had the advantage. “Over my dead body,” she spat. “You will never see your daughter again.”
SEPARATED
My father went to the chief of police in Toronto, who contacted the chief of police in Berlin. He discovered that he had no legal right over me while I was in Germany. My mother was a German citizen, and he wasn’t. I was in her country. What’s more, if he were to go to Germany to get me, he would risk being jailed, not because my grandparents would have him arrested but because my mother had the wicked foresight to make such arrangements.
My parents separated but remained in Toronto. One day Bari was driving in the city and saw my mother just ahead of him. He sped up and cut in front of her so she couldn’t get away. In the middle of an intersection he jumped from his car and knelt on the pavement beside her door, begging her to bring me home. Delayed cars honked and tried to get around them. She refused him mercy and repeated, “Over my dead body. You will never see your daughter again.”
Eight months later Ingeborg called my dad. “If you want Belma, you can go get her. She’s with a woman who has a private adoption agency in Toronto.” She gave him her number. He immediately called, and the woman confirmed I was there. Identifying himself as my father, he said he would come right away to pick me up.
He arrived at the address. Ingeborg was there with a woman she introduced as the proprietress. She had divorce papers in her hand and demanded that my father sign them before he could see me. In desperation, he signed them. Ingeborg left, and the woman said, “I’ll be right back. I’ll go get Belma.”
My dad waited. The woman didn’t return. She had disappeared out the back door. My father not only discovered the place wasn’t an adoption agency but found out I wasn’t in Canada. He had fallen prey to one of Ingeborg’s schemes. He later learned that she had paid the woman to deceive him.
After this incident my father was unable to cope and had to seek psychiatric help. It would be another 19 years before he would see me.
HEAVEN
On the other side of the ocean, however, I was thriving.
One of my richest memories is of spending time outside the city with Oma and Opa on a garden property they had purchased in 1904. We went there every weekend. Without a car it was a 45-minute walk from the underground train near our home in Berlin.
Our garden weekends could not have been more heavenly. My memories of those days—the contented chatter between my grandparents as they worked, the clean air thick with the scent of flowers, the warm breezes, the security—helped sustain me through the horrendous years to come. It was a beautiful garden filled with love and smiles. I’ll never forget walking hand in hand along the pathways with Oma, admiring each unique flower and exploring their centres with my nose to find the sweetest aromas.
I loved to be with Oma. Slim, with dark curly hair, she always wore a skirt or dress. I never saw her in slacks, not even in the garden. She was always a lady.
Opa was fun. A little taller than Oma, he was a jolly man. He loved to laugh at life. He, too, was always dressed respectably, including in the garden, where he grew and looked after every kind and colour of flower and fruit tree.
After the war everyone preserved their own produce. Oma canned everything. She loved to put down my favourite fruits—sour cherries, pears, raspberries, plums.
While my grandparents worked, I played house with my doll, rode my tricycle down the pathways, made roads in my little sandbox, and played with Purzel. She and I were great friends. I dressed her in a wedding dress, and we all laughed, seeing her strut with a veil.
The house in the country was a small one-room painted-board structure with no insulation. It contained a plain bench, a chesterfield and a table. At night we put the table on the bench and made a bed where we all slept together.
My great-grandparents had a little house right beside us on the same property. They also came on weekends from their Berlin apartment. They visited us in the garden and brought me candies. I was raised as if they were my grandparents and my grandparents were my parents. A lovely family! I was a blessed child.
Our lifestyle was simple, but it was more than adequate. It seemed abundant and, in today’s materialistic world, even enviable.
Our refrigerator was a hole in the ground. Opa climbed down into it and filled a basket for Oma to pull up with a rope. The bathroom was an outhouse, but it seemed perfectly normal, and no one minded. We didn’t have running water, and neither did anyone else. We had a pump with an endless supply of cool, clean water. A coal stove and candles took the place of electric heat and lights. We went to bed when the sun went down and got up when it rose.
A FOUNDATION OF FAITH
Every night we prayed to Jesus, and sometimes Oma told me stories about Him, even though she never spoke of having a personal relationship with Him. Faith probably came down the family line. I can imagine that her mother prayed with her the way she did with me. Oma certainly raised me on Christian principles of honesty, integrity, respect for elders and other godly values. We also celebrated the accepted Christian holidays. Both Christmas and Easter were special.
At Christmas we went to the Roman Catholic Church to see the nativity scene. We also bought a tree, never bigger than me. Opa measured it and said, “Okay, that’s the tree.” We took it home, put it on the table and decorated it.
All our food was homemade, except the oranges on the lazy Susan in the middle of the table. This was the only time of year we had them. Every delicious treat was placed on it. We gave it a twirl, and whatever stopped in front of each of us, we ate. We swung that lazy Susan all night—just Opa, Oma and me, and we spent a lot of time together. Family was everything.
At Easter we were in the garden house. Oma got up at five o’clock in the morning and put Easter eggs in the flower buds outside. When the sun rose and warmed the petals, they opened, and there were the eggs! One year Opa dressed up in an Easter bunny suit and hopped past us. I thought about it for a moment. “Oma,” I said, “I don’t want the Easter bunny. I want Jesus.” I told her I thought I had been born in the wrong time period. I so would have liked to be born when Jesus lived on earth. Even then, when I was so little, I longed for Him.
PREPARATION FOR LIFE
My grandparents influenced me in many life matters. Among important things I learned from them was how to handle money wisely. They taught me to take a penny and stretch it to ten—a skill that prepared me for the work I do now.
Like so many, we had very little after the war. I went shopping with Oma every week. We wrote a list and visited four stores. In each store we priced the items and recorded the prices. Then we went back to the store that had the best price. Whatever money was left, we hid under the table between the wash pans and saved it.
At five years of age I learned to save. Oma got me play money and showed me how to count it. I stared into her twinkly green-brown eyes as she taught me, loving every moment with her. She made pretend grocery lists of things for me to buy with the money and a game of seeing how much I could save. I played shopping with my little cash register for hours, lining up make-believe money and dolls and pretending to take them to the store to buy things.
Oma also gave me an allowance of ten cents every week, as long as I was a good girl. She said, “We’re going to spend five cents and save five.” We went to the store with five cents, and she helped me learn how to spend it. She pointed out how value increased through wise
