Now this life and time memory is from around.....11 years ago.... A good friend on the stream reminded me of this memory that I had stored back in the dusty part of my mind...
Margaret Rhine was in her 70‘s…. She was just “convalescing” as she put it after breaking a hip at her home where she lived alone… She had been moved on my hall for me to look after, as she continued to recover… (For those of you who have just tuned into the life and times of Sherrena, I use to be a nurses aid…) She was a very talkative woman… and very easy to like… Her hair die was extremely red and she wore red lip stick to match… Her eyes were a sparkling blue and her face showed her 70 some odd years… She was born in Germany to the parents of upper class citizens. When she had told me this, she made sure that I had heard her…She had been quite happy before the war had broken out… She told tales of her and her sister playing along the hills and how beautiful the city she had lived in was…. Now to her, being a young woman, she hadn’t really known what war was about… Or that it was even going on as it raged across Europe and her county men slaughtered, butchered and pillaged all those in their path….Those last word had been her own…. ( I knew what it was like to have a war going on and No nothing about it… My dad had made sure that I didn’t even know Vietnam was happening ) She had loved her people… But her people in the end had not loved her… After the bombs started dropping on her city is when she new that there was a big change… Her home was destroyed and her parents had been killed… In the haste for escape she had been separated from her sister and she now was alone…She told me of the tanks that entered her city and the fear she had of American’s…. But it was they who saved her… As she walked along the side of the road, cold and hungry, an American soldier had stopped to give her a ride… She explained to him in her native tongue that she had no place to go… He offered her food and water and then took her to the Red Cross…. They fed and clothed her and it wasn’t long before she repaid “his” act of kindness by continuing to stay there and work to help other‘s that had survived the bombing….It’s funny how I don’t recall any of the good things about the experience that she told me until she said the soldier had came back for her…they had courted in war torn Germany and she had married him… She said his German had been rusty and she had not known any English… I asked her how then it came to be then that she had married him if she couldn’t even communicate with him… She laughed and said … “The language of LOVE!”… As the words rolled off her tongue I wanted to laugh…. Her soldier had brought her back to America with him … She told me how he had went to California and left her alone for 3 years while he finished his duty…When he had returned he stayed out most nights drinking and “carousing” (if you have never heard a German woman saying that word you have missed out) with who ever was drinking with him that particular night…. She said the day their son was born is the day he stopped drinking… then another son…. I asked if she had ever found her sister…. She told me no… Through great tragedy she had over come…. I remember how sad her face had looked when she told me about her city falling… and how she had walked down those muddy roads as tanks passed her splashing mud upon her only dress…. The long walk to no where…. I was a bit shocked by her story…. I had so fixated on the history books and on the atrocities the “Germans” had committed against the Jewish population that I had NEVER thought about the German people… The German’s that had not hated…. Margaret said she had never hated anyone…. So how could it be that Margaret was punished just like all the rest of Berlin… because Margaret had been German in 1945!….Later I saw a movie about a German man who had been just like Margaret except he, being older and wiser, knew what was going on… and he had helped were she couldn’t…. After he had died the Jewish people that had known him placed stones upon the head of his grave…. (A friend of mine told me it was for remembrance… and respect…. I hope someone does that for Margaret someday)
Now across the hall from Margaret was Lydia… She had been a USO girl back in the 40’s… Ah yes, it seems the 40’s was the happening time of the century… Now Lydia, unlike Margaret only TOLD you things… she was very bossy and very unpleasant to be around…And all of us who took care of Lydia knew to wear gloves… Not only did the nurses insist on this but Lydia her self did also… She had the nerve to think that one of US would pass some kind of germ onto her… When truth is known it was SHE that had a sexually transmitted disease that couldn’t be fixed with penicillin…. Now I don’t mind telling you this because I have changed Lydia’s name and she WAS mean as hell to me…. On more than one occasion she was known to knock her tray of food off in the floor just to have you clean it up in front of her…Now to look up on Lydia and see just a person sitting there in a reclining chair, as you picked up her supper off the floor… I don’t think you could have guessed her age… The only reason I know is because I read it off her chart… Her over all appearance was striking to say the least…She had the body of a 20 year old! And everything was real! She smeared Oil of Oley every morning on to a smooth face… hardly any wrinkles… Her legs were long and her arms were graceful and when she moved her hands up to her mouth and giggled she did so like a teenage girl would, after they were embarrassed by something…. Lydia only giggled when men were around… On the way to the dinning room a huge transformation would take place…. She would shed her mean persona, her voice softened and she became some kind of Scarlet O’Hara…. I think Lydia could have been from Brooklyn or some place life that because I’m southern and when Lydia cussed you out it was in a “northern” accent… As I would sit there feeding other residents I would watch her flirting with the men at her table… I saw quite well why they loved her and why they HAD loved her in the second war…Lydia had met Bob Hope… She told stories of how Bob had flirted with her and how in 1948 he had even kissed her…. Lucky that’s all Bob had decided to do with Lydia…….. Lydia always looked at Margaret through slanted eyes… And to the best of my knowledge they never said a word to one another… I don’t know how she knew a German woman lived across the hall from her….. But she did… and I don’t think she liked it much…. One day I asked Lydia, after a nice hot shower what Bob Hope had been like… She said he was funny and was a wonderful man…She said he liked to put his hand on the small of her back as she came out on stage to do her little routine and how she had dinner with him on several occasions… I pictured her dancing with him while Tommy Dorsey’s Band played in the back ground…. And then I was snapped out of my day dreaming by Lydia pinching my arm and telling me not to rub her legs so hard… “Your not needing bread girl!”…. “ It’s so hard to get good help these days..” She would say while shaking her head…No, Lydia had NOT been my favorite little lady but she had been an interesting person to know none the least…. I know she’s dead now…. And I guess this story has brought her back to life…. I love how the dead rise when remembered…Even Lydia.
... maybe I'll get some of those pretty colored contact lens... 
... maybe I wont need glasses.... I hope the doc doesnt have bad breath.... 
.... Maybe I should just cancel that appointment and just not drive at night because that's the only time I have a problem....No that's just not an option....... 
I hope I don't end up looking like a school teacher! 
