Inspirational Blog Posts

(Author’s Note: I took the Sunday School Teacher’s class over a year ago, and writing this article is a culmination, though surely not the end, of a growth period that began then.  The class was about working with children and being a child, looking at one’s own childhood. I decided I would write down everything I could remember about my childhood because those years were so traumatic for me.  I wrote about the first seven years of my life, growing up during World War II.  It was been very important for me to use my CDM taught techniques, to run my energy daily, and to communicate with my God to remind myself that I am spirit.

That’s what those early creations were all about, to see that I am spirit, despite the constraining and painful experiences of my childhood.  It feels wonderful to be letting those experiences go, and to be creating in the present.  As I acknowledge the pain of those years, I can let go of it).

I was born in a small seaside city, Parnu, on the western coast of Estonia, one of three Baltic nations facing western Europe with the Soviet Union flanking the eastern border.  Parnu was noted for its white sands and its curative healing waters.

Estonia was an independent nation between 1917 and 1939, with a history of foreign occupation since the 1200’s when the German feudal knights and the Catholic church invaded and converted the native population.  The feudal Germans were followed by the Danes, Swedes and Tsarist Russia.  Along with most of Europe, Estonians were serfs, but freed serfs by the late 1800’s.  The soviets invaded in 1939, then the Nazis, and when the Soviets returned in 1944, my family left the country.

I was born six months into the Nazi occupation of the Baltic.  My mother and father had agreed that we would try to wait for my father (an officer in the cavalry division, fighting on the eastern front against Soviet invasion), and leave a message with the mayor of Parnu if we couldn’t.

We waited, but he did not come to us, and so my mother took me, my sister and my “aunt” (no relation, but more like a mother to me) and we left for eastern Europe, choosing to go in the direction where the Soviets were least likely to be-from one enemy into the arms of another.

I have no recollection of Estonia and the above information was provided to me by others.  I have been told that when I was two years old, I threw my sister’s shoes into the brook for the frogs, since they had none.  I like that idea.

One of my earliest memories of the war is a bomb shelter in what I assume was Germany.  I must have been 4 or 5 years old, maybe younger, I remember women and children, people running for the shelter, everything being grey and white, running downstairs into an underground cellar or room, people sitting there together crowded and still and waiting and frightened.

I remember being on trains and the click clack sound of the wheels in the night and of the whistle blowing.  It was very comforting.

I remember an attic room in a displaced persons camp.  It was dark and I was alone.  I had the mumps and we could not put on the lights because my eyes were sensitive.  I was hidden there by my mother who was at work, because she did not want me in the infirmary.  There were lots of contagious diseases around, and tuberculosis was a big fear.

I remember having to wear, in winter, a woolen undershirt which chafed my skin so unbearably that I would walk around stiff and holding my breath so that I would not feel it.  I argued endlessly with my mother to not have to wear it, but to no avail.

I remember being inoculated, waiting in a long line with other mothers and children.  There was a general air of anxiety and waiting.  Lots of people, and children crying.

Scattered memories of hanging on to another child’s toy, leaving the room with the toy and having my mother make me give it back.  I hung on crying.  I couldn’t understand giving up the toy, as I had none.

I played outside by myself for hours with twigs and branches and dressed them up and used match boxes for beds for the twig dolls.

I remember being taken off a swing in the central common square by my aunt.  I was swinging on a swing with no underpants, having wet my pants and taken them off.  I had done something wrong, and people were disapproving, but I didn’t know what was wrong.  I was ashamed.

I remember being in school, under 7  years old, and being demoted a grade because I couldn’t do an arithmetic problem.  I was scolded in front of the class.  Then at another time, I was promoted when I got something, again in front of everyone.  I was very shy of doing anything in front of people.  It made no sense to me, this system.

In the same DP camp, I remember awakening in the middle of the night in the barracks where it seemed like 50 or 60 people were all sleeping in the same attic-like room in separate beds.  My aunt would awaken me and give me a cup of warm milk to drink.  I would drink the milk and whirl the end of my braid in my ear to help me fall asleep again.  In later years, my mother told me that my aunt had hollowed out the tin cup so she could get more milk for me as part of our ration.  My mother was angry because she was in charge of seeing that everyone got equal rations.

I remember the same room and its rafters, which were high and made of wood and they crackled at night in the dark as hundreds of roaches scampered about and fell down from the rafters on to the beds and the people sleeping in them.

I remember arriving from some other city and waiting for my aunt.  I saw her before she saw me.  Her face was filled with anxiety and fear and apprehension and some hostility, or so it seemed to me, as she searched for me.  I was embarrassed and frightened by the anxiety and fear I saw.  If she was grown up and my source of love and safety, and she was afraid, then something really was wrong: wasn’t she invincible?  I didn’t tell her this because I didn’t know I was upset or that she was upset.  People didn’t talk about those things.  I just knew fear.

I remember walnuts. Green hills scattered with houses, and trees so full of walnuts that all you had to do was shake a tree and an abundance would scatter to the ground and I would run here and there and pick up as many as I could fit into my skirt, which I used as an apron for this purpose.

Again, somewhere in Germany, I remember fields of red poppies swaying in the wind.  The sky was blue and it was summer time.  Everything was still.  There were no people and there was no war.  I was the only one, alongside this small stream by the open fields stretching as far as I could see.  I ran to explore the river and watch it flow gently by, all the poppies swaying gently.

There were walks through the Black Forest with my aunt: mushrooms and the smell of pine needles and moss.  Every walk was something I eagerly looked forward to.  It was quiet and fascinating.  We walked along a small path that led into forest.  There was sunshine and the cool of the forest and indirect light coming through small openings in the tree cover.  We walked side by side, not talking, but taking comfort in each other’s presence.  There were blueberries bunched together in open areas and the smell of dryness as the sun shone down and ripened the berries.

Then it was Christmas, and I was being held by a stranger, a man, in a large festive hall full of people.  My mother was standing next to me.  I was scared and wet my pants and the man’s suit.  My mother was always good about explaining away any problems so that nobody was angry.  Santa Claus the German version, was on the stage and all the little children were in great fear.  He had a booming voice and made a racket and said he would whip the bad children with his birch switch.  He was calling children up to the stage by name.   The room was dim and his booming voice echoed through the room.  Certainly this must be hell if there was one.

I remember a dog, a black and white mutt, sitting on the wide low steps by the kindergarten complex.  Everyday when I came home, he was waiting on those steps for me. When he saw me, he would jump up and down with joy and race over to me.  I liked him.  We were great friends.  I cried when we had to leave him behind.  I was told he would live on a farm with people who would take care of him.

In that same compound, I remember the military police.  They were chasing some teenagers, in their jeep.  The boys had poured several cans of white paint off the roof of one of the buildings.  It was incredible to me that they would defy military authority, which to me seemed all-powerful.

I remember standing still, frozen to the spot, while the American national anthem was played over the loudspeaker across the compound.  We all stood at attention.  My impression was that total obedience was demanded.  I was sure that if I  moved one little finger or breathed too loudly, I would be put into prison.  Obedience to the victorious forces in liberated Germany was total.  Disobedience was treason.  No one, as I remember it, dared to move an inch until the anthem was over: our lives depended on it. I was scared, and I could not hold my body still enough.

In that same American-occupied area of Germany, I remember Americans and how they looked.  I remember men in military uniform.  I remember a woman who was tall and slim and stood straight, though no with effort.  She may have been a social worker with the Red Cross or the YMCA, which was so instrumental in helping the refugees.  She seemed untouched by fear, loss or chaos.  She was from America.  Americans smiled, were friendly, powerful, and had abundance.

The Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church was our sponsor for coming to the United States.  The church sponsored most of the Estonian refugees. I remember standing in long lines in Germany, getting processed for coming to America.  We children could not believe our good fortune: we were going to the golden land of dreams! We spoke of having soap and towels and of how people there each had a room to themselves.  My favorite daydream was about having terrycloth towels.

Then I was on the ocean liner.  The trip to Boston harbor took ten days.  My family was on board, but I have no recollection of them at that time.  There were people everywhere and there were many people who were seasick.  Finally, I threw up too, over the railing of the ship.  The sailors gave oranges to the children.

I remember arriving at the harbor and walking down the gangplank. Again, I was alone in memory.  There were people waiting, and women with toys to give to the children coming off the ship.  I remember one well-groomed American woman coming toward me with a toy in her hand, smiling.  Then she changed her mind and walked right past me and gave the toy to another child.  I was ashamed that I was somehow unworthy, but I didn’t know why.

Years later, when I was still a child, riding the New York elevated train, a young couple standing near me started talking to each other about how they wanted a little girl just like me.  I couldn’t believe they were talking about me. I had always felt so skinny and unattractive with my tight braids and big ears.  And yet, when I look at my childhood pictures, I see a young child who is sensitive and gentle.  The hair style and the clothes were the choice of others, the hair pulled too tightly to keep it from slipping out of the braids, but I see the eyes as sensitive and gentle.

We arrived in New York City by subway on a hot June night in 1950.  Once the subway came above ground and we got out, I saw the streets filled with cars.  All the sidewalks were lined with cars.  And the streets were covered with loose newspapers flying around in the breeze from the moving cars and subway gratings.  I had no words to describe this experience, it was so new to me.

As a resident of New York, I learned my first essential words of English, which were “shurrup,” or shut up.  Children in the tenement back yards, which were cement, but carried many intrigues and intriguing things, yelled at each other across the fences.  They were feisty city kids who did something about their fear and anger, they used their words.  Thus begins another story, about life as an immigrant child growing up in New York City.

It seemed to me a very long process, leaving Estonia and coming to America where I wanted to be. The body is a strong instrument.  As spirit, I make change, and I  have learned to care about the body and heal it of the effects of some of that change.

Acts 2:28-29: You have made known to me the paths of life: you fill me with joy in your presence.