Ways and Means Part 2

So, back to Mom.

She arrived in England with 2 suitcases. I believe that she had a friend in Berlin ship a trunk - or something, because we had featherbeds from Germany and Mom's china (some of it that didn't get broken) that was her marriage china. There were some linens and Sabbath candlesticks from my Grandmother - also a Chanukah menorah from my Grandmother.

I doubt that all that was in her suitcases.

My Grandmother had four candlesticks for Shabbat. Two were taller than the others. She gave two to my Aunt Toni and two to my Mother and it was only later that Mom noticed that she had a mismatched pair. Carol got my mismatched pair which I had inherited from Mom. They were brass - not valuable except in emotional attachment.

They were lit every Friday of my young life wherever we were and I remember once they were lit in England and there came a banging at the front door. My Mother quickly hid the lit candles - it was two members of the British police wanting to know if my Father had any contact with his cousin (who seemed to be involved in black marketing). My Father didn't and cursed his cousin for being a stupid troublemaker. But I always remembered the fear of the police (in their long leather coats) and the hiding of the Jewishness of the candles.

So somehow my Mom managed to finagle into our four room cottage on the farm (Manor Farm Cottages, Whitchurch Hants.) a dining table and four chairs; an easy chair for my Father; a treadle sewing machine (more on that later) and a pump organ that lived in the kitchen and was MINE.

The cottage had no electricity, no gas and water came from a well in the foyer (which I was terrified of). Later they put in piped water but it came from a faucet outside and we had to heat it up on a kerosene stove to cook, wash dishes or take baths. There was also a wood stove which heated the whole house - not well as the basin and ewer in my room, from which I performed my morning ablutions, usually froze over.

There was an outhouse in the back of the garden and a bucket in the foyer for emergencies.

Upstairs we had two beds - a chest of drawers for my parents. For me a closet (with no back)
and a stand for the ewer and basin.

Later my Mother acquired a piano for me as she arranged for me to have piano lessons from the only other Jewish couple in town - Auntie Rose and Uncle Walter. They were Viennese and Auntie Rose was quite an accomplished pianist. I was her first pupil.

The kitchen was a room. There was a sink, but water had to be carried in. The cooking was done on a kerosene stove. There was no refrigeration. Milk was delivered by not all the way to the farm - I had to bring it home by picking it up on the way home from school. That was a twice a week event. My Mother fed the garbage to the chickens by boiling it into a mash.

The radio was our major source of information about the outside world and Winston Churchill's voice was a major part of my growing up. My parents hovered over the radio as though their lives depended on it - and in some ways it did. For years a "hobby" of mine was to think of places to hide, just in case. I never really focused on who I had to hide from - I just knew I had to be creative about hiding.

My parents somehow got involved in making jewelry as a hobby (?). They bought sealing wax and some small tools and created floral designs on buttons. My Father converted safety pins to catches and attached them to the back of the buttons. We sold these - somehow - to a lot of people.

Then my Mother made herself a winter coat (using that old treadle sewing machine) from an Army blanket. Soon half the town was lined up at our front door with Army blankets in hand and my Mother made coats for them all. She became the seamstress for the town and I remember before we left she made a wedding dress and all the bridesmaids dresses and WE were invited to the wedding. I still have the photograph of that.

Mom made almost all my clothes out of remnants from these customers and I was sometimes embarrassed when people recognized the clothes I wore as being the same material as their items. It wasn't often, but it happened.

I think Mom was basically very creative - I remember she and my Father poring over patterns trying to figure out what the English instructions meant. I've done some sewing in my time and I speak English well, and have had trouble with the instructions.

My Father worked on the farm. He got all the Sunday assignments because "Jews don' t care about working on Sunday" I don't remember that he got a lot of Saturdays off, but maybe he did. I often went with him to feed the pigs. I sometimes got to drive the cart and horse that we used to get about to the various sites where animals had to be fed.

But it was my Mother who found books for me and especially books about Jewish subjects geared towards children. She had a friend who lived in London. Mrs. Young. Erna Young had been the cook in the household where my Mom worked as a housemaid. They shared a room.
Erna had a son, older than I and I don't know where he lived. Mr. Young - when given the choice, went into the British Army. My Dad chose to work on a farm as he said he couldn't imagine killing fellow Germans.

I think my Mom envied Erna's life because she had it much easier living in London. First of all there were other Jews - but also life was hard for my Mother as she had to do all the household work without the aid of electricity. So Laundry was boiled in a tub over a wood fire, wrung out by hand and hung on lines to dry - or freeze - depending on the weather. Ironing was done by heating two irons on the wood fire stove and changing back and forth between them. Even with all this, my Mother laundered weekly and ironed everything including my pajamas and socks!!

My Mother also tended chickens and rabbits. The rabbits were ostensibly mine, and they were always escaping. I never put two and two together to realize that whenever one of my rabbits escapted we had rabbit stew for dinner. My Mother sometimes sold the eggs from the chickens but mostly we ate them ourselves.

Mom also tended a large vegetable garden where she grew potatoes, carrots, cabbages, brussel sprouts, onions - an anything else she could manage. Where she learned to do all this, I have no idea. She never lived on a farm before England.

Mom also "put up" jams, jellies, sauerkraut and preserved fruits and vegetables by canning.
Her industriousness and hard work were legendary and 30 years later when my foster Father called in the Los Angeles to tell me his wife, my foster Mother, had died he mentioned in the conversation that my Mother could squeeze more out of thruppence than anyone he ever saw.

He also told me that I was speaking English within 6 weeks of coming to his house.

When I was about 6, I remember my Mother telling me that there was just ONE GOD. It made perfect sense to me. Then she taught me the Shma.... She tried to teach me Hebrew but neither of us was disciplined enough to keep it up. But, in her way, Mom taught me about the major Jewish holidays and we celebrated them as best we could.