The Window, by Rico Wallace

By Rico Wallace

It happened February 18th after coming off the graveyard shift, muscling freight, outside,

all night, on the dock. Ragged, cold, and tired, Mr. Z unlocked the door to a quiet home and sat at the kitchen table for a drink. He looked out the window at the freshly fallen snow. “It looks nice, before the world mixes it up,” he thought.

He noticed two sets of footprints along the house. “That’s not right, what are those doing there? It started snowing after I got to work and it stopped a few hours later. It’s Saturday morning. Nobody is ever out this early.”

The footprints were close to the house. Z walked to the living room where the footprints tracked up to the window. Someone had been there earlier, looking in. He swept a spider web from the windowsill.

He went outside to see where the tracks came from. He followed them down the street. They led up the stairs of a big gray house. Z stood in front looking up at the porch. The old lady that lived there was standing inside the doorway, smiling and waving at him. Z walked up the stairs.

She opened the door. “C’mon in Mr. Z,” she said.

“Are you the one who was by my window last night?” he asked.

“Yes, that was us,” she said.

“What were you doing there in the middle of the night?”

“I’m sorry, I wanted to see if it was the same as I remembered,” she said.

“I don’t understand,” Z said. “What do you mean? Did you know someone who lived there?”

“Yes. I had friends that lived there. But before that, I went to school there.” She took Z’s arm, “Come here and sit down,” she said. “Your house was first built and used as a school. It was a pretty little white building with red trim. The roof had a cupola with a small brass bell. I was the bell ringer . . . teachers’ pet. You look surprised.”

Z leaned back in the chair. “You know when I think about it, that doesn’t surprise me. I know the house is old, a hundred years. At times I’ve wondered what the town was like back then.”

The old lady smiled. “It was mostly farmland and fields around here. There were houses and some shops by the railroad tracks; the hardware store, barbershop, a grocery, and the little town hall.”

Z felt as if he was going into a trance. He squinted. Her face was transformed. Her skin was smooth. Her soft brown eyes were clear and bright. Her hair was long and curly with a rich auburn shine.

“And I met my husband in your living room,” she went on. “When we would have a dance on Saturday, we would invite the kids from the next county and have a mix. It was love at first sight. Now you know why we were looking through your window last night. The first time we met he took me out to the front porch and we watched the full moon rise in the east. We could see to the horizon. Do you want something to drink, Z?”

Z stood and rubbed his eyes. “I think I should go now,” he said. It was nice talking to you

Mrs. . . .?”

“It’s Mrs. McGuire,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to chat with you but you always seemed so busy, I didn’t want to bother you. I’m happy we finally had a chance to talk.”

Z went home and sat at his kitchen table, looking out the window. A funeral procession was going down the street. His wife came into the room.

“You’re home a little late today,” she said. “Did you work over in that awful weather, Hon?” “No, I was just down the street, but whose funeral is this,” he said.

“That’s Mrs. McGuire. She passed away a few days ago. They’re doing a drive-by at the house. Remember her in the purple hat walking down the street. She never said much but, hello. She’s with her hubby now, again, I’m sure. Why are you looking at me like that?”

Rico Wallace

By Judit Rajhathy

“I bet you don’t remember” is something I am told by almost everyone who hears my story of how we escaped from Hungary—to escape the brutality of Russian soldiers, tanks, and Commu-

nism. I thank God every day that my parents chose freedom. I thank God every day that they fled, leaving behind everything they ever knew, to arrive in Canada with one suitcase, two small kids, and paternal grandparents. But not without consequences . . . My heart breaks for the Ukrainians who have to flee everything they have ever known. They were living normal lives just like you and me until bombs began falling all around them, when their normal, happy lives were instantly turned into hell on earth. I was four when the ‘56 Hungarian Revolution broke out, fleeing on top of my father’s shoulders, feeling my parents’ terror as we ran for our lives. I remember my father grabbing a heavy suitcase from my grandfather’s hands that he was dragging behind because it was weighing him down and we had to run! I remember turning my head only to watch our family photographs fly away in the cold December wind, proof that we had a history simply fluttering away in the wind. My grandpa had tried to bring his life with him. No wonder I was so obsessive about taking photos of every little milestone when my own kids were growing up. We had so little proof of our lives before ‘56. I remember well. The nightmares ended when I was fifteen, but every single night for eleven long years I would wake up in a cold sweat reliving trauma—real or otherwise—of my father being shot repeatedly by Russian soldiers and my mother and grandmother being forced at gunpoint to do horrible things. Running in the cold winter night, dodging bullets and searchlights, away from everything that was my security, everything I ever knew. Leaving our home, our customs, habits, my favorite grandparents, and my doll, Sari Baba.

I watched my mother cry every night from frustration of having to speak a new language in her new job. Every single night, my grandmother, with tears running down her face, made me recite Petofi Sandor’s freedom fighting poem. I watched the neighborhood kids stone my brother who thought he was weird because he spoke another language.

Don’t get me wrong. I am forever grateful that we escaped Communism for freedom. We were so grateful to Canada and are so thankful today. As a result of being immigrants, my children and grandchild have the privilege of being raised in a democracy where opportunities are endless. But uprooting one’s life has scars that last a lifetime.

I learned that nothing is safe. I learned that everything in life is transitory. I learned that my abandonment issues had everything to do with this early childhood trauma. Childhood should be filled with security and innocence, not with terror.

Over 5.8 million Ukrainians have had to flee their country. The physical horror is one thing, but the psychological effects are there for a lifetime. I know.

I remember.

I, too, am an immigrant.

Judit Rajhathy

By Moonyeen King

President of the Board for Tepehua moonie1935@yahoo.com

Next year on Mother’s Day, take a bunch of flowers to the village and give one flower to every old woman you see. Perhaps you’ll bring a smile to her face.

Great Grandma Jarvis, who lived in the United States in the late 1800s, had 13 children, of whom only four survived. One of the survivors was called Ann Jarvis. She herself was pregnant with her sixth child at a time when the mortality rate was still tragically high, and death seemed like a form of family planning. This high death rate angered Ann, and she started a workshop so that mothers could get together and learn home hygiene in the hope their children would live. This informally became known as Mother’s Day.

One of Ann’s children, Ana Jarvis, in 1908 started a church meeting in which she carried a white carnation in honor of her mother, and this tradition caught on. In addition to the white carnation, the tradition of a visit to mother, if she were still alive, or a visit to the church if not, or both, because customary. It became very popular and every second Sunday in May was the unofficial Mother’s Day. Ana made it her work to promote this until, in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared it an official holiday honoring mothers’.

The commercial hog picked it up and ran with it, and Ana Jarvis watched as Mother’s Day turned into the largest consumer spending day of the year. She spent the rest of her life outwardly denouncing it and suing any company using the title “Mother’s Day” to no avail. Ironically, she had no children of her own.

Meanwhile, around the world Mother’s Day became entrenched in the curriculum every second Sunday in May, and continued to flourish. Unlike the rest of the world where the date is always changing, Mexico honors mothers but always on May 10th. Started in 1922 by Raphael Alducin, editor of the newspaper El Excélsior and who was sometimes called the Father of Mother’s Day, on this day mothers are celebrated with good food, loud music, and love expressed in flowers. As Mother’s Day in Mexico is not a national holiday, when it falls on a working day workers are usually allowed to leave early. The flowers for Mother’s Day here at Lakeside are so stunning that even Ana Jarvis would change her white carnation into a bouquet for Mum.

Mother’s Day actually started with the Greek and Romans as they celebrated once a year the powers of the Goddess Rhea, the mother of the gods. Always, somewhere there are some forgotten angels or village mothers whose children never had the chance for adulthood, mothers too close to the ground to get noticed. This author had the experience of this on a dark day, on a lonely walk thinking through sadness, and a gentleman got off his bike, obviously a gardener, and gave me a rose but made me wait until he had broken the thorns off. By the last thorn the sadness was forgotten and my heart sang all week.

As Rudyard Kipling said, “God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.”