A class act turns 90.
Last edited Mon Sep 25, 2017, 03:01 PM - Edit history (1)
Yesterday, some family and about 75 friends celebrated my mother-in-law's 90th birthday.
It was in one of those "I-can't-find-it-on-the-map/You-can't-get-there-from-here" villages in the Pladdütsch-speaking region of northwestern Germany. There is still a bus route that runs through there 3 times a day on weekdays, nothing on weekends. The train tracks are still there, but rail service was discontinued decades ago.
My wife's father died 20 years ago, so her mom has been on her own for the last 20 years. Up to last year, she still traveled the 6 kilometers to the dentist and back on her bicycle, really the only form of transportation she has ever driven by herself. During the last four months, she has experienced a rapid deterioration in her eyesight due to macular degeneration. She did everything right, just had bad luck. Even so, her mind is still sharp and she can recognize people by voice and general body language, as she can still determine shapes. Both my daughters came, one from Frankfurt and one from New York. Even their cousin came, which was a minor miracle, as the widow of my wife's brother cut off all contact with her when my wife's brother died from a Glioblastoma, and her daughter was caught between the two. Almost all the other guests were her elderly friends and relatives from the area, most of whom spoke the local Pladdütsch dialect.
Born in 1927, she remembers going to school on her bicycle, and abandoning it to run into ditches beside the road when British fighter-bomber came down for strafing runs. That part of Germany is very flat, and there wasn't much in the way of cover to be found. She and her village were Catholic, and she still goes to Mass every Sunday. I was a little apprehensive when my wife first invited me to spend Christmas with them the year we met (1974). I knew her dad had been in the Wehrmacht, though I didn't know all he had been through, or how it was that he ended up there. She told me in advance that he had only one leg, and I was nervous about meeting a guy who had lost a leg fighting with an army who my dad's generation was drafted to defeat. Her mom was born in 1927, which meant that from age 10 to age 18, all she had learned in school was to hate people like me.
But my worries proved groundless. Her parents welcomed me immediately, although they admittedly found me somewhat exotic. They had never met someone from America before. But I spoke German, so the ice was already broken from the beginning. I wasn't Catholic, or even religious, but they overlooked that major "defect" as their daughter liked me, and that had the far greater priority for them. Though very conservative in nature (small "c" ), they were most liberal. Her father had been drafted off his farm at age 17, sent to Stalingrad at 18, got a leg blown off by a Soviet artillery shell, and returned to their tiny village a cripple at age 19. But her mom liked him enough to strike up a friendship when they met, and married him a while later. Their daughter, my wife, was born nine months to the day after they got married ("Catholic" with a capital "C" ).
They tolerated and accepted me, the godless exotic from across the sea, without question or hesitation. They were extremely grateful (as were my parents) that we raised our own children bi-lingually, so they could communicate with both sets of grandparents effortlessly. They got to be friends with my parents to the extent they could, considering they knew no English and my parents knew no German.
My mom-in-law suffered with her family in the hunger days after world war two ended. She had lost two of her brothers killed in the last months of the war. One skipped to Canada before the war began, and was never heard from again. One, they hid in a cellar when he deserted, and stayed hidden until after the war was over. They survived from handouts from relatives who had farms, and later on food brought from my future father-in-law from his farm family, although with one leg, it was obvious he'd have to go into another line of work. He did--he took courses in banking, and became a loan officer at a local bank, helping local people get loans to start up their own farms in the area. He must have done it well, because about 400 people came to his funeral. I didn't haven't seen that many people at a funeral except when my friend Helen Thomas passed several years ago.
My mom-in-law didn't want a huge gathering organized on her behalf--so she said. But she was thrilled so many people came yesterday. She claims she doesn't want to be 100, especially now that she can't really see anyone any more. But she delights in her daily visits from those of her local friends that can visit, and, of course, from the visits from my wife, and, occasionally, me and our daughters. She hates the idea of assisted living, even though she knows that she will have to accept it eventually. I think the thing she misses most is no longer being able to view the miniature landscape paintings her husband (they are brilliant--he even did a plastic Easter egg with a local landscape) painted after his retirement, and which adorn her house, and, to a far lesser extent, ours. She isn't frail, though can't do all she used to be able to do. But she is still intellectually curious and delights in human contact. So, she may claim not to want to reach 100, but I doubt the moment will arrive when she says, "I've had enough." She loves people and people love her, and I don't see that changing. It hasn't in the 43 years I've known her.
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My two on the outside, Oma and their cousin in the middle.
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Last edited Tue Sep 26, 2017, 05:59 AM - Edit history (1)
The things she has seen and gone through, losing brothers killed in a war, one of them only a few miles from home while retreating, had cancer twice (like my wife has), etc. One time when her husband was dying, she took to the task of caring for him so intensively that she had to be hospitalized herself. She had forgotten to eat or drink, and nearly died of kidney failure. But if she can bounce back from being bombed and strafed, she can bounce back from that, too, and sure enough, she did.
