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Floor Polish and Paint

Dec11

I sat cross-legged on one of the red vinyl and chrome kitchen chairs, watching Mom at the kitchen counter vigorously kneading bread dough. Christmas was next week but I felt like I couldn’t stand the suspense until the big day! I knew better than to complain that time was passing too slowly. Mom’s answer to that was, “Stop wishing your life away!” I stared at the large red and black Stratford State Bank calendar hanging on the side of a cupboard. Some of my nine-year-old classmates at school talked about having their trees up already, but I knew our tree would not be put up until the afternoon of December 24th.

I perked up when the back door slammed. A minute later my 20-year-old brother, Billy, stepped into the house. He was carrying a can of paint. He announced, “I’m going to give the entrance a fresh coat of paint.”

Mom questioned with surprise, “Does it really need a fresh coat of paint?

Grinning, Billy explained, “It could probably wait, but Christmas isn’t Christmas for me unless I can smell fresh paint.”

“How strange”, I thought, “What does paint have to do with Christmas?” I looked forward to things like listening to WDLB, the local radio station. Besides Christmas songs, during the weeks leading up to Christmas, they had a program every evening devoted to someone reading the letters to Santa that children mailed to them. Then, there was my family’s Christmas cookie decorating night, a tradition carried out each year within a week or two of Christmas.

The cookie night had taken place just last evening. When I came home from school yesterday afternoon, the house smelled of freshly baked cookies. Mom had filled a large roaster to overflowing with cut-out cookies. It took Mom, my sisters and I all evening to decorate them. My brothers even decorated a few when they came in from doing barn chores.

Remembering not only the cookies, but Sister Florence’s instructions on how to correctly use the words, “may and can”, I politely requested, “Mom, may I please have a Christmas cookie to eat?”

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Redeemed Souls

Dec4

Mom watched me reach into my cereal bowl to take another candy. She leaned forward and rested her elbows on the kitchen table and commented, “Saint Nicholas was very generous with you again this year.” Today, the feast of Saint Nicholas was a red-letter day. I circled December 6th on the calendar each year and looked forward to it with excitement. It didn’t matter that I no longer believed in Santa Claus, now that I was eleven years old. I enjoyed the yearly tradition of receiving pre-Christmas candy.

Happily chewing the chocolate-covered caramel I’d just popped into my mouth, I grinned and agreeably answered, “Oh! Yes!” but with my mouth so full, my words sounded more like I had hummed them. Early winter darkness had settled over our farmyard an hour ago. Daddy and my brother Billy were in the barn milling the cows.

Last night at bedtime, my brothers and sisters placed cereal bowls on the kitchen table where we usually sit to eat meals, as we do each December 5th. We put letters to Santa in the bowls, in which we tell him what gifts we want to receive for Christmas. During the night, Saint Nicholas takes the letters and fills our bowls with peanuts, candy canes, and chocolate bridge mix.

I found my treat-filled bowl this morning when I came down to eat breakfast. Mom let me have a few pieces of candy, but said I had to leave the rest until after school. I thought about eating candy all day!

My classmates and I were restless all day at school and had a hard time keeping our minds on the lessons our teacher, Mrs. Miller, wanted us to learn. Then there was a big surprise after the afternoon recess. When we filed back into our classroom, we found small brown paper bags on every desk. The bags were from Saint Nichloas, and contained oranges, candy canes, popcorn balls, Christmas taffy, and peanuts.

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Necessary but Thankless Jobs

Nov27

Daddy stood up and pushed back his chair. He addressed my brother, Billy, “Time for us to get going. Our cows are waiting to be milked.”

Glancing around at all the used supper dishes on the table, Mom addressed my sisters, Betty and Mary, “Time for us to get to work, too. The supper dishes need to be washed.”

I turned to leave the kitchen, but Betty stopped me in my tracks by demanding, “What about Kathy? Why do Mary and I always have to wash and dry the dishes? She’s old enough to take a turn!”

Grabbing a kettle filled with kitchen scraps off a kitchen counter, I announced, “I’m taking this out to feed the pigs.” Everyone in my family knew I absolutely hated washing dishes and threw a fit whenever I was forced to do it. I usually got away with this avoidance tactic because I was the spoiled baby of the family. Besides, up till then, there had always been plenty of others to do the jobs that I hated. Unfortunately, the dynamics of our family were changing now that the oldest siblings were leaving home.

Mom sighed and nodded. “Kathy, I’ll help you do the dishes tonight.” Mary and Betty disappeared before I was able to melt down into full tantrum mode.

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Adulthood Crash Course

Nov13

I parked in front of Stratford’s Allington & Van Ryzen Red Owl store and sat for a moment before getting out of the car. The damp, overcast sky made the day feel like it was much later in fall, and not just a chilly end of August afternoon. Clutching my purse, I slowly walked up the steps to enter the small-town general store. My mission that afternoon was to shop for and buy a pair of khaki pants.

At seventeen years of age, the only preparation for adulthood that I had made was to learn how to drive a car and get my license. Many of the activities that most teenagers experience were not checked off in my life. I had never cooked a meal, thought about what I wanted to do after graduating from high school, entered a store by myself to buy clothing, experimented with makeup, or gone on a date. I was far behind the social development of other kids my age.

Perhaps the reason I was so far behind had to do with my being the youngest of a large family, living in the country on a farm, being an introverted person. I felt afraid of adulthood and thought it was too far a stretch for me. 

Pausing for a moment after entering the store, I glanced around appreciatively. To my right was the grocery side of the store. Although it was small with about four short aisles, there was a refrigerated counter along the back wall with a butcher there, cutting and packaging meat. The check-out register was next to the entrance. I smiled, remembering the times I visited the store with Mom and my sister’s boyfriend was working at the cash register. He liked to joke and tease people, and it felt like he was a big brother even before he really was.

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Fired Up for Fire

Oct23

I was excited and couldn’t stop moving around. My mother, trying hard to button my coat, exclaimed with exasperation, “Hold still!” From where I stood in the farmhouse entryway, I could see through the back door window to a snow covered back yard that I wanted to play in. Turning my head slightly to the right, I could see a pan of freshly baked cookies on the top of the stove. The smell of them made me want one so badly that my mouth watered. Tying a scarf tightly under my chin, Mom exclaimed, “There! Done! Now you can go outside with the big kids.”

One of my brothers asked, “Can we take cookies with us?” Mom got the pan and held it out to us. We each scooped up a warm, sweet treat before turning to leave the house.

Although I wanted to play in the fluffy, white, fresh snow, I dutifully followed my brothers and sisters to the backside of our farmyard. The boys put down bags of household garbage on a small pile of wood scraps and dried weeds. Striking a match, my brother set the kitchen garbage on fire.

The bright orange flame revealed what was in the bag as it burned. I watched it devour a bloody paper that the butcher had wrapped around the stew bone Mom was using to make soup. It delicately licked at a brown apple core, then turned it black before finishing it off. The fire warmed my face as I got closer to see what the flames would do to an empty soda-cracker box. My eldest brother snapped, “Back away from the fire, Kathy. You’re too close to it!”

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The Chaperone

Oct16

I wrung out the dish cloth and laid it on the counter and left the kitchen to look out the living room window to check on my children. I still felt I needed to periodically check on them even though they weren’t little anymore. 14-year-old Niki and 10-year-old Tammie were old enough to take care of themselves while I did housework.

The first few times my daughters played in our backyard when they were younger, I never got anything done in the house because I was constantly peeking out of the windows to make sure they were safe. My friends didn’t seem to feel the need to constantly chaperone their children as I did. Was I an overly anxious mother? My way of thinking was that if one of them got hurt, it wouldn’t be because they were unsupervised.  

The phone rang. It was my mother. She had gone shopping and wanted to tell me about what she’d bought. I sneezed. She commented, “I hope you aren’t coming down with a cold.”

From the window, I spotted my two girls playing badminton on the back lawn. Feeling silly, I paused before asking, “Mom?” 

On the other end of the telephone line, my 86-year-old mother responded, “Yes?”

I repeated, “Mom, when does a mother stop worrying so much about her children?”

My mother answered with a slow, impish drawl, “Umm…. I don’t know!”

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Cat’s Eye Club

Oct2

I climbed the worn and weathered wooden stairs to the ancient shed’s second floor. Three of my neighborhood cousins who were the closest to my age followed. Bright morning sunshine peeked in between the building’s aged wall boards. We sat down on out-of-date equipment, the sort that accumulates in long-time family-run farm sheds.

Gray shadows inside the shed hid the bright colors of the summer shorts and tops our mothers had sewn for us, while the bright shafts of sunlight highlighted narrow strips of blazing color. Filled with a poorly thought-out kid-club fantasy, I suggested, “Let’s start a club. We could call it…” After stopping to think for a moment, I said, “The Cat’s Eye Club! This is such a cool shed. We could hold our meetings here.”

Barb, a year older than me, nodded and agreed, “That sounds like fun.”

Alice, a year younger than me, brushed dust off her leg, commenting, “Mom doesn’t like having us play in this shed.”

Donna, who was the same age as me, asked, “What would we do as a club?”

She had me there. I couldn’t think of a single activity for Cat’s Eye Club members to do. It didn’t matter. Our meeting place, the dangerously interesting shed, was torn down later that summer.  

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Watch Me Dance

Sep25

The smaller grandchildren tumbled about on the living room floor like happy little puppies, while the eldest girl tried to organize the bedlam. Anne kept repeating, “Let’s put on a dance for Grandma!” I smiled. The younger children were lost when Anne wasn’t home to direct their play.

 A golden ray of late afternoon sunshine found its way into the room through a slight opening in the drapes. The wayward shaft of light was like a spotlight on each towheaded child as they obediently trooped out of the room through the light to put on dress-up clothes.

Before the children were dressed and ready to put on a floor show, their mother and youngest sibling returned from town. I got up and walked into the dining room to talk to my daughter. When the children came back downstairs from their visit to my dress-up box, they were wearing prom dresses, scarves, petticoats, and lacy kerchiefs pinned in their hair. Anne begged over and over, “Mom, Grandma, come into the living room and watch us dance!”

We all returned to the living room, and Anne lined her siblings up. I took a picture of the performers. When she said, “Ok” they all began to twirl, jump and leap. If enthusiasm indicates a superior performance, my daughter Niki and I were watching the world’s best dancers.

“Watch me dance” was a demand I heard Anne make often when she was a small girl. It didn’t seem to matter if her siblings danced with her or not. In her mind, she seemed to feel she was on a stage, and that her leaps and twirls were flawlessly choreographed movements.

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Living off the Land

Jul31
V-shaped notches were used here to tap sap from a pine tree.

A cool breeze entered the living room window and swirled through the room. It had stopped raining a short time ago, so the damp breeze carried the smell of the lilies blossoming in profusion just below the window. Looking up from the comic book I was reading, I reflected upon how cozy it felt to spend a Sunday afternoon with Mom and Daddy like this. My older brothers and sisters were in other parts of the house.

Mom, in her upholstered rocking chair, had one of her favorite woman’s magazines on her lap as she dozed. Daddy sat in the armchair reading the big family bible. Sitting on the linoleum living room floor next to where Daddy sat, I leaned against his legs. An incredible thought suddenly occurred to me: Mom and Daddy had once been children, too!

“Daddy?” I questioned. “What sort of things did you do when you were a little boy”?

Looking up from the bible, he thought for a moment before replying. Glancing down at my bare feet, he said, “I didn’t wear shoes all summer long.” I looked at his face to see if he was joking. I’d taken mine off after coming home from Mass this morning, surely, he wore shoes to attend church! As if reading my mind he explained, “I grew out of the shoes I wore to school during the winter and I didn’t get another pair until sometime after the weather got really cold during the following fall.”

Mom had once told me she and Daddy were in their middle forties when I was born. I counted on my fingers…that made him at least fifty-five years old! “What else do you remember?” I prompted, realizing that his childhood was such a very long time ago.

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Pine Pitch Bandage

Jul24

Although I was going downhill, I kept peddling my bike. Hot summer sunshine blazed in the afternoon sky as I sped down the road creating a breeze that fluttered through my uncombed hair. The sleeveless top I was wearing caught some air and billowed away from my sweaty back skin.

The center of the gravel road was hard like pavement, but loose gravel lined the sides of the road. The driveway to my family’s farmyard came up faster than I was ready for it. With all the confidence of a ten-year-old enjoying her summer vacation from school, I decided to keep peddling and just turn the wheel of my bike when I got there.

All the hay wagons that had come in and out of our yard that summer had made the driveway hard as pavement, but also covered it with a large amount of loose gravel.  My bike skidded and tipped over, but momentum kept me moving. Still clutching the bike handlebars, my right knee scraped across the hardened driveway made up of thousands of sharp granite crystals.

Coming to a stop, I sat up immediately and took stock of the situation. My right knee hurt. However, I figured it didn’t hurt bad enough to have a broken bone. My wound was covered with gritty dirt. It didn’t even immediately bleed. I stood up and walked my bike to the back door of our farmhouse, yelling for Mom. By the time, I reached the door, there was blood running down my leg.

It hurt to have a soapy washcloth rubbed over my knee, but I understood that the dirt had to be washed away. Some of the dirt refused to leave the wound. Mom said it was trapped under a flap of skin. Opening the medicine cabinet over the bathroom sink, she pulled out a small bottle of mercurochrome. With tears running down my cheeks, I cried, “No! Don’t put any of that on my knee! It burns and hurts too much. My knee already hurts more than I can stand.”

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