Parallels

I have always seen myself as about as different from my mother as a daughter can be. Mutti is pessimistic, pragmatic, and unemotional. I see myself as optimistic, affectionate and considerate. Who knows, maybe I'm all wrong on that score! But may that be as it is, thinking about my mother last night I was surprised and amazed at the parallels I see in hers and my childhood.

Even though Mutti was born the eldest of two daughters in a well-to-do family, she was born with two strikes against her. Her beloved father, who was much older than her mother, passed away when she was only five years old. Mutti's father had been Jewish, a wealthy banker. He left her Aryan mother a nice apartment and quite a bit of money. And his daughter, my mother, he left the legacy she least needed; black eyes, curly dark hair and the obvious looks of a Jew in a Germany that rapidly deteriorated into despising and hating Jews.

I was born with two strikes against me also. I was born in a tiny circus caravan in utter poverty in a country that was reeling from an unjust war. I was born the second of six children. My parents had neither resources nor affection enough for all their children.

As a child, Mutti experienced prejudice in thousands of tiny gestures and actions of the other children, of her neighbors and even of her relatives. From earliest childhood on, she doubted her self-worth. When she was thirteen, she learned in school that half-Jewish children are inferior to Aryan German children. She learned that half-Jews like her, are stupid and ugly. That day, she ran home from school as quickly as she could and inspected her budding self in the bathroom mirror. In spite of her young age, she decided that she was definitely not ugly, and that decision has pretty much guided her life. She always dressed up prettily, and often talked about how beautiful she had been as a young girl.

As a child, I experienced prejudice in thousands of tiny gestures and actions of the different children we went to school with every week. In my family I was one of many, not getting any attention unless I did something wrong or bad. I heard about God in school, and, from a very young age, I developed faith in a loving God who'd love me in spite of all my faults. When I was fourteen, I met the Mormon missionaries and learned about and accepted the Gospel. That decision has guided my life and made me who I am now.

After all these years, I have a lot of love and respect for my mother who survived unimaginable injustice, without any recourse to a loving God. And I hope Mutti is proud of me also, in spite of my gullible ways and my strange American church!