Conversation – 36

JOIN HANDS DAY

Join Hands Day, observed across the United States on the first Saturday in May, is about uniting the older generation with the younger generation in a day of volunteering. Instead of pointing out each other’s differences that often create distance between one another, this day is intended to bring to everyone’s awareness the benefits of aiding each other.

NATIONAL BOMBSHELLS’ DAY

National Bombshells’ Day each year on the first Saturday in May encourages women to celebrate themselves and their best friends.

NATIONAL HOMEBREW DAY

And, whatever your personal flair – honey, and ginger, or hoppy and dark – if you are a homebrewer, this celebration is for you.

NATIONAL SCRAPBOOK DAY

Each year on the first Saturday in May, National Scrapbook Day invites the country to bring their talents together to celebrate the art of scrapbooking. Also known as National Scrapbooking Day, avid scrapbookers gather to share their craft.

NATIONAL TRUFFLE DAY

Traditionally, chocolatiers make this sweet confection with a chocolate ganache center coated in chocolate, icing, cocoa powder, chopped nuts, or coconut. Oftentimes, they may fill the truffle with other yummy surprises. Some candy makers include cream, melted chocolate, caramel, nuts, fruit, nougat, fudge, toffee, mint, marshmallow, or liqueur.

NATIONAL START SEEING MONARCHS DAY

The Monarch butterfly is a milkweed butterfly. It may be the most familiar North American butterfly because its wings feature an easily recognizable orange and black pattern. Monarchs typically reach 3 1/2 to 4″ in size. In the fall, they migrate south to warmer climates. In the spring, they return further north.

KENTUCKY DERBY

The beautiful horses and the bustling crowds under the spring sunshine make for an exciting day of racing. Add to the months of training and any money at stake, and the nervous butterflies of the event

NATIONAL FITNESS DAY

National Fitness Day on the first Saturday in May offers an opportunity to be inspired and try new ways of becoming fit and healthy.

Her mother died before she could remember her face.
Her father died while she was still a child.
The guardian who raised her was cold, faithless, and had little patience for a girl who was, by every account, a lot.
Her name was Maria Augusta Kutschera.
You probably know her by another name.
She was born on a moving train on January 26, 1905 — arriving in a hurry, as if she already knew she had no time to waste.
Raised without religion. Raised without much warmth.
And yet somehow, she found both.
She found faith listening to a Jesuit priest speak in Vienna. She found peace in the Austrian mountains she climbed alone as a teenager, breathing in something she couldn’t yet name. At nineteen, she walked into the Nonnberg Benedictine Convent in Salzburg and told them she wanted to give her life to God.
The Abbess had other ideas.
In 1926, Maria was sent — temporarily, everyone assumed — to tutor the sick daughter of a widowed naval captain named Georg von Trapp. He had seven children. He had lost his wife four years earlier. He was quiet, disciplined, and deeply principled.
Maria was loud, impulsive, and full of barely-contained energy.
She was supposed to stay a few months.
She stayed for the rest of her life.
They married in 1927. But here is the part the movie left out:
Maria later admitted she didn’t marry Georg because she had fallen in love with him.
She married him because she loved his children.
The love between them came later — quietly, the way real love often does.
Together they had three more children, bringing the family to ten. They sang together — folk songs, madrigals, sacred music — not because it made a beautiful story, but because a banking collapse had taken most of what they had, and music was what remained. In 1936, they won the Salzburg Festival competition and Europe began to take notice.
Then came March 1938.
Hitler’s forces marched into Austria.
Georg von Trapp was a decorated war hero. The Nazis wanted him.
He said no.
The family understood what that refusal would cost them.
They packed what they could carry and left — not over the Alps on foot as the famous film shows, but by train to Italy, then to London, then across the Atlantic. By late 1938, they were standing in America with their voices, their faith, and each other.
They settled in Vermont. They toured. They built a life from scratch in a country that had no reason to know their name yet — and learned it anyway.
In 1942, they bought a farm in Stowe, Vermont. Maria said the mountains looked like home.
Georg died in 1947.
Maria kept going.
She wrote her memoir. She built the Trapp Family Lodge with her own hands and decisions. And when a Broadway producer came knocking and later Hollywood followed, she signed away the rights to her life story.
For $9,000.
Hollywood made millions.
When someone pointed that out, Maria shrugged it off. She believed the story would give people hope. She thought that was worth more than a bigger check.
She was right.
When an interviewer once told her that Julie Andrews had played her so sweetly and perfectly, Maria laughed out loud.
“They showed me as such a goody goody,” she said. “That was not really me at all.”
And maybe that’s what makes the real Maria von Trapp so worth remembering.
She wasn’t the glowing, graceful woman on the screen.
She was sharper. Funnier. Harder to impress. More stubborn. More human.
She was a girl nobody planned for, born on a train going somewhere fast, who lost almost everything before she was old enough to understand what she had — and still managed to build a life so extraordinary that the whole world eventually sat down to watch it.
Maria von Trapp died on March 28, 1987. She was 82 years old.
She is buried on the grounds of the Trapp Family Lodge, in Stowe, Vermont — in the mountains that looked like home.
The hills were alive for her.
They always were.
And because she and Georg said no in 1938 — quietly, firmly, without hesitation — their children grew up free.
That part was never just a movie.
That part was real.

😎