WWII Story from R.E.

B's Aunt, Renee, visited.  Sometimes, when she was in the right mood, I heared stories about WWII.    This is a story she told me over breakfast.  WARNING:  true war stories are not heart warming.

We knew they were coming, because of the shells.  The night before we'd spent in the woods, listening to the shells flying over, into our town where the German soldiers who'd lived in our houses were fleeing.

Momma and Grandma had dug a bunker in the back yard.  Only a deep hole with a ladder going into it, when the shelling started we'd run from the house to the hole.  That last time we hid, waiting for an army to come and occupy our country.  Finally we heard them, searching our house.  First Grandmother when up and then Momma.  I waited and waited.   When I couldn't stand it anymore I told my little brother to stay and climbed up the later.

When I reached the top I saw Momma with an American soldier in front of her, holding a rifle to her chest.  I screamed, louder than I've ever screamed before and the soldier dropped the point of his gun.  Then I ran, dodging another soldier straight into my mothers arms.  Nothing could have stopped me from getting to her.

Later we came to love the American soldiers.  They gave us food, when we were half starved, they took us on rides in their trucks and were kind to us.  If we'd been in a neighboring town it wouldn't have been so nice.  They got the French Army and most of the women were raped.  It's it horrid what war does to women?  I can't believe that it's still happening in the world today, women getting raped while the UN does nothing.

Wayne McGregor Random Dance

Last night I went with B's visiting Aunt to see the Wayne McGregor Random Dance group perform their latest work, F.A.C.  As you can guess by the name, it's modern dance, which is a little ironic; my first experience with live professional ballet, and I end up seeing a modern piece danced to tonal music.

From the opening of the curtains, I quickly realized that the performance consisted of much more than dance.  Four torch bearing dancers entered and the two principles began to dance -  music made visual by the dancers with flickering light and shadow playing a visual counter melody.  One by the torches burned out, leaving the stage dark and the music changing from a classical underlaid with a strong base into tones woven into a solid percussion.   For the rest of the dance a board full of LED lights threw patterns of shadows and light onto the stage.

I could not have listened to the music as part of a concert, I would have walked out.  Sometimes they danced to a beat but for almost each piece came a section where strange violent tones surfaced, making the body feel uncomfortable - it was made bearable by watching the dancers play out the emotions of the music, the struggle of woman against man, man against man, woman against woman - as if the conflicts we experience as humans, the dissonance of everyday life, came into graceful yet violent movement and then resolved into support and harmony; only to fall out of balance again.

While it was not what I expected, I enjoyed the performance.  It opened my eyes to how modern dance is like modern art:  it is an inkblot which you interpret on your own.  Someone else would most likely have come out of that performance with a very different opinion of light, dance and sound.

If you'd like to see them here's a You Tube video.  Warning:  the beginning is edited so that it's cutting from one dance to another so it's a bit confusing.  It's better about halfway through.

A question a friend posted on Face book.

Where do you go and what do you do when you no longer want to have to concern yourself about all those things that adults have to be concerned about?

I am walking down a familiar two track that I've always known, reaching up to hold my father's hand.  He walks in the weeds so that my feet can follow the beaten dirt path, one hand holding mine the other wrapped around Ralph's leash.  We walk in a comfortable silence.  When we reach the edge of the hard woods I run in, looking for wild flowers.  Maybe I'll ask to be lifted up onto a tree branch to survey the world from a height as Dad works on splitting some logs, or perhaps I'll take off my shoes and wade in the stream.


****
The trees are taller now, but I have grown too and with that growth the added responsibility of homework, piano practice and my own dog.  Each day we travel the two track together to the paths winding through the woods.  And when the burdens of the world lie heavy on my shoulders, I stop to climb a tree and sit until my mind is still and I feel at peace.


*****
This afternoon my feet found their way along a wooded path, and I walked in silence, my dog crisscrossing the path in front of me with the joyous run only a puppy can muster.  Surrounded by the tall, unchanging trunks, my thoughts slowed into the rhythm of the trees - remembering the things that matter, branches reaching upwards, roots stretching down, seasons, weather - the pulse of the earth.

To escape this adult world, cluttered in worries, I return to my roots, my forest.  No matter the country, the trees speak the same language.

Spring!

Well, sort of spring.  The temps are still low and it snowed about a week ago, but the green is emerging to spite the chill.

High ropes

For months B. had planned a trip, but the dates never worked for us to go.  Finally we had a weekend off together when the weather agreed and we went to a high and low ropes course.  

I didn't know how much I've missed the wind in high places until I felt it again.  There is nothing like swinging over empty air - next I might just go and take some para-gliding lessons .....

Almost up the ladder

At the platform

You can see the lower course - the purple at the bottom is the head of the woman under me.

This was the most difficult challenge of the whole day.

Concentration.

Hitting the pad after a zip.

Safety first.

In my 20s I used to climb to the top of trees this size, without safety ropes.

I stood for a while and enjoyed how the tree danced and swayed in the wind.

Checking to make sure it's tight enough.

Here we go!

One of my goals at the age of six or seven:  Read Black Beauty.  Never mind that it was a novel and curses at the remedial reading teacher who told me I'd never learn to read or write properly.  Mom had to call the librarian and tell her to let me check it out from the school library - that practical woman knew it was too hard for me and kept giving me books I could read, not the one I wanted.

Many evenings I'd sit in mom's lap for 10 or 15 minutes my finger running under the words as she read them, carefully watching so I could read every word I knew.   I, you, we, they, is, am are, it.  When mom didn't have time I'd turn to bookmarked page and read every word I knew until my concentration ran out.

The other day I got this email from my sister:

Dan comes into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes and snuffling.  "Aunt Re had it much better when she read Black Beauty.  She could only understand the little words.  It is a sad book, especially when Ginger dies."  

So the legacy lives on - how Aunt Re read Black Beauty.   At around 9 or 10 I did read it from cover to cover many times.

And Mr. Remedial Reading Teacher;  the laugh's on you.  While my spelling will never be perfect, I'm a published author in several magazines and have perhaps read more books than you ever did.

Excerpt:  East toward the Dawn, a woman’s solo journey around the world by Nan Watkins

At this point 60-year-old Nan has just returned to Delhi after visiting the Taj Mahal.  She and her friend arrive late, and end up finding a place to sit in a second class waiting room, with a floor full of sleeping men.  

“In my lazy, hazy state, crouched in my orange plastic seat, I remember a dream I have had throughout my life:  I am running anxiously, rapidly, through countless city streets or over the country roads, trying to catch a train that has just pulled out of the station.  Each time I have missed that dream train I have awakened, deeply disappointed that I was left behind, that I had missed another opportunity.  Watching these snoring men who are waiting for impossibly late trains, I am struck by the irony of it all.  The men have spent their days waiting for trains, whereas I have spent my night dreaming of missed trains, missing opportunities.

This surprises me, for even as a girl, I was eager to try things new.  In graduate school I remember Professor Jantz telling his students, “When the goddess Fortuna knocks at your door, seize her by the forelock, for she will disappear as quickly as she appeared.  Seize the opportunity when it is there!”

I think of opportunities I have missed, of paths I have not taken.  My biggest regret is that I did not fully integrate my early passion for music into my adult life as a wife and mother.  I remember my piano professor saying to me during my senior year at Oberlin ....  that he thought I had lost my focus and discipline to become a performer.  I think it was a combination of things:  I had discovered other pleasure in the world and was eager to enjoy them, and this gave me an excuse to drop the rigorous, disciplined  life of a performer.  I think, too, that I fell prey to my doubts that I was not good enough to have a career as a performing artist.

There were other opportunities I didn’t pursue in music and travel.  The reasons varied, but often it was because I doubted my ability or thought I didn’t have adequate preparation.  This must have been an innate sense of inadequacy, for my parents were abundantly supportive of all I attempted to do.  It must have been the perfectionist in me, holding back.  I seem to have had an invisible threshold beyond which I didn’t trust myself to go. ....

“Follow your heart,”  my old friend Ginny told me when I was newly on my own after my marriage dissolved, “and don’t let the excuses in your head get in the way.”

====This text spoke to me, reminding me to let go of all the barriers I impose on myself and to take what life gives me, lest it slip away during my indecision.