When I hear people complain about how breathing is uncomfortable in the year of pandemic mask-wearing, I think back to how we put up with a bit of discomfort when there was candy to be gotten. I mean, just look at this thing! See those two tiny holes right beneath this hideous cat’s nose? And right above the back of kitty’s tongue – that tiny slit? That’s how we breathed on Halloween. And no one complained. Growing up in the…
What a surprise to learn that my paternal grandfather was not just a painter, but a poet. Dad recently passed some of his father’s verse along to me. The paper is yellowed and fragile. Some copies are faint, thanks to carbon paper. For the youngest among us, that’s what we used to make copies before home computers and printers made life so much easier. Grandpa would have taken two pieces of typing paper and slid a purply piece of wispy…
Have you ever felt a sense of grace while going through a really hard time? Have you found something to smile or chuckle about through your tears of grief? Mom called this “a sense of holy laughter” in a recorded interview, below. She was referencing how she and her siblings managed to laugh as they stepped cautiously through the final weeks of their father’s life in the spring of 1982. A sense of holy laughter. Grandpa loved a good laugh….
There comes a time in every mother’s life when she simply has to put her foot down. Dad recalls the first time Mom did this. It was in the mid-1960s, we were living in Pittsfield, and there was too much cussin’ going on in our house. “Mom got on my case,” he remembers. I asked Dad, “So what was it, mostly ‘hell’ and ‘damn’?” ” … bastard, too.” The response came much sooner than I would have expected. For those…
As a young girl, Mom had a pen pal, her Aunt Margaret Regan. Known to non-family members as Sister Amabilis, she was only 16 when she entered religious life. It was September 1943 and Mom was 13 when she wrote this to her aunt, who wasn’t permitted to visit her family very often. It was September 1943; her older second-cousin Eddie was on furlough from the Army during World War II. Eddie wrote on the back of the photo, “Quit…
Today is the last day of summer. The temperatures have already cooled and the fields are ready for harvest. My darling tomato-picker has been busy all summer: Cameron wasn’t sure he’d like the taste of a grape tomato, but sampled a few each time he visited us this summer. He’s still not sure. When Gary and I went to spend some time with Dad in Connecticut earlier this month (quarantining all the while, as per the Nutmeg State‘s Covid rules),…
“Jelly” is an occasional topic of conversation in our household. It seems Gary was traumatized as a child by all the plum jelly he was forced to consume. Growing up on a farm, with parents who remembered The Great Depression like it was yesterday, Gary knew better than to complain. So he dutifully ate plum jelly on a slice of bread (he calls it “jelly bread,” which I’ve always found confusing) when it was served to him as a kid….
As a kid, it ticked me off that certain things were “boys only.” For example, my dad took my brothers bowling. But not me. “I’ll take you bowling on your wedding day,” Dad promised. I reminded him of that oft-spoken vow on Gary’s and my big day in 1982, but didn’t hold my father to it. It was the mid-1960s, and my older brothers were donning the special robes, lighting the candles, ringing the chimes, and burning the incense. My…
“Boy am I glad to have this cell phone!” Well, I nearly cried. I’d talked Dad into buying a mobile phone well over a decade ago. It took until the other day – and the aftermath of Hurricane Isaias – to hear him praise the handiness of this new-fangled option to his trusty land-line phone. Gary and I sometimes ponder this question: What gadgets will our sons want us to use in the future? My husband is incredibly technology-adverse (although…
When you’re a child of the Depression, you have a different outlook on personal finance. Mom used to tell the story of Dad, as a young child, going door to door trying to sell his toys. He wanted to help feed his family. When I asked him about it recently, Dad recalled that he sold his alphabet blocks for five cents a piece. He raised about 25 cents, and presented the pennies and nickels to his parents. As he hit…