Precious Essence

Jun11

I wrote a history book twenty-five years ago. It told when, how, and who made Saint John the Baptist Church in Marshfield become the first Catholic parish in our newly formed Central Wisconsin city 125 years before. To accomplish this, I borrowed a friend’s Publisher program. Being relatively new to computers, and totally without instructions on how to use the program, I went to work making a desk-top book.

Saint John the Baptist Church will celebrate 150 years as a parish in 2027. Father Thelen, our current pastor recently asked me if I was interested in updating my history book for that event. I instantly felt panic. I’d changed computers at least three times since 2002. Would I still have a copy of the book?

The word serendipity came to mind when I looked in my file cabinet and saw a CD labeled; my documents 2004. A friend visited me one evening, two years after I wrote the history book. She told me I should occasionally make a copy of what I had on my computer, so if it ever crashed, I would have my work saved. Computer CDs were new to me, but Val had one with her and proceeded to make a copy of my writing program. It was the only time I have ever made a copy of my computer’s contents.

My lack of computer experience and total lack of knowledge of the Publisher program turned making the book into a major struggle. One unsurmountable technical difficulty I had 25 years ago, was how to put pictures into the book. Unable to solve this problem, I ended up taking my digital book stored on a floppy disk, to the printer and proceeded to physically lay the pictures out where I wanted them. Surprisingly, the printer let me do this, and even more surprisingly, the book turned out. I returned all those photos and original documents to the church rectory and parishioners.

Continue reading →

Strawberry Robbers

Jun4

After checking the carrots and potatoes in stovetop kettles, I loudly announced, “Everything is ready. Let’s pray, so we can sit down to eat.”

My four youngest grandchildren, Luke, Jacob, Gemma and Blaise, wandered into the kitchen where my daughter Niki, sisters Rosie and Agnes, and I stood. Looking around, Jacob questioned, “What are we having?”

I’d made a fresh loaf of bread. Rosie brought a bowl of fruit salad, and Agnes brought a jar of pickled okra, and cheese curds to go with supper. Niki made roasted chicken thighs. She instructed, “The plates and silverware are on the counter next to the stove. Mom’s bread is on the counter next to the refrigerator. When you have what you want, find a place to sit at the table. The rest is on the table.”

This was our weekly Tuesday night family meal, where each week we enjoy good food and conversation. When the meal was over, my company started to think about going home to relax for the night. Agnes and Rosie hugged each other, then they hugged me and Niki, then the children hugged my sisters and me.

I stepped out the back door of my house, pleasantly surprised at how velvety warm the evening spring air felt. A chorus of spring peepers from by the nearby river were peeping loudly and a flock of birds in a grove of trees sounded like they were squabbling over which branches to roost on for the night. Stepping out of the house to join me on the deck, my sister Rosie chirped, “It’s been lovely! I’ll see you all next week.” I watched everyone get into their cars and drive away.

From a tree next to the house, a robin warbled a song of praise and thanksgiving. From the top of the yard light pole, another robin joyfully answered. The sound was delightfully pure.

Continue reading →

Spring’s First Flower

May28

Melting snow exposed muddy ruts next to the cow yard. Tall tufts of brown grass lined the yard. Last summer’s smooth, green lawn now looked dreary, brown, and treacherously uneven. A wet cardboard box, softened and broken down, littered the yard as a strong westerly wind pushed and pulled it about between outbuildings. The farmhouse and barn appear bleak under the overcast sky. They looked naked without summertime foliage to conceal weather-weary paint, and lack of structural beauty. The winter-ravaged farmyard had never looked worse.

With nothing better to do, I rode my bike around and around the farmyard’s circle driveway. When I realized I could also ride around the old house which sat next to the driveway, I enjoyed changing up my route by doing figure eights. I felt warm despite the chilly wind.

Billy, my big brother, stood in the doorway of the milkhouse when he and Daddy finished doing the morning barn chores. I rode over to him and stopped. He said, “Listen to all the birds that have come back for the summer. Do you recognize robin song and red-wing-black bird calls?”

I responded, “Of course I do. I’m not a baby.”

My brother asked, “Have you noticed how big the buds have gotten on the cottonwood trees? It won’t be long before they leaf out.”

I hadn’t noticed that. With consternation, I exclaimed, “Those branches look dead! Everywhere I look, the tree branches are bare. I hate this time of spring. Nothing is growing yet.”

Smiling, my twenty-year-old brother said, “That’s not true. Let me show you something.” Leaning my bike against the milkhouse, I followed my brother to the sunny side of our barn. He stopped and pointed at a small tuft of green growing against the stone foundation.

It was a dandelion. A few steps beyond that was another one, and that one had a bright yellow blossom, too. Seeing it made my gloomy opinion of early spring disappear. Protected by the building, warmed by the sun and the heated stones, these brave plants grew and produced spring’s first flower. Billy picked a dandelion blossom, and we went into the house where he presented the wildflower to Mom.

Continue reading →

Feeling Connected

May21

In my dream, it was time to go home from work. I had enjoyed working my hospital shift but suddenly realized that I had never cared for one of my assigned patients. Patient vitals needed to be taken and then charted; hours of overtime started to accumulate. I heard someone talking and wished they’d be quiet so I could finish my work. Coming to consciousness, I realized the talking was coming from my bedside alarm clock set to radio.

I have always detested the sound of a buzzing alarm clock. Since retiring, I have my alarm clock radio programed to automatically turn on at seven thirty in the morning. Despite this being a full two hours after the time I had to get up for work, I seldom get up right away. The privilege of retirement means I can enjoy laying quietly, relaxing and listening to the radio for another half an hour or more.

The big news that morning, the eighth day of May, was that the conclave in Rome had finished its first full day. According to the news reporters, there wasn’t a single Cardinal candidate that stood out as the most likely one to be chosen. I slipped out of bed thinking, “The conclave will last at least two more days. It’ll be hard for the Cardinals to get a majority vote.”

There were several goals I wanted to accomplish that day. First, I sat down at the dining room table to drink a cup of tea, and jot down a to-do list. A message from my daughter Tammie popped up on my phone. It said, “There is white smoke! We have a new Pope.”

Continue reading →

The 266th Pope

May14

After the death of Pope Francis, I watched news reports on television regarding his funeral, mourning period, and conclave. When the reporters were shown at Vatican City in Rome, they were often standing in a crowded Saint Peter’s Square, describing the mood of the crowd. Seeing the familiar landmarks behind the reporters was like recognizing someone I loved but hadn’t seen for a long time. With a shiver of equal parts of joy and disbelief, I remembered how my daughter and I met and shook hands with Pope Francis at the top of the Basilica steps during a trip we took to Rome in September of 2023.

A deep and abiding respect for the Pope had been instilled in me by my Catholic parents. The Pope is more than just the head of the two-thousand-year-old Universal Church. He is responsible for making sure all the doctrines set by Jesus and entrusted to Peter, the first Pope, never change.

 The hot September day Tammie and I met Pope Francis, started with us rushing to Saint Peter’s Square in the early morning hours. When we arrived, there was already a huge line of people that stretched for blocks. Tammie wondered out loud whether the line was for tickets or to get in. Either way, the length of the line filled us with dread since neither of us could bear standing for very long.

We approached a guard stationed by a metal crowd control barrier to ask where to go. He simply moved to one side and motioned us through. We joined a much shorter line to pass through x-ray machines under the colonnade. Once inside Saint Peter’s Square we met colorfully dressed Swiss Guards. Each one we approached, motioned us forward. We got closer and closer to the stairs leading up to the entrance of the Basilica. I said to my daughter, “This can’t be right.” I felt like we were mistakenly being given seats of honor. We ended up sitting on banquet chairs lined up in rows alongside the canopied dais where the Pope would appear. As I looked around at the people sitting around us, I began to understand how we got to be there. This part of the audience consisted entirely of religious and handicapped people. Behind us was a section filled with young men and women dressed in their wedding dresses and tuxedos.

After Pope Francis’ address was repeated in seven different languages, he began to shake hands with the people surrounding the dais. I was in total disbelief! I would get to shake the 266th Pope’s hand! I found his voice to be soft and pleasing to hear and his eyes filled with so much love! After shaking hands with my beaming daughter, Tammie, the Pope affectionately reached up and patted her right cheek.

Continue reading →

Daughter Like Mother

May7

I cleared clutter off the dining room table and put away a coat that had been draped over a dining room chair. Returning to the kitchen, I placed a bowl in the dishwasher, closed it and turned it on. The sound of a vehicle pulling into the yard made my cats run to hide. A swirl of cool spring air accompanied my younger grandchildren as they trooped into the house. Luke sniffed appreciatively as he commented, “I can tell you have a loaf of bread in the oven. It smells great!”

Hugging Luke, Jacob, Gemma and Blaise, I announced, “You can eat some of the fresh bread as soon as it cools off a little.” My daughter Niki followed the children into the kitchen, carrying a large pan. Smiling, I instructed, “My bread is finished baking, so I’ll take it out. Then you can put the pork and sauerkraut in the oven. I’ll turn the temperature down, so it doesn’t dry out.”

Niki turned and spotted a loaf of sweet bread on the kitchen counter and asked, “What’s this?”

I explained with a shrug, “I saw a recipe for rice bread on Instagram the other day and I had to try it. I put dried fruit in it.” Seeing the questioning look on my daughter’s face, I added, “It’s ok, but I’ve thought of a few tweaks I could give the recipe to make it better. I’m going make it again.”

When Niki left for her appointment, I gathered art supplies and sat down at the dining room table with my grandchildren. I explained, “I saw an interesting craft on Instagram the other day and I want to do it with you.” For the next hour we made spring blossoms using white, absorbent paper and Q-tips. After putting spots of marker color on the petals, we put the stems into water and watched as dampness spread and made the color bleed beautifully out to the ends of the petals. The craft was fun, and we enjoyed the rainbow streaks of color.

Continue reading →

Baby Khruschev

Apr30

When it began to rain, I wandered into the living room. Unable to work in her flowerbeds, Mom was already there, comfortably cuddled in her rocking chair with a lap robe over her knees, reading a woman’s magazine. Stretching out on the linoleum floor next to Mom, I listened to the rain softly pattering on the cedar tree and lilies growing alongside our house. After a muggy morning, the gentle breeze coming through the window screen, scented so beautifully by green plants and the earth, felt like a bit of heaven.

I spotted the shoe box Mom used to store family pictures on the floor next to Daddy’s favorite chair. Remembering his smiles and head shakes as he went through them last evening, I decided to spend my rainy-day afternoon looking at pictures. There were many of them but not in order. Old pictures and new ones were all jumbled together, so I began to sort them. Being twelve years old and having looked at the pictures often through the years, I knew almost everybody in the pictures, even those taken of my older siblings, before I was born, when they were very young.

Mom had somehow pulled together enough money during the war years to buy a black square, box-camera called a Kodak Brownie. She’d made good use of it. Everyone in the family recognized that having a camera was a luxury. Although the pictures were never put in a photo album, they were often looked at and enjoyed.

Being the baby of my family, an inordinate number of pictures were taken of me. I made a pile of my favorite ones: the one with me on my belly to watch close-up how our cat ate; three-year-old me wearing a polk-a-dot dress and chasing a small flock of guinea hens past the old house; me being held up by my brother Casper, high among the branches of a heavily blooming apple tree. Some pictures showed me looking like a cute toddler, but pictures of me as a tiny baby were much different. One of my infant pictures had caught me on the back lawn, crying with my mouth wide open and my eyes closed. As a baby I was fat and very bald. I stared at my image in disbelief. It was like I saw this picture for the first time. My preteen sensibilities were jarred. What a very ugly baby I had been!  

Continue reading →

Weird Sense of Humor

Apr23

I felt totally comfortable with my husband and often shared funny asides and comments about life when we were together. Arnie usually laughed at my observations, but sometimes exclaimed to me, “You and your weird Altmann sense of humor!” Despite his negative description of my family’s humor, I got the distinct impression that Arnie loved it, was sometimes bewildered by it, and even, at times, secretly admired our outlook on life.

A sense of humor is a personality trait that allows people to understand funny things, appreciate jokes, and in general, see the funny side of life. I don’t think living a perfectly happy life necessarily produces happy, joke-spewing people. If you have a sense of humor, it will show up even in the darkest of times. When I gave birth to a baby with an obvious birth defect, I joked, “At least we know we brought the right baby home from the hospital. There was no way there could have been a mix-up. Ours looks different!” This is an example of ‘dark humor.’

Does everyone in a family share the same type of humor? Not always, but I know my daughter Tammie shares my dark humor abilities. She once said she never worries about anyone stealing her winter coat from public coat hooks because, “Not many people can use a short-armed coat!”

Is a sense of humor trait something people can learn, soak up, or discover like a treasure? I’m not sure, but can verifiably report that, if that is possible, that is what happened to me and my family. During the 1950’s when the lean years of the depression and war was over, Daddy bought every Donald Duck comic book written by Carl Barks as they were published. At first, each of these comic books cost only five cents a copy, which was very affordable for our farm family.  

We loved these comic books because they contained references to geography, history, literature and science. The humor Carl Barks infused into the duck family’s experiences was sublime and clean. We read and reread each issue. Our meal-time discussions sometimes centered around the duck’s latest adventure. One of our favorite, playful family insults was taken from one of the stories. The horrid Beagle Boys had been outsmarted by the wily old duck once again.  Holding Scrooge by the feet, upside down, Beagle Boy number 716-617 angerly shouted, “You rich pig of a duck!”

Continue reading →

Fuzzy Yellow Chick

Apr16

Daddy jumped out of the family car when he saw us approach. My brother Billy sat in the car’s backseat calmly eating fried pork skins. Clearly relieved to see us, Daddy fussed, “I worried that you might be having so much fun shopping, that you’d forget what time to come back to the car!”

Mom assured him, “I had fun, but I remembered you wanted to get home at a reasonable time. You start your evening chores at 4 p.m. every day like clockwork. Then you milk the cows.” Betty, Mary and I got into the car. My three siblings and their purchases were packed in the backseat, while I wedged myself between Mom and Daddy in the front seat along with more packages. As we pulled away from where our car was parked, I worried that Daddy was in such a big hurry to get home to do barn chores, that he would skip my favorite part of a shopping trip to Marshfield. I leaned against him and begged, “Please Daddy, can we stop at Clover Cream for ice cream?”

With a twinkle in his eyes, Daddy cheerfully responded, “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!” I knew his answer was ‘yes!’ He liked the rhyme, which was from an old-time song, and often said it when we asked for ice cream.  

Living on a farm 12 miles from Marshfield, we seldom went shopping in the bigger city. Most of our supplies came from Stratford, a small town only three miles from our farm. However, with Easter Sunday being three weeks away, Mom determined that we needed to visit Marshfield to buy new hats and gloves to wear to church. We found what we were looking for, and more!

After supper, Mom hid one of her shopping bags in a closet. I smiled, realizing it contained Easter Bunny treats. Together, we admired the pretty hats Mom had bought. I especially liked my new lavender spring jacket, because last year’s jacket was too small.

Continue reading →

Another Once-in-a-Lifetime

Apr9

I stood by the night-darkened window, watching rain drops gather and trickle down the screen. I sadly asked my husband, “Why does it always seem to rain when a person has something nice planned?”

Arnie irritably responded, “You can’t change anything by watching it rain. Get back into bed and forget about it.”

A flash of lightning and a roll of thunder accompanied my return to bed. Needing to unwind before going to sleep, I pointed out, “This rain is coming too soon after we almost got trapped in Canada by gully-washing rainstorms. It’s hard to believe that we got home from that experience just one week ago!” A gentle snore made me realize Arnie wasn’t listening.

I usually love lying in bed at night and listening to a summer thunderstorm passing through the countryside. Watching the flashes of lightning and listening to the gentle rolling thunder and pattering rain on the windowpanes make me feel cozy. But tonight, it just made me feel uneasy.

The event that I was worried the rain would ruin wasn’t just a simple occasion that could be postponed to another week. This weekend the church Arnie and I attended was celebrating 125 years since its formation. A picnic with lots of food for all the parishioners was planned. Someone had arranged games in the park across from the church for the children to play. The parish was celebrating our patron saint’s name day in conjunction with the quasquicentennial anniversary. In preparation, the church building was given a much-needed restoration leading up to the occasion. In addition, I was excited about the debut of the parish history book that I’d worked on for the past year. I looked forward to seeing it in print!

Continue reading →