Custard’s Last Stand

Jul10

I rode through the countryside on the school bus for an hour, mesmerized by the other students who got off the and walked to their houses. At eleven years of age, this was my first experience riding a bus. I lived only three miles from school and this morning I was the last person picked up. That bus ride lasted ten minutes. This afternoon was a different story. Following the morning route, It appeared that I would be the last to get off.

Finally, it was my turn. The bus driver pulled to a stop and opened the door. I plodded down the steps into the fall sunshine. Tree leaves were just beginning to change. Crickets and other bugs were singing a September chorus in stands of tall grass. Summer wasn’t finished with the countryside, but my sixth-grade school year had started anyway.

Stepping into my family’s farmhouse, I gasped in surprise. My brother-in-law was crouched on the living room floor behind a television. We didn’t own a television! My neighborhood cousin’s family did, but I didn’t think my family ever would. As I watched, Bozo the clown flipped across the screen. Jim turned knobs to adjust the picture. After alternately buzzing and more rolling, the image finally settled down and stayed in place. Continue reading →

Sunday Afternoon Oasis

Jul3

I rushed around the kitchen preparing supper. My nerves were strung as tight as guitar strings. I didn’t know when it would begin, but wanted most of the supper prep done before then. Tammie, my two-month-old daughter began wailing before I had the potatoes pealed. Glancing at the wall clock I thought, “She’s starting early tonight.”

The pediatrician told me Tammie suffered from colic. He said eventually she would stop her incessant evening-into-the-night cries; cries that sounded as if she had great pain; cries that nearly drove my husband and me out of our minds.

Tammie had been born missing her fore arms and with a bleeding disorder. I was well past feeling upset about her missing bones. My fear at this point was that all her straining while crying for hours every day would cause an internal bleed. When I examined her in the mornings while she was calm, I noticed that her skin had freckles of broken capillaries from her waist on up. The roof of her mouth was bruised from suckling. Nothing was easy with this baby.

Dumping the unpeeled potatoes into a kettle with some water, I put it on the stove over a medium flame and went to scoop my infant out of the bassinet. I knew from experience cuddling, bouncing, back pats, diaper changes, sips of food or water wouldn’t calm her. Placing Tammie on her stomach on my shoulder, I trudged from one end of the house to the other. Walking reduced her crying a little, but she continued wriggling as though uncomfortable. Continue reading →

Wooden Heart

Jun26

Clouds sailed majestically across the sky like big white sea-going ships. Each cast large moving shadows on the roads and farmland below. I stood with my bike in the farmyard driveway watching the clouds and shadows, marveling at how slow the clouds seemed to move, while their shadows traveled more swiftly on earth.

Daddy’s first crop of hay was in the barn already and his corn was about ankle high. Summer vacation had started long enough ago that I’d forgotten school routine, but recently enough that I felt as if my free time still stretched long and deliciously ahead.

Hopping onto my bike, I peddled uphill towards my cousin’s farm. I found the three girls closest to my age under the shade trees in their front yard. Getting off my bike, I stretched out on the cool grass and asked, “Would you like to go for a bike ride with me?”

Barb considered the idea before suggesting, “It’s hot today. We shouldn’t go far and get overheated.”

Nodding her head, Alice insisted, “And I don’t want to take the road where we go down the steep hill. Peddling back up is murder!”

Getting onto her bike, Donna informed us, “I don’t want to take the road toward the highway, because it’s bumpy.” Continue reading →

Literary Produce

Jun19

The doorway into my imaginary home was the branch I used to pull myself up into the crabapple tree. The branch next to it was my kitchen and the branch beyond it, the living room. On the backside of the tree was the bedroom branch.

At the age of five, cheered on by my siblings, this was the first tree I had learned how to climb. For the rest of my childhood, despite climbing many other trees, the crabapple stayed my favorite. I spent hours in it, thinking, imagining, making up stories and eating frozen chocolate chip cookies I’d filched from the new chest freezer in our farmhouse basement. Each year, when my tree’s small apples had rosy cheeks, I’d sit on the kitchen branch munching on these close-to-hand snacks.

Like the garden of Eden, the farmyard I grew up in was filled with many beautiful flowers with names I learned as well as the names of my siblings. Flowerbeds bordered the front and back of the farmhouse where there was a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Lawn chairs and a lawn-swing provided wonderful places to sit. Continue reading →

The Crossing

Jun12

My brother announced after dinner that he was going to walk to the woods on our farm’s back forty. I excitedly begged, “Take me with you! Please? I promise to keep up.” Being nine-years-old, I no longer needed to be carried home as I did when I was five.

Moments later, equipped with apples to munch on, we left the muddy cow yard and turned down the cow lane. Wide enough for a tractor and farm wagon, this long narrow fenced area served as an alley for cows who wanted to go from the barn on our front forty acres to the woodlot on the back forty. A lush corn-field bordered the fence on one side and an oat field on the other.

I stopped to admire the yellow flowers of a tall, fuzzy-leafed mullein gently swaying in the breeze next to one of the fence posts. A red-winged black-bird swooped low overhead, scolding excitedly. My brother explained, “He has a nest nearby and doesn’t like how close we are. Let’s move on!”

I ducked and ran, swatting the air overhead in case the crazed bird tried to peck me. By the time we were several yards away, the bird had calmed down.

When we crested the hill, we saw the small creek with our field and woods lying beyond. I wasn’t as interested in visiting the woods as I was in visiting the creek’s two crossing spots. As I walked, I stared at the stream of water. My brother snapped, “Watch your step! You almost stepped into a cow pie!” Continue reading →

Life Dancers

Jun5

I spun from the refrigerator to the sink. Dumping a bundle of carrots on the counter, I twirled toward the stove where a kettle lid was jiggling noisily. My fifth grade daughter Tammie, sat reading a book in the corner of the kitchen. Ninth grader Niki, leaned on the counter next to the sink eating an apple.

Earlier, when I picked them up after school, I had asked, “How was your day? Tell me about it.” They’d each given me the typical non-verbal shrug.

I knew from experience that I’d opened a channel of communication. If I was patient and listened, by the end of the evening their experiences of the day would slowly unwind for us to share.

Tossing her apple core into the wastepaper basket, Niki proudly announced, “My gym teacher asked me today if I was a dancer.”

Looking up from my gravy-making, I inquired, “What gave her the idea that you danced?”

Niki answered with a chuckle, “She had the class doing stretches. I was able to do them easily. She told me people who dance are usually more flexible than those who don’t.” Drawing herself up as tall as she could, she proudly proclaimed in an exaggerated drawl, “I am flex-i-ble!”

Laughing, I instructed, “Ok, flexible girl…show me those stretches!” While I finished supper preparations, both Niki and Tammie were on the kitchen floor doing splits. Continue reading →

Planting or Burying – Sowing and Reaping

May29

Warm, golden sunshine steadily bathed the lawn. Its brilliance made the lush blades of grass look as if their beautiful shade of green glowed. The slightly humid air felt like velvet against my skin as a gentle breeze softly caressed my cheeks. I stopped planting seeds in the garden for a minute and looked around.

A plump, orange-bellied robin landed a few feet away from the edge of the garden. Opening his beak, he tilted back his head and sang a breath-taking beautiful song that proclaimed his joy; for being alive, for the warm sunshine, for the bountiful earth.

Immediately getting down to business after his song, the bird thrust his beak into the earth near his feet. Coming up with a worm clenched in his jaws, he tugged. The robin pulled mightily until the entire worm was free of the soil. Then, in a flash of powerful wing flaps, he was gone.

I looked down at the seeds in my hand. Would they grow once I put them in the ground? There was nothing to tell me that life existed inside their hard, dry exteriors. In the silence while I contemplated the mystery of seeds, another robin on the other side of the yard caroled its anthem of praise.

The song triggered a memory of a funeral that took place on an early summer day as warm and as beautiful as this one. Loved ones crowded around an open grave with the casket suspended above. When the minister finished his prayers, the silence that followed was profoundly poignant. Suddenly, the clear, beautiful voice of a robin filled the air with a song that made tears well up in my eyes. It made me think of love, hope, and the mystery of what comes after this life. Continue reading →

Wild Storm

May22

The jangling of an alarm woke me. Instead of a light-infused spring dawn peeping through the bedroom windows, a dark, foreboding quiet surrounded our mobile home.  I had the day off from work, but Arnie, my new husband needed to get up. I shook him and gently pushed him out of bed.

Being the good little new wife, I got up with Arnie and made him a scrambled egg breakfast. It didn’t matter if he appreciated my efforts or not, I was filled with self-satisfaction. The minute he stepped out of the house, I trotted back to bed.

Far away thunder rumbled. Rain pelted our metal mobile home roof. I stretched, yawned and snuggled under the covers with a smile. I loved to lay in bed listening to thunder storms. An occasional flash of lightning and closer rumbles of thunder entertained me for the rest of the morning. Continue reading →

Two-Room Apartment

May15

Dark clouds overhead made the afternoon look and feel like dusk. The air in the backyard was hot and sultry. A flash of lightning illuminated Mom’s lush flowerbeds and shrubs. It was as blinding as the flash of her Brownie camera, but terrifying. An ominous deep rumble rolled from one end of the sky to another.

I wanted to be with my brother Billy in Grandpa’s two-room apartment. The storm was getting worse. If I didn’t go now, I wouldn’t be able to get there!

A fifty-foot-long path paved with flat stones was between the backdoor of our farmhouse where I stood, and the garage apartment. Afraid, I took off running as fast as I could. Another rumble, louder this time, inspired me to pick up speed beyond what my seven-year-old legs had ever done before. Continue reading →

Rosie Spearmint

May8

Standing in front of the dressing table facing my sisters on the bed, I twirled a button threaded onto an arm’s length of yarn. My sister Mary giggled, “Tell us about yourself, Rosie Spearmint.”

Like an actor on a stage, I maintained a serious expression as I informed her, “I’m a little girl and my Daddy used to own a grocery store.”

Betty elbowed Mary and hissed, “Ask Rosie why her Daddy doesn’t have the grocery store anymore!” Betty had been with me when we dreamed up this game, so she knew the answer.

Mary frowned and questioned, “Hmmm. Did you say your Daddy used to have a grocery store? Why doesn’t he have it anymore?”

I sighed theatrically and answered, “I ate him out of business. He bought cookies and cakes, bacon and cheese to sell, but I have such a big appetite, I ate it all up before he could sell any of it.”

Laughing, my sisters flopped onto their backs and hooted.

My make-believe game had me claiming to be someone other than Kathy.  As the youngest member of our family, I loved making my siblings laugh and this schtick was doing the trick! Continue reading →