Category Archives: Uncategorized

A Brand New Life in Canada

Posted on by
My 'Max"

My ‘Max”

It was the 5th of October 1955. My father had helped me to make an irreversible decision. Without even saying ‘goodbye’ to my mother after our last meal I left what had been my home for the last ten of my twenty-one years. My heart was filled with anxiety but also sadness for all I was leaving behind – my parents, my sisters, my friends at my kayak club, my boat “Max” (the great love of my life), and my new sky-blue bike. All I took along was a very small suitcase containing one set of bedding sheets; a couple of towels and an evening gown a friend had just made for me. This was very unlikely luggage for someone escaping from a politically oppressive life into a totally unknown new one – and that was just from one Germany into another Germany. That ‘other’ Germany was known as “The Golden West”. Freedom! Chocolate and bananas and oranges and nice clothing were available if you worked hard and earned money. And I planned to do just that. I won’t even go into the “trials and tribulations” I had to endure. (Most of you read about them in my memoir anyway.) Those troubles finally drove me over the edge and I wanted to “escape” once again. This time, my luggage was a shipping container full of my accumulated goods of almost ten years, except for furniture and my beloved car. It all went across the ocean to another continent. The container later became part of a Volkswagen garage for a neighbour in Canada.

Every year, when the 14th of December comes around, I remember that day in 1963. I remember my feelings. I can see myself, see the way my hair was, the way I was dressed. I was floating in a vacuum. I couldn’t cry and I couldn’t laugh. I can still see my new in-laws and their faces as we said goodbye. Was it forever? I emigrated because of image1-002the little Canadian girl I had fallen in love with and right now she was tightly holding onto my hand. She was shaking. She was leaving her grandparents after a couple of months she had spent with them. I was taking her home to her daddy in Vancouver, Canada. I had married him after five months of lovely correspondence and hoped I would learn to love him after I had my heart set to be a mother to his little girl. She had picked my picture out of about three hundred replies to an ad he had placed in the German magazine “Constance”, and declared: “I want her to be my new mommy.”

image9

Language did not matter between us.

This year on December 14th it will be fifty-three years since I set foot on Canadian soil. I hardly spoke any English; the little girl became my first teacher. The YWCA in Vancouver offered language courses for newcomers; I booked and paid for several courses in a row. Did we receive help in any way from anybody? No. Immigrants were on their own. If you had a job, you might make about $50.00 a week. My husband had started with ‘White Spot’ in 1956 and had not even earned $20.00. When he ended up in the hospital needing a stomach operation, the doctor, who discharged him, had asked:

“What’s your address?” Since he didn’t have one, the doctor invited him to live in a cottage on his property. In payment, he did handyman’s work. But that is another story.

You worked hard, you did not care what the work was, and you just did what was needed to make ends meet. There was a time when I worked in an office, did bookkeeping at night and cleaned toilets on that business property on Sundays. Those were the tough years.  Now, fifty-three years since I first came to Canada and comfortable after a successful business life, I think back and try to figure out “What am I?” Am I still considered an immigrant (Which most Canadians are anyway unless they are indigenous) or am I really the Canadian woman I think I am? I have written four books in English, one of them is translated into three other languages.  I have now lived in Canada for two-thirds of my life. It’s a very long time, but looking back, the fifty-three years passed one another like sand running through my fingers. Life is like a toilet roll – it goes faster the closer you come to the end!

As I am writing the sequel to my memoir “We Don’t Talk About That”, more and more memories are flooding my head about my life in Canada, this enormous and beautiful country. One day, in about a year (?), you will be able to read about the new and different “trials and tribulations” I faced on this continent during those fifty-three years. While writing some of the chapters I can’t help but smile – while others give me writer’s block. Ce’st la vie!

How Hard Is It To Get Rid of Eggs?

Posted on by

anne-of-green-gablesLast night we watched “Anne of Green Gables” – the ‘must see’ delightful television movie, always shown around Christmas time. The scene of Marilla taking Anne (with an ‘e’!) into the chicken pen to collect the eggs, put a big grin on my face. Anne hesitated to touch the freshly laid but slightly dirty eggs with even little feathers on them. Why did this scene remind me of a recent visit with my friend Jane?

Let me tell you. We were traversing the ups and downs in a park along the ocean shore. Our conversation, the way it’s always among women, covered a lot of problems, from global warming to gardening, composting, and, from there, quite naturally to reducing our ecological footprint. Jane reminisced about her experiences while in Germany. She had been posted close to Baden Baden with the Canadian army.

“Giselle, believe it or not, it was 1971 and the Germans were sorting their garbage already then! I had been allowed to rent a small apartment in a house and did not have to stay in the barracks. The landlady showed me where to put my garbage in the basement, sorted by glass, metal, and paper. The rest I was to leave in the bag and just put it next to the container. For some reason, I had to ring her doorbell one day. I was shocked when I saw my garbage bags in her entrance hall. She was in the process of sorting through it. It had been the “time of the month” for me and you can’t imagine how embarrassed I felt for some of my garbage contents. She was quite nonchalant about it. She explained her brother had pigs and there is a lot of stuff in the garbage that can be added to their feed. A few days later she gave me a little package of pork meat…”

I told Jane of my upbringing on a small country farm. I can’t remember if we ever had any garbage that wasn’t used for something. My mother had a basket for shopping, small bags made out of old pillow cases for sugar, flour, salt with those names stitched onto them. Most of all the other food grew in our gardens or fields. We had a horse, a few cows, pigs, geese, ducks, chickens and my father had quite a number of pigeons. Jane continued her story, almost unbelievable for me, the country girl.

dirty-eggs“Oh my God, Giselle, I can’t believe I have to tell you this. With a proud gesture, my landlady handed me a brown bag with half a dozen eggs in it. This was quite a gift! When I looked at them in my kitchen, my stomach turned. There were little feathers on them and some spots of chicken sh#t. No way would I eat those eggs! How could I dispose of them? I didn’t even want to touch them. I couldn’t put them in my garbage because she would find them. The thought of washing them never even occurred to me. But never mind, I found a way. I jumped into my car and drove to a rest stop on the autobahn. The garbage cans were often quite full. I stopped next to one and put the bag with the eggs in it and drove away, relieved. It didn’t take long and there was a siren howling behind me. My goodness, ‘Polizei!’ I quickly checked my speedometer but I was well under the speed limit. I didn’t feel guilty at all and kept on driving. My thought was he surely must mean someone else…The police car sidled up to me and the officer waved me to the side to stop. When he approached me, he made a motion for me to roll my window down, which I obligingly did. He handed me the brown bag with my eggs and said sternly:

“Those garbage cans are for people resting and eating at the rest stop. The garbage cans are for them and not for people to drop off their garbage.”

Even now, with a lost expression, Jane said, “He didn’t give me a ticket when he realized I did not speak German. Apparently, he hadn’t even looked into the bag. For me, it was an embarrassing moment and terrible to have those eggs back. Now what? Then it came to me. I had to go to a meeting, held in a rather large hall. I took the eggs into the restroom there, cracked them over the toilet and flushed them down. I also crushed the egg shells and they followed the egg yolks. Aaah, problem solved.”

I looked at Jane and was wondering – but before I could even ask, she explained,

“Giselle, I was twenty-five years old. I was born and raised in a city and had never seen a chicken or knew or even thought about where the eggs we bought and ate came from…”

chickensWatching ‘Anne of Green Gables’, who was only eleven years old but apparently felt the same way my friend Jane felt, it occurred to me that there might still be lots of city folks who have no idea of what they eat or where it came from. But then – with the enlightening of the 20th and 21st century social media, television, picture books and Farmer’s Markets it’s hard to imagine that children only see the headless chicken carcass wrapped in clear plastic on the supermarket shelves. Seeing those it’s hard to imagine that they were once the creatures responsible for the existence of the eggs down the aisle, neatly and cleanly packaged in recyclable soft cardboard cartons.

Walls and Walls and more Walls?

Posted on by

 

Gate to Dionkelbuehl

Walls can surround you anywhere. You can build a wall around your heart. People build emotional walls around themselves. Your garden may have a wall for privacy. We had a wall built to shore up our garden against landslip. My favourite city of West Vancouver has a Seawall, the most wonderful place for walking or jogging. I have visited a great number of cities surrounded by walls, mostly built during the last two thousand years to keep out enemies or marauders. Surprisingly, many are still in good shape. And last but not least, I have lived and worked in the beautiful harbour city of newest part of wallStralsund at the Baltic Sea with a city wall which was rebuilt after heavy bombardments during WWII. Lest we forget! This wall is not for protection anymore – but primarily for its beauty, history, and tourism. (My guess!) Stralsund is now listed with UNESCO. You find other places with walls surrounding them along the Romantic Road and many other places in Germany. Some even have moats with drawbridges in front of the wall.

Some medieval cities have a small little door next to the big gate which was closed at dusk. A resident, coming home too late to enter through the big gate, had to make himself known to the gatekeeper. The gatekeeper usually lived in a small room above the gate. Giving the right name or password the small door would be opened. During a conversation about religion my old friend Fred had asked me:

“Giselle, do you know how a camel gets through the eye of a needle?”

Fred was a Sunday school teacher. When he asked me he was referring to the Bible, Matthew 19:24. I knew the term but I had no answer. That’s when he explained that the little door next to the gate in the city wall of Jerusalem was called “Eye of the Needle”. During a late arrival with a camel, both man and beast had to crouch and it was very difficult for the animal to get through. Jesus compared it to the difficulty of a rich man getting into heaven.

The most famous and longest wall in the world is the ‘Great Wall of China’. I have climbed this wall to the highest point as the only woman of my China Tour group a few weeks after the horrific happenings in the year of 9/11. The trip to China was the most interesting trip I ever did. Climbing the wall started out easy enough but got harder as the stairs got steeper and narrower. With my western shoe size, I had been walking sideways. At one point – by just inches – I almost got the boot of the man in front of me in my face. Respectfully, I put a few more steps between us.

2-image1The part of the ‘Great Wall’ my group traversed starts not far from Beijing and was built to keep invading armies out. It runs on top of a steep mountainous landscape. Invaders would be seen early and would hardly have a chance before being destroyed from above. Needless to say, the views are stupendous. The ‘Great Wall of China’ is supposedly one of the very few constructions on earth seen from space. It took many Emperors, soldiers, and criminals over 2000 years to build it. Most of the existing wall was built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and, naturally, it has been repaired constantly ever since. It measures 8,851 km (or 5,500 miles) but in ancient times, all the different sections together stretched over 21,000 kilometers.

Another well-known wall to most of us is the infamous “Berlin Wall”. It was built by the German Democratic Republic (DDR) during the night of August 13th, 1961. To this day it is a puzzle how nobody had known and nobody ever saw or heard the trucks bringing masses of rocks, blocks, barbed wire and fence materials to the different locations. To build this wall was the only way to stop people from fleeing to the west. Parts of the wall ran along the middle of city streets dividing neighbours, families or friends living in houses on either side. Imagine a wall with glass pieces and barbed wire on top where we have a yellow line to divide the traffic. Thousands had fled the DDR every single day (I was one of them) and more were trying to escape after the wall was built by digging tunnels, even constructing a balloon, swimming across lakes and needless to say, many lost their life trying. The East German police had strict orders to shoot to kill.

image2-002-1The Berlin Wall was just one part of what became known as the “Cold War”. After the Berlin Wall had closed the biggest ‘hole’ to stop the escapes, construction of a wall with mine fields, and guard towers was built around the entire communist controlled part of Germany. It was probably the only wall ever built to keep people “in” and not to keep the enemy “out”. Just as nobody knew that this wall was going to be built so nobody expected it to come crumbling down during anyone’s lifetime. Incredibly, during a huge mass demonstration on the eastern side of the wall when everyone expected the Russian tanks to crush them, nothing happened and the East German police, guarding the wall, put their guns down. The people stormed the wall, started hacking away at it and once a section broke down, the rush to get through before all hell would break loose, filled the night with screams. Screams turned to laughter as people were met by the waiting crowd on the western side with hugs and tears. With music and song punctuated by champagne corks popping, they started dancing on the wall. The night turned into the party of all parties, never experienced or dared to hope for, uniting people and families after nearly thirty years of being kept apart.

Brandenberg Gate

Brandenberg Gate

On June 12th, 1987, at a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, President Ronald Reagan had called out to Mikhail Gorbachev,

“Tear down this Wall!”

It happened unexpectedly on the 9th of November 1989. It was the end of the Cold War, the unification of the two Germanys and it started the break-up of the mighty Soviet Union. Twenty-seven years of friendship, rebuilding and a never experienced quality of life for many countries followed. Today, we ask ourselves what may lie in our future now.

Donald Trump promised during the American election campaign to build a wall along the Mexican border. Would it become the most infamous wall of all the walls in the world? From the English songstress ‘Adele’ to Pope Francis and many others, cries like “Don’t build walls, build bridges” are heard. According to Donald Trump, his will be the highest, the meanest, and the longest wall ever. Will it rival the Great Wall of China and will it be seen not just from the ‘Moon’ but from ‘Mars’ as well!? Just kidding…

Oh no, it will ruin my holiday!

Posted on by

Hotel Cebulj Oct. 2016

Hotel Cebulj Oct. 2016

I packed my suitcase on Oct. 2nd and looked forward to a great holiday. I was heading to the spa city of Bad Woerishofen in Bavaria, a place I had visited more than thirty times in the past. Over the years, I always stayed in the same lovely family hotel, even in the same room. It became my ‘home away from home’. A short 17 minute flight brought me from Nanaimo to the International Airport in Vancouver B.C. on the third of October. When I boarded the Lufthansa flight 477 to Munich and settled into my seat 2D, my anticipation of a wonderful three weeks rose by several degrees. A gentleman sat next to me in the aisle seat. Since I had the window seat I didn’t need to be concerned of being disturbed. I leaned back and with a smile on my face I closed my eyes and thought of the wonderful time awaiting me. When I woke up we were already flying into the clouds… We had an award winning Lufthansa dinner (no, I didn’t want any wine) and it didn’t take long before the window blinds were closed. Some folks settled down for the coming night.

a toilet trained pussy cat

a toilet trained pussy cat

One couple had a bag with a beautiful cat between them. I had met them earlier in the Air Canada Lounge ladies room. The cat was trained to do her business on the toilet. Incredible! I started reading a book I had downloaded onto my i-Pad. I was unable to concentrate. I soon took my glasses off, put them into their case and into the pouch on the seat in front of me. The man next to me was already sleeping; we never exchanged a single word during the whole trip.

I pressed some buttons and my seat extended to full length and I had a flat bed with pillow and blanket. Several times I had to climb over the legs of my neighbour – he never noticed. After a hot cloth to wake up and a breakfast in the middle of the night (my time), we touched down in Munich ten-and-a-half hours later. It was already October the 4th. My pick-up was arranged. My driver did not take the autobahn but beautiful country roads. Too much construction, he told me. The Munich Airport now has three terminals with a train running between them. I remember when there was only one terminal. Those were the times when everything was easy.

I was greeted with welcoming hugs at my hotel. My suitcase disappeared and I took the stairs up to my usual room. Unpacking didn’t take too long. I was anxious to send a message home and looked for my glasses. My glasses? Where were my glasses…Oh, dear God, I left them in the pouch in front of my airplane seat. I installed the hotel ‘Wi-Fi’ password and used my i-Pad to send a message to my husband. I asked him to get in touch with my travel agent. I figured they have a better chance to contact Lufthansa and their ‘Lost & Found’ than I did. I phoned my husband five times before I gave up. I went to the hotel office and the hostess spent the next three hours following the prompts “click this, click that” on the Lufthansa website until she finally was able to send an e-mail to the right place.

“Passenger G.R. in seat 2 D of flight # 477 Vancouver-Munich arriving Oct. 4th left a pair of glasses with a gold frame in a black leather cover and a purple cleaning cloth in the pouch in front of her seat. Please contact… or mail to…”

When I tried to use my i-Pad again a message in a little window told me that it was locked for my own protection. I couldn’t be in two countries on two different continents at the same time. My husband had needed to access my e-mail account in Canada! ‘We suspect a hacker. Once you are back in Canada you can re-set etc. etc.’ I was devastated. No chance to delete all the hundreds of e-mails I would receive? No chance to send any? No chance to read my e-books? According to “Murphy’s Law”, what else would happen? It’s always three things, right? Well, the third thing was my blood pressure monitor. Despite the fact that it was working at home, it did not work in Germany. So much for that! Now, what else could go wrong? The first week was alright.

Breakfast Buffet & Hotel Cebulj

Breakfast Buffet & Hotel Cebulj

I decided to enjoy the rich buffet and not eat just bran and soaked linseed with yogurt as I did at home. Cold cuts, eggs, wonderful cheeses and all those different types of bread and buns on the buffet and the creamy cottage cheese and the jams and fruits and and… Every day was a feast! My youngest sister and her husband stopped by with their RV on their way to Italy, my two cousins from Cologne came for four days – needless to say that we regularly visited one of the many cafés. We had coffee and sampled a piece of wonderful cake every day. Cheese cake, poppy seed cake, plum cake, you name it.

Lufthansa sent an e-mail to my hotel with a number to claim my missing glasses. When my cousins flew back to Cologne on the 9th they were able to pick them up at the Munich airport “Lost & found”. They took them to Cologne and mailed them to me from there. I had used a pair of magnifying glasses up to now, and my eyes had always hurt. Once my visitors were all gone I felt lost and lonely. I even cried a little. Will I ever be able to come back or see them again? I checked the hotel library and found some interesting German books. I read a lot! I also found a music channel on the TV and sometimes watched the international news about the upcoming US election. One morning, I got up and almost fell on my face. I couldn’t use my left foot, the big toe hurt something awful and the pain was ten out of ten. In the doctor’s office, I was told I have a gout attack. Gout? Isn’t that something old people get? The nurse said, “you are kinda old, aren’t you?” I got pills and a cream to rub my toe with. The pills made me double over, my stomach didn’t like them.

“What did you eat this morning? Cereal with milk or yogurt? You cannot have any milk products, no yogurt, no red meat, no coffee, no alcohol, no…”

“But what can I eat?”

I was advised to eat a piece of dry bread before taking the pill. After that nothing for a few hours. Apparently, I had enjoyed the buffet and the cafés too much and I now had to pay for my sins. The pounds I might have gained during the first week disappeared during the last two weeks of my holiday. I was mainly lying on my bed reading, afraid to eat anything. I was living on dry bread, horsetail- and stinging nettle tea to help my body to get rid of extra uric acid. This was not what I came for. I could hardly wait to go home. The Lufthansa service with wheel-chair assistance was second to none on my flight back. My doctor in Canada prescribed different pills which are not attacking my stomach. I still am on a restricted diet and the pain is less – but not gone. How long does it take to get rid of a gout attack? And how do you really know it is gout? What is the proper procedure to diagnose it?

I had 1458 e-mails on my computer when I came home. As I started ‘deleting’ more rolled in. One of them was dated October 5th from Lufthansa:

“This is to inform you about a found property at our office for cabin lost and found items, which is probably yours: A pair of glasses in a black softshell pouch together with a purple cleaning cloth of the West Vancouver Optometry Clinic was found on board of flight LH435 from Chicago today. Your business card was inside the pouch.”

Kurpark Bad Woerishofen 2016

Kurpark Bad Woerishofen 2016

If I had received that on October 5th a lot of anxiety on my part would have been avoided. I couldn’t do without glasses but I discovered there is a life without the Internet. But gout is something else I would rather manage without.

Halloween – Ghosts and Goblins

Posted on by

Pirate Day

I couldn’t believe it! It was only the middle of September when I saw the first Halloween costumes for sale. Placed close to the entrance the sales rack had stopped a number of children in their tracks. Excitedly they checked the costumes and called:

“Mom, this is exactly what I want! Come, take a look. Isn’t this cool?”

I couldn’t help watching them. With rosy cheeks they would touch this one and pull out another; they started begging their parent to buy the one they liked best. They didn’t listen to Mom saying,

“Let’s go to other stores too, you might even find something better.”

No, it had to be right now! Many little boys want to be pirates and most little girls want to be princesses. Just a few years older and they want to be witches or devils or scary ghosts and even appear to be skeletons. It is amazing how many choices there were. What I couldn’t believe were the prices. They were rather high. When my kids were small we made the costumes at home since we couldn’t afford to buy any. I don’t even know if one could buy ready-made ones in the olden days because we never checked. Times surely are different.

dsc03802Next to Christmas, Halloween is big business with the highest turnover during the year. I read that in the USA alone people spend over six billion dollars for candies, decorations, and costumes. There is also the pumpkin business, fields of large and small pumpkins by the thousands and huge cases full of pumpkins in all the food shops. When I was a kid my mother would make a desert out of the flesh and if we were very good she would allow us to carve one for a candle. We collected and dried the seeds and ate them. We did not know then but I now know that pumpkin seeds are very good for your health because of the high content of protein, manganese, magnesium, and zinc. They make the best snack and are ‘antioxidant scavengers’ – busy to improve your immune system. A little-known secret is the enhancement of men’s sexual health.

Have you ever ask yourself what are the roots for this festivity? The history goes back about 2.000 years to the ancient Celtic festivities called “Samhain “. The Celts believed the ghosts of the dead came back on the evening before November 1st, their New Year’s Day, to haunt and scare them. They would light bonfires, wear costumes to fool the ghosts into mistaking them for their own kind and, to prevent the ghosts from entering their house placed food on the steps. In the 9th century, Christianity had created an ‘All Souls Day’ and the evening before was  ‘All-Hallows Eve’ and  eventually became Halloween or Hallowe’en.

Halloween came to America through the Irish immigrants and evolved during the last few hundred years to what it is today. It is big business for costumes, candy, pumpkins and all kind of decorative ghost items. A time for scary ghosts and superstition, apple bobbing (which goes back to the Roman times) and a much anticipated day for all the children, young and old. Don’t break a mirror on Halloween, don’t step on cracks in the sidewalk and don’t meet a black cat! I remember that I would not cross the road if a black cat had crossed it from left to right. It is bad luck! I would rather wait for another person to cross before I dared to do it. If the cat crossed from right to left you were not just alright but would be lucky!

halloween-costumesHave fun but be wary on Halloween! Make sure your children are safe and check their  harvest from trick-or-treating for needles in apples and tampered chocolates. It is sad but a fact that some bad ‘witches’ are still around. They are full of hate and resentment of  all the fun and don’t mind hurting innocent children.

 

 

The Last Supper

Posted on by

767 Dorchester Wpg.

767 Dorchester was an old house with a wonderful interior layout located in a quiet neighbourhood of Winnipeg. It was white with green trim and had flower boxes under all the many windows. I needed ninety-eight geraniums for planting the boxes every spring. It was a sight to behold. I would plant a hundred pots with cuttings and have those on the wide window sills indoors in preparation for the next season. Just imagine how long it took every day to water all those. In full bloom, they made the house look ‘rich’.

A bright hallway and a wide stairway leading to the second storey were the heart of the old house. Through French doors on either side of the hallway, one entered into a huge dining room on the left and on the right into a most charming living room with lots of windows and an open fireplace. A built-in breakfast nook in the kitchen was one of our favourite spots. All our family meals were served here. It was the children’s place to do their homework while I was preparing our meals. There was an ancient sink in the middle of the long counter, an old ‘rounded’ fridge and a more modern stove.

1-image0-001All of us loved this old house! Mr. Moffat had rented it to us. He not only came to collect the rent every month but occasionally stopped by to say ‘hi’ and chat. He always complimented me on the work I did in the garden. Spring flowers were followed by colorful summer flowers and big sunflowers stood guard. The tomatoes, thriving along the sunny side of the garage, still tasted like real tomatoes.

One warm July day Mr. Moffat turned up and was greated with welcoming smiles. But that day he seemed uneasy. He even sat down for tea and after a few minutes, he told us he was selling the house. He was giving us three months notice to find another home. I lost it and completely broke down. I cried and begged him to sell the house to us but, sadly, it was out of his hands. A lawyer had bought up the houses next to us. Our house was the last in the middle of all the others. Mr.Moffat said he had held on as long as he could. The houses would be demolished to make room for an apartment block. What a shame. It was heartbreaking.

We went house shopping and in the end decided to buy a bungalow from a builder in a suburb called ‘Southdale’. We were promised the house would be ready for move-in on October the first. The children started school in our new neighbourhood in September. Driving the kids to school each morning I loaded the car with ‘stuff’and brought more boxes in the afternoon when I  picked them up. Our friends Inge and Peter had offered their garage as a storage place. They had also bought and lived there already. Only our big pieces of furniture remained for the moving company.

Our last meal before the big day consisted of leftovers but I had baked an apple pie for desert. I had left the baking oven door slightly open so that the heat could dissipate but I did leave the pie in it. For the children, playing outside, the backdoor was always open. My husband and I drove out to the new house with the last boxes. When we came home I closed the baking oven door and started cooking. The family was sitting around the table in the ‘nook’and chatted excitedly about moving and sleeping here for the last time. I served dinner and switched the baking oven on to warm up the apple pie. We loved hot apple pie with vanilla ice cream! At last, I could sit down and start eating myself.

I was restless and got up again. My husband was annoyed. “Why don’t you finally sit still and eat, you drive me nuts…”

767 Dorchester entrance

Just to prove something I went to check the pie. I opened the baking oven door and stumbled back screaming as our neighbour’s cat jumped out of the hot oven and almost into my face. The cat ran like crazy for the back door, scratched the screen and meowed loudly. What if – oh my God!

The pie was half eaten. The other half went into the garbage. Luckily the cat lived and there was only vanilla ice cream for desert. I was so shaken up that I was in no condition to even eat my dinner.

An Interview with Don Massenzio

Posted on by

Giselle readingBelieve me, this on-line interview was an interesting experience. It was done by an accomplished writer, Mr. Don Massenzio. He ‘invented’ a couple of very imaginative detectives for his first book, “Frankly Speaking” and, you guessed it, his book found readers who liked it so much that those two detectives are now appearing in a series. I have read “Frankly Speaking” and was amazed by the twists and turns of the story but especially impressed by Don’s knowledge of the intricacies of law and order, computers and people in high places. It felt as if he always consulted one of his detectives…and I forgot that HE was the writer!

Don sent me 20 questions to answer. You can find the interview by clicking on this link:  https://donmassenzio.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/20-questions-with-giselle-roeder/

That Lady Can Really Light Up A Room

Posted on by
Kurpromenade

Kurpromenade

The centre boulevard in the relatively small but world-renowned Bavarian Spa city of Bad Woerishofen was filled with people slowly walking to and fro. Everybody had time, nobody was hurrying. Occasionally a biker would wind his way through the throng, attracting annoyed looks because this was a walking street. Most bikers wore either lederhosen or a typical Bavarian dirndl dress, an indication they lived and worked here in one of the elegant houses or hotels. Little ice cream parlours, small cafés with lots of outdoor seating had clusters of people milling around waiting for a table. I loved sitting there, watching people. Everybody was dressed up like in the good old times. Jeans? Hardly. Elegant elderly couples were holding hands or had their arms around each other, smiling and talking, looking happy and relaxed. They had met here during their “Kur” and enjoyed a ‘fling’. They were each other’s “Kurschatten”, the ‘shadow’ who stayed with them as long as they were here. Married people just didn’t act like that…

Flowerbeds with seasonal plants were alongside a small but very fast flowing stream coming from the Alps on one side of the boulevard. Little bridges crossed for access to shopping at the elegant boutiques, offering the best of everything money can buy. Their sales people were chic and sophisticated, so much so that one didn’t even dare to enter. How do they get you to enter? There was always a sales rack next to the entrance. If you stopped to see if there was something affordable they were right there and lured you in…

Would you believe that this elegant boulevard with those enticing shopping venues used to be a mud path for the cows to come home to their barns on the left and the right? The first time I was here was in 1958 and I saw it with my own eyes. Some farmers didn’t sell out and still lived in their old, but now groomed, houses but the barns were turned into condos and townhouses or shops.

Today I was checking the sales rack of a men’s shop. I loved buying something for my grown son or the significant other in my life – if there was one at the time. For myself – I didn’t really need anything. It was more of I wanted something – if I couldn’t resist. Before I knew it I was inside this super elegant gentlemen’s shop, looking around, wanting to compare prices, but there weren’t any. If you had to ask – you can’t afford it anyway. A well dressed, above middle-age, lady stood at one of the glass counters and apparently had a hard time to choose from several beautiful ties. She held one after the other against a pale cream coloured shirt.  Fascinated I stopped and watched her. She must have felt my admiring looks at her incredible jewellery, complementing her elegant finely knitted dress. She glanced at me, gave me this tiny little smile and asked me,

“ Which of these ties would you buy?” I had already made up my mind, so I pointed to a buttercup yellow one with tiny specs of light gray in it. It looked great next to that shirt. The set would not look good on my young son, it was way too elegant. But for the husband of this lady? Or her ‘Kurshadow’? Perfect.

When I heard the price I almost choked on my own saliva but I behaved and slowly moved away. I didn’t even want to know the price of the shirt. I probably could have bought two or three suits for my son in a ‘normal’ shop. I left and was looking at a jewellery display window next door when I saw the reflection of the lady in the window. Now it was my turn to glance at her. Would I mind joining her for an ice cream? She was alone here and would enjoy my company. We spent at least two hours chatting and getting to know each other.

Kurkonzert

Kurkonzert

We parted at dinner time but made a date for the daily evening concert. Since I was in charge of my time as well we spent most of the next three days of her visit going on walks, sitting in one of the many cafés and I heard many of her life stories. Some were very shocking. I had never known anyone who had been sexually abused as a child by her father. Her mother had accused her of lying and was very cross with her, she never believed her. The abuse started when she was ten and went on until she finished grade school, ran away and then lived with her grandmother. The father had also abused her younger sister who was only eight.Their mother never believed either girl and made their life hell. “Helga” – my new friend – got married to a very nice man, they had a daughter but her husband died after twelve years. She worked as a waitress, she became an office girl, and she worked her way up and a few years ago became the secretary and then the mistress of a wealthy gemologist. His wife was begging her to keep the romance going since she does not want sex with her husband anymore. He never left his family and she was agreeable to the setup. She asked me to visit her in her hometown as soon as I had a chance.

When we first met I was in Bavaria with a group of Canadians to enjoy the health spa. Helga was intrigued and readily agreed to come to my hotel, share our dinner and meet them. I vividly remember her entrance to our cozy dining room. She stood in the door, looked over the different tables to our large one with this incredible one-thousand watt smile. All conversation stopped and everybody looked at her. She really was a sight to behold. She had this special radiance about her as if she was lit up from within. Three of my single Canadian men told me later,

“What a woman! My God, that lady can really light up a room.”

I can only think of one other who can do that: Julia Roberts. We exchanged telephone numbers but never had any correspondence. It was the late eighties. A year later I visited her after my annual group had left. By that time her lover had died of a heart attack and she was left in charge of his business with a generous salary. He had also appointed her to be the executor for his family. There were three grown children over twenty. She had tried to refuse but the wife begged her to accept since otherwise her children would pressure her for money-money-money and squander everything. The son was into betting on horse racing. One girl was into partying and drinking and the other child was still under age. The two women became quite close.

By this time, Helga’s own mother was now also in need of help and asked her estranged daughters for assistance. Her sister absolutely refused to even see her mother. Helga felt obligated to take on the deed. Her father had passed away a few years earlier. I heard more horror stories and the worst was that the mother still did not believe that her husband had abused his own daughters. Helga was totally stressed out because her mother failed to control her anger against her girls every time Helga was there. She refused to go into a care home. My common sense advice was of no use. Helga felt she needed to be there for her mom despite everything. The government could even order her to pay for the mother’s upkeep. She chose to do it out of her own free will and her sister never helped her. I invited her to visit me in Canada and we made plans. She had a cousin in New York and got excited about the prospect to visit her as well on the same trip.

It was the beginning of June the next year. I was already back in Canada from my annual trip to Bavaria and had an early appointment. I was on the way out of my door when my phone rang. I grabbed it on the run thinking it might be my secretary but it was Helga. She wanted to talk to me but I told her I had a meeting, was working all day and would get back to her the next morning because of the nine-hour time difference. She made small talk, seemed to want to hold on but I was already late. Somehow I felt guilty but really, I had no choice but to hang up. I couldn’t get her out of my mind all day. I stayed up late and phoned her at midnight, about nine in the morning her time. There was no answer. I tried several times during the day to no avail. I decided to write her a long letter. I never heard from her, no letter, no call. I tried every few weeks. Then, in September, I received my own letter to her back with a note next to her address: “Adressat verstorben” – meaning this person has died. I had to sit down. I never knew anyone who was so full of spirit and life, who was so sparkling and had lately tried to find another partner through an ad, went to dancing classes, exercise classes, had many lady friends; how could she be dead? Impossible! I had no way to get any other information since she had never given me the address of her daughter who lived with her boyfriend in another city.

Another year came around and I took my new Canadian group to the lovely spa city in Bavaria. By pure chance, I met a younger lady who came from the same city where Helga had lived and, to top it off, her mother was in the same exercise class. What I heard next shocked me and now, about thirty years later,  I am still not at peace with it. Apparently, Helga had planned to renovate her condo and had made an appointment for a representative from a construction company to come at 4.00 PM and give her an estimate on the day she had phoned me. To his surprise  the door was open, he called out and then went in looking for her. Beautiful flowers were on the table, Beethoven music was filling the room, lots of candles were lit, there was a festive mood, a wine bottle, and a half full glass was on a side table by the couch where she was resting. He couldn’t raise her and, shocked, he spotted an empty pill bottle next to the wine glass. He realized what must have happened, knocked on the  neighbour’s door, an ambulance and the police came. Too late. She was gone. Had she made the appointment with this man to make sure she was found? Alive – or dead?

Why did she do it? What had happened? Did her mother drive her to it, did the early childhood years catch up because of the constant fighting? Why did she phone me? What was it she needed to tell me? Why didn’t she scream it out to me that morning… Why? Nobody will ever know. She did not leave a note. She had not talked to any of her lady friends or her daughter. None of them knew her secret. Did she tell me because I was a stranger? I feel guilty to this very day because I had no time to listen. Listen to a friend in need, a friend desperate for my ear. Or did she just want to say goodbye, had planned her exit from this world and I couldn’t have done anything anyway?

God, I wish I knew.

Retirement: DoThe Golden Years Have A Silver Lining?

Posted on by

Since I’m into it I always wondered about it. Wondered about the praised “Golden Years” when I finally have time to do all the things I had put off ‘til later’. When I’m retired I’ll book a fitness class. When I’m retired I’ll go on a cruise through the Panama Canal. (Actually, I did that one!) When I’m retired I’d volunteer for this and that and the other to get out and meet new people. When I’m retired I’ll have time to sort out books I don’t re-read anymore. When I’m retired I’ll organize my desk drawers and get rid of the outdated files. When I’m retired I’ll finally work on my Last Will and Testament to make sure my last will is going to be done and my earthly treasures – treasures to me but maybe not to my heirs –go to people who will appreciate them. When I’m retired…

So I thought and made plans for retirement. I didn’t know that retired people never have time. Retired people get so very busy and I did as well. I wonder how I ever had time to work and do all the things I did: Run with the dog in the early morning, keep a home, do the shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry, some light repairs, have the most beautiful garden on the block, was the chauffeur for my husband when we only had one car, raise three kids and make sure they had what I didn’t have, ballet and painting classes, German language school, (which they hated!) do homework with them, darn socks and fix sheets, and I even took the children to the lake and camping. How could I have done all that and more without falling apart? I bet the days had more hours back then.

I’ve been retired for many years. I have been busy and I never have time just like other retirees. Being “re-tired” looked good from a distance but now I feel I’m mostly “tired”.

Laverne Brady, a writer friend of mine who is also a humor writer for the Huffington Post comes up with some funny ideas. Her book “How (the bleep) did I get this old” is one of the best summer reads if you like smiling while you read about light – happy – seriously funny and insightful happenings that you hadn’t even thought were funny. She sees the bright side of any situation! Let’s see what she thinks of retirement.

Laverne BardyAuthor of “How (the Bleep) Did I Get This Old”? Syndicated Columnist, Huffington Post Blogger.

He’s Retired

He says it would make sense to move dishes to a lower shelf, so I don’t have to reach so high to get them. And, pantry items would be easier to find if they were in alphabetical order. Also, if I wash clothes with cold water I won’t have to separate darks, colored and whites.

I Growl

I like my dishes up high. I sit on my ass, at the computer, most of the day. The only exercise I get is reaching for dishes and repeatedly picking my cane up from the floor. I tell him alphabetizing pantry items is a good idea. When he’s done he should tape the list onto the pantry door. And, I’m pretty sure cold water doesn’t sanitize.

He’s Retired 

What he loves most is going out for breakfast. Every Morning. It was a treat the first 253 times but after eating eggs scrambled, eggs poached, eggs over easy, and eggs fried every day, I’m overdosing. Oatmeal makes me gag, and pancakes make me fat. I suggest we eat dinner out every evening, instead.

He’s Retired

Holy #$@%, he’s a morning person! I don’t remember him ever being a morning person. At least not in a way that affected me. It seems mornings are when his creativity, energy, and libido are strongest. It’s when he most enjoys talking – especially about his dreams. Whoever said that dreams only last a few seconds forgot to tell him. His unabridged versions last longer than most movies.

Mornings are when he enjoys everything noisy: practicing his flute, practicing his violin, listening to classical music, and hearing television. Not watching it. Just hearing it, as he wanders from project to project, whistling.

I don’t do mornings. I do everything I can to bypass mornings. Generally, I struggle to lift my head from the pillow after a sleepless night during which I staggered to the bathroom at least three times. Mornings are when I need peace, quite, and…in a perfect world…solitude. I don’t talk and I’m not remotely interested in listening. It’s the time of day when I ruminate, marinate, contemplate and speculate. My head is full of fresh ideas I can’t wait to write about, but I’m tired and lethargic, and my arthritic back and neck hurt. So, if and when I’m able to focus, I need silence…without interruptions. Do not talk to me. Do not play the television and do not even think about acting on your libido.

He’s Retired

Now that he’s home all day he likes to snack…just a little…not much…just something to tide him over until dinner. Like lunch. I don’t do lunch. Not for me. Not for him. I prepare one meal a day. Dinner. Sometimes.

He opens the refrigerator and asks, “Where’s the milk?” I point. He expected it to be behind the lemon juice, where it was yesterday. I remind him that the refrigerator isn’t alphabetized, and sometimes we have to move things to see other things.

He’s Retired

I’m working at my desk. I hear his footsteps coming down the hall. They’re getting closer. He knows I’m working. He enters the room anyway, bends over and plants an impromptu kiss on the back of my neck. Not something I’m accustomed to in the middle of the day. He sets a cup of hot tea on my desk…flavored exactly the way I like it. Lots of lemon. He hands me a bracelet that I’d asked him to repair…if he could. A stone had fallen out. He fixed it. Also, he says our washing machine no longer dances across the floor. That’s fixed, too. As well as the latch on the front screen door. He asks if I’d like to take a break — drive into town and hit Dairy Queen. I grin. Broadly.

He’s Retired

He has no one to play with. Yet. Until he finds a golf buddy and a weekly poker game, I guess I’m it. Which isn’t entirely bad. Maybe tomorrow we’ll take another break. One that involves his creativity, energy and libido.

——
Hah! See, there IS a “Silver Lining to the Golden Years”!

A Different Type of Addiction

Posted on by

McleanMe? Addiction? Can’t happen to me! You know I am into history, reading and writing about it, telling you about the books I read and how I learned more from reading history books than I ever did in school. One day I came across a review of a book called a fantasy-thriller, science fiction  and, because it mentioned kayaks paddling under the Burrard Bridge, I went to Amazon.com, put in the title “The Gift: Penance”, clicked on ‘Look Inside’ and read as much as was possible. After that I even wrote to the author, J.P. McLean, and the rest is history. My book reading history changed.  I read the whole thing, a genre I have never ever even given a thought to. My webmaster did too and we were both ‘hooked’. One day we met the author. Jo-Ann McLean lives on one of the Gulf Islands nearby and we exchanged books: Since I had read the fourth book of her “Gift Series” I was happy to receive the first one, “The Gift: Awakening”. After reading it I can’t wait to read number two, “The Gift: Revelation”. And you know what? I know I will then go on to book number three: “The Gift: Redemption.” I have read book number four (The Gift: Penance) already but I know there is now also a book number five. These books take me away from my own writing. I apologize for not having written a blog for several weeks, I just couldn’t! My mind was occupied with weird stuff. Sorry, folks. Forgive me.

Gift awakeningI am addicted. If this is what addiction is like: Thinking about it all the time, even a few weeks after I finished reading the book, trying to figure out how the h… anybody can come up with the ideas, the ‘invention’ of something that may even one day be possible with the way the technology is going; thinking back to the time when we didn’t have trains, planes, submarines, bikes, cars, washing machines or vacuum cleaners, radios or television, telephones, cell phones, computers, i-Pads or even self-driving cars, safer than any driver could drive.  Even more astounding was the first man on the moon and, if we have enough money, now booking a future trip to Mars. So how did Jo-Ann come up with the idea of a human being able to defy gravity, lift off and fly, doing somersaults in the air, having fun and in this particular scenario even be able to be invisible…

As a growing child I loved reading fairy tales. As a teenager I started to realize that fairy tales carry a subliminal message, not really thought for kids but for the grown-up who reads the story to the child, or later for an adult to finally understand it. One of the best books in this kind of genre is “The Little Prince” (by author A. Exupéry) – his love of his prickly rose, his travels to planet Earth, his encounters with different types of people, how could any child understand what all those stories mean? Anyway, I started to collect Fairy Tale Books from all over the world. For quite a number of years I lived in a “Fantasy World”. But now, in my senior years, I should start reading thrillers? Science Fiction-Fantasy? I remember my son writing an incredible fantasy story for his English class when he was thirteen years old. I wish, oh, do I wish he or I would still have that story! It was something similar to Star Wars…and a bit like what J.P. McLean is writing about. I remember being absolutely engrossed and fascinated by it when he read it to me. He has the mind to be able to write something like it but he is too busy living, working, and what else people in middle age do.

Let me tell you: If you want to dive, sorry, fly into another world, read J.P. McLean’s first book of the series, “The Gift: Awakening”. It starts a bit slow, at times your mind rushes faster forward than your eyes can read, but this author has a ‘gift’ herself for spinning a tale like a net and you are in it. Trapped! The setting, the characters, as during the story more and more enter the plot, the danger, the love scenes (oh my goodness, I could never write anything like it!) and as I said before, you will want to go on to the next book.

Maybe you are stronger than I am and will not become addicted.