Weigh the Wind

Weigh the Wind
Copyright © 2017 by Christopher Matthews Publishing
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of
1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or
transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval
system without the prior written permission of the author.
Editor: Jeremy Soldevilla
Cover design: MJC Imageworks
Typeface: Georgia
ISBN 978-1-945146-16-8
ebook ISBN 978-1-945146-17-6
Christopher Matthews Publishing
http://christophermatthewspub.com
Boston
Printed in the United States of America

To my daughter,
whom I love,
to infinity and beyond,
up, down and all around.

Note to Readers
Names and some identifying details of persons
portrayed in this book have been changed.

Introduction
THROUGHOUT MY LIFE, there has been a persistent and nagging voice in
my head that told me I was unlovable and different—alien even. To the world,
I appeared happy and secure as I kept up the façade by plastering on a smile
and pretending I was okay. Inside me was a bottomless pit of yearning for
someone, anyone, to love me. What could have created such a needy and lovestarved
human? Where does this longing come from, and does everyone have
it? Why was it so great in me?
Being so giving, so forgiving and so nice, I tried hard to be "kept" by
anyone and not tossed aside like I never mattered. Every day "Please love me"
ran through my mind as I whispered it to the universe. I had never felt normal,
for I lacked the confidence, self-esteem, and value in myself that came so
naturally, it appeared, to everyone else. I would people watch in the everyday
world and wish I was anyone else but me. Becoming a chameleon, I could
blend in without being visible, without complaining, without asking for
anything, without being true to myself. I became a people-pleaser and yes—a
person so maybe then, this time, I would be loved. Why was I so damaged with
such a huge hole in my heart?
Searching for normal, for love, I tried to figure out life and how I should
be acting by reading and watching others. Where was the love I witnessed on
television, for I was a TV Generation kid longing for the Cleaver parents so
caring, understanding and affectionate? Where was the love I read about in
romance novels as a teenager? This was the love that conquered all adversity
with the white knight riding in to rescue a distressed damsel. Where was the
happily ever after and the white picket fence kind of relationship I so
desperately sought? I wanted a Mister Darcy. Why did these kinds of love
elude me? I was gypped out of the encircling arms of adoring parents and the
sheltering embraces of loving partners, and I would look in the mirror and
wonder why me? What was wrong with little old me?

Dianna Lyn
For a long time, I pretended that it did not matter that I was not loved,
and I buried my feelings and kept "busy." This was easy to do as I was a
submissive and meek guilt-ridden farmer’s daughter and a conscientious
perfectionist elementary school teacher. The bottom line was that I
desperately wanted to be loved and I searched high and low, but especially
low, and made unwise choices for myself. Somehow, my chooser was broken!
What price love?
For most of my life, I could not risk having feelings—no crying, no
laughing, no anger, no emotions allowed. Emotions were dangerous and
troublesome, and it was in my best interest to show nothing—no reaction. I
had to do what I was told and hide me. Never could I let "them" see me, my
pain, or my neediness. I had to keep tight control on myself. Love was a luxury
emotion I learned early on, and it had to be earned by pure obedience and
subservience, if at all. Yet, I wanted it so badly!
I would, as a child, dream of flying with the gentle wind above the land,
above the farm buildings, above the trees, and I would look down to where I
had come from and then I would look up to where I wanted to go—away! I
would feel safe and free for a while in make-believe until reality came crashing
down on me through a loud yell or a crack of the belt. I was not wanted from
the moment I was born, and my little heart knew and felt it.
Since I was a teenager, I kept a journal where I poured out my emotions
and pain. Here was where a shy, scared, unloved girl expressed "stuff" that
kept bubbling up like the artesian well I had discovered on the wooded land
while pasturing cows. I ended up behaving as if I was subpar, for prominent
people in my life never confirmed that I was precious or worth cherishing just
as I was. These "takers" saw an "L" on my forehead to mean long-suffering
and lacking and took advantage of my kind heart.
Somehow, I had to erase or replace that "L" so it represented lovable. Why
did I always feel like I was heading into the wind? Where could I find
validation for my worth? Who or what would become my savior, my rock and
my soft place to land? Is love really a universal concept we all strive to
understand, comprehend and seize for ourselves? Empowering myself with
knowledge, I lived and survived it all. Wisdom was waiting!
I strove to find peace and love in my life and understand the purpose for
it all. Seeking was my necessity to awaken spiritual growth and self-love, for I
had believed that everyone else was more valuable than I. There had to be
more than just this! There just had to be.
2

Weigh the Wind
How blessed I was to experience amazing happenings that proved there
was something beyond this life and this world. What lessons had the wind
been whispering to me through the years?
Learning more from the absence of love than the presence of love I kept
searching for it outside myself, not realizing that it was an inside job first. I
had to silence a critical and taunting inner voice to become a survivor, a strong
spirit, a loving soul. Many have entered and exited my life—some hindered
me, some hurt me, some betrayed me, some abused me, some sustained me,
some supported me and some did and do love me.
This is the story of a most difficult life and a quest to find where love is or
is not! Maybe, if you follow my journey, you will understand and discover
more of who you are and where love is for you as you weigh the wind you
encounter.
It was August 2015 when I awoke with abruptness as a clear voice from
someone whispered twice "Weigh the wind."
Over the last five years, I had searched for a title to my book, and I had
discarded dozens. None seemed perfect, and I agonized over a choice. As I
reached in the dark for the yellow Post-it pad on my night table to write the
spirited message down, I smiled and was in awe. The title I had been given
seemed intriguing, thought-provoking, reflective, summarizing and very
meaningful for my life. My book was complete, and my journey calmed.
3

4

Chapter One
I Wasn't a Boy
I ENVELOPED MY QUIVERING BODY in my red-flowered comforter as if to
give myself a soothing bear hug like the ones my grandmother had given me as
a little girl. It served as a protective coating as unstoppable tears continued to
fall on my stained cheeks. Great trepidation still gripped me as I positioned
myself cross-legged in front of the picture window overlooking the quiet, late
night cul de sac.
Would he dare return to torture me further?
Though the police had escorted him out and promised they would trail his
car across the city to his parents' house, I feared he would finish what he had
started.
After everyone’s departure, I ran to unplug the garage door openers. The
police had ordered him to hand over the house keys, yet I did not know if this
was enough protection or enough deterrent for a raging bully and abuser.
As I sat on the carpet, holding vigil in my dark house, my mind raced with
worrisome thoughts. Have I really escaped? How had an intelligent, degreed,
professional woman like me ended up in a life-threatening, degrading
relationship? Why had I tolerated it for so long?
The locks would have to be changed first thing in the morning. My daughter
will need to be told of our life change.
Suddenly, I saw car lights turn on the cul de sac, and I strained to see if they
belonged to a green Accord—his car. My heart pounded as I shivered and shook
uncontrollably, but the lights turned into another driveway. Relief!
I returned to my troublesome thoughts. It is most dangerous for a woman
after a perceived separation from her tormentor. I hugged the comforter closer
and trembled, quietly sobbing from the trauma of it all for so long.
Slowly, I emerged from the fear controlling me to realize what a pivotal night
it really had been. The winds of change were afoot. Yet, why had this hell
happened to me? I needed to go back to once upon a time long ago in a land far,
far away across the immense windy ocean.
So it begins.

6
MY LIFE BEGAN ON A FARM 20 kilometers east of Winnipeg, Manitoba,
Canada. I was born the eldest of three children to parents of Slovak descent. My
parents immigrated to Canada from Czechoslovakia in the 1930's. My mother
was two years old when she crossed the Atlantic on a ship called The Statendam
from Rotterdam to New York. It was August 5, 1937.
The Statendam made many trans-Atlantic voyages between 1929 and 1939.
While in Rotterdam port in May 1940, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, and
The Statendam was repeatedly hit by crossfire and burned for five days before
becoming a total loss. Rotterdam was greatly damaged by bombing, and there
was fear that Amsterdam or The Hague would also be devastated, so the Dutch
surrendered. Hitler’s menace was spreading fast as the violent winds of change
swept Europe.
My father was eleven years old when he crossed the Atlantic on September
24th, 1938, on a ship called The Volendam. The Volendam was torpedoed by the
Germans near the Irish coast in 1940, but it limped to port and was repaired
over ten months before it entered further service. Father’s family sailed on the
last ship that was allowed to carry passengers from Slovakia and other European
countries to the New World.
My mother’s father, my grandfather, wanted a better and safer life for his
family and chose Canada. Landing in New York after eight days at sea, my
grandparents and their five children boarded a train to Montreal and then to
Winnipeg. There they stayed at an immigration hall for a few weeks as
grandfather looked at farms with a real estate agent.
He bought a farm in Meleb, Manitoba far from Winnipeg where land was
cheaper. My mother’s family had been simple, poor farmers in Slovakia. It was
a hard life in Canada, so Grandfather had to leave the farm and his family to
journey to Pine Falls, Ontario, and fell trees to make extra money.
Grandmother and my three uncles, who were seven, 12 and 16, had to run
the farm with its cows and chickens. The house had huge cockroaches, and
grandmother tried everything to get rid of them to no avail. Summer brought
throngs of mosquitoes.
The family only spoke Slovak, but they slowly learned to speak English. By
coming to Canada, my brave ancestors gave me the freedom to be whoever I
wanted to be. I was born in the best country in the world!
By 1944, my grandparents had ten children. Uncle Adam’s parents both died of
tuberculosis before he was ten, so he was adopted by my grandparents and
immigrated to Canada with them. The day of Uncle Adam’s mother’s funeral, in
Slovakia, my grandparents lost their four-year-old son, Stefan, to heat stroke.
My mother was the fifth child born to my grandmother Irena.

My grandmother, Irena, was born in Zastrania, Slovakia April 6, 1906, to
Anna Martinek, my great grandmother. Anna, apparently a very beautiful young
woman, had an affair with the local count who owned the nearby Budatin Castle.
The 13th-century castle was owned by the prominent Hungarian family from
1798 until 1945 when it became a museum of Slovak artifacts and history. Anna
became pregnant with grandmother and was rejected and denied by the married
count. Apparently, this count had an eye for the young ladies, and no female was
safe from his advances. This means that I have some royal blood in me.
Anna hated her daughter and made her do heavy chores while other children
got to play. Grandma would be beaten for the smallest thing. I suspect my great
grandmother took out her frustrations and embarrassment on my lovely
grandmother since having a child out of wedlock would have been a scandal in
the village.
It was a tough life for a young girl. Grandma was two when Anna married
Petr Duris, and her stepfather was very gentle and kind to her. Unfortunately,
he often wasn’t home because he had to work in coal mines far away. When he
was away, grandmother was again beaten and yelled at continually by her
mother and grandmother. Grandma’s stepfather was the only one to show her
love, and somehow, with that little kindness, she retained her sunny disposition
and positive outlook on life, for this is how I would know her to be. Petr died of
black lung when he was 38 years of age. My grandmother was unloved again for
a time.
Next door to my grandmother’s house lived a boy who was four years older
than her. She caught his eye because she was such a hard worker. That boy was
my grandfather, Joseph. They were married in 1924 when grandmother was 18
and grandfather was 22. Though my grandmother loved her husband totally, I
know that he was harsh and abusive towards her at times. In those days, women
did not leave their husbands and divorce was unheard of for Catholics.
Everything had to be tolerated and put up with as a woman, and my cheerful
grandmother excelled at it.
My father’s family came from Hornany, Slovakia. The day they left their village,
tanks were rolling up the main street in anticipation of war. The family of three
children and parents took a train to Prague and then on to Holland. So many
people were leaving Europe for America that the ships in the harbor were filled
to capacity. The family had to wait in a hotel for a week until another ship
arrived.
My grandfather knew a lot about America as he had worked a number of
years in the mines in the States. My grandmother’s brother had immigrated a
few years previously to New York, and he greeted the family when they arrived.

8
The USA was not accepting immigrants in 1938, so my father’s family came to
Canada. My grandfather, Joseph, and his older brother Vincent’s family
immigrated at the same time and bought farms in southern Manitoba where
other Slovaks had already settled.
The two families shared horses and machinery as money was scarce. Slovak
immigrants were only allowed to take a fraction of their money with them when
they left Slovakia. My father’s family was quite wealthy in Hornany and had
servants for the house and farm. With the money grandfather made in the
States, they had built a new two-story house and barn just outside the village.
Everything was left behind and entrusted to a relative named Peter. Thirty
years later, my grandparents received a small portion of the farm’s worth. My
grandmother, Helena, never liked Canada and always dreamed of returning to
Slovakia. In Canada, she had no servants and often she was left to run the farm
with the two boys and one girl as grandfather left for the States to work.
My grandmother was born Helena Warenyi on September 20, 1891. She had an
older brother, John, born in 1882 that lived in New Hyde Park, New York. John
had a son, William, and daughters, Anna and Helen.
William J. Warenyi, Private First Class, served with the 334th Infantry
Regiment, 84th Division for the USA and was killed in Granterath-Hetzerath,
Germany on February 26, 1945. William was buried in the Netherlands
American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten, Netherlands. William, only 19
years of age, received a purple heart posthumously for being killed in action
against an enemy of the United States. It is affecting that William would be
buried in the country that both my families departed from to find a new life in
America.
Anna married a William Shattuck and had three daughters and two sons who
live in New York and Florida.
My grandmother loved and was engaged to a man who died in World War I. He
was her true love. When my grandfather started courting her, she thought he
was too short and so wasn’t very interested. Finally, after grandfather persisted,
she agreed to marry him in 1923. My grandfather died in 1954, the year before I
was born.
Since he liked nice clothes, stylish hats, ivory handled canes, and expensive
rings, I do not think he wanted to be a farmer. The doctor told my grandfather
to give up smoking, drinking and rich foods. He refused to do that and said he
would rather die. Joseph died of a heart attack at the age of 64. How I have
wished I could have had him in my life, for I think I would have really liked him.

I understand why my grandmother was always so serious and bitter. It would be
my father, the baby of the family, who remained my grandmother’s favorite all
her life, much to my mother’s vexation.
My father had only a Grade 7 education because he was needed on the farm full
time since grandfather was often gone to the United States to make extra money.
The family grew sugar beets, clover, millet, buckwheat and raised turkeys, cattle,
chickens and pigs. Later, they grew wheat, oats and barley.
On Sundays, the family attended mass at a Slovak Roman Catholic Church
in Winnipeg. It was here that my father met my mother. Her family also
attended the Slovak Church once they moved closer to Winnipeg to farm. My
father’s older brother, Fredric, had mental issues. Grandmother would tell me
that back in Slovakia he’d been beaten over the head with a stick by a teacher
that left welts as big as sausages. He was never the same after that beating she
said. Grandmother and Fredric had a home across the yard from my father and
mother.
When I was young, I was very scared of my uncle. He would expose himself
anytime and anywhere around the farm. I remember seeing his penis and
running away, scared to death. Today this is called indecent exposure. He would
just grin and laugh, so it was a family decision to commit him to a communal
home in Pine Falls. After he left, he was seldom talked about, and he died of
stomach cancer when I was a teenager. My father acquired the farm from my
grandmother and took over the mortgage.
My mother’s family had moved closer to Winnipeg to Stonewall, Manitoba after
buying the farm of William Kurelek’s family. Kurelek, a famous Ukrainian
Canadian painter, would visit a few times a year to take pictures of his old
homestead. He would include in his paintings the red barn and white stone
cheese factory that I remembered seeing when I was a child visiting my
grandparents.
Some of my earliest memories as a child were of that white-washed cheese
factory and the two-story house with a hand pump for water by the kitchen sink.
I remember the dark hallway, the creaky wooden steps that led to the upstairs,
and the prevailing musty smell throughout the dim house. In early 1962, my
grandparent’s house burnt to the ground mysteriously, or not so mysteriously,
and a new one was built.
My mother completed Grade 9 and had to quit because it was difficult riding
a bicycle to the high school in Stonewall many kilometers away. The road was
not paved, and she would often get the wheels clogged with mud so that the bike
had to be walked and pushed.

By now, her family had a large dairy herd, so she stayed home to help on the
farm for a year. After that, her older sister got married and persuaded my mother
to move in with her and her husband for a few months until she got used to living
in the city.
The two sisters worked at Rice Sportswear, sewing. My mother liked her job
on the buttonhole machine as it paid good money. She got a room a few blocks
from work and went home every weekend by bus to the farm. Being only 18,
buxom and good looking, her boss would often sexually harass her, which was
very upsetting for her. He wanted my mother to take a typing course so she could
become his personal secretary. It was at this time that my mother met my father
at church.
My mother’s oldest living brother, Victor, was very handsome and was wellliked
by the ladies. He enlisted in the army in the Princess Patricia’s Light
Infantry while underage. Uncle met his future wife, Janie, at a boarding house
in Thunder Bay while working in the lumber camps. They married and bought a
farm near Stonewall. Both of their sons were born with birth defects.
My uncle ran a still in the back of the barn. The animal smells hid the odor
of grain brewing. I remember my father getting a large glass jug of clear liquid
from my uncle. He brought it home and proceeded to bury it under one of the
fence posts that enclosed the cow pasture. There it remained for a long time till
my father decided to dig it up. My father forgot under which post he had buried
it, and it was never found. One night, my uncle’s barn burned down, and he lost
the still and most of his livestock and goat. That was the end of risking
everything by illegally brewing alcohol.
I loved visiting my aunt and uncle’s place. We were always treated nicely,
and my cousins would take us to the huge haystack where we could rearrange
the bales to make forts. We were not allowed to touch our haystack at home for
playing on. My cousins had tons of comics about Superman, X-Men, and Archie.
They would let us borrow them so we could take them home to read. How I loved
perusing them late at night. I would take a flashlight and read under the covers
so my parents did not know. I made my sister promise not to tell. Before long, I
was caught and yelled at for wasting the flashlight battery and ruining my eyes.
When I had to get glasses, this was one of the reasons my parents said caused
my poor eyesight.
The whole front of my uncle’s farm had two half-mile long rows of mature
trees. I loved walking down the middle of those trees with my cousins. Today, in
my kitchen, I have a picture of two people strolling in the distance between two
rows of trees. That picture reminds me of my cousin Junior, who I have not seen
in over 45 years.
10

The second eldest brother, Don, remained single until his sixties. He remained
on the Stonewall family farm and continued to run it with my mother’s youngest
brother after my grandparents retired and moved to Winnipeg.
Tom, the younger brother, married a woman who was divorced with one
child. To a Catholic family in the 1970s, this was scandalous. They lived together
many years before making it legal.
I would hear my parents talk about this frequently, and Cindy had a difficult
time being accepted by the whole family. Uncle Tommy was an energetic, happy
and friendly man, and I admired him for weathering the family gossip mill. He
passed away quite suddenly in 2012 from cancer, as did Cindy six months later.
Uncle Don would not marry till the farm was sold to people from Holland in
1997. Neither of my uncles had any sons, and after a lifetime of being tied down
to a large dairy and grain farm and worrying about the weather, they decided to
sell. Both of my uncles remained good friends with the new Dutch family and
often helped them on the farm.
Shortly after selling the farm, Uncle Don began corresponding with a
woman from Slovakia who had an 18-year-old daughter. He brought them to
Canada and promptly married the woman.
At the age of 67, Uncle Don was smitten. The 47-year-old woman saw it as
an opportunity to remain in Canada. She came to live in Uncle Don’s new house
in north Winnipeg with her daughter.
Uncle Don would drive the daughter to and from the local high school.
Everything was great for two months after the wedding. Then the new bride
became very physically abusive to my uncle. He was able to relate the whole story
to me when I visited him many years later in 2007. He needed someone to just
listen to his pain and shame.
At one point, rumors in the family circulated that Uncle Don was gay
because he had a best, close male friend. My mother would say he never married
because he had a hernia that had never been medically attended to. Uncle Don
was tall, dark haired and handsome, and always treated us children kindly. He
would buy us Christmas presents every year. I still have the two Snow White and
Frosty the Snowman music boxes I received as a teenager from him.
Uncle Tommy helped Uncle Don get away from his wife and file for divorce.
He ended up having to pay her a lot of his hard-earned money, and she and her
daughter remained in Winnipeg after Uncle Don got his house back.
As children, we went to visit the Stonewall farm where my mother grew up a
couple times a year. The large barn had at least 60 Holstein cows on either side,
with automated drinking bowls. The cow would put her nose in the bowl, which
depressed a lever and water flowed in. My uncles had the most modern milking

12
machines and a huge milk tank for storage. I envied them because my parent’s
dairy had no amenities.
All of us had to milk cows by hand and water them outside in troughs or
inside by pails. To this day, I have large biceps from all that milking I did by
hand. My uncles’ house smelled of disinfectant always. They didn’t like us going
into the barn because they said the cows gave less milk the next day as if we
upset them or something.
Aunt Dora was my mother’s older sister. She lived in Transcona with her
husband and three children. She was the bossiest, most outspoken, gossipy and
unkind person you could ever meet, and similar to my mother.
When these city slickers unexpectedly visited us on the farm, they would
arrive with their superior attitude and flaunt their fancy clothes, newest toys and
store-bought candy. We were dressed in dirty and worn farm clothes. To this day
I do not like people just dropping in to visit without calling first.
I don’t remember them ever bringing us any treats, but they would eat theirs
in front of us. I remember feeling jealous and hurt, and maybe this was when a
seed began germinating inside me that someday I would be that city slicker and
I would have nice clothes and store-bought treats.
Aunt Dora’s family was very religious and attended Catholic mass every
Sunday where my cousin Bert was an altar boy. The oldest daughter, Emma, had
just begun attending the University of Manitoba when she was struck by a city
transit bus and was left a paraplegic. My aunt took her to Lourdes, France, where
believers come for miraculous healings, but nothing happened. After that
disappointing trip, none of the family attended church ever again.
Aunt Dora became more cynical and nasty, picking fights at Christmas and
Easter family gatherings especially about money issues. Bert never married, and
because he had many feminine mannerisms, the gossip in the family was that he
was gay. Again, the narrow-mindedness of my family that professed to be so holy
and Catholic seeped through. I watched all this through the eyes of a child that
even then sought to be and do the opposite.
Aunt Dora’s youngest daughter, Margie, would always fight with my sister,
who was the same age when they visited. My sister, as a toddler, resorted to
biting Margie whenever they fought. Aunt Dora would say that something was
wrong with my sister because, of course, her daughter was innocent.
Years later, when I attended the University of Manitoba, I would see Bert
and Emma, in her wheelchair, at the university now and then. After that, we
never kept in touch and the family retired to the Okanagan. Aunt Dora suffered
many years with Alzheimer’s disease before passing.

Beside my aunt’s Transcona home was the Starlite Drive-in. My cousins
would take us to the drive-in after dark, and we would sneak under the fence at
the very back and turn on the speaker. Then we would sit with our backs against
the metal fence and watch the movie for free. No one ever bothered with us.
My mother’s younger sister, Lisa, got married and lived in Calgary and
Vernon. I remember them visiting us on the farm a few times when I was young.
She arrived in short skirts and mink stoles. My Uncle Ted was very handsome
and very likable for he had the gift of the gab. Unfortunately, he was an alcoholic
and passed away at 54 of cirrhosis of the liver while his two sons were very
young.
I remember my uncle telling us kids to go in the garden and pick him some
peas for which he would give us each a quarter. My father and he would get
drunk, and while Uncle Ted would become happier and happier, my father
would become meaner and meaner. I liked my uncle, but I hated when he
encouraged my father to meet him drink for drink.
After they left, we were saddled with a mean and nasty father who would run
to his mother on the other section of land, where she now lived, because of my
parents' fighting. My mother and we kids were left to do all the chores alone. My
mother hated when my father ran to his mother whenever they had a fight. She
never had love for her mother-in-law, and she treated my grandmother horribly.
My youngest aunt, who was beautiful and gregarious, married a very abusive
overweight older man. After three daughters she was brave enough to leave him
and get a divorce. The middle daughter was born deaf. Again, there was a
scandal in the family, and everyone gossiped.
I was a teenager at the time, and I remember feeling proud of my aunt for
leaving her situation, and this may have stuck in my mind for later reference.
She raised her daughters and later met a wonderful man whom she married
and moved to British Columbia with. I remember visiting my cousins a few times
in Transcona where they lived and where my aunt helped her first husband
grease and repair the gravel truck he used to haul sand and rock for road
construction.
Before they had moved to Transcona, the family lived somewhere near
Beausejour on a farm. I remember going there once to visit. My cousins took us
down into their dark and dingy basement. All over the walls, in white paint, were
the words danger, keep out, Jack the Ripper was here, and a skull and
crossbones was depicted. I was so scared. Needless to say, I did not stay down
there very long, and I had nightmares for a few nights.

14
In the spring of 1954, the Slovak Catholic Church on Mountain Avenue was
having a tea, and it was there that my father noticed my mother. The tea was in
the basement where the women and young girls were preparing and serving
finger sandwiches and dainties with tea or coffee. He kept accepting everything
she served him, including the sandwiches that he did not like. He ended up
stuffing them into his pockets.
Apparently, at the age of 18, my mother had dated lots of boys. My father
was eight years older than she was and she thought he was more mature and
responsible. From that tea, my father was brave enough to ask if he could drive
my mother home to Broadway Avenue in the city center from North Main. My
father had a beautiful car that was his pride and joy, and I think my mother was
impressed. She was tired of living alone in the big city and being sexually
harassed by her boss at work.
My parents saw each other all that spring. When my father’s dad passed
away that April, my mother went to the funeral and met the rest of the family for
the first time. They were engaged in October and were married at the church
they met in.
The reception was in a hall in St. Boniface which was catered by the ladies
of the church, as was the custom. There was no honeymoon as there was much
fall field work to be done.
Father had built a house that was hard to get to on a dirt road, so the
following summer it was moved to the original homestead site across from my
grandmother’s house.
I was born July 11, 1955, and was named Dianna Lyn after the actress Diana
Lynn. The nurse who filled out my birth certificate spelled the name incorrectly.
I was told all the nurses at the St. Anne Hospital told my mother that I was the
prettiest baby they had ever seen.
A woman in the bed next to my mother had just had a baby boy, and she
jokingly said maybe the two of us would be married someday. Years later, when
I was teaching in Lorette, this baby, now a man, came to our school to read from
the children’s book he had published. Deep down, I have always felt that I had
been switched at birth and that really I had another biological family
somewhere, mainly because I was so different from all of mine.
Never would I be called Dianna by my parents or siblings, and they not
calling me by my birth name left me feeling disconnected somehow. Though my
brother and sister were addressed by their actual given names, I would be
called "Dien" and never Dianna. When I found my voice later in life, I would
insist on being called Dianna and not Diane or Dee or Di or anything else, and I
would emphasize that my name be spelled with two ns and an 'a' at the end.

Maybe this, and other traumatic events in my childhood created an identity
crisis in me as I searched my whole life to find and know myself. I remember
reading Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables and identifying fully
with Anne with an "e" who had a best friend named Diana. I just wanted so badly
to be loved and acknowledged for me! To this day my siblings call me Dianne or
Sis and address letters to me as Dianne. Only recently have I had a brave enough
voice to correct them, but it does not matter so much anymore as I know better
who I truly am.
My father would not come to the hospital and pick up my mother and me
because I was not born a boy. In those days, men never stayed to witness any
aspect of the birthing process. My father only wanted a son who would take over
the farm someday. It was my father’s brother, Fredric, who picked us up and
drove us home. I would hear all my life the laments on why were you not born a
boy and since you are not the firstborn son, then you will marry a farmer. That
son-in-law would work alongside my father and someday take over the farm and
continue the legacy.
Father would berate my mother about not having a boy first because it was
all her fault. I shall never forget the day, in Grade 12 Biology, that I learned it
was the man who determined the sex of the baby by donating either an x or a y
chromosome. I took my textbook home to show my father, but of course, he
would not listen and called it hogwash. After all those years of blaming my
mother for me being a girl it really was him who determined it.
Nothing changed, for it still was my destiny to bring a son-in-law into the
family who would farm alongside my father and allow both of them to have an
easier and boastful life.
I started walking at nine months, and I was a "good" baby. I seldom cried and
slept most of the time, so my mother was still able to help with the farm chores.
When I was just beginning to crawl, an incident occurred where I was almost
killed. I was left in my grandmother’s house to sleep while the two women went
outside on the hot May day to pump water into the trough for the thirsty cows
coming in from the pasture. The cows were pushing and poking each other as
they vied for a position at the trough. Somehow I had let myself out of the house,
and the two women saw me crawling in among the many cows’ feet as they
jostled for water. My mother screamed and ran to scoop me up. She said that a
guardian angel must have protected me as it really was a miracle that I was not
trampled to death. For all intents and purposes I should have been squashed
and killed, but maybe my destiny was to create significance for my life, and so I

16
was spared. I would search for that higher purpose and meaning in every
situation and with every person placed before me every day I breathed.
Growing up on the farm meant there was always much work to be done. My
mother had to be out in the field working side by side with my father. My
grandmother watched me a lot of the time in my early childhood. She was not a
demonstrative person, and I always found her to be reserved and serious. I do
remember that she would make potato gnocchi coated with ground poppy seed
and sugar. To this day I can smell and taste those plump little pillows of dough.
My mother never made them, but she did make donuts and cakes and buns.
During summer haying my parents would buy ice-cream in buckets and my
mother made homemade popsicles with Jell-O and Kool-Aid. My parents did
not believe in "treating" us children very often, for that was a waste of money
and they would justify their behavior by saying that they never had treats as kids
so neither should we.
All of us worked so hard hauling bales and stacking them, and it was a tiring
and hot July job so those rare cool treats spurred us on to toil that much harder.
We were never allowed to just go in the fridge and have whatever we wanted.
There was a strict rule, enforced by my mother, that we had to ask for food and
then she determined what we could or could not have. When our parents left to
the city to buy machinery parts we children would dare to sneak a tablespoon
each of ice-cream from the basement freezer, but not too much, or our mother
would discover our treachery and of course, being the oldest, I would be yelled
at or even hit for this disobedience.
I must have been about five years of age, and there was a heavy, dense fog
hanging over the morning as I walked across the yard to my grandmother’s
house for a visit. Upon running back home, I forgot about the barbed wire fence
in the fog and ran smack into it. My face and arms were all cut up, and I entered
the house crying. It’s funny, but I never remember being comforted or soothed
when I was hurt or when I cried. No cuddles, kisses or hugs. I remember the
stern voice from either of my parents saying, "Detsko, stop crying." In Slovak,
detsko meant kid, and my parents would add an English adjective when they
spoke to me. That adjective would usually be "stupid," "useless" or "hopeless."
The verbs they added in front of detsko were "hurry up," "stop crying," or "come
here" spoken in a strict voice. Detsko became the last Slovak word spoken to me
by them well into my adult years and that word still conjures up feelings of being
small, helpless, fearful and powerless. The detsko in me has struggled to be liked
and loved because, as a cute little girl, I was not cherished or comforted by either
of my parents. As an adult, I am embracing that little girl and showering her with
love, hugs and kisses. I’ve learned to parent myself in order to heal deep

childhood wounds. I placed a framed picture of little me in my study to
acknowledge and love that young girl every time I am in that room.
When I was older, my mother insisted on grandmother’s house being moved to
the other section of the farm. My mother had no liking for her mother-in- law,
and she saw my father as a "mama’s boy." He would leave, by driving to his
mother’s whenever my parents had a yelling fight even though she now lived
three kilometers away.
During spring teas and fall suppers at the Catholic Church, the women
busily prepared and served food while the men went upstairs to the priest’s
parsonage to drink, smoke and play cards. My father would drive us home in an
intoxicated condition and proceed to pick a fight with my mother. He would yell
and call her awful names, throw and break things, and then leave to see his
mother. We would be left to do all the chores again.
My father was a mean drunk, and it is to his credit that I never saw him
inebriated after about the age of ten. Living on the farm and being far from
stores, it was difficult to get alcohol. Also, before marrying my mother, my father
smoked quite a bit, but my mother put a stop to that immediately. So, as the
years progressed, she firmly wore the pants in the family and controlled all the
business and finances. I would soon find out the main reason why they fought
so much.
The section of land where my grandmother’s house stood had a large bush.
Every spring our young heifers and steers were put there to pasture as it was all
fenced in. My grandmother looked after the cattle all summer before we herded
them down the back road to my parent’s farm for the winter. Often, there was
not enough room to house all the cattle inside the barn, so six or so heifers were
kept in the chicken coop across the yard for winter.
I remember lugging large pails of water in minus 20-degree weather to the
coop every day. The water would slosh all over my pants and instantly freeze,
leaving my pant legs stiff and icy. This was one of many chores I dreaded.
A few times, I had to go into the chop granary to shovel the crushed grain
used to feed the cattle, away from the spout of the crusher. A fly wheel on the
Massey tractor had a wide belt that operated the crusher machine inside the
wood granary. After about an hour one would come out covered in white powder.
I had a difficult time breathing since the air in the granary would be full of dust,
and I would feel like I was suffocating.
It was the same with augering grain into wood granaries. Someone had to
be inside the granary shoveling away the grain from the auger spout as the air
filled with dust.

18
My parents were always stingy with money; my mother especially. With her
dislike of my grandmother, she only bought her the staples for food. My parents
would take my grandmother’s pension check and buy her groceries. It was
always the bare essentials I am sad to say.
During the winter, grandmother stayed with us, and as she got into her
eighties, my mother had no choice but to accept her living with us permanently.
The two women seldom spoke to each other. Grandmother would sit in her chair
all day and read her Slovak bible. She had a twin bed in the basement where she
slept.
As a young girl, I began forming an impression of my mother as a cold,
mean, unaffectionate woman who ruled by yelling and scare tactics to get me to
obey. It was extra confusing and hurtful to see her lavish affection on my
brother. My mother was a parent that played favorites. There came a time when
I understood that my tears of hurt or upset had no effect except to garnish a
retort of, "Stop crying, you crybaby." Today I realize that she was exactly like my
great grandmother and great-great grandmother. Meanness ran on that side of
the family, but somehow it had skipped a generation with my kind-hearted
grandmother.
When I was 23 and teaching in Woodridge, I got a phone call saying that my
paternal grandmother had fallen down the basement stairs and she had hit her
head on the cement floor. She was rushed to the hospital but passed away
February 13, 1979.
There was a blizzard raging, and our neighbor helped me shovel out the car.
I drove the 100 kilometers from Woodridge to the farm on treacherous roads.
The funeral was in Winnipeg at the Slovak Church, and I silently cried for I lost
someone who loved me and had done her best to show it.
I sat in the front row and remembered when my grandmother and I stripped
feathers for pillows or braided strips of colored rags to make coiled rugs or
shelled peas and conversed in Slovak, or the times she tried to stand up to my
mother and support me. I knew I would see her again for my heart was brimming
with love.
When I was two and a half, my brother was born. My parents were ecstatic I am
sure. Here was the boy who would work alongside my father and make the farm
prosper. Pictures show me standing sadly to the side as my mother smiles
broadly cuddling her precious baby boy; her "prince."
The irony is that my brother never wanted to remain on the farm. He had
little aptitude for farm machinery or their repairs. My brother liked books and
school and aspired to do anything but stay on the farm. The reason for that was

partly because of the way he was treated by our father. Who would want to work
alongside a critical, short-tempered and intolerant dictator?
There would eternally be pressure put on me to marry a farmer by both my
parents, and my brother would be allowed to live his own life.
15 months later, my sister was born.
I was privy to what happened in my parent’s marriage from an early age. In
my teens, my mother told me that she tried to abort my sister because she did
not want any more children. She punched herself in the stomach repeatedly and
wouldn’t eat properly. Nothing worked, and she had to endure the pregnancy.
My sister was born a little different with mild learning disabilities and had
an IQ of 90. My mother was never kind to her, but my father would always stick
up for her in any disagreements.
In 2011, my mother disclosed another horrifying secret. Being the keeper of
family secrets placed a heavy burden on my psyche all my life. After having me,
my mother immediately and too quickly got pregnant again. She told me my
father kicked her and kicked her in the stomach, so she lost the unborn child
that was a boy. She had gone outside to the side of the house, squatted down and
aborted the baby. I saw no emotion whatsoever in her relating this to me. How
sad, because that may have been the boy who would have loved the farm. Maybe
there would have been less pressure placed on me to marry a farmer had he
lived.
I was shocked when I heard this, and later I cried when I was alone. That I
had such cold-hearted parents! They were even colder than I had thought. Today
I realize that this was murder! Maybe I would have had one member of my
biological family who would have loved me.
One of the biggest issues in my parents' marriage was sex. As far back as I can
remember I was always put in the middle of their fights. It was not appropriate
that I was the sounding board and that I was apprised of all their personal issues.
Being Catholic, no birth control could be used. My father wanted sex, and my
mother withheld it. He would tell me that she never wanted it. My mother would
tell me that sex was revolting and she never liked it. Sex was just a wifely duty to
be tolerated, especially since, I suspected, she had no affection for my father.
When my mother was pregnant, she did not have to have sex. It was an
excuse she used to avoid intimate relations with my father for as long as she
could. After having "the son," she did not want any more children.
My father had a violent temper, was very jealous, and he was physically
abusive to us children and especially to me. He would yell at my mother and be
verbally abusive, but I do not remember him ever physically abusing her. I do

20
not believe that my mother ever loved my father, but divorce was not possible
for a Catholic at that time. I think, over time, he gave up asking for sex, and he
spent as much time as he could outside on the farm and away from all of us.
Abstinence was the birth control used probably for the rest of their life after my
sister was born. I knew that my mother would have been happy to just have the
one son and no daughters at all because it was only to him that she showed
affection right up to the day she died.
For a few years, when I was very little, my father drove all the way to the west
side of Winnipeg to work building houses during the winter months. I remember
standing on the toilet in the bathroom, looking out the window that faced west,
and watching for car lights coming. All the neighbors were also coming home
from work so I never knew which lights were going to be my father’s.
I was a normal child watching for my father to come home but not receiving
the normal fatherly responses upon his coming through the door. Mine was not
the Cleaver or Nelson family I would see on television. Never would I see my
mother and father kiss, hug or hold hands. I do not remember ever getting hugs
or kisses from either of my parents. Ever.
It was when my parents and I went to Winnipeg for machinery parts and
other errands that fights started in the half-ton. I could not escape until we
arrived home. Many trips before, my father hinted at some other secret. He
would threaten to tell me something that would change how I saw my mother.
"I’m going to tell her, and then she’ll know what you are."
When I was 15, while driving home past Dugald, my mother did not let the
fight drop and decided to tell me what my father had hanging over her head. My
mother herself had previously admitted and bragged to me that she had many
boyfriends before my father was in the picture. She would relate to me the barn
dances at Crabby Steve’s and boast how popular she was. One of those
boyfriends had been the brother of Aunt Dora’s husband. Thinking that my
father would know she was not a virgin on their wedding night, she told him that
she had had sex with this younger brother of her brother-in-law.
Through the whole marriage, my father had brought up the issue that she
was not a virgin when he married her outside the ear shot of us children. Times
had changed, and it was no longer a big deal to have sex before marriage. It
angered my father that I would not side with him as I refused to be drawn into
this issue. I know that this city boy she had sex with had the same first name as
my father, the farmer, and I think my mother lamented that it was the farmer
and not the city slicker that wanted to marry her. Today I suspect that she
resented me when I chose a city slicker instead of a farmer to marry, which was

totally against her orders and her plan. How angry and jealous she would be that
I would escape my fate of a life of drudgery like she had!
Through the years, my mother had hinted at another sexual secret in the family.
It wasn’t until 2011 that she told me more. She revealed that when she and my
aunts were in their teens, my Uncle Don tried to get into bed with each of them
and have sex. She said she fought him off and then quickly changed the subject.
I wonder if what she said was really true. Maybe there was more to this secret.
Maybe that was why she wasn’t a virgin on her wedding night. I was too shocked
to pursue the issue at that time, but I wish I had. There were so many secrets I
had to carry.
In February of 1964, our house burned down. My brother and I were at school
two and a half kilometers away. At recess, we were sliding down the snow banks
on the edge of the skating rink when the other kids started pointing to the gray
smoke in the sky and saying that our house was on fire.
We denied it. It could not be true. I remember worrying all day in school. At
3:30 p.m. it was my aunt and uncle who came to pick us up. Upon arriving at
home, I could see that nothing was left of my house but blackened sticks and
smoldering ash.
The winter snowfall had been especially heavy that year. My sister, who was
not yet school age, was in the barn with my parents doing the morning chores
when the fire started. There was a blustery wind, and it was carrying the fire to
the detached garage where the 1960 Bel Air was housed. A hundred centimeters
of snow was blocking the doorway of the garage after recent snowstorms. My
parents were frantically shoveling in order to move the car out of harm’s way.
Neighbors started arriving to help save some items from the house. One
neighbor crawled through the back bedroom window and saved the photo
albums and important papers from a dresser drawer. Thick smoke prevented
anyone else from going in.
The car was saved, and to this day I have the Bel Air in my garage safe and
sound. I bought it from my father for one hundred dollars in 1980 and had it
tuned up. In 2015, after the Bel Air sat untouched for 18 years, I sold it to my
daughter’s boss for $3000, and he invested $13000 to get it running soundly.
Though I teared up when it was towed out to be repaired, I have since been able
to make peace with my decision to sell it. Anyway, my daughter’s boss asked if
he could store it in my garage so a few months later the Bel Air came back
mechanically sound.

22
This concludes the sample preview.
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