Archives

Dust Bunnies

Feb12

I glanced around my neat living room wondering where Tammie’s gray kittens were. I hadn’t seen them for hours. Worried, I called for them. Suddenly, one of the kittens popped her head out from under my sofa. Surprised, I questioned, “How are you doing that? The opening under the sofa is smaller than your head!” The kitten wriggled out and then the second kitten peeped out at me and sneezed.

One thing Tammie had missed and desired all through her four years of college and two years of grad school, was a kitty for a pet. Since she lived in dorms all those years, this was never possible. Dorm pet policies generally say something along the lines of, “If you want a pet, it has to be able to live underwater.”

Shortly before Tammie graduated from grad school, a stray cat living in Niki and Mike’s backyard gave birth to a litter of kittens. The surprise delivery took place on their back deck during cold, inclement spring weather. Niki felt compelled to take the mother and babies into her house. Her young children loved the unexpected fuzzy play mates and immediately named them based on food and random names they heard.

Having secured a job and apartment to live in immediately following graduation, Tammie asked her sister if she could adopt two kittens from the rescued litter. Although her children protested, Niki didn’t want to keep all six kittens.

Tammie picked a pale gray tabby named Carla, and an orange tuxedo kitten named Macaroni and Cheese. They were wonderful companions for Tammie for the next 16 years. Carla was the first to pass away. After grieving for several months, Tammie went to a Humane Society Shelter and picked out a two-year-old gray and white cat. This kitty had a white bib, paws, and star on her nose, which made us think of the song, “Lucy with Diamonds in the Sky”. Although she was very friendly with humans, we were told Lucy didn’t like other cats, but to our surprise and delight, she peacefully coexisted with Mac until he died a year later.

Continue reading →

Sky Rooms

Feb5

My sisters wanted to paint stars on their bedroom ceiling around the time I was leaving behind my infancy. Like all babies I had spent my first two or three years floating about in a nebulous world. The events and activities of my siblings were indistinct and vague to my perception because little of it had to do with my three most basic needs: nourishment, dry diapers and cuddles. Slowly, I began to understand words, and I began to sort out the tangle of my two arms and two legs, making independent locomotion possible. At that point, I became “the shadow”, following the siblings I could keep up to, while firing endless questions at their backsides.

Agnes and Rosie insisted they had to paint the bedroom they shared a rich navy blue. Mom said, “That color is too dark. A home decorator in one of my women’s magazines recommended that bedrooms on the northside of a house, like yours, should be painted bright colors.” The two girls insisted that they needed the room to be the color of a night sky because they were going to stencil silver stars all over the ceiling.

I was told years later that the girls worked day after day for weeks that summer on their bedroom décor. Arranging the various sized stars so they were evenly spaced was time consuming work. Reaching high overhead to neatly paint the stars using a small detail brush was neck-breaking. They also wanted coordinating room accessories such as a wastepaper basket. To supply this, they found a square five-gallon fuel can, had the top cut off, cleaned it, painted it navy, and stenciled silver stars on it as well.

Despite having two windows, the bedroom was dark like a cave after both the ceiling and walls were painted the rich, dark blue. The advice found in Mom’s woman’s magazine had been correct. A bedroom on the north side of the house needs lighter paint. The ceiling stayed as it was, but my sisters soon repainted the walls a bluish white.

Continue reading →

My Daily Bread

Jan29

If I was a cartoon character, the artist drawing me would have pictured my hair standing on end and droplets of perspiration flying around my head as I gasped, “But what will there be left for me to eat, if I give up everything made with wheat, sugar, corn and soybeans?!”

The slim, very pretty nutrition specialist sternly stated in a voice edged in ice, “Kathy, you will have plenty of other things to eat! If you don’t want to try this plan to make your arthritis less bothersome, you can just forget about it and not bother coming back to me for dietary advice.”

Blushing, I mumbled, “I’ll give it a try.” Feeling like I had been sentenced to a prison where food was severely restricted, I went home wondering how long I’d have to give up all the things I liked to eat. As time passed, I slowly came to realize that certain foods would always be verboten.

The most common form of arthritis is osteoarthritis, and it can be debilitating. A Mayo Clinic rheumatologist says that what you eat may help reduce some of the inflammation associated with this joint-destroying illness. There are dozens of websites that list the best and the worst foods for people suffering from osteoarthritis.

I had a hard time at first, giving up certain foods. I felt deprived, dissatisfied, and often meditated on whether I ate to live, or lived to eat. Eventually I reconciled myself to my restrictions, because after all, my restrictions didn’t forbid me to eat, they just directed me to eat different things.

Continue reading →

Bathing A Cat

Jan22

Scrolling through Instagram, I came across a video of cats being bathed in water by their owners. Some of the animals were docile and cooperative. I commented to my daughter Tammie, “Are these cats for real? And why do the cat owners think cats need baths?”

Tammie defended cat bathing, “Hairless Sphinx cats need to be bathed. They have body oils that need to be washed away. They don’t have hair like other cats, which wicks oil off the skin. There are also other cats with hair like Turkish Vans that enjoy being in water.”

 Unconvinced, I pointed out, “Some cats might like baths, but most turn into screeching, shredding, high-speed rockets whenever someone tries to put them into water. Didn’t you and your sister Niki try to bathe one of our cats when you were kids?”

Nodding, my daughter admitted, “Yes. We tried to bathe Berry.”

Remembering our cat Berry makes me smile. My eight- and twelve-year-old daughters and I found him as an older kitten along our country road one late summer afternoon. We named him Berry because he had been hiding under an elderberry bush.

Our ten-year-old tom cat named Flicker made very little fuss when we added this new feline to the household menagerie. After a while, the two cats grew to like each other so much that they often slept curled around each other. Both cats were tuxedo cats, so it was hard to tell where one cat started and the other left off. They resembled one big furry kitty puddle.

Someone once asked me how I could tell Flicker and Berry apart. While they did look alike from a distance, with a closer look it was easy to see that Flicker had black fur on his nose and muzzle, while Berry had white fur in those places.

One day when Berry was still a new member of the family, and we were playing with him in the backyard, he showed us his belly for scratches and pets. He was happy and comfortable, so he stretched and rolled around on the dusty driveway. His crisp looking white fur picked up dust and grass clippings from the lawn. Niki and Tammie decided their new kitty needed a bath. I stated, “Cats don’t need baths.” The girls insisted that the cat would love being washed clean in a bath. I retorted, “We never bathed cats on the farm I grew up on.”

Continue reading →

Frog Monster

Jan8

My daughter Niki snuggled down under the covers in her bed. Her younger sister, Tammie, reluctantly crawled into her bed. I turned on a small nightlight on the dresser, then leaned over to pick up clothing from the floor that had been cast off in favor of night clothes. Tammie sat upright to point out, “You forgot to shut the closet door.”

I thought, “That’s nice. Tammie likes having the room look neat at bedtime.”

Niki dismissed that idea when she sleepily commented, “Tammie wants the frog monster to stay in the closet.”

This was the first I’d heard about a frog monster! I looked closely at my youngest daughter. She didn’t look too worried. I asked, “Where did the monster come from? Tell me about it.”

Tammie shrugged as she outlined what she knew about the frog. “I don’t know where the frog came from. He wears a crown and is six feet tall.”

Sleepiness gone, Niki rolled on her side and added with a giggle, “It carries a large trident like Neptune.”

I was impressed. How many children have closet monsters that are six-feet-tall and carry the three-pronged weapon of a Roman sea god? I inquired, “Are you afraid of this giant frog monster?”

Both of my daughters denied being afraid. Tammie informed me, “The frog doesn’t bother us if the closet door is closed.”

Continue reading →

Improving Myself

Dec31

Activity on the nursing unit had slowed down. Afternoon sunshine peeked into the rooms on the west side of the building. The early in the day hustle-bustle of changing beds and bathing patients, combined with doctor rounds, breakfast and lunch tray delivery and pick-up was over. By two in the afternoon the atmosphere in the halls was mellow as patients either napped or had visitors. Few patients put on their call lights during this time.

The charge nurse looked up from the clipboard in her hands and said, “Kathy, I’m giving you a patient in room 25. Admitting just brought her up.”

I collected supplies to give to the patient, then I wheeled my computer and blood pressure machine into the room. The patient was a well-dressed older woman who was scheduled to have surgery the following morning. Having conversations with total strangers has never been hard for me to do, so we got along very well. Just as I was preparing to leave the room, she asked me, “How long have you been a Certified Nursing Assistant?”

When I tell people the answer to this question, they are usually surprised. I started when I was eighteen. I smiled and confessed, “At the end of September, I will have worked at this hospital for 45 years.”

The newly admitted patient looked shocked. She blurted, “Didn’t you ever want to improve yourself, to become a nurse?”

Her question seemed strange. How was I supposed to respond to questions like that? She most likely considered being a Certified Nursing Assistant to be a low value, unimportant job. I decided to treat the situation with humor, so I chuckled, “Improve myself? Why would I want to do that? I’m so nice the way I am!”

Continue reading →

Amazing Grace

Dec24

After the nurse stepped out of the room, I stared at the ceiling over my bed. My ears were on high alert for the sounds of nurses passing my room in the hallway and their murmured conversations. Nightime darkness shrouded the curtained window, but the pale hallway light sent mysterious, elongated shadows deep into the room. It was one o’clock in the morning and I was exhausted from having just given birth, but sleep was the last thing on my mind.   

Having given birth, I was now a mother to a tiny, helpless infant. When I thought about motherhood, what came to mind was my mom and Mary, mother of Jesus. I wasn’t even in Mom’s league, let alone Mary’s. Giving birth had elevated me into a sphere that was too lofty for a nineteen-year-old who’d never even had the experience of babysitting to attain. Mom and Mary knew so much, while I knew nothing, and yet here I was, a mother, just like them.           

My motherhood hadn’t been a surprise. I’d known a baby was on the way for nearly the entire nine months of my pregnancy. Delving deep into my amazement, I realized the shock I felt was the sudden intense feeling of responsibility for the new soul my husband and I had brought into the world. Up until now the only person I ever had to take care of was myself. Maintaining a house, a marriage and my employment in the very hospital unit where I was now a patient, didn’t seem like anything more than taking care of myself. But now I had a helpless person to look after for the next eighteen years! The immensity of this reality had never dawned on me until now.

Continue reading →

Last Laugh

Dec18

Arnie always told me I was pretty.

We were the same age when he died in 2007. Now I am 18 years older than him.

Will he still think I am pretty when we meet in the here-after?

The digital clock on the stove showed four, but the dimming daylight made it feel like it was eight. My husband called home a while ago and said he would be home soon. We were having roast beef for supper. I opened the oven door to check on its progress, and a blast of heat made me turn my face away. The metal necklace around my throat began to feel hot against my skin. The beef roast looked brown, juicy and tender.

Tossing potholders on the counter, I turned toward the kitchen windows in time to see Arnie driving his work truck and trailer into our driveway. All the lights and reflectors on his rig looked impressive in the late afternoon’s growing darkness. Remembering that today my husband had had fresh lettering applied on his truck and trailer, I slipped into a pair of shoes and pulled on a coat as I hurried out the back door of the house to see it.

Arnie pulled to a stop under the yard light, which automatically turned on just as I walked across the yard. Stepping out of the truck cab, he proudly questioned, “How does it look?”

Both sides of his truck and trailer displayed the words, ‘Arnie’s Farm Care’. His cell and home phone numbers were listed under his business’ name. “Beautiful!” I exclaimed. “The letters are large and easy to see. The garage did a good job!”

Continue reading →

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?”

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →