Archives

Yuletide Beast

Dec17

The bushy balsam looked as if it was bringing itself into the house. Stomping through the dining room and into the living room, the tree boughs bounced when it stopped and a voice requested, “Help me with the tree stand.” As the tree turned to settle onto the floor in the corner of the room, I finally saw Arnie, my husband. Pulling the tree away from the wall a little, he pointed out, “I think the best side of the tree is facing the room. All I need, is for you to hold the tree steady while I tighten the screws.”

Fresh balsam scent and the aura of cold clinging to the tree’s gray branches and trunk began to mingle with the warmth of the living room. Racing downstairs and into the living room, my nine-year-old daughter Tammie exclaimed, “I could smell the tree from upstairs!” Her thirteen-year-old sister Niki entered the living room a little slower, but with a happy smile.

Flicker, our tuxedo tom cat crept slowly around the outer perimeter of the living room. His black nose twitched; the smell of outdoors to now suddenly be indoors seemed to make him nervous.

By the time our Christmas tree was fully decorated later that afternoon, Flicker came to accept the new feature to our living room. As evening advanced, he seemed enamored with the tree, making a spot under one of the lowest boughs his favorite place to nap. It wasn’t until bedtime that I could see we had a problem. As Tammie walked past the tree, Flicker reached out with his long kitty arms and snagged her ankle with a claw. She let out a yelp.

I scolded, “Naughty kitty! Niki, you’d better put him out in the entryway for the night.”

Niki reached under the tree and scooped up the cat. Petting and cuddling him, she commented, “Look at Flicker! His eyes are crazy looking.”

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Candy Closet

Dec10

There was a big smile on my face when I arrived home from school. Snow had started to fall during the afternoon recess! An important item on my secret holiday checklist received a mental checkmark. Racing into the house, I announced that I was going to play in the yard for a while. I loved the independence of being a ten-year-old. Mom nodded but admonished, “Be sure to come into the house before dark or if I call for you.”

I slowly shuffled through the new fallen snow while listening to the sounds of Daddy working in the barn, preparing the cows to be milked. Large flakes continued to fall. Sounds in the snowy air seemed louder than usual and carried further. The scrape of a metal shovel on concrete screeched as Daddy pushed scattered feed back into the mangers for the cows.

Darkening shadows and a chill made me decide to return to the house which I found filled with the comforting smell of supper ready to be served. My big sisters, brothers, Mom, Daddy and me all had our own place to sit at the table. No one would dream of sitting in someone else’s place. Routines made me happy, so checking off items on my mental list of holiday traditions helped me enjoy them and anticipate the next. So far, this year, I’d check-marked Saint Nicolas treats and snow!

Frosting a huge batch of cut-out cookies happened the next day. Checkmark! I looked forward to the job, but I rarely stayed for the full course. During the several hours that it took, almost everyone in the family decorated at least a few Santa or wreath cookies. The older siblings created artwork that they didn’t want anyone to eat. I contented myself with shaking green sugar on wreaths and trimming them with a few red-hot cinnamon candy dots.

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Silo Playhouse

Oct1
My silo was real, but my playhouse was pure imagination!

Every tree I saw along the way on my way home from school was a blazing red, orange or yellow. The air felt cool and breezy, a complete reversal from the hot and sticky weather we had when school started a month ago. Warm sunshine sparkled as it hit the car windows and warmed my relaxed shoulders. My school day routine felt comfortable now. First day of school jitters were now just a memory. I knew which classroom to go to, who my friends were, and felt resigned to who my teacher was.

Once I reached our farmyard, I sprinted into the farmhouse. Mom greeted me from the kitchen. I sniffed and asked, “Did you make cookies today?” Mom nodded and pointed to the cupboard next to the refrigerator where a decorative tin cookie box sat.

Prying the lid off, I found chocolate peanut cookies with chocolate frosting. Eating one in almost a single bite, I took a second for eating-on-the-go. With my mouth full of soft, sweet cookie crumbs, I explained as I headed for my bedroom, “I’m going to change out of my school clothes and go outside.”

Like a typical ten-year-old, I flung my discarded clothing onto the bedroom floor and hastily pulled on what Mom called ‘everyday’ clothing. The second cookie I’d taken was long gone by the time I ran out the back door of the house. When the screen door shut with a slam behind me, I stopped to consider my options. A plan instantly popped into my mind: get apples from the orchard and watch Daddy chop corn for silage in the field behind the barn.

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Girl Meets Country

Sep10

The realtor placed two sheets of paper on the table in front of Arnie and me. He explained, “I’m going to take you to see these two houses this afternoon. Before we leave the office, you might want to look at the spec sheets. You’ll notice both houses are in the countryside, and both have the number of bedrooms, bathrooms and the backyard you want.”  

Each sheet bore the picture of a house for sale. Below the picture was information about the house. One had fifteen hundred square feet of living space, the other had two thousand. One house had a new roof and with the other a new water heater. The yearly property taxes listed for either property made my eyes water.  

Both houses looked nice, but I had trouble taking my eyes off the brick house. It looked inviting, warm, and friendly. My gut feeling was that it looked like a home…my home. When we toured it, Arnie and I liked what we saw, despite its many faults. The house was built over fifty years before I was born. Some remodeling had been done, some of it very poorly. It was branded with the colors and products of the 1970’s mobile home industry. Most shocking to me, was that the house had two furnaces! One was an oil furnace, and the other was a wood furnace.

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Elderberry Bush Gifts

Aug13

 Seeing Casper stand up to leave the table, Mom suggested, “If you’re going to walk down to the woods this afternoon, check the elderberry bushes for blossoms. They always blossom by the end of June. If they are, pick enough for me to fry for our supper tonight.”

I had already planned on spending that Saturday afternoon tagging after my big brother, but now I certainly didn’t want to miss the chance to help him pick elderberry blossoms! I jumped to my feet and announced, “I’m coming with you.”

Casper gruffly instructed, “Be sure to keep up with me.” As I followed him out the back door of our farmhouse, Mom handed me a brown paper bag to put the blossoms in. I had to run to keep up with Casper’s longer legs. We crossed the cow yard and started down the cow lane towards the woodlot and the small creek that ran through the back forty acres on our farm. I rested whenever Casper stopped to check who was using the birdhouses that were nailed to some of the cow lane fence posts.

Our hurried pace slowed as we came closer to the cow pasture near the creek. Birds I never saw near the house sat on reeds bobbing in the breeze. Butterflies flitted around wildflowers. Casper examined paw tracks in the mud. “Racoon,” he muttered for my benefit.

Mom was right. The elderberries were in full bloom. As we approached the bushes, a slight breeze made the delicate flowers flutter, reminding me of lacy handkerchiefs waved by a flirtatious, medieval damsel. We spent an enjoyable hour or more checking bird houses by the trees, seeing squirrel tracks while we walked through the woods, watching minnows and frogs in the creek. We returned to the elderberry bushes to pick the flowers on our way back home.

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Birthday Combustion

Aug6

Mom brought a cake to the table and set it down. A single unlit birthday candle stood tall and proud in the center of the cake amid chocolate frosting. I clapped my hands with happy anticipation. We were celebrating my nephew David’s first birthday. He was born March 27th, 1960, the year I turned ten. My brother-in-law had enlisted in the army amid the Berlin Crisis, so he and my sister, along with David, had recently moved away to an army base. Even though he wasn’t with us to celebrate his special day, I insisted Mom make a birthday cake for David.

Taking a wooden matchstick from a box, Daddy reached under his chair to drag it across the rough underside to ignite it. Suddenly, with an aggressive roar, flames shot out of the cold air-return grate next to where he was sitting.

Seeing large orange flames coming from inside the wall of my much-loved home, I jumped up from the table and screamed. As a ten-year-old, I figured that everyone was responsible for their own escape from the house. I ran from the kitchen, through the entryway, and out the back door. A few minutes later, my brother Billy found me standing on the sidewalk behind the house, sobbing. He said, “The fire is out. Everything’s okay.”

I returned to our supper table to find Mom had placed a serving of the birthday cake at my place. It was like nothing had happened. I felt confused and as though I needed to run around the block several times to get rid of the residual panic in my system. A few fork loads of frosted cake went a long way towards making me feel better. I hic-upped, “What happened? Why did the house catch fire? It happened so suddenly!”

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Never JUST Right

Jul30

Mom sat in the front seat of the family car. I and a few of my siblings piled into the back seat. Daddy got in behind the wheel and slammed the car door shut. One of Daddy’s favorite things to do on Sunday afternoons during the summer, was to take slow, meandering drives on country roads. I liked to go along because I always hoped we’d stop for a treat, and occasionally, we did!

As Daddy drove the country roads, he examined our neighbor’s corn field. With an approving nod, he announced, “Mark’s corn looks good. It’s as far along as mine.” With his attention not on the road, the car began to veer towards the left ditch. Mom and the older kids yelled, “Watch the road!” This happened again when Daddy noted that our neighbor Tony had already finished taking in his first crop of hay. Sunday afternoon drives were always exciting during the summer months. My father took his job of inspecting local farm crops then comparing them with his own crops, seriously.

While getting ready for one of our Sunday drives, Mom told me, “We’re going to stop at a custard stand today.” I wondered what sort of treat a custard was. At ten years of age, I thought a custard was just a pudding. A good treat, for sure, but it seemed to be an odd sort of thing to be selling from a stand.

            That day I sat between Mom and Daddy in the front seat, because more of my siblings were coming along. I shrugged and commented, “Okay. I like puddings.”

            Mom smiled as she corrected, “It isn’t pudding. It looks and tastes like ice cream, but it’s soft. Instead of being scooped out of a box, it comes out of a machine when a button is pushed. The server puts the custard into an ice cream cone.”

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Cow Pasture Daisies

Jun25

I rolled around on the grass in the backyard, playing with our beagle, Dopy, and a barn cat who stopped off for a visit on her way back to the barn after an afternoon of mousing in the orchard. Mama cat enjoyed my attention, but she was in a hurry. She didn’t want to miss getting her share of the soppy milk filter from the milk strainer that Daddy threw into the cat food dish when the milking chores were finished.

The June afternoon had been hot, but the grass on our back lawn was in the shade of the house, so it felt cool against my skin. Laying on my back, I watched a few fluffy clouds slowly move across the blue sky, listened to birds twittering, a bee buzzing, a heifer in the barnyard bawling, and the comforting, rhythmic thrum of the Surge vacuum pump in the barn. I loved the sound of it. It meant I knew where Daddy was, and that the cows were getting milked. All was right with the world.

Nearby, Mom worked like her energy was endless. On her knees, she dug and smoothed the flowerbed soil to repair last winter’s damage. Freshly sprouted perennial plants had their dead stems cut away, while annual plants killed by the cold were removed and replaced with new, blossoming plants.

I knew when Daddy finished milking the cows and had let them out to pasture for the night. The Surge vacuum pump was turned off and shortly after that, he came to see what Mom was doing. Excitedly, Mom showed him all the work she had done while he was doing his chores. He admired the beautiful flowerbed arraignment and smiled with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. Daddy teased, “Those are pretty flowers, but I saw some that look just like them growing wild along one of the line fences.” Mom made an indignant huffing sound and began to gather up her gardening tools for the night. Daddy gave her a clumsy hug.

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One Job

Jun18

I picked up my long-handled clippers from the garage and walked across the lawn towards one of the pine trees in the backyard. Sunday afternoons are for relaxing and not working, but I looked forward to cutting down the unwanted clumps of false elderberry bushes and other invasive saplings growing under the trees. This one job done on a Sunday afternoon would be easy to do, and a pleasure to have out of the way.

Visiting and checking on flowerbeds around the backyard on this pleasant early summer afternoon was a joy. Birds warbled happy tunes to announce that they had returned from their winter vacations. A busy little wren sang to warn other birds to stay away from his nest. An oriole singing from a tree top sounded wistful, like he was begging for jelly to eat.

Arriving at the tree patch, I stood looking at the plethora of weeds growing in profusion under the pine’s branches. I wondered where to start. The area had never been touched by a lawn mower. I ducked under the closest tree’s bottom branches and boldly waded into the tangled mess. My goal was to cut down the tallest and bushiest first. Instantly, a legion of no-see-ums rose up and swarmed across my face, neck and hair. The small, biting midges got behind my glass lenses and in my ears where they buzzed frantically and bounced against my skin like pinballs in a pinball machine. Sputtering, I spit out the no-see-ums that were trying to get into my mouth.

Swatting at the small insects was futile; they moved too fast. Suddenly, my one, small Sunday afternoon job felt like a hard-fought, protracted war and I was a stubborn soldier who refused to leave until the job I came to do was done. The enemy crawled all over my arms and legs. Dozens of midges started to take samples of blood from my hairline. I leaned over and quickly lopped off the bushes and invasive trees.

            Once I’d accomplished my goal, I rushed to escape. Taking a hasty step forward, one of the plant stem stubbles stabbed me in the ankle. Gasping, I limped out of the bramble onto the lawn. My leg hurt and blood trickled from the wound.

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Strawberry Robbers

Jun4

After checking the carrots and potatoes in stovetop kettles, I loudly announced, “Everything is ready. Let’s pray, so we can sit down to eat.”

My four youngest grandchildren, Luke, Jacob, Gemma and Blaise, wandered into the kitchen where my daughter Niki, sisters Rosie and Agnes, and I stood. Looking around, Jacob questioned, “What are we having?”

I’d made a fresh loaf of bread. Rosie brought a bowl of fruit salad, and Agnes brought a jar of pickled okra, and cheese curds to go with supper. Niki made roasted chicken thighs. She instructed, “The plates and silverware are on the counter next to the stove. Mom’s bread is on the counter next to the refrigerator. When you have what you want, find a place to sit at the table. The rest is on the table.”

This was our weekly Tuesday night family meal, where each week we enjoy good food and conversation. When the meal was over, my company started to think about going home to relax for the night. Agnes and Rosie hugged each other, then they hugged me and Niki, then the children hugged my sisters and me.

I stepped out the back door of my house, pleasantly surprised at how velvety warm the evening spring air felt. A chorus of spring peepers from by the nearby river were peeping loudly and a flock of birds in a grove of trees sounded like they were squabbling over which branches to roost on for the night. Stepping out of the house to join me on the deck, my sister Rosie chirped, “It’s been lovely! I’ll see you all next week.” I watched everyone get into their cars and drive away.

From a tree next to the house, a robin warbled a song of praise and thanksgiving. From the top of the yard light pole, another robin joyfully answered. The sound was delightfully pure.

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