My father would have been 100 years old today. He missed that milestone by just two years, leading a long and colourful life in spite of uncertain beginnings.
In 1939, he and his parents fled Hitler’s Nazi regime in fear of their lives. He left his Austrian birthplace at 15, and never saw his homeland again.
Hitler took away his citizenship and he couldn’t return to live there, but he would have liked to go back for a visit. Somehow it never happened.
But my father left us an unexpected legacy, something I didn’t give much thought to as a child, He left us our heritage. And last year, the Austrian government decided to consider residency applications from the descendants of victims of the Holocaust and people forced from their homes by the Nazis.
I’m currently in the process of applying for my Austrian residency and my dream is to live in my father’s beloved Vienna. I plan to walk to the opera, to ski Austria’s stunning slopes, to step into my father’s shoes and write his escape story, to speak to the man whose parents helped him and his family flee for their lives, to follow his route through the Netherlands to the UK and eventually to Australia, a country he fell in love with and for 83 years called his home.
As an author of historical fiction I have a fascination with the past, to delve into it, to understand how it influences our lives today.
I inherited my thirst for knowledge, creativity and curiosity from both my parents. My father was an architect, a man with a vision for the future. My mother was one of the first women to work for the CSIRO. She was also an artist and photographer … and a writer.
When my father passed away in 2021, I inherited our parents’ dining setting, the centrepiece for so many family dinners as I was growing up.
Our family moved house frequently, and that dining setting, created long before I was born, was transported all over Victoria, and I always felt that it had its own story to tell.
Our parents were married in 1952, around the same time that this Danish designed table and chairs were lovingly created by a master craftsperson.
The choice of dining setting was a reflection of my mother’s love for timber and simple, clean design. It reflected my father’s appreciation for things that were well made and mechanically clever.
It was also a symbol of their enduring union which lasted more than forty years, until my mother passed away when my eldest son was just a few months old.
Like the dining setting, our parents union survived many moves and considerable adversity. Just like their relationship, the table and chairs stood the test of time.
After 70 years, the table was still structurally sound but it hadn’t gone through the last seven decades unscathed.
When it came to me, it bore the burns, scrapes and scratches of a long and well worn life.
It took me five full days of scrubbing, puttying and sanding the table top to uncover the true beauty of the timber grain. This was followed by eight layers of oil with a light sand in between each layer.
As I worked, I reminisced about family meals eaten at this table, I also thought about the craftsperson who had worked on this furniture, table number 27, 70 years earlier, and the Danish designer Arne Vodder who had conceived it. Arne became known for his simple and beautiful designs.
Restoring the furniture has been a labour of love, a walk down memory lane, an appreciation for craftspeople who worked without the benefit of electric sanders and other modern day tools.
I think I had a subconscious goal to finish restoring the table by my father’s 100th birthday … and I made it.
Refurbishing this beautiful piece of furniture has been a tribute to both my parents.
It has also reminded me a lot of the writing and editing process, not just because of the persistence and patience it has taken to complete the task.
The similarities to writing and editing have been in identifying the essence of the story, in paring back of unnecessary surface layers and adding deeper, more meaningful ones … getting to to crux of the story , appreciating the beauty in what’s already there, and polishing and shining the rest until it sparkles.
Every preloved object has a history, a life of its own, a story to tell, one that may surprise you. Do you have a piece of furniture or family heirloom that means a lot to you? I’d love you to share its story in the comments.
My next projects are to restore the chairs and get to Austria to write my father’s story. Stay tuned.
DeeScribewriting Blog 