My Mother

Marriage

to a man who placed her
on a pedestal --
in a glass box
whose key only he possessed --
must have seemed to her
a haven
a place with thorns among the roses
and only a small price to pay
compared to
fearing for her life in Nazi Germany
where her mother's mysterious heritage
COULD have been construed as "undesirable"
and the whole family whisked away
like so many others ...

Or compared to
running away from the advancing Russian army
on foot
across Czechoslovakia
where German citizenship put her at risk,
a despised refugee ....

In a world, formerly comfortable
and privileged,
now torn by guns
and bombs
and hate ... a world of fear,
mortal danger,
deprivation, scarcity, and
uncertainty,

perhaps

the fact that her rescuer
was also her jailer
seemed only a small price to pay
for security.



January 11, 1996
from journal entry dated October 31, 1995