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Naughty Fingers

May24

New technologies challenge me. Until 2016 I was afraid I wouldn’t know how to use a smart phone. When I finally took the plunge, my daughter Niki set it up and trained me. Very carefully, she explained and demonstrated how to open the apps I wanted. She showed me how to use the calculator, flashlight, and camera. There was so much more to learn, like how to get back to the homepage, and how to recognize the sound the cell phone made when a text came in. My daughter also helped me pick out a notification sound for phone calls.

As my daughter was preparing to go home, I noticed the cell phone’s screen was black. Hoping to wake it up, I shook it. Niki took it out of my hands, again. After swiping up, a keypad appeared. She punched in the numbers we agreed would be my secret code. Suddenly, my phone was awake and interactive again. I nodded, happy that I knew what to do when I needed to use the device.

An hour later I decided to sit down and play with my new toy. I swiped up on the black screen and the keypad appeared. I typed in my secret code and waited, but nothing happened. The numbers just sat there like small numeral guards protecting Fort Knox. I fretted, “Why won’t it open for me? Did I somehow break the phone?”

Driving to my daughter’s house, I tearfully explained, “Niki, I think I broke it.” She took the cell phone from my hands and tapped in my code. It instantly opened for her. I stuttered, “But, but, if there isn’t anything wrong with the phone, why couldn’t I get it to open?”

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The Rowboat

May17

I stepped out onto the back deck and realized I didn’t need a jacket. The sunny spring afternoon was warm despite there being a few drifts of leftover winter snow dotting the yard. Folding my jacket over my arm, I commented to my daughter, Tammie, “I’m bringing the coat with me. When the sun goes down, it’ll get chilly.”

Tammie, who was a few steps ahead of me, turned and asked, “Which car should we take? Yours or mine?”

I apologized, “I’m sorry, I should have filled my car’s gas tank when I was in town the other day. As it is right now, my car doesn’t have enough gas to get to Wausau and back. Let’s use your car tonight and mine for the rest of the weekend.”

Niki, my other daughter, had invited Tammie and me to join her at a cooking class put on by Grebe’s store in Wausau. We happily looked forward to attending without a stop for gas first. Without another thought, we got into Tammie’s 2016 Mazda.

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Dark Anniversaries

Mar29

The sound of the ringing phone dragged me out of a deep sleep. Before I knew what I was doing, I was on my feet and stumbling in the dark mobile home hallway toward the living room to answer the phone. I felt heavy with a strange nagging dread. Arnie, my young husband was two steps behind me.

Two months earlier, I had given birth to a baby girl named Christy, who had a rare birth defect. We brought her home twice but were forced to return her to the hospital within days. Having no childcare experience and feeling terrified by her special needs, I felt like a failure as a mother. Yesterday evening Arnie and I had visited our little girl at the hospital. Reaching through the bars of her crib, I gently patted her back. I didn’t know what else to do.

The voice on the other end of the line was Christy’s pediatrician. He said, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your daughter has just passed away.” Handing the phone to Arnie, I sank onto the sofa and cried. Christy’s death was our first experience with losing someone dear to us. My husband and I had celebrated out 20th birthdays a few months earlier.

The call from Christy’s doctor at 2 a.m. on April 2nd, 1971, introduced me to days that I have come to call dark anniversaries. Unlike a birthday where you celebrate the person’s birth, the death date is a day you remember them and miss what might have been. Dark anniversaries are seared into your memory forever.

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Big Girls

Feb1

My two-year old daughter reached with both hands for the baby bottle. Sitting down on her bed, I opened the book to begin reading her night-time story. Instead of reading, I lowered the book and said, “Niki, you’re such a grown-up girl! You don’t need diapers anymore and now you’ve even started to sleep in a big girl bed!”

                I wanted my baby girl’s babyhood to last longer, but after a week of internal debate,  finally had to reluctantly admit that Niki was too old to be still having a bottle at bedtime. One reason I was reluctant to take her bottle away, was because she didn’t use a pacifier nor had a special blanket. Would bedtime be too hard and comfortless without the soothing bottle?

                Niki basked in my compliments. She bit the bottle’s nipple and smiled. She knew she was a big girl and was happy that I recognized that.

                Before reading the bedtime story, I leaned forward and shared in a low, confidential tone, “Did you know that big girls don’t use bottles?” My daughter nodded, but I wasn’t sure she understood.

                For the next three days, I told Niki from time to time that big girls don’t use bottles. On the morning of the fourth day, I took a large, brown paper grocery store bag and used a black magic marker to write on one side, “Hide this in the garage.”

                That afternoon as I prepared the evening meal, I opened the bag I’d prepared and told Niki that she was a big girl who didn’t need baby bottles anymore. All of her bottles were on the counter and I had Niki stand on a chair to help me throw them into the brown paper bag. Rolling the top of the bag closed and taping it shut with masking tape, I said, “Come and help me throw these bottles away.”

                I opened the back porch door and stood facing Niki. I instructed, “Help me throw the bottles away.” Together, we swung the bag back and forth and at the count of three, let it sail out the door to land on the back lawn.

                When Arnie arrived home for supper, he found the bag and hid it in the garage.

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Craving Christmas

Dec14

Mom put down the spoon she was using to stir soup, and turned away from the stove. She instructed me and my sisters, “Tonight’s the eve of Saint Nicolas. After supper I want you to write your letters to Santa Claus.”

My sister Mary volunteered, “Kathy’s in first grade. She doesn’t know how to write yet, so I’ll write her letter for her.”

Although I was still too young to write my own letter to Santa Claus, I knew December 6th was the official start to the annual Christmas count-down. At bedtime we would put our letters to Santa in bowls at the place we always sat at the table. In the morning, the letters would be gone and we’d find the bowls filled with peanuts, angel food candy, bridge mix, candy canes and an orange.

For me, time dragged by too slowly between Saint Nicolas Eve and Christmas. I fretted and fussed. I wanted the tree up. I wanted to constantly hear Christmas songs. I wanted fun, Christmassy things to do. Most of all, I wanted to open a big pile of presents. The craving for all things Christmas was intense.

When I grew up in the 1950’s, Christmas was hardly mentioned before the first week of December. Luckily, my emotional agony didn’t start as early as Halloween as must be the case for children now, since stores promote Christmas sales two months in advance.

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Thanksgiving Beast

Nov23

Thankful for yet another wonderful widow’s supper, I leaned back to enjoy my cup of tea. These weekly gatherings for an evening meal had started for me and my daughter after both my husband and son-in-law had died. When my sister’s husband died, she began to join us each week, too. Our being together for this meal as a family is a blessing and a joy.

As my daughter Niki’s four youngest children reached for the novelty ice cream treats my sister had provided, I turned to my daughter and suggested, “How about I buy the roast beast for this year’s Thanksgiving Supper?

Putting the last of the kale salad on her plate, Niki acknowledged my plan to buy the turkey. “That sounds great!”

I questioned, “And what dish would you like me bring, a seven-layer salad, a potato casserole or one of the desserts?”

Niki speared the last, crisp green leaf on her plate with a fork and exclaimed, “I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.”

A week later at the grocery store, I stood examining the frozen turkeys for sale. I wanted a big bird. Someone had once told me the bones of a huge turkey weren’t that much bigger than the bones of a medium turkey. I figured that meant buying a dinosaur-sized turkey was an economically wise move. With fingers quickly going numb from the cold, I strained to lift my choice from the freezer. It landed in my shopping cart with a loud, “clunk!”

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Twosday

Mar23

Looking at my daughter’s chart, the Nurse Practitioner instructed, “Bring Tammie back to see me in two weeks.”

To access Tammie’s electronic records, the clinic appointment scheduler requested her birth date. Tammie, who was in fifth grade, leaned against me and answered like a small adult, “It’s two, twenty-two, eighty-two.”

Later in the car, I suggested, “Would you like stopping for a treat before I take you back to school?” Tammie’s answer was of course, an enthusiastic yes.

Taco John’s advertisement for Taco Tuesday blared from the car radio. I complained, “Ugh, the words ‘Taco Tuesday’ turns into an ear worm whenever I hear this! It plays over and over in my head.”

Tammie asked, “Could we go to Taco John’s for my treat?” The fast food restaurant happened to be along our route back to school, so I happily pulled into that parking lot. Instead of a savory taco, my daughter ordered a desert taco, which looked and tasted a lot like a chocolate-covered waffle cone filled with ice cream. While eating it she commented on how she liked all the two’s in her birthdate.

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Baby Trainer

Mar9

The dreams began near the end of my pregnancy. Each night there was a baby, not necessarily my baby, but someone’s baby assigned to me. Each night I’d forget all about the infant. Each night in my dreams there were fires, floods and other natural disasters threaten our wellbeing. However, I never once remembered to pick up the baby when I ran out of the slumberland house to save myself. 

One night I took the baby given to me and laid it in a crib in the upstairs bedroom of my childhood’s farmhouse. I immediately forgot all about the little one. A few days passed before dreamland me suddenly remembered. Filled with great apprehension, I raced to the crib and peeked in. Somehow, inexplicably, the neglected baby had multiplied to become three or four smaller babies.

I didn’t need to visit a psychiatrist to figure out why I was having these dreams. Eight years earlier, when I was twenty years old, my husband Arnie and I had had a baby daughter. Christy was born with a rare birth defect and was very sick. To make the situation scarier, I had never taken care of a baby before, not even babysat for one. The idea of taking Christy home scared me. I loved her, but didn’t want to take care of her.

I took my daughter home two different times, but she had to readmit to the hospital after only a day or two because of her ill health. The experience made me fearful of childcare. I was ashamed of how I wanted a healthy baby, not the sick one I’d given birth to. Christy died at two months of age on April 2nd, 1971. My guilty feelings began to grow. I felt like a bad mother.

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Little Christmas

Jan5

A lighted garland crowned the archway between the kitchen and living room where a festive balsam tree glittered and twinkled. My husband Arnie and son-in-law Mike sat on the couch next to the tree watching a football game on television. My daughter Niki and I sat at the table in the kitchen. Arnie held six-month-old Jon in his arms while Anne, my two-year-old granddaughter, ran between the two rooms playing with her toys.

A tea kettle on the stove began to whistle. Niki jumped to her feet. Placing a steaming mug of hot water and a tea bag in front of me, she sat down with a cup of her own and commented, “I love the holiday traditions I grew up with, but I would like to have some new traditions that I are my own.”

Taking a bite of Christmas cookie and a very small sip of the hot tea, I questioned, “What sort of new traditions are you thinking of?”

Pushing a library book towards me, Niki launched into a list of ideas, concluding with, “This book had so many good ideas that it was hard to pick which one I wanted to start for my family. The top one on my list is to celebrate the 12 days of Christmas.”

Cupping my hands around the delightfully warm mug I asked, “How do you plan to do that?”

My daughter had obviously formed a game plan. She detailed, “I want to buy 12 very small gifts for each of the children. Then, every night between Christmas Eve and the Epiphany, they will have a package to open.”

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Time Rushing Past

Dec29

“Hello. Kathy, Niki and Tammie are here to visit!” I called out as I opened the farmhouse door and walked into my childhood home, My two daughters rushed ahead of me. As I stepped from the entryway into the kitchen, I heard the back door open again. Glancing over my shoulder I saw my brother Billy entering the house. Seeing my car enter the yard, he had stopped doing chores to come inside for a visit.

Hearing us, my mother ordered, “Come on in!” I pulled off my coat and hung it up on the stairway newel post. Noticing my daughters had tossed their coats on the steps, I stopped long enough to drape them over my coat on the post. Grammie was comfortably settled in her upholstered rocking chair in the living room. Niki and Tammie were on the floor leaning against her knees. The Christmas tree stood in the corner of the room, glittering and sparkling. From the other room I heard Silver Bells playing on the kitchen radio that always played from morning to night.

Billy sat on the sofa. My brother Casper strolled out of his bedroom a moment later and sat down on the other end of the sofa. I sat down on a dining room chair near the tree. My eight and twelve-year-old daughters were gobbling Christmas candy from the bowl on the table.

Glancing over at the candy dish, Mom pointed out that it needed to be refilled. I jumped to my feet. I knew where the candy was kept. Carrying the green glass bowl into Casper’s bedroom, I opened his closet door and knelt down. Just as in my childhood, a box on the floor contained various brown paper sacks filled with a variety of candies. Scooping handfuls of angel food, bridge mix, chocolate covered caramels, butter finger bites and peanut brittle into the dish, I remembered all the times I had raided the Christmas candy stash as a teenager.

Back in the living room, Billy commented on how the shadows on cold winter days were blue-colored. I stood by the large living room window and studied the clear sky and the lengthening late afternoon shadows. He was right. The shadows cast by small pine trees near the house did look very blue against the snow. On the distant radio I heard Bing Crosby singing, ‘Adeste Fideles’.

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