As I write this my 92 year old Opa, my stepfather’s father, is fighting for his life following a massive heart attack.
Opa came into my life when I was 11. That was the year my mother married my Canadian stepfather, and we moved from Santa Barbara to Brandon, Manitoba, Canada.
Although our families have known each other for several generations dating back to when they all lived in Russia (a long story for another time!), my sister and I met my stepdad’s parents and siblings for the very first time the weekend of the wedding, and the day after the wedding were sent off to Manitoba with his parents and sister while he and my mom had their honeymoon.
Stepping off the plane in Manitoba was like entering a funhouse full of mirrors that took everything familiar and distorted it. It was July, and the 100 degree heat was accompanied by nearly 100% humidity and swarms of mosquitoes….very strange for California kids whose associated heat with dry Santa Ana winds and brushfires. The people spoke English, but with an odd inflection. The food was similar…but also different. My stepdad’s mom cooked the same Russian dishes that we knew, but her borscht was full of big chunks of cabbage and potato, while my Mom’s had lots of beets and finely chopped vegetable. A day or so after we got to Brandon we biked to Kmart and I bought what I thought were M&Ms from the bulk candy counter….but with the first bite discovered they were Smarties, which gave candy-coated chocolate a whole different taste.
So there we were, two scared kids who didn’t know anyone other than these people we had just met and who were supposed to be our new grandparents, aunts and uncles. Well we already had grandparents, aunts, and uncles back in California and we missed them fiercely….and we didn’t really want any new ones.
And there they were, two middle-aged adults landed with introducing us to our new home, dealing with our tangled long hair and braids as well as our homesickness. It was only years later that I realized that it must have been nearly as hard for them as it was for us.
My mom and step-dad arrived a couple of weeks later and we moved into our new house, met the neighborhood kids, enrolled in school, and began to settle in….but it took a very long time for Brandon to feel like home, and an even longer time for us to figure out our relationship with my step-father’s parents.
For many years we didn’t even know what to call them! They referred to themselves as Grandma and Grandpa, but we already had a Grandma and Grandpa who we dearly loved in California, so we simply didn’t call them anything at all…a situation that lasted through at least six years of weekly Sunday dinners, the arrival of my ½ brother (who did call them Grandma and Grandpa), innumerable holidays, and several more extended stays at their house while my mom and step-dad travelled.
Eventually, and I don’t even remember how it happened, we hit upon the German term for grandparents, Oma and Opa. It worked because by then we had grown to love them deeply and to think of them as grandparents of our hearts if not our blood, we didn't already have an Oma and Opa, and it also fit with Oma’s Mennonite German background.
We lost Oma nearly 25 years ago, but Opa has been a constant in my life since I was that scared 11 year old leaving everything familiar behind, and as I grew up I came to appreciate what a truly remarkable person he is.
He was raised on a collective farm in the Eastern Ukraine, which must have been a harsh place indeed during the Depression years of his childhood, and met Oma when they were both medical students (and part of a circle of friends that included my mother’s older sisters). Displaced by World War II, they married and started their family in German refugee camps before emigrating to Canada where Oma had distant relatives.
He arrived in Canada with nothing except a young family, and upon discovering that his medical qualifications would not be recognized determined he would become a doctor anyway. He put himself through medical school for the second time by working at a foundry at night, and then established himself as a General Practitioner in Brandon.
His life was marked by hard work and a determination to succeed. He certainly was not one of those doctors who spend a day a week on the golf course! I can remember hearing him leave the house in the dark early hours of the morning to do his hospital rounds before going to his office to see patients, rushing home for a quick lunch before more patient appointments, and then going back to the hospital for more rounds after dinner.
Eventually he sold his Brandon practice and “retired” to Victoria, British Columbia where he soon began working as a doctor in a walk-in clinic….a job he held until just before his 90th birthday.
When he wasn’t working as a doctor, he could usually be found working around the house and yard - mowing his lawn in precise diagonal stripes in the summer, shoveling his driveway down to bare concrete in the winter, working on the vegetable garden.
Inside the house was Oma’s domain, and we had a running joke every Sunday after church when he would announce that he had been up all night cooking the feast before us (and it was always a feast).
After Oma died his daughter Valerie taught him housekeeping skills like cooking, cleaning and ironing and he took great pride in maintaining their condo and yard to Oma’s high standards, something he achieved right up until the day of his heart attack.
His steadfast belief in the value of work and his extremely high standards have meant that he hasn’t always been the easiest person to be around, especially if he felt you were not living up to his expectations or your potential (the same thing in his mind!), and all of his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren (step or otherwise) have been on the receiving end of his “loving advice”.
He has also been steadfast in his love and support. One of the highlights of my adult life has been the twice-yearly cards (birthday and Christmas) from Opa, each with a money order in U.S. dollars so I can avoid currency exchange fees and, even more valuable to me, filled with handwritten motivational comments and quotes along. He never forgot or even was late.
The latest of these cards arrived in late August, just before my birthday, and among other things reminded me to “keep my smile on”.
So this blog post is for Opa, grandfather of my heart. It is hard to “keep my smile on” as I think of you in your hospital bed, and I know I probably won’t get a chance to say good-bye in person. Know that having you in my life is one of the things that made all of the challenges of moving to Brandon and figuring out how to navigate the new relationships created by our blended family worthwhile.
Love,
Kathy
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