MY FATHER

A recent conversation has me thinking about my father.

I never enjoyed a healthy relationship with him. Several years ago he passed away. It’s too late. I refused to go to him on his deathbed, and I don't regret my actions. What I wish is that he'd had the courage to own up to how he wounded me, before he died.

His family were German Mennonites living in Russia. (Mennonites were invited by Catherine the Great, to live in Russia, because they were being persecuted in Holland). The Mennonites lived in their own colony in Russia, raising silk worms. My father's family became extremely wealthy.

When the revolution happened, the Mennonites had everything taken from them, and were forced to work on collective farms. My father was around five at that time - much younger than his siblings. He and his family suffered from malaria, starvation, terror and hopelessness. His mother (my grandmother) lost all her hair, from lack of food and extreme stress. One of his older brothers went insane, was imprisoned and escaped several times before he eventually died in prison. Eventually the rest of his family were sent to the Gulag in Siberia, where they were forced to collect wood in the forest until they starved and froze to death.

When my father became of age, he was drafted into the Russian army, but because the Russians had so horribly persecuted his family, he hated them. And he had no wish to fight against his own German people. He escaped from his unit, and joined the German army. They valued him because he was a German who knew the Russian language.

He rarely talked about his war experiences, but occasionally he would tell us a few memories. He told us that his unit had been sent to Warsaw the day before the uprising. I think they were on their way from the training camp, to fight on the Russian front. When the uprising occurred, they were ordered to stay in Warsaw. Whenever I see wartime photographs of Warsaw, I look for him.

At some point he fought on the Russian front. Because he knew the Russian language, he was sent on a special mission with two other soldiers who did not know how to speak Russian. The three went over to the Russian camp. When they neared it, his two companions stayed behind while my father, pretending to be a Russian sympathizer, went into the camp to talk with someone there, and gain information.

But as he was talking with this person, his companions were discovered. My father heard yells, and shots, he cut off his sentence midstream and ran for his life. He reached his companions, found them dead with their faces blown off, and ran on. A handgernade hit him in the leg. He told us it felt as though his leg had been blown off. I remember the horrible scar that was revealed each summer of my childhood when our family went on vacation and my father wore his swimming shorts. People on the beach would ask him about it, and he would shrug it off. I remember the tension.

He struggled back to his camp, narrowly escaped being shot by his own comrades as he approached, and was taken to the hospital. As he was convalescing, the Russians overtook that area and stormed into the hospital. My father remembered a nurse rushing into his ward, warning him and the other patients in his room to make a pile of their stuff and burn it for their own safety. I never understood the significance of this as a child. As an adult I was told that my father had been SS.

He and the other patients were taken prisoner by the Russians. While a prisoner, my father's wounded leg was deliberately broken several times. Eventually he escaped, and, with his leg still in a cast, jumped on a train to Germany where he hid in barns, and was taken in by kind farmers.

After the war, he lived in Germany for a decade before emigrating to Canada. A year later, he met and married my mother and they started our family. He was nearly forty years old. He never told us about his post war life in Germany. My dad had many secrets.

It's a strange and sad thing to be looking at a photograph of jews being herded together and shot, and find yourself automatically searching for the face of your father among the German soldiers. It's eerie to watch a slide show of pictures your father took when he returned to Warsaw as an old man. He took photographs there, of a statue of German soldiers with guns, and told me "This is a statue commemorating what the Germans did for the Jews during the war."

When I tried to correct him “Don’t you mean what they did to the Jews?”, he looked right through me.

“That’s right.” He said as though I’d agreed with him. “What we did for the Jews.”

I feel terribly sad when I think about my father. I feel ripped off, and I feel that he was ripped off as well. I have to believe that there was a good man in there somewhere. Even though I rarely saw that side of him, I think my two younger sisters were lucky enough to experience it.

My father was not good to me. He wounded me terribly, and then he died, leaving me with nothing. But I like to think that if he hadn't been twisted by the horrors of his early life, he might have loved me to bits.

MY FATHER'S SIBLINGS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

MY FATHER BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

MY FATHER AND HIS FAMILY AFTER THE REVOLUTION

MY FATHER IN UNIFORM

MONDAY MONDAY

Monday I decided to walk to Home Depot and buy two square 20" plastic terra cotta pots to repot Mike’s jade trees. I’d only ever gone to Home Depot with Mike in the car, so I had no idea if it was within reasonable walking distance. But I’ve been a megga walker all my life, so ... pfft ... I wasn’t worried.

So, with Mike’s Ipod clipped to the waistband of my shorts and the little earplugs in my ears lending a loud and beautiful soundtrack to my world, I put on my sunglasses and stepped out the front door.

I walked through the park, crossed the overpass and followed the highway. My head was full with the music blasting into my ears, and muted sounds of traffic (California traffic is HUGE), and the even more muted sounds of my footsteps marching along.

Over my years of walking (I’ve never had a driver’s licence), I’ve developed a personal style of getting from point A to point B. I look on the horizon for a particular highrise, or whatever, that I can aim for. And then I aim for it. When I get there, I figure out which direction I need to turn. So ... I looked for a particular California hill, and headed for it. Along the way I saw buildings I recognized from those times that Mike and I went to Home Depot in the car, so I knew I was going the right way.

Along the way, I spotted plants here and there, that I wanted for my garden, so I stopped and pinched off some cuttings to root when I got back home, and thrust them into my shoulder bag.

When I got to Home Depot, I sailed in through the doors, found my pots, bought them, and sailed on out again. The pots weren’t heavy, even though they were quite large. I carried them easily on my shoulder.

I got lost on the way home.

I guess I took a wrong turn. I was marching along the highway with my pots on my shoulder, when I realized I was heading North toward Canada - my former homeland. A sign announced “this way to Eureka”. I turned back.

Further on, I turned up what I thought was the overpass I’d crossed earlier. Halfway across, I realized it was not the same overpass. I stopped, and shaded my eyes with my hand to scan the horizon. Far to the South, I thought I recognized the overpass. I turned back.

I tripped along, carrying my pots on my shoulder, music blasting into my head, glorying in the fact that I was in California and I was wearing shorts and I had a bunch of cuttings in my shoulder bag, and ... well I was just happy as a lark.

Anyway, after three hours total, I finally made it home.

ART

It's nearly midnight. I've been listening to great music and working on several new artworks - sculptures with found animal bones, dolls, clay, a miniature harmonica, a large cross, etc.

The doors and windows are open to let in the breeze, I'm wearing shorts and an earth toned shirt made in Lithuania. I'm drinking Southern Comfort and soda on ice.

I just took a break to step outside onto the deck. The music wafted out through the screen door. I stood in the moonlight and listened to two different kinds of crickets singing. They sing nearly year round.

I love being an artist.

SPENDING TIME IN MY OWN WORLD

On Tuesday I walked to Trader Joes for a case of wine. It was hot out, and smoke hazy from all the fires. I had Mike's Ipod on - playing Beatles for me alone.

The Ipod filling my head with private music, and my sunglasses hiding my eyes from everyone, and the heat making everything shimmer, and the smoky sky that was white instead of the usual blue ... all of these things put me into a different state of being. I felt I was all alone in a kind of capsule that the world could not penetrate. It was quite beautiful.

I felt my legs striding along, but hardly heard my footsteps over the music being fed into my head through the tiny Ipod earplugs. I passed people, looked them in the eye and smiled a serene smile. But of course they couldn't see my eyes, and they didn't know that my world was full of music while they were obliged to hear just the usual city thing.

Occasionally I passed another person wearing an Ipod and sunglasses. I realized we were each listening to a completely different song. Each sitting inside our own head as we strode through the hazy heat, sailing past each other so close we could touch if we wanted ... but our heads were each in a seperate Ipod/sunglasses universe.

As I crossed the Trader Joe's parking lot, Oblah Dee Oblah Dah started up. I grinned at the perfect timing. Trader Joe's is a very cool natural foods hippie type of store. A very happy place. An Oblah Dee Oblah Dah kind of place.

I took off my sunglasses as I entered, but kept the Ipod playing. The removal of my sunglasses made me feel a little less inside my own head, which was suddenly disconcerting. I looked forward to returning to the outdoors where I could hide behind them again.

I lifted up a case of wine, and discovered (as I'd suspected from the beginning) that I couldn't possibly carry that heavy thing home, especially in the heat. So I wandered the aisles for bananas and other lightweight stuff.

I paid, and left the store. Put on my sunglasses and began the return walk home. At the streetlight, a Mexican man was there, waiting to cross. He pressed the crosswalk button, turned to me and commented on the heat. I could just hear him over the Ipod. I agreed with him, and we crossed together.

At the other side of the street, he walked on ahead, toward a dusty path cut into a steep hill leading up to the highway. I watched him climb it to my own private accompaniment of 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer'. He looked very 'old world' to me.

He reached the top and looked down at me looking up at him as I strode under the overpass, and we smiled at each other.

The End