What I set out to do

I'd taken a step back from this website because the book took on a life of its own, completely out of my control and bidding. It was an animal, meandering its own path. When I revisited it recently, I renamed it, because I realised that this book, my book, wasn't the only thing I wanted to …

Turning around

I'm revisiting the first few chapters and realising that I've been writing as if part of a private conversation. Meaning, there is no cinematic pull-back of where the scene is set, the scenes read as if someone is standing in the middle of a group, watching people talk, relate, argue, debate, think. It's as if I've …

Italy

Apparently, Italy was a factor in how they moved around. This was unknown to me, as well as my mother. I found the link through a genealogy website that I'm using. Italy. There was a displaced persons camp in Italy. How did they get there? Apparently, from my research of late-1940s Germany, trains would leave …

Displacement

                                                                                                   Source: Wikipedia Human beings should have …

Yaroslawa

She gave birth in an internment camp. She wasn't prepared to be a mother at 28. She was getting on with life and she made herself capable. She looked ahead, never down. Hieronimus wasn't thrilled with being a father, she wasn't the woman he wanted to be with. But it happened, life happened, so he knew the only …

Stuck

It's half-term, so I'm understandably groaning under the weight of Lego and biscuit-dough and craft supplies. My writing has taken a turn towards articles on parenting, motherhood, wife-hood, self-hood and life-with-little people observations of the crazy, boring and inane. I like that. It keeps me practicing, keeps my own story current. But I need to get back …

Neumark, 1945

Finding pictures of 1940s Germany is a fascinating exercise in history but it can be all-consuming. I feel like I'm drowning in history books, and my own collection of family photographs... but very little of the internment camps and the villages that they were travelling and working in. I found this picture, and from her stories, …

Perspective

I need windows when I write. I use photographs, memories, conversations, ideas... but when it comes to sitting down and getting the pen to paper, I need windows. John Irving wrote, in his book The Hotel New Hampshire, "Keep passing the open windows." It makes sense. For me, windows need to be unobstructed, no passing traffic. …

Beginnings

How do I start? I'm writing about writing. Odd. Thing is, I've never sat down to write something of this emotional depth, ever. I had a blog years ago when I first moved to the UK, and it was a cathartic exploration of little old me, a child-less newly-married American living in the United Kingdom …

Do you hear, my brother, my dear friend, Flying away in a silver line are the cranes, for winter. In a foreign land I'll die, by the time I cross the sea. I'll wear away my wings, wear away, my wings. --Bohdan Lepky, 1910