Lost and Found

You know that feeling of frustration when you’re looking for something and you can’t find it? How about the frustration of not really being sure what you’re looking for . . . only that you’ll know it when you find it? 

 

Well, I’ve have that feeling for more than six months now. Only it wasn’t a thing, it was a title. My upcoming novel has had a working title, but like an unborn child, it’s now needing a real name. 

I’ve wracked my brain, traveled far and wide, let it rest, and continued the search again—sometimes losing sleep over it. And wouldn’t you know it . . . two days before Christmas, when my mind is overflowing with a myriad of details about gifts, meals, schedules, etc. . . . out pops the right title. 

Like a stone on a beach, it’s suddenly the perfect treasure and I’ve stuffed it safely in my pocket, to be revealed when the time is right. Such a good feeling to find something that was lost. A good feeling indeed. 

Now where did I leave the scotch tape?

Snowman Art

What fun we had with the EAL class where I volunteer once a week. My friend, Mel, led this spirited group of refugee women in a paint 'afternoon.'

They've been so eager to please, to follow all our Canadian rules. But this time around we wanted them to channel their inner child and have fun with it. Easier said than done, but the results were worth it, wouldn't you agree?

December Gratefulness

Aspen woods in Charleswood

This is my sixth December of not working for the post office and it definitely puts a different spin on the whole season. I mean, snow? Looks pretty from inside. Cold? Just have to warm the car up first. Parcels? Instead of dragging them up to third floor apartments, now I'm just clicking on the internet for my own gift-giving. Yeah, it's amazing how my Decembers have changed.

But I appreciate the cold, the subtle nuances of what cold really is. Minus thirty in the sunshine can be balmy compared to minus ten in on a grey, windy day. Fresh snow looks great but can really impact walking conditions. The timing of snowfall matters. A Friday night snow means homeowners have all weekend to clear their steps and sidewalks.

Physically, it was a tough job. Mentally, it was awesome. And now, six years into retirement I'm grateful to—so far at least—having some stamina in my aging body. I have a dog who keeps me walking in all kinds of weather and I've learned my lessons. Dress for the weather and keep moving.

The hardest part was convincing my mom that delivering mail in Winnipeg was not as bad as working in a Siberian gulag. I don't think she ever believed me.

Anyway, happy December to all. Try to resist the click on the online retailers. Shovel your walks and dress for the season. Enjoy.

Socializing

December—the month of socializing—makes me grateful for the gift of friendship. We’ve come a long way as women, haven’t we? I don’t recall my mom going out and having a social life of her own.  

High School friends, getting into festive mode

Social life? She was part of a couple—her life was enmeshed with my father’s, and his with hers. Their senior years were limited to and by each other’s. She crocheted, baked, watched the Young and the Restless, and cleaned. He grew tomatoes, golfed, watched sports, and puttered. That was how I saw them. But perhaps. . .after a rather tumultuous life, this was good enough. I wonder . . . how will my kids remember me?

Determined not to be house-bound like my mom, I’ve made an effort to maintain a social life outside of the house. Of course, being a writer shapes my days and has always been the motivator behind most of my interests. For a writer, even difficult relationships or situations are just food for the mind’s compost pit.

I’m grateful for friends, old and new, who continue to inspire me. I don’t want to ever take any of you for granted. Thanks for sharing in this adventure called life. 

Thinking of Berlin Today

I’m thinking of Berlin today—grateful that I was able to visit this dynamic, work-in-progress city. I spent four days getting lost, navigating hordes of tourists and all the while appreciating how much history sits in this place–especially as a consequence of Hitler's insane rule. Today it’s about celebrating thirty years since the Berlin Wall fell.

The apartment where I stayed was a five-minute walk to a memorial of the Berlin Wall. I appreciated learning about how it divided families, destroyed lives and insisted on using violent power to control. Thirty years isn’t all that long ago and walls still threaten to divide families, destroy lives and violently control people. Why?

I'm reading Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz in honour of Berlin’s reunification and to understand a bit more about the city's history. The novel's been compared to Joyce’s Ulysses and I’m sure struggling with it. But I’m more than halfway through and it’s getting a tad easier. The Babylon Berlin series on Netflix was a much more entertaining way for me to appreciate Berlin during the Weimar Republic years in the 1920s. 

Congratulations to a city that manages to keep history, art and people flourishing. 

I might post another time about the Nazi era historical spots I visited because . . . yes! I managed to retrieve my trip photos thanks to some patient computer geeks.  

Finding Slavskoye

While sorting through travel photos the other day, I lost at least half of them. Don't ask me how I did that. I'm visiting my local computer place this coming week and hope they'll be able to help this luddite.

Rather than risk losing more, I thought I should post my favourite photos right now. 

My cycling trip through parts of the former East Prussia (now Kaliningrad Oblast, Lithuania and Poland) retraced some of my mom’s life while living in Kreuzburg (now Slavskoye) between 1932 and 1945.

Cobblestone main road in former Kreuzburg

The village of Slavskoye is an almost thirty-kilometer road trip south of the city of Kaliningrad (called Königsberg until 1946 and renamed in honour of a Soviet politician who died that year). The traffic, exiting Kaliningrad (pop. about 450,000) on a Friday afternoon was horrendous. What should have taken half an hour, took more like two hours. Our minivan driver, Igor, seemed nonchalant about it all, but I felt bad for this detour he was taking on my behalf. 

Once we arrived is Slavskoye, however, it was all worth it. The village, in a state of ruin ever since it was caught between the advancing Soviets and the retreating Nazis back in the cold winter months of early 1945, has no main store or business, but some of the houses have been restored by their proud Russian owners. Yes, this is Russia and all the Germans are gone. Still, I hoped to find some traces of my family. 

It was a beautiful day in early September and flowers bloomed in colourful profusion over rickety fences and along the sides of bullet-scarred houses. Almost seventy years after the war, this part of Europe still sits derelict and mostly forgotten. 

Former Kreuzburg school 

The school my mom would have attended—albeit for a very short while because her coldhearted aunt thought the twelve-year-old girl should work, rather than become book-smart—stands pockmarked with bullet holes. I read somewhere that Wehrmacht soldiers had retreated to the school as a last defence. It looks like someone now lives in on the right end where new windows have been installed.

Former family home

And then I found the house her family built—still standing—at the end of a road with a well in front. Just like I’d been told.  It was one of the better maintained houses in the village. An older man, a Volga-German who’d once been exiled to Kazakhstan, was the proud owner. He invited us in for tea, but unfortunately, because of the traffic jam issues, we were short on time. I could only thank him for the outside tour. 

Then his elderly neighbour called out from over the fence, where she was mostly hidden by an apple tree thick with fruit, why weren’t we coming to visit her. Very friendly people who rely on their gardens to supplement their meager pensions. I left Slavskoye feeling that my family’s former home was in good hands. It’s too bad politicians can’t fight their wars on chess boards. My family, like these Russian settlers, were mere pawns in those horrible battles. 

Change

A reminder of how quickly things can change and how little control we have.
Living in Winnipeg . . . never a dull moment!

The Tuesday Garden

and the Friday Garden.