Survivors Every One

Her domain extended further to the chicken coop whose inhabitants provided eggs until they became the family dinner. Oma was not shy about teaching us food management skills: how to catch a chicken, wring its neck, throw it on the wooden block and while using her handy axe, decapitate it. We little girls laughed in nervous delight as the chicken literally, ran around with its head cut off. Once it had stopped, she took it over to the wooden porch steps and sitting down on the bottom step with skirts billowing around her legs, she encouraged us to help her pluck the chicken’s feathers. Chicken noodle soup was that night’s dinner. Using all the chicken’s body parts, including feet & head, she made her own egg noodles to put in the soup. Everyone at the dinner table knew that the head, floating among the noodles, was off limits. It was Oma’s favourite delicacy; others could compete for the feet.

When my sister and I were both in all-day grade school our grandparents retired from farming, moved to a house in town, and sold their farm to my Dad and his brother. During their first winter storm in town, Opa stubbornly disregarded his wife’s warnings and insisted on walking to the variety store down the block. He succumbed to a major stroke and was discovered in the snow some hours later. At the age of 71, my dear Oma became a widow having never learned to read or write English, balance a cheque book, drive a car or go anywhere without her husband. She learned to live independently with minor help from her children, picked up enough of the English language to visit with her non-Mennonite neighbours, and lived a full and happy life until her sudden death at the age of 87.

Other Gramma, my mother’s mother, had a similar life trajectory except for one factor. Like Oma, she and her husband were sponsored by an Ontario Mennonite family, settling on that family’s farm to live and work. In contrast to Oma though, both Other Gramma and her husband had been part of the wealthy land-owner class in Russia. Once in Canada, they became farm labourers, worked hard for several years on another family’s farm, and finally saved enough money to buy their own land. Just then Other Gramma’s widowed mother-in-law arrived from Russia and, as was the custom in the Old Country, moved in with her eldest son and family. Tradition had it that upon the death of a father, the firstborn son assumed the role of family patriarch, thereby assuming responsibility for a widowed mother’s care. Remaining the family matriarch while in her son’s home, she was exempted from labour on the farm. Her son did not expect her to assist his wife in the domestic labour of the home either.

Other Gramma toiled silently and resentfully as her mother-in-law lorded it over her. Other Gramma’s domestic burden increased with the addition of one more family member to feed. Two children and ten years later, her 70 year old mother-in-law voluntarily left the family home for the independence she’d never before experienced. She moved into her own apartment in town. Why did she wait until then? How could she afford it? Did anyone help her? All these questions have been left unanswered. All those family stories were lost.