I met Josephine just
over three months ago. Friends now, I drop in on her weekly for a bit of chat
and gossip. I enjoy our visits tremendously, so much that a thoughtful sadness tends
to overcome me each time I walk away from her front door. I find her seemingly “normal
life” (whatever that means) to be
captivating but distant in a way that makes me want to know more about her.
The thing about
Josephine is that she is much older than I. Born in 1918, she was well into
retirement by the time that I was even born. She is 94, lives alone having been
widowed 10 years ago and while she can’t manage to lift her feet passed her front
doorstep of 65 years, her mind has not slowed down in the slightest.
I think of her
and her anecdotes often, even now as I am sitting in a cold room. How lovely it
would be to be able to film her glorious accounts, to preserve them and share
them. Her accounts are tragic and beautiful and that combination fills me with
enthusiasm and hope.
One cold morning
in 1933 she was cycling to school when she noticed that her little dog, had
once again, followed her to school. Having been scolded the day before by the
headmaster for the same thing she was earnestly “shooing” the dog away when a
young man who saw her plight offered to walk her dog home. “What would my
mother have thought, had a strange man shown up at my doorstep with my dog.
That would have been frowned upon.” She
ultimately turned down the offer but 3 years later that strange young man would
court her and they would eventually marry. Her courtship with Charles was very
sweet. They would write letters to each other and often sit and read on a small
wooden boat in a nearby river, trees romantically draping over them. “There was
never any of that necking nonsense that goes on these days. We actually sat
together and read together. I remember those times fondly.” How lovely it
sounds to me. It is miles different than my whirlwind courtship with my other
half.
Fast-forwarding
to 1941 and living a married life in Oxford, Josephine describes it as “a
difficult time.” Her son was born
that year, in the midst of WWII, and at that time everything was rationed and
coupons were accumulated to purchase things such as cloth diapers. With only
enough coupons for 1 diaper, she just had to cope and make do while in
hospital. Once home, she made diapers out of whatever she could spare. You couldn’t find things like that in shops
because as she said “shops were completely bare. There was no food. Everything was rationed.” She coped and got on with life though she says that during the
war her “tummy was always rumbling.”
Just back from
hospital with her newborn, the army knocked on her front door in search of
metals to melt down for machinery and arms. They took all but one of her pots
and pans. They even stripped the metal gate around her home. They took
everyone’s gate. All gone.
“If for whatever reason you were out and you saw a queue (line), you
would stand in it, not even knowing what it was for.” She stood nearly 3 hours
on one occasion with her son and in the end was given a small bag containing 2
rocks of coal. It was a completely different world.
She remembers the cold winters and with no central heating, coal or
wood for burning she sent dear Charles out to cut down the sole tree in their
back garden. Having done that, they were devastated when the wood wouldn’t burn
because it was too wet. The house itself was too damp and cold for it to dry
and so they were cold and according to her “That was that. We waited for winter
to end.”
On her back garden wall hangs a stunning wooden branch, from that
same tree she had tried to burn, a sort of memorial to having lived through all
of that. It is absolutely gorgeous. I am
not sure if it is the wood itself or the story behind it that makes it so
beautiful. I am thinking of her and of
that tree now, as I sit typing this, tempted to turn on the heating or
fireplace. But, I won’t because actually it isn’t really that cold, is it.
On my last visit with her she told me that being a mom is “hard work.”
I sheepishly agreed realizing how easy I have it. My problems, like having to clean my own house
this week because my cleaner didn’t show up, are small and I really can’t and shouldn’t
complain.
