Reprise on this very Day: I Wish I had Big Breasts and Wore High Heels

Perhaps because I am in Prague today, on August 21, I decided on this reprise.

Perhaps today's NEVERMORE1968 happening in Prague with its photos, films, testimonies, and poems inspired this share.

Perhaps the reason is my mom’s stories from her ninety-one long, fabulous life’s journey on the waves of Protectorate, Communism, and freedom. I have always been devouring each word about how she went around to lead her life.  How she stayed true to her values,  how she survived, and still lived a happy life. 

For my mom, it was an easy choice: As a music teacher with a love for poetry and theater, she and my father devoted their lives to spreading the beauty of knowledge and art. After the graduation, they were both sent from Prague to the Sudetenland. It was a common practice in the 1950s in Czechoslovakia to get a so-called  “placement card” with an order to report to a given workplace in your field; it was not your choice in what location to work. Issued by our government, it was an assurance that the students graduating in the same year are dispersed all around the country, so they will not become prone to getting together and perhaps organizing resistance. And, the Sudetenland needed to be repopulated. My parents, then a boyfriend and girlfriend, were sent to a beautiful corner of our country, to Moravia, nestled between the border with Austria and Slovakia.  It is a very traditional wine-making region with the most hospitable kind generous happy people I have ever met! Their dialect is the sweetest music to my ear.  Folk dancing and singing have been an inseparable part of Moravian wine-making agrarian life. And it is where I grew up.

My parents started teaching in a small village Poštorná, and before one knew it, there was a children choir under my mom’s baton, a trip to Prague’s theater, a youth theater, an adult theater a book club in the library, lectures, poetry theater, and my favorite: Thursday’s Poetry Readings in cafe Slavia. All done with selfless passion, earnestness, and joy by my parents to offer something that may be embraced, that may bring sunshine to life, and create camaraderie. After all, they were two young strangers trying to fit in and to be accepted. And to stand out, they did in a place where everyone spoke a language laced with fabulous local vocabulary, and women over fifty wore only costumes and no civies. It seems that the Moravians understood my parents' effort well: to present the beautiful fruit of human talent shining through poems, plays, and songs. 

And so, my parents became, in their 40-plus years in Moravia, someone special, sought after, admired, and dear to many. There is a tree in the name of my father, a wing of a junior college where he taught, bears his name, and a beautiful plaque was revealed last year at my mom's school facade acknowledging my parents' contribution.

But that is for a different blog I should write soon.

But now you understand why I had to move far away so as not to live in their shadow!

For today, Thursday, the twenty-first day of August, I decided to reprise one of my stories. My parents are in it, then 34 years old, I was five, my brother was one: a young family on a hot summer day in Czechoslovakia 57 years ago today: 

I WISH I HAD BIG BREASTS AND WORE HIGH HEELS

August 21, 1968, Czechoslovakia

It is the twenty-first day of August 1968, late at night. The Russians just invaded Czechoslovakia.

I am five and excited to be woken up at two AM because it is an unexpected promise of a great adventure.

My mother is quickly helping me dress, tucking my yellow shirt with an embroidered bee on the right shoulder into my shorts. She allows me to wear flip flops even though we do not go swimming, the only time I can usually wear them. And off she drags me out. I wonder what is going on, but I say nothing and listen to the fun echo sound of my rubbery flip flops hitting the shiny concrete steps. I hold on tight to my mom’s hand, not to fly away as she is hurriedly catching up with my father, already waiting outside.

The sidewalk in front of our house is crowded. My father is standing in a circle of our neighbors, a small radio in a brown leather case by his ear.

We never take our small radio outside. We never go outside in the middle of the night unless we are catching a train.

Something must be up.

We join the crowd and walk towards the village plaza by the church.

I notice that the yellow apartment building on my right has many windows lit and open, and as we are passing the maroon building of the coal warehouse, I am startled by the noise of the heavy gate gliding noisily on the rail to be wide open so the night-shift workers can join us.

One more turn by the bus stop, and here we are at the plaza. I love this part of my village. I am often allowed to bike here to meet my friends.

The plaza is surrounded by beautiful old buildings, all shining with red bricks made and baked in our local ceramic factory. The red buildings are similar looking: beautiful and fancy, some with slim spiral towers, tall round-arched windows, some with wrought iron decorations, heavy doors and funny and really scary gutters: here is the library, the beautiful building of the doctors’ offices and a town hall, next is a post office and on the left my favorite of all: my school cafeteria!!! It has a fenced wrought iron bridge between the two spiral towers, and we were once allowed to cross the bridge up there!! But the most beautiful buildings that complete the square of the plaza are a big elementary school nicknamed Red, after the red bricks, where my mom teaches, and a huge round gorgeous, red church sitting in the middle of a large, spooky garden where we play a lot.

Everyone I know is here in the plaza: like our cook from a school cafeteria paní Kuriálová, our postman, pan Bartoš, our nurse, the cashier from the grocery store, Miss Bumbálková from after school, and all of my parents’ friends. People carry Czech flags, others have them pinned on their clothes, everyone is loudly greeting everyone, shaking hands, gesturing wildly; small groups are formed, and people mingle around. By now, my father puts me on his shoulders, and I crane my neck to spot my classmates and friends, and if I do, I wave at them.

Suddenly, the sound from the tall red brick belfry startles the plaza as it almost visibly swells with the sudden frantic tolling of the bells. I am scared, it is so loud and all people look up as if something should come down from the heavens. What is up? My parents talk to everyone left and right, I keep asking why the church tolls its bells in the middle of the night for so long and what are we doing out, but they brush me away with a loving but quick pat on my cheek with “wait a minute” and “ it’s nothing” and they keep talking.

My mom’s friend Věra starts stroking my head and keeps saying, “Do not worry, my little doll.” That is how she always calls me, my little doll. Then she says she took Radek, my neighbor and my best friend, to his grandma when I ask where he is. She took him to his grandma in the middle of the night? Strange.

Then I hear an incredible, unfamiliar rumbling noise that makes the ground shake, and at the same time, I hear three geese shrieking sharply above our heads as they are finally disturbed from their nap on a garden lagoon. I cling to my parents and I hear loud shouting: “Oh, no!” and “Jesus Maria” and “This is it”, and “My God” and “What will happen now”.

Tanks roll into the church plaza, and everyone in the village stands still. Dark, bulky clouds are passing over the night's clear sky. All of a sudden, as if someone gives a signal, the entire plaza starts moving, almost dancing. Some people are angrily shouting, others are piercing the air with their fists, some people are crying, others burst into our national anthem, and I am afraid. My parents look serious as they join the singing.

I am all over my dad, squeezing him tight. He takes me down and holds me, but my mom grabs my hand and drags me away, the back way through the church park. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my friend Zdena still sitting on her father’s shoulders, her eyes round and big as she stares into the night.

We are back at home. My parents’ friends and neighbors come to our large kitchen. The phone is ringing, the radio is on, and my mom is pulling out rolls to make little sandwiches with liver pate and pickles. The kitchen is loud and cozy to me. “Russians”, “Moscow”, “Breznev”, Invasion”, Contra Revolution”, “Dubček” —these words are said with so much tension and drama that I watch with an open mouth out of a corner where I quietly sit on our green couch. I feel a part of everything. I start here and there nodding my head to some of the comments, as if I understood.

My parents never let me stay up after 7 PM, and it is almost dawn! I know that something big is going on, and I am forgotten. I sit in the corner, legs pulled up, I listen, I watch, I try to understand. In a while, I even get up and make myself a drink with raspberry syrup. I sit down again and wait for my opportunity. Being already a part of this exciting, strange night, I have so much confidence that when there is the smallest gap in between the everlasting talk, I jump in and say loudly: ”The Russians went too far this time, and the Communists will pay big time”. I have overheard this sentence from my father’s colleague, who was standing next to me at the plaza.

I do not understand why everyone is suddenly staring at me and why my mom springs to her feet and rushes me to bed, not even commanding me to say a proper “good night” to our guests. When the door closes, I hear a subtle laughter spilling from the kitchen into the hall. I do not understand! Why do I fall again into the stuffy realm of the undesired when I, too, want to be a part of today’s happening! I only wanted to show them I do understand! I liked to listen and watch, and I was enjoying myself so much.

Under the covers, I feel betrayed and alone. I am so sad. I wish I already had big breasts and I could wear high heels. Then nobody would rush me off to bed.

But before I fall asleep, I come up with something that excites me after all. I cannot wait to go to school in the morning. There is something I want to tell my teacher.

My mom's red brick school

In the morning, my mom is preoccupied. I have to go with her to school, and we are taking the back way by the fields. It is August, and I smell cherries from the nearby gardens we are passing. I notice how everyone is warm-hearted today. Several people stop for a second to speak to my mom, and they all agree how horrible the situation is. I notice a tricolor ribbon, blue, red, and white, on everyone's clothes. My mother tells me it stands for our flag, and people wear it to let each other know we are a nation that is proud to be Czech. I am proud to be Czech, I say. I love to sing our national anthem even when I cannot sing it solo in front of everyone.

I wish I had a tricolor ribbon right now. My mom promises we will get one later.

Finally! I am allowed to go alone on the last block from my mom’s Red school to my Yellow school. I run as fast as I can, my bag on my back, jumping up and down in a wild staccato. I storm into my room and scream at my teacher: “Mrs. Kučerová, Mrs. Kučerová, the Russians went too far this time and the Communists will pay big time, BIG TIME!”

 My calm, kind, neat old kindergarten teacher jumps out from her desk, swiftly comes to me, her finger erected right in front of my face. “Markétka, do not ever repeat this. It is adult talk you do not understand.” And she glances at me, but in a second, hugs me gently, gives me a short pat on my back, and quickly pushes me toward my desk.

I am so hurt! What is wrong with the world! I just want to be a part of their gang. I want to let them know that I understand, and instead, I feel betrayed again. I even wish the tanks would go by the school; I want something big to happen. So alone I feel.

I wish I were grown and I could tease my hair the way my mom and Věra do. No one would hush me down.

I see a bee trapped between the screen and the window. I see a blue sky with fluffs of white clouds passing by. I am squinting my eyes as I look out, and I am craving an apple sorbet. The one that comes in a square box with a wooden stick. The kind you can only scrape as it is as hard as a rock, but it dissolves in your mouth. Then, when it melts a bit, you start licking on it, and finally you take a bite and your teeth are set on edge, but you keep biting piece by piece until the sorbet is smaller and smaller until it is completely gone.

The Russian army stayed in Czechoslovakia from August 21, 1968 till June 1991