Fond Memories, by Gillian

In the basement I have a box labeled MEMORABILIA. In it are all kinds of bits and pieces from my childhood; mainly things which once belonged to my parents. It is indeed a motley collection. You will be glad I have brought only one to share.

My mother occasionally wore a headscarf the like of which I have never seen on or off anyone's head since, though I understand many of them were produced. It is made of silk, and rather than the usual flowers or paisley patterns or famous landmarks, it bears a map. These 'escape maps' as they were called, first originated in Britain in 1940, and  over three million were eventually produced throughout the war years by both Britain and then the United States. The intent was to help airmen downed behind enemy lines to find an escape route and evade capture, and I imagine a spy or two might have found them useful. They were made of silk primarily because so much of it was available from damaged parachutes. But silk is durable and light-weight but also warm - a blessing in an unheated plane, and, I should guess, if you found yourself trying to survive in Poland in January. This particular map is of part of Eastern Europe and The Balkans. Sadly, I never had a photo of Mum wearing it as headscarf, a purpose for which it was, of course, never intended, but at least I still have it, and in fact I can probably see her in it in my memories much more clearly than I would in an old faded photograph.

OK, an interesting little bit of trivia, but my fond memories of the scarf stretch out beyond those of Mum wearing it. To begin with, unlike most of the occupants of that memorabilia box, I remember when and how this one entered our lives.

I think I was six or seven, so it was somewhere in the late 1940's, when a young German man came to stay with us. I have absolutely no idea why, but my father brought him so maybe it had something to do with my dad's job. Dad had spent a little time in Germany after the war; something to do with rebuilding German industry with Allied help rather than with Communist assistance. The young man's name was, rather unremarkably, Hans, and I was completely captivated by him, as, though with a little more subtlety, was my mother and, I think, even my father.

He was the archetypal Arian, a Hitler poster-boy: tall, slim, piercing blue eyes and a shock of white-blond hair. He was also charming, and, apparently, charmed by all things English - including us. He bowed and clicked his heels, rising deferentially from his chair every time my mother or even I rose from ours. He asked my father interminable questions about anything and everything and clung to every word of his reply. This was fine when the topics were manly things like machinery and especially cars, but not so good when other responses were solicited.

'Oh vat iss thiss, please, in English?' asked poor innocent Hans, delicately fingering a daffodil.

'Oh, that's a dandelion,' replied my father, carelessly, as one to whom all yellow flowers are dandelions.

'Oh, ja, so this iss the dandelion!'

Poor Hans seemed enraptured. Luckily my mother was there to come to the rescue.

This was the first time in my young life that anyone had ever stayed with us. I don't remember how long Hans visited, but the days he was there were magic. I became a beautiful, charming adult. My mother became a vivacious teenager and my dad, at least by his own standards, became positively verbose. It was as if we were suddenly able to do everything a little better, but with less effort, than before. When he left, our beautiful, light, colorful, bubble burst. We floated back to earth and became ourselves once more. But none of us ever forgot that visit. It was as if this magical stranger had shown us, for a little while, who and what we could be.

Before he left, Hans gave my mother a gift in appreciation of her hospitality. There was no such thing as gift-wrap paper anywhere to be found either in Germany or Britain at that time, so very apologetically he handed her this little package wrapped very neatly in tattered old brown paper.

He further apologized for the gift itself. Gifts of any kind were not thick on the ground in either of our countries at that time, either, so he really did not need to apologize, but, this was all he had, he said, looking completely downcast.

All three of us looked in some confusion at this cloth map. The history of 'escape maps' only surfaced many years later. If Hans had any idea of it's true purpose, he said nothing. He shrugged. 'It iss ... jou know,' he gestured over his head, lightly skimming his beautiful hair, 'for the head covering ..'

British Silk Escape Map Fig 1

The light dawned. Mum immediately popped it over her head, knotting it loosely at her neck and striking a kind of would-be film star pose. It was, in fact, a strange kid of headscarf, but my mother didn't care - and anyway she loved maps - and I was too young to judge. My dad smiled appreciatively. To him, I think my mother was beautiful whatever she wore.

'Ja. Iss goot!' Hans approved.

A few minutes later he caught the local bus into town and we never, as far as I know, saw or heard from him again.

For the rest of my life, as my knowledge of World War Two progressed, I wondered endlessly about Hans and his part in the war, and before. Had he been in the Hitler Youth? Almost certainly, I would think. Was he in the Gestapo? The SS? Or a mere foot-soldier? He had no visible scars or missing limbs or a tell-tale limp. He looked too robust to have been in a concentration camp; neither did he have numbers on his arm. Perhaps he hadn't lived in Germany at all? But he did soon after the war. And finally, most puzzling of all, why and how did he possess a British escape map?

British Silk Escape Map Fig  2

British Silk Escape Map Fig 3

British Silk Escape May Fig 4

I shall never know the answers to any of my questions, and finally I have become at peace with the handsome and charming Hans, whoever he was; whatever he once had been. Now, I simply find it incredibly ironic that one of my most treasured objects, and all the fond memories that go with it, was given with such sincere humility, by a German. It took a German to cast, just for a few days, a cheerful light to brighten my corner of the endless gray gloom that was Postwar Britain.

© October 2016 

About the Author  

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30-years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years. We have been married since 2013.

Nostalgia Regained, Gillian

I have always thought myself blessed; I can live the time and place where my nostalgia takes me any time I want. There are countless books, and especially movies, about Britain during World War Two - the time and place of my early years. There are not as many of the later 1940's, or the '50's and '60's, but there are enough. If I want to return to my childhood amongst remote farms, I can watch and re-watch the old PBS/BBC series, All Creatures Great and Small, which feels to me to be an almost exact replica of my childhood environment.

If I want to feel that stirring patriotism of the war years, emotions which I think I recall but in fact was probably too young, I can watch the old black-and-white movies of the time, many of which are cloyingly sentimental, such as, In Which We Serve, The First of the Few, or the unabashed propaganda of Mrs. Miniver.

In the '50's and '60's came an era of more realistic movies dealing with the many issues remaining after the war: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Billy Liar, and Georgy Girl.

 

Or those films whose only purpose was to make us laugh, like the wonderful selection starring Alec Guinness.  

And then, along came The Beatles with It's a Hard Day's Night, which appeared in 1964, a year after I graduated from college. A nostalgic ride if ever there was one. 

In the year of my birth alone, 1942, Britain produced over 50 movies set in Britain. Yes, it is easy for me to take that trip down memory lane any time I feel so inclined; which I did quite frequently over the  years. Opportunities for nostalgic trips via the movies are even more plentiful, of course for Americans. But most other first-generation immigrants like me are not offered this escape; at least it is not immediately available from the local library, and probably not even these days from Netflix and the like. How many movies are there that would have you jump aboard and be immediately transported back in time to 1940's Latvia or 1950's Guatemala?

But in later years something seemed to go wrong. I no longer delighted in this armchair time-travel the way I used to. In fact, rather the opposite. Movies, either fiction or documentaries, depicting my time and place of nostalgia, whether made back then or current depictions of it, tended rather to depress and anger me. They make me cry. They are sexist, classist, xenophobic, homophobic; all the ists and ics you can think of. They are bigoted, 100% white and 100% heterosexual. They are all about the unthinking, unquestioning, superiority of men and equally unquestioningly subservient women. They made me question not only my memory but my very sanity. This is the piece of history upon which I gaze with such affection? It has been said that nostalgia is a longing for a time and place which never existed. I fear that must be what I suffered from for much of my life. Sadly, I began to see it more clearly for what really did exist, and did not particularly like it.

I rather blamed my efforts, over the last few years, to become a more spiritual person. This has, as indeed it is part of it's purpose, raised my consciousness; allowed me to see things more clearly, as they are, rather than as a blurred concoction of my own designing. But I hated that I was robbed of my nostalgia; my place of escape on a bad day.

More recently I have turned yet another corner. I can still take that magic carpet ride. I can still enjoy depictions of my past. It is simply that I have lost those tinted lenses through which I once gazed with love and longing.

I wouldn't go back there if you paid me!

In 1952, when Alan Turin was arrested for his homosexuality, I was an English schoolgirl of 12. What hope was there for me to deal with, or even acknowledge, my own homosexuality? Not that anyone knew anything of Turin at the time, all he had done for the Allied war effort was kept under the secure wraps of the Official Secrets Act for decades, but his terrible story is emblematic of the attitudes of the times.

So now I again enjoy movies and books portraying that life I once lived. They no longer make me angry. They simply offer pictures of a past which, thankfully, no longer exists. They remind me of the many ways in which we have moved forward, for all that at times it seems that we have not. I can recognize that past of which I was a part, with at least a modicum of objectivity. I neither hate it nor love it. It once was, and now it's gone. Those spiritual teachers/guides would be proud of me. I am truly, at least in this one instance, living in THE NOW!

© May 2016 

About the Author 

 I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30-years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years. We have been married since 2013.

Road Trip by Gillian

I came honestly by my addiction to road trips. I was introduced to them by my mum and dad. In Britain during, and for years after, World War Two, private cars were relatively rare; gas was severely rationed. But as we staggered into the fifties, our world became a little brighter and Dad took his old car down off the blocks where it had rested for a decade. He worked lovingly on it for some time, then lo and behold suddenly one Sunday afternoon we were off to the Welsh mountains. Before long the afternoon jaunts graduated to day excursions and thence to a week in Cornwall and two weeks in Scotland. There was never any discussion of camping, not a very attractive prospect in the wet cold British weather, but we were on a low budget and stayed in small back-street B & B’s. These were nothing like their upscale modern U.S. namesakes, but simply a spare room in a very modest house, usually sharing the bathroom and breakfast with the owners. In this style we went to many different parts of the country and met many interesting people.

Perhaps, had I not been an only child, I would have hated these vacations and even the day trips the way many modern kids hate spending hours in the car. But I had the luxury of the back seat to myself, without noisy squabbling siblings to dig elbows in my ribs or squash me against the door handle and demand the windows be open; or closed. I never once recall asking, even silently in my own head, “Are we there yet?” I think it was a safe and warm haven to me, shut away in this metal box, just the three of us.

But it was my mother who turned it from an OK activity to something I truly loved. Mum kept up something of a running commentary as we passed through the farms and towns. She loved history and regaled Dad and me, though he never responded except occasionally to glance back at me in the rear-view mirror and wink, with fascinating tidbits about different places; not boring things like dates but little anecdotes. At the time I believed it all to be true, though looking back I’m not completely convinced, though she certainly was a very knowledgeable woman. Apart from history, she would make up silly stories about a farm we just passed, or the vicar of a village church, or the family in a car we met going the other way. There were still not many cars on the roads then, so seeing one was just an invitation to Mom’s imagination. Most of all, she loved to laugh, and if there was nothing too immediately amusing in the vicinity, she would create something. She made herself giggle with some of her imagined stories, and she paid great attention to license plates, making them into acronyms or rhymes.

My mother leaps up in my memory quite often, and usually it’s when something comes up that I know would have made her giggle. During football games, for instance, not that I can imagine Mum ever enjoying football, but how she would giggle at some of the commentary, when they say things like, “He wasn’t doing much when he was an Eagle, but as a Panther he’s really come into his own.” When she stopped her giggles she would then, I know, weave some wonderful fairy story around this failed eagle which somehow morphed into a more successful big cat.

Anyway, having made a short story long, that was my introduction to road trips; followed, inevitable by a hiatus of decades given over to work and family. Then, in celebration of a new millennium, Betsy and I bought our VW camper van and embarked on our own series of road trips. I haven’t had time to count them up, but they must number around twenty-five for a total time of maybe a year, though we rarely are away for more than three or four weeks at a time.

We have been many places from the Mexican border to, and into, Canada; and from coast to coast. We have visited every one of the lower forty-eight states, and camped in most of them.

We have seen sights we had always wanted to see but not had the chance, and chanced upon things we had no idea of. Unlike taking a plane, when the best you can possibly hope for is a journey that is uneventful, road trips are never uneventful; nor do you want them to be, though it’s good when the wonderful surprises well outnumber the bad ones. We have of course had our share of those less positive - flat tires both on the road and in campgrounds, loading up in the morning all ready to go and the van won’t start; freeway accidents only narrowly averted and near misses with tornadoes, hail storms, and forest fires.

I understand that one day in the not too distant future one of us is going to reach the age where camping road trips are not such an attractive option. It’s unclear at this time which of us will reach that stage first, Betsy or me or Brunhilda as we call the van, mostly though not always, with great affection. That will be a sad day, whatever the reason. But one of the blessings of aging seems to be the ability to accept with relative ease that the good times of the moment will inevitably come to an end, but only to be replaced by other, different, good times. We can love taking out our favorite memories and dusting them off for further enjoyment, but at the same time always creating new ones while continuing, with luck, to live without regrets. And I suspect that my most frequently re-visited memories, as long as I’m privileged to have memories, will be of oh those many road trips.

© 15 August 2014 

About the Author 

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.