aMusings

A lovely evening was recently spent exploring memories with some friends …
Setting the stage

Elizabeth:
Parents born in Hungary.  She brings love letters written by her father (to her mother) while he was stationed at Aberdeen Proving Ground during WW II.

Sue and Susan:
Hungarian/American friends.  They came to enjoy the food and [Texas] wine — and to translate the letters which were written in Hungarian.

What a story!

Leo, born Lipot Müller in Pápateszér, Hungary about 1912, immigrated to America in May 1937.  Immigration records note that he had been a farm worker of the ethnic group called Magyar in Hungary.  Just a short few years after his arrival in this country, he became a soldier in the United States Army and was ultimately assigned to the Mess at Aberdeen.

At the time that Pearl Harbor was bombed, Leo was about 29 years old.  He may have enlisted in the Regular Army on March 5, 1940 in Queens, New York, well ahead of Roosevelt’s declaration that the US was officially entering the war. One has to imagine that a young man who had lived amongst the uncertainties and strife of Europe during this time, might be anxious to defend his new homeland. One might also wonder if this young Hungarian was assigned to stateside duty in lieu of the European front because of some compassionate reasons.

Perhaps Leo met Mary (also Hungarian) in New York before enlisting … or maybe when he was visiting family on leave from his service duty.  By 1942, the letters he is writing to Mary are very loving and sometimes signed with rows of xxx’s, indicating kisses in any language!  They are sweetly touching and sometimes humorous.

As we listen to Susan read the letters and Sue help to translate them for us, the story unfolds that they were likely married just prior to August 5, 1942 — as Leo abandons the greeting ‘my dear heart’, and begins a letter with ‘my darling wife’.

We hear tidbits of what life was like for a lonely soldier of those times. He is enjoying his position in the Mess Hall, and a lieutenant is complimentary of his cooking!  We find that he listens to the radio and reads in the evenings, sometimes reaching out more than once in his day to write soulful letters to his darling Mary.  He does his own laundry and painstakingly irons uniforms.  He worries about the health and well-being of his bride.  He writes of a trip she will be making to see him on the post, telling her how to change trains in Philadelphia.  He tells her that paperwork has been completed for her to receive a military allotment of about $34 monthly!   A lovely story unfolds in his words.

Bittersweet ending

Leo and Mary have a short but apparently happy marriage.  Three children are born to them, including Elizabeth in mid 1946.  Leo dies when little Lizzie is only 2 years old.  Mary lived until 1995 and never remarried.

When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine?

Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four?

And so, the Beatles sing on, but via iTunes now — and we remember ‘when’.
Who woulda thunk that 24 years ago I’d be playing in a rock ‘n roll band with someone who actually had a conversation with Jim Morrison?  Or that 28 years ago, I’d be living in sunny Hawaii and spending winter birthdays on Waikiki with my old grade school chum?  Or that 34 years back, I would be living in Colorado and skiing powder with my favorite lady engineer  for my birthdays?  In fact, 35 years back, I was the lucky recipient of a sled for a snowy birthday in Nebraska — though I left it under our Christmas tree to fly home to Texas and see the folks.

What a lucky person to have had Worldwide Birthdays, as I have.  Let’s see, there have been celebrations in Marietta, GA – Indianapolis, IN – Paris, France – Santa Fe, NM – Waipahu, HI – Colorado Springs and Monument, CO – Omaha, NE – Columbus and Savannah, GA – Copperas Cove and College Station, TX – Dallas and Austin, TX – Victoria, TX.  Celebrations with family, both close and distant kin.  And celebrations with friends of all sizes, flavors and colors.  Sometimes the celebrations were more imaginary, in a crowded coffee shop just watching busy shoppers come and go.

The first birthday celebration sixty-four years ago was in San Antonio, TX at the Santa Rosa Hospital, reputed to be built over one of the funeral pyres of the Alamo Defenders.  This bit of history has always made me feel special that the Santa Rosa is where I ‘discovered America’.  I have looked back at faded photographs of that cold December in 1946, my dad holding his first child and grinning ear to ear.  My grandmother was there when I was born, also — and I was named for her.  My father left us shortly after I turned 32 and my grandmother joined him the year I was 53.

And so, When I’m Sixty-Four there will be a great celebration.  I shall light all of the candles on my cake and watch them burn down into the icing and sputter away their brief light.  In the candle light, I will be remembering special birthday gifts from special people through the years — on my 5th birthday, my father gave me a piano, and for my 7th, I received from him my very first diamond ring.

My first real sweetheart (now gone) gave me a puppy for my 16th birthday!  My husband (now gone) gave me a black kitten on my 23rd birthday, and a motorcycle when I turned 25 (and promptly busted the front fender showing me how to do wheelies).  A very dear friend (now gone) took me to see Camelot for my birthday one year, and she gave me ice-skating lessons at the Broadmoor, too!  Another special gift was my first campfire pit, which we fondly called “Camp Suz” — and that friend is gone also.

There have been lovely cards and letters from friends through the years.  And flowers — mostly yellow roses (as in The Yellow Rose of Texas).  Candy, too — like my favorite pink peanut patties, a Texas gourmet delicacy.  Books and Scotch.  Movies and coffee.  Perfume and dancing shoes.  Frilly lingerie and power tools.

Ah, the pleasures of birthdays and those we celebrate them with.
So let me now go find the match to light these candles …