First Silver

Mar16
fork

Example of fork from wedding set.

The diamond ring sparkled as I pushed my left hand back and forth through the bath water to work up more bubbles. Leaning back in the old fashioned claw-footed bathtub, I held up my hand to better examine the ring. The bright silver etched band had scallops which corresponded to the wedding band Arnie would be putting on my finger in one month. Light from the window behind me made the amazing stone and the bubbles around it sparkle with flashes of silver, gold, green and blue.

I smiled, thinking about Arnie. He was handsome and fun to be around and I knew without a doubt that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. Thoughts about our wedding preparations and the many things I had planned to do that day suddenly made me feel restless. Pulling the plug on the tub, I rinsed off bubbles, dried and dressed.

The bathroom window was open a crack and a warm March breeze whispered in, smelling fresh and with a hint of the red, bulging buds on the maple trees which towered over the house. Six months ago an elderly lady named Alma had rented me an upstairs bedroom and a bath in this house. I loved the place because it was just two blocks from the hospital where I worked. I didn’t own a car. Today I planned to walk twelve blocks to the stores downtown to buy a few things that I needed. Continue reading →

Spring Forward

Mar9

Bare-branched trees along the driveway whipped back and forth in a wearisome wind. I knew from my walk around the yard earlier, that the wind was cold, despite the bright sunshine and blue sky. Patches of snow covered most of the lawn. Very little ice melts on days like this. On my desk calendar I spotted small print on one of the days in mid March. Knowing what I’d see, I leaned in closer anyway. It said, “Daylight saving time begins.”

Although Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1784, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” he was not the man who introduced daylight saving. His satire merely proposed that Parisians get up earlier in the morning and go to bed earlier to save on candles. It was New Zealander George Hudson who proposed daylight saving in 1895. Continue reading →

Pig Jelly

Mar2

Mom stood at the kitchen counter rapidly stirring the contents of a bowl. Dropping my school books onto the table and grabbing a cookie, I went to perch on my old highchair step stool and propped my feet up on one of the chrome and red plastic kitchen chairs. Mom asked, “How was your day?”

Unable to come up with a short, one or two word answer, I shrugged and grunted, then took another bite from the cookie. Nothing really interesting had happened. Swallowing, I asked, “What are you making?”

Mom said, “Sweet and sour heart and tongue. Do you remember the cow we butchered last week? I made a big batch and canned several quarts of it today.” Continue reading →

My Cat, Lassie

Feb24

I leaned back in my chair and took a sip of tea. The warmth and flavor made me feel cozy and content. My daughter Tammie glanced over at me from where she was sitting and said, “I’m beat. How many miles do you think we covered at the Mall?”

Slipping off my shoes and flexing my toes, I answered with a grimace, “Too many.”

Spotting my feet, Tammie’s cat, Carla, sauntered over to rub up against them. Sitting back on her haunches, she looked up at me, and then suddenly leapt onto the arm of my chair. From there, she carefully stepped onto my soft, warm lap. Tammie said, “Wow, Carla-Cat likes you! She doesn’t get this chummy with just anyone.” Continue reading →

Good Friday’s Fish

Feb17

Pale light was filtering into my bedroom when I awoke. My first thought was to wonder whether my big brother, Casper, had returned home.” Sliding out of bed, I padded over to the bedroom window and pulled the curtain aside. His car was parked in its usual place in the farmyard driveway below my window. In bare tree branches near the house, several small birds twittered and trilled their spring-time joy.

Only a few small patches of dirty snow still dotted the yard. Yesterday I’d helped Daddy make shallow trenches in the driveway to help hasten drainage from the lawn around our house. Although it was still early morning, they were already filled with water. I smiled, Easter would be warm this year and I could wear my lavender coat and flowered hat to church.

No one was in the kitchen. I grabbed a slice of bread and buttered it. Hearing voices in the basement, I slowly crept down the steps, munching on the bread. Mom and Casper were working at the sink, gutting and washing small fish that were only three to four inches long. Next to them was a large milk-can nearly full with more fish. Continue reading →

Compassionate Valentines

Feb10

My big sisters slammed the back door as they left the house. To hurry me along, Mom said, “Put your scarf on and go…Daddy’s waiting in the car.” I pulled a small purple nylon wisp of material from my coat pocket, folded it diagonally and put it over my head and tied a small knot under my chin. Pushing my glasses further up onto the bridge of my nose, I ran out of our farmhouse, slamming the door behind me.

The air felt sharp that February morning, as sharp as any of the January mornings the previous month, but something seemed different. I couldn’t place what it was. A bird sang as I clambered into the family car. The sound made me pause. It was not one that I’d heard since last fall. As cold as it was, some of the summer birds were returning!

There was a hole in our green Dodge’s floor boards behind the driver’s seat. As Daddy drove through the yard to the road, I instinctively put my foot over the hole as we approached a big mud puddle. Instead of a splash against the bottom of my foot like happened after school yesterday, we heard the sound of shattering glass. I loved the sound. During first recess at school, my friends and I would go all over the playground and break the panels of ice that covered each puddle. Continue reading →

Middle Child

Feb3

Agnes, my eldest sister sat at Mom’s sewing machine slowly, patiently feeding a bright, flowered material to the shiny mechanically powered needle. It darted up and down as the motor made a low humming sound. The machine was new, delivered only a day or two before. I tried to remember the old machine, but could only recall that it had a foot pedal which Mom had to pump to work.

Tired of watching Agnes sew, I found Rosie, who was a year younger than Agnes. She was in the bedroom they shared, brushing her hair. Bored, I began to ramble around though the house checking on the rest of my siblings. My sister Mary, who was seven years older than me, was in the living room reading. Betty, who was one year younger than Mary was on the back lawn playing with a kitten. I found Casper, who was a year older than Agnes, in the garage. He was building a bird house.

After searching for a while, I finally found Billy in the garden with Mom, who was inspecting her new seedlings. Billy had been born after Casper, Agnes and Rosie, but well before Mary, Betty and I. While I saw him as one of the big kids in my family, he was also one of us younger kids. Continue reading →

Germinated Gardener

Jan27

I leaned against my bedroom window, soaking in the beauty of a brilliant winter sunrise and wondered when the Mid West had last enjoyed a full day of sunshine. Yesterday was overcast and gray, so was the day before that and the day before that. Seasonal Affective Disorder doesn’t bother me, but after weeks and weeks of minimal sunshine, seeing the jolly face of our giant earth-star rising up in the east certainly made me feel very happy. I contentedly sighed, “The days are getting longer again.”

Despite enjoying sunshine peeking into my house that morning, I knew it was very cold outside. The furnace was running almost constantly. Pulling the living room drapes open, I checked the thermometer outside the north window. It read, ‘Ten degrees below zero’. Nodding, I remembered that the weatherman had said that it would ‘warm up’ to five degrees by noon.

As the morning passed, I went again and again to the windows to admire the sunshine. I wanted to go outside, but even at five degrees above zero, it was too cold to really enjoy being in the backyard. The only hospitable place would be inside my unheated greenhouse. When the sun shines though the plastic, it gets warm. Eyeing the drifts between the house and my greenhouse, I calculated whether the struggle to get there was worth it. It was. Continue reading →

Queen of Sheba

Jan20

The cup of black tea was almost a little too hot to sip. I happily breathed in its fragrant scent and smiled at how the ceramic mug shared its warmth with my chilled hands. Setting the cup down on a table next to my chair, I pulled up the quilt on my legs, so that I could cuddle under its voluminous folds. Outside the living room window snow drifts were casting chilly blue shadows, while towering pine trees appeared more black than green. It was a good day to stay indoors to read.

Picking up my Bible, I opened to where I had left-off the day before from my ‘one page a day’ reading commitment. I Kings, chapter 10 told about the Queen of Sheba paying a visit to King Solomon to test his wisdom of renown. She arrived in Jerusalem with a huge retinue, camels bearing spices, a large amount of gold and precious stones. Continue reading →

Hell’s Furnace

Jan13

I shivered even though the room was warm. Thinking about the furnace had me anxiously rocking back and forth. My daughter Niki, sitting on the sofa next to me, put her hand comfortingly on my shoulder while her husband Mike nodded in compassion. Arnie and I had had an old fashioned marriage. I took care of cooking, cleaning and laundry. He took care of mowing the lawn, keeping the furnace running and fixing anything that broke down. Four days ago my husband of 37 years had unexpectedly died.

If I had died, a few weeks after the funeral when family and friends went back to their lives, Arnie would have merely starved to death in soiled clothing. This was a fate that I considered far less horrible than the one I was facing at the moment. With Arnie gone, I was sentenced to learning the care and maintenance of the wood-pellet-eating beast in the basement. Knowing that it was-right below where I was sitting-made me shiver again!

Most people have furnaces that are turned on and off with the twist of a thermostat dial and only need a heating specialist’s visit once a year to service the equipment. That would have been too simple and easy for my husband. He bought an unusual furnace that few others have in Central Wisconsin. He installed a furnace that required as much hands-on care as a newborn baby. The dirty thing needed to be burped, diapered and potty trained. All I knew about it at that moment was how to pour in the wood pellets. Continue reading →