Archive | February 2026

Snuggling Madison

Feb25

Awake, but reluctant to leave my warm, cozy bed, I rolled over and hugged my teddy bear. Betty and Mary, two of my big sisters who shared the bedroom were up and getting dressed for the day. I stared up at a window-shaped patch of sunlight on the wall above my bed. The wall had been painted a pretty color, but the bright sun and the dancing shade of a tree branch made it look even prettier. I smiled at my bear’s funny little face and kissed it.  I heard my sisters walking down the stairs and Mom asking, “Didn’t Kathy get up, too?”

I wasn’t stubborn. I just didn’t want to get up because I was comfortable. Last night when it was bedtime, I fought going to bed as usual. It was hard for me to say why I didn’t like bedtime, other than I disliked not being awake.

 “I’m not stubborn about bath-time, either,” I assured my teddy bear. Mom always had a hard time getting me to take a bath. But once she got me to sit in the warm soapy water, I loved it and never wanted to get out. I hated how cold my freshly bathed, damp body felt after a bath. That sort of cold was dreadful.

A surge of love made me hug the teddy bear and say, “I love you, Madison!”

One year ago, one of my big sisters on the verge of leaving for college became very sick. I was frightened and didn’t understand what was happening, or if she would ever get well again. I heard the grown-ups whispering things like, “brain bleed” and “…needs to go to the big University hospital in Madison.”

Weeks later, Mom announced that a miracle had happened. She prayed for my sister to be healed, and my sister ended up not needing surgery. She could now go home, but the University Hospital was far away from our farm, and Daddy was busy. My sister’s boyfriend said he’d take my mom and me to Madison to bring my sister home.

I liked my sister’s boyfriend because he was always funny and when I was around, he would pay attention to me. Despite the excitement of traveling and having Jim joking around with me, the trip to the University Hospital in Madison felt like it took forever. The hospital was so huge that while we waited for my sister’s paperwork to be done, we visited the hospital gift shop. Not only was I surprised that there was a store inside the hospital, but I discovered that it was better than my favorite stores in Marshfield: Woolworth’s and Ben Franklin’s Five and Dime.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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?”

Continue reading →

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.”

Continue reading →

‘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.

Continue reading →