My mother turns 90

Posted on March 26, 2012 by doradueck

Tina Doerksen, now 90.

My mother turned 90 yesterday, and my seven siblings with spouses, as well as several granddaughters and great-granddaughters, travelled to Winnipeg to mark the milestone. Mom was born in the former USSR, in today’s Ukraine, in 1922, and fled Russia with her parents as a small child. She grew up on a farm near Winkler, Man. She enjoyed school. Her father was somewhat unusual in the Mennonite community of the time in that he insisted his five daughters get an education and profession. Three of them chose nursing, and two, including Mom, chose teaching. Mom left her teaching career when she married, but her teaching gifts continued to be exercised in various ways, not least of all as mother of eight children. Continue reading →

Holding the world

Posted on March 17, 2012 by doradueck

I’ve never done this before. Caressed a globe, I mean. We’ve had a globe in our house for a long time, purchased in the days before maps were finger-tip accessible on the computer, when we had young students in the house who needed to see where countries in the news or homework were. But holding it in my lap? No.

That, however, is what the Lenten Prayer Guide I’m following asked me to do this week: Settle into your comfortable place with a map of the world or a globe. Hold [it] in your hands as you breathe deeply. Continue reading →

Cross in hand

Posted on February 28, 2012 by doradueck

My husband and his siblings knew their father had written some kind of diary in his younger years, but the notebooks were tucked away in one of the sister’s closet after the parents’ deaths. She had intended to transcribe them, but she became ill with cancer and died in 2009. After that, my father-in-law’s papers came into another sister’s possession. She set to work on them. Just last week, we received a transcript of “Papa’s Tagebuch [diary]” from December 1929 to December 1932.

For me, this is a great treasure, because I can “hear” Heinrich Dueck for the first time. My father-in-law died suddenly – his funeral was on my birthday, in fact – before we were married. I lived a continent away. All who married into the large family had come to know him, except me, spouse of the youngest. I’ve heard much about my father-in-law, of course, gathered stories, viewed pictures, but I feel a hole in my experience of this second family of mine. Here in his diary, however, is something of his voice. Continue reading →