Has the Life gone out of Family life?

There are a lot of people in the world who do not have much. Well, right after WW-II there was not much for anyone in Europe either. The years after the devastation were spartan, and yet we were rich. Now that we are approaching the holiday season, it is good to remember the blessings and what we saw through the eyes of children. At my parent's home our life was a bit like it is everywhere today. The parents were busy and we only met at the lunch and dinner table. In between, if we were not in school, we could pretty well do as we pleased. We were not a religious family, although all major holidays were celebrated.

We lived on a large farm that was pretty well depleted during the war and when Dad inherited it, there was no money to restore it or for upkeep except from what it produced. As everyone knows, a farm is a bottomless pit for money. Because everything was still done with horses and manually, there were several hired hands, men outside and women in the house. They all lived there in their own apartments and rooms. Everyone needed to be paid. I usually had the chore of delivering mid-afternoon food and coffee to the workers in the fields. Almost everything not canned for the household was sold to make money.

I also remember the orchard and gardens with vegetables and flowers. Strawberries were my favourite. But greed had its own reward. One day I was too late getting away from breakfast. I wanted to snatch a few ripe strawberries before someone picked them all to sell. Oh well, I tried some that were only blushed at one side. Not bad. I do not know how many I ate, but that afternoon, night and next day I was deathly sick. I was told I had cyanide poisoning. It had knocked me out. I vomited alot. Doctors came to the house in those days, but they had nothing to pump out the stomach with exept give you something to make you vomit. To date I am cautious about eating strawberries as they often give me a stomach ache if they were picked unripe even after they ripen in the store. See how easy it is to accumulate poisons and retain them in the body?

My favourite activity was inspecting everything. I loved sticking my fingers in the angora rabbit cages and let the rabbits sniff my fingers. I think they liked me. Then I would go and see what apples were getting ripe. Plums, pears, raspberries, oh and later in fall the bags of filberst (hazelnuts) and soft shelled walnuts we harvested. Do you know that black rye bread with some sweet butter and halves of fresh walnuts, not rancid ones like most nuts today because they are treated so we can't make any grow, is so delicious! Nature was a delightful treasure house of discoveries every day.

In the barn were cows and the hired hand let me "help" throw down the hay that was loosely stored in the mow. I still remember the embarrassment when he left me to work away while he did something else. I kept dropping whisps of hay down the hole in the center of the feed aisle until it rose up to meet me. I thought I had done alot. I kept yelling for someone to put up the ladder so I could get down. Nobody seemed to hear me. Finally I decided that this pile of hay is probably soft and I could just fall on top of it. I jumped on the pile but found that the center was harder than the side so I tilded and zoomed down the side of the hay pile and landed on my butt on the cobblestone aisle. The cows were shocked and pulled on their halters. The cow right next to where I landed stepped backwards into the milk pail and dumped it into the gutter. The fellow who was milking at the time jumped up and swore as he was getting splattered with milk. His stool flew against the wall and on its way hit a cat that tore away screaching. I snuck away as fast as my sore bum would take me.

In summer and when we were not yet in school, in December, we went to live with Mom's parents. They lived in a town that had been heavily bombed during the war. I remember the empty and rubbely basements that had these long tubes sticking out. There was always a stretch of these before we could go walking in the forest.

Grandfather was a minister. His church was destroyed so he had church twice on Sundays in his livingroom and study. We were always involved with everything. On Saturday afternoon we helped carry all the furniture out into a storeroom. I later got to push the polishing block around over the wood floors that were always freshly waxed. Then chairs were taken out of storage and set up. By then, after a job well done, we were starved and looked forward to the evening meal of Kruska, a stiff cooked cereal made from coarsely ground whole wheat, whole rye, barley, some oats where the husks were not totally removed, and extra bran, wheat germ, and raisins, and served with usually blueberry conserve. After all in late summer we picked most of them in the forest and got ourselves covered with ticks that we learned to remove with oil. It was not a meal I liked, because the husks made me gag if I got one in my throat, but it went down when I was hungry.

Our aunt always took us out for a walk, or to go shopping. This was an every day event because there were no refrigerators. Milk had to be picked up every morning, and a few fresh rolls and pretzels, butter, vegetables, meat every Wednesday and Saturday, eggs if we were baking. There was usually boiled meat on Thursdays because a woman came to help with the ironing and on Sundays we got roasted veal. All other meals were vegetables, beans, peas, lentils, and grains, occasionally some fish on Fridays'. We never heard of spaghetti, lol.

The house was like a townhouse and Grandparents lived on two floors. The third and fourth floors were occupied by someone else. The basement was divided into locked storage areas for the two tenants. The house was on a street that was going up a hill and behind the townhouses were gardens terrassed into several levels on a steep rise with only a tiny patch of green behind a wrought-iron fence in front. So we would go up all the stairs to the top of the garden that belonged to Grandfather. There were a few chickens and two sheep. They provided some of the manure for the compost pile that fertilized the small garden every year. My aunt taught me to fork over the compost pile. We also spent time every week cutting the bits of lawn with scissors because we did not have a lawnmower. That was story-telling time. The most satisfying fairytales were woven into the mindless excercise and we were usually done so quickly that a story did not get quite finished until next time...

We baked spicy and nutty Christmas cookies and Auntie had a really neat calendar for Advent that counted the days till Christmas. Instead of a paper calendar where you opened a new window for every day before Christmas, she attached 28 little packages for each of us on a ribbon that was hung horizontally on the wall in the livingroom. Every day we could open one. Sometimes it contained a cookie, nuts, a Christmas tree hanging, a little card, something for our dolls, raisins, little things, but it was so much fun.

In preparation for the holidays she got us black craft paper and taught us how to design and cut out church windows. We covered the openings with different colours of celophane paper. Then we shaped them to stand on the window sills facing outward. From the inside we set candles so they would glow and people passing could see them.

Also Grandmother taught us to knit. Every Christmas we finished a scarf and hat or a pair of mittens or socks that we wrapped in fancy paper. On Christmas eve, dressed as angels, we flitted around the neighbourhood and discreetly left our presents on the doorsteps of people where we had been guided by one of the church helpers. All the while we sang carols with our guides and then back home were greeted by Grandmother who asked, "Now is it not true you feel happy because you gave someone else something that was work to you?" Yup. I'll never forget it either.

Somehow life is not like this any more. Television, computer games, chat, endless trips to the hockey arena, figure skating, whatever else, and everyone doing their own thing somehow alienate us from each other. Somehow even what we do for or with others does not give that feeling of belonging and participating because it is combined with so much technology. Yet everyone seems tired, or apathetic?

In those days the wool we used was unravelled from sweaters we no longer wore, washed and sometimes redyed. One of us kids held the new skein while another wound it into a ball. We had dolls, one each, but they were restored and redressed every year. Our own clothes were lengthened and mended until it was impossible to make them fit. You wore aprons to keep clean. We were cautioned to be careful with everything. We built dollhouses from cardboard boxes when we were sick and had to stay in bed. Or we got a book to read. I learned to read before I started school. Stories do that to you. Today most young people can't read or write properly.

This all probably sounds like the TV series the Waltons' but it was a life that engaged everyone in the family in almost all the tasks in the home and around. That is not child labour. That is teaching responsibility and togetherness. We were happy. It was a life that truly lived.

Shucks, lets get to work and stop reminiscing. Sign up with Immunotec and get healthy… or maybe help others to get healthy too: Call customer service at 1-888-917-7779 or write to info@immunotec.com and quote ID # 226211 to place your order. To join as a distributor you can also join here or through Customer Service. As a distributor you can start small around $100 and less or properly around $400. I look forward to working with you.