Archives

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 →

It’s Tradition

Dec16

The house door softly clicked shut behind me. I took a deep breath of the frosty night air. An inch of fresh snow lay on the deck. Shuffling my feet in the fluffy ice crystals, I looked around and saw by the yard light that more snow was falling steadily on our already white farm yard.

Smiling, I held out my arms and tipped my head back to allow the flakes tickle my face as they landed. I felt small in a big world. Inside the house behind me were my four and eight year-old children, in the barn before me was my husband waiting for my help. Continue reading →

Snow Songs

Dec9

Snow started to fall while I was reading the latest comic book Daddy had bought for me while in town to have our oats ground into cow feed. Some latent instinct in my ten-year-old mind must have helped me feel the change in the barometer or the rise in humidity. Putting the Donald Duck comic down, I went to the window. Seeing a white curtain of ice crystals between the house and the barn made me gleefully shout, “Yee-hoo!”

A happy, content feeling enveloped me as I began to think about going out to play in the snow and about all things Christmas; gifts, cookies, candy, the tree, midnight Mass, singing carols, the crèche and vacation from school. Soon restlessness filled my mind. No longer interested in the comic book, I decided to check out the spot where Mom stored the extra Christmas candy every year. Finding it empty just made me feel more excited, knowing that the box of malted milk balls, chocolate covered nuts, caramels and at least ten other goodies along with plain nuts would magically appear there on Christmas Eve. Continue reading →

Mrs. Spelling Bee

Dec2

I looked up from my paper. Without making a sound, our teacher, Sister Mary Florence was walking slowly up one row and down the next. All 48 children sat still at their desks, silent as mice when the cat is about. Outside, the wind moaned subdued complaints as it swirled through the playground. The bank of windows which ran the length of our fourth grade classroom creaked as the wind push against them. The radiators below, whispered, ‘click, click, click’ as warm water from the school’s boiler room flowed through the pipes. Continue reading →

Unidentified Party Guest

Oct28

When the doorbell rang, I glanced around the room and counted. I had a clown, belly dancer, hobo, large mouse, a gypsy and Carmen Miranda. All of our invited guests were present. Who could be at the back door? Assigning my twelve-year-old daughter the job of passing glasses of vile-looking green punch to our guests, I went to see.

Standing on the deck at my back door was an old woman dressed in a long, colorful skirt and shawls. She stood so hunched over a black cane, it was hard to see her face. Despite that, I was able to tell that her long nose and wrinkles were soft rubbery plastic. Wisps of gray hair stuck out from under the babushka that she wore on her head. She spoke no words, but motioned to indicate she desired to enter my house.

Mesmerized by this mysterious stranger and sensing only benevolence radiating from her, I stepped aside. The unidentified party guest (UPG) hobbled into the dining room. My two daughters and our guests all fell silent. After greeting each costumed child with a one-armed hug and motions to indicate her approval of them, our UPG finally retired to a chair in the corner of the room. Continue reading →

October Wedding

Oct14

Bright afternoon sunshine slanted down through colorful fall foliage, blinding me for a moment. I impatiently pulled down the sun visor. Spotting a place to park directly in front of the school door, I swiftly pulled into the space and immediately jumped out of my vehicle. I had a dozen errands to run that afternoon and I intended to get every single one done as quickly as possible.

Next to the school door was a huge planter filled with salvias. The plants were tall and ablaze with vibrant red blossoms. I skidded to a stop. My feeling of being rushed and overburdened fell away, replaced by a sweet childhood memory filled with nostalgia and a sense of timelessness.

Fall was a season of celebration when I was a child. Red, yellow and orange trees were flames of joy, announcing that the bounty of summer was ready to be harvested. Mom and my siblings gathered apples from the orchard and made them into apple sauce and pies. Daddy spent warm days and cool nights in the corn fields making silage so the cows had more than hay to eat during the winter. Continue reading →

Dude Ranch

Sep16

By the time I wandered from my bed, everyone else had been up working for hours. I heard the wringer washer humming in the basement and remembered that it was washday Monday. Finding a slice of Mom’s home baked bread in a bag on the kitchen counter, I slathered butter and jelly on it and went to sit on one of the basement steps.

When I sat down, Mom looked up from feeding soggy clothing to the washing machine’s rollers. She said, “So, you finally decided to get up?” I grinned at her and continued to nibble on the bread. Eyeing my summertime uniform, shorts and a sun top, Mom said, “Good. You dressed for the day.”

I popped the last bite of bread into my mouth and frowned.  Last summer my big sisters made a fuss about how I wore my nightgown well into the day and refused to comb my own hair. Pictures that they took showed a fluffy tangled rat’s nest of hair on the back of my head. Now that I was eight and a half I dressed when I got out of bed and even combed my hair. Continue reading →