Sunday Scene

Bavaria, Germany, about 1946. Two of Mom's friends make a passeggiata outside the DP camp.

Snapshot from a Sunday

Schweinfurt, Germany, 1949. Here's an image from the same passeggiata. A fashionable group!

Sunday Practice Walk

Suburban Chicago, November 1959. We spend some time outside on a warm, Autumn Sunday.

Sunday Outing

High Park, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Summer 1960. My Dad's twin sister, Jonė, and her daughter—my Toronto Cousin—join friends under the pergola.

Thanks to my Toronto Cousin for making this photo available to us.

Thanks for the Company

Breslau, Germany, 1944. This fellow was among the refugees with whom Mom rode in the cattle car as she fled Lithuania. Here they are in Brelsau. When the travelers dispersed to different Displaced Persons camps, the man gave this photo to Mom as a memento.

Late-Winter Promenade

Suburban Chicago, March 1959. Mom and Dad air out the baby.

Prepared

Venice, December 1983. The Riva degli Schiavoni is staged for acqua alta.

Sunday Paper: You're-Wearing-That Edition

Suburban Chicago, 1972. I read the paper while waiting for a ride. That day, Mom asked me to go to a shop—C.D. Peacock Jeweler in Oakbrook Center—to pick up a ring she had left there for repairs. Oakbrook was a tony place, and back then, people dressed up when they visited that mall.

That morning, I had put on some tattered jeans, a casual top, and a bandana. My paternal Grandmother, Tatjana, questioned whether I should go to Oakbrook dressed "like that," but I assured her it was okay because I'd be running in and out of Peacock's quickly, and I wouldn't be making a promenade around the mall.

The person who drove me to Oakbrook waited in the car as I popped into Peacock's. While a clerk fetched Mom's ring, I saw a mother and daughter leisurely browsing the diamond case, and I overheard them chatting. They spoke in Lithuanian—and, confident no one understood them—spent a few minutes critiquing my appearance, and wondering how Peacock's had let someone "dressed like a hippie" into the shop. When I'd paid for the ring repair, I turned to the women and, in Lithuanian, thanked them for the compliment about my fashion sense. The exchange could have stayed in my memory as just a satisfying moment of snark, but it taught me to be careful in public—no matter what language one speaks.

On the way home from Oakbrook Mall, Don McLean's "American Pie" played on the radio, and the driver explained the meaning of the song's lyrics to me.

The Workplace

 
Schweinfurt, Germany, 1949. A friend of my Parents stands outside the UNRRA school where many Displaced Persons worked. Dad took this photo on the same day he and Mom made the"mitten promenade."

A Back-to-Back Stroller Post

Toronto, Ontario, about 1953. My Dad's twin, Jonė, and her husband Kadis take baby Toronto Cousin out for an airing.

Thanks to my Toronto Cousin for making this photo available to us.

Saturday Stroll

Brooklyn, New York, Autumn 1950. Dad focuses again on Mom.

Related by Marriage: Sunday Stroll

Probably Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Summer 1961. Mr. Irene's maternal Aunt Martha and her husband, Wally, get out of the room and take a walk.

Sunday Promenade, with Stroller

Seligenstadt, Germany, about 1946 or 1947. Mom again guides the stroller in which her goddaughter rides.

Sunday at the Playground

Schweinfurt, Germany, 1945. Displaced Persons gather in a makeshift playground. I don't know more about the persons in or circumstances of this photo. My Dad had stored it in an envelope that he called "Voketija," or Germany—referring to snapshots from the Displaced-Persons era.

Godparents

Seligenstadt, Germany, about 1948. My Mom and an acquaintance serve as Godparents for a friend's daughter. Mom did not know this fellow well, but he gave Mom a lovely, wood-inlay box for the occasion. She still has that box.

Palmsanlage

Erlangen, Germany, 1946. My Mom and her medical-school roommate explore the Palmsanlage, a park near Erlangen's University Clinics. Decorating with indoor palms was very fashionable in the early part of the twentieth century. But I had never before seen palms used so extensively outdoors in a northern climate.

Another Walk with a Stroller

Seligenstadt, Germany, about 1946 or 1947. My Mom holds onto her goddaughter's stroller as she walks with fellow Displaced Persons near the camp.

Platform Promenade

Erlangen, Germany, 1946 or 1947. My Mom, on the left, and two of her medical-school classmates are out and about. Both women were stylish, platform shoes.

I don't think you'll need a coat.

In The Long Road Home, Ben Shepherd details why the Baltic Displaced Persons valued education above most everything else. When I read that section, I also recalled an article, "Culture in Adversity," by Linas Saldukas published in Lituanus in 2006. I linked to Saldukas's article once before, but it's worth a close, second read.

Saldukas does a great job of explaining how the World War II DPs were different from other immigrants. He also clarifies how the distinct DP experience shaped the foundation of the refugees' cultural lives in America. Sometimes, the DP experience distorted American life.

The numbers of educated people who fled the Baltic countries at the end of World War II is astonishing. It's no wonder that our families taught us that an education was the most important form of wealth. The expression at home was, "moklsa nė nėšči ant nugaros," or (loosely) "an education isn't like something a beast of burden carries on its back."

Erlangen, Germany, Spring 1947. My Mom, on the far right, and her medical-school classmates return from lecture. Look how sharp all of these DPs looked!

Double Date

Here's my Dad, again on that double date for which I initially could not place the location.

Hohenheim University, Stuttgart, Germany, 1946. My Dad, on the far left, is in his early twenties here. This rendezvous* occurred two years before Dad reconnected with my Mom.

*In our family, "rendezvous" is a term used to refer to an innocent passeggiata, picnic, or other platonic activity with someone of the opposite sex.