Joanna Wiebe

In 1993 I won an award at the Silvermine Gallery in Wilton, CT, for a diptych, Two Letters.  They were a pair of “envelopes”, a memorial to men and women who died under Stalin’s KGB. Each envelope bore a black and white photo of a prisoner in the upper right hand corner, like a stamp. Addresses were etched in a cryptic formal script.  One was done on a nice creamy sheet of hot press Arches watercolor paper, the other on black scratchboard.

After I finished these two pieces, it was late May, and close to my June birthday.  I was inspired to do something more personal, an envelope addressed to myself, using scratchboard as a medium. The photo is of myself at the age of three, standing on a chair between snowbanks at my grandparents’ back door in Blaine Lake, Saskatchewan.  This portrait was made possible, one might say, because my grandmother Anna convinced her husband Jake to leave Russia in 1923, thus escaping the Great Purge of the Stalin years,  which pretty well eradicated the family members which did stay there, although I have a Great Aunt Neta who survived the Siberian work camps and now lives in Berlin. The “return address” in the upper left corner is my birthdate and birthplace. The address in the middle is the word “Survivor”, scratched out in dramatic flourishes. I used rubber stamps and silver ink to create postmarks, and sealed it all with my thumbprint. Happy Birthday, Joanna Wiebe.

One summer day when I was about eight years old,  my cousin Trudy and I were jumping on a trampoline in her back yard. All around us was a very green, tidily mowed lawn. Trees in full whispering summer leaf stood at the periphery of the lawn, and above us gleamed a blue, blue Canadian sky. It was a happy moment for me, a little surreal, even. That’s because our cousin seemed so rich, with her store-bought clothes and auburn ringlets, her abundant toys, and this immense trampoline right in her own backyard.  Then Uncle John, Trudy’s father, came home from his store, carrying a cloth bag that was tied at the top. Smiling, he untied the string and tossed the bag’s contents onto the trampoline–hundreds and hundreds of Canadian coins.

And as Trudy and I jumped on the trampoline, all around our feet, and up into the air around us flew hundreds and hundreds of maple leaves, voyageurs,  beavers, moose, Queen Elizabeth, King George, and sailing ships, bouncing off the taut surface of the trampoline and onto the green lawn where they glinted between the blades of grass.

Many of the letters written by Anna Janzen Funk to her daughter Katie, my mother,  contained the phrase, “Take courage.”

I have thought of that short phrase often: Take courage. What does that mean? Faced with a blank page, I will take courage and fill it with words.

OK, let’s get serious. What if I make a mistake? I’ve gathered materials about grandma’s life for years; yet I often struggle with getting the facts right!   Can I trust this process of writing?

My red-haired great-grandmother, Anna Janzen Funk, was born March 15, 1895, in Friedensfeld, Sagradowka, southern Ukraine, one of 12 children of Franz J. Janzen (who also had red hair) and Katharina Boldt Janzen. Growing up in a well-developed Mennonite culture, Anna matured into a strong-willed, spiritual, intelligent person. She developed a hatred of crocheting, much preferring to read.  She did not have much time to read, however, as she began working seven days a week when she was 15. When she was 20, on a dark, rainy Sunday, she took the train about 90 miles to her second job. She was going to be a baker’s helper at Bethania Mental Hospital, near the Dnieper River. While she was at Bethania, in February 1917, the Russian government collapsed and the socialistic Bolshevist regime took power. Their army (the Reds) took over the area, taking livestock, food, and household goods, killing and razing estates. Anna’s family disappeared. The opposing White army battled the Reds back and forth across the Ukraine.

So, after that long setup, here’s the story about the importance of creativity, and how critical courage is in expressing creativity. One winter day, about 30 Red soldiers had stolen all the extra clothing from the male hospital patients. Now the revolutionaries were warmly dressed, slurping their soup in the dining room. As fast as she could slice bread, the soldiers grabbed it. Anna rushed into the spacious, bright kitchen with its tiled floor and huge stainless steel kettles to get a new batch of bread which the kitchen girls had just pulled out, and to ask them to punch down the rising dough and form it into more loaves to be baked. She heard a sharp knock on the back door of the kitchen. When she opened the door, she was startled to see a couple of dozen soldiers from the White army, who had been able to cross to Bethania on the frozen Dnieper River. “Let’s have lunch!” they demanded. What was she to do?  The Reds were having their soup in the dining room!  As she stood on the doorstep, the bright sun lighting up her coppery hair, she squinted at the hungry White soldiers, many of them her own age or younger, and rubbed a floury hand over her forehead. She could see that the Whites had added a lot of mud from the thawing banks to their uniforms and boots. Of course!  She grinned as she scolded them, “Please, boys, do you think I will let you in the house with those boots! Scrape the mud off completely! Knock again when those boots are clean, and I will give you a nice meal.”  Truly disarmed, they smiled back at the saucy young woman and began working on their boots. Anna brought the trays of bread into the Red group, encouraged them to fill their pockets for later, and opened the front door for them. As she saw the last Red soldier’s back going through the front door, she motioned silently to the kitchen girl to let the Whites in for their meal.

Now that I’ve written the words, I know quite well that this is not exactly the way it happened. I have left things out—big things, like the Makhnovist bandits. I have made things up, like the dialog. But—I have steadfastly shuffled phrases and sentences like jigsaw puzzle pieces to achieve that moment when I am not only seeing a picture that feels true, I myself am standing beside Anna on the back step at Bethania, close enough to see the flour dusting her forehead, to hear her steady breathing as we stand in the sunlight, facing those hungry, rough young men. I watch with my entire self, to witness her in the very moment of taking courage. She uses what she has—her bright hair, her confident smile, and her memories of her lost brothers—and speaks. The ugliness of war transforms into a homely backyard scenario: big sister telling the boys to clean their boots before coming inside. Anna’s courageous creativity has brought life to the day.

Opportunities for life-giving creativity occur daily. Filling a page with words is good practice.

Joanna Wiebe, May 1, 2007