Read Online Letters From the Lost by Helen Waldstein Wilkes - Free Book Online

of the apples that had fallen to the ground, and we collected enough to last through the long winter evenings. Ludwig knew endless jokes and riddles and he never seemed too busy or too preoccupied to talk to me. Sometimes he’d teach me Czech tongue twisters:
“Strc prst skrz krk,”
the classic all-consonant line that means roughly, “Stick finger through neck,” and my all-time favourite
“Trsta trstetz tria tribernek,”
which involves three thousand three hundred and thirty-three red fire engines. Ludwig would laugh and laugh until I joined him.
    As he sat peeling, I’d often count freckles on the back of his hands until the dots blurred. To me, Ludwig was so handsome. A head of tight red curls framed large green eyes, and a huge dimple sat squarely in the middle of his chin.
    Both Anny and Ludwig had more patience than my parents did. They also seemed to be more cheerful, and certainly, they knew how to cheer me up. I still remember the little ditty Anny used to sing whenever tears gathered in my eyes:
Doodle-oodle-ei,
Doodle-oodle-life
Sagt my Wei’
Says my wife
Das Heferl ist zerbrochen
The bowl, it got broken
Hab’ kein Salz,
I’ve got no salt
Hab kein Schmalz
I’ve got no fat
Wie soll ich da kochen?
How can I be cookin’?
    Neither of my parents could have coped without the help of these two amazing people. Ludwig the fixer was the real glue that held everything together. Whatever was broken, eventually he’d figure out how to repair it. To this day, I keep every bit of string that comes my way, partly as a frugal habit that does not die easily, partly in memory of the way Ludwig could tie things together. The same knack that he brought to broken machinery, he also brought to human relationships.
    Ludwig and my father got along beautifully, but the friction between my mother and my aunt was constant. Old rivalries from their childhood surfaced repeatedly, and usually Ludwig poured soothing oil on troubled waters.
    I often wonder at the source of Ludwig’s inner calm. He was not a very learned man, yet he had a wisdom that I find all the more admirable as I struggle to find my own perspective. There were frequent rumours that Anny had flagrant affairs. Did she? Or were the rumours just envy on the part of straitlaced outsiders who secretly admired her uninhibited social interactions? New acquaintances, both women and men, instantly felt they were her best friend. Anny knew how to reach out.
    Ludwig, in turn, knew how to hold his tongue. After his death, Anny complained that it was the one piece of his advice that she had failed to master. Ludwig also knew how to recognize and foster the good in others. Just as he had encouraged me to sit unafraid on the back of a huge horse, sohe helped others in later years. Long before “Native rights” became prevalent in Canadian consciousness, Ludwig began hiring men from a nearby reserve. Frequently, there were accidents and problems, but Ludwig never lost sight of what was right. He continued to support the men, and their families, who often became his friends.
    At Ludwig’s funeral, there were all sorts of people. Absent were a handful of people that Ludwig had been unable to forgive, those who had turned their back when Jews had clamoured for entry to Canada. Some had been fellow Jewish immigrants more concerned with getting ahead in the new world than with reaching out to those stranded in Europe.
    Anny had always been a woman of action, the one who grabbed life by the scruff of the neck and shook it until change happened. Just as she had taken the lead in learning English and in selling eggs, she had stepped forward in other ways. Ironically, the more Anny did, the more my mother’s resentment of her grew. Petty complaints, all voiced behind closed doors. Although her food tasted great to me and largely came from the same cookbook that my mother used, I grew up hearing that Anny was a terrible cook. Today, I still make her red current cake. The tart berries