You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out
My mother never uttered those dreaded words to me, either in regard to BB guns or motorcycles. No explanation was required or offered; I would have neither. Had she been alive to see me riding now I suspect she would not be pleased. But she would not stand in my way. Between my mother and father — she was the adventurer.
This post is in response to the writing prompt “Mom.” As I thought about my mother I also was thinking of my granddaughter Emma who will never know her. For some time now I’ve been considering a project called Letters to Emma — stories about our family that I am in sole possession. History that will vanish with me lest I write it down. And since she’s not even two years old it will be awhile before she can appreciate any of it.
This post is an experiment in sharing history; for her and for me.
The Summer of ’42
My mother is German and came to the United States in 1948 as a war bride. War bride. I saw a newspaper clipping from 1958 when she won a crossword puzzle contest with a title “War Bride Wins Contest.”
War bride. Ten years after she came to America.
I knew she was born in Germany and lived there through World War II but never really asked about it. She was my mother and that past wasn’t relevant to my childhood or self-centered life. When she died my father gave me all of her journals and diaries. It was odd to look at them, neatly written in German until suddenly they appeared in English in the 1960s.
There was one beautiful leather journal different than the rest. The first page had a dedication to a young German soldier she was engaged to but had died in Russia late in 1942. The journal was started after he died and she wrote to him every day for a year. I never knew anything about her life as a young woman at that time or much at all about her childhood. I regret not asking.
In 1942 she was 19 years old.
Sisters
My mother is on the right. The photograph was made in 1927 when she was four years old. Old photo albums display many images where she’s in traditional clothes from Bavaria. I see my mother in that young face but can’t imagine what her life was like.
Young Girl at Schliersee
This photograph has an eerie quality for me. It was taken 85 years ago at the lake where I interred her ashes when she died. She asked that I travel to Germany to take her home. Her family vacationed every summer at a small town in the foothills of the Alps called Schliersee. I’ve stayed in the same small hotel they did.
Schliersee in 1928
Much of who my mother became must have been formed in these early years in places like these. At the very least she developed a strong love for the mountains of Germany and Austria. As a child, she and I traveled to Germany many times to visit her family, and we were always walking in the Alps.
She was an independent woman. After my father died several of his friends spoke to me at his funeral and mentioned my mother and how many problems she caused with their wives and wishing my father would do something about it. She had no problems traveling alone, or with me to Europe or in the states. My father didn’t like to travel so she went without him. I never saw any evidence that he tried to control her. What I thought was normal growing up — she managed the money, she worked, she traveled alone — I learned was not common in America. And my dad’s friends didn’t like the example she was setting, especially as she tried to convince their wives to travel with her.
None ever did. The only women who would travel with her were the single women she worked with. And then, only when their boyfriends approved.
Emma, if you ever read this, don’t let any man — father, grandfather, boyfriend or husband run your life. Or anyone for that matter man or woman. They’ll have enough on their hands trying muck through their own lives. Tell them to mind their own damn business.
My desire to adventure is a direct connection with my mother. Her streak of independence is stronger and wider than anything think I have in me. But I keep her close to heart and try and tap into her strength from time to time.
It’s a payoff of illuminating family history from time to time.
Well done Steve. One day Emma will appreciate that.
Thanks David. So much to do, so much…
A wonderful project. I know that I should do the same or my grandchildren will unlikely know who grandpa really was as a person.
Namasté
Absolutely. There is a disconnect between knowing someone as a child, and realizing later who they were and what made them tick. I wish I had asked both my parents more. And I never knew my father’s parents or my mother’s mother. And her father only spoke German and seemed to have little patience for children. That may not be true but I know little about him. So I want to say a few things to my granddaughter now. She can read them later…
I can imagine many of us wish we had asked more questions from our folks and grands. The disconnect becomes a natural part of our social evolution. This digital age, too, will affect the nature of what gets passed on to our families.
What a gift she is, even to your readers. Knowing an independent person is so valuable, isn’t it? I am a wuss most times, and having a great aunt who was anything but a lilly-livered twit has helped me jump on a motorcycle and camp all over Florida. Enen if she wasn’t my mother, she had a huge impact.
Thanks for sharing your mom
I think we respond to other people’s stories that relate to our own experience, struggles, fears or joys. It’s probably why biographies continue to be written and sold. Even though our own family stories are personal to us, I think they can help strengthen, or at least remind, those parts of our lives that are important. Your great aunt provided you what you needed. And perhaps her story will help others in your family, or the children of friends, jump on what will become important to them.
I appreciate you sharing your experience with your family too.
what a gift your mom must’ve been. she sounds like my kind of lady <3
"Emma, if you ever read this, don’t let any man — father, grandfather, boyfriend or husband run your life."
THIS.
All day, every day. And it goes for me too. No one but you, should be running your life. Beautiful post, Steve.
Ugh… i meant: *And it goes for men too.
Absolutely applies to men as well. All of us fall prey to rules and convention quickly. The world is built around that sort of obedience. Straying from the norm creates problems but we need some rebels in life right?
Some years ago my older brother passed away suddenly at a relatively young age. I know he still had lots to say and share. So with his passing I started writing long letters to my children and grandchildren. In now have 40 or 50 of them and I’m certainly not going to stop writing them until I pass. In my will I have instructed them on exactly where to find the ever-increasing complete collection after my death. I hope they will value them, and enjoy them as much as I am enjoying writing them.
I envy your letter writing. I hope I can maintain something like that myself. I struggle with whether to publish them here or just store them away for some future date as determined by a will. One would hope that a gift like that would be well received and cherished but you can never know what state someone will be in when they get them. Could be minimized or lost and vanish. I remember what I was like in my late teens for instance.
Anyways, it’s a special thing you’re doing for your grand children!
Steve — I love to read your posts. This speaks volumes to me in many ways and gives me a lot to think about. I commend you for your commitment to share and write for Emma. In addition to learning about her great grandmother, she will learn a lot about her grandfather as well. Thank you for sharing your stories with us.
… don’t let any man — father, grandfather, boyfriend or husband run your life…
Well said, Steve. Your mother seemed exceptionally independent for a lady her generation. Good for her!
We often forget about the lives our parents led before they had offspring…
My mother was unusual. She worked as a married woman beginning in the 1950s. That was unusual. When I was born she stopped until I was three or so and then worked part-time. She was independent. And my father was not a victim of the trend to be in charge. There are aspects of their marriage that seem unusual even today.
Please write your stories down for Emma. I know almost nothing about my family’s stories and I have no-one I can ask. I know that one branch of the family came over from Ireland and found work in Glasgow, great-grandfather beating steel and great-grandmother beating laundry. I know this only from their birth, marriage and death records. Do you still have your mum’s diaries? They must be a fascinating read.
I plan to write the stories down. Time will tell. I’m fortunate to have a lot of information about my mother and her family. But wish I knew more about her personal feelings in life. There is some things in her diaries. The early ones are in German and a struggle to read. And they’re often sort of mechanical recallings of events — I went here, did this, saw this person. But there are gems.
The most important one, the one written in 1942 at the loss of her fiance, has vanished. I keep telling myself it will appear in my massive accumulate of stuff, but in my heart I feel its gone.
Great posting Steve, you were a good son to take her ashes home….
I’m glad I could do it. My father won’t fly so it was up to me.
This is a great post. Keep writing these stories for her descendants to enjoy and get to know her.
That’s the plan.
Steve, this is a post I will not forget. I think with such a heritage and to write it down will be like gold for your family to read and look back on.
Our forbears often had far harder and more interesting, adventures lives than us who were born post war.
Thank you for this most interesting post.
Bill,
As an only child my family is small. I do want my granddaughter to one day have some insight to part of her past. Those stories of life in the 1930s forward are unusual from our perspective today.
Thanks for taking the time to comment. I appreciate your thoughts.
Beautiful!
thank you.
This is simply lovely, Steve! What a tribute to a woman ahead of her time! My mother was German too and came to the US a war bride in the late forties. That husband died in Korea and then she met my father. Very similar story, except we never went back to Germany to see her relatives after I was 6 years old. I feel like we lost that entire part of the family. And sadly, she had no journals and I didn’t ask the questions that I would ask now, and it’s now too late.
Lastly, please, please, please continue to write your family history for Emma. You have such wonderful advice for her, (and anyone, really), but to gift her with her family’s history will also be priceless. <3
It’s sad to miss the chance to know history — family or otherwise. My mother’s sister lived 20 years longer and I squandered the chance to ask more. We did talk some but it was minimal. So the idea of just writing things down takes the lack of questioning out of the picture. I want to share the little piece of history I have.
I was fortunate to have been able to make many trips to Germany with my mother and see what was important. I always wanted to take my daughter but the opportunity never presented itself. So writing may be my only option now…
Steve: This simply floored me.
Aside from the fact that your mother was clearly something of a maverick (and a stunning one at that, if I may say so), which I always admire, it’s clear her history was broad and tumultuous, including a jump from one continent to another. Also wonderful that you got to travel with her – the trips I recall most from childhood were the ones I took with my mother at a very young age, as my father too was less used to traveling than she. Alas, my Mom struggled a good deal between what she wanted to be and do and what was expected of her, as a woman, at the time.
Our parents’ struggles, passions, anxieties and so on get thrown into our DNA and can’t, for better or worse, be gotten completely clear of. I suppose the best we can do is harness all this and make the best we can of it. Sometimes I think I’m only getting the hang of it relatively late in life, but better late than never.
From my vantage point at 62, I feel as if I wasted a lot of time compared to what my mother and father accomplished. It’s really hard to know for sure how they felt about their lot in life. But whatever drove them along is probably at work in me somewhere.
My mother was a maverick. Not politically or anything like that. But in terms of a woman’s role in society, she was not going to be enslaved to anything she didn’t want to do. If she had a different husband things might have been different. Hard to say. But my father was the perfect partner for someone like her. It must have been his poor, hard-scrabble upbringing in the panhandle of West Virginia.
Quite a meaningful story about your mother. The photos are, as my grandmother would say, are priceless. Your comments and the story is appropriate for a hard back book.
A book for some future work after the others I have in mind. First up with be that Scooter in the Sticks book.
I know I’ll regret not informing the next generation on what kind of person my Mom was. For several years Dad kept a motorcycle aside for her. She learned how to ride before I was born and I only saw her ride alone once. After child number five appeared she grudgingly gave in to propriety and had Dad sell it. She worked and took care of the seven of us. A typical life for her generation.
You don’t see those big families much anymore. I can’t think of a single family now of that size. I’m sure they’re out there but they’re strangers to me.
I read if again. It was fun imagining your mother in those situations going through her life in different countries and a new family. I didn’t know you when you went with her to Germany but I’ve seen some photos you took there. It would be cool to read her war time letters I guess they’re romantic type but maybe not. Some part of her is alive with you so that part continues in ways you see and don’t see so I know a little about her through you.
I’ve been to Germany with her a half dozen times. After I went to college she was going every year. Sometimes twice.
The entries in her journal during the war were handwritten in the fraktur style and difficult for me to ride or translate. I managed enough to figure out what happened but I didn’t feel comfortable reading more of those private entries. Sadly that ornate leather journal has disappeared. I had it in my office at Penn State and it “walked off.” As a philosopher stated, “Oh well…”