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This is My Mother's Story by Catherine Adams February 14, 2007 This morning I was listening to The Writer's Almanac, and Mr. Keillor mentioned that today is the 62nd anniversary of the bombing of Dresden. My mother was a survivor of that bombing. Fortunately she had taken to heart the advice of one of her teachers, who had taught her students how to survive in a world at war. One of the lessons was: when there is an air raid, stay away from other people. Panic is contagious, and if you are in a crowd you will catch the others' fear and behave irrationally. When the bombs fell, my mother walked alone away from the city, avoiding the train lines and making her way to safety. I literally owe my life to these two intelligent women. After the War my mother met and married an American and then moved to the US. Like many young couples in the 1950s, my parents didn't have a lot of money, so Mom wasn't able to return to Germany to visit her family. Stories were her lifeline: written to and from her mother in letters that crisscrossed the Atlantic and, even more, told to her children as we sat around the kitchen table. The old table was where we lived our lives, eating our meals, doing homework, drawing pictures, listening to the radio, or simply hanging around the kitchen and talking. Mom told us about her family, of her experiences before and during the War, of meeting our father and moving to the foreign country that became our home. Mostly I remember her war stories, and I realize today how many life lessons I absorbed simply listening to them. From my grandfather who, having been denied admission to the Nazi party because he insisted on remaining a practicing Roman Catholic, afterward observed that there are some groups from which it is an honor to be barred, I learned the importance of holding to one's principles. From my grandparents who helped Jewish friends escape into Switzerland, I learned the importance of doing the right thing no matter how terrified you are. From my grandparents' suspicion of one neighbor who always seemed to be watching them and their trust of another who was always kind and friendly, the difficulty of knowing whom to trust and the importance of keeping one's own counsel. (The watcher was actually a member of the resistance who recruited my grandfather, and the friendly neighbor was busy feeding information to the local Gestapo office.) From my mother's story of the Christmas when her father slaughtered the family's goose for their holiday meal and how no one except my grandfather was able to eat the goose despite their hunger, I learned that a full heart can trump an empty belly. From the story of how the parish priest would visit my grandparents' house, and he and my grandfather would lock themselves in the study with a bottle of wine and tell Hitler jokes, I learned that hope and joy and humor can coexist with fear and pain. Finally, I learned how virtue frequently goes unrewarded and often is punished; that beautiful and radiant souls can fall down into the darkness and be forgotten; that the wicked or cowardly often prosper; in short, that life is unfair and that one's moral worth is no guarantee of a good life. This is pretty dire stuff for a child to absorb, but children generally only absorb as much as they can understand, and one's understanding grows in lockstep with one's ability to cope. I think these were useful lessons for a child growing up in the United States in the 1950s and 60s. History wasn't something that happened to others and then was neatly summarized in text books. In fact it had happened to my own family and continued to happen in the kitchen as my mother's stories brought World War II to life. I feel blessed that I had a mother who talked to her children about her life, who taught us moral lessons without preaching, and who gave us a sense of pride in our family. I am also grateful to that one teacher, whose name I do not know, who taught my mother and her classmates things that had nothing to do with academics and everything to do with life. Think for yourself. Avoid the madness of crowds. Put one foot in front of the other and keep going. And don't forget to laugh. About the author: I'm a single female, in my mid-fifties. I retired several years ago to devote my life to reading, writing, cartooning, and supporting a tribe of ungrateful pets. I work part-time for a local builder, trying to sell condos. I'm mostly successful at these things, sort of. | | | |
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