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Undeniable

Jun1

Leaning forward I quietly asked my daughter, “Do you remember the first time you lied and knew you were lying?”

Niki shrugged and said, “No. I don’t think so.”

“Well, I do.” I confessed. “I was in second grade and I hated the baggy brown stockings I had to wear to school. They wrinkled around my ankles and looked terrible. The stockings I wore to church on Sunday mornings were white and not at all saggy…probably because they were worn only one day of the week, whereas the brown stockings were continuously washed and worn. Both required a garter belt to hold them up.”

Amused by my tale, Niki asked, “How did wearing saggy socks cause you to lie?”

“Pride.” I said with a sad shake of my head. “One evening after school I told Mom that my teacher, Sister Mary Michaeleen, wanted all of the girls in the class to start wearing their white stockings to school.”

Chuckling, my daughter said, “Did Grammie fall for that lie?”

I said, “Of course not. I’m the youngest of seven children. She had four other girls before me and hadn’t just fallen off the turnip truck. What I wanted and why was entirely transparent.” Continue reading →

Fifty Years Too Soon

May25

I took my old recipe box out of the cupboard and began rifling through the cards. My daughter Tammie said, “Mom, what are you looking for?”

Without looking up, I answered, “There’s an old recipe for spiced carrots in here. It would go well with our meal tonight if I could just find it.”

“Oh!” My daughter exclaimed excitedly, “I was in Pinterest the other night and I saw a fantastic carrot recipe.” Whipping out her smart phone, she asked, “How about I pull that recipe up for you?”

Surprised, I looked up at her to ask, “What in the world is Pinterest?”

Tammie explained, “It’s a website on the Internet. It’s like a bulletin board where you can pin pictures and information about crafts, cooking, sewing or anything else of interest. I like visiting this site to find ideas for crafts. The ideas I like or try, I pin on my personal Pinterest board. Other people on the Internet can see what I have on my board. If they like the type of things I post, they can ‘follow’ me by copying ideas from me.” Continue reading →

New House Old

Apr27

A ray of morning sunshine slanted down from the window on the stairway landing. Without thinking, I stepped into the beam, like a super star steps into a spotlight on stage. Closing my eyes, I smiled. It felt right and good to be there.

I may have stood in this exact spot on an April morning sixty years ago, when I was five. Back then I would have been listening to Mom talking to Daddy in the kitchen and enjoying the smell of fresh bread baking. I would have listened to my sister practicing her clarinet in her room, knowing that my brother was down the hall tinkering with a mechanical gadget in his room.

Today’s new, yet familiar, sunlight opened a floodgate of memories. Memories made more poignant by the job that lay before me, clearing out my childhood home to prepare for a new family to move in. Continue reading →

THEM versus US

Apr20

When the recess bell rang on the first day of school, not one of the fifty children in my first grade classroom moved. We didn’t know what to do. Sister Donna said, “That bell is telling us that it is time for you to go outside to run and play in the fresh air. In the closet by the door, I have jump ropes and balls. When the bell rings again, you have to come back to the classroom and put the balls and jump ropes away.”

Some of my classmates knew each other, so they went out to the playground holding hands. On the playground I watched the other little girls jumping rope and talking. There was something different about some of them. I didn’t really understand what it was, though. Continue reading →

Catch a Falling Star

Apr13

I stopped halfway to my neighborhood cousin’s farm and looked around with pleasure. Overhead, the clouds were light colored, but on the horizon they remained a brilliant, stormy blue, reminding me of a face still wet after crying. Only an hour before, it had been raining. New grass and small leaves on the trees were bright green. The plowed soil along the road held rows of perky green sprouts against the dark brown dirt. Crystalline droplets of water sparkled on every sprig. The colors were strong, clear and beautiful. Even the damp gravel under foot was an amazing salmon-pink.

As I paused in the soft, velvety, afternoon spring air, I thought about how I seldom left the house for anything other than to go to church until I was four years old. I was the youngest child of a large, farm family. When it was warm I spent time out on the lawn with the big kids, but when it was cold I had to bundle up until I was hardly able to move. Continue reading →

Pig Jelly

Mar2

Mom stood at the kitchen counter rapidly stirring the contents of a bowl. Dropping my school books onto the table and grabbing a cookie, I went to perch on my old highchair step stool and propped my feet up on one of the chrome and red plastic kitchen chairs. Mom asked, “How was your day?”

Unable to come up with a short, one or two word answer, I shrugged and grunted, then took another bite from the cookie. Nothing really interesting had happened. Swallowing, I asked, “What are you making?”

Mom said, “Sweet and sour heart and tongue. Do you remember the cow we butchered last week? I made a big batch and canned several quarts of it today.” Continue reading →

Good Friday’s Fish

Feb17

Pale light was filtering into my bedroom when I awoke. My first thought was to wonder whether my big brother, Casper, had returned home.” Sliding out of bed, I padded over to the bedroom window and pulled the curtain aside. His car was parked in its usual place in the farmyard driveway below my window. In bare tree branches near the house, several small birds twittered and trilled their spring-time joy.

Only a few small patches of dirty snow still dotted the yard. Yesterday I’d helped Daddy make shallow trenches in the driveway to help hasten drainage from the lawn around our house. Although it was still early morning, they were already filled with water. I smiled, Easter would be warm this year and I could wear my lavender coat and flowered hat to church.

No one was in the kitchen. I grabbed a slice of bread and buttered it. Hearing voices in the basement, I slowly crept down the steps, munching on the bread. Mom and Casper were working at the sink, gutting and washing small fish that were only three to four inches long. Next to them was a large milk-can nearly full with more fish. Continue reading →

Compassionate Valentines

Feb10

My big sisters slammed the back door as they left the house. To hurry me along, Mom said, “Put your scarf on and go…Daddy’s waiting in the car.” I pulled a small purple nylon wisp of material from my coat pocket, folded it diagonally and put it over my head and tied a small knot under my chin. Pushing my glasses further up onto the bridge of my nose, I ran out of our farmhouse, slamming the door behind me.

The air felt sharp that February morning, as sharp as any of the January mornings the previous month, but something seemed different. I couldn’t place what it was. A bird sang as I clambered into the family car. The sound made me pause. It was not one that I’d heard since last fall. As cold as it was, some of the summer birds were returning!

There was a hole in our green Dodge’s floor boards behind the driver’s seat. As Daddy drove through the yard to the road, I instinctively put my foot over the hole as we approached a big mud puddle. Instead of a splash against the bottom of my foot like happened after school yesterday, we heard the sound of shattering glass. I loved the sound. During first recess at school, my friends and I would go all over the playground and break the panels of ice that covered each puddle. Continue reading →

Middle Child

Feb3

Agnes, my eldest sister sat at Mom’s sewing machine slowly, patiently feeding a bright, flowered material to the shiny mechanically powered needle. It darted up and down as the motor made a low humming sound. The machine was new, delivered only a day or two before. I tried to remember the old machine, but could only recall that it had a foot pedal which Mom had to pump to work.

Tired of watching Agnes sew, I found Rosie, who was a year younger than Agnes. She was in the bedroom they shared, brushing her hair. Bored, I began to ramble around though the house checking on the rest of my siblings. My sister Mary, who was seven years older than me, was in the living room reading. Betty, who was one year younger than Mary was on the back lawn playing with a kitten. I found Casper, who was a year older than Agnes, in the garage. He was building a bird house.

After searching for a while, I finally found Billy in the garden with Mom, who was inspecting her new seedlings. Billy had been born after Casper, Agnes and Rosie, but well before Mary, Betty and I. While I saw him as one of the big kids in my family, he was also one of us younger kids. Continue reading →

Queen of Sheba

Jan20

The cup of black tea was almost a little too hot to sip. I happily breathed in its fragrant scent and smiled at how the ceramic mug shared its warmth with my chilled hands. Setting the cup down on a table next to my chair, I pulled up the quilt on my legs, so that I could cuddle under its voluminous folds. Outside the living room window snow drifts were casting chilly blue shadows, while towering pine trees appeared more black than green. It was a good day to stay indoors to read.

Picking up my Bible, I opened to where I had left-off the day before from my ‘one page a day’ reading commitment. I Kings, chapter 10 told about the Queen of Sheba paying a visit to King Solomon to test his wisdom of renown. She arrived in Jerusalem with a huge retinue, camels bearing spices, a large amount of gold and precious stones. Continue reading →