The Human Spirit

The director of our senior hall tells us to trust that she picks engaging speakers for the monthly Life Learning Lecture Series and to come even if the topic doesn’t sound particularly interesting. I’m glad I took that advice this week. I’ve been in a ‘down mood’ lately with no discernible explanation for feeling that way so I was afraid that listening to a recounting of personal experiences about living in Nazi prison camps might add to my melancholy. But it didn’t. In fact, afterward I was intrigued with exploring the unanswered questions posed at the lecture: “How do you survive surviving something as heinous as the Holocaust? How are people able to accept the past injustices and put faith in humanity again? 

The lecturer, a medical anthropologist, wrote a well-researched book based on her mother’s personal accounts. The back cover summary reads: “Jadwiga Lenartowicz Rylko, known as Jadzia (Yah’-jah), was a young Polish Catholic physician at the start of World War II. Suspected of resistance activities, she was arrested in January 1944. For the next fifteen months, she endured three Nazi concentration camps and a forty-two day death march, spending part of this time working as a prisoner-doctor to Jewish slave laborers. [The book] A Polish Doctor in the Nazi Camps follows Jadzia from her childhood and medical training, through her wartime experiences, to her struggles to create a new life in the postwar world.”

Barbara Rylko-Bauer gave a spell-binding lecture and if you get a chance to see her, don’t shy away. She’s been traveling all over the country on a book tour and has even been invited to speak in Paris this summer. The book has won many prestigious awards, has gotten a lot of media attention and I can't believe Barbara lives close-by. The lecture was more than just another survivor’s story. It showcased a unique mother/daughter experience, of a woman who didn’t talk about her wartime years until late in her life, of the two of them going on a pilgrimage back to Poland and Germany to retrace and document Jadzia’s life including her time spent working for the U.S. Army after the war helping to treat concentration camp survivors. That's where she met and married another Holocaust camp survivor before resettling in Michigan. She was 100 years old when she died.

One thing that the author stressed throughout her lecture is how people in the camps found ways to “resist” and increase their odds of surviving and to hold on to their own humanity. For example, at a slave labor work camp the women would smuggle sewing thread they were making for German uniforms back to their barracks where they would braid it into chains that they used to crochet socks. In that same work camp she slept in a 10’ x 10’ room with thirteen other women, sleeping on a straw covered floor “like sardines in a can.” And the ‘crime’ that got her arrested and imprisoned in the first place? She belonged to a small group of friends who listened in secret to a radio which was against the law in occupied Poland. 

After the lecture I went through Mr. Burger’s take-out line to pick up some lunch. It’s green shakes season in honor of St. Patrick’s Day and after that thought-provoking lecture I needed some comfort food. (Who am I fooling? I always want/need comfort food.) I took my lunch over to a place that overlooks a contributory river to Lake Michigan. My husband and I used to go there often after he became wheelchair bound so the place weeps with widowhood memories. Its serenity made it a perfect place to reflect on how people survive surviving heinous life experiences. Where does the strength come from to pick up the pieces and go on? And if they can do that, surviving ordinary life experiences should be a piece of cake.

The ice on the river was gone, the current was strong and it carried a large fallen tree along at a fast pace. Spring is here and I realized that’s the source of half of my melancholy. I don’t even have my wintertime To-Do list done and it’s almost time to roll out a spring list. Why do I (we?) get caught up into micromanaging life to the point that not doing something like cleaning the kitchen cabinets can make me feel like a failure or lazy or old? Why do I turn stuff like that into a big, mood-alternating deal? And, for me, that’s why going to lectures like the one I heard on Thursday is important. They’re a good kick in the butt for getting lost in the minutia of life. No one is going to die if I don’t throw out my outdated vinegar or donate the biscotti pan I never use. No one cares what I do or don’t do…and that’s the source of the other half of my melancholy. Woo is me and shame on me at the same time. I’ve got some broad-brush, important things going on in my life like good health, freedom and financial security and if there are missing pieces---oh, well, I'll find them when I find them. The human spirit is amazingly renewable. ©

If anyone is interested in an in-depth review of A Polish Doctor in the Nazi Camps click this link:  The Boston Review  The author's website is here.
 

Tall Tales and Little Fish

My husband was a born storyteller. He honed the skill at an early age by listening to his dad who had a reputation for telling long-winded stories that often left his listeners laughing. Like father, like son. It was also a rare occasion that anyone could pull one over on Don when it came to telling the difference between a tall tale and a truth filled story. Then I entered his life and I believe one of the main reasons Don fell in love with me was because, when we first met, I was able to hook him into a fairytale about my career choice that I dragged on for 3 or 4 weeks before I finally told him the truth.

To this day I don’t know what made me tell Don that I raised tropical fish in my basement and shipped them mail order for a living---probably I didn’t want to tell this stranger I’d just met at a bowling alley/bar where I actually worked for fear he’d turn out to be a stalker or just plain not my idea of a date-able guy. But I kept in character and answered his many questions a lot easier than anyone who values Truth should have been able to accomplish. I didn’t even own a goldfish at the time! I had been researching the idea of setting up a fresh water tank so I had some useful facts and fancy fish names stuffed in the corners of my brain. The rest I just made up on the fly.

Week after week he’d come by when he knew the women’s league I was bowling on would be finishing up and he’d talk me into having a drink with him and his friend. I had a crush on his friend so it wasn't a hard sell. Always, Don was full of fish questions: How did I get customers? How did I ship my fish across the country so they wouldn’t die in route? Would I help him set up a tank? What was my favorite species of fish? “Oh, I couldn’t choose a favorite,” I told him “but the Crowntail Bettas and Black Moors sell the best.” When I finally decided the joke had gone on long enough and I told him he had fallen for a fairytale hook, line and sinker, he got a sheepish look on his face that, at the time, I couldn’t interpret. And the rest of the night he was uncharacteristically quiet so I thought that was the end of it. No more stopping by the bowling alley for this guy.

I found out later on that his friend, who was at the table when I made my confession, had told their fellow co-workers in the diemakers department that a girl had pulled one over on the King of Storytelling. In GM factory talk you can read that as: The king of bullshit just got out bullshitted big time! The following week Don showed up at the bowling alley, again, and he decided as a punishment for my big fish tale we had to go out on a date the following afternoon. Guess what we did on that date. He dragged me to a dime store where I helped him pick out two goldfish and all the supplies that went with the happy couple. The rest, as they say, is history.

This story came out of my memory vault today because I was trying to come up with a theme to write about for one of my infamous (and usually tongue-in-cheek) “Sunday Sermons.”  I had goggled ‘inspirational topics’ but I couldn’t get in the mood for serious thought that might come off sounding preachy if I didn’t write it right. Then I goggled ‘Toastmasters Club topics’ and---bingo---there, I found a suggestion to pull something out of your past that changed your life and work your speech around that memory. One thought led to another and I got to wondering if I had told Don the truth that first night we met---that I worked in the floral industry---would my life have turned out differently? He might not have been intrigued enough without my “unusual career” to keep coming back. He certainly wouldn’t have been kidded unmercifully by his co-workers for being bested by a woman. The King of Bullshit lost his crown! We've gotta meet this girl!

If this blog entry were the bones to a speech I’d written for a Toastmaster’s Club the finished product might hold an audience’s attention, but as a Sunday morning inspirational piece, it falls flat. Instead of teaching the value of being a person of high morals, it holds up an example of where telling a whooper of a lie led to love. Sunday mornings should be a time to reflect on the intrinsic values that hold civilizations together, shouldn’t they? A lie, fib, practical joke---whatever you want to call what I did---is not one of those intrinsic values, so I hope no one with a young, impressionable mind is reading this. It's bad enough that the Angels who look out for soul mates are up there laughing at my hand-wringing dilemma on whether or not I should seek out a confessional booth this fine Sunday morning or to sing their praises for letting a tall tale and little fish bring two people together so many years ago. ©