Happy Birthday, Dad!

July 10, 2012 by scillagrace

My father was born on July 10, 1933. He died in 2010. He had a group of work colleagues who were also born in July, and they used to call themselves the SRA Cancer Society. My father did have prostate cancer at one time, but surgery eliminated it completely. He died of Alzheimer’s. He was never one to celebrate his birthday in any obvious way, but he did enjoy fine dining. Fortunately for him, he had the wherewithal to enjoy the very finest. I benefited from the “trickle down effect” of that boon, meaning that I have dined well on his generosity myself. On the occasion of his 70th birthday, we stayed at The Benbow Inn near Garberville, CA. Located on a river in the redwoods, this beautiful resort was established in 1926. My father counted it as one of his favorite places. The first time I went there was on the way north to Oregon for my sister’s wedding. My 9-month old daughter Susan was with me. Ordinarily, children are not allowed in the dining room after 8pm, but the management made an exception for my father, who promised that the baby would be beautifully behaved…and she was. Later that evening, I realized she had a bit of a fever and digestive distress, but that only mellowed her out. The next time I visited the Inn was my father’s 70th birthday. I had begun to notice signs of memory loss and confusion during that trip, but he was completely in his comfort zone at the restaurant. My mother and brother look a bit skeptical in this photo:

I remember the delight he showed in settling in at the bar and sampling from their extensive selection of Scotch before dinner. I compare it to my absolute thrill at finding a decanter of sherry in my room. So nice of them! The next day, we had them pack us a picnic to eat while out hiking. It was elegant and tasty, but a far cry from the granola bars and such that my father usually took on his woodland walks.

I think I set the camera on a tree stump and used the self-timer on this one…

My father would be participating in the heavenly banquet of eternity right now, and I can imagine him enjoying himself immensely in that setting. I’m off to get myself a little supper, probably just some hummus and a glass of Shiraz, but I eat and drink to his honor in gratitude this evening. I love you, Dad. To Life!!

Retreat

June 28, 2012 by scillagrace

The Ketola family were Finnish immigrants who settled in Wisconsin just before the turn of the 20th century. Their daughter had scoliosis and was mostly bedridden from the age of 20 until her death at age 40. When her parents died (in their 90s!), her brothers took care of her. They bought her a parlor piano and set it up in her bedroom so that they could keep up a public appearance of humble simplicity by closing the door when visitors came. It wouldn’t do to have the neighbors think they’d squandered their earnings on such a luxury! The brothers never married and lived in the house without electricity or plumbing well into the 1960s. They had electricity in the barn, though, for milking.

Your family, your bed, and your music. That sounds like a nice retreat to me! Healing wishes to all….

VIP Tour

June 25, 2012 by scillagrace

Late in the afternoon yesterday, some VIPs came to tour Old World Wisconsin. Unfortunately, they arrived only an hour before closing and didn’t have ample opportunity to view the 575 acres and 50 buildings that comprise this living history museum. So today, my day off, I took them back to the site and gave them a personal tour. I also secured for them a copy of the historical gardening book that our expert, Marcia Carmichael, published last year. Putting Down Roots: Gardening Insights from Wisconsin’s Early Settler’s includes historical references, tools and plot layouts, produce recipes from each ethnic area, and a lot of other wonderful information and sumptuous photographs of the meticulously researched and maintained gardens. I know this couple is beginning to practice organic gardening, and they are eager to learn all they can. In addition to that, the young man is a carpenter, and was thrilled to see the craftsmanship on the original structures. They were able to get some behind-the-scenes photos and detailed descriptions of the building methods of the 19th century. Each of the interpreters in the various houses were in fine form, communicating information and interest in a very friendly and professional manner. The weather was perfect for our visit, and we skipped the tram rides and walked the entire circuit of trails through the site. It was an altogether delightful tour, and I enjoyed seeing parts of the museum that hadn’t been included in my training schedule. I consider it a privilege to have been invited to host this marvelous young couple. Who were they? My daughter, Rebecca, and her boyfriend Joe.

In the sauna at the Finnish Ketola farm

One of the friendly faces on the tour

Alice Through My Lens

June 21, 2012 by scillagrace

Blue eyes. That was one thing that made her unique among 4 sisters. She had our father’s eyes. She was the shortest among us; I believe I grew to have at least a half an inch over her. But that took a while. Since she was 3 years older, I trailed behind her most of my life. I definitely didn’t mind following in her footsteps. I adored her. She was the sweet sister, the kind one, the one who loved children and animals and had friends. She somehow spanned the gap between being a nerd and being popular. Not that she wasn’t picked on early in grade school. We all were, and she was very sensitive to it. When she was 10, she ran away from a boy who was chasing her down the sidewalk. He caught up to her and managed to grab the back of her coat hood. He yanked her down hard, and she fell backwards onto the sidewalk, hitting her head and fracturing her skull. The boy was sent to military school, and Alice recovered amid cards and gifts and angels surrounding her bed.

She started dating first among us, though she wasn’t the oldest. I wanted to learn how this “boyfriend” business worked, so I watched her very closely, sometimes through the living room drapery while she was on the porch kissing her date goodnight. She modeled how to be affectionate in the midst of a distinctly cerebral family, shy about demonstrating emotion. She gave me my first pet name: Golden Girl or Goldie, and then the one that stuck in my family, PG or sometimes Peej. By the time I was 16, we were very close friends as well as sisters. She invited me to spend Spring Break with her at college, and enjoyed “showing me off”. She told me that the boys were noticing me and that she’d need to protect me. I was thrilled!

Alice and Mike in Los Gatos, summer 1979

We spent that summer at home together in California. I introduced her to my new boyfriend, who eventually became my husband. She begged our parents to allow me to be her passenger on a road trip back to campus at the end of the summer. She had just bought a car, and although I couldn’t drive, I could keep her company, sing with her along the way, and be her companion. The road trip was a travel adventure flavored with freedom, sisterly love, and the sense of confidence and brand new responsibility. We flopped the first night in a fleabag motel in the same bed. She woke earlier than I and told me as I roused and stretched how sweet I looked cuddling the stuffed bunny my boyfriend had bought me. Then we stayed with her friends in Colorado. Our next day’s journey was to go through the heartland of the country and hopefully, if we made good time, get to Chicago for the night. We never made it.

Nebraska is flat and boring. We’d been driving for 6 hours. I was reclined and dozing when we began to drift off the fast lane, going 80 mph. Alice over-corrected, and we flipped. She had disconnected her shoulder strap, and flopped around, hitting her head on pavement through the open window. Her fragile, gentle head, with two blue eyes. She was dead by the time we came to rest in the ditch.

Life is an experience, a journey of unexpected and unimagined happening, a verb in motion, not a noun. Alice was in motion, at 20, and may be even now…somewhere, in some form. I still taste her sweetness floating near me from time to time.

Three of four sisters, Christmas 1978

I Promised My Mother-in-law

June 18, 2012 by scillagrace

I promised to dedicate a post to my mother-in-law for her birthday, which was the 16th. The last time I saw her alive was on her birthday in the year 2001. She died sometime the following week, alone in her apartment, while we were traveling. That fact is consistent with the mystique I associate with remembering her. I’ll never be certain who she really was, although I have many theories. I have been told that she was a concert pianist as a young woman and that she played for Rachmaninoff when she was 16. I have seen the signed program portrait that he gave her. I did hear her play as an accompanist for our community theater. She was definitely capable, even with arthritis. I wish I had known the passion of her younger years. I saw in her such a mixture of joy and anxiety as a mature woman. She had a playfulness and sense of humor that I found completely amusing, so much more casual than my own mother’s. She was a grade school teacher with the ability to relate to people in a very natural way. She was sentimental about cats and dogs and friendship and children. As I learned more about her relationship with her mother, though, a very painful history emerged, steeped in shame and punishment. I’m sure that was the root of the depression that lingered throughout her life. She carried scars and secrets with her to the grave. We only learned about them when her sister-in-law spoke up after the funeral. I imagine, though, that she would have liked to allow the sunniest parts of her personality to shine through unclouded. It was her ability to laugh in the face of fear that I illustrated at her memorial service when I told this story:

In June of 1992, she came out to visit us from California. We had only been living in Illinois since August, and Jim had been through an emergency cardiac procedure that January. She came out eager to see him recovering and to bask in the hugs of her four grandchildren. He had a scheduled check-up during her stay, and learned that his arteries were even more clogged than in January. He was advised to undergo double bypass surgery as soon as possible. He was 31. She decided to extend her stay indefinitely and see what happened next. Her anxiety was tremendous, and so was mine. Her sense of humor, however, surfaced much more readily. It was her coping strategy, and it matched his perfectly. The day of the surgery was stormy and dangerous. A tornado touched down in the vicinity of the hospital and cut out power just as he was coming out of surgery and off the breathing machine. A frantic nurse grabbed a mouth tube and bag to squeeze air into his lungs. Marni and I were shaking all over and clutching hands as we watched. Moments later, the generators kicked in and a calmer air prevailed. Jim was breathing unassisted, and he was motioning me to come closer to tell me something. I leaned in to hear him say in a hoarse whisper, “They found out what was wrong with my heart.” “Yes, dear…” “When they opened me up, they found this!” His hand moved under the bedsheets by his side. I looked down and discovered that he was clutching the broken figure off of one of his bowling trophies. “The Bowler” was a running gag we had started the first year of our marriage. He surfaced in Christmas stockings, random drawers, and even in the bouquet of roses Jim brought onstage after my senior voice recital. How in the world did Jim manage to stage another practical joke on the day of his heart surgery?!! Well, he had an accomplice, of course. His mother, who smiled mildly and innocently at the end of the bed while I looked around in utter amazement. Then we all tried to keep from laughing too hard, only because it was so painful for Jim when he tried to join in.

Recovering from heart surgery, smiles intact.

So, whatever troubles lay at the core of my mother-in-law’s psyche, I appreciate that she had the desire to live happily and tried to do that as much as possible. She truly loved her children and grandchildren and enjoyed so many pleasures with them. She shared what joy she found with a lot of kids during her lifetime as a teacher, and I’m sure many are grateful and remember her to this day.

My Favorite Fathers

June 17, 2012 by scillagrace

The obvious blog subject of the day here in the U.S. of A. is Father’s Day. I have two stellar examples of fathers prominent in my thoughts and conspicuously absent in the flesh. My husband, the father of my four children, died in 2008. My father, who had 5 children, died in 2010. What they have in common is that they both felt woefully disappointed by their own fathers (at one time) and were determined to do better. I’m glad to say that my husband had the chance to improve his relationship with his dad over the years, whereas my father did not. They both had an internal sense of the kind of father they wanted to be, and were clear in their values. They were incredibly dependable, stable providers of basic things, although in slightly different mixtures. My husband was far more of a “warm fuzzy”, emotional Teddy Bear. My father provided more structure and logic. I’ve come to realize that these are not opposite qualities in parenting, they are important components. There are as many ways of concocting a life-giving balance as there are fathers.

My favorite memories of my dad contain literary and educational aspects: his voice reading aloud from story books, the ballet and opera and museum tickets he treated us to regularly, the vacations and nature walks we went on. My favorite memories of my husband as a father are visceral and physical: how he held them, laughed with them, cried with them, sang to them, praised them and worried over them. When a man is giving the best he has to his children, it’s a beautiful thing. Well worth celebrating, whatever flavor it comes in.

You gotta give Dad a tie on Father’s Day…

(Okay, photographers, clearly the slides taken by my father’s Leica in the 1970s came out better than the prints from my Canon AE-1 that I scanned into a dusty screen. My brother-in-law converted the slides to digital images somehow; I love how sharp they are!)

This Space Reserved

June 16, 2012 by scillagrace

Today’s date is reserved for a blog about my mother-in-law, who was born on this day. However, I just don’t have time to do Marni justice, since I didn’t get home from work until 6:30, made dinner, walked to the market and am now eagerly anticipating the arrival of my oldest daughter and her First Mate for a sleepover visit and Sunday breakfast, after which I go back to work until 6pm again. I apologize for the disappointment, but promise to do my best to honor her at a later time. Here’s a teaser about this beloved person: she was a concert pianist. She played for Rachmaninoff when she was 16. Yeah. And as a grandma, she was a computer game geek. You’re gonna love her.

Jim, his mom, and Ach du Wee Bear.

Friday Night Dancing

June 15, 2012 by scillagrace

After the living history museum closes and I’m finished my work for the day as an interpreter in St. Peter’s Church, I’m changing out of my corset and bustle and into modern day country dancing togs! There’s a barn dance tonight in the octagonal barn. Square dancing is something that I’ve enjoyed since grade school when Mr. Maghita, the gym teacher, would call out the squares and teach us to promenade, doe-see-doe, and allemande left with our classmates. I didn’t even mind the boy cooties. Even better, though, was the Girl Scout square dances when I got to dance with my father. Which reminds me of a funny story….

On my 15th birthday, my older sister Sarah and I were staying with my father at the historic Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. We had just delivered my sister Alice to the University of Colorado, Fort Collins and were heading back to California. As we checked in, I noticed a sign in the lobby advertising that there would be square dancing on the patio that evening. It sounded like a perfect way to celebrate my birthday, so after dinner, we made our way out to the terrace. I noticed that there were a lot of people dressed in square dancing outfits – ladies in ruffled skirts that stuck straight out, gents with string ties and cowboy boots. I lamented the fact that I hadn’t really packed for this occasion. I also wondered why all these people had pinned on name tags with the same logo. As the music started, people started squaring up, and my father promised me the first dance and asked my sister to wait her turn (since it was MY birthday). When all the squares were completed, I spotted a rather disgruntled couple in costume sitting on the sidelines. The caller and the dance started up, and the other couples in our square, in professional regalia, started ushering and dragging my father and I around to the dance steps being announced. Finally, I started putting all these clues together and realized, to my complete teenaged humiliation and embarrassment, that my father and I had just crashed a Square Dancing Performance!! I had always thought of square dancing as a teach-as-you-go, anyone-can-play kind of thing. It never occurred to me that the hotel guests were supposed to be simply spectators! My sister was so happy that it wasn’t her birthday, allowing her to be spared this special treatment. Ah well, Daddy. It makes up for there not being enough room for us to dance together at my wedding reception in the parish hall of the church 6 years later.

So tonight, Steve & I are dancing. I’m pre-posting this because I intend to get home from Old World Wisconsin all hot and tired and in need of a shower and sleep. Enjoy your Friday night, friends! I hope you DANCE!!!

P.S. Becca – you know this reminds me of you!

I Love My Mom

June 4, 2012 by scillagrace

My mother makes a very satisfactory leader of my Fan Club. She is, undoubtedly, First Fan, as many mothers are. The hallmark of her grace is in the way she embodies this position, not simply as a role, but as a genuine expression. I never get the feeling that she encourages me out of obligation. I believe she really likes me. What a stroke of good fortune!

This morning I got an e-mail from her titled “catching up on the blogs”. I felt her heart bubbling over like she had just emerged from an afternoon reading a favorite novel. She had associations, appreciations, memories, connections to share, like her synapses were fireworks going off. From a reader to a writer, this has got to be the highest praise. She started off by remarking, in all caps, that there has to be a book in this somewhere and that she wants an autographed first edition. Aw, Mom!

My mom is not a literary push over. She has a degree in English from Radcliffe (now coed with Harvard). She devours books regularly and always has. Her typical posture these days is sitting in her high-backed rocker with knitting in hand, book strapped in on her reading stand, mind and fingers flying. She used to hide away in her bedroom with a bag of snacks and emerge an hour or so later with renewed energy to tackle her household obligations, sporting a kind of secret glow. Get her talking about one of her recent historical sagas, and she will enthusiastically engage for hours! I love seeing her pull thoughts that have been carefully laid aside like unmatched socks and bundle them together with a flourish of discovery and pride.

She recently told me that her doctor mentioned her good prospects for living another 20 years. That would make her 97; she wasn’t sure she’d want to live that long. But think of all the books you could still read! Or that could be read to you, if the cataracts cause the eyes to fail. I can still hear my father’s voice reading to her behind the bedroom door. His partnership to her intellectually was so rich, until Alzheimer’s whittled his brain away. I wonder if she feels the same phantom guilt I have in enjoying a healthy body and a sound mind after our husbands’ deaths. Well, I suppose consciousness is a responsibility to approach with reverence. We live, we feel, we think, we read, we make connections still. May we both bring life and light to the world like fireworks, Mom, as long as we are able.

Mom (photo credit: DKK)

Memorial Day

May 28, 2012 by scillagrace

Steve and I are headed for adventure again today, an opportunity to make more memories! This time, we have to remember to feed Steve before he gets all ornery. This was taken on Friday when we finally found a restaurant. Food was ordered, but hadn’t arrived at table when I caught his listless expression.

Keeping family members in mind today: Alice, Jim, and Dad; and Steve’s Dad, too. Blue skies and wispy clouds remind me of the great unknown adventure they are having today.