From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Last night I told Grandfather that I had been a very good girl for a long time, over a week, and I thought he should tell me some more of that story. He asked Alma if that was true, had I really behaved nicely all week long and not yelled or stamped my feet and Alma said yes it was true, that not once had she had to bring me the little glass bowl. Every time I lose my temper and cry, Alma brings me a little glass bowl for my tears. She always says that if I can fill it she will buy me a pretty goldfish to swim around in it. That would be lovely but so far I have never been able to cry enough to fill even half. Really, I can’t even get it hardly wet because the tears run down my face and not into the bowl. So because I was good, Grandfather told me more of the story.
He asked me where he left off and I said in the kitchen with the cow. So he went on…
And he told me that he was the eldest of those boys, his brothers, but of course I knew that already. He said that they were so poor that he has trouble even now thinking that he isn’t poor anymore. They had meant to eat only once a week. Not nice lamb chops and steaks and veal cutlets like we have but stringy boiled beef just out of the water and it didn’t come to the table all trimmed with pretty parsley. His mother always cut it in half right away and gave half to his father and then she divided the rest evenly amongst the rest of the children. She never kept even a tiny piece for herself, she just always said that she wasn’t hungry or that meat isn’t good for her. Grandfather now thinks that she must have been terribly hungry but she wanted to feed her children but he didn’t know it then. He said that she was like that. She just wanted everything for everyone else and nothing for herself.
Then he said that if his mother had gone to visit Tante Esther, she would have been glad to take the money out of her bank and buy her some roses. Then he said that a present isn’t a present unless you have to go without something yourself so that you can buy it. Then he talked a long time about how much fun it is to give things away and how good it makes you feel inside yourself. But buying the roses for Tante Esther didn’t make me feel good inside. It just made me feel mad. I didn’t tell him that and I didn’t like that part of the story. Grandfather said that he was sleepy and he guessed I was too and he would tell me more some other time.
I was very interested to read this entry because it tells part of my own family’s story. Hilda’s grandfather Jacob was my grandmother’s father Adolf’s brother. According to my grandmother’s story about her family history, her father was the eldest son, while Grandfather says he was. Both stories agree about the poverty they were born into. My grandmother wrote: “One fine day, the oldest son Adolf, then 10 years old, packed his bundle to be off. He had neither money nor any idea where to go but for the fixed plan to go to school wherever he would have an opportunity.” Adolf was about 10 years older than Jacob. Regardless of exact timing, perhaps my great-grand-father left home as the house filled with more mouths to feed, leaving Jacob as the eldest brother living with their parents.