continued from The Soldier (continued)
The best place for western Europeans to recover from the ravages of WWI was the untrammeled countryside of Switzerland. Crisp, clean, high altitudes were thought to be especially good for tubercular patients. Neutrality during the war had saved Switzerland from the toxic blastings that decimated farm country in other parts of Europe. The comparative abundance of fresh dairy products lured wealthy Germans, French and Austrians seeking to restore vigor and calm nerves. Arosa had served as a leading health resort or sanitarium since the 1880’s.
On the heels of the most frightening event in her life, my mother’s things were suddenly packed and she was sent to Arosa. There was no explanation for her banishment. Not until she was much older did she understand the ramifications of anemia. Instead, this seemed like a steroidal version of standing in the corner. She had been a bad girl. She had let her father down and he was disappointed in her.
At the age of ten Yry was completely alone in yet another foreign environment. Later, I would find a stash of letters that she wrote to her parents and also to her Granny in Darmstadt. They reveal a devoted and very lonely child. She wrote faithfully to each parent at least once a month in a labored childhood scrawl on lined baby-blue note paper. Most letters were written in English, but some were written in German. Frequently she asked about her “Birdie” and her “Pussy,” as well as about maid, Marie, and her friend, Elise. She begged for pictures of her pets or postcards from home. Her letters were signed “Girlie” or occasionally, her given, but detested, name of Hertha.
One side of the page is for daddy; the other side is for Mamy.
Vendredi le 11 April 1924; My dear daddy. I hope you are gett-ing on well. I am not pleased that youdo you do not visit me. Many grettings to Lang. Much much love from your much loving. girlie/ Vendredi le 11 April 1924; My dear Mamy. I hope you are getting on well. Why do you not visit me, I am not pleased about it. next week the Doctor will come to me. I will write a letter, to daddy. I do not no wot to write today. tell Mairi and Ilise, I should like a letter from vem, many grittings for mairi and Ilise. Much much love from much loving, girlie./
Her father’s letters to her were preachy warnings and advice to work and study harder. Piled on top of an infancy shrouded by the hell of war, the shock of straddling two languages at the age of six, a violent attack on her body, followed by banishment to the sanitarium, I begin to understand how the stage was set for my mother’s high strung personality. Grandfather Herman’s correspondence sounds cold and callous; a perception supported by a three by four-foot oil portrait that dominated my childhood home, and from which my grandfather’s stern gaze eerily followed me around the room. But I never knew the man so it is not my place to judge his character. He, too, was a product of his environment; German men were raised to be authoritarian disciplinarians.
Meanwhile, back in Mainz Pussy on the piano waits for her mistress. (That piano, now in my living room, still attracts kitties.)
Linda, your attempts to understand context are valiant. Authoritarian fathers may have been the norm, but did not make it right. I kept thinking about Captain Von Trapp in “The Sound of Music.” Also, in the 1950s, we gravitated back to a men at work, women at home model for those who could afford after so many women kept the war machine running here during WWII. Thanks for the continuing saga, Keith
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Yes, it is interesting to note how we conveniently forgot the power of women after the men came home. I have always wondered how those Rosies handled their demotion to domestic affairs. I’m sure some of them were delighted. But not all. Having tasted the independence of working outside the home for a real salary, I would have rebelled at being corralled inside the house.
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wow this is just sad and gripping! 😦
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Thanks, Lyn.
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Wow what a story!
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Thanks for the honest impressions that you share about “Girlie.” The letters show her grasping for some form of affection some confirmation that she was valued.
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Yes, I was shocked to see these letters with the name “Girlie” attached to them. This was so contrary to the woman she became and the woman I knew.
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In one of my blogs about World War Two I said that Peter and I did not experience anything that would have caused us some trauma. Our fathers survived the war, but we agreed that both our fathers most likely would have gone through traumatic experiences during the war. Both our parents’ marriages ended up in separation and divorce after the war.
‘Normal’ life after the war was very difficult. There were shortages of everything. Most people had very reduced living space. They had to take in refugees or people who had lost everything in bombing raids. Women usually were better able to adapt to different living conditions, whereas these men who had been soldiers and probably survived traumatic war experiences, and maybe had been in prison camps, these men found it difficult to adjust to civilian life in their home country which was in ruins.
A lot of women, who had to survive the war years without their men, found, when the men returned, that they were better off on their own . . . .
A lot of men never returned from the war. These war widows had to go to work anyway. I wonder, how much this ‘independence’ would have been to their liking.
I always blamed the war that my parents separated after the war. But maybe my mother would not have liked to live with my father anyway. Yes, maybe my parents’ marriage would anyhow have ended in divorce.
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One never really knows. All wars scar the participants and their families. Our country is still scarred by what happened to the poor kids who faught in Viet Nam. Too many of them came back broken, if not in body, in spirit. I don’t know what the divorce rate is among them, but I know it is high. And as they age, many of their battle wounds amplify, causing all manner of troubles.
But it is true. We never know the what-ifs in a family situation. I’ve known people whose spouses have died, and I thought (silently, of course) that they just got the benefits of a divorce without the mess and stigma. That’s awful, but I know of at least one case in which I’m sure that is true.
It’s always nice chatting with you Uta.
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