Your Oma: A Totally Dedicated Life...
David has been bugging me about writing about Oma and her hobbies and day to day activities. Well, I will give it a try.
It's really not that easy since I picture my mother as mainly a kitchen person, always cooking, washing dishes, ironing, washing clothes, and the like. In the evening, she was a tired mom, sitting in her favorite chair with her darning needles and basket of yarn and a pile of holey socks in her lap. On the arm of her chair was her old dilapidated prayer book that must have been one she had as a young woman and had used religiously. Also nearby might have been the latest issue of The Catholic Virginian or the newspaper that my Dad had already finished hours earlier.
More than once, the socks lay undarned; the prayer book unopened and the newspapers lay still folded, because my mother was too exhausted to do anything except nap a little in the evening. Her head would drop to her chest or lean way back against the chair and off she would go to the wonderland of dreams.
I'm sure that many of her dreams dealt with her beloved homeland for she missed Windischeschenbach all her life from the time she came to the USA til the day she died. I don't think she ever really felt at home in this country. Though we had many German friends here in the States, she must have yearned for her childhood friends, the small town gossip and regular church activities that she was a huge part of in her youth.
Oma was the kind of person who knew everything there was to know about anyone in Windischeschenbach, Neuhaus and its environs. If there were any questions about who we were related to and how, Oma had the answer on the tip of her tongue. I was amazed at the incredible bits of knowledge that she knew about each household in the town. And yet, she was not a gossip. She simply listened to her elders or contemporaries and stored every bit in her brain.
She knew many of the old stories about the lives of our ancestors in Windischeschenbach; who married who... when a person had died... all the odds and ends of daily life.
Her family were owners of forest and farmland, storekeepers and brick factory owners. They were active in local politics and were considered a fairly well-to-do family in this small town. They even lived in the choicest area of the town... on the Marktplatz. They had been in the Windischeschenbach area for centuries.
When my mother finished her elementary school years, there was no high school or equivalent in Windischeschenbach. The boys were generally apprenticed into a trade or they went for further study to a seminary school in Weiden. Not for the priesthood, but for pre-university studies.
Many girls who were in Oma's circle went to finishing school in the city of Straubing in their mid to late teens where they learned all the different arts needed to keep a household. Cooking, household management, budgeting, shorthand, all types of needlework, artistic and practical. Some of the girls probably went into the religious life, but most of them were expected to marry into a good family and raise many children who could help in the business their parents had established. During this time, she had a collection of old postcards; as well as, beautiful antique paper lace holy cards, which I now have in my possession...
Oma had received several marriage offers when she had reached marriageable age, but she turned each one down because she was intent on marrying her "Fritz " - her childhood sweetheart. And this was despite the fact that her Fritz had been born into a family that was considered nouveau riche and not "old money" as the Rupprechts were.
At any rate, Opa left Germany for the USA in 1922, leaving Oma to take care of her family, help run the family business and eventually, to take care of her parents during their last illnesses. Finally, in 1927, she was able to leave Germany for her new homeland and her marriage to Opa.
Soon after she arrived in the USA, she took one of the many personal maid jobs that were open to immigrants. Oma worked for a well-to-do woman by the name of Madame Rihm. She lived somewhere in the New York City-Brooklyn area and she also had a house on Shelter Island, a haven for the rich. She worked there until her marriage to Opa which took place on October 15th, 1927.
So we come back to Oma who is still napping in her chair. Cooking and housework were exhausting in those days, especially during summer weather. We had no fans - just open windows, which invariably brought more hot air into our house. She had stopped knitting and doing other needlework long before. She no longer understood the shorthand words she learned as a young woman and really found no other hobby in our sense of the word. Her hobby was taking care of Your Opa Fritz. She took delight in that; was an excellent cook and kept the house fairly spotless until Freddie and I came along.
She was a very religious person; but was frightened about many things. She constantly prayed as one can see by the worn out prayerbook that she used and finally left behind for me. It was full of old holy cards commemorating people's death, remembrances of a new priest's first mass. All part and parcel of the life she lived.
It's really not that easy since I picture my mother as mainly a kitchen person, always cooking, washing dishes, ironing, washing clothes, and the like. In the evening, she was a tired mom, sitting in her favorite chair with her darning needles and basket of yarn and a pile of holey socks in her lap. On the arm of her chair was her old dilapidated prayer book that must have been one she had as a young woman and had used religiously. Also nearby might have been the latest issue of The Catholic Virginian or the newspaper that my Dad had already finished hours earlier.
More than once, the socks lay undarned; the prayer book unopened and the newspapers lay still folded, because my mother was too exhausted to do anything except nap a little in the evening. Her head would drop to her chest or lean way back against the chair and off she would go to the wonderland of dreams.
I'm sure that many of her dreams dealt with her beloved homeland for she missed Windischeschenbach all her life from the time she came to the USA til the day she died. I don't think she ever really felt at home in this country. Though we had many German friends here in the States, she must have yearned for her childhood friends, the small town gossip and regular church activities that she was a huge part of in her youth.
Oma was the kind of person who knew everything there was to know about anyone in Windischeschenbach, Neuhaus and its environs. If there were any questions about who we were related to and how, Oma had the answer on the tip of her tongue. I was amazed at the incredible bits of knowledge that she knew about each household in the town. And yet, she was not a gossip. She simply listened to her elders or contemporaries and stored every bit in her brain.
She knew many of the old stories about the lives of our ancestors in Windischeschenbach; who married who... when a person had died... all the odds and ends of daily life.
Her family were owners of forest and farmland, storekeepers and brick factory owners. They were active in local politics and were considered a fairly well-to-do family in this small town. They even lived in the choicest area of the town... on the Marktplatz. They had been in the Windischeschenbach area for centuries.
When my mother finished her elementary school years, there was no high school or equivalent in Windischeschenbach. The boys were generally apprenticed into a trade or they went for further study to a seminary school in Weiden. Not for the priesthood, but for pre-university studies.
Many girls who were in Oma's circle went to finishing school in the city of Straubing in their mid to late teens where they learned all the different arts needed to keep a household. Cooking, household management, budgeting, shorthand, all types of needlework, artistic and practical. Some of the girls probably went into the religious life, but most of them were expected to marry into a good family and raise many children who could help in the business their parents had established. During this time, she had a collection of old postcards; as well as, beautiful antique paper lace holy cards, which I now have in my possession...
Oma had received several marriage offers when she had reached marriageable age, but she turned each one down because she was intent on marrying her "Fritz " - her childhood sweetheart. And this was despite the fact that her Fritz had been born into a family that was considered nouveau riche and not "old money" as the Rupprechts were.
At any rate, Opa left Germany for the USA in 1922, leaving Oma to take care of her family, help run the family business and eventually, to take care of her parents during their last illnesses. Finally, in 1927, she was able to leave Germany for her new homeland and her marriage to Opa.
Soon after she arrived in the USA, she took one of the many personal maid jobs that were open to immigrants. Oma worked for a well-to-do woman by the name of Madame Rihm. She lived somewhere in the New York City-Brooklyn area and she also had a house on Shelter Island, a haven for the rich. She worked there until her marriage to Opa which took place on October 15th, 1927.
So we come back to Oma who is still napping in her chair. Cooking and housework were exhausting in those days, especially during summer weather. We had no fans - just open windows, which invariably brought more hot air into our house. She had stopped knitting and doing other needlework long before. She no longer understood the shorthand words she learned as a young woman and really found no other hobby in our sense of the word. Her hobby was taking care of Your Opa Fritz. She took delight in that; was an excellent cook and kept the house fairly spotless until Freddie and I came along.
She was a very religious person; but was frightened about many things. She constantly prayed as one can see by the worn out prayerbook that she used and finally left behind for me. It was full of old holy cards commemorating people's death, remembrances of a new priest's first mass. All part and parcel of the life she lived.
Labels: oma
posted by mary ann at 3:10 PM
1 Comments:
I have many memories of Oma.
David and I went to St. Elizabeth's Catholic School for four years, and it was a short walk from the school to the church, so the school had processions to the church, mass, confessions, and May Day celebrations in St. Elizabeth's Church. The school did not have a "chapel" like in the convent, where mass could be said. So we found ourselves at St. Elizabeth's Church fairly often, and fairly often in the back of church, there was Oma! She would be kneeling or praying rosaries with a group of four or five other elderly women. Sometimes she would nod back at us, or even make a small smile, but we were not supposed to interact with her, or barely acknowledge that we knew who she was. It was the only time I ever saw her without Opa. -Jimmy
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