I...yes I, have a blog??
Let me introduce my broken self. A refugee in body and mind from a revolution decades ago, in fact so long ago, most of my fellow "Americans" never heard of it! I was a child when my foolhardy, brave, naive parents decided to flee Hungary in late '56 south, to what was then called "Yugoslavia", where we were encamped in various refugee camps. for almost a year. My parents, I and a baby sister who was scarred for life after being ripped from a home we loved, only to be jostled from camp to camp, with camp duties, lumped in with strangers, sleeping on floors, eating what we could. Much of our food came from misguided charities that basically sent boxes of leftover, unsold goods that they deduct from taxes. So, one month we would get boxes of of Crisco, a product eastern Europeans had never even heard of, let alone understand it's use, since Hungarians and most of Europe only used pure lard in preparing sauteed or fried foods. Another month we got boxes of anchovy paste which we spread on bread and ate several times a day until it was gone. The month we got tampons was exciting, since the camp members had no clue what they were used for! Boxes of hundreds of lipstick was pretty useless too! Care package charities have since revamped their programs and no longer 'dump' useless goods in refugee camps worldwide.
I remember the 2-3 day trek through wet cold and and deep, crusty snow with my parents, said baby sister, and a larger than life personality that was my uncle. My parents managed to make their way to the Yugoslavian border despite themselves and their bickering, meandering without a compass in the dark, avoiding watchdogs, watchtowers and roving Hungarian troops entrusted with being on the lookout for fleeing countrymen. I was annoyed, and bewildered by the whole ordeal, couldn't comprehend what we were doing and why, and missed my grandmother. When we finally tripped over the last evidence of a border: which was a trampled bit of barbed wire, we reached the edge of a river, with floating ice, and Yugoslavian green wool clad soldiers, complete with red star on their caps, similar to the very uniforms we were running from in Communist held Hungary, who ushered us into a small boat, filled with other people, weighed down to nearly capsize or flooding stage. My mother, barely 21, created a scene when she first saw these Yugoslavian troops, thinking they were Russians, there to arrest us and take us back, or worse, have us executed. She beat on one guards chest, who then protested in his native tongue, that he was not Russian, but Yugoslav, until my father succeeded in calming her down and led her to realize what was going on. On the other side of the river in the early dawn, more guards greeted us and whisked my baby sister away, who was so cold and still, my father thought she had already died. They took her to a clinic somewhere and returned her a few days later. She had umbilical hernias from birth and had to be taped and kept from crying, so as not to exacerbate her condition. I remember the camps vaguely as pleasant places with some children, mostly boys, with whom I found frogs in the streams and abandoned fountains from estates long forgotten. I didn't mind the laundry duty or helping my mother plan for and cook for as many as 300 some people per camp. My father worked at whatever needed doing, or searching the countryside for vegetables, fish and such to supplement our poor diet. I think I got a touch of rickets during that time, for I look at pictures from before my 5th birthday, and I had straight legs, but afterwards my right leg has been quite bowed and still is today, now in my 60's.
