Triple-A

Feb18

I planned to do three errands after my weekly three o’clock appointment. By the time I finished my first errand, night had already settled over the parking lot. I shivered as I walked to my car. For the last several days the temperature in Wisconsin was often below zero in double digits. Today a brisk wind made this Siberian weather unbearable and very dangerous.

Once inside the vehicle, I decided to forget about the other two stops I had planned to make. I was cold and tired. All I wanted to do was go straight home. Cars are dependable these days, even during cold winter weather, so I confidently pressed the starter. Instead of hearing the familiar purr of the car engine, all I heard was an unfamiliar clicking sound! The car didn’t start. I had hoped the heater would make me feel warm as I drove home, but now I didn’t even know how I was going to get home. I felt betrayed. My trustworthy car had let me down!

It didn’t take me long to assess the situation. My preferred car repair shop was nearby but already shut for the day. Who could I call for help? My immediate family is extremely light on adult men who could come to my aid. At this point, I realized that I was losing feeling in my fingers and toes from the cold. I have a sister who lives in Marshfield, so I called her to see if one of her sons could come to my aid.

I was ready to abandon ship and hitch a ride home, leaving my car where it was. But if I got a ride home, then how would I get back into town tomorrow? I had no faith that my car could be easily resurrected. As far as I knew, it was dead and hopeless. My sister said she and one of her sons would be with me in a few minutes. She had more confidence in my car than I did, telling me that her son would be able to get it started. My face was now feeling stiff with the cold, which made it hard for me to talk, so I walked back to the store where I hoped to warm up. Frostbite was a real danger in as little as ten minutes because of the extreme cold and wind.

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Dreaming of my Love

Feb14

I put down my book, more interested in sleep than reading and knowing what happened next in the story. With the bedside lamp turned off, I snuggled into my favorite sleep position. A thin stripe of yard light shone though the bedroom windows onto the wall nearest the bed. The alarm clock on the bureau slowly ticked, measuring out the seconds and minutes.

The last thing I remembered was squirming to adjust the pillow under my head and the angle of my hips. Suddenly I found myself in a dream world with Arnie, my late husband and my two daughters when they were in fourth and eighth grade. We were so busy going places that I had trouble completing a satisfying conversation with Arnie. At the social functions we were attending, all of us were with friends, separate from each other.

Each time I spotted Arnie in the crowd, I felt a burst of affection. It was like the crowd was in monochrome black and white with Arnie being the only one in full color. I wanted to shout, “I love you. I miss talking with you. Do you still love me?”

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Fighting For Control

Feb11
The vase on the left is the new one. The one on the right was made in Door County.

Tammie parked her car and turned to me and asked, “Are you excited about our class?” A hot, midsummer sun baked the Door County parking lot.

Not sure how to answer, I wrinkled my nose and shrugged before finally admitting, “I wouldn’t describe how I feel as excited. I feel more nervous than anything, because I want to do well, but I don’t know if I have what it takes.”

 Inside the pottery shop next to the parking lot, we found our instructor preparing a pottery wheel and gathering supplies for our appointment. My daughter had arranged this class for us because I wanted to experience using a pottery wheel. Making one clay bowl wouldn’t make me an experienced potter, any more than watching brain surgery on television would qualify me as a brain surgeon, but I wanted to feel damp clay and make something beautiful.

Our teacher was in his fifties, had a bushy, salt and pepper beard and a durag tied around his head. His clothing was spotted with dried clay and paint. Shelves on both sides of the narrow room were full of different types of clay, paints, and other supplies. Next to the pottery wheel was a water faucet and below it, a drain in the floor.

After greeting us, our instructor handed us plastic aprons to wear, then went back to work. He explained, “Properly centering clay on the wheel takes a lot of practice. Since this is a onetime class, I’m doing it for you.” After demonstrating how to sit at the wheel, he explained that it was very important to keep our hands wet as we worked with the clay.

Tammie and I took turns at the wheel. Frequently dipping our hands into a bowl of water and a lot of assistance from the instructor we each managed to make an unremarkable small bowl. Before taking my last turn at the wheel, I commented, “I’d really like to make a small vase.”

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‘Hip A Hoola’

Feb4

I arrived at the nursing home while my mother was working with a physical therapist. Her nurse for the day encouraged me to go to the physical therapy gym to watch Mom doing her exercises.

Mom looked tired and a little red in her face, but she was using a walker correctly with the help of a staff member. In need of a perm, Mom’s white hair, straight and a little shaggy, covered her forehead. Looking up at me, she tried to joke as she had in the past when something hurt. She said with a dramatic sigh, “Oh! My aching pinfeathers!”

I laughed, despite knowing that she was having pain caused by arthritis. My family had a cartoon inspired vocabulary that we often used even when something bothering us wasn’t a laughing matter.

Comic books drawn and written by Carl Barks were a part of my family as I grew up. Daddy bought them each week for ten or fifteen cents apiece while in town to have oats ground for cow feed. Each member of the family read all the comic books many times, enjoying the funny pictures and storylines. Barks introduced his miserly character, Scrooge McDuck in 1947. Scrooge frequently suffered from ‘aching pinfeathers’. This mysterious ailment troubled him whenever his three-acre money bin was about to be broken into by the wicked Beagle Boys.

Another comic book word that entered my family’s vocabulary was ‘pixilated’. It came from Carl Bark’s story about a pixilated parrot who memorized Scrooge’s vault combination before flying off. The vault held “ninety tons of money”. Afraid the combination would fall into the wrong hands, Scrooge and his nephew Donald, and his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie chase after the parrot. In love with another parrot, the troublesome bird manages to get the Ducks shanghaied and they end up in ancient Persia where they discover a lost city.

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Winter Indiscretions

Jan28

The medical assistant pointed at a scale standing next to an exam room doorway, and politely requested, “Please step on the scale.”

Feeling incredibly rude, I responded just as politely, “I don’t want to be weighed today.”

My refusal was accepted with a simple nod. The world didn’t come to an end. I wasn’t scolded.

I know my weight is up. It’s wintertime. The cold weather, snow and ice keep me from going outside and moving around as much as I would during the warmer months. But I cannot blame my weight gain entirely on seasonal inactivity.

My problem stems from my wintertime indiscretions. The odds are stacked against anyone with a healthy appetite. Just as the weather gets colder and the nights grow longer, we have Halloween. I never have trick-and-treaters stop at my house, but I buy candy anyway. It wouldn’t be so bad if I bought just one candy bar. Instead, I buy candy like I’m preparing for a long, sugarless siege.

Not even a full month later, we celebrate Thanksgiving. Despite having about twenty guests at my table, the food was abundant and there were enough leftovers to have held a second feast.

Saint Nicholas takes place December 6th, and of course that means buying more candy. Then several members of my family have birthdays at this time of the year. It would be rude to not bake a cake for them! It would be even ruder not to eat some of that cake. Sometimes I restrain myself from eating cake when with others. I get complimented for having a strong will power. Then, after everyone has gone home, I eat “healthy” calories which end up being more calories than I would have taken in with one slice of cake.

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Goldilocks Goes Swimming

Jan21

I stood in the changing room, shivering, feeling self-conscious in my swimsuit. It had been hard for me to leave my warm, comfortable home on a snowy night, then take off my winter coat, just to change out of my slacks and top to squeeze into a tight swimsuit.  The air at the YMCA was comfortably warm, but the memory of having walked across an icy parking lot to enter the building only moments before made me shudder. Acknowledging that having come this far, I needed to take the next step. I opened the door and entered the pool area.

Less than a dozen people were swimming in the large pool. I remembered taking a swimming class in that pool many years ago. The water had been so cold, it caused my lips to turn blue. I backed away and turned towards the nearby small hot tub. Thinking it would feel nice to soak in that pool for several minutes, I took one step down into the water.

My feet were cold from recently been outdoors, so the water in the hot tub pool felt dangerously hot to my skin. I quickly stepped out of the water thinking ruefully, “Now I know how a lobster feels when it is dropped into boiling water!”

Through a glass door, I saw another pool. It wasn’t as big as the first pool, nor as small as the hot tub pool. No one was in that pool, and the door was locked. Once, many years ago, I’d taken an elderly woman to an exercise class in it for arthritic people. What I remembered was that the water in that pool was comfortably warm.

A lifeguard unlocked the door so I could use the medium-sized pool. The water temperature was perfect, just as I remembered. Submerging up to my neck, I circled my arms, marched back and forth in the pool. Hanging on the pool edge, I paddled my legs. For the first time that evening, I was glad that I’d left my home to come to the YMCA.

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Steamrolled

Jan14

My family had spent Christmas Eve with Mom and my brothers, Billy and Casper. On Christmas Day we stayed home and relaxed. The following day I stopped by to visit Mom with my two daughters in tow.

At ninety years of age, visiting Mom on the family farm sometimes made me feel like I was stepping back in time. This feeling was especially acute during Christmas visits. My two bachelor brothers lived with her in the farmhouse that I had grown up in. When she was no longer able to bake for Christmas, she directed my brothers to make the one favorite spice cookie everyone liked. As in my childhood, the kitchen radio was tuned to a local station from sun-up until it went off the air at sun-down.

After happily greeting Grammie, my teenaged daughters, who had followed me into the living room, sat down on the sofa. Sitting down in a chair closer to Mom, I commented, “You look cozy snuggled in your chair.”

Silver tinsel on the Christmas tree branches glittered in the daylight. Mirror ornaments on the tree reflected nearby balsam branches and other ornaments. Mom sat in her recliner with a small lap-robe covering her lap. Her white hair had tight curls because I’d taken her to have a perm only a few weeks earlier.

Mom requested, “’Would you plug in the tree lights for me?” My movement made the tinsel sway. A draft from the furnace made the mirror ornaments twist and reflect a kaleidoscope of lights.

I asked, “How was your Christmas Day?”

Mom eagerly shared, “It was beautiful and relaxing. Billy played his new Christmas Mannheim Steamroller CD for me after supper. The only lights we had on were the Christmas tree lights. We enjoyed listening to the song ‘Silent Night’ so much, that Billy put it on repeat.”

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Imaginary Kittens

Jan7

The mother cat and babies cuddled together on a soft mattress next to a window. They calmly watched Tammie and I slowly approach them. Two of the babies wore gray and white coats, one had an all-gray coat. Seeing one of the gray and white kittens sit up, I reached down and scooped her up. After a brief struggle to escape, the kitten became still until I turned to look at an all-gray kitten that Tammie had in her arms. Then, the little gray and white in my arms used my distraction to escape.

The animal shelter worker smilingly informed us, “We are having a special this weekend where you can adopt two animals for the price of one.”

My daughter put down the gray kitten and mused, “My older cat, Lucy, might not warm up to a kitten, so maybe I should get two, so they can play with each other. But is my house big enough for three cats?”

Tammie chose to adopt two siblings: a gray and white kitten that resembled the cat Tammie had at home and the all-gray kitten. The shelter worker picked up the three-month-old babies and touched their noses to their mother’s nose to properly have them say goodbye to each other.

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Do Over!

Dec31
Happy New Year!

The sun sank lower in the western sky and the heat of the summer day lessened. A glorious sunset turned jet trails and cirrus clouds ablaze in several shades of orange.  Although the sky would be light for hours to come, the shadows in the farmyard lengthened. My 77-year-old father and I walked on the lawn around the garden, orchard and flowerbeds. I was his youngest child, born the year he celebrated his 45th birthday.

Daddy had spent his entire life working hard as a farmer, having taken over running the farm from Grandpa in his teens. Instead of retiring as many people do, he chose to continue doing farm work, despite having sold the farm to my brother 12 years before. He looked tired and every bit of his age. He didn’t feel well. In fact, he hadn’t felt well for a long time. The invention of treatment for his medical complaint was still several years away.

The shaggy orchard grass felt pleasantly cool as it brushed against my ankles. Our conversation took a sad turn when Daddy commented, “I’m ready to die.”

I was horrified that he felt that way. Being 32 years old and the mother of two very young children made it impossible for me to understand how he felt, so I instinctively exclaimed, “Oh, no!”

Daddy calmly explained, “I’m sorry, but many of my friends have died already, and I don’t feel good anymore. I’m ready.”

Troubled, I questioned, “Do you wish you could start over and be young again?”

His prompt answer surprised me. He declared without hesitation, “No.” My heart dropped. I couldn’t understand why he felt that way, and why he was so adamant.

I always thought that having a second chance was a good thing. As a young adult, I looked forward to all the possibilities that lie ahead.

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New Baby Smell

Dec24

The baby lay on her tummy, with her head turned to the left. The fuzzy, pink bonnet on her head matched the pink, fuzzy, full-skirted dress she wore. Her sweet, small lips reminded me of a pretty rosebud. Peacefully asleep, her closed eyes displayed dark eyelashes resting upon her cheeks. I happily pulled her out of the wrapping paper to wrap my arms around her.

Mom allowed me to open my Christmas presents after we arrived home from attending midnight Mass. Daddy had gone to bed so he could sleep a few hours before having to get up to milk our cows.

A zipper all along the hem of the baby doll’s fuzzy, pink skirt opened to allow me to store my pajamas when I wasn’t wearing them. Mom said, “She’ll look so pretty in your bedroom on the bed.” The baby wasn’t really a doll. She was something pretty that a grownup girl could use and enjoy.

I fully understood that this was my last baby doll of my childhood. I was growing up, allowed to stay up for midnight Mass and even sing on the choir. Pressing the sleeping baby’s face against mine, I drew a deep breath. The wonderful smell of plastic that her head and hands were made of made me mentally revisit every new baby doll I’d ever received in past Christmases.

When I went to bed, I took my pajama bag doll with me. Curling up under the covers in my chilly bedroom, I cuddled and sniffed the perfume of the sweet baby. I was fine with no longer receiving dollies for Christmas, but there was something very nostalgic about the smell of this one. I laid there, awake and lingering at the outer edges of my childhood and sleep until the gray light of Christmas day’s winter dawn peeked into the windows.

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