Thursday Mornings: Breathe, Stretch, Listen, Love

By Ruth Mannino

Through a dichotomy of life experiences, the author presents an account that is part history lesson and part love story with loss and redemption headlining the interviews. Readers will discover what it was like to have front row seats to World War II; how it felt when communism took over land once called home; the feeling of wonder experienced by a young child upon seeing the Statue of Liberty after enduring a long Atlantic voyage; what it was like to be an integral part of civil rights activism of the 1960s; how it felt to be gay before the LGBTQ movement; what it was like to lose loved ones and continue to live when all life's enjoyment left with them. And lastly, how they confront the myriad of physical complications that inevitably come with aging. The reader will meet people who are vulnerable, yet proud; fragile in body but indomitable in spirit. People who were willing to let down their guard and agree to candid story telling. In turns funny, wistful, tragic, and hopeful, this book is a testament to the power of faith, optimism, purpose, and love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098321710

Book preview

Thoughts

Introduction

Every Thursday morning finds me on stage. Not at some Rodgers and Hammerstein production or church choral group. I won’t be winning an Oscar or presenting one to any of the famous stars. I’m up there solo, and how I arrived there is the beginning of this story.

The stage is part of the Robbinsville, New Jersey Senior Center’s multi-purpose room. My title as chair yoga instructor came about rather haphazardly. Recently retired, and considering my daughter no longer needed child care services, I found myself with time to spare. It didn’t take long for boredom to set in. Life went from running after toddlers, changing diapers, reading nursery rhymes, cleaning up spilt milk (sometimes I cried) to searching for ideas to fill empty hours. There were just so many jigsaw puzzles to piece together, and detective novels to read before I would guess whodunnit and spoil the drama. Amazon was taking all my money and the malls were becoming way too familiar. Life became mundane, and mundane became hazardous to my health.

It was at this point I joined the chair yoga exercise group being offered at the senior center. Connie Ferrara was our fearless leader. I was surprised to hear this energetic, amusing lady was eighty-five years old! She became my inspiration and rightly so. Her spirit was infectious. She had us dancing, stretching, breathing in unison. Her witty remarks had us laughing. We laughed a lot in her class. Thursday mornings became something I looked forward to. The class was made up of yogis in their sixties through their nineties. Men and women, at all stages of expertise, came together in their desire for a healthy body, mind, and soul. I enjoyed being there and my initial hesitation on being labeled a senior citizen quickly dissipated on seeing how much fun these seniors were having. Connie encouraged and energized us. It was with sinking hearts we learned about her moving to the West coast. Her husband passed away and her nearest son lived in California. It took a while for Connie to sell her home, but the inevitable goodbye party was planned, attended, there were hugs all around, and then she was gone.

Our group was in limbo. For a few weeks afterward we went through the motions, each of us leading one of Connie’s exercises. It didn’t have the same feel, but it was close. It was at this time Renee Burns, the center’s director, began to interview various candidates to take Connie’s place. She found the best in Eileen who teaches chair yoga at the center on Tuesdays. I dutifully went to Eileen’s Tuesday class while continuing Thursday’s free-for-all sessions. Three months after Connie left, I decided I could and would take her place. This decision didn’t come easy, after all, it was quite a commitment, but once it was made, I announced it to the class and was met with smiles and nods.

Something dawned on me during year three of my yoga undertaking. After hearing bits and pieces of my yogis’ lives, I began to form the initial thought process leading to this book. I had, in front of me, people with interesting stories, one who emigrated from China, one from Holland, one from Croatia, and others from New York, and some not far from Robbinsville in New Jersey. What led each member of this diverse group to the Robbinsville Senior Center and to my Thursday morning yoga group? What began as a casual interest, changed my life as I listened to each story. I grew to love each interviewee as they allowed me into their lives. Ninety-year-old Emily, from China; eighty-five-year-old Jack living with glaucoma; Lillian, unbelievably spry, our matriarch at the age of ninety-five; Elisabeth (eighty-five) had a front-row seat to World War II from her home in the Netherlands; Ernie (eighty-five) and his new wife Gail (eighty-three) found each other late in life after losing their first spouses; Harvey, the youngest at the age of seventy-five, grew up in New Jersey as a gay man when it definitely was not cool to be gay; and lastly, Jay Derrico (seventy-eight) emigrated as a child with her family from Croatia to escape communism.

Along with those interviewed, I want to thank the other dedicated yogis who come to class every Thursday morning in search of peace of mind, and a limber body: Aggie, Alexandra, Alicia, Anita, Betty, Cathy, David, Don, Ester, Helen, Margie, Marina, Matt, Minerva, Ramona, Roe, Rich, and Zarina. They have changed my life and I’m happy and honored to share with them my Thursday mornings. I also want to thank Renee Burns, C.H. Kang, and Ed Drago for making our Thursday morning meeting space warm and welcoming.

We are travelers on a cosmic journey,

stardust,

swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity.

Life is eternal.

We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other,

to meet,

to love,

to share.

This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.

~ Paul Coelho

Chapter One

~Emily Ou~

The first thing you notice when meeting Emily is her regal standing. For a woman of ninety years, she is remarkably well put together. Her hair always just so, meticulous in her makeup, beautiful clothes, and jewelry, convey the impression she is a woman of substance who has a story to tell. I chose Emily to interview when I learned she was taping her conversations with other seniors who sat at her lunch table. We took our interview to a private room, where we spent hours-she telling her life story, and I listening. Emily told her story with an easy laugh. She met interruptions with patience and grace. I was soon to learn how well these attributes served her during her compelling, and sometimes tumultuous life history.

Emily Jing Ou was born in 1928 in Shanghai, China during the Chinese Nationalist Era, of a well-to-do family who, before the communist takeover in 1949, enjoyed a life of servants, limousine services, and topnotch schools. She was born in her paternal grandfather’s house with no plumbing (customary at the time) which looked out over a beautiful courtyard. Her father was well educated and spoke excellent English. A wealthy businessman, he later became chairman of the Kwang Hwa oil company, sole agent of the Richfield Oil Corporation in China. Under his leadership, the company procured its own wharf in Shanghai which was a big deal!

Emily’s mother was betrothed to her father at the age of four. Her paternal grandfather played matchmaker, and it was said her mother would hide when her future father-in-law came to visit. He was a distinguished builder in Shanghai, the famous Jade Buddha Temple being one of his projects. Emily’s mother was an obedient child, very loving and eager to please. She did not protest when her feet were bound, an old Chinese tradition, and as a result, she had a lifetime of foot problems. Emily’s maternal grandfather was a dentist with many apprentices under him. He pulled, fixed, and supplied gold teeth to those who could afford his services. She never knew him; he passed before she was born.

Emily notes, with candor, it was unfortunate her mother, who was unschooled, and her father were so intellectually dissimilar. This discrepancy, in addition to Chinese patriarchy at that time, was perhaps a cause of her father’s indiscretions. Regardless of his actions, Emily loved her father and he returned her love. Her father told Emily she brought fortune to the family the year she was born. The fourth of four children, she was the only daughter, and today the only surviving sibling.

Emily’s formal education began at the age of four when she entered kindergarten. Upon seeing Emily coming to school on the family’s servant’s back, her teacher chided her saying, shame on you, motivating Emily to walk to school from then on. Hers was an elite school attended by many well-to-do pupils. Hot meals, brought to school by servants, consisting of three courses: soup, vegetables, and fish were eaten in the school dining room. The servants waited outside the school until lunch was over and then returned with the remains to their respective homes.

When Emily was nine or ten her family moved to a more modern home, far from school, necessitating a ride in a rickshaw. It was in third grade she took her first formal English lessons and was given her English name Emily. Her mother, having great faith in Emily’s abilities, tried to get her early admission into high school. Normally education entailed three years of junior high plus three years of high school. Emily’s English and math skills were very good, but she didn’t do well in Chinese composition. She was a bit surprised that she was accepted, but as a consequence of this acceptance, she was always the youngest in class. She attended the prestigious St. John’s University in Shanghai at the age of sixteen, a school noted for graduating prime ministers, ambassadors, and even the president of nationalist China. St John’s is often regarded as the Harvard of China.

Emily was in her last semester, with a few credits left to graduate when her friend Clara asked her what she was planning to do upon graduating. Laughing, Emily responded, Get married? Clara had gone to American schools and her English was very good. She encouraged Emily to take shorthand and typing classes. Up to this point, Emily, who found learning easy, was always academically middle of the road. By her own admission, she did just enough to get by. When she was introduced to shorthand, however, and saw that symbols could be used in place of words, she became fascinated and fell in love with the technique. Typing, however, was a different story altogether. Emily did not like to practice, a root cause behind one of her later regrets, never learning to play the piano in spite of her love of music.

Emily’s brothers were older than her by twelve, ten, and five years. The eldest brother, Hwa Ming, started a cigarette factory in Shanghai. One of their famous brands was the ‘Million Dollar’ during World War ll when American cigarettes were being boycotted. He became very successful. You could find the ‘Million Dollar,’ in their bright red packaging, with a gold dollar sign emblazoned on the cover. Growing up, Emily’s brothers took care of her.

1948 brought many changes for Emily and China. She turned twenty. Her future husband, six years older than she, was training to be a pilot for the Chinese Air Force. Fortunately, the war ended before he saw active combat. 1948 also was the year of the communist takeover. Things were about to change drastically.

Emily’s future father-in-law was an international lawyer. He graduated from the University of Chicago in the 1920s with a Ph.D. He worked on the treaty, after World War ll (1945), which gave the island of Taiwan, occupied by Japan, back to China. Because of his connection to the deposed Nationalist Party, he decided to flee to Taipei, Taiwan with his family. Before Emily could leave with them, her father insisted she get married. Within a span of two weeks, she planned her wedding, got married, and fled to Taiwan with her new husband and his family.

Emily found herself challenged by her new married life. Her husband just graduated from pilot training; so, with no means to buy a house, they stayed with his family in Taiwan. The house was big, complete with a chauffeur and servants, but it didn’t take long for Emily to miss her family back in Shanghai. To make matters worse, once the communists took over, all contact with her family was cut off. It would be years before she was able to communicate with them.

Life in Taiwan was troublesome for Emily. At the age of twenty-one, she gave birth to the first of her three children, a girl they named Jenny. Emily had no friends or family to help her. Her mother-in-law was no substitute for Emily’s own mother whom she missed very much. She could not converse in the local Taiwanese language, and she found the tropical climate, at times, unbearable. At one point, she found herself having to cook for eleven people including three servants. The family had a chef who cooked for her father-in-law’s business parties, but since her husband did not like the way the chef prepared the family meals, she was made to take over the cooking duties. She bought herself a bicycle with two baskets to carry what she had to buy at the local grocer. The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was when, after working diligently over one of the meals, Emily’s mother-in-law complained and had the chauffeur drive her to the grocer, bought the same ingredients, and showed Emily how the meal should have been made. This bit of meanness made Emily cry that day, but she was more than ever determined to get a job and earn enough to leave her in-laws.

Her daughter Jenny was