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After the war, America and the returning troops appeared to adjust quickly to peacetime. Men rejoined their families, took up the jobs they had left to serve their country, or enrolled in school under the GI Bill. Many women relinquished their wartime jobs in favor of marriage and work at home. Civic projects, postponed during the war, began again. Tract houses sprang up in suburbia to meet the returning veterans’ demands for housing. The revved-up economy made people feel prosperous once again. Everyone looked toward the future, but no one who had lived through it could ever forget the war. In an undated entry from 1953, Irma remembered. One time when I had a family party and we had put little Emily to bed, she came pattering down the stairs and complained that she couldn’t sleep because “The Germans were making too much noise.” The aunts and Grossmutter talked German and, although I tried to teach each of our own children German, everybody around them spoke English and I was not too successful at it. When we were children we were taught German before we learnt English. Our maids (Mamma had two) were instructed never to give us anything unless we said Please and Thank you afterward. We had to say these things in German. I thought that was good. I did not succeed in the German part but I did stress the importance of good manners especially toward persons who worked for one. Later, years after my party Emily’s complaint turned into a family proverb. The Germans, were indeed, making too much noise. And in two world wars they almost succeeded in wrecking civilization. If they Changes, 1950–1966 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 have learnt their lesson, they will never again be making too much noise. Irma packed many activities into the postwar years. She traveled east a number of times to be with her son, granddaughter, and greatgrandchildren , took her first airplane ride, attended concerts and art exhibitions , and saw both Ruth and Alfred listed in Who’s Who. She said that “I have been clearly conscious that life has a beginning, a middle period and an end like every good story has. . . . I had never imagined that age would have its thrill just as childhood, romance and motherhood had.”1 During those years, Irma also began her autobiography “for the hundredth time.” On Sunday, January 21, 1951, she revealed how “[m]y writing would have lost its charm for me unless kept as a relaxation.” Writing, for me, is not work. I love it. If professional it would have become a chore. I have kept it — held it one of the things I love to do and live by. For me, it is as if I were a piano player who would sit down now and then to the piano, run my fingers over the keys and listen to the music. In addition to her diary entries, Irma began to organize the cookbook she had started when she first married, and to which she had added recipes throughout the years. On Friday, September 28, 1951, she composed a rough-draft introduction. Cooking . . . is an art. There is much more to it than the fire. [It is the] converting of raw materials into enjoyable edible and “healthful food.” Like any other art, it means first selection, transposing, or transposing-converting separate entities (look up entities) into an inspiring, pleasing or challenging whole. And it is more than art. It is a health measure (Better diction). As happy as these activities made Irma, other events during this era were tinged with sadness: the sale of her beloved house in 1952, which meant the loss of her garden, and, especially, Victor’s illness and death, coupled with the gradual weakening of her own strength. Thursday, September 27, 1951 This slowing up of business is not at all to my taste. I hate it when some one says “Be your age.” Yet, being old is not as old as it used to be. It makes me so mad when I stop in the midst of doing things to lie down. c h a n g e s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 ] I’m not the man I used to be. I hate it when everybody yells at me, “Don’t Overdo! Don’t overdo !” Often I feel guilty when I know I’ve “over-do-ed.” I hate it when Essie rubs it in and says, “You’re not sixteen.” As though she were...

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