Mothers Day - the bravest woman I know

A bunch of flowers I thought I had bought for myself

taking up half of my room

when in reality, they are for my beloved mammi

a little and immensely courageous woman

in a faded photo on  her wedding day in 1918

Serious and sombre, with no idea what life had in store.

My father, with a distinguished cross for 

years of surgery on the Russian front

after being conscripted out of Medical School.

Naturally, after the war he had no right to practice

without a degree.

They made their living in the twenties and thirties

in whichever way they could.

Father, tuning and restoring pianos, as share farmers 

and running a store in a small town.

This venture did not really prosper

since mother was too open handed to the poorest of the poor.

Later, father joined the police force and became a detective.

Mother meanwhile, had born him 5 children,

losing her firstborn doughtier to dysentery at the age of two.

When the Germans handed Latvia to Russia in the secret 

Ribbentrop plot, my father was arrested and deported to Siberia

and mother became our sole support.

My elder brother was fighting for our country and badly 

wounded in Lithuania, loosing a lung and a number of ribs

but, within weeks, was sent back to the front.

Mother, having studied languages at university,

worked shifts at the international exchange 

at the post office.

Not easy juggling a job and three children

between 4 and 12

and finding sufficient food for her hungry, growing chicks.

In 1944, with the advancing Russian front on the horizon,

she packed up her chicks and what we could carry 

and her trusty, hand cranked sewing machine,

and, after a 2 hour warning, we were on the last train

from certain death under the Russians

 to a Germany besieged  and bombed from all sides.

While the war lasted, we were all separated and put to work,

happily in the same village. I was 7 and was shunted 

from one place to another and had to help wherever I was.

Mother worked as maid to a publisher in his summer house, 

a water mill, with running water under the kitchen. 

Mother had mountains of dishes to do and got 

very bad rheumatism and the hardest thing in my life I 

had to do, was to pick a large bunch of nettles 

and beat her naked back with them.

The surface pain took her mind off the unbearable pain inside.

Finally, she was carted off to hospital 

in the nearest town.

I felt totally bereft.

Not knowing whether papa or my elder brother 

were dead or alive was hard for us all, but mostly mother

for there was a time when she felt with certainty 

that my brother at the front, had been killed.

Fear for all her children was ever present,

not just before the end of the war from the Gestapo

and the bombing

but after it as well, with soldiers of various armies

coming through and two young daughters to keep safe.

Then came the famine, we were in one of the 

French zones

and the French really hated the Germans

and confiscated any food they could find 

and sent it back to France.

There was little enough for the local population

and much less for us who had no contacts on the land.

Mother traded all her silver and linen we had brought 

with us, except for her children's christening silver,

for food. Even so, she got thinner and thinner,

like a horse ready for the glue factory.

Every bit of nourishment she fed to her children

until survival surpassed fear from being sent back 

to Latvia to a certain death

and we finally registered as displaced persons or DP's.

Shunted from camp to camp for two years

until we found a country which would take us.

Only Australia was prepared to take a parent over 45

and a child of school age, but at a price.

My younger brother, 19, and my 16 year old

sister had to come first and sponsor mother and me.

So we came to Australia, where people of working age,

had to work under contract for two years,

wherever they were sent by the government.

My sister was working as nurses' aid in a NSW

country town, my brother as dessert cook 

at an army barracks and I went to school and

had to learn English from scratch.

Not being able to speak English, when travelling on 

public transport, other passengers would sidle away

from us, as though we had the plague if we spoke.

At first we lived in a boarding house, three in one room 

with use of tiny kitchenette and bathroom

while my brother slept under the front steps 

with just a trellis separating him from trawling 

perverts looking for young boys.

Mother, my sister and I all worked in a 'sweat shop'

while they both sewed garments, I was finishing them 

after school and on Saturday mornings.

Every penny was scraped together until, 

with another family we had enough for a deposit on a house.

A few years later, we sold our half and had a 

deposit for our own house.

Oh the joy!

Mother planted apple trees, a birch and a fir tree 

in memory of our homeland.

A grape vine shielding the porch,

berry bushes, roses and vegetables.

Just to get our hands into our own bit of soil!

My mother was a wonderful woman, respected and beloved

by all who knew her and I miss her 

every day although she left us more than a quarter

of a century ago.

There is so much more to mother's story

but that would take a whole book.

My DD gave me this almost black chrysanthemum

that actually smells like one too.

It seems the modern ones have the scent engineered out of them.

How boring the world becomes 

when you do all this genetic modifying.

Linking with TODAY'S FLOWERS

 OUR WORLD

and I Heart Macro 130