Rita's last Zoom call with her beloved grandmother on the other side of the world.
Rita's last Zoom call with her beloved grandmother on the other side of the world.
Yesterday marked International Day of Older Persons and Bay of Islands woman Rita Baker would love nothing more than to spend it with her beloved grandmother. Instead, they are a world apart. She tells Jodi Bryant of their special bond.
If lockdowns, border restrictions and the cost of quarantine weren'tan issue, Rita Baker would be on a plane straight to her Germany-based 99-year-old Oma in a heartbeat.
Despite the generational gap, the two grew up in the same house and were always close. Now, with even Zoom calls not an option, Rita can only hope the world changes in time to allow her to see her beloved grandmother one last time.
"She's an amazing woman. I owe her everything really," Rita said, from her Russell home yesterday.
Rita grew up in the family home built of stone in 1920 which has housed five generations, its surrounding land used as market gardens for the family business until the Berlin Wall put a stop to that.
Rita worked in tourism which landed her permanently in New Zealand in 2003 where she met her Northland-based Māori husband. Up until two years ago, she would return annually to visit her family who still live together in the same house.
"It's a multi-generational home. My grandmother lives upstairs, my parents live on the first level and my brother lives in his own apartment at the back of the property. My sister lives there too. So there are three generations living there.
"My grandmother is getting on. She still climbs the stairs but long-distance walking is a bit tricky, she needs hearing aids and she can hardly see any more."
Which has ruled out Zoom calls, their only form of connection.
"She could hardly hear me as, electronically, and with hearing aids, it just doesn't work. At least, in person, you can touch somebody and they know that you're there."
As a child, the connection between Rita and Irmgard, who she called Oma, the German name for grandma, was obvious.
"My mother would say, 'Oh you and your grandmother ...'"
The two would spend hours together cooking, doing crosswords and needlework.
"She was like a walking encyclopedia. She's very down to earth, very no-nonsense and an absolutely amazing cook. I've got all her cooking and baking recipes, some of which she learnt in school back in the 1920s. She was very hardworking and I don't think she ever had a day off."
Rita's biggest life lesson from her grandmother was to never take life for granted.
"She survived the bombing of Dresden," Rita explains of the 1945 World War II event.
Irmgard was eight months pregnant when the sirens sounded and she spent a night in the backyard bunker. Her husband had been forced to join the army the same year they met in 1943 and was given a couple of days' leave for them to marry. Wounded, he was placed in a prisoner of war camp in France. With all able-bodied men at war, it was down to the older people and women to dig the bunkers.
"It was a communal effort. My great-grandparents dug a tunnel into the property by hand and she spent that night with her in-laws and neighbours. The next day apparently they saw the whole city burn. Her parents were cut off in another part of Germany at the Czech
border and could see the red glow on the horizon, so her in-laws sent her to live in another village with her godparents where it was safer so she walked 50km through the snow."
Meanwhile, France was liberated and the French farmers were looking for workers with their own sons displaced. Because her great-grandfather was a trained gardener, he volunteered and became life-long friends with another young German volunteer he worked alongside. Two years later, the farmer kindly and illegally let them go, offering the farm to return to later in life. Rita's grandfather later returned but the farm and farmer were no longer there. The friends spent around two months making their way home, avoiding authorities.
"They literally walked all the way home. I'm guessing, they would've jumped on freight trains at night. He never elaborated but it took him a couple of months. By the time they got home, avoiding authorities, they weren't official prisoners of war any more," she laughed, adding that, by memory, he arrived home at Christmas.
After three years, he reunited with Irmgard. He had bullet wounds and later developed cancer, having his leg amputated as a result.
It's stories like these Rita is missing out on during the precious time left with her Oma.
"A few years back I sat her down and had the video camera running and got out the photo albums and got her to talk. Unfortunately, I had a house fire and they're gone and now she can't see," Rita laments. "Those memories are priceless and I'm frightened that those sort of stories that she tells will get lost.
Irmgard's first selfie with granddaughter Rita on her 2017 visit home to Germany.
"If I had the money for quarantine and they had the spaces, I'd jump on a plane tomorrow. I'd be sitting with her every single day for the whole day and just listening to her. She's got old people's dementia a bit but she talks about the old times. She's got a knack for story-telling.
"I would love to be there, of course, but there's nothing I can do and there's no point in mulling it over. You can't change it, you've just got to get on with it. She just got on with it. At the moment, I'm just crossing my fingers that I can still go and visit and that she's still there."
Needless to say, the vaccines are a no-brainer to Rita and Irmgard has now had her third booster shot.
"She very much understands what's going on and she remembers all those (similar) times. I was the first to say yes to the vaccine no matter what. I really don't care about how much it's been trialled, I just want to get home."
Meanwhile, Rita, who runs Flaxworx NZ with her husband, has created a Facebook page, with YouTube videos called Oma Irmgard's Saxon Kitchen, dedicated to her grandmother and her recipe book which shares recipes from the book she started in school, hand-written in old German.
"True to my grandmother's beliefs; never stop working, never put all eggs into one basket and try many things."
