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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.

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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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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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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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