Family Mysteries

I just checked my mail, and found a letter from my mother. She's recently (4 years ago) widowed, and having a hard time with being alone. She was very dependant on my dad. She tells me she's planning a trip to Europe with some other elderly ladies. It will be a bus trip through Budapest, Prague, Berlin, and Vienna. She and my dad went to all these places several years ago before he became ill with cancer. She and my dad travelled extensively after my sisters and I were out of the house - Alaskan cruises, several trips through Europe ... England, East Germany, Russia.... Now my mom is travelling with other ladies that she knows. I'm glad she's doing this, I hope it's a nice trip for my mom.

My father comes from Russia, his family were wealthy German Mennonite silk farmers before the Revolution. I have photographs of his family standing outside their mansion, and studio photographs of the kids in fancy clothes, posing in front of velvet draperies. There's one of my dad as a five year old, with his hair to his shoulders, he wears a little velvet outfit and is climbing some artificial rocks. About two years later, the family photographs show the immaciated family wearing rags, their faces haunted. Mennonites were horribly persecuted during the Revolution, my dad's family were robbed of all their posessions, and set to work on a collective farm. They all eventually starved or froze to death in concentration camps. My dad escaped by defecting from the Russian army, joining the German army and fighting on the Russian front.

In the basement of my childhood home was a creepy, web infested pantry room with empty jars holding dead spiders, and a terrifying square hole in the floor that was filled with water. We were afraid to enter this room, but did so quite often, to get jars of preserved fruit for mom to use in her cooking. The room still haunts my dreams. One day, I was sent to get a jar of canned peaches. The first thing I saw when I pulled open the door, was a large footlocker on the floor in the middle of the room. It was placed haphazardly, as though someone had dragged the heavy thing in, and dumped it quickly. I called my sisters. We circled the trunk, reading the name on the top "Johanne Toews'. Our father's name in its German spelling. The trunk was locked. We asked our mother about it, and she said it was 'daddy's things from the war.' After several days, during which my sisters and I returned several times to the trunk to touch the name, and to finger the lock, and to whisper about its mystery, the trunk disappeared, never to be seen again.
I have a curious, writer's mind. More than that, my curiosity stems from a personal desire to know, for my own sense of closure. I have often wondered what was in that trunk, and what became of it. Not to mention where it came from in the first place, since I never saw it before that day I found it in the pantry. If only my sisters and I hadn't been so damned obedient! If only we'd smashed the lock and looked inside!