Crossing the Sound
February 21st, 2007 by Nadja
My mother was afraid of dark water. Throughout her life she avoided all situations - however appealing they appeared - that involved dark oceans, ponds, lakes. She knew they would make her feel nauseous.
No moonlit scinny-dipping. No romantic midnight-strolls along the boardwalk. No summernight-fishing for mackerel in the Norwegian fjords. No shooting-star-watching from the deckchair of a cruiseship. No ’sundowners’ on the balcony if the balcony faced the ocean.
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She believed the fear of dark water was caused even before she was born: When my grandmother - four months pregnant - had to flee Denmark when the Germans came for the Danish Jews during World War 2. Like most of the Danish Jews they made it to safety in Sweden thanks to the extraordinary help from the Danes.
Crossing the Sound at midnight - hiding in the bottom of an old fishing boat cruising through the minefields…
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A relative of mine, who was a little older than your mom, also had fear embodied in his memory because of that boat trip.
Escaping the pogroms, he and his family were hiding on one of the fishing boats, him being five years old. His strongest memory is that his mom had a syringe with sleeping medicine in, ready to inject into his arm in case he started to cry. That would save them all.
But it left him with a trauma that he carried with him: He couldn’t bear hearing children cry. I remember this vividly from my childhood.
To me, his story has always reminded me how important it is to be gentle with each other, and to work towards not rolling over other people like a wave. It is crucial in a society based on decency that its inhabitants live with the conscience that others may carry personal pain with them.