Sixty in Sicily
I will never tire of seeing how people react when they learn of my husband's age. There's usually a mixture of shock, confusion, joy and jealousy. And now the game just got even better...
We concluded our epic two-week Italian trip with a 'Sixty in Sicily' celebration. Happy birthday Denny, and a massive thanks to everyone who could share the occasion with us. 🫶🥰
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Bohemia & Vienna
I couldn’t have hoped for a better birthday, at the end of a great week that family Fuchs/Fox/Lindsey/Newell will remember for many years to come.
We were expecting the discomfort of an August heatwave, and hordes of tourists. Instead we had a surprising amount of rain, but relatively empty streets. So I guess it worked out OK on balance..? ☔️⚖️🤷♂️ Maybe the proof is in the video watching.
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The Ninth Person On This Trip
We decided to bring three generations together for a Czech family pilgrimage, in this one unique window of opportunity: while Denny and I were visiting Europe from Shanghai; while Dad and Ann were still young enough to travel; while memories of our family history were still fresh in our minds; and before my teenage nephews Benjamin and Jacob flew the coop to university. On top of that, having been unable to spend any time together as a family during COVID times, it was also the perfect way to force us all to be in each other’s company for a week. The last time I saw my nephews, they were children. Now they are mountain-sized adults, whose cheeky personalities I feel like I’m getting to know for the first time.
Along with my brother Daniel and his wife Helen, the 9th person accompanying us on this trip is the spirit of my Grandmother (Babička). We started the trip in Prague, where she had ended up after the war, and where my father and uncle Jirka were subsequently born. And we’re making our way down to her birthplace of Vienna. But yesterday we made a special visit to the sleepy town of Milevsko in Southern Bohemia. That’s where Babička’s parents in Vienna (the Neumanns) had desperately sent her and her sister to live with their grandparents (the Aschermanns) after the annexation of Austria into the German Reich in 1938. She was 17, her sister was 15, and their little brother had been too young to travel, so had stayed in Vienna with his parents.
Babička was the only member of the Neumann and Aschermann families to survive the holocaust. The building where she lived in Milevsko has since been knocked down and rebuilt into a hardware store. And the local synagogue has since been reconsecrated into a church.
At the entrance to the church, there was a very nice memorial to the old synagogue, and to the victims of the holocaust from the town. Despite all this loss, the fact that the Aschermanns’ great great great grandchildren could pose for a photo in front of this memorial was enough to feel like we were breathing fresh life into the memory of my family, and all the other Jewish families of Milevsko.
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London Homecoming
Don’t wait until the next wedding, or the next funeral. We can always make the effort to meet each other, simply to show that we value the connection we have with one another. 👫
After four years away, this was by far the best of all London homecomings. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person in these photos who had been feeling nervous about seeing each other again. We’ve all become so adult, so independent. So concerned with our own family units, our own problems. But in the end it took just one afternoon to forget about the years apart, and to get back to making new memories together. 🥰
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A Photo of Mother and Son
A photo of mother and son back in 1979.
I was 2, she was 32.
We were... Thirty years apart.
She died on this day in 1989, she was 42.
The same age I’ll be this year.
It’s been... Thirty years apart.
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Remember Me
A story about grief, remembrance, and self-delusion. Performed live at the Unravel storytelling event in Shanghai, Dec 2018.
This story didn’t quite go to plan. I didn’t get the reactions I was expecting. I underestimated the awkwardness of the subject. The self-deprecating parts elicited pity, when I had been going for laughter. My mind blanked and I fumbled in quite a few important places. There was applause in a part that I totally wasn’t expecting. I even had a heckle (which, to make matters worse, was entirely justified).
But I’m still happy that I did it. And I’m sharing it in case it’s a story someone out there needs to hear this Christmas.
Thanks go to Clara and the team at Unravel Shanghai, for the amazing community they have built around their monthly storytelling series. Thanks to Lisa, Fred, Shaun, and all the friends (and strangers) in the audience. And thanks to Denny, to Jennifer, and to my family for all their love and support.
A Tribute to a Remarkable Lady
Katařina Fuchsová, or Katharina Fuchs, you were known by many names - Katja, Katka, Kačka, Kathy - but to me you were Babička. You were born Katharina Neumann to Bohemian parents in Vienna, Austria on 16 May 1921. You were a speaker of Czech, German, English and French, with some Russian and Spanish thrown in; you were a survivor of Terezín, Auschwitz and Mauthausen; a wife, mother, babička and prababička; a choir singer, a beer drinker and a potato boiler. You are no longer with us, but your spirit will abide.
You sometimes would just sit there at the end of the table, listening to your sons and their families talking and laughing. But there you are in every photo at every birthday, every graduation, every family gathering representing every bookmark of our lives. We know we owe these lives to your strength, your stealth, your will, and your sheer luck.
Luck that you married Honza Fuchs, who became a member of the Aufbaukommando at the Terezín concentration camp in 1941, a role that allowed him to slip extra potatoes into holes in the lining of his jacket that you sewed for him. Luck that until the end of 1944 you were spared transport after transport to the death camps, which took almost every other member of your extended family. Luck that when you were finally sent to Auschwitz, Mengele selected you to work in a munitions factory to assemble V1 rockets rather than send you straight to the furnaces. And luck stacked upon luck to later be reunited with Honza in Prague after you had been liberated from Mauthausen and he had escaped a death march by jumping into a haystack.
But you knew that life was not just good luck and bad luck. You knew to make the most of the hand you were dealt. Leave no crumb uneaten. Leave no letter unwritten. No favour or kindness unthanked. You treasured your family as the precious gifts that they were. You were never late to meet us. In fact sometimes you arrived four hours early. Sometimes you made a dry-run the day before, and still arrived four hours early on the day.
With a life thrust into turmoil from a young age, you also learnt to take comfort in routine, predictability and traditions. I saw you twice weekly as a teenager, as regular as clockwork. And I knew on those evenings to expect the call at 6pm to come down for a meal of vepřo knedlo zelo. Or řísky. Sometimes palačinky as a treat. You weren't much of a cook - we all knew it, and so did you - but no-one cared. In my early twenties I moved into my own flat, and still you came every Tuesday to cook and eat together. Sometimes we talked about your life, the early days in Vienna, your subsequent post-war existence in Prague, or your later life as a refugee in England after you and the family fled the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.
But mostly we avoided delving into the past, and stuck to conversations about our day-to-day routines. For you it was the latest tidbit that you'd learnt from your U3A university courses. Or gossip about colourful characters such as Gertie Balok, Frau Doktor Inge Müller and all the other Babičky in your circle. Or your swimming timetable at Copthall, and how it would fit with your plans to buy some kabanos at the Polish butcher in Chalk Farm. With Babička, no detail was too mundane.
And at the end of each weekly meeting, no matter how outrageous the British weather, you always caught the bus back to Hendon, irrespective of how much I insisted on driving you home. It also reminds me of that time when London came to a standstill in the snow. I was going to tell you the epic story of how I'd spent two hours walking home from work, until you said that you stayed up in a café all night and caught the first bus home in the morning. To have known Babička is to have known legendary patience. And stubbornness.
In later years I moved to Asia, and our meetings became less frequent. But you still sent your letters, typewritten on that old computer and printed on paper from a dot matrix printer with holes on either side. And we still spoke on the phone, sometimes at very unusual times because you always confused the timezones. I still came back to see you as often as I could. You still made bábovka and buchty. Oplatkový dort for birthdays, and vanilkové rohlíčky at Christmas time.
You were proud of me. You were frustrated by me. You called me 'můj zlatý' in your letters; you called me 'provocateur' when I was cheeky. You loved me, you loved all of us.
We will miss you.
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