Shade gardens and reading

Ain't gonna lie ... it's been a difficult year .... caregiving while managing my own health issues.  Grateful for the dappled shade of a garden and a pile of books.  

                                    

José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro /
CC BY-SA 4

Like Cicero said,   “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”

   ― Cicero (born 106 years before Christ - so that's 2131 years ago and still relevant)

I've got the garden ... 

and I've got my stash of summer books!  

So I'm all set. See you in the fall! Stay curious, be brave and practice kindness! Hope it's a good summer for us all.

Our Children

 

Reading One day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (by Omar El Akkad) back to back with the memoir, Eine Mutter mit Sieben Kinder, (Helma Herrmann Schlicht) has been jarring. Human hypocrisy flames brighter and brighter as we struggle to make sense of headlines in the media. The power of propaganda has never been stronger. R. R. Douglas explored the hypocrisy in his 2012 text, Orderly and Humane, the Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War.  80 years later the insanity rages on.

Be critical. Be aware. Knowledge is power, but don’t believe every headline streamed your way!  And know that a child’s pain is universal. Our collective world peace and wellbeing depends on our efforts to be kind, to be curious and to be brave. (Nancy Drew). Our world’s children are crying and their pain fuels the world's future. 

For Father's Day

As a post-war immigrant to Canada, my dad worked hard. Yet in spite of his long working days, he was also a bookworm and always had a book on the go. As a kid, one of my big thrills was going with him to the German Book Club, located in a rambling 3 story house, overflowing with books. That’s where he’d get his German language novels … many set during the war years …  and I became determined to keep up my own German language skills so I could read his books. I became inspired to live in my own book-filled house and to be a writer of historical fiction. 

Dad taught me to drive using our sixties-era mint green Mercury. Driving home from the cottage on Sunday nights he’d encourage me to pass the slowpoke RVs, trailers, or farm equipment ahead of us on the single-lane highway just west of Lake Winnipeg. “Check your surroundings, make sure it’s safe, and then pedal to the metal and pass the slowpokes.” I remember having my hands gripped tight around the steering wheel, filled with fear, as Dad urged me on. “You got the power, girl. It’s a V8! Go for it.” That’s how I gained confidence in my driving. Passed the test first time around, too.  Thanks Dad. (Music: Mercury  Blues Alan Jackson)

Dad’s been gone more than thirty years, and I sure miss him.  I miss the fact that my own kids never got a taste of his exuberance and zest for life. What I’d like to tell him? Dad, you were right! There were so many things that I did the hard way.  Dad would laugh at me and demonstrate an awkward pose.  “Why scratch your ear like that?" he'd quip. "When you can scratch it like this.”  I’m a slow learner, Dad, but I’m finally putting the pedal to the metal and changing lanes.  Now I can roll down the window and feel the breeze. Thanks, Dad. You were right! I do have the power.   (Music: People have the power, Patti Smith)

East Prussian Ruins

My two YA novels, Tainted Amber and Crow Stone were set in East Prussia and I’m working on another one set in the area immediately after the war. To continue my research of the area, I follow social media posts by Russians living in the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia.  They share visuals of the historical ruins of what was once East Prussia. 

Near Svetlogorsk (former Rauschen)

My mom moved to East Prussia from Soviet Ukraine after collectivization and Siberian exile in 1931. Then in 1945 she was sent to work at coal mines in the Soviet Urals, while her sisters and other family members remained behind in Soviet-occupied East Prussia. They weren’t permitted to leave the enclave until 1948. 

Those years, 1945-1948 were murky, difficult years for my aunts and surviving cousins. It was a taboo topic because of their various traumas, which included rape, severe hunger, and homelessness. As Canadian-born kids, my cousins and I tip-toed around the topic, afraid to re-traumatize our mothers.  But the elephant in the room was awkward… my family’s traumas were their punishment for being German. It became my shame, as well, something I explore n Waltraut. 

With the 2023 death of my last cousin who lived through those times, I’ve got plenty of regret that I didn’t persist in asking more questions … that I didn’t face that rotting elephant. There were some vague jokes about ‘brennessel’ for soup (stinging nettle) or the taste of horse meat. There was the strong anti-Russian sentiment that persisted and a constant fear of thunder storms. 

There are so few sources to turn to for more information. I’ve read ‘wolf children’ accounts and continue to grab other memoirs. Currently, I’m absorbing Eine Mutter mit Sieben Kindern. This memoir is set in same area (Heiligenbeil) that my mom and her sisters would have been caught in during their attempt to flee. Like my family, they were hijacked in February on their way on their way to the Pillau harbour on the Baltic.

While I read about the destruction of 1945, I’m also seeing the 2025 remains of these villages in what is now Russian Kaliningrad.  It’s bizarre and haunting. The ghosts are everywhere even as I click ‘like’ on my cell phone and give kudos to those modern-day 'keepers of the ruins,'   They are preserving the relics of war, of time and of history. Meanwhile, a few hundred kilometers further east, war rages on. And more traumatic memories are being forged.

Along the Baltic near Svetlogorsk (former Rauschen)