Going Home Again...and Again

Then

In an unexpected turn of events, we traveled 25 miles southeast of Podunk to another, even smaller, Podunk…  Having been sick with a cold for more than a week, I was glad to get out of the house and “see the world” as it were…

We traveled to a quaint little town east of Podunk to visit my favorite antiques shop.  Afterwards, we stopped in at the hardware store.  Truly, a hardware store, with creaky wood floors, items displayed in divided shelves, and an old-fashioned heater grate in the floor.

Ever solicitous about my health, he asked me if I wanted to go home…. I said “no” because I was enjoying being out in the sunshine.  And so, he had an adventure in mind: “let’s go to Lindsay (an even smaller Podunk) and find the house you lived in….”

I don’t know why, all these years later, that I remember the name of the street we lived on….But I do.  And I found it on my iPhone’s Google Maps app.  As we drove through town, the little blue dot on the screen was moving with us, ever nearer to Linda Vista Drive.

I remember what the house looked like because I have several photos of family in front of it.  My mother told me once that the house was featured in Sunset Magazine in 1947.  I don’t know if that is true or was invented by a realtor who wanted my parents to buy the house.  I think I may have to look into that at some point…

I felt a lump in my throat as we drove down the street…..and there, at the turn in the road, was the house.  I remember it as being gray—the color of the kitschy cinder-blocks used to build it—and now it is a beigy-gold paint color.  The window frames are still hunter green, and the windows are original, too.  A cooler is precariously perched in one of the bedroom windows, and the lawn is winter dead.

Now

Although we only lived in that house for a couple of years, and I was VERY young, I do remember lots of things about it.  For instance, the bathroom floor was black marble.  Why do I remember that?  Perhaps because I spilled my mother’s face powder on it and she thought she would never get it all cleaned up…

My favorite spaces in that house were all outdoors.  There was a screened-in sleeping porch along the entire back of the house and I would sleep there at night during the long, hot summers.  Just beyond that porch was the back patio, which was huge.  It was angled and free-form to make it blend into the back lawn in a pleasing fashion. 

One of my favorite things to do (remember: I was VERY young) was to push Daddy’s push mower across the patio, delighting in the clackety-clack sounds it made on the cement.  I do remember the last time I did that, too, as Daddy was home for lunch and came outside to ask me to “stop doing that!”

I remember the houses on each side of ours, too.  On the one side was the “elderly” neighbor with the apricot tree.  I amazed my neighborhood friends by being brazen enough to sneak into her back yard and steal an apricot from her tree.  Not only that, I stopped at the faucet under her kitchen window and washed it off before running out front to eat it in front of my cohorts…

On the other side of our house was the home of my best playmate and friend.  She and I had some great adventures, such as painting her porch red with the blooms on my mother’s rose bush.  Also not a popular pastime with adults…

That relationship had its ups and downs, too.  When I was allowed to paint the picket fence on her side of the back yard (remember, I was too young to have read “Tom Sawyer”), she was upset that I wouldn’t let her help me.  I tried to explain that my mother told me just to paint our side of the fence, and that she had to ask her mother before she could paint her side of the fence…..  She was frustrated and slapped me—hard—on my cheek.  Without thinking, I ‘slapped’ her with my paintbrush across her cheek.  After hearing both of us shriek, our mothers both came out of the house and, needless to say, neither one of us got to do any more painting….

We had moved to that little town because that’s where Daddy found a job after the war.  I also remember why we left that house and that town….

It was Christmastime, 1950, and my mother was busy getting ready for Christmas.  One of the things she did to “get ready” was to take down the living room curtains and wash and iron them.  It was a whole day’s chore, I’m sure.  And then, on Christmas Eve, the weather dropped to below freezing.  Since that little town is situated in the middle of miles and miles of orange groves, the night air smelled of the smudge pots burning all around us, keeping the oranges from freezing.

Perhaps it worked, and the crop was saved.  I really don’t know.  What I DO know is that, on Christmas morning, my mother shrieked when she saw her newly-washed and ironed curtains: they were now charcoal gray, thanks to the freezing temperatures and smudge pots…

By the next Christmas, we had moved here, to Podunk, to the very house where I am writing this…

We had prolonged freezing temperatures here in Podunk last night….maybe that’s why I was thinking about that house in that even smaller Podunk, 25 miles away…

Cali

Farewell....

What can I say?  My heart hurts right now.  A beautiful lady who was a huge part of my life for nearly forty years has died….

  

She has had Alzheimer’s disease for more than a decade and didn’t even recognize her own sons when they came to see her.  I know it was hard on them because my ex-husband (her first-born son) and I have talked about it.

My daughter told me today that she is saddened, too.  She thought she “shouldn’t be” because Grandma has been gone from all of us for a long, long time.  As I told her, the fact is that we are never prepared to lose a loved one, no matter how imminent the death might be.

She’s gone.  How can that be?  It isn’t fair, that’s for sure.  She was more to me than a mother-in-law; she was my Other Mother.   She was my shelter from the storm of my relationship with my own mother.  She was everything I wished my mother had been: kind, caring, gentle, loving and approachable.  As odd as it might sound, my mother was never approachable……  Yet my Other Mother was always there for me, as I tried to be for her.

Walking in the orange groves, after supper, so many years ago when I was pregnant with my first child, we would talk.  My husband worked evenings and my in-laws invited me out to their ranch for supper at least one night a week.  So, we talked.  We walked along a row of orange trees highlighted by the setting sun and she answered my questions about my pregnancy.

Over and over again, I asked her to tell me about “labor” and what I would be going through.  I asked her what things I needed to have on hand before the baby came home from the hospital.  And I listened in amazement as she described how I would feel when I saw my baby for the first time.

And she nailed it…

I remember after Steve and I separated that  she hoped we would reconcile.  She even “set us up” by asking each of us to come out to the ranch and help her on a Saturday afternoon.  I hadn’t seen Steve in a while as he was dating someone else and so was I….

It was hard to see her so desperate to fix something that was irretrievably broken, and neither of us could get mad at her for trying so hard.  And neither of us was in a place to try to fix it.  It was over, but NOT my relationship with my Other Mother.

She continued to be my friend and called me frequently to see how I was doing.  After her husband died, she called me and asked me to come by and see her.  She had a gift for me: a beautiful, dark red flower vase.   She wanted me to have something of hers to remember her by.

As if I needed an object to remind me of her…..

And now she’s gone.  Gone to a place where she is whole again and not suffering.  We are left with our memories—wonderful memories—of a beautiful woman, a beautiful person.  We will talk about her often, sharing stories and remembering her with much love and affection.

 

And shed some tears, too….

Cali

All in a Day's Work....

Sometimes I look at what I have “done” during the day and chastise myself for not doing more.  Since I am retired, I can always do whatever needs to be done “tomorrow” if I want.  Ah, but tomorrow never comes, does it?

So, what did I have to do today that didn’t get done?  Truthfully, nothing.

Maybe I feel guilty because he spent so much of the day outside, mowing the lawn and working in the yard.  I don’t have nearly as much to show for my efforts today….. Let’s see: I have done two loads of laundry, cleaned up the kitchen, put some things away, and worked on my scrapbooking.

Is that enough to do in one day?  Does every day have to have monumental results?  Is there really anyone who would be impressed if I did more?  Or less?

Actually, there is more that I did today.  I was online, finding out more about Harald Hardrada.  He was the King of Norway and my 33^rd great grandfather, on my mother’s side.  Funny thing, he tried to conquer England in September of 1066 but died trying.

 

He was known as the last of the Viking warriors.  After King Edward the Confessor (of England) died, there were three men who claimed the throne: an Englishman, Harold Godwinson, a Norman, William of Normandy, and Harald Hardrada, King of Norway.

After defeating Harald Hardrada at the Battle of Samford Bridge, Harold Godwinson marched his army to Hastings to meet his other foe, William the Conqueror, husband of my 33^rd great grandmother on my father’s side, Matilda of Flanders.  Exhausted from the previous battle and forced march, Harold’s army was defeated by the Norman.  What my maternal ancestors couldn’t accomplish, my paternal ancestors could.

No wonder I’m so tired…

Cali

First Voyage

Recently, when cleaning out boxes in the closet, I came across a treasure.  No, not savings bonds, or rare coins, or the deed to a gold mine.   I found a story written by my father.  And hand-written by him in calligraphy….

On the cover, he wrote: To my beloved daughter….From Daddy, Christmas 1979…

I couldn’t remember seeing it before, yet I obviously did.  I suspect that, since I was working night shift at that time, and had to leave his home to go to work on Christmas Eve, I probably didn’t give it more than a cursory look after he gave it to me.  I know I didn’t read it….

It was a different time then.  He was alive and well.  I was a fairly new RN, working the night shift, married, and raising three children.  Daddy was always in my life, and I couldn’t imagine his being gone from me any time soon, so there was no rush to read his story.

How things have changed.  Daddy has been gone for almost 15 years now.   And somehow, this booklet, with his story, has surfaced again.  What was once a simple Christmas gift has taken on much greater meaning: it is no longer just a story, it is Daddy’s legacy.  To me.  From him. 

I was shaking as I opened the booklet.  On the first page are the words “First Voyage”…..  I was intrigued.   As I read the next page, and the next, I was enthralled.  It is a story of my father’s first trip to Europe, as a young man, and it is a delightful recounting of a trip, yes, but also of a young man who later became my father.

His words make me smile:

"Other eight-year-olds had toy ducks floating in their bathtubs.  I had a wind-up scale model of a World War I battleship.  I wore navy blue “sailor suits” in the winter, and white in the summer.  Both came from Brooks Brothers in New York, where my dad bought his clothes."

There was never any question in my mind as to what I would be when I “grew up”: I would be either Captain of a big liner, or Admiral-in-Chief, U.S. Navy."

He relates that his father met Lord Louis Mountbatten, and through him, Captain Arthur Rostron, RNR, captain of Cunard Line’s HMS Mauretania, “fastest liner in the world”….  He was Captain of the Mauretania when the Titanic sank and was awarded a special Congressional Medal for rescuing the survivors…

As his parents became fast friends with Captain Rostron, they had lunch with him every other Saturday when the Mauretania was in New York.  "I had complete run of the ship; I knew Mauretania from keelson to truck."  Captain Rostron became Sir Arthur Rostron when my father was a teenager. 

The rest of the story is about his first sea voyage.  He was 23, footloose and fancy free.  "Despite youthful dreams of a maritime career, a shrinking Navy, limited berths in the Merchant Marine, and—above all—the Great Depression—made nautical openings hard to find."

So, in 1935, he embarked on the S.S. Black Tern (“a Hog Island single-screw well-deck cargo vessel, built in 1919, and refitted in 1930 with an oil-fueled GE steam turbine, multiple gear power plant.”) He worked his passage as an Ordinary Seaman.  For the grand sum of .01 cent, he worked his way from New York City to Antwerp, Belgium.

In his story, he recounts the tasks he was assigned while aboard ship: polishing the “bright”, chipping paint, and painting, battening down the hatches, and coiling wire cargo halyards, among other things.  The captain took a liking to him and let him stand watch on the bridge. 

As he recounts his voyage, I learn more about my father as a person.  I read his words, first scribbled in his journal, during the journey.  I feel as if I have met my father as a young man.  A man who worked hard and had the respect of his shipmates.  A man who enjoyed the beauty of the ocean and the stars and wasn’t afraid of hard work. 

As the voyage came to an end, he writes:

”For the first time in more than a week, the sea is calm.  No rolling, no pitching, whatsoever.  The water is almost an emerald green.  All about us are ships and birds. To port, we can see the chalk cliffs of Cornwall.  We steam past Penzance, and a thrill runs up my spine at the memories the name evokes of high school operetta days when a certain work-away sailor was Major General Stanley in ‘The Pirates of Penzance.’”

The adventure ends at a restaurant in Antwerp: four shipmates met for lunch and then split the check four ways: 45 cents each.  Daddy was leaving for Brussels and the World’s Fair the next morning.  As he said goodbye to his shipmates, they went off in one direction and he went in another….

The voyage was over, and a new adventure was about to begin…..

Cali

Through My Daughter's Eyes...

(This was written in late March, about a month ago....)

My daughter and her husband are in The Big Apple this week.  It’s the first vacation in a long time for them.  My daughter works too hard, going in to work extra shifts when there’s a staffing shortage, working a double shift when someone calls in sick, and taking the ER duty when no one else wants it.

She’s a Certified Cardiology Tech at a hospital about 45 miles up the road from Podunk.  She does the 12-lead EKGs as ordered, transcribes Holter monitor reports, and makes her mama proud.  She was even ACLS certified for a few years.  (CCTs are not required to take Advanced Cardiac Life Support training: she just wanted to know more about the EKGs she does….).

There was a patient once, who had an EKG done in the morning.  Later in the afternoon, he was complaining of chest discomfort and the physician ordered another EKG.  My daughter compared the two EKGs and alerted the RN that there was a significant change in the afternoon EKG.  The RN shrugged and mentioned that the physician would be in “soon” and she would tell him them.

Not satisfied with that response, my daughter paged the physician.  When he called her back, she shared her concerns about the patient.  To make a long story short, the physician came straight away to see the patient and took him immediately to the cardiac cath lab.  When he was finished, he came back to the cardiology department to inform my daughter that she probably saved the patient’s life.

No, not a proud mama here….  But you can see just how important it is that she has a vacation.  And so, she’s posting photos on Facebook from her adventures.  Every chance I get, I go online to see where she is and what she is seeing.  In the photos taken by her husband, she is happy and smiling, with a little bit of wide-eyed awe thrown in….

She has ferried out to Ellis Island, taken photos from atop the Empire State Building, been to all the important museums on Manhattan, walked through Central Park, made a pilgrimage to Tiffany’s, and even spent some time in FAO Schwartz…..

It has truly been a trip of a lifetime for her.  A chance to see a place she had only seen in movies and dreamt about seeing in person…..some day.  And her someday finally arrived…..  She has seized the moment and put all her energy into enjoying her time there, just as she puts so much energy into doing her job well.

And I have been to New York this week, too, through my daughter’s eyes….

Cali

Regular Days.....

Today is just a regular day. It's not a holiday. It's not a birthday or anniversary—in my family, anyway. It's just a plain, old, regular day. No traditions. No celebrations. No special meals.

Just a day. Twenty-four hours. A beginning, middle, and end. A day in the life.....

And yet. Regular days are special, too, in their own way. It is a day in my life. It is mine to do with as I please. It is mine to waste, or mine to use for a good cause. I can clean and cook and work. Or I can sit, relax, and daydream. Or a little of everything.

One thing special days and regular days have in common: they come, and then they go. Regardless of how I use the day, I can never retrieve it. I can't change what I did yesterday. I can plan better for tomorrow, or today.

Today is the only day I have. Yesterday, and all the yesterdays, are just memories. Tomorrow is a dream, a hope, of what is to come.

I guess I'd better make something out of today. Enjoy it. Embrace it. Use it. Spend it. Remember it.

Carpe Diem, All!

Cali

Noise.....

Sometimes, life is peaceful. Other times, it is interrupted by noise.

I can get used to the noises that happen every day. The familiar noises: voices, sirens, dogs barking, cars, planes, music on the radio.... I can continue what I am trying to do and tune them out. Most of the time.

The noise that won't go away is inside of me. I don't “hear voices” but there is a still, small voice inside of me that tries to communicate with me.

When I choose to listen, I learn the things that I need to know, such as, how I am feeling about something, or what I need to do about a situation in my life.

For months, I ignored the little voice. The noise inside of me kept getting louder and louder. And I had to work harder and harder to ignore it. Until I could ignore it no more.

I had to listen.....

The cacophony was gone and a sense of peace washed over me again. I know what I have to do and I know it is the right thing—for me—to do.

Note to self: please listen to me!

Cali

It's Time....

The shopping's done. The gifts are wrapped and under the tree. The meals are planned and the cookies are almost ready.


The house looks beautiful in its holiday wardrobe. The lights, the sounds and the smells just add to the excitement. And company will start arriving tomorrow afternoon.


The rush is over and the work is mostly done. What didn't get done doesn't matter. It's time to let go of the to-do list.


It's too late to worry about what could have been. Or should have been. What's done is done. And what didn't get done? Well, there's always next year.


The time is here to savor the moments, make the memories, and enjoy the holiday.


Merry Christmas, All!


Cali

Simple Pleasures....

It's funny the things that please us. I have been waiting for over a year for Dave to convert some shelves and drawers in the kitchen for me. Dave is my former daughter-in-law's husband. He is an excellent carpenter and a very nice man.


Today was the day! The new shelves were built and the one drawer, replacing two small ones, is done, too. It only took him about an hour to install them, too.


And now? I have more room for cooking utensils and knives in the one BIG drawer, instead of two, awkward, smaller drawers. And the best part? I now have slide-out shelves for my pots and pans. Open the cupboard doors, slide out the drawer, find the pot or pan I want, and close the drawer.


No more getting down on the ground to dig for the perfect pot or pan!


Right now, I am going to go through all the whatchamajiggies that were in the drawer. If I don't know what it is, or how to use it, I probably don't need to keep it. Everything in the cupboard next to the stove will be clean, neat, and orderly. And, easy to reach!


How cool is that?


Cali

The Christmas Dishes...

'Tis the season to be jolly. Are you?


This morning, I got out my Christmas dishes. They are from Mikasa and they each have a Christmas tree on them, with green lattice around the rims. I think they are quite pretty....


Normally, I take them out on Christmas Eve, just before our meal, and set them out on the dining table. I decided to do things differently this year: we will use them at supper time from now until after Christmas.


They are festive and fun, regardless of what food is on them. A roast, a casserole, even hot dogs, will look better on Christmas plates. It is about presentation, isn't it?


The simple addition of festive Christmas plates will make each meal special during the season. It is an indication that family is special, too. By not saving “the good china” for company, every meal becomes a celebration. Every person around the table is loved and welcome.

And every meal becomes a joyous occasion....


Cali