Archives

Growing With the Times

Aug23

I pulled the refrigerator door open and looked for possible snacks. Mom, energetically kneading a large ball of bread dough at the kitchen counter, asked without pausing, “What are you looking for?”

Reaching for a plastic-covered metal bowl on the middle shelf, I announced, “I want the leftover chocolate tapioca pudding.”

Still kneading, Mom protested, “I thought that could be dessert with our next meal.”

Looking at the contents of the bowl, I said doubtfully, “It doesn’t look like there’s enough for everybody.”

Mom rapidly cut and rolled small balls of dough for buns as she answered, “Someone must have snacked on the pudding last night after supper. Go ahead then, eat the rest of it.”

With the bowl in one hand, I slammed the refrigerator door shut. Until now, I thought that the round-shouldered refrigerator was large. Suddenly, I realized that I had grown taller than it. Dropping down onto a red vinyl and chrome chair at our kitchen table, I commented with mixed emotions, “Mom, I’m getting really tall.”

Turning away from the pans of raising buns, Mom said, “You’ve grown like a weed the last few months. Ever since you started fifth grade. I’ve been sewing new school dresses for you every week, trying to keep up.”

Putting down a spoonful of pudding, I worriedly questioned, “Is that normal? How tall am I going to get?”

Mom reassured me that I’d grow as tall as the other girls in the family. Daddy walked into the kitchen then, and announced, “I’m going into town to grind oats for cow feed. Do you need me to get you anything?”

“Yes,” Mom said, “Bring meat home from the locker. I want a roast and two packages of hamburger.” Daddy nodded agreeably as he turned to leave.

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Garden Bingo

Aug16

The sun came out as soon as the rain stopped falling. I slipped out of the back door of the house and took a deep breath. The air felt fresh and clean. A full color rainbow stretched across the sky from one horizon to the other. Droplets of water glistened on blades of grass and tree leaves. Rivulets of water dripped off the hoop building garden, and garage.

The heat earlier in the afternoon had made me stay inside the house. Now, all I wanted was to walk through the yard, despite how wet my feet would get. I wanted to see how the flower beds and garden were doing. Slipping on an old pair of shoes, I stepped off the back deck. The wet grass felt deliciously cool. As I crossed the lawn, I mused, “Gardening is like playing bingo. Getting all my flowerbeds and the garden weeded at the same time is like getting five chips in a row, thus winning the game.”

I checked the front of the garden first. Seeing the freshly weeded first row of plants made me smile. It looked nice and well cared for. That was one chip.

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New Life

Aug9

I tossed my car keys onto the kitchen counter and announced, “While I was in town today, I bought a new tree for us to plant in the yard.”

My husband Arnie was leaning against the sink eating a summer sausage and cheese sandwich. He asked, surprised, “Why would you do that? We have more than enough trees in and around our yard.”

My husband was right, there were a lot of trees around our house. To the west, we had seven trees along the road. To the north ran an entire row of pine trees. On the east side of the property stood a small forest of white pine trees which had been planted by Arnie and my brother in 1981. On the south side ran the Little Eau Pleine River. Its banks are lined with oak trees, box elder and sumac. Most of the trees around our house are pine, except for a flowering crabapple, a white birch, and a mountain ash which were planted close to the house a long time ago.

Standing next to Arnie, I looked out the kitchen window and explained, “Ever since you made a second driveway to our yard, the small field south of the house has been turned into a lawn. It looks empty. I want the new maple tree planted there, right in the center.”

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Lavender Dreams

Aug2

I wrapped my arms around my daughter and complained, “Your visits go by so fast! I wish you could stay longer.” After spending a wonderful weekend together, it was time for Tammie to return to her home. Her car was packed and ready to go.  

Tammie assured me, “I’m coming home again in four weeks, and we’ll visit the New Life Lavender Farm in Baraboo. That’s something nice to look forward to, isn’t it? I’ll call Niki to see if she and the kids would like to come with us. It’ll be an educational field trip.”

Waving goodbye as my daughter drove out of the yard, I smiled. Tammie liked to cheer me up by turning my thoughts to activities we would do during her next visit. I thought, “I’m so lucky to have such a thoughtful daughter.”

Lavender plants do well in my garden and some years I even get them to survive winter. But my sweet-scented lavender plants with their small, demure blossoms do not get used to their full potential. I like how they look, but don’t have a clue how to use them other than displayed in a vase.

Four weeks later Tammie was home for another visit. She said, “We need to get to the farm by eleven in the morning on Friday if we want to ride a hay wagon around the lavender fields.” That morning we packed lunch in an icebox. There were eight of us in Niki’s van including my sister, Agnes. We arrived at the farm 15 minutes before the tour, enough time for us to scope out the gift shop where we found a surprising number of lavender-themed products to buy, foods to eat and drink.

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Who Knew?

Jul26

 I glanced out the kitchen window and saw a school bus crossing the bridge near our house. Its red lights began to flash as it slowed down to stop at our driveway. Looking into the dining room, where my two grade-school-aged daughters sat eating breakfast, I informed them, “Your bus is here.”

Niki and Tammie popped the last of their toast into their mouths, picked up their school bags and rushed out the back door, yelling, “Bye, Mom!”

From our bedroom above the kitchen, I could hear my husband, Arnie, moving around. He liked it when I made breakfast for him on my days off from the hospital. I gathered what I needed from the refrigerator, set the table for us in the dining room, and began frying bacon.

Arnie walked into the kitchen just as I broke the last egg into the skillet. He gave me a peck on the cheek and asked, “What do you plan to do today?”

Turning away from the stove, I said, “Our garden gets planted today. I’m happy with the nice weather this morning. All week I’ve been worrying that it would be rainy on my day off. What are you planning to do today?”

While buttering his toast, Arnie listed the customers he needed to see after working his day shift at the plant, adding, “I need to pick up supplies, so I’ll see you when I swing by to pick them up this afternoon.”

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Guide Lines

Jul19

Crumpling the notebook pages in my hand, I quietly walked out of the farmhouse. I felt wounded, but I wasn’t crying.  Earlier that morning, I had shown my mother a story I had written. Mom disapproved of something she read and scolded me. The pain I felt was a deep, aching shame. Knowing what I needed to do, I crossed the farmyard towards the orchard.

Our freshly planted garden ran alongside the rows of trees. After tearing the notebook pages into small scraps, the size of snowflakes, I dug a hole in the soft soil near my favorite crabapple tree. Scooping up the white bits of paper, I threw them into the hole and covered them with the rich, dark brown soil.

At ten years of age, I didn’t know a single person who wrote anything other than letters to friends or relatives.  Yet, I wanted to write a book someday. Who knows where I’d gotten an idea like that. The teachers at my grade school certainly hadn’t covered anything like the different types of writing a person could do, nor how to construct stories that had realistic conflict, climax and satisfying resolutions.

The desire to write never left me. Every several years I’d pull out my notepad and do some writing. The people who saw these first literary attempts gave me honest critiques. Being thin-skinned, their advice on how to improve felt like personal attacks. The result each time was the same. I’d throw my notebook back into the desk and try to forget about it.

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Also Known As

Jul12

To entertain my older siblings, I put on an old hat, sunglasses, and wrapped myself in a shawl. Clutching a large, empty purse, I knocked and entered the bedroom my sisters, Mary and Betty, shared. In a high-pitched, whiny voice I announced, “My name is Mrs. Humperditzel, and I’m here to drink a cup of tea with you.” My sisters screamed with laughter and began to ask my alter-ego questions. Mrs. Humperditzel answered in a snooty voice, “Yes, of course I live nearby; in the haymow. I’ll have my tea with lots of sugar!“  

I grew up with several siblings who were much older me. Life had handed me an excellent invitation to be an entertainer, and I took advantage of the opportunity with gusto. My repertoire included several eccentric individuals. Mrs. Humperditzel was an old woman who liked to dress up and make Sunday afternoon visits. Erma Peabody on the other hand was an outgoing woman who did unexpected, outlandish things. My favorite persona was Rosie Spearmint. She was a young girl who lived in the orchard in an apple tree. Her solemn father liked to twirl a button on a string, and his full name was Spearmint Spearmint.

One drought-marred summer afternoon, I took on the persona of a famous mud pie chef. It was so oppressively hot that July day, I didn’t even bother to give him a name. After gathering the ingredients needed to make a mud pie, I gratefully sank down on the grassy lawn in the shade of a backyard tree next to one of Mom’s meticulously tended flower beds. High overhead, the hot July sun glared down on the farm. The dappled shade provided by the young tree gave me scant relief from the scorching summer heat, but I knew that if I stopped moving around and stayed in the shade, I would eventually feel cooler.

I slowly organized my equipment and ingredients on the grass next to where I was sitting. Mom’s old kettle, usually used to carry scraps to the chickens or barn cats, was my mixing bowl. Instead of using a stick to stir, I lifted an old spoon from the kitchen. Mom had used it for so many years that one side of spoon’s bowl was rubbed flat.

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Bat Bouncer

Jul5

I lifted the lid off a pan on the stove, and a cloud of steam billowed up from it along with the mouthwatering smell of well-seasoned meat. I turned the burner off so that it wouldn’t burn. My husband walked into the kitchen just as I was checking the other kettles on the stove. Arnie exclaimed, “Supper smells great! How soon do we get to eat?”

Turning to face him, I announced, “The carrots and potatoes are tender, so we can eat right now if you’re ready.”

While Arnie washed his hands, I called our middle-school aged children to join us in the dining room and placed our meal on the table. I had worked all day at the hospital, so I was happy that I had been able to produce an appealing meal for the family before anyone became grumpy.

Just as I finished my meal, a dark shadow swooped through the room. It was there and then gone in the blink of an eye. Frowning, I wondered what I had seen. Arnie had been about to take a bite of the buttered bread in his hand. Still holding the bread close to his lips, he looked around and concluded, “There’s a bat in the house.” Fourth grader Tammie and eighth grader Niki screamed.

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Sneaky Snackers

Jun28

A ruby-throated hummingbird whizzed past my head so closely I imagined that I felt the light touch of its whirring wings. I watched the small bird land on my sister’s nectar feeder and hungrily plunge its beak into a red flower feeder-cup to drink. I leaned back in my deck chair and eagerly questioned, “Did you see that?”

My sister answered as she handed a glass of wine to me and sat down, “Those small birds are sassy and totally fearless when they know there’s nectar in the feeder.”

I took a sip of wine, enjoying the balmy evening air in the shade of my sister’s house. All around the perimeter of her deck were pots and plantstands filled with a large variety of blossoming plants. Glancing around at the three nearby bird feeders, I commented, “I love how close your feeders are to the deck. That makes it easier to watch the birds.”

Nodding, my sister agreed. “It is nice, but something other than birds have been after the feeders. If I forget to take them in for the night, I find them on the ground in the morning, usually in pieces and licked clean. The shepherd’s hook holding the oriole feeder is bent.”

After watching two aggressive hummingbirds fight over the feeder, I pointed out, “It would be interesting if you could set up a trail camera to see your nocturnal visitors.”

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Haymow Cats

Jun21

Daddy swung a bucket strap over a Holstein cow’s back and leaned down to hook it below. Being a well-seasoned milking cow, the old black and white bovine never flinched. I stood behind her in the barn’s center aisle chattering non-stop as I watched, enjoying the smells, the sounds, and the way the cows acted. My father good-humoredly smiled, nodded, and looked pleased as if he enjoyed a talkative six-year-old’s company while he worked.

Mom called me Daddy’s shadow because I followed him everywhere on the farm. Starting school limited the time I could spend with him, but school supplied more topics to talk about as he worked. This typical summer evening took place in 1957.

Stepping out from between the cow to be milked and its neighbor, Daddy picked up the Surge milk bucket on the limed walkway next to me and hung it on the strap under the cow. Connecting the vacuum tube to a vacuum valve installed on the stanchion, he then leaned over to introduce the inflation cups to the cow’s teats from where they dangled on the lid of the vacuum bucket. He did this slowly, one by one as to not startle the cow. The teats quickly slipped into the cups by suction.

Stepping out from between the cows again, Daddy pulled a washcloth from a bucket of water and stepped between two cows across the aisle and began to wash mud off the next cow’s teats and udder. Just as he was finishing, the milker on the cow across the aisle began to make loud squealing sounds. The cow brought up her hind right leg, as though she didn’t like the tickle caused by the loss of suction. But she didn’t kick as some of the cows would. Moving quickly, Daddy stepped next to her, removed the inflation cups, and checked to see if she was finished milking.

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