were helping re-build the Soviet Union as POWs  - one in above open pit mine, the other in an underground coal mine. 

Star Weekly, August, 1945

I sit and read in air-conditioned comfort, flicking through news reports of more bombings, more casualties. 

Yes, these are the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer for some ... I wish it were for all!

Time on the Beach

Lake Manitoba beach

I’ve spent some of the best moments of my life on shorelines … whether as a kid going to summer camp and singing around a sunset beach fire … as a young person soaking up some sun on a beach towel surrounded by the smell of sunscreen … as a mom, building sandcastles with her kids … or as a ‘mature’ beachcomber hunting for garden driftwood. 

Sandcastle construction beside Lake Winnipeg

Even my 2019 research trip to Kaliningrad and Schleswig Holstein involved the beach. If ever there was an edge to sit on, the beach has promised me the best view … of waves, of clouds, of sunsets, of endless storied stones and, equally, of endless storied people. 

Baltic at Svetlogorsk (former Rauschen)

Summers are so short here in Manitoba and we’ve had our share of rainy days this year … so yesterday’s shoreline trip was a treat. Exploring with a couple of kids in tow reminded me of past beach magic. We returned to the city with pet rocks and some caged fish-flies. Great adventure! 

The fact that these kids, who’d spent years in a refugee camp, got to toast their first marshmallows, ended a rather perfect beach day.

Camp Morton shore

 

Happy Canada Day Weekend!

Happy Canada Day weekend! Hope you get to smile as you soak up some sun, splash in warm rain, smell some flowers, or eat some ice cream. It’s summer! Any thunderous sounds promise stormy weather, not war, and the inevitable fireworks that will ruin my dog’s night walk, are friendly fire. Last year at this time I was hanging out in a hospital, so I know the value of a good summer weekend!

Lake Manitoba

We’re far from being a perfect country, but we’re a democracy worth celebrating. Back in the sixties, my parents chose to become Canadian citizens and raised me to be grateful for its many freedoms.

To the newcomers who still arrive and embrace this freedom … may we learn from each other … and continue to celebrate Canada Day with gratitude. We have the opportunity and the responsibility to reflect the Canada we want.

Things to do:  get lost in a Canadian-authored book, learn some Canadian park history, listen to some Canadian music, walk through an urban park, visit a Canadian lake, eat some fresh strawberries with real cream, or sit around a campfire, surrounded by magical fireflies. 

So slap those mosquitoes and smile! This is our home!

Manitoba Sunset

About Joy

While working on my new book, Waltraut … which comes out in the fall! :)  … I explored the word schadenfreude. As a side note, of interest only to copywriters, editors and such, the word schadenfreude is a noun and while nouns are capitalized in German, a foreign word that has become a universal word, no longer needs a capital.  Interesting?  Maybe, to some.

Clouds or promise of rain?

Many English words and expressions have become ubiquitous throughout the world … but other languages, including French, (ex. Bonjour); Italian (ex. Ciao) and yes, German, have their own words that have become international. Often these are long, complicated words like sehnsucht, auf wiedersehen, or doppelgänger. Schadenfreude is a typical long German word that is actually two words, schaden, meaning pain and freude meaning joy. Combined the word means ‘joy at someone else’s pain.’ For example, we had a recent by-election in our province and no doubt there was considerable, schadenfreude amongst the winners. To be expected. Another type of schadenfreude would be when someone in your class, say a bully, comes down with a life-threatening illness. That would an unkind form of schadenfreude.  

While exploring the term schadenfreude, I came across the word freudenschade. This was new to me and also interesting. It’s more passive aggressive. Freudenschade means a lack of joy at someone else’s success. How many of us felt freudenschade at Putin’s recent electoral victory?  

And then there’s freudenfreude. Is this even a word? Apparently, yes. It means joy about other’s joy. I’m thinking empathy is a great umbrella term to connect us with other’s joy, pain and success. 

So whatever you’re feeling … schadenfreude, freudenschaden, or freudenfreude … it’s best to talk it out and return to the common word found in all three of these compound German words… freude (meaning joy). So freude to you, my friend, whatever language you speak.

Read more about these terms here. 

Joy of Joy

 

The Fabric of a Community: a tribute to Bev Morton

June 6th would have been Bev Morton’s 74th birthday.  In her honour an opening reception was held to celebrate her art at The Studio of La Maison on Provencher Boulevard. Aptly titled, “The Fabric of a Community,” the tribute highlighted her contributions to the local art scene.  Her death in November, 2021,  left a gap in many lives but her friends and her generous financial contribution to the Manitoba Arts community ensure that she won’t be forgotten.

Bev's sister, Sandra Weizman

Fabric art by Bev Morton

I continue to nurture her partner’s real-life geraniums, featured here in this piece of fabric art.  Never mind that Bev was a ferocious Scrabble player, I was in awe of her tenacity and vision. Even as she lay dying, she was planning the next art show.  And now, her sister, Sandra Weizman, has made it happen. 

Inspiration from
 geraniums

It’s a wonderful testament to the power of art, of memory, of community and to sisterly love. 

While the Wayne Arthur Gallery is no more, its spirit lingers on. The show continues at La Maison’s The Studio until June 22nd.  (From The Forks, it’s a short walk via the Esplanade Riel Footbridge.)

La Maison, 219 Provencher Blvd.

D Day for Germans

 D-Day. 80 years since Juno Beach near Normandy became famous. Canada lost 381 men on the first day of the invasion … a battle that lasted 77 days with many more lives lost. 

1944. My dad in a hurry to nowhere.

My parents didn’t immigrate to Canada until 1953, didn’t meet each other until 1951. So where were they in June, 1944?  My mom would have been working in an artillery factory in Stablach, East Prussia … present-day Stablawki in the Kaliningrad Oblast. She lived in the barracks, next door to a prisoner of war camp known as Stalag. As a civilian, I assume she had time to enjoy the beautiful June weather during her breaks. Maybe she went on a bike ride and picked some linden blossoms. East Prussia has beautiful linden, beech and chestnut trees. 

And where was my dad, the Luftwaffe pilot in 1944? As a crash survivor, he would have been in Poland's Stubendorf (Izbicko) and Posen (now Poznań) training new pilots in a “Blindflugschule.” Which means, training pilots to fly via instrument panels, not visuals.  My dad would have still been with his first wife, who got pregnant that summer with their second son. Maybe he had some spare time to play with his older boy. He’d always been good with kids. 

However, with the arrival of the D-Day troops on Juno Beach, that would be the last beautiful June for my parents. By June of the following year, the European war was over. The D-Day assault had been the beginning of the end for,the Nazis. Within a year, both my parents would be in Soviet custody. D-Day marked the end.

Would the Germans of June, 1944 be aware of the change coming at them? Certainly, the average German family had been affected by the true cost of war ever since the Stalingrad winter of 1941/42. But was the Nazi propaganda machine, run by Goebbels, still masking the inevitable doom that was in store?  Without a doubt.

I haven’t been to Normandy, but I’ve visited nearby Calais and sleepy little Fécamp. It’s hard to imagine fishing villages turned into slaughtering grounds. Why can’t sleepy villages be left to sleep?

June 6th … D-Day in Canada … a very different day for Germany. Of course, modern Germany is not the Third Reich and the men and women who experienced the Second World War are mostly gone. We have new wars grabbing headlines, new young men being called up to fight, new fronts being created.  It’s ironic that Germany’s leader, Olaf Scholz, stands with the Allies at these remembrance ceremonies, with Russia now the aggressor state. What will the next generation be commemorating 80 years from now?  

sunset vs sunrise

A friend invited me out to Victoria Beach the other day where she'd been granted an art retreat. Driven by curiousity, I jumped at the opportunity to enter through the gates into this restricted and historical beach resort. Victoria Beach, on the east side of Lake Winnipeg, has had a reputation of being unfriendly to immigrants. 

Until the 1950s, cottages throughout Manitoba were accessed by trains. One track ran up the east side of Lake Winnipeg serving Grand Beach and Victoria Beach (along with smaller resorts) and the other track went north along the west side, serving Winnipeg Beach and Gimli areas. The different routes also meant that sun-seekers didn’t have to mingle with other races, ethnicities or classes. 

East side of Lake Winnipeg at Victoria Beach

To have a cottage at Victoria Beach meant you were a ‘civilized’ person who was escaping into nature because you had earned it … you were successful. It also meant you were probably British. You were definitely not Jewish or East European. East beach people got to walk sandy beaches and watch sunsets.

Meanwhile, the rest of us … the immigrants, the poor, and the dis-inherited … established beach communities on the west side of Lake Winnipeg. Here, we got to watch sunrises and collect stones on the rockier shoreline.  The really well-healed holiday-ers headed out straight east to Lake of the Woods, a lake offering up islands for total privacy. Again, a different train route. 

Nowadays, of course, cottage communities don’t depend on trains. A network of highways created access to many summer resorts throughout our well-laked province. Even campers like me have access to beautiful beaches. 

My parents, 1950s' immigrants, could never own a Victoria Beach cottage but that didn’t stop them from dreaming of a west side cottage.  My dad helped build enough of them in his early years here in Canada but it wasn’t until I was in high school that his own cottage finally became a reality on Valhalla Beach. 

My dad (left) at a cottage construction site, 1950s

Nearby Gimli had a thriving community of Icelanders, Winnipeg Beach welcomed Jews, and Ukrainian and Russian settlers built up other spots on the west shoreline.  Yes, the east side still has better sand and idyllic sunsets. It still holds on to a nostalgic past that still charms its privileged vacationers by keeping out the public. 

But the west side has great rocks, good fishing and ordinary people. The sunrises are amazing and promise a future that assumes equality amongst all ethnicities. 

West side of Lake Winnipeg near Gimli

a dangerous faith

I’ve no regrets or doubts about dropping out of the German Baptist faith community in which I was raised … a community my adult-self considered stifling, narrow-minded and judgmental. Yet right-wing evangelicals still thrive as they continue to feed people’s needs for spiritual support and I admit that my upbringing has continued to influence me. For example, I learned to study words and to read between the lines.  We would pour over literature, aka, the ‘Word of God’ and try to interpret its meanings. Pastors could deliver hour-long sermons about a single verse. So it's not surprising that I did two degrees studying literature, albeit from secular sources.

Neudorf Baptist Church in Volhynia

A hundred years ago, there were about 200,000 Germans in Volhynia and at least 50,000 were Baptists. (Volhynia is a triangular area northwest of modern Zhytomyr). In the town of Neudorf, a huge red brick Baptist church was built back in 1907. During Soviet times it became a grain storage facility. In nearby Heimtal (now Yasinuvka), 50 km NW of Zhytomyr there was a German training seminary and teacher’s college, built around the same time. Yes, a hundred years ago, the German Baptist movement was thriving in Ukraine.

By the 1930s, however, under Stalin’s collectivization, things had drastically changed. My grandfather, ex-kulak, was a homeless fugitive hiding from NKVD authorities when he was arrested one final time on June 3rd, 1937. With a Bible in his possession they had enough evidence against him to find him guilty of treason … and he was finally executed in September. 

Today there are about 100,000 Ukrainian Baptists in Ukraine. Again, they are threatened and persecuted. Their enemies are no longer Soviets with a hammer and sickle flag. Now its Russian authorities who feel threatened by this small evangelical movement that just won’t be beaten.  Recent new clips show Baptist churches being vandalized.  Being a Baptist is still a dangerous thing.

Yesterday I did a book talk with a small group of Baptists from my former immigrant church. They know little of their own family histories. Many of them were only children when they fled war-torn Ukraine, Poland and East Prussia. Their memories are small memories ... like hiding in a closet as homes are vandalized or picking maggots off of horse meat or stepping around dead bodies. They clutch their faith like a child holds a teddy bear. I can only listen and try to imagine. And pray for today's victims of war.  We can all pray.

It's Just-Spring

Basking in spring sun

It's been a slow spring here on the Manitoba prairies.  Rainy, windy, cool.  And yet ... the light grows stronger, the days grow longer and buds are bursting.

The cat chills in the warm rays, while the dog focuses on muddy smells.  I put gangly geraniums back outdoors to let them recover from an indoor winter and maybe compete with the show-off dandelions. 

Bug-wise,  I've only had three wood ticks so far this season and I managed to rescue a bumble bee that bumbled into the house by mistake. I also found the  ladybugs cozy winter hideout amongst last season's leaves. 

Happy Spring!

Nature keeps cycling

Bee recharging in the sun after near-death experience

Back in 2004

Heimtal, Ukraine, 2004

It's been twenty Mays since I've been to Ukraine searching for my mom's home village.  Back in 2004, Federofka (now called Kaliniwka) was a broken village with a difficult past and an equally difficult future. It was part of a countryside littered with forgotten kulak windmills, sunken graveyards, homemade distilleries, and dilapidated homes. BUT ... it had a skyline brightened by industrious storks soaring above, nesting on broken chimneys or hydro poles as they cared for their young.  Spring was full of hope, with lilac, chestnut and linden blossoms sweetening the air and promising honeybees a sweet crop.

Former collective in Ukraine, 2004

It was less spring-like in the nearby city of Zhytomyr were I got to peruse secret police files and discovered the reasons for the human suffering in the countryside. There was a Victory Day parade rehearsal happening just as our small group was wandering through a public square.  It was eerie, back in 2004, as World War Two tanks rumbled past us, old Soviet military music blaring and ominous government vehicles encircling the parade staging area.  Twenty Mays later and the rehearsals are over. 

Soviet-era tank monument in Zhytomyr, 2004 

Spring, 2024. Ukraine is fighting for its life. Are the storks still able to nest? Is nature finding its way through the madness of war? Or are the red granite stones of the former Federofka turning a deeper red? 

Peace to Ukraine. Peace to the storks, to the soil, and to the people. 

Red stone marking base of my grandfather's windmill,
former Federofka, 2004

Beech Trees and Book Woods

Beech trees along Baltic

The trees are awakening here on the prairies and like every spring, I marvel at their magic.

Jane Gifford’s The Wisdom of Trees: Mysteries, Magic and Medicine came out back in 2000.  One section tells about the beech tree. I’ve not encountered beech trees here in Manitoba. Maybe our prairie winters are too severe. 

Maybe that’s why I noticed them when cycling along the Baltic back in 2019. Beech forests are found throughout Europe.  I welcomed their cooling shade after yet another sloping hill turned steeper than our intrepid leader promised. It was in the towering, gloomy beech woods that I tried to imagine the Second World War refugees hiding from their enemies.

Buchenwald, meaning 'beech woods', has become synonymous with the Buchenwald Concentration camp, about ten kilometers northwest of Weimar. Once known for its beech trees, almost 250,000 people were brutalized by the Nazis in that beech tree prison. 

Shade in my Garden

But the beech tree has more positive associations. Beech tree seeds, or nuts, were used during hard times to create ‘ersatz kaffee’ and even used as a tobacco substitute. Beech tree oil and butter is a common by-product and beech wood is favoured for carving wooden spoons and other household utensils. 

But the most interesting thing about beech trees—for a book-lover—is that the word, beech, comes from the Anglo-Saxon word boc, which became the German word Buch. Buch became buchstabe, meaning letter of the alphabet.  So once Buchenwald was not a place of horror. Once a Buchenwald was a forest of books. A library.  Before modern paper production, beech wood could be used for early writing tablets. And, as Gifford points out, beech tree are great for carving lovers' initials.

Even if I can’t grow beech trees in my garden, I’m still appreciating their impact. Like Cicero said, “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”

Part of my home library

 

94 years ago ...

Nancy Drew debuted on April 28, 1930. She'd been conceived by Edward Stratemeyer, son of German immigrants, and fleshed out by a ghostwriter we all knew as Carolyn Keene.  After his early death, his daughter, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams kept Nancy Drew alive, by supplying outlines for her mysteries. Carolyn Keene, as mysterious as the mysteries she penned, was Mildred Wirt Benson for the first 23  books. 

But this post isn’t about the authors.  I’m  thinking about the timing. April 28, 1930.  Even though the Great Depression had descended with a thud, it didn't dampen the success of the series.  Nancy Drew and The Secret of the Old Clock was an immediate hit.  Her earliest ghostwriter, Benson, said: “ … (ND) was everything her author—or any girl, in fact—wanted to be and then some.” (page 117, Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak).

Because I’ve been obsessed with my mom’s history for the last twenty years, I can’t help but compare my eleven-year-old reading habits to hers. What was Katya, aka my mom, reading in 1930? (Hint: It wasn't Nancy Drew because the Russian translation for Nensi Dru didn’t come out until 1994.)

My mom wasn’t much of a reader.  Kulak daughters like her weren’t visiting libraries or bookstores to find adventure.  At 11 years old she was about to embark on a journey to Siberia. She did have a bit in common with Nancy though.  Both lost their mothers at a young age. Both adored their fathers. Both had a pet dog. 

But while girls on this side of the Atlantic escaped with mystery novels, girls in the Soviet Union were either joining the compulsory Young Pioneers or dealing with homelessness, exile and imprisonment.  No wonder my mom seemed jealous and even discouraged my love of reading. But forbidden fruit is so very sweet. During the sixties, I read and reread Nancy Drew along with a required dose of German poetry and Martin Luther bible verses. While the German translation of Nancy Drew debuted in 1966, I didn't get a copy.

April 28, 2024. Nancy Drew is still on bookshelves. Forever young. Forever single.  Forever driving her blue roadster. Once regarded as a trashy serial, too low-brow to be ‘real’ literature, she finally made it to library shelves in the 1960s and she's been in circulation ever since. 

The power of novels ... such a mystery. 

Border Issues

Another one of my former EAL students recently received her Canadian citizenship and I'm so happy for her.  Applying for a passport will be the next step.  It’s been a long and tedious journey. Dealing with bureaucracy takes tenacity and patience.  Her new-found Canadian pride reminds me of how fortunate I am to have a passport and to not have border issues … at least not with most countries.  Borders around the world seem to be growing in importance.  How did that John Lennon song go?

 “Imagine there's no countries/It isn't hard to do/Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion, too."

My mom's family: fresh arrivals in Winnipeg 1953

Winnipeg attracted many European immigrants back in the late 1940s and 1950s. I remember the term DPs quite well. It wasn’t a positive label. DPs, often Eastern Europeans, came to Canada after the war to avoid repatriation to the USSR.  Resettlement in our overcrowded city was marked with language issues and financial strains. 

My mom’s family experienced decades of homelessness and went from displaced people, (as kulaks) to migrants (as orphans), to refugees (fleeing war), to forced labourers (war reparations) to migrants again (to Germany) to Permanent Residents (in Canada), to full citizens (in Canada). 35 years of not belonging. 

At the former border between East and West Berlin

This rootlessness probably started back in the 1860s when my great-grandparents migrated from the Gdansk/Danzig area to settle in newly opened farmland of the Volhynia area. In Volhynia they stayed long enough to establish not only villages but an infrastructure filled with schools, churchs and business.  They stayed enough years to call Volhynia home. 

Then in the 1930s, Stalin forcibly ‘resettled’ kulaks into Siberia and other remote areas. (See Red Stone)  A few years later, family in pieces, my mom and her siblings crossed the border from Soviet Ukraine into East Prussia (explored in Broken Stone). Later, in 1945, she crossed the border back into the USSR.(Crow Stone) A 1947 travel visa let her travel to Soviet-occupied Frankfurt an der Oder. She then needed to do an illegal border crossing into Western Europe, where she registered as an official ‘refugee’. 

She had no documents to prove her birthplace. The refugee category allowed her to obtain eventual German citizenship and further, an opportunity to immigrate to Canada. It took her until 1964 to get her Canadian citizenship. (A scene in my new book!) She was so proud of her Canadian document and of her new passport.  

I cross international borders without much worry except about the carry-on liquids I carry.  Passports are keys to safety, to opportunity and to new lives.  As long as there are borders, we will need passports to unlock the gate.

Now our country has new waves of immigrants, wanting only peace and freedom. Seems simple.

 

Fitting In

Just read Call Me Al, written by Wali Shah and Eric Walters. It’s a middle grade novel exploring the immigrant experience in Canada. Having spent the past seven years meeting with newcomers as an ‘English language facilitator,’ I can appreciate the challenges of adjusting to Canadian culture.  I grew up in an immigrant family and know what it’s like to live in two worlds. Call Me Al was told from an insightful and captivating young person’s perspective.

 

Wali Shah, author and spoken word poet

Wikipedia image

Like any young person, 13-year-old Ali desperately wants to fit in, hence his name Ali, becomes Al. This reminded me of an incident working in an after-school science program, a few years back. We had Syrian refugees in the grade three class and I was unsure of one boy’s name. “Just call him Mohammed,” one white boy shouted. “My dad says they all have the same name.” Like skin colour, names matter when you’re a kid … they can label you as different. 

While I didn’t have to deal with the challenges of racism, back in the sixties I had to deal with the post-war stigma of having German parents. My father had been in the Luftwaffe and still had a rough, military exterior. My mother … well, we dismissed her messed up past as too confusing … something I’ve tried to make up for with my novels. 

'Gangsta'-posing at Anita Daher's potluck
May, 2023
with the award-winning & prolific
Eric Walters

In Call Me Al, Ali needs to please his self-sacrificing Pakistani parents who expect him to become a doctor. Turns out that at 13, Ali has emotional and social needs that can’t be neatly resolved with perfect math scores. 

Without giving too much away, the novel ends with a compromise. I’m not sure every immigrant child’s story ends so neatly, so happily. But middle-graders might feel empowered by Ali’s story. It’s the kind of novel I wish I had an opportunity to read when I was an awkward grade eight kid, ashamed of her family and living in two worlds. 

About April

My backyard in April

T.S. Eliot, in The Wasteland, called April the cruelest month and I’d have to agree. It’s a month of transition and even change for the better is difficult. Stronger sunlight battles brisker winds. Snow turns to puddles, which return to ice before grudgingly retreating back to puddles, which shrink ever so slowly. Skinny, naked branches thicken with buds and eventually green sprouts emerge in even the shadiest spots. 

April was a cruel month in Europe, back in 1945. Sifting through old magazines I’ve collected over the years, I’m reminded of Nazi atrocities. That April, the Allies were like a spring sun bringing warm winds and exposing Nazi crimes of unbelievable proportions. Charred bodies, ditches filled with corpses, stick-like survivors. Images befitting the cruel month of April. Hitler belongs to April, too. Born April 20, 1889, he shot himself on April 30, 1945. 

Gardelegen Massacre in April, 1945:  CC  Max Stuck

So April is a month of endings, of beginnings, of transition. Ugly, cruel and yet hopeful. I’ll take it one day at a time.

And if this sounds too depressing, I also have fond memories of this month. Of anniversaries, of birthdays and of unexpectedly warm, summer-like days. My favorite April moment: finding pussy willows ... so tenacious, soft and brave. 

April … cruel to be kind?  A lyric from a modern poet. Thanks, Nick Lowe.  Let’s hope the cruelest month will finally be kind to us all. 

A Purple Light

Our city glowed purple this past week thanks to a national epilepsy awareness campaign. A long time friend and member of my writing group, was instrumental in bringing an Epilepsy and Neurosurgery Care unit to our city.  Thanks, Pat. With my own family directly affected by epilepsy I’m well aware of the need for epilepsy treatment facilities. 

It was my family connection to epilepsy that prompted my research into the condition and I used what I learned to write Tainted Amber. In that novel I highlighted the Nazi intolerance to epilepsy and their attempts to sterilize or even murder people with the condition.

What is epilepsy? Surging electrical brain activity that leads to seizures or convulsions.  (Think of an electrical thunder storm).  Modern medicine can monitor electrical surges through EEG. Locating the electrical misfirings can lead to proper medication to control these 'storms'.

CC  https://www.flickr.com/photos/tim_uk/8135755109/

How many Canadians are affected by it? About 300,000 (1% of the population) or more than 3 million people worldwide.

Famous people with the condition include: Albert Einstein, Socrates, Charles Dickens and Elton John. 

Thankfully, modern science has found medication that can control unwanted and unexpected seizures. There is no need to sterilize or euthanize people diagnosed with the condition. And with more research, more awareness, more purple light campaigns … we can now support and not stigmatize this seizure disorder. 

Thanks to advocates like my friend, Pat, our city is taking positive steps in that direction. Pat, you look great in purple!

Puzzling Memories

My aunt who inspired 'Marthe' in Crow Stone

Crow Stone was inspired by my mom who died back in 2011 at the age of 92. I’d been collecting her chaotic memories all along, and later put them together into narratives … filling in the missing pieces with background reading and travels … almost like doing a puzzle. As I quoted Kate Morton, last week, I was fulfilling the universal human need to create a narrative.  

A few months after Mom's funeral, I visited her youngest sister who'd been unable to come to the funeral. This aunt lived up in northern BC and passed away the following year.  It was from her that I learned the story about the child she'd fostered during the flight from the Soviet Army in the final months of the war. She claimed that it was this little girl, whom I call ‘Erika’* in the novel, that saved her from my mom’s fate in a POW camp in the Urals. My aunt was 19 in 1945 and looked after little ‘Erika’ until she came to Canada in 1953 after ‘Erika’ had finally reconnected with some of her own family. 

My aunt, date unknown, prob. about 1950

I’d been trying to meet up with ‘Erika’ as I researched the book, to no avail. Imagine my thrill to now finally connect via email. Imagine my surprise to have ‘Erika’ asking me to fill in the details of her early childhood. Imagine my absolute delight to be able to share my book and my research with this woman, now in her early eighties, living in northern Germany. 

from The Guardian, Jan.3, 1947, p.8

I told ‘Erika’ of how much my aunt loved her. My aunt had shared stories about how the surviving East Prussian women and children were forced to work in the newly formed collectives or kolkhozes’.  Those were extremely difficult years. Food was scarce ... hunger and disease was everywhere. But my aunt, smiled with gratitude as she shared, “little ‘Erika’ was our sunshine as she sat amongst the vegetables with us as we worked. She sang to us with her sweet voice and gave us so much happiness.”

To be able to share this memory with the real ‘Erika’ makes me so very happy. Of course, I sent her a copy of Crow Stone. I know it’s not the factual truth … it’s not a memoir. But the magic of story transforms facts into emotional truths that can be just as valid. 

It's making these sort of connections that makes my writing and research efforts seem so worthwhile.

*See Crow Stone, pages 91, 98 and 101 for mention of Erika

welcome sign of collective or kolkhoz in the former USSR
from my own collection
'

Reading Kate Morton

Kate Morton’s one of my favourite novelists. Her latest novel, Homecoming, had been on my TBR pile for a while. I’ve really lost myself in the worlds of two of her earlier novels, The Forgotten Garden and The Clockmaker’s Daughter. This new one, Homecoming, however, was not quite as compelling. The pace seemed plodding, the characters and POVs too confusing, and the convoluted plot line more irritating than intriguing.  What saved it was the writing!

I love Kate Morton’s writing. Her novels evoke mood through a neglected natural setting. Besides nature gone wild, there are the inevitable neglected homes in her stories ... revealing complicated pasts. I’m reminded of the ruins of East Prussia inside modern Kaliningrad.  Here in Canada, ruins are sparse. If we have any ruins, they're soon razed for new development or burned by homeless people keeping warm. 

Besides nature and history, Morton’s ardent love of books and old things infuses her work. She braids mystery, nature and human frailty into compelling narratives. 

Here are some of my favourite lines from Homecoming. 

About story:

 “…the first and firmest human addiction is to narrative.” (p. 116)

About walking:

“…to walk was to think, to think was to breathe, to breathe was to stay alive.” (p. 193)

About home:

“Home, she’d realized, wasn’t a place or a time or a person, though it could be any and all of those things: home was a feeling, a sense of being complete.” (p. 543)

About time:

“…a sense of timelessness, of nature, older and more pervasive than anything human beings and their histories could generate, grew thick and warm around them.”  (p.544)

about travelling

Me and Lenin in Zhytomyr in 2004

People travel for different reasons. Some, of course, travel because of work. But many deal with the stresses of new time zones, busy airports, and passport controls by choice.  Some travel to escape … and any random destination will do. Some travel to re-connect … with people, times, or places. Some travel to get lost. Some travel to find themselves. Some travel because of weather. In spite of our warm houses, warm cars and layered clothes, we still wimp out on the cold. Some travel to relax in spite of  luxuries in their own homes. Some travel for adventure. Some travel, not by choice … some are exiled. 

Others don’t travel much at all. Like me. I’ve been restrained by finances and family health issues. Past family travel carefully avoided the big (expensive) spectacles of the world and focused on local, nature-centred camping trips. 

As I youngster, I had my first suitcase at age three … a round blue-with-white trim affair, with a slot for an umbrella. I was sent on a journey as my parents prepared for the arrival of my only sibling. I guess that trip made me an exile.

sunset in Bucerias

As a student, I traveled to escape and find myself … doing the requisite year-long backpacking trek through Europe. Later, the few trips I managed to squeeze in while raising kids focused on exploring my roots. 

This last trip was the first time, in 40 years, that I went on a trip for fun. Holidaying in Mexico, last month, was weird. I felt strangely out of step with my fellow tourists. Hedonistic even. This is what people do? Eat in restaurants, have drinks, buy stuff they don’t need and get too much sun? Just for the fun of it? 

It doesn’t explain why I’ve booked a holiday in Mexico for next year. Practice, perhaps? I need to practice. But mostly, I promised my family that I’d share. After all, they were house-sitting, care-giving, and dog-walking while I was soaking up the sun. 

Truth be told, I find reading to be an awesome way to travel. Right now, I’m in southern Australia, soaking up the drama of a Kate Morton historical novel. Love how she time travels between present and past. 

And for me, time-travel is the best kind of travel!