memories – Page 4 – Linda Mahkovec

Irises of May

Published on May 8, 2017January 13, 2019 by Linda Mahkovec - Author2 Comments

I love the irises I come across growing along old fences, or inside a garden, in different stages of unfurling: some still in tightly bound spears with tips of saturated color, others gracefully opened in full display. Like peonies and other spring flowers, their relatively brief appearance creates a sort of urgency to appreciate them before they disappear with the season.

Irises always remind me of a visit to my hometown many years ago. On a walk through the side streets, I came upon a small house with a startling burst of color alongside a fence. From a thick row of slender green blades bloomed bunches and bunches of irises — tall and elegant, in colors of ethereal blue, dusky mauve, yellow, and combinations of royal purple and apricot, white and watercolor rose, lavender and deep gold. I had to step closer to marvel at the rich array, so casually crowded along the fence.

The owner of the house, an elderly woman with a warm smile, caught me admiring her flowers and offered to show me her garden in the back of the house. It was even more breath-taking — tucked away from view, full of winding brick paths and interesting details set among gorgeous flowers. It must have taken her years to create such a work of art. When I told her how much my mother would love the garden, she graciously welcomed us to stroll through it whenever we wanted, even if she wasn’t at home. I had the feeling that the woman’s generosity and kindness came from the same internal place as her desire to create the beautiful garden — a place that takes pleasure in life and wants to add to the world’s beauty. I brought my mom back later that day, and the delight she took in the garden remains etched in my mind long years since.

I’ve often thought of that May garden, and wondered how many other secret gardens there are in my town, and in the cities I have lived in, and the places I have visited. How many people create works of beauty for the sheer joy and pleasure they bring? How many so freely and graciously offer their efforts to passers-by in patches of flowers, or window boxes trailing with color, or in potted blooms in front of a house? Like the best parts of ourselves, flowers require tending to be coaxed into being, to be nourished with love and sunlight and weeding and watering. The result is a sort of two-way gift that is offered back to the world in a communication beyond words.

Over the weekend, I took out my terracotta pots and planted them with rose and purple stock, pink geraniums, and scarlet carnations, and set them on my steps just outside the door.

The End of April

Published on April 29, 2017January 13, 2019 by Linda Mahkovec - Author1 Comment

Do schoolchildren still sing the song “April Showers”? I think every year since I was a girl, some line, if not the whole song, runs through my mind in April. In an involuntary response, part of the melody just pops into my head when someone laments the rain, or when I come across a patch daffodils or violets.

A quick online search shows that the song was written in 1921 (in a period of post-war, pre-Depression optimism), and was introduced by Al Jolson in a Broadway musical. As can only be expected, the song’s relentless optimism inspired parodies: “When April showers, she never closes the curtain…,” and a skit where a bucket of water is thrown on the far too cheerful performer. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Showers] (Some versions of the song, as with Judy Garland’s, begin with “When” rather than “Though.”)

Such sentimentality lingered on in the optimism of the 1960’s schoolroom, at least in small-town Illinois. On an old upright piano, our music teacher played from a repertoire that ranged from war songs to the flowers of spring, and the over-sized class of baby-boomers belted out tunes about violets, caissons rolling along, and flowers that bloom when the fairies sing.

I love the rain of April and the color it brings. On such days the air itself seems tinged with green, so lush are the leaves and grass.

Green, rainy places have always held the most allure for me. On a trip years ago, I fell in love with Ireland and the Lake District in England — and very much want to go back. And a trip to Bangladesh had me gasping at such luxuriant green everywhere.

I actually moved to Seattle when I was young because I had heard that it was beautiful and hilly and green — and rainy. A soft rain was common enough, but dramatic storms with thunder and lightning, like Midwestern storms, were rare. Still, the soft rains kept Seattle blooming in flowers nearly all year long, and it lived up to its reputation as a beautiful, hilly, green city. (They call it the Emerald City and the last time I was there, they even had a yellow brick road to prove it.)

New York, like the Midwest, has seasons of intense green — April through June, for the most part. So when April showers come my way, I take my umbrella and indulge in the wealth of green.

April Rituals

Published on April 9, 2017January 13, 2019 by Linda Mahkovec - AuthorLeave a comment

How are personal rituals formed, and what purpose do they serve? I have morning and evening rituals, ways of opening and closing the day. I have seasonal rituals, ways of marking time, of making it specific and memorable – as if putting a frame around a moment, a season, a month, so that it can be more closely looked at.

I think, for the most part, my rituals have been haphazardly formed. Some combination of actions clicked together agreeably at one time, and so I tried to recreate it again and again.

My spring rituals are largely determined by flowers. I search out the first blooms in Central Park – crocuses, daffodils, Forsythia. I plant my window boxes and choose the colorful annuals for the garden. Though I try to start the season in March, the cold of New York usually forces me to wait until April.

Though April is changeable, it can be counted on for a show of color – purple, yellow, pink, white. There’s a quince bush a few houses down that is among the first to flower in the neighborhood. I keep an eye on it, noting the first bits of green, then the dots of color as the buds begin to open. Then after a few sunny, mild days, the melon-colored flowers start to open, and there’s no suppressing the surge of pleasure they bring.

At about the same time, the pear trees along the street begin to bloom. My view at this time of year, as I write at the kitchen table, is that of white blossoms against the changing sky. In full bloom the trees are truly magnificent.

I can’t remember exactly how a particular April ritual got started, but several years ago I sought out the music of Thomas Morley’s “April is in My Mistress’ Face.” The time of year must have reminded me of the lyrics, and of the college music class where I first became enamored with the music of Palestrina, Bach, and Morley.

An online search brought up several renditions of Morley’s Renaissance madrigal, many of them with a montage of spring flowers in the background. But the one I liked best showed a young woman looking very demure, and yet sensual and lovely. Instead of the usual four-part polyphonic voices, the melody was carried by a simple lute. http://bit.ly/2oTC1Eq

April is in my Mistress’ face,
And in her eye July hath place;
Within her bosom is September,
But in her heart a cold December.

I tend to ignore the last line. I like to think of his mistress as sweet and lovely in face and heart.

One of my April rituals then, is to fix a cup of tea, gaze out at the blossoming pear trees, and write – or perhaps it’s more honest to say I stare out the window and remember and dream, casting back into the past and forward into the future – trying to link the beauty outside the window and in the music with a sweetness that once was, or that, perhaps, could still be.

Is April, and spring itself, a larger metaphor for life, for youth, for a beautiful past (real or imagined)? Very likely. And so I do my best to hold it, to love it, to be a part of it – even as the white blossoms are being blown from the trees.

Poppies

Published on March 28, 2017January 13, 2019 by Linda Mahkovec - Author1 Comment

Research can be a thread that starts in one place and leads in a labyrinthine wondering, often ending in a completely unintended destination. I was immersed in research for the next book in my Christmastime series (1944), and briefly stepped out of the WWII frame of mind to search out one tiny detail about WWI.

Many hours, many books, and many Google searches later, I was still reading about WWI. In particular, I was looking at which battles a soldier from the US might have fought in. And that lead me to asking what the boundaries were before and after WWI, and how far X is from Y, and what exactly is meant by Flanders vs Belgium – a trail that ultimately lead me to the poem “In Flanders Fields,” written in 1915 by a Canadian military doctor.

And that got me thinking about poppies.

And why poppies became associated with WWI (and Armistice Day/Veteran’s Day) and Flanders. I came across an interesting article in the Smithsonian stating that poppy seeds “can lay dormant for 80 years or even longer” until the soil is disturbed, which happened during WWI when “the soil was torn up by miles of trenches and pocked by bombs and artillery fire,” causing the buried seeds to germinate. All around the crosses of the fallen, amid the horror and destruction of war, bloomed the beautiful red poppies. A sort of miracle, a balm of nature to help assuage the pain of war. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-poppy-came-symbolize-world-war-i-180960836/

And that lead directly to another interesting article about an American impressionist, Robert Vonnoh, who painted a field of poppies in 1890 entitled “In Flanders Fields” which, though recognized as a masterpiece, failed to sell. But then, in 1919, after McCrea’s poem of the same name became widely popular, the painting was purchased by Joseph G. Butler, the founder of The Butler Institute of American Art. A beautiful painting it itself, its significance was deepened by the tragedy of war, and it came to represent a more gentle past whose ways were forever gone.

More searches on poppies. After getting further sidetracked by the language of flowers, and representation of poppies in art, then in Western art, then in Victorian art, I stopped – and simply tried to determine why I have always loved this flower, and where that love came from. I thought of popular cultural references – from opium and the drug trade, to the scene in The Wizard of Oz, where the Wicked Witch rubs her green hands over her smoke-filled crystal ball, cackling, “Poppies! Poppies will put them to sleep!”

Then I took a look at some of my vintage postcards, recalling that several of them had images of poppies. The pink and red flowers were on cards for everything, from Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day, to birthday wishes and cards of remembrance.

My strongest association of poppies comes from my Victorian studies, where I often came across depictions of the flower: in the ornate wallpapers of William and Morris; in portraits by the Pre-Raphaelites, signifying sleep, remembrance, and imagination; in the outdoor qualities of light and air in the works by Van Gogh and Monet; in Mucha’s lush compositions, representing the exotic and luxurious allure of the Belle Époque.

Perhaps my love for these older periods explains why I used an old drawing of poppies for my business cards and why the poppy has made its way onto the cover of one of my books, Seven Tales of Love, its design based on an Art Nouveau-styled illustration. Maybe I’m drawn to the poppy because it seems like an old-fashioned flower, like violets and lily-of-the-valley, and evokes a whole different set of sensibilities.

Or perhaps, as they say, all roads lead to home, and the association is deep rooted in a particular patch of red poppies in my hometown. There was a garden at the back of an old house on a corner, and in the spring long-stemmed poppies grew in profusion, spilling out of the garden and into the ditch alongside the road. I think it was there that I was first struck with their impossible beauty – so vibrant, and wild, and magical – paper-thin red petals with black centers, set against intense green leaves.

I have an etched-in memory of a little old lady who used to live there long years ago. She was always out in her garden, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat as she bent over to tend her flowers. The garden was particularly beautiful at the end of day, when the tangle of flowers became tinged with gold. Somehow, that image has stayed in my mind, and, in the odd ways the mind makes associations, that garden in the setting sun has come to represent a deep longing that I could never quite put into words, and that remains elusive.

My mom and I once took seeds from one of the poppies and planted them in her garden, hoping for the same burst of beauty the following spring. But they never took. Perhaps they belonged in the overgrown garden with the setting sun at close of day – flowers locked in a mystical forever.

But enough of digressions that never really end. And back to writing my book.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, WWII. 1944. Winter.

Saint Patrick’s Day

Published on March 13, 2017March 13, 2019 by Linda Mahkovec - Author2 Comments

My mom being Irish (third generation), I grew up with limericks, rhymes, and poetry. She always read a poem or two before going to bed from a slender collection that rested on her nightstand, and books of poetry lay scattered about on bookshelves and counters to be picked up and browsed through at leisure.

Nothing laborious or unduly difficult—rather a light touch here and there that added a dash of beauty or insight to the day, the same way other people set candles and frames around the house.

On the telephone desk stood an old earthenware mug filled with pens and pencils, and printed on it in black lettering was an Irish Blessing. From seeing it so often, I think we all had the poem memorized at an early age.

And on the telephone notepad or perhaps at the bottom of a grocery list, we often came across a dashed off rhyme or limerick by Mom, some effervescent burst of wit that couldn’t be suppressed.

On the living room wall hung one of her favorite poems. She asked an Irish friend, known for his beautiful calligraphy, if he would copy it out for her. Then she bought an antique wooden frame and placed the poem where everyone could read the stirring lines.

Poetry was woven into the day, offering a moment to ponder some idea, a dip into profundity, a gasp at a beautiful thought or image, a smile at some witty phrase.

On this cold, snowy Saint Patrick’s Day, I’m going to celebrate by making a cup of tea and opening one of the books of poetry that lay scattered about my house.

World War II Veterans

Published on February 28, 2017February 20, 2024 by Linda Mahkovec - AuthorLeave a comment

I traveled to Tinton Falls, New Jersey over the weekend in order to interview my friend’s father, a WWII veteran who served in the Pacific from 1943 to 1946. I wanted some details for the next book in my WWII series, Christmastime 1944.

Tom had a modest, understated manner when describing his time in the war, a trait so common in that generation: you did your duty to the best of your ability, and didn’t complain about it. (He also talked a bit about his years as a NYC policeman – which included delivering four babies!)

With an occasional reference to the album on his lap, full of photographs, newspaper clippings, letters, and mementos, he described boot camp and then leaving from the Brooklyn Naval Yard on the U.S.S. Bennington, an aircraft carrier.

They sailed through Panama and stopped at Hawaii. In the album were the now classic WWII images of Hawaii: women in grass skirts dancing the hula, sailors with leis around

their necks posing against a tropical backdrop – just young boys, seemingly far too young to be in uniform. Then on to the Pacific.

Tom described being stationed at the gunnery, and how the kamikazes would often attack four at a time, two flying low, just above the water, two up high; one came so close that they saw the pilot’s face. “He came out of the clouds. If he had emerged another fifteen or twenty feet closer, I wouldn’t be here today.” And there were photographs in his album of night time kamikazes taking fire.

He described the typhoon off Okinawa in June, 1945 that snapped off the prow of their aircraft carrier, “bent it like a pretzel.”

Miraculously, no lives were lost. Besides the euphoria of having survived the typhoon, a surge of happiness filled the seamen– surely the battered ship meant they were going home!

But no. The ship was patched in the Philippines and continued on towards Japan.

After about two hours of reminiscing, it was time to let Tom take a rest. We would come back later to take a closer look at the photo albums.

At dinner that night, overlooking beautiful Tinton Falls, my friend and I wondered: what was it about WWII that so defined our parents’ generation? Why was that the topic of conversation they always wanted to talk about? After all, three years out of ninety-one years in her father’s long life seems a very short time.

For my father, it was his time in the Army Airforce, as it was called back then, that was his favorite storytelling topic. We grew up with his tales of WWII, and now that I think of it, I don’t really have a clear idea of his life before or after the war. As with Tom, it’s as if those war years remained in color and sharp focus, fresh in detail and charged with emotion.

Was it because it was a pivotal point in their lives, the transition between boyhood and manhood? The jarring experience of being a 17- or 18-year old boy with his eye on the future, college, the girl next door, suddenly pulled into a cause larger than his dreams, into a world-wide conflict? Was it the strong camaraderie in life and death situations? The pride of having served a purpose higher than the one they might have chosen for themselves? An unspoken: I was there. I was part of something great. In a war of values, I fought on the side of good. And won.

Before leaving Tom and the assisted living place, my friend and I stopped by its library to drop off a set of my books. We noticed that there were several shelves reserved for books about WWII.

My friend recognized one of her father’s dining buddies, Eric, and introduced me to him. There he was, well into his nineties, with an atlas opened before him, the seat of his walker serving as a table. He was intently poring over a map of Italy, his finger slowly traveling up the map. He was British and I thought perhaps he had vacationed there, or maybe he was checking a fact from a book or conversation. We asked about his interest in Italy.

With a twinkle of pride in his eye, he looked up and smiled. “I was stationed in Italy, during the war.”

Of course.