UNDER A WEEPING

WILLOW:
MEMOIRS OF AN IMMIGRANT

Jytte Holst Bowers

TABLE OF CONTENTS. 2
FOREWORD... 4
UNDER A WEEPING WILLOW...8

MY FAVORITE, NOT SO GOOD, DOLL... 11

A RAINBOW.17
FREEDOM38
SPEAKING IN A FOREIGN TONGUE... 41
THE AMERICAN MAN... 47
THE AMERICAN WOMAN...50
THEIR CHILDREN..54
THE WHITE LINE58
THE WHITE MANS CHURCH.62
THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY

65

AN AMERICAN DILEMMA...74
THE SHORT LIFE OF BRYAN DOUGLAS

81

FRATERNITIES94
FRIENDSHIP..111

THE FATHERLAND

116

THE LAND..121
CITIZENSHIP AT LAST126
A RETURN TO THE WEEPING WILLOW..133

FOREWORD
But mother, you never told us your stories. Michelles voice
came from across the ocean, across the plains, yet rang out as if
it came from across the street.
Oh, I did so, I said. Havent I told you about kings and
queens, and the fair-haired little princesss little royal rump.
And, how her grandfather, King Christian X, oh, but that is a
separate story. I didnt tell it to my parents until years later. I

was so ashamed. God also has a stern voice. Isnt it fortunate

we cant see him?
Now you ramble, Mother. The fact is we never heard those
stories, and now, your granddaughter has just returned from
America. She traveled five thousand miles to see you, and you
forgot to give her the fan you had bought for her last year when
you went to China. Even to tell her about the adventures you
had.
Next time, I said, when I see Sabina, she will probably be a
teenager and understand more. She will be brushing her hair, a
hundred strokes at least; not like this visit when she just put her
charming pink hat on, flipped up the front and insisted that the
hat covered her hair anyway, so she didnt need to comb it. Yes,
I believe she then will have grown up enough to open the fan
with a flick of her fingers.
Next time you will probably be dead, Michelle remarked,
slightly sour.
Yes, there was that possibility, I thought, as I stirred the stew. I
had put in enough wine that my daughter could probably smell it
in Denmark. I straightened out the telephone cord, while
Michelle rattled on, all the way from Copenhagen. I licked the
spoon. Could that be heard? It had been an absolute no, no,
when I had taught my daughters the skills of cooking, which I
barely mastered myself.

I was about to hang up, but had to justify our little tiff, which
began when I had complained about my husbands mother who
lived down the road in a nursing home.
Here sits your grandma, I had told Michelle, close to 102
years old, with no stories to tell. How many stories could one
recall at one hundred and two? The problem was she hadnt
shared any when she was sixty, none in her eighties and none in
her hundreds, only something about bridge parties. What the
girls wore: high heels, short skirts, which later became long,
before they once more became short. They had chatted and
giggled over a drink they called a Pink Lady. She had talked
about her important positions in the Ladies Lions and of the
day her boss, the President of the bank had put his arm around
her. What if someone had seen him? But she had been in her
sixties. No one could have misunderstood his intentions, could
they?
There must have been so much more to tell, I sighed and put
the spoon down on the plate.
But mother, Michelle insisted, you didnt tell us your stories,
either.

UNDER A WEEPING WILLOW

The summers of the early forties were filled with bright sunlight.
The branches of the large weeping willow at the end of my aunt
and uncles garden provided my cousin, Lilly, and me with
endless privacy and joy.
The branches were long and twisted, and so numerous that they
completely covered us, our books, toys, and at times a plate of
my aunts homemade cookies. It was there doll fashions were
decided, stories were told, and most of all, where the adults
discussions about a world at war couldnt reach us.

At the end of May, light green leaves like thousands of pointed

arrows, came out. The tree looked like a big waterfall starting in
midair, running into the dark, almost black garden soil. The
suns rays made the leaves glow in a wide range of greens like
early apples in August or the junipers by the farm house. The
large tree trunk was so big that our fingertips barely touched
when we tried to circle it. The ground, where mostly weeds
grew in small tufts, got so little moisture that it cracked in many
places. It looked like a big jigsaw puzzle.
To the right and back of the tree was a large clover meadow with
a gurgling brook where black and white Holstein cattle refreshed
themselves, and where Lilly and I sent hundreds of pea pod
canoes to imaginary destinations. The pungent smells of clover
and cattle, hybrid roses and nearly ripe berries were carried into
the bower on the warm July wind.
In the late afternoon, when the large green crown became nearly
black in color, the smell from my aunts kitchen outdid all the
other lovely scents and drew us from our seclusion onto the
gravel path toward the house. Although the bark from the old
willow had made imprints on our sun baked backs, like
tributaries joining larger rivers, we took great care to erase our
tracks. After all, the highlights of the summer were secretly
hidden behind thousands of light green willow leaves.
Lilly and I lived peacefully there despite the disturbing news
from the outside world. We talked about a world at peace, a

peace which would allow us to travel far beyond the reach of the
swaying willow branches.

MY FAVORITE, NOT SO GOOD, DOLL

On my seventh birthday my parents gave me a doll. She
was so different from any of my other dolls. She was black
with curly hair and dark brown eyes which, remarkably,
closed at the same time. She was beautiful. I called her
Ingrid-a name fit for a queen.
She lasted two hours.

I clumsily tripped over a chair, and

my beautiful doll lay scattered on the floor.

My tears

overflowed , so instead of scolding, my father wrapped the

remains of Ingrid in a box and bicycled into the doll
hospital in the center of Copenhagen, which was famous

for erasing tears from the eyes of small girls. As it was

only the head that

had broken the doctor was sure he

could fix it.

Two weeks later I had her back in my arms; but it was
no longer Ingrid. The doll doctor had put a white head with
blue eyes and blond, curly hair on her black body.
But, but, I felt tears rising in my eyes.
Yes, yes, I know, my father said. They couldnt get a black
head. Your doll was made in Germany. Right now it looks
like Germany would rather make war than dolls. She was
very expensive. We couldnt just throw her away, could we?
You can still love her, cant you?
I wasnt sure. She looked so strange. I asked my mother for
an old shawl I could swath her in. When my friends asked
if they could see her I told them she had a terrible cold,
so I had to keep her covered up. They patted her blond hair
and said she was beautiful.

I overheard my father whisper to my mothers cousin that

I didnt show her the doll because it was a bastard. What
a beautiful word!

A new one to add to my First Grade

Reader. I rolled it on my tongue and swished it around in my

head. I would be sure to use it.
True to tradition my fathers maiden aunt, Aunt Augusta,
came New Years Eve. True to tradition she brought me a
belated birthday present. She always wanted to see my gifts.
I loved her.

She was old, so old

we had no problem

understanding one another.

She always wore the same dress, a black taffeta with a
high collar, in which white Brussels laces peeped out from
numerous

folds.

It rustled delightfully when she walked,

swish, swishjust like music.

Everything about Aunt

Augusta was music. In her youth she dreamed about being a

concert pianist; when that failed she settled for being a piano
teacher.
We had finished our dinner. True to tradition we ate boiled
cod and potatoes in a creamy parsley sauce. Mother stood
in the kitchen preparing the desert. Father discussed the war
with his brother when Aunt Augusta,

with her coffee

balanced in my mothers Royal Copenhagen, came across the

floor to where I sat with my birthday presents.
But darling, why dont you take the wrappings off your
doll.

I bet you have dressed her beautifully.

Do let me see

her. I hesitated, but to dear Aunt Augusta I could tell the

truth.
She bent down, and when I raised myself on the tip of my toes I
whispered into her ear.
She is a bastard. Oh, that wonderful new word.

Jesus Maria, Aunt Augusta exclaimed. She didnt whisper,

either. Once my father said that she had turned to Catholicism
just so she could use that phrase.
It sounds like music, she had said. Aunt Augusta was an
overture all by herself. The coffee cup fell from her hand,
many more broken pieces than Ingrids head had produced.
My father rushed over to us. He and Aunt Augusta whispered
for what seemed an eternity.
That evening, on the last day of the year in the first year
of the Second World War, was the first and only time in
my childhood that I, true to tradition, wasnt allowed to
stay up to listen to the church bells ringing in the coming
year.

24

THE SHORT LIFE OF BRYAN

DOUGLAS
John Kennedy was shot. So was his brother, Robert, and
also Martin Luther King. I wasnt at the scene, and I was
half an hour too late when Bryan Douglas took his rifle
and made his toe pull the trigger.
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They called me from the deans office to say I had to

hurry up to Shepherd Hall. There had been an accident.
What kind of an accident? I inquired.
A shooting, a fellow shot himself.
Shot himself.

Shot himself.

The words rang in my

ears as I hurried up to the dormitory, where I was met by

the sheriff and a young officer.

They were shaken, the

younger man looked as if he was going to be sick.

I was escorted up to room 204 on the second floor,
Bryan

Douglass

room.

It

was

single

room with

bookshelves on all four walls where books, records, model

miniature cars and sheets of music were arranged very
orderly. The only thing out of place was Bryan Douglas,
ashen colored, lying in a pool of blood, the rifle by his feet.

26

There is nothing we can do here, I told the police.

I will go to the deans office. He will then decide what has to
be done.
So many shots had been fired in America in a short
span of time. What makes young men take their own lives
in this country which is supposed to have everything?
A few years earlier, when Jim and I were head residents
at Redlands University in California, another young student
had

taken

his

life.

David, a student in our dormitory,

intentionally drove his pickup over the ridge of one of the

mountains in the canyon.
Among his belongings we found a gift for his mother,
bought for Mothers Day.

We also found several of his

pencil drawings, which had become increasingly morbid.

David was very talented, but his parents, according to his

27

roommate, had told him that being an artist would not place
food on the table. They wanted him to become a doctor.
We didnt know David but for the shy fleeting smile he
sent us when we met occasionally in the hallway.

He

never caused us any problems; there were enough students

who did. We were more than happy with the quiet ones.
Ah, but that was also Bryan Douglas, wasnt it? I sat in the
deans office, leafing through Bryans admission papers.
No, he has never seen me in the nurses office, I
said. Yes, he was a transfer student coming from a
college which didnt challenge him. Yes, he was an A
student who didnt participate in sports or in fraternities.
But, the dean interrupted, Bryan had just returned
from Fort Lauderdale. Some of the students had talked him
into joining them for the Spring Break. He should have
been happy after frolicking on the beaches.
Where have you been? I thought. Dont you know that
you

can

go

to

Fort

Lauderdale,

drink yourself

into

euphoria, return home with a hangover and a painful

28

sunburn. Meanwhile, the girl of your dreams is already on her

way to her next conquest.

Dean Philips had a degree in

psychology; he didnt consider, however, that the trip to

Florida had been Bryans last try to fit into a carefree, and at
times careless, society.
What about David? He didnt fit in either. He might have if
his parents had encouraged his talents. They only thought of the
material poverty they would bring him.
Bryan, I didnt know you. You never came to see me in my
office, I whispered to myself. I should have known,
however, to look up students I didnt hear. Students who
walk quietly around in search for a meaning in life are easily lost
in the corridors of institutions.

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