3 minute read
Unconditional love
AGOTHA “AGI” STERNBERG
As I reflect on the Christmas season, I think of all the children that were dreaming and hoping for that perfect gift. I remember my boys’ faces years ago as they lit up when they received the “perfect” gift. Now I get to witness the same look on the faces of my grandchildren and great grandchildren as they experience the magic of Christmas and see their wishes come true.
I recall my childhood in Budapest, Hungary, where poverty was the norm. I did not know we were poverty-stricken because my parents provided what they could to make our “dreams” come true. There was only one time that I can remember when I didn’t get what I was hoping for.
I had a doll when I was little, which had a soft cloth body. The head was made of beautiful and fragile porcelain. I played endlessly with that doll and one of my favorite pastimes was to swing with her. We had a swing in the doorway (indoor entertainment) in the living quarters and I was swinging one day with my favorite doll in hand. Unfortunately, the swing swayed to one side and the doll’s head hit the doorway and smashed its head into little pieces.
I cried and tried to console the doll, and myself, hoping that soon she would have a new head. I was told by my parents that the doll hospital was working hard on making the heads, but it would take a long time as many dolls’ heads were broken. As I waited for the new head, I played with my doll as she was, headless. I dressed her, took her on walks, and loved her like before the accident. It didn’t matter that she had no head, I talked to her and loved her as she was. Unfortunately, her fixed head never did come back from the doll hospital, but I played with her and loved her anyway.
A few years later, in 1956, my family escaped Hungary and were taken in by a Swiss family in Kirchberg, Switzerland. The first Christmas (1957) in Switzerland I was given two dolls. I don’t have a picture of my injured doll, as cameras in Hungary during that time were a luxury, and we didn’t have one. But we did have a camera in Switzerland and here is the picture of me and my two new dolls with heads! I was in doll heaven that Christmas.
My Christmas dream finally came true!
Agi with her two dolls with heads in Switzerland in 1957. Her Christmas Dream came true!
My parents brought my sister, brother, and me to America in March of 1959. At 77 years old, I have two sons, four grandsons, three granddaughters, and two great granddaughters. I was a stay-at-home mom until my sons went to middle school, and then joined the workforce as a bookkeeper. Now I run my own business that I took over from my brother after working for him (with him) for 27 years. Before that I had a travel agency for several years until the electronic age more-or-less killed the industry.
After my husband passed, I moved in with my older son Robert (Rob) Susel, who lives in Streetsboro and has a mother in law suite that is now my home.
