Oma

Oma taught me to knit and crochet.  My dolls all had hats, pants and sweaters made while I watched her size and create them to fit.  A time together filled with love and warm moments that fill even my heart today.  My dearest doll, Elschen, pox faced from being left in the rain, had a home made dress, pants and a knit hat which I loved.  Newer dolls did not surpass her beauty.  Oma had many stories to tell me, and I yearned for more while I watched her work.
Oma  was a milliners daughter.  She made hats in the small town in Southern Germany where she was born, Maria Jacoby.   Her sisters Elsa and Johanna ,were in the hat business, too, but she was the only one who wanted to do the books and the cash work, so it ended up she went to business school.  She was the only young woman at the time to go into the "man's" world of secretarial school and learn typing and shorthand.   It seemed to me a mystery how she knew what she was writing, with little squiggles, in such short letters.  Her handwriting was elegant and perfect.  No machine was more perfect, shaped by an artist's hand. 
She had intended to run away with the circus.  I can see her balancing on fences imagining being in the big top.  Her father would say, "NONSENSE!"   Her voice was lilting and light, and she always wanted to have a future singing, but her father would say, "SNAPS IDEE!" 
A friend of her family came from his travels in the east, bringing treasures and antiques, oriental rugs or jewelry.  He proposed the idea to take one of the daughters in marriage, and Maria was offered.  "I was sold like a cow,"  Oma would say to me.   My grandmother was born in 1883, and customs were quite different then.  
Mami was an obedient daughter, marrying Reinhart von Oettingen, and a faithful wife.  She lived in Elmshausen, Germany, and there were 5 children born:  Annemarie, Barbara, Roland, Gerhart and Anneliese.    I am the daughter of the youngest.

Barbara, Oma, Roland, Me standing, Anneliese, Tyll, Gerhart, (Ushi and Manfred, Gerhart's family)

Reinhart continued travels to the orient leaving Maria to care for the children in Germany.  She told me stories about the sad fate of Annemarie, the oldest, who at a young age fell backward in a boat, hit her head, and a fragment of her skull wandered in her brain, at times causing blindness, until around the age of 8, she died.   Her favorite doll had been named, Anneliese.   When Mami had another child, a "replacement baby" and it was a girl, the name HAD to be Anneliese after Annemarie's favorite doll.
I wish I had written down all the stories, all the details which now pass into forgetfulness.  I recall the story of my Onkle Roland, that one day family friend Arved came from South Africa to visit.  Grandfather was happy to see him, and when he suggested Roland go to South Africa with him, he agreed, "Sure, let the boy go!"   Roland was a young teen, maybe 14, and Mami was furious to have him leave at such a young age to an unknown "dangerous" world.  She spent years not seeing him, but I recall that several times in my life he came to Cincinnati to visit her, a grown and successful rancher, with a wife and family, always trying to convince her it had been a good desicision.
I crochet and I relive my past;  I create a story and knit up another blanket.  It all weaves in and out and on and on.