Dedicated to Mother

Always very early, together with the rising sun, our mother got up and began her daily tasks. Only in the evening, when the sun had long since slipped behind the forest, did her day come to an end — so that the next morning she could begin everything again.

As a child I did not yet understand that Mother had so much work and so many worries. Sometimes I even saw tears in her eyes. Now I know that hardly any of us passes through life untouched by hardship. You notice that only after experiencing it yourself. How much I would like, even now, to thank her for all the warmth and love she gave to her family.

Our little home was always warm and cosy. There was always bread on the table, and there was no lack of milk, meat or butter. We were never short of food. If someone happened to arrive at mealtime, Mother never failed to put a plate out for them. On Saturday evenings she would take fragrant food from the oven. Scrubbed floors covered with home-woven striped rugs, and a delicate green asparagus fern at the back-room window, made the home warm and beautiful. I also remember the preparations before Christmas. Beer was brewed. Father grew rye and barley malt for it. When the grain had sprouted to the right length, it was dried and ground fine. A mash was made from it, then shaped into loaves like bread and baked in pans in the oven for three hours. When they came out, I wanted to lick the caramelised corners of the pans at once, they tasted so good.

During the holidays Father went to the mill and returned with a whole load of sacks. He stacked them on a bench in the pantry. There were several kinds of fine flour, semolina and groats. Mother made very tasty rye bread from fine flour. The dough was put in the bread trough near the warm flue to sour, with a fur coat laid over it for warmth. It was beaten several times with a wooden paddle. We children kept secretly tasting it with our fingers, although we were forbidden to do so.

None of us remains a child forever. Our time also came to arrange our own lives and leave our father's home — one went into the army, another made a new home through marriage.

So our parents were left together with their work and daily chores. They kept waiting for their children to come home, especially for Sunday visits. Mother said Father could hardly leave the window because he was always watching to see whether someone's head was already appearing from the direction of the park.

Of course we visited as often as each of us could. Buses ran frequently then, tickets were very cheap and it was possible to travel back and forth even several times in a day.

Mother came to see me off at the bus. She always took a lantern so that the way would be lighter, safer and less lonely.

I feel guilty that the home they built with so much work and hardship has been abandoned by us children. During the building, Father even gave a workman his new boots as Christmas wages because there was so little money. Why was there not one among the three of us who went to live beside our parents? Each of us had already made a home elsewhere and set off along our own path in life.

The book of life has turned its pages many times. The old ones have found their resting place.

Yet it hurts my heart to see the buildings still standing and decaying, where years ago our hardworking parents lived and cared for their home.

The path between the house and the barn, where our mother once walked carrying two buckets, is now overgrown with grass.

But the larch by the well, planted by Grandfather and turning green every spring, will remain to remember the life of that family, because winds and storms have not managed to destroy it.