My mother believed

My mother always believed in me.

The past few days I have been on a cabin-fever mission to clean out files. I have a lot of files. Today, contained in a file I labeled “bits and pieces” which I recall creating to store future writing ideas, I found a manila envelope with “Christine Writings” written on it in my mother’s handwriting.

I wasn’t surprised. I knew my mother, who rarely saved anything sentimental, had saved some of the things I wrote when I was younger. There is a three-page handwritten essay on “Childcare and Babysitting.” I was probably in junior high.

“When a girl gets to a certain age she needs more money of her own and needs more responsibility. Babysitting gives you both. It also gives you in a roundabout way lessons for homemaking and childcare. Although you have to know some basics and important facts before you start, each time in some way, a new experience occurs.

The age that I find easiest to handle is around seven to ten . . .”

In it, I spelled “allowed” as “aloud.”

There is a sheet torn from a school newsletter we put together in 8th grade. The type is a script and is purple. Remember the smell of mimeograph copies and how they were a little damp at first? I wrote a poem about the snowflakes.

“. . .They drift on sometimes furiously, sometimes serenely, but always beautifully, ever journeying on to the end where they finally rest on even the smallest twig. And the twig is proud.”

I remember sitting in science class beside the window, watching the snow fall and composing this poem in my head. I did a lot of day-dreaming in grade school. I probably should have been paying attention.

My mom kept an essay I wrote in freshman English class, period 6 entitled “My Favorite Place” about the beach. My teacher wrote on the top, in red pencil, “Check some spots for awkward structure. Watch modifiers.” But he gave me a 4.5 out of 5.0 anyway. I got a 5.0 on “The Typical Mixed-Up Teenage Girl.”

“Carefree is her name and rule to live by; or often she wishes it were so. Actually insouciance (insouciance? Where did I come up with that word?) is one virtue she lacks. It would be so easy for my friend if she didn’t take things to heart so hard.”

I have a feeling I was writing about myself here.

Then there is the short story, “The Power of Giving” that I wrote in December of 1971. I think I might have been a better fiction writer then than I am now. I knew how to write a hook in the first sentence.

“The memory of it all is still as fresh in my mind as it was the first few days after the accident, and probably always will be.”

It’s a sentimental story, written in first person (I guess I liked first person even back then). A young girl gets in a car wreck right before Christmas and ends up in the hospital. She’s self-centered, and feels sorry for herself that she won’t be home for Christmas and throws a tantrum of major proportions. Later a little old lady named Auntie May visits her.  They strike up a friendship and spend a lot of time talking. The girl knits Auntie May a scarf for Christmas. Auntie May has no home to go to and is headed to a nursing home. The narrator gives her the gift she made. “That was the first real Christmas I ever had,” the narrator says, “For that was the year I discovered the power of giving.” The teacher liked it. He asked me to read it out loud to the class and I couldn’t get through it without crying. That’s still true of some of my writing.

My mom kept a poem I wrote in 1975 about our neighbor who was from Germany. I illustrated it with a drawing I made of the little old man with his cane, walking down a sidewalk under a big branching tree with bare limbs. Convincing me yet again, lest there be any doubt, to stick to writing and not drawing.

“. . .
Wonder if
While walking down the street
He yearns to be
Where he is not
Out of place;
Lonely for his home,
A place to understand,
That understands
Him.”

His name was Mr. Gronauer and he did not speak English well. My dad used to go over and visit him from time to time to talk about Germany. One day my two sisters and I went over, maybe to give him and his wife Christmas cookies or something. They used to give us those gigantic Hershey’s chocolate bars. I’m not sure Hershey’s makes them anymore. On this particular occasion, they invited us in to have a seat on the sofa and they poured each of us a little glass, maybe about a shot, of liqueur. It might have been brandy. I took one sip and wondered how I was ever going to be able to drink it all. My oldest sister didn’t seem to be having any difficulty with it. I think Carol and I surreptitiously pawned ours off on her. I might still be sitting there today otherwise.

Yes. My mom believed in me. When I’m doubting myself and wondering what to do next, my mom’s belief, in the form of a manila envelope, calls me forward, still.

 

~~~~~

 

 

Forgotten

~A memoir from childhood

I was forgotten once.

I attended the public school when I was young even though I was Catholic. When it came time to make my first confession, which was a scary enough proposition in itself, I had to go to the local church. I was in the second grade.

My mother didn’t drive, and was largely confined to the house because of my disabled sister Annie. Mom had arranged for me to walk to church with a couple of older girls who lived about three blocks away and attended the Catholic school. I had met them, but I didn’t know them well.  Shellenbergers. It’s interesting the things we remember.

Things were different in those days. It wasn’t out of the ordinary that I would walk somewhere at a young age. We walked to school and back every day, but I had never walked to church.

On the morning of my first confession, I walked the three blocks, then up the steep steps to the Shellenbergers’ house. I crossed the covered porch and knocked. After what seemed like an eternity the mother answered the door. “I’m sorry,” she said. “They already left. If you hurry you might be able to catch up to them.”

Hurry I did. I was terrified. I didn’t know how to get where I was going. I ran down the steps and turned the corner to Roosevelt Street where I could just barely make out the other girls in the distance. I did what I usually did when I was scared, upset, or sad. I started crying.

I followed the girls from a distance. I couldn’t catch up and stumbled along behind. I was now crying profusely.

From my vantage point I saw where they turned a corner. I followed and  made it to my destination. The nun who met me at the church door took one look at my red blotchy face and wanted to know what was wrong. She led me through a door and down a quiet hall to a room where I could regain my composure. My first confession was anti-climatic after that. Facing a priest behind a screen in a small darkened room and telling him all the sins I had committed was nothing compared to the trauma I had experienced getting there.

To this day I don’t know why I became as upset as I did following those girls to the church. Although I tried to deny it to myself, in part I felt that my mother had let me down. I was alone; I didn’t know where I was going; and she was supposed to be taking care of me. Like other thoughts I’d had before and would have through the following years, that led immediately to guilt. Mom had to stay home to take care of Annie. She shouldn’t have to worry about me.

Maybe I felt sad that those people Mom trusted to help me let her down as well.  Maybe I was just sad that I had been forgotten.

I was only seven.

 

 

~~~~~

 

 

 

 

Why I like to iron, but don’t do it.

I dress more for comfort than style, you might say. Unless you are my daughter, and then you might say that I never dress for style. But I maintain I do have a style, and it is called, comfort.

One of the things I like about my particular style, is that it requires little to no ironing. Wash, dry, fold or hang-up and my clothes are ready to wear. There are one or two exceptions for special occasions, like Christmas.

I wanted to wear a light-weight wool sweater today for the family party we are hosting. It is a rich cranberry color and mostly I save it for the holidays. I washed it, dried it flat, and it is not ready to wear. Iron on a warm setting, the tag informs me.

So I pull my rickety ironing board out of the closet, unwrap the iron’s cord from the handy shelf/bracket I installed in my closet five years ago expressly for that purpose, and plug my iron in.

My mother taught me how to iron.

In fact, when I was young, I loved to iron. My mom would save my father’s hankies, and all the pillowcases for me to iron. In those days she didn’t have a steam iron. She dampened the things that needed to be ironed, which I suspect were most things in those days before the miracle of permanent press happened.

Mom had a shaker bottle that she filled with water. She would lay the clothing or household article flat on the table or ironing board, and sprinkle it with water. Then she rolled it up and placed it on its end in the laundry basket to wait its turn. I can remember it as clear as if it happened yesterday.

I would unroll the damp pillowcases and go to work on them with the iron, transforming the wrinkled and damp to dry and smooth. I folded the pillowcases as I worked. I folded each one into thirds lengthwise, making a long narrow, neat column that I would fold in half and again into fourths, pressing each section as I went and ending with a nice neat little square that stacked perfectly in the linen closet.

I can’t remember the last time I ironed a pillowcase.

I liked doing my dad’s hankies even more. They were quick and sweet and made a nice little square when folded in half eight times.

I still have one of my dad’s hankies. I stuck it in my pocket when we cleaned out his room in the nursing home the night he died. I took it with me to the cemetery at his funeral where I dampened it with my own tears and pressed it between my fingers.

Maybe I’d still enjoy ironing pillowcases and hankies today if I took the time to do it.

What we later learn

It always amazes me when I see something, learn something, understand something, only much later after the fact.

It’s like the postcard from Peru I got this week from our new daughter-in-law. “Enjoying everything this beautiful country has to offer,” Cori wrote. “Can’t wait to share our travel stories.” Well, we already knew all that; heard the stories; saw the photos. Matthew and Cori went to Peru over three months ago in August. I don’t know where this little postcard has traveled since then—maybe it’s been riding along in the bottom of a mail carrier’s bag all this time.

This morning I had a revelation about my mother. My mind was catching phrases from the television playing in the background. I was listening for the road conditions as we were in the middle of a predicted winter storm. It must have been some kind of a commercial about health professionals. They were listing things they were there for, or the things that people told them. The phrase that caught my attention was “When someone finds a lump. . .”

I’ve written about the last good day I had with my mom when I put up her little Christmas tree last year. What I may not have fully explained was that in the preceding days and even weeks, she and I had a somewhat adversarial relationship. She was determined to continue to care for Dad as she always had, but her strength and health were continuing to decline. I was trying to convince her to make some changes —add more home health aide coverage, get Dad an indwelling catheter so she wouldn’t have to do this tiring task three times a day, let Dad stay in his bed more, use the lift—because I was worried about both her and my dad.

The last week of November I changed my approach. I threw in the towel. I told her I wasn’t going to try to solve her problems, but told her that when she was ready to make a change all she had to do was tell me and I would help her make it happen. So when she seemed different, more at peace, calmer, on that last Friday in November, I attributed it to my stepping back. In fact, I have remembered that day fondly—my mom sitting in her chair watching me decorate her house, being agreeable about it all, which frankly surprised me at the time.

Last year when my sister called me a few days later, on the morning of that first Sunday in December, to say Mom was ready to get medical help and she wanted to go to the hospital, and I returned to their house, before we called 911 and started the sequence of events that led to her diagnosis of cancer, Mom told me something that came back to me this morning like a punch in the stomach. She had gotten cold feet about going to the hospital by the time I got there a half hour after the phone call. I was trying to convince her it was the right thing to do. I think she was afraid they would want to do tests and she wouldn’t want to be away from Dad that long. I think she was afraid she might find out something really bad was wrong with her. She was lying on the sofa and I was sitting on the edge beside her. I gave her the phone and was trying to convince her to dial 911. I was trying to reassure her by telling her it was probably nothing critical and that maybe she would finally be able to get some medicine that worked better than her pantry full of over-the-counter remedies she had been ingesting.

Mom responded to my assurances by saying, “But, you don’t know everything.”

“What don’t I know?”

“A couple of days ago, I found some lumps here in my stomach,” she said as she touched her hand to her belly.

That sealed her fate, as far as I was concerned. There was no way I was not going to take her to a doctor somehow with that knowledge. She had wanted to go to the hospital. She had wanted to go in an ambulance because she wanted them to help her get there and get in. I called 911.

What I realized this morning when I heard the words, “When someone finds a lump,” was that Mom had found a lump “a couple of days” before Sunday. She probably had already found those lumps when I was there on Friday playing Christmas music and putting up her Christmas tree. I think she knew. And I think she wanted to have a good day. No, even more, even harder to bear, is that I think she wanted me to have a good day.

So I had a moment this morning. And I’m having another one as I try to relay this to you.

Some days I really miss my mother.

I love you all for the support and kind words you always have to share. Have you ever found something out or understood something long after the fact?

A little Christmas cheer one year later

I broke one of my cardinal rules today and played Christmas music before Thanksgiving. But I needed the music because I was going to decorate a Christmas tree. My mom’s little Christmas tree to be exact.  The little tree traveled with us to Mom’s assisted living apartment, and then later I packed it up and moved it home with me where it has remained boxed up in the basement until today. I look forward to the year I can put it up without tears again. This post is copied from my one last year about Mom’s Christmas tree.

November 27, 2012

I spent most of the day at my parents’ yesterday. Holidays are so hard for people who are suffering in some way. I woke up thinking that I needed to hang the strand of blinking red bell lights along Mom’s living room mantle. My sister Annie loved watching the red blinking lights, and because of that my mother loved them too. Or because Mom loved them, Annie did. We never were quite sure which way that actually went. We hung the bells up the first two Christmases after Annie was gone, but I think it was too much trouble for Mom to do last year.

Armed with blank Christmas cards and a package of peppermints, I left for my parents house mid-morning. Life has been so hard for Mom over the past months, years really, that she is worn out and doesn’t want to do one thing extra. I suspected if I asked her if she wanted me to get out her Christmas decorations she would say “No.” So I didn’t ask. I went for the bells.

I went down the hall and into Annie’s room where Mom keeps the Christmas decorations in the large closet.

While I was looking for the bells, I found a wreath. I took it out and hung it on the front door.

“I usually put the wreath my sister gave me on the front door,” Mom said from her chair near the far corner of the living room where she sat and ate her toast and drank her tea. “It’s on the glass porch.” I moved the wreath I’d hung to the back door and went out on the porch for the wreath my aunt had made.

I decided we needed Christmas music so I sorted through their collection of vinyl albums for the Christmas ones and selected one I remembered from my youth, the album cover completely torn through on one side.

“I don’t want to get the tree out today,” Mom said as I worked.

In one box I found a Santa and Mrs. Claus that a good friend of hers had made years ago. I set them together on top of the china cabinet.

Back and forth to Annie’s room I went bringing out decorations one or two at a time.

I put the snowman and woman on the window sill beside the card table, Dad’s “office,” where he sits and “works” or plays ball with a family member or a home health aide.

I found a centerpiece for Mom’s coffee table, four miniature nutcrackers for the kitchen window sill, and a snow globe that I think Dad might enjoy.

At the bottom of a big box, in a bag, I found the red bells that Annie loved.

I hung them along the mantle, securing them with tape. Then I cleared the nick nacks off the mantle and set out the manger scene that used to be my grandmother’s.

Christmas carols playing in the background, I stood still for a minute and looked around the room. Mom used to put a small tree on a table in front of the picture window in the living room, but Dad sits there now and the table is full of pencils, blocks of wood, books, cups of coins, and other things we use to try to entertain or occupy him.

“You know, you could put the little tree on that table beside you, Mom,” I said. “It wouldn’t have to be in front of the window.”

“I could put it on that table,” Mom said and pointed across the room to the end table beside the lift recliner that we got for Dad, but that he rarely sits in anymore. It is simply too hard to get him in it, and he slides out of position if he sits there too long.

I shifted the recliner away from the sofa and moved the small table between the two so that it would be closer to the electrical outlet. Then I got the little white tree from a box on the shelf in Annie’s closet, and I set it up on the table.

“I don’t want to do the ornaments today,” Mom said.

I went back into Annie’s old bedroom and found a crocheted tree skirt.

“My sister made that for me, too” Mom said.

I arranged the skirt around the bottom and plugged the tree in. It’s tiny colored lights added a warm glow to the room.

Annie’s blinking bells strung along the mantle lent a cheerful twinkle to the room.

I left the ornaments in the three small boxes on the bed in Annie’s room.

Mom can decorate the tree later.

Christmas 2013

~~~~~~

A tribute to Vera

Today I bring you a guest post from Cindy Cunningham. I met Cindy through my memoir, Dancing in Heaven, as she explains below. From time to time readers of Annie’s story have contacted me to share their own story. I’ve decided to share with you any stories I receive for which I have permission to do so. My plan is to create a permanent page on my blog with links to these stories. Thanks in advance for reading Cindy’s story about Vera.

I live in southern California, but home is just north of New Orleans, LA.  Most people who don’t live in Louisiana hear New Orleans and instantly think big city.  I actually grew up in a very small rural area called Covington, which is north of New Orleans, just a stone’s throw away from the north end of the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway, which separates New Orleans from country living.

My children, identical twins, Aimee and Jaime (now 32 years old) and my son, Scott (now 34 years old) along with their children and my parents who are now 75 and 78 still live in Covington. Our grandchildren either fly out yearly to visit us or I fly there and visit them. While my 15-year-old granddaughter was here on a visit she told me she had to read a memoir for her upcoming honors English class.  I searched around and read several introductions and found yours. We both began reading and memories of my own childhood came flooding back.

My grandmother became a wife at the age of 15 and was eventually the mother of six children.  Each child was born at home, a house with a beautiful high ceiling my grandfather had made from the logs he had harvested over the years.  Back in the 1930’s in rural Louisiana there just weren’t hospitals and doctors to care for you.  My grandmother did manage to get a midwife to attend the births.  Each and every one went smoothly until my Aunt Vera was born.  May 29, 1938 changed my grandmother’s life forever.  The birth wasn’t going smoothly.  The baby just wasn’t entering the birth canal correctly and in desperation the midwife took an ironing board and pressed on my grandmother’s stomach in an effort to make the baby move.  Eventually the baby was born, but severely damaged.  My Aunt Vera had cerebral palsy.  She was a beautiful baby, just a baby trapped inside her body.  Nobody knew enough back then to help her.  She never got to attend school and was carried by my grandparents everywhere they went.  She couldn’t lift her head or straighten her legs or control her arms.  She sat in a rocker with a cushion in my grandmother’s kitchen as long as I can remember.  Her bed was a twin bed placed along the wall in my grandparent’s bedroom.  She slept in that bed until the day my grandmother went to awake her as she had done for 55 years.  I remember clearly getting the call that Vera had passed away.  My initial thought was “How will my grandmother live without her?”

Growing up, Vera was always there.  I saw her disabilities, but they were who she was.  I watched my grandmother carry her from her bed every day and put her in her special rocker in the kitchen so she could be with everyone all day.  Around noon it was routine for her to be moved to another rocker in her bedroom (also my grandmothers bedroom) so they could watch their favorite soap operas.  I would visit when I got older and mention a soap star to Vera knowing she was all into it and would be excited about my opinion.  She would light up and rock back and forth and try so hard to make words come out.  Words always eluded her.  Only grunts and noises would surface.  Sometimes she would get so angry because she couldn’t express her feelings and she would get flushed in her face and finally her body would go limp and she would fall back into her rocker with the look of defeat.  I wanted so badly to give her the gift of speech.

My grandmother told me stories of when I was little and would play around Vera’s chair and poke her and laugh and hide.  She said Vera loved it and laughed along with me.  Growing up seeing her so disabled was a natural thing for me, but it didn’t stop me from wishing it had been different for her.

One of my fondest memories is of going to church with my grandparents and Vera.  They attended a Baptist church in the country and Vera had a special rocker to the right in the front row.  My grandparents would sit next to her during services. Everyone would come by and speak to Vera and she loved it.  The church family was a big part of her life.

It seems my entire adult life while I was raising three children of my own, I kept Vera in my thoughts.  Every time I was out and about and saw a raffle or something that I thought might make her days brighter I would enter her name.  I remember once my grandmother called me and asked if I had entered Vera in a drawing. I had so many times that I just said yes.  She said that K-Mart had called and asked to speak to Vera and she told them that she couldn’t speak because she was handicapped.  They told her that Vera’s name had been drawn for a huge 4-ft pink energizer stuffed bunny.  I had to laugh.  My grandmother had someone pick it up and when activated it clapped it cymbals together and marched.  I was right. It did brighten her day.  No matter how trivial it was to most, it made her laugh.

Vera had about twenty baby dolls and my grandmother would dress them for the day and lay them out for Vera to see.  She would pick one and insist my grandmother place it in her crooked arms.  She would then rock it for hours.  Once I got her an anatomically correct baby boy doll and she loved it.  She laughed so much when she saw it.  The other thing she loved was punch balls.  My grandmother would tie the band to her finger and she would use her dominant right arm and swing it around. As with your sister, Diane, Vera’s right arm was always the stronger one.  She could swing it back and forth, but it always ended up curled up like the left one.  Her back was always hunched over and her legs crunched up too.  She was almost in a fetal position.  I use to wonder how her back didn’t kill her.

One Christmas I decided to buy small trinkets for the twenty-four days leading up to Christmas.  Vera loved Christmas and no matter how old my grandmother got she always went all out decorating for Christmas.  I also bought a hanging shadow box that on the 25^th day would be given to Vera to put all of her trinkets in.  I made up poems about the trinket of the day and mailed it anonymously to Vera.  When I visited she was so excited about the trinket of the day.  Neither she nor my grandmother could figure out who was sending them.  The buildup was grand and it did my heart good to see their excitement.  On Christmas day I brought the shadowbox over, and revealed myself to them.  Vera was so excited she was beside herself.

Looking back I think of all of the things I did to try and make Vera’s life happier.  I think maybe on top of her being happier, it healed my heart in a way.  Imagining a life being trapped inside yourself with no voice or control over your limbs was so heartbreaking for me.  She deserved better and I couldn’t give it to her.

Vera died June 8, 1993. My grandmother was 79.  I thought about how my grandmother would, for the first time since she was 15, have freedom.  But how much freedom can you have at age 79?  Her health wasn’t good and she had always put Vera first.

Reading your book about your sister made me cry, made me laugh, and made me realize that there are so many Vera’s in this world and you and I were lucky enough to have them.  My life is so much richer because of Vera.  Her life was not a waste.  She touched so many lives in so many ways and her legacy will live on.  So will Diane’s.  I miss Vera every single day, but I know the day she flew away that she was whole for the first time in her life.  She could walk and sing and God was rewarding her for what she didn’t have here on earth.

Cindy Cunningham

Cindy’s grandparents and her Aunt Vera

~~~~~~~

Can we ever really know the truth?

At my writing group last night one of the women wrote about care-giving for her father who had Alzheimer’s. She wrote of herself as a reluctant caregiver. She found a lot of reasons why she didn’t want to make the 2-hour drive to Columbus and stay overnight at her parents’ house.

I applauded her for her honesty.

And then I started to wonder about myself. Did I resent feeling a responsibility to take care of Mom and Dad over the past years? I don’t remember not wanting to go visit them. I don’t remember it being a burden. What I remember most was being driven to try to fix the problem, to help ease their pain, to scramble to make things better somehow, someway. It was a vocation for me.

I’m sure there were days when I might have preferred to stay home, but I really can’t recall feeling that way.

And it makes me wonder whether I am now in denial, or whether my personal history has made me approach or feel differently about care-giving than some others might. I learned care-giving from a very early age as I stooped to pick Annie’s toys up off the ground where she dropped them, or straightened her up in her chair, or fed her a meal. When I moved away from home it wasn’t very many years before I was giving care to what would eventually be four children in our family.

I know there were times when I grew tired, or frustrated, but I don’t think I would ever refer to myself as reluctant. I wanted to help my parents. I was desperate to make things better.

When things fell apart last December, I spent nights on a sofa in the lobby of a hospital, on a sofa at my Mom’s house, on a Hospice chair that converted to a very hard bed, on an air mattress on the floor, in a recliner beside my father’s bed. I wanted to be there. I went home and slept in my own bed only because I knew that if I didn’t take breaks I would not be able to sustain the level of support I wanted to give.

But in this place of grief where I now dwell, I wonder if I will ever know the truth of any of it anymore. Can we ever really know the truth?

Time for grasshoppers

Grasshoppers dot the sun-warmed paved path every couple of yards or so where I walk Arthur beside the rippling lake on a cool autumn day. Arthur gets close and pokes his nose at one. It hops away.

Arthur scampers along beside me in the grass, his nose to the ground. Following a trail. His little white paws startle grasshoppers hiding there. Arthur ignores them.

I remember a long ago fall day on the river levy of my dad’s youth where we scampered along the hillside, our little Ked’s-clad feet startling the grasshoppers who hid there. Grasshoppers popping up all around us.

We set chase, catching them with bare hands then letting them go again. The thrill of the catch enough.

We had time for grasshoppers then.

A proposal and a wedding – August 4, 1953

Mom and Dad, fall of 2012

Had they lived for seven more months, today we would have been celebrating my parents’ 60th anniversary. Last fall Mom had already been thinking about the upcoming event and was worried about how we were going to celebrate it with Dad’s condition and all. Now, here we are today, left in their absence to note the day and celebrate or not, as we choose.

I’d like to share with you a short excerpt from my work in progress—Where Memories Meet.  My dad wanted me to write his story. From about 2008, until my dad couldn’t speak coherently anymore I interviewed him about his life. At this point in his story, he is engaged to marry my mother, but a date has not been set. He has been drafted and sent to Fr. Jackson, S.C. for basic training. He did not want to marry my mother before he left because we were still fighting, and some were dying, in the Korean War. He did not want to leave my mother a widow if he got sent to Korea and was killed in action.

The following is my dad’s story in his own words.

~~~~~

A proposal and a wedding

I got to Fort Jackson on March 28th  and left at the end of July. I started basic training on Monday April 6th and finished on Wednesday June 3rd.  Then, a few days later, I started Motor Maintenance School. The maintenance of jeeps, trucks, or whatever. Wheel School.

I was in the military school when I found out that I wasn’t going to go to the Far East. If you were going over there you had to get the cholera shot. Everybody I knew who was going to Korea had already had their cholera shot. And I never did get one. I surmised that I wasn’t going to go to the Far East.

I called your mother from Ft. Jackson. I stood in the g-damn line half the night to get to use the telephone, milling around the damn telephones with maybe a hundred other guys. And I waited until I could get a telephone and I called her. I asked, “Are you sure you want to get married?” And she went, “Huh?” That didn’t sound right to me. She has always denied that, but that’s actually what she did. She claims she couldn’t hear me.

Mom and Dad in Columbia, S.C. summer of 1953

She eventually came down to South Carolina. Got in an airplane and flew down to Fort Jackson. We got a motel room at the Wade Hampton.  It was right down at the capital of Columbia, S.C. I got a one-day pass to go to town. I think she was only there one day. Then we got her back out to the airport and she flew back to Vandalia. It was really shocking that your grandmother and your grandfather allowed it. She was only 19 years old.  She’d never been out of the state of Ohio prior to that.

So she went on home.

We corresponded of course, about what had to happen to get married. That all worked out and she got her blood tests and I had mine before I left Ft. Jackson. That was a trip—a lot of running around to do on the base to get that stuff taken care of. I had to clear a lot people. I got all that done.

When I got finished with the school, I got leave. I got transferred to Fort Knox, Ky to the armored school and I had a two-week delay in route, is what they called it. You’d get a piece of paper saying you had to be somewhere on this date. I had to be in Ft. Knox by  August 12th.

I finished school on July 31st and I left for home on August 1st. I got a cab and went out to the airport in Columbia S.C. and got on a propeller airplane. It was a military plane. We didn’t pay for any transportation. I flew to Vandalia.  I believe that was the first time I ever flew.

I came home and got married. The wedding was on August 4th. We had a little bit of a honeymoon in Chicago then I went back—to Ft. Knox, Ky.

~~~~~

I’m thankful for the dedicated years Mom and Dad spent together and I hope that there is a place after our life here on earth ends where they are happily together still.

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad, from a very grateful daughter.

Mothers’ wisdom

Dear friends, acquaintances, readers, and unconcerned passers-by,

I am sending out this request for guest bloggers who would like to share a memory and write on the topic of mother’s wisdom. Now that Mom is gone, when her little pieces of wisdom come to mind I greet them like a precious jewel. I am planning on sharing those little jewels with you as they drop into my hands. But I realized that we all have pieces of wisdom from our mothers. I invite you to share one here on my blog. I hope to hear from you, whenever, at christine.m.grote@gmail.com.

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“Things don’t always turn out like you think they’re going to.”

 Mom said that to me at some point during our journey through her last six weeks. I don’t remember what comment I made that provoked it, but I’m sure it was one of my attempts at being upbeat and optimistic about her move to the assisted living facility. Or maybe it was a fore-shadowing of her dip in the whirlpool at the new facility that I thought would be heaven after all the years she wasn’t able to get in or out of the bathtub at home. That turned out to be incredibly uncomfortable, a test of fortitude and endurance actually, when Mom had to sit (for a very long time according to her) on a straight-backed metal seat that got lowered into the tub. “I’m not going to do that again,” she said,” unless they can get some kind of a cushion for me.”

Some things just don’t turn out as good as you think they’re going to.

I don’t know what experiences in her life drove that thought home but I imagine the day-to-day care of Annie; Mom’s attempts to improve the quality of life for her mother who had dementia; or Mom’s constant battle to take care of Dad at home as he continued to decline with Alzheimer’s provided many opportunities for failed attempts and things that didn’t turn out as good as Mom had hoped.

It’s not a profound statement really, or likely even one that we haven’t already learned on our own. But sometimes, some of us, need to be reminded, I guess.

Mark was playing golf this morning. He doesn’t get out that often. We used to play occasionally with his parents. I rode in the cart with his mother and he with his father. I enjoyed that well enough. His mom wasn’t considerably better than I was and it wasn’t overly taxing for me. I can’t say the same for later attempts to play in a foursome with our sons or other people who didn’t mind devoting hours to the game week-after-week and year-after-year in order to improve their skills.

I really like the idea of playing golf with Mark and some friends. I imagine it might be a life-style I could enjoy—a weekly outing on the golf course on 70 degree, blue-sky, breezy days. Laughter, camaraderie, the challenge and the feeling that comes when the ball soars off the tee and flies out over the green straight ahead dropping into an excellent chipping or putting position (I really have to stretch my imagination on that one.)

In my weaker moments I sometimes forget the frustration and utter humiliation of some of my later attempts at golfing. My mind conveniently refuses to recall that the last time I played nine holes I quit after only three, picking up my ball, jamming my 5-iron into the bag, and parking myself in the cart while uttering all kinds of best-forgotten comments.  I think maybe golfing would be a fun thing that Mark and I could enjoy. Sometimes I think, maybe I’ll try again.

At times like those when my imagination threatens to delude me it is good to remember the wise words of my mother, “Things don’t always turn out like you think they’re going to.”

Undoubtedly so. Thanks, Mom.