Archive | April 2024

Thinking in Pictures

Apr24

I sat on the floor playing with building blocks, using them to outline floor plans of an imaginary home. While I did this, I also had a story playing in my mind. In the exciting story, the heroine’s bravery and cleverness amazed everyone. Occasionally, when she spoke, I’d say her words under my breath because she was me.

My sister, five years older, looked up from where she sat nearby giving my Debbie Reynold doll a new hairdo. She scolded, “You’re a big baby, making believe all the time!”

The mini movie in my head screeched to an instant halt. I felt like my sister had dumped a pail of cold water on me. Imaginative stories ran through my mind almost constantly when I was by myself. I wondered, “Is that normal, or is there something wrong with me?”

I did not share the bravery and cleverness of my characters in the stories. In real life, I tended to be a scaredy-cat and overly worried about things that my sisters said were dumb.

Getting up from the floor, I went into the kitchen and found Mom standing at the stove preparing supper. I sat down on a chair nearby and asked, “Mom, what are you thinking?”

Mom’s practical answer made me realize she didn’t understand the question. She said distractedly, as she checked the kettles of vegetables, potatoes, and meat cooking on the stove top, “I’m thinking that someone should set the table because supper is almost ready. Daddy will be in from the barn soon.”

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Lucky Seven’

Apr17

Mom escorted me to my first-grade room on a blustery day in September of 1957. She introduced me to the teacher, Sister Donna. Having never attended school before, not even kindergarten, I nervously stared up at the young woman. She wore a black, floor length habit, just as two of my aunts did. This wasn’t surprising since Sister Doris and Sister Ritana were members of the same convent as my teacher. Only, her white wimple and scapular collar framed a young face, instead of an old face. The long veil on her head cascaded down her back like beautiful, black-cloth hair. I felt amazed because my teacher was so young and pretty. Sister Donna looked as young as my oldest sisters!

As time passed and the days grew colder during first grade, Sister Donna assigned numbered hooks in the closet at the back of the classroom to hang our sweaters and coats. She called it the cloakroom and directed that when we came to school wearing boots, they were to be lined up in neat rows on the floor below our coats. To my delight, the number by my hook was seven. I rejoiced, “Of course it’s number seven! What else could it be? After all, I’m the seventh child; the baby of my family!”

Mom was twenty-eight years old when she married Daddy, who was a full year older than her. They had six children between 1935 and 1945. Mom was forty-four and Daddy forty-five years old when I was born. When I tell how old my parents were when they had me, some people instantly assume that I was a menopause ‘accident’ baby.

Nothing could be further from the truth. As I grew up, Mom liked explaining to me that she was pregnant several times during the five years before I was born, but each time, she spontaneously miscarried the baby. Mom’s doctor examined her and informed her that she would never be able to carry another baby to full term. Then one day in early 1950, Mom babysat some of my young cousins. She said, “Taking care of them made me wish very much for one last baby, so I prayed, ‘Lord, please allow me to have one more baby.’”

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Different Models

Apr10

I walked into the living room munching on a cookie. Arnie looked over the top of the newspaper he held in his hands and asked, “Is that a cookie you have?” As I took another bite from the sweet treat, he demanded, “Get me one of them, too.”

Knowing my husband wouldn’t be content with just one cookie, I put three on a plate and set it on the side table near his elbow. Sinking into a chair across from where Arnie sat on the sofa, I asked, before taking a bite from another cookie, “Do you remember the summer when we were kids that there was an invasion of June bugs?”

Arnie chewed the cookie in his mouth before asking, “Why in the world are you asking about June bugs?”

Self-consciously, I explained, “I want to write about a memory I have of them. One summer they were everywhere in the farmyard. Because they were so large, catching them was easy. It was as if they had Velcro on their feet, making them cling to our hands. At night we heard the June bugs chewing on tree leaves. When we went into the house after it was too dark to be outside, the June bugs scrabbled at the window screens. Their rapidly flapping wings made a loud buzzing noise. It appeared they would fly through the screen if they could.”

Looking mystified, Arnie claimed, “I don’t remember anything about June bugs.”

My husband seldom recounted memories from his childhood. If I worked at it, I sometimes managed to get Arnie to remember small things. That day I succeeded in pulling a small treasure out of him. He finally remembered a summer where he found huge June bugs and put them in a toy truck bed while playing in a sandbox.

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Winter Never Happened

Apr3

I stood at the kitchen window sipping my morning tea and watching a few chickadees busy feeding at the birdfeeder. Blue jays perching in the white birch took turns stripping a seed cake. The little snow we had earlier in the winter, had completely disappeared during a long stretch of refrigerator winter weather. The snowless late February yard alongside the house looked dreary and comfortless like a hard, lumpy bed with neither the luxury of a pillow nor a blanket.

Thinking back over several decades of my life, I wondered, “Have we ever had a winter with so little snow and such warm temperatures?” Some winters had less snow when I was growing up, but not because the snow kept melting away in unnaturally warm December, January, and February weather.

Most families don’t avidly discuss the weather, but mine did, just as I suspect many farm families do. Unusual droughts, heat waves and unexpected freezes are the reasons many farm businesses have fallen into ruin. Delving deep into my memories, I tried to remember some of the things Mom and Daddy had said about unusual weather.

I recall Daddy saying, “There was one year without a summer. A huge volcano in Indonesia blew up and put so much ash and debris into the atmosphere that the entire northern hemisphere had dark, stormy weather, and frequent freezes all summer the following year. Because of it, crops failed, farmers went bankrupt, and many people starved.” The way Daddy spoke of that disaster, it seemed as if it had happened during his own father’s lifetime.

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