Remembrance Day....

1918...my parent's wedding.



Today would have been my mother's one hundred
and eleventh birthday...
unlike the weddings of today, no designer dress or
multi-thousand $ reception. Just two very serious
young people, my mother, a university student, my
father just discharged army surgeon.

Life ahead .... uncertain.
Prospects ..... non-existent.

Medical positions were all filled ... they worked at
anything they could find. Father had perfect pitch
and tuned pianos for a while. They farmed but with
the arrival of children, ends refused to meet.

The depression of the thirties did not make things
easier. Father joined the police force reaching the rank
of inspector, mother worked as international telephonist
since she spoke 5 languages.

Their story of the years between the wars is worthy
of a book by itself. It was mother's fortitude that kept
her fledglings safe and together after the terror of 1940
when my father was deported to Siberia.

In 1944, her elder son already twice wounded and sent
back to the front, with the imminent threat of another
Russian invasion, she bundled up her brood and fled.

The story of flight, famine and 5 years of being displaced
persons, fills yet another book.

Starting again in Australia, a strange land, a strange
language and cusoms, even the seasons upside down
and not a penny to scratch with, at 51 years of age was
not exactly a picnic either ... yet she brought us all up
safely and helped each one of us to get a good start in
life. We owe her so much more than life itself. She was
a philosopher and poet who spent her working life in
Australia hunched over a sewing machine in an army
uniform factory just to put a roof over our heads and
send me to university.

Mother was truly a remarkable woman, see also her
granddaughter India's post.

Inspiration Wednesday

Is inspiration that which has accompanied us through
life and given us solace or is it drawn from the pebbles
we have picked up along the way? For me it has probably
been both. The one peg I can always hang my hat on is
light in all its glorious forms, beating down on us like a
sledge hammer or just the merest whisp of starlight
drifting down from a cloudy midnight sky. The stark light
of the first rays of the sun disguising the normal colour palette
of the landscape



or the last afterglow on a twilit world. Refracted light
from ice clouds, rainbows in the sky or in a dewdrop
on a blade of grass. Light in all its forms, including its
total absence I find an inspiration for creativity, be it
painting or throwing a pot, with light defining its shape.
The same applies to sculpture, light lends form.

When I was thrown in head first into the English

language at the age of 13 and had to learn it by myself

in a foreign country by being dropped into school at

mid-year just two weeks before exams, never having

studied Latin and faced with translating from one

unknown language into another, I was rather proud to

achieve my 3%! It took some 3-4 months for me to raise

my head above water and, with the help of L.M. Montgomery

and Anne's love of long words as well as the sea stories of

Joseph Conrad, both found in the school library, I gained

the first building blocks, later to be augmented by G.B.Shaw,

Shakespear, Oscar Wilde and all the other classics. At one

time the Oxford Book of English Verse was my constant

companion with Chaucer in the original as bedtime reading.

On the other side of the path I gathered up James Thurber,

O'Henry, Mark Twain, Steinbeck and the delightful Ogden

Nash. You can tell that my pockets were rather weighed

down by this time and yet there was room in them for a

like compendium of German Literature as well as my

Latvian heritage.....and then came the Australian Poets:

Henry Lawson, Banjo Patterson and all the others.

All these pebbles have been rubbed to a well loved shine

and are a part of me. Should you ask me who the most

inspirational person in my life has been, there can only be one

and that is my wonderful mother who kept what was left of

our family together through flight and famine and emigration,

could write a sonnet whilst cooking a meal, worked hard

all her life and remained a true philosopher and inspiration

not just to me but others of my generation who recently,

20 years after her death still wrote articles about her smile

and tolerance which have affected their lives as well.

The Weaver of Grass suggested we write of our inspiration,

never having thought about if much before, it was also a revalation

to me. Click on Weaver to visit other stories.

TODAY'S FLOWERS ~ 25 Mothers' Day

This post is for Mothers everywhere, but
particularly in remembrance of my own.



Born in 1898 in Latvia, under the rule of the Czar of
all the Russias, her mother died soon after her birth.
Her father unable to look after a baby as well as her
8 year old brother, gave her up to a childless couple.
Her stepfather was kind, her stepmother longed to adopt
one of the numerous brood of her sister's who would not
part with any of them.
She experiencd the peasant's revolt and famine of 1905,
and seeking an education forced her way into a highschool,
then a totally male province, by travelling to St.Petersburg
and applying to the Minister for Education for special
permission for herself and her friend to study in Pskov where,
in 1917 during the Russian Revolutin, the Czar's family in a
cattle truck were parked for a week at a railway siding.

Mother financed her schooling by making lace and tutoring.
Sometimes she was lucky enough to get a meal when tutoring.



During the first world war epidemic cholera and typhoid
fever swept war ravaged Europe. Both step-parents died
of cholera. Mother succumbed to both diseases and some-
how survived them. She went to university in Riga and
read philosophy and science and shortly after the war met
a dashing doctor just returned from a field hospital. They
married and over a period of 16 years, had five children.

Latvia gained her freedom from Russia and became a republic.
Times during the 20's and 30's were tough and they both
worked hard at a number of occupations including farming
and keeping a general store which did not work out so well
since my mother had a generous hand with the very poor.

Both parents wrote poetry and were the centre of
a group of artists, musicians and literary intellectuals.
The eldest daughter died at 3 of dysintery - there
were no anti-biotics at the time.
In 1940 the Russians marched in and purged the country
of state employees and intellectuals and shipped them to
Siberia, my father among them.
Mother became our sole support. I was 4 years old at the
time. Since she had a command of 5 languages, mother
worked shifts at the international telephone exchange.
How she did it, I don't know, somehow she was always
there for us, wrapping us in warmed blankets after our
baths, cooking delicious meals, providing clean clothes and
enfolding us in her love at all times.

Fortunes of war changing, the Germans now marched in and
another purge followed, this time of Jews and communists.

The population of our little country kept dramatically
shrinking.
My elder brother was now in the Latvian Regiment of the
German Army fighting the Russians, this was a big worry
for mother as he was wounded a number of times, the second
time loosing a lung and some ribs, she travelled to the hospital
in Lithuania to be by his side. As soon as he was on his feet, he
was sent back to the front, young men in war are expendable,
those making wars never experience the hell of the front lines.

In August 1944 with the advance of the Russian front, it was
time for the remnants of our family to flee from certain death
or deportation if we stayed. We had two hours to pack and left
with what we could carry on the last train in a cattle truck to
Germany, at the time the lesser of two evils.

The saga of hardships endured as aliens in a crumbling Germany,
being bombed and shot at by the Allies, surviving the two year
famine and fear of being sent back to certain death are a tale by
themselves.

Prospects for us in Europe were non-existent, so once again it
meant leaving everything we knew behind and emigrating.
Australia was the only country willing to take us, so another
language and other customs to learn. Starting anew with nothing,
Living three to a room with shared kitchenette and bath until
we managed to buy a shared house and later our own.
I went to school, and later university but mother slaved at
menial work behind a sewing machine to make it all possible.



Mother was my rock, my haven, the love I could always
rely upon, she tought me to cook and sew, to read and enjoy
music and to garden. We had no roof over our heads, but we
managed to see the operas standing at the back of the gods,
behind the seats of the dress circle at the very top of the theatre.
The same with the ballet. We haunted the Art Gallery and
Museum on Sundays, the Parks and Botanical Gardens.

Mother was the most non-judgemental person I know, she
guided us with tact and taught us her values by example,
never forcing her views on us but making us think and come
to our own conclusions.

Mother left us 21 years ago, but to this day those who even
briefly knew her, still speak of her often and with deep
affection, and even my grandchildren who never experienced
her presence often say "Oma would have been proud of these!",
be they a clutch of eggs from the hen-house or a batch of perfect
yeast cakes from the oven or her eldest great-granddaughter's
distinctions in mathematics.
Mother was a remarkable woman, she could as easily dash off
a sonnet as mend a rent in your party dress or your broken heart.



All photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Click on the Logo at right to see many more flowers.

Thanks to Luiz Santilly Jr. for creating this meme and
to those who help to keep it going.