Category Archives: family

A Town Girl on a Dairy Farm

I’m from a town—a suburbia in the San Francisco Bay Area–a place that is less densely populated than a city and bigger than a village.  My town has clean streets lined with sycamore and crepe myrtle trees, houses with front and back yards, barbecues, swimming pools, cabanas, patio sets, and walking mail carriers.  People walk their poodles and Labrador retrievers on neighborhood hiking paths and buy popsicles from the singing ice cream truck that meanders the streets on summer days. 

I own a tidy little home in my town.  Yards with manicured hedges, carefully pruned flower beds, edged lawns.  Clean and tidy. I sweep under my garbage cans each week when I take them out for collection.  My children are grown and have homes of their own, so my house is immaculate too.  I spray my shower down after each use.  I wipe the stove after each meal, and I own five vacuum cleaners, one for each type of vacuuming task.  You get the picture.  I’m a clean freak. 

I decided to visit my relatives in the country this last month.  They live on farms all around the city of Winona, Minnesota, in both Minnesota and Wisconsin. I also am lactose intolerant, and, when I was born, my parents bought a goat to feed me.  My mother grew up in Wisconsin, a state popular for milk and cheese.  Her whole life, she drank three tall glasses of cow’s milk a day, one at every meal.

I wasn’t one of those town kids that thought milk originated in the refrigerator case at the grocery store.  My mother told me where it came from.   After all, she grew up on a farm.  I’m smart enough to know that most milk at the grocery store comes from cows, not goats, almonds, coconut, or oats.  Sorry vegans.

When I visited my relatives in Minnesota and Wisconsin this month, my cousin Scott–a handsome man with a ready smile, who owns a 600-cow dairy farm near Altura, Minnesota, invited a bunch of us to visit his farm.  I didn’t mention to him that I was lactose intolerant since I didn’t want to feel ostracized.  I was confident, however, that his cows would like me just fine.  Really appreciate me, in fact. 

We got to the farm before Scott did, and his workers told us to wait outside.  As we walked through a barn full of teenage cows—some with the cutest faces, we found some pitchforks and posed for a picture like Grant Wood’s 1930 American Gothic painting, except both my husband Bob and I held a pitchfork since we believe in equality.  In Grant’s painting, the farmer’s daughter didn’t have a pitchfork in her hand.  I hate to think what Scott’s pitchforks were actually used for and what debris was on the handles that I touched, but I wasn’t going to pass up a great opportunity for a memorable photograph.

I was wearing a clean T-shirt and skort and a pair of running shoes, knowing that we’d be traipsing around in cow emissions of all kinds.  When Scott arrived, I gave him a cousin hug.  He recoiled away from me, and when I let go, I noticed that his Tshirt was full of dirt stains.  He didn’t want to get me all dirty, apparently.  He had already been at work on the farm the whole morning, and had had meetings with lots of females (cows) who never put on a suit or blouse.  That was a town-girl blunder.  I surreptitiously looked down at my T-shirt and skort to see if I was still presentable. 

I’m not at all a dumb person, but, living in a town, I spend more time thinking about the best hiking trails and restaurants than I do about the biology of animals.  This visit brought my knowledge of cows out of the back room of my brain into my frontal cortex.  I appreciated, too, that Scott was as informative as an agricultural professor at the University of California, Davis where they offer classes in dairy farming. 

The first thing people must understand about milking cows is that a cow has to have a baby before it produces milk; therefore, the process of milking cows takes patience and great skill.  Because the cows have to be impregnated, go through about a 280-day pregnancy, give birth, and then produce milk, a dairy farm is comprised of a fertilization lab, pregnancy dorm, maternity ward, nursery, elementary school, high school, milking station, and milk refrigeration tank. 

There’s a lot to learn about a cow’s life.  About half of the calves that are born are female and the rest are male.  I know this seems obvious, but Scott doesn’t need all those males so this statistic is unfortunate; he keeps a few males for breeding but sells off the rest to beef processing facilities.  What happens there is for another blog post, likely not written by me. 

At the back of his property, Scott raises his calves in individual pens, each one living in a domed shelter with food and water.  When the calves get bigger, they live in a barn—organized like a college dormitory—which has an insulated roof and fans that blow constant breezes through the building to keep the cows cool.  The cows are encouraged to spend as much time in the field as they want. I was intrigued that they actually had a choice in this matter; Scott talked about them like they were his valued students.  Their rooms were also much cleaner than most college dorm rooms I’ve visited. 

Pregnant cows also live in a barn dormitory.  A long building that holds several dozens of cows, organized into three rows that run the length of the barn, each row is divided into individual pens filled with a soft bed of sand.  The two outside rows are where the cows stay when they’re inside.  They can either stand up or lay down in the soft sand.  They face out, having access to fresh water and hay.  Their backsides face into the center row through which a stream of water flows, sweeping up the cow manure and any sand that is soiled and discarded by the cow’s movement. 

The dirty water, filled with excrement and sand is processed through a filtering system near some manure holding reservoirs.  The clean water gets recycled back into the barn stream, and the excrements are deposited into the holding reservoir where it is treated and used for fertilizer to grow alfalfa or corn.  A well-thought-out system that truly impressed this town-girl.

So many problems can occur with milking cows.  They can get sick, dehydrated, infected, or overheated—all of these situations affecting their ability to produce high-quality milk.  We saw calves that had spikes put through their noses to prevent them from milking on other cows.  We learned that new babies were removed from their mothers so they wouldn’t milk, and they were given milk that was tested to ensure good health.   We witnessed testing tools, pages of testing data and production statistics.

In the milking shed, the cows are milked twice a day.  They are led into the stalls and encouraged to turn around so that the workers have access to their relevant body parts–teats.  Some milking sheds, Scott informed us, have turnstiles that turn the cows into the right position.  Scott doesn’t have those.  His milk hands push the cows into the correct position, clean each cow’s teats and attach the milking tubes which automatically milk the cows for an average of 20 minutes.  When the milk hand punches the cow’s serial number into the machine on her stall, the machine measures her milk output and adds it to the farm’s data system.  See why math classes are so important.  Everyone uses math. 

Cows are insanely fruitful.  One cow produces about 60 pounds of milk a day—that’s 90 glasses a day for people like my mother.  The milk travels through pipes into a stainless-steel cooling tank that looks a lot like the stainless-steel wine tanks in Napa, California that hold sauvignon blanc or chardonnay.  These dairy tanks are expensive—one can cost from $100,000-$140,000.  What struck me was that the purpose of the tank was not just to store the milk, but to also cool it.  The milk is warm when it comes out of the cow.  Again, I might have figured this out on my own, but, secretly, I was surprised to hear about it. 

I asked Scott whether his farm was considered a small, medium, or large dairy.  “It depends on who you ask,” he replied. “I’m only one of three dairy farms left in the immediate area.  Smaller farms are disappearing due to the rising costs of operation.”

Scott now has a female manager at his dairy.  I can’t remember her name, but let’s call her Laci.  “Laci likes to be in charge,” said Scott. “She also fell in love with my one-in-a-million cow hand, married him and now has a child.”  Scott’s calls this cow hand one-in-a-million because of his excellent work ethic.  Apparently, One-in-a-million is also supremely savvy; he married his boss.

By the time we had toured the whole process, my T-shirt and skort reeked of cow sweat, dust, and hay and the treads on my running shoes were caked with a smelly, nefarious, brown sludge.  I found myself holding my arms away from my body in a desperate attempt to feel cleaner.

Scott invited us into his office where his hound was waiting.  When we sat down, the dog plunked his muddy paws onto my lap and slobbered my skort with drool. First, I looked down in horror, but, then, I quickly composed myself and left the drool alone, trying very hard to adapt my cleanliness obsession into an acceptance of the natural dairy farm environment.

Scott opened his little refrigerator and offered us frozen chocolate treats and push-up ice cream popsicles.  They were certainly welcome after a hot tour of his cow quarters.  I hadn’t had a push-up popsicle for ages, and I tried hard not to drive the whole piece of ice cream out of the tube and onto the floor as I struggled with it. 

Turns out, Scott gave the last part of his popsicle to the hound who licked it up joyfully on the floor.  This helped me relax a little, and when I had just a little of my popsicle left, I shared the rest with Scott’s hound too.  This was a remarkable development, you see, because a town-girl would have never put her popsicle down on the floor for a dog to roll around and lick up. 

That day, on Scott’s dairy farm, I proved that even town-girls can leave the town behind and have a little fun in the country.

Cousins in Every Direction

Way back in the 1860’s, my great-great-grandfather Ignatius immigrated to Wisconsin with his four brothers.  They all had families.  My great-grandfather Leon had seven siblings.  Most of them had families.  My grandfather Leon had six siblings; all of them, except for his brother Phillip who became a priest, had families.  His brother Ed had fourteen children.  His brother George had nine offspring.  Many farmers had large families so they could use their children to provide free labor on the family farm. 

My father had four siblings, and they had children.  My father had ten children.  His brother David had ten children.  And between his siblings Gerald, Mary and Daniel, there were eleven more descendants.  Now those descendants have children and so do their offspring. 

Then, there is the maternal side of my family.  Two families dominate this line of my heritage: the Konkels and the Jereczeks, families who immigrated to the Pine Creek area of Wisconsin in the 1800’s as well.  I’m still working out the threads of my great-great-grandparents, but I’m clear about the progeny of my Great-grandpa John Jereczek and his wife Pelagia Konkel.  They had eight farm laborers—excuse me, eight children.  One of them was my grandfather August.  He married Florence Gibbons, a woman from a large Irish family that immigrated to the area during the Irish Potato Famine.  Everyone in every generation had large families. 

Truly a cousin conundrum.  I have first cousins, second cousins, thirds, fourths, cousins-removed in a lot of different ways, over-the-hill-cousins, and near-and-far cousins. Between the farming community of Altura, Minnesota—throughout Winona—and into the farming communities of Dodge and Pine Creek, Wisconsin, I am in danger of running into one of my cousins at any time in any place—as the owner of a dairy farm, at church, in a restaurant, at a grocery store, or on a hike in the state park which used to belong to my great-grand-father Leon. If you count the relatives who live outside of this area—in Minneapolis, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and California, my cousin count is exponential.

What really is a cousin? I did a little research and found a definition.  The website Who Are You Made Of? defines a cousin as “anyone who shares a common ancestor with you and is not a direct descendant of you or your siblings, a direct ancestor, or a sibling of a direct ancestor.”  This definition certainly proves that I have hundreds of cousins, most of whom I probably will never know since I can’t even keep the names of my great aunts and uncles straight. 

I recently visited the Wisconsin/Minnesota area where my ancestors first landed in America, and I had such a fabulous time with my relatives—mostly cousins—that I became inspired to better understand this voluminous family of mine.  I do understand who my first cousins are.  They are the children of my aunts and uncles.  I have 44 first cousins—the children of my father’s and mother’s siblings.  When I visited a few days ago, I was able to see about 25 of them.  What a fun group they are—laughing, joking, telling stories, recalling memories, and thinking of the next fun social opportunity. 

My children’s names are Alex and Rachael.  Since I have nine brothers and sisters who have produced a total of eighteen children amongst them, my children have eighteen first cousins just from my side of the family, two from their dad’s side. 

The thing is, my first cousins now have children, like I do.  With a little more research, I found out that my cousins’ children are my first cousins-once removed.  They are also the second cousins of my children.  This means that all of the children of my 44 first cousins—I can’t even begin to tabulate this number—are Alex and Rachael’s second cousins. 

One day on my visit, I went to the Bronk Nursery which is owned by the son of my Great-uncle Ed—one of Ed’s fourteen children–Donald.  Later that night, Donald had a beer with me and some of my first cousins at Wellington’s Pub and Grill in Winona.  We sat outside while the sun set, and when the darkness descended, the mosquitoes started to feed on us with a relentless enthusiasm.  Since Donald is my father’s first cousin, I believe he is my first-cousin-once-removed. 

My brother Ron and sister Margaret were on this visit with me.  On Sunday, they went to church in Lewiston, Minnesota to meet Greg, the son of our Great-uncle George.  Since Greg is my father’s first cousin, Greg is also our first-cousin-once-removed.  Oh boy.

Another time when I visited Winona, I went to a restaurant with some of my first cousins, and the waitress turned out to be the daughter of my Great-aunt Agnes, who preferred to be called Florence.  The waitress’s name was Paula Doerr.  She was also my father’s first cousin, which also made her my first-cousin-once-removed. 

This visit, I was looking for a restaurant for another dinner and I found a bar owned by the Gibbons family.  This name shows up in my mother’s heritage line. I don’t know whether these bar owners are first-cousins-once-removed or even worse.  After visiting several cemeteries where I was related to an incredible number of inhabitants, I was becoming overwhelmed by all the relationship possibilities. 

Think about all the tombstones connected to me.  In the Sacred Heart Cemetery in Pine Creek, there are 27 Jereczeks and at least 7 Bronk headstones.  There are dozens of Konkels, Gibbons and Broms, too, and they are all related to me.  My Great-grandfather Leon and more Bronks and Broms are buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery which turned out to be only half a mile from my hotel.  My Grandfather Leon and Grandmother Lillian are buried in Fremont Cemetery–a pastoral place in the country with their son Daniel who died when he was only 29.  I even have a great-great-great grandmother who is buried under Mankato Avenue in Winona, Minnesota.  When they laid out the streets for the City of Winona, they never moved her body. Her husband is likely buried nearby since we don’t know where he is.

I didn’t meet any of my second, third, or fourth cousins that I know of, but I know they’re walking around the Minnesota and Wisconsin dells somewhere.  My research revealed that I share DNA with all of these cousins, and that anyone beyond a third cousin is considered a distant cousin. 

I’m married, but if I was single, I could marry my third cousin.  Queen Elizabeth II married Price Phillip who was her third cousin, both descendants of Queen Victoria. 

It’s comforting to know that I come from such an ample family.  I am close to many of my first cousins, and even if I don’t see them on a day-to-day basis, when we do see each other, we take up just where we left off the last time we spoke.  We support each other through both happy and sad family occasions: weddings, births, graduations, and deaths.  My life would feel so much lonelier without them.  Luckily, cousin love doesn’t have any DNA restrictions. 

A Story about Straw Pile Hill

Between Stockton Valley and the west side of the Mississippi near Winona, Minnesota is a ridge covered with white pine trees.  Once upon a time, my great grandfather, Leon Ambrose Bronk Sr., bought land on this ridge to grow alfalfa and corn.  Throughout the years, he bought more adjoining farms until his land holdings reached 761 acres. 

On June 16, 2022, when I was visiting, two of my cousins arranged for a group of family members to ride up into the park in 4-wheel drive trucks so that my 92-year-old uncle could see the land where he spent the first 14 years of his childhood. 

Great-grandfather Leon bought this property in the 1920’s and lived in a white wooden house at the bottom of the ridge where he planted a family garden and built a barn for cattle and horses.  Twenty years ago, I remember walking through the ruins of that house.  When he bought some farms at the top of the ridge, Leon Sr. let his oldest son Leon Jr. and his family live in one of the farm houses up there.  Leon Jr.’s first son, Paul—my father, was born in 1929 and his second son, David, was born in 1931.  David is the father of ten of my closest cousins.  Twenty years ago, we found a rusted sled that Paul and David used to travel down the snowy slopes of the ridge when they were little. 

In 1969 when he was 81-years-old, Leon Sr. sold the land to the State of Minnesota, and it became part of the Richard J. Dorer Memorial Hardwood State Forest.  Since much of the property rises 500 feet above the surrounding valleys, it provides hikers and bikers tremendous scenic views of the land and water below.  The State of Minnesota planted thousands of white pine trees in rows, a forest that now covers up any evidence of houses, gardens, and alfalfa fields.

On this day, cousins Diane and Bill drove the trucks into the park and up the ridge under the supervision of a park volunteer named Mark.  Mark is an avid off-road bicyclist, and he started to maintain the 6.5 miles of hiking trails in this park by using his electric weed-whacker to cut the weeds. One day when he was working, he met a state park ranger, and he explained how he biked up the ridge with his whacking machine to keep the trails open.  He also wished that the gate was open so he could use his four-wheeler jeep to bring his mower up; because the weeks grew so fast, the mower would do a better job in a shorter amount of time.  The ranger gave Mark a key to the gate and unlimited access to the park.

When my cousin Diane wanted to arrange a family drive, she called Mark to get the State’s permission to drive trucks through the gate and up to the top of the ridge.  He helped her out because he wanted to meet the oldest living Bronk relative, my Uncle David, who had actually once lived on the property.

Mark was excited to hear stories about the property’s history.  The park is named the Bronk Unit Plowline Trail referring to the line where the Bronks stopped plowing their fields.  Uncle David revealed that one ridge is known as Cherry Hill, probably due to the cherry trees growing there.  Another ridge is known as Straw Pile Hill.  That’s where, when he was a mere boy, David dumped the hay that he harvested from the fields, and Paul would pick it up and haul it off to be sold.  David had to plow the fields and collect the hay with a horse-drawn contraption.  Paul got to drive the tractor since he was older. 

My dad used to say that “You can take a man away from the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the man.”  All his life, my father was an excellent farmer.  When I was born, my family rented a two-acre farm in Fair Oaks, California.  I was allergic to cow’s milk, so my parents bought a goat and gave me its milk.  We had chickens, bunnies, and geese.  My mother made butter and ice cream by hand. 

Later, when we moved to a smaller property, my dad raised sheep.  One sheep was our favorite, and we named him Jerimiah.  One day when we got home from school, we couldn’t find him.  At dinner, we asked my parents where he was.  “He’s on your plate!” said my dad with a grin. 

David, too, farmed his whole life.  He bought a farm that had been owned by my Great-Great Grandpa Ignatius Bronk, who immigrated to the area from Gostomie, Poland and bought this farm in 1886.  When Ignatius died in 1896, his son Theodore took over the farm; Theodore was the older brother of my Great-Grandfather Leon Sr.  Today, David lives on the farm with his wife Linda and a herd of cows that his son, Bill, manages for him.  While I was visiting, about twenty-five of us cousins, first-cousins-once-removed, second cousins, and Uncle David and Aunt Linda had a picnic on a hot and humid 100-degree day. To stay cool, we sat under the spreading branches of a white oak tree and slapped the gnats that buzzed around our faces.

While we walked around the top of the ridge on Great-Grandpa’s property, we found wild carrots and asparagus—souvenirs from the gardens that once fed the Bronk families.  Hanging high above a hiking trail, we found a scarecrow with a Jack-o-lantern head, plaid shirt, and farmer pants.  Mark told us that a solar light made the head light up at night, creating an unexpected scary encounter.  We watched big, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies settle on wild flowers and examined tiny pine cones that fell from the white pine trees.  The floor of the forest was covered in a thick matting of dead pine needles, hiding the remnants of our relatives’ lives. 

What occurred to me that day was that all of the farmers who worked on my great-grandfather’s land had been removed from it: my great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father, and my uncle.  Yet, there was evidence all around the area and in places far away, like California, that these people and their descendants were still farming.  David’s son Bill will one day take over David’s historic farm.  My brother, Donald, can grow any vegetable or flower in his patch of garden in California.  I have a green thumb when it comes to growing flowers. Apparently, you can’t take the farm out of a farming family. 

Limericks for Grandma

“Play a game with me, Grandma,” said Rachel.

“No, Rachel, I don’t feel like playing now,” said Grandma. “I miss Grandpa too much to play anything.”

Rachel missed Grandpa too. She missed sitting in front of the fireplace and listening to those
funny poems of his. What had he called them? Limericks, that’s right.

Rachel had started writing her own limericks too, just like Grandpa. It was fun to think of rhyming words and funny phrases.

Before he died, Grandpa had given Rachel his typewriter. If you want to write really funny
limericks, he said, use my typewriter. Some of my funniest limericks were punched out with these
keys. Rachel knew she would keep that old typewriter forever. It made her smile to see it on her desk. Why wasn’t Grandma happy to be surrounded by Grandpa’s things?

She had an idea. That night, she sat in front of Grandpa’s typewriter. T-h-e-r-e she typed.
Rachel noticed the “r” was lighter than the rest of the letters. She typed a limerick like one of
Grandpa’s, then folded her poem into an envelope. The next morning, she slipped it into Grandma’s
mailbox.

“Hi, Grandma,” said Rachel that afternoon after school.

“Look what I got today,” said Grandma. “A limerick. Like those funny poems Grandpa used to write. “This one is good too.” Grandma read the poem out loud:
There once was a girl named Dolly
Who felt so melancholy
She went for a walk
To the end of the block
And when she returned, she felt jolly.

“Why would anyone send you a limerick, Grandma?” asked Rachel, smiling.
“I don’t know. There’s no name on the page. Whoever it is must know Grandpa used to write limericks. Maybe this poet wants to help me remember him.”

“Let’s go for a walk too, Grandma. We can talk about Grandpa.”

“O.K.,” said Grandma. She rose slowly from her rocking chair. Rachel held her arm as they
descended the stairs and walked down the street. When they reached Rachel’s house, they turned and walked back.

“I feel better,” said Grandma as she sat down, but she didn’t look happy.

That night, Rachel typed out another limerick on Grandpa’s typewriter. Grandma found it in her mailbox and read it out loud to Rachel the next afternoon:
There once was a woman named Billy,
Who when she felt sad, she got silly,
She’d hop to her feet,
Dance a jig in the street,
“Til she felt just as fine as a filly.

“This poet sure knows how to rhyme,” said Grandma. “I wish Grandpa had met him.”
“Grandpa would act out his limericks,” said Rachel. “If he wrote this one, he’d have danced a jig for us.” Rachael jumped up in front of Grandma. She put her hands on her hips, twisted her
waist, kicked out her feet and turned around. She counted a beat. She stomped her feet. She turned and turned until she got dizzy and fell on the floor at Grandma’s feet. When she looked up,
Grandma’s foot was tapping on the floor. A slight smile brightened her face.

“There’s a little bit of Grandpa in you,” she said.

That night, Rachel typed out a third limerick. She tried even harder this time to make it funny. She wanted to hear Grandma laugh. She wanted so much for her to be happy again.

“I received another limerick from my secret poet, Rachel. I didn’t open it up yet. I wanted
you to hear it with me:”
There once was a woman named Jackie,
Who lived in a house that was tacky,
So she painted her plants,
And the bees and the ants,
“Til her garden became just as wacky.

Grandma leaned back in her rocker, raised her eyes to the roof and began to giggle. At first the giggle came from deep in her throat but as it rose higher, it grew into a laugh. She looked
straight at Rachel, put her wrinkled hands on both sides of her cheeks and heckled for a good long five minutes.

“Isn’t that funny,” she said, reaching for Rachel to come to her. She gave Rachel a big hug,
and laughed into her shoulder. “I have some bulbs in the garden shed. Help me plant them this
afternoon, will you?”

“Oh, yes, Grandma,” said Rachel. They planted tulips on each side on the stairs so Grandma
would see them from the porch when they bloomed.

Rachel was so tired that night that she forgot to write a limerick for Grandma. She woke up
late the next morning and rushed to get to school on time. When she got to Grandma’s house after school, there was a note on her rocking chair on the front porch:
I’m visiting your mom at your house today. Meet me there.
Love, Grandma

Rachel raced home. When she reached the mailbox, she noticed a letter stuck to its side with her name typed on the envelope. The “R” was lighter than the rest of the letters. “Mmmm,” she said. She opened the paper and began to read:
Most Grandkids think Grandpas are funny,
And Grandmas are just sweet as honey,
But I’m funny too,
Quite as funny as you.
Thanks for making my afternoons sunny.

Rachel ran through the front gate, up the path to the porch, skipped up the stairs, dashed to the screen door, opened it and yelled, “Oh, Grandma! How’d you know?”

A Tule Fog Morning

When I walked outside to get the newspaper this morning, tule fog blanketed my world. The blades of grass chilled my slippered feet, and the air bathed my face in cold breath. The street lamps glowed like steaming, yellow jewels. Houses wore shrouds of gauze, and both ends of the street disappeared into a thick, milky blanket.

I grew up in Sacramento where tule fog covers the neighborhoods, hills, and American River from November to early March. When the humidity is high and the nights cool down fast, the condensation lifts from the ground like a thick mist, as white as a clean sheet.

I paused in the front of my house to enjoy the mystical sensation. I couldn’t see any details past about a hundred feet, and the whole morning was clothed in mystery. My heart skipped a couple beats at the excitement of remembering long bicycle rides in the tule fog, not knowing whether I’d be cycling head-on into a mailbox or a person walking on the street. I rode slowly, but deliberately, tempting the fog to clear just in time to save my life from a disaster.

While I was standing outside this morning, my almost bare feet chilling, my arms cupped around my torso, holding my robe together, I felt the thrill of the mystery of not knowing what the fog was hiding.

Mystery is an exciting part of life. We never know what will happen the next day, the next year, or the next decade, even if we plan conspicuously. Life has a way of retaining a sense of mystery.

I thought back to the day when I was nine-years-old, writing my first poem. When I was a teenager and I got up early in the morning to walk in the dew-filled yard just so I could write a poem about how it looked. About when I won the Cadbury’s Essay Contest before I ever knew that writing would become my major passion. Mystery.

I thought back to the times when my parents and nine brothers and sisters celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, sitting around a plain, mahogany dining room table. Later, when some of us got married and had kids, the food would be set off to the buffet; we’d line up, say prayers, and then jostle for a seat. Lots of fried chicken, sliced ham, potato salad, broccoli salad, a tray of raw vegetables, ranch dip, fruit salad, pecan pie, trifle, and pop out of the can. Never would I have imagined that these family dinners would create an unbreakable bond between me and my siblings that is even more important now that both of our parents have passed. Mystery.

I thought back to my first college adventure when I majored in accounting. I planned to work in finance my whole career since it was a good field for women at the time. I admired my mother’s sharp ability to manage money, and thought that this major would give me the independence I sought. I did. What I didn’t know was that my love of writing would eventually win out, and I’d go to graduate school to become an English professor. The change was exciting, and I’m sure a lot of the excitement came from studying a completely different topic.

I saw myself in a silk wedding dress walking down the aisle of a church in Sonoma, California toward my first husband. The mystery of not knowing that the marriage would become a disaster allowed me to stay married for nineteen years, long enough to almost get my two beloved children raised and launched, and long enough for me to pick my crippled self off the floor and walk decidedly out the door to a healthier life.

So this morning when I stood in my robe in awe at the impenetrable tule fog, I became astutely aware that my life was still full of mystery, and I felt excited. Will I ever truly become fluent in Spanish? Will I ever get the chance to fly to Argentina to visit my son-in-law’s mother and be able to chat with her?

Will I finish writing my novel? If I finish it, will I publish it? If it’s published, will I visit bookstores to read and sign it?

Will I live to be sixty-five, seventy, eighty, or ninety? If I do, will I be able to write until the very end, or will my health limit my ability to follow my passion.

That’s the thing about mystery and the future. We just don’t know what’s going to happen until it happens. This forces us to focus on the present and helps us do the best we can now so that our future has a chance of imitating our dreams.

The tule fog covered the ground for hours this morning, reminding me to make the best of my day. That’s as far as I really can see.

Wisdom of the Trees: Chapter 4

Chapter 4 – Willow

Friday was the last day of class, and Profesora Casti lead her students to Almagro, the part of the city known for its flower vendors.  First, the group wandered among the flower stalls on Acuňa de Figueroa where baskets of roses filled the air with intense fragrances.  Leonie bent over the bunches to breathe in their perfume, and she took turns saying their names out loud with her classmates.  They chatted with the vendors who told them where they grew their flowers and how they worked from early in the morning until late at night planting seeds, hand-watering, and pruning in order to produce the most beautiful flowers. 

The vendors smiled when they talked about Mother’s Day, weddings, and baptisms for which they sold the most flowers.  Some vendors stayed open 24 hours a day.  The best time to buy flowers—late at night or early in the morning.

Then, the class meandered to Calle Sarmiento where even more vendors had their shops.  One shop was filled with tuberose and jasmine, which filled the shop and the air outside its door with heady perfume.  Inside, the vendor was busy wrapping flower bouquets in cellophane paper for a woman and her two daughters. 

Leonie wandered away from the group to admire the lilies of another vendor.  While she was reaching out to touch a petal, a woman dressed in a green apron came out to greet her. 

“Your lilies are gorgeous,” exclaimed Leonie.

“Thank you.  My grandfather used to sell flowers on the streets of Buenos Aires.  My father sold flowers in the old market in stall 8, and, now, I rent this shop here to continue our family tradition.”

Leonie moved under the shade of the willow tree that grew right in front of the storefront.  “I love flowers,” she said.

“I love flowers, too,” replied the vendor.  “I’m sure I’ll sell flowers until I’m old and frail.”

Leonie paused in thought, running the woman’s response through her mind.  Forever was a long time to do just one thing.  Leonie didn’t know that she would ever find something that she wanted to do for so long.

“So,” Leonie asked, “You don’t ever wish that you could do anything else?”

The woman smoothed down the front of her green apron with hands that were crusted with dirt and chapped from years of working with plants.  “No, I never wish to do anything else,” she finally said.  “I feel that each day in my flower shop is another day where I get to express my creativity, and doing that gives me intense joy.  Besides, I know that I like to be around beautiful things, and what could be more beautiful than a shop full of flowers.”

“You seem so contented,” said Leonie.

“You see this willow tree that’s giving you shade?  A willow tree symbolizes fulfilling wishes of the heart.  It also symbolizes inner vision.  I’m lucky to know what fulfills my life.  That knowledge is my inner wisdom.”

The vendor showed Leonie around her tiny shop, identifying the names of all the flowers and inviting her to smell their fragrances.  Leonie told the vendor that she was about to take a trip to search for her life’s purpose.  As the woman listened to her story, her eyes glistened and a whisper of a smile set upon her lips.

Before Leonie left, she held out a yellow rose.  “This rose symbolizes our new friendship,” she said.  “Friends are one of the most precious treasures of your life.  From now one, you and I are lifelong friends.  I wish you success on your trip and hope that you find your version of life fulfillment. 

That night, just before Leonie went to bed, she sat at her desk to write in her journal.  I know what fulfills me, she wrote.  After setting down her pen, she felt anxious.  But I don’t know what fulfills me, she worried.  I don’t know what I want to do with the rest of my life.  I don’t know what makes me happy day after day after day. 

As she sat, she thought about the vendor in the green apron and how she had found fulfillment.  She remembered how gently the woman had picked up each flower and described its characteristics.  She had moved among her flowers with grace, touching each blossom with respect and admiration; her movements were filled with love. 

Now Leonie knew.  The woman had been a messenger from her own soul to teach her how to find her own purpose.  Love was an integral part of finding fulfillment.  When she found out what she loved, she would find her contentment. 

Wisdom of the Trees: Chapter 2/3

Chapter 2 – Birch

During the last week of class, Profesora Casti took the class on field trips so the international students could experience the culture of Buenos Aires.

On Monday, the class walked to the Manzana de Las Luces.  Profesora Casti explained that this was the Block of Enlightenment and contained some of the oldest buildings in Buenos Aires, including the Baroque church of San Ignacio, a church built by the Jesuits between 1686 and 1722. 

The students listened as their instructor explained how the Jesuits also built a school, museum, and pharmacy on the site, and operated all of them until the Spanish came and suppressed the Jesuits.  Since then, the site has been transformed into a university, cathedral, and Argentina’s first medical college.  Later, the Spanish opened Buenos Aires’ first printing press and orphanage on the site, extending its colorful and diverse history. 

What most fascinated Leonie was the warren of tunnels underneath the street, once used to store ammunition during Argentina’s fight for independence.  The students followed each other single file through the narrow, brick tunnels, stooping their heads low under the arched ceilings.  Here and there, the tunnels stopped, the entryways blocked by dirt and rocks from centuries of neglect. Utility lights lit up the corridors, and the lights created shadows on the walls that walked with them. 

When they came outside again, the sunlight blinded Leonie, and she shielded her eyes with her arm, squinting and squeezing her eyes shut until they became adjusted to the brightness.  The students sat down on stone walls in the courtyard to rest.

Leonie sat next to an older woman who was wearing a straw hat and drinking out of a metal flask.   Beside the woman leaned a walking stick, hewn out of white wood marled with yellow scars.  Leonie had never seen a walking stick so beautiful and unusual.

“Are you wondering about my stick?” the woman asked suddenly.

Leonie looked down at the ground quickly, fluttering her eyelids.  “Yes, I am,” responded Leonie.  “It’s so unusual.  What kind of wood is that?”  She slowly raised her eyes to look at the stick and then noticed the woman’s smile.

“I carved this out of birch wood when I was about your age, a wood that signifies new beginnings.  I can see that you are about to start a long journey, one that will give you a new beginning and help you find out your life’s purpose.”

Leonie opened her eyes wide and stared into the woman’s face.  “How did you know that I was going on a journey?  How did you know I was searching for my purpose in life?”

“I am an old soul, and old souls can read energy.  From your energy, I can see that you have suffered a great loss, but this loss will help you gain wisdom and strength, and, in the end, the loss will become your constant companion.”

“My mother died, and I miss her terribly.”  Leonie sank onto the rock perch, remembering the last time she saw her mother’s face.  Her mother had been beautiful, even when she suffered from the cancer.  Her face always glowed with an even sunny complexion, and her smile lit up her eyes like emeralds under a jeweler’s lamp light. 

“The first thing you need to do is to write down your affirmations,” said the old woman, rustling her wide skirts as she turned more to face Leonie.  “Whatever you wish to have, write it down like your already have it.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”  Leonie scratched the back of her head.

“An affirmation is a positive assertion that claims something is true.  When you put forth a personal affirmation, all of creation conspires to help you attain it.” 

“That sounds very interesting,” said Leonie, “but my father wants me to go home right after I finish this Spanish class.  I keep thinking I should stay here longer so I can find out what to do with the rest of my life.”

“You must learn how to believe in yourself and not to rely on the opinions of anyone else.  Your father cares for you, but your life is not his.  You must follow your own heart, or you will feel like you are not living.”  The woman stuck one of her tanned hands into the folds of her skirt and took out a small book, about the size of Leonie’s cell phone. 

“This is a gift from me.  Inside this journal are blank pages.  Today, start writing down your affirmations, and then your life and fulfillment will begin.”  The woman smiled at Leonie just as the sun poked through the branches of an oak tree.  Leonie had to close her eyes it was so bright, and when she opened them, the woman with the birch walking stick was gone.

That night, Leonie sat up in bed, the journal opened before her, a pen in her hand.  She wrote—I want to make a difference.  No, that wasn’t right.  The old woman had told her to write as if what she wanted was already true.  She put a line through the sentence and tried again—I am making a difference, she wrote.

Pressing the journal to her chest, she leaned back to see if she felt better.  No.  She still felt like she hadn’t a clue of what to do or how she could contribute to the world. 

Contribute—a good word, she thought.  She wrote another sentence underneath the first one—I am contributing something positive to the world.  Now she felt a little better.  The way she would make a difference would be by contributing something positive.  She didn’t know what that was yet, but she was determined to find out. 

Leonie placed the journal and pen on her nightstand, turned out the lamp, laid her head on her pillow, and fell asleep with a feint smile on her face.

Chapter 3 – Myrtle

On Wednesday, Profesora Casti took the class to Iglesia de Santa Felicitas on Calle Isabel la Catolica in the Barracas District.  The students learned that this church was built in the early nineteenth century in honor of Felicia Antonia Guadalupe Guerrero, considered to be the most beautiful woman in Buenos Aires.  Her husband died from yellow fever, leaving her a widow.  Later, she was killed by her rejected suitor, Enrique Ocampo. 

Leonie walked through the eclectic gothic interior of the church, gazing into the faces of the marble statues of Felicitas and her son and husband.   Around the perimeter of the church, she paused in front of the stained-glass windows, looking into the faces of the saints and admiring the colors of the roses.  She was so intrigued by how the natural light lit up the panes of glass that she didn’t see the young girl until she bumped into her.

“I’m sorry, said Leonie.  I didn’t see you there.  I was so interested in these beautiful windows.”

The girl didn’t respond.  She seemed lost in thought and sad.

“Are you o.k.?” asked Leonie.  She gently touched the girl on her wrist, which she noticed was tied with a long, red ribbon.

The girl was about the same age as Leonie.  She had long brown hair, big brown eyes, full lashes, and a mouth that was wide and voluptuous.  Leonie thought she was beautiful. 

The girl looked at her.  “Oh, I was lost in thought.”  Her eyelashes scanned Leonie from head to toe, and then she smiled.  “Are you a student at the university?”

“Yes, I am.  I’m on a field trip with my Spanish professor.  This is the last week of classes, and we’re touring around Buenos Aires to learn more about the Argentine culture.  May I ask you why you are here?”

“I’m looking for love,” said the girl, waving her wrist in front of her. 

“I don’t understand,” responded Leonie.

“We have a tradition.  If a girl wants love, she comes to the cathedral and ties a ribbon on a branch of the myrtle tree in the garden, which symbolizes romantic and devoted love.  Soon, she will find a love that will be true and lasting.”

“What a nice tradition.”  Leonie smiled at the girl.

“Did your professor tell you that this church is haunted by its namesake?”

“No. What do you mean?”

“The woman for whom this church was built, Felicia, was murdered.  She was shot in the back by her suitor and died on January 30.  People say that on that day, a woman with a pale face and dark hair, dressed all in white, walks from the garden, opens the door to the church, proceeds down the aisle to the main altar and leaves a trail of tears behind her. 

“That’s such a sad story.”

“Now, Felicia brings love to all the women who request it by tying their ribbons on the myrtle tree.  She has turned her tragedy into positive deeds—bringing love to all women of her beloved city.”

“So, you are going to tie your ribbon on the gate?”

“Yes, to find my love.”

“May I help you?”

“I’d like that. Let’s go.”

The two girls walked out of the church together, smiling and chatting as they went.  Once they reached outside, they walked through the roses in the garden until they reached the myrtle tree.  The brown-eyed girl untied the ribbon from her wrist and, with Leonie’s help, tied it around one of the tree’s branches. 

“Thank you for helping me,” said the girl.  “I believe I will find my love even faster because of your kindness.”

“I was honored to share your dream,” said Leonie. 

“Let’s tie a ribbon on the tree so you can find your love.”

“Oh, I’m not ready for love,” said Leonie.

“That doesn’t matter.  Your love will arrive when you are ready.  Here, I have another ribbon.”  The girl pulled another red ribbon out of her pocket and handed it to Leonie.

Leonie raised her chin back and laughed which sounded like the rise and fall of a musical scale.  “I guess it won’t hurt.”  She chose another branch close to the girl’s ribbon and tied hers around it in a bow.

“I’m happy that you will find love too,” said the girl.  The girl smiled at Leonie, placed her hands on her shoulders, and kissed her lightly on each cheek.  Her eyes shone like topaz.

“I will never forget you,” said the girl, and she walked away, her skirts swishing gently from side to side. 

That night, before Leonie fell asleep, she wrote in her book of affirmations.  She wrote—I provide love to the world.  She looked at the words that she had written and thought about the girl with the full lashes who wanted to find love. 

I must first find out what I want, Leonie thought.  Until I know who I am and what my purpose is, I won’t attract the right kind of love. 

One thing I know.  I know I can provide love to others.  I’ll do this first and then, when the time is right, I’ll let someone love me. 

She turned out the light and dreamt about the myrtle tree and its red ribbons.

Wisdom of the Trees: Chapter 1

Photo by DARIAN PRO on Unsplash

From ancient times, trees have symbolized physical and spiritual nourishment, transformation and liberation.

Chapter 1 – Oak

One more week and she was done.  Graduated with a double major.  College over.  More educated than most of the people on earth. 

And you know what?  She wasn’t going back home, even when this class was over.  Her father had paid for a round trip ticket to Buenos Aires, but she was going to cash it in and stay.

This was her chance to really be independent, to find out what her values were without her father’s advice about this job or that apartment, this guy or that outfit. 

She missed her mother though, but her mother wasn’t at home anyway.  When Leonie was supposed to be having the time of her life in college, her mother had contracted breast cancer.  After three surgeries, six months of chemotherapy that sapped her effervescent energy, and twelve weeks of radiation that burned her skin red, the cancer came back. 

Just before she passed away, Leonie and her mother had sat under the oak tree in the back yard, the shadows of its branches spreading like arms across the grass. 

“I can’t lose you, Mom.”  She had wept beside her mom, the shade of the giant tree darkening her tears like black pearls.

“You won’t feel the same, but you’ll never lose me.  You’ll just have to learn how to live with me differently.” 

Leonie had felt so confused.  She stared at her mother’s face so that she could remember it—her gray-blue eyes, silky skin, a mouth that always held the hint of a smile.  She stared deep into her eyes, holding on, wishing for more time.

“I’ll be with you,” said her mother.  “I’ll guide you from a new place, a place you cannot see, but that is nevertheless powerful.  You’ll feel me.”

Leonie clutched her mother’s hand.

“I want you to find your inner strength.  Emulate this oak tree.  Every time you feel weak or lost, visualize yourself as an oak tree, rising strong, spreading wide, enduring challenge and finding the sun.  You won’t be alone because I’ll be beside you, breathing my love into your heart.”

“But I won’t see you.  You’re my inspiration.  I’ll be lost without you.”

“My love will remain here.  When you can no longer physically see me, you can find other women to inspire you.  Choose many, in fact.  One to follow for leadership skills, another to learn the art of love, and another to learn how to live with joy.  She may be one of your professors, a co-worker, a girl friend, a friend’s mother, or a woman you meet only one time in your life. Whatever you wish to be, you can find a woman to inspire you.”

“How can you be so strong?  You’re dying!”

“I’m content because I know that I will continue my life in another form.  My spirit is not dying.  My soul will continue, and I’ll grow from its future experiences.  I have many things to look forward to.”

Leonie remembered this conversation as she held her mother’s ashes six months later, secured in a pearlescent urn shaped like a heart.  Leonie kissed the top of the urn before placing it in the niche at the cemetery.   “Enjoy your journey, Mom,” she whispered.

Later, as she sat in the back yard next to her mother’s chair, Leonie thought she heard her mother’s voice.  No, maybe it was the breeze rustling the limbs of the oak tree instead. 

“My journey will be right alongside you,” said the breeze.

Staying focused on her studies was impossible after her mother’s death, but her girl friends had helped, and then Leonie decided to go overseas for a change of scenery—a much needed distraction that she needed to survive.

So now, she was in Buenos Aires and hungry.  She lived in a shabby dorm room in the basement of the university and tutored students in English to make money, but it wasn’t enough. 

Leonie searched through her backpack for something to eat: an empty plastic juice bottle, a paper envelope from the bocadillo she had for lunch.  She poked her fingers deeper.  Something waxy.  She grabbed at it and pulled out an apple, a little bruised, but it was food.

The next morning, Leonie woke up with a growling stomach and the sound of traffic.  Engines racing, horns blaring, and brakes squealing invaded her tiny room through the high window that wasn’t even big enough for her to crawl through.  Leonie grabbed her shampoo and towel, opened the door, and paced to the single shower room. 

Whew!  It was empty.  The water felt refreshing on her wet head, rinsing off the humidity and sweat of her body from the sweltering night.

Today, she was going to meet a friend that she had met in her Spanish class.  Clarissa was a native Argentinian and Leonie wanted to ask her about traveling throughout the country. 

Upstairs in the dormitory lobby, a canister of coffee stood on a table next to a large blue box of sweet pastries.  Leonie poured the thick, viscous liquid into her own mug, stuck a pastry between her teeth, and whisked out the door.

Clarissa was sitting at a table in the corner of the café with her laptop open when she arrived.  A cup of mate steamed to the right of her computer, Clarissa wildly typing on the keyboard.

“Hey, how’s it going?” asked Leonie, grabbing the back of the chair opposite her, scraping it across the floor, flinging her backpack over a post, and sitting down.

“Hey,” murmured Clarissa, finishing a sentence.

“You know, this Spanish class is my last college class, and I’ve got to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.  I feel lost without my mother, and I don’t want to go home without a plan.  I don’t even know if I want to live there anymore.”

Clarissa picked up her mate, sipped it, and looked up at Leonie. “I suggest that you travel and meet as many people as possible.  They’ll give you new ideas, and you’ll learn that you have endless options,” said Clarissa.

“That does sound good,” said Leonie.  “How should I start?”

“Just go,” said Clarissa. “Don’t think too much.  Don’t plan too much, but be ready to make your trip work each step of the way.  I’m emailing my sister.  She works at the Belmond Hotel, a few miles from Iguazu Falls.  Maybe she can get you a free room.  Iguazu Falls is one place you should go!”

“Oh, I’m so nervous about traveling by myself.  Maybe I’ll just stay here,” responded Leonie.

“Oh, no you won’t,” said Clarissa. “You’re going, and that’s that.”

“We’ll see,” said Leonie.  I have a whole week of classes left.”

“Yes, a whole week to build up your courage and begin your new life.”

Hidden

Photo by Anton Darius on Unsplash

Sylvia had a secret.  One that rolled around in her stomach like a marble in a maze, bashing against the walls until they bruised, swirling her energy into anxiety.

Sylvia’s friend Ruth told detailed stories about how her mother psychologically abused her during her teenage years.  When they were cleaning out her grandmother’s house after her death, Susan had wanted her grandmother’s wooden chest full of yarn.  Her mother refused to let her have it, and, instead, gave it to Susan’s older sister who didn’t even knit.  Susan wondered for decades why she wasn’t good enough to have such a treasured keepsake and why her mother had favored her sister over her.  Ruth told everyone about the hurts in her background, but she still walked around like a broken doll, permanently damaged, as if nothing could ever erase the scars she had suffered.

When Ruth talked about her feelings, Sylvia flashed her own memories across her mind about how her father had favored her sister over her.  “Isn’t she beautiful,” she remembered he had said.  Sylvia had looked in the mirror countless times wondering why no one ever called her beautiful.  She had clear skin, thick hair, blazing green eyes.  Weren’t green eyes as pretty as blue ones? 

Her friend Paul had told her about how his father was never around.  He never played sports with him, never sat with him on the couch for a game of chess, never even got to his high-school graduation until Paul had already walked across the stage and waved to his mother who was frantically waving back with both hands, as if she was waving for two.  Even today, Paul’s father didn’t act like a father, but like a distant friend who sent him an article once in awhile about a topic that never related to Paul’s life.  Paul had worked hard to build self-confidence, but struggling with a narcissistic father made that an up-and-down journey.

Sylvia’s friend Jen talked about her childhood, too.  She told Sylvia how a sixteen-year-old neighbor boy had raped her when she was eleven, luring her into his backyard shed one afternoon and slowly removing her clothes while he talked to her about the different birds in the garden.  Jen said that it was therapeutic to talk about it after so many years of keeping it hidden.  At first, she was embarrassed that it had happened to her.  What did she do to encourage that boy anyway?  Why did she let him get her into the shed by herself?  Didn’t she know better?  Sylvia didn’t see how Jen had let go of the trauma if she still had all these questions in her mind.

When Jen talked, Sylvia nodded empathetically: “It wasn’t your fault.  He took advantage of you.  He was stronger, and you couldn’t have stopped him.”  Inside her chest, however, Sylvia carefully drew a curtain in front of her own heart, shielding it from the memory of her own secret, stopping her from the minute-by-minute re-enactment of the scene, her shame, her acquiescence, her fear of exposure. 

Sylvia didn’t want her friends to know she had suffered so much, had been irreparably violated.  Maybe someone would use the information about her secret as revenge if they ever got angry at her.  They would expose her in front of people she didn’t trust, and she would endure more embarrassment than she could handle. 

Sylvia had spent years searching for her own self-esteem, her worthiness to be loved, her value as a treasured friend, her worth as an employee, her right to be happy at all.  She thought that she should go talk to someone about her secret so that she could get it off her chest.  Would that even work? 

Finally, she made an appointment with a female minister at a church she did not attend.  She told the woman about her secret, and asked her what she should do to heal from it.  

“First, ask God for forgiveness.  God will forgive anyone, even if you can’t forgive.  Once, you’re comfortable that God has forgiven you, then forgive yourself and anyone else involved.”

Sylvia had worked on forgiving herself and the other person involved for years.  Nevertheless, the memories, surfaced again and again like a nightmare when she least expected them.  Sometimes, she even invited them into her thoughts as if she could purge them out of existence by focusing on them one last final time. 

Nothing stopped the nightmares.  They came while she was sleeping in a vivid stream, and her fear rose incrementally during the dream until she would awaken all of a sudden, gasping for breath like she had been under water the whole time.  Her forehead was drenched with sweat, her heart tight with shame.

Sylvia did feel the pain of her friends, and because she did, she could listen to their stories and offer some solace just by suffering with them.  She also understood the pain that her students told her about. 

Samantha was a student in Sylvia’s college composition class.  Samantha’s mother had kicked her and her three-year-old daughter out of the house, and, now Samantha experienced anxiety that interfered with her performance at school.  Sylvia had counseled Samantha through several episodes of anxiety, and she had passed her English class in spite of her mother.

Van suffered from post-traumatic-stress-syndrome ever since he returned from Iraq, and his significant other left him right in the middle of the semester.  Since Sylvia knew what anxiety and poor self esteem felt like, she coached Van step by step until he, too, passed his writing class.

So many of her community college students needed emotional support in order to pass their classes.  Owen’s father beat him.  Misty lived with five family members in a noisy, two-bedroom apartment.  Monica’s parents wanted her to get married like a dutiful Islam daughter and give up going to school.  Randall had spent two weeks living out of his car during the semester until his uncle let him live in his garage. 

Sylvia knew that if she put in more effort to help these students, they could succeed and improve their lives through education and awareness of other opportunities.  Yet, sometimes, as Sylvia sat beside one student or another, she felt like a broken human being trying to help another broken soul.    

Was it true that people who never felt loved died of heart attacks?  Most mornings, she woke up with a tight chest.  She lay in bed breathing in and out of her nose until her chest relaxed a little, but the tightness never fully went away. 

Most people had a secret, didn’t they?  Weren’t most people walking around, hiding their secrets underneath their shirts, their polite manners, their rudeness, their abusive characters, their anxiety, their bullying, their surrender, and their repeated attempts at survival?

Yes, they were, Sylvia knew.  She was, too.  She had endured so many scars and affronts to her character, yet here she was, carrying her secret around like a satchel of wisdom.

Really, she thought she deserved a medal.

An Old Rose

She was worried about her mother who seemed to struggle to stay present, something pulling her focus away or inward.  Some days she sat in the arm chair by the window, staring straight ahead, her gray-blue eyes lost in deep thoughts. 

When Sestina tried to talk to her, her mother struggled to respond.  “Wait a minute,” she would say, then, with a determined set to her mouth, she’d squeeze her eyes shut for a brief moment, open them wide, and glare at Sestina while she slowly made a lucid response. 

Her mother woke up early every morning, took a spit-bath at the sink in her bathroom, put on her clothes, and combed her golden white curls until she looked neat and ready for an outing.  After breakfast—not a big one mind you—just a piece of bacon and half a piece of toast with butter and strawberry jam—she sat down in the chair by the window and disappeared into her private thoughts.  Her breathing was labored, and she raised her shoulders every time she inhaled, her chest rising slowly, and she exhaled by opening her mouth and releasing a small burst of air.

On Wednesday, while her mother was sitting in her arm chair, Sestina went out to prune the old roses off the rose bushes.  She knew her mother not only loved flowers, but she loved roses most of all, and Sestina wanted the roses to look perfect when her mother looked out the window.   Eight tea rose bushes grew in the redwood planter, a raised bed so that the roses bloomed at the same height as the window.  The planter was about six feet from the window so when her mother looked out, she could see the stems wave gently in the breeze and glow in the sun. 

The yellow rose bush was the heartiest with big blossoms that bloomed like cabbages.  One bush grew lavender roses, medium in size with delicate petals and a hue that took Sestina’s breath away.  Four of the bushes bloomed with various versions of red flowers, each a unique shade of red and shaped petals.  The two white bushes bloomed with the most flowers, always producing plenty of blossoms so that Sestina could cut some and bring them in the house.

Sestina held the kitchen shears in her right hand and pulled back a single stem from a rose bush, looking for the perfect compound leaf of five leaflets so she could prune the dead rose at just the right angle and place to encourage more growth. 

As she made the cut, the daylight intensified into a blaze of light all around her.  Insects’ voices grew loud into a hum like a Gregorian chant, and she heard the wind rush under the wings of a swallowtail butterfly who hovered over a rosebush nearby.  The butterfly glided toward her, waved its wings close to her nose, and she thought that she heard it whisper, it’s time for her, time for her.   Its black face smiled, and its eyes looked deep into hers, speaking wordlessly of love.  She heard the breath of the breeze travel through the petals of each rose, and the scissors snapped the rose’s stem like a clap of thunder.  She heard the leaves of the lemon tree give birth to new cells and buds of fruit.  Then, suddenly, the breaths of the insects and flying creatures, echoes of the growing plants, and pneuma of the wind were silent, and the garden was still.

When Sestina got back to the cottage, she found that her mother had died.   Her face was turned toward the open window and her hands were folded over each other like a final prayer.

Child of Light

That child of mine. 

She was like the black sheep of the family, but that didn’t mean there was anything wrong with her.  On the contrary.  Ever since she was a little girl, she walked like she was floating on air—her feet swishing out from beneath her, her body gliding like a spirit, her head held up and her eyes cast high like she was watching a movie in the sky. 

Little Beth had a heart-shaped face, her blue eyes spaced perfectly apart and framed with blonde eyebrows, her pale rosy cheeks glowing like pink pearls, her plump cherub mouth, and soft chin.  But she was a shy creature and shunned the limelight, so most people didn’t notice her as she peeked into the room around a wall, hid in a corner on a stool, or swung on the swing outside, alone, when the rest of the kids were in the house. 

After Beth turned seven and received her Holy Communion, I walked up behind her to Communion at one Sunday Mass.  When Beth reached the priest, his eyes opened wide as he looked into her face, his hand paused with the wafer above the chalice.  After a frozen moment in time, he said, “The face of God.”

What did he mean?

My daughter stood there with her hands joined together, her fingers pointing to the ceiling like dove wings.  Finally, the priest fluttered his eyes, seeming to compose himself and said, “The body of Christ.”

“Amen,” said Beth, her voice rising like a musical whisper.  She stuck out her tongue and the priest placed the wafer there, then she circled around so I could see her. 

And then I knew.  A spotlight from the ceiling lit up her face, and I saw a glow in her eyes like the sun breaking through the clouds after a rain, radiant globes of love.  A warmth filled my body as she passed me, and I knew from then on that I was extraordinarily blessed to have her in my life. 

The priest’s eyes followed her as she left, and, because he was preoccupied, I also turned around and watched her glide down the aisle like a sail on the breeze.   Quickly, I faced the altar again, but still had to wait for him to recover and remember that more people waited in line for Holy Communion. 

***

My husband and I asked Beth to be the executor of our will.  We asked her because she studied finances in college and we thought she’d be qualified to deal with the mechanics of disbursing our assets. 

Peter died young so he wasn’t around when I started to go blind and I couldn’t write checks, cook on the stove, or drive my car anymore.

Beth told me that it was time that she took care of me.  She helped me move into an assisted living place where three of my friends already lived.  She helped me sort through the sixty years of belongings in my house, found charities to pick up unwanted furniture, hired a gardener to keep the lawn cut until the house could be sold, worked with my realtor, accepted a great offer on the house, and filled my bank account with the money. 

“You have enough money to live for 35 more years,” she told me.  “You saved and scrimped, and now, I’m going to make sure you are treated like a queen.”

I couldn’t see very well, but Beth knew that I could still smell the roses, so every time she came to visit, she brought a dozen roses, a chrysanthemum plant, Easter lilies, Gerber daisies, or an African violet to put on my windowsill. 

I died on a December morning instead of a January afternoon because Beth was beside me in the hospital, making sure that the medical professionals didn’t exceed their zeal in pointlessly extending my life with hoses down my throat, catheters in my neck, and countless blood transfusions. 

She ordered a giant spray of red roses to cover my coffin at the viewing and to decorate my grave after I was buried.  Red roses signify eternal love. 

That child of light of mine. 

Rosie’s Resistance

Photo by Repent of Your Sins & Seek Lord Jesus on Unsplash

“Who gave you the right to run my life?’

Rosie was leaning on the dining room table in her house, sitting with her daughter Claire.  As she asked this question, she leaned her elbow on the table and rested her hand under one cheek.

“Mom, you did,” responded Claire.  Rosie thought Claire looked sad, but determined.  “You and Dad asked me to take care of your trust, and, now, you need someone to take care of you.”

“I’m fine,” Rosie insisted.

“Every day you ask one of your children to come over here to help you with something.  You drop your pills and can’t see to pick them up.  This is a big house.  You need someone to dust, wash floors, vacuum, and even cook for you.  You can’t live here alone anymore.  It’s too dangerous.”

“They can help me.  That’s O.K.”

“Mom, they all have families to take care of.  You said that you didn’t want to be a burden to your children.”

Rosie didn’t answer.  She looked down at the table silently.

“Asking them to come over every day is too much.  This house is big.  Your yard is huge.”

“It doesn’t hurt them to help out,” Rosie responded.

“Mom, now you’re being selfish.  You can move into Sunrise Assisted Living just a mile away.  Three of your good friends live there.”

“I don’t want to.”

“It’s time, Mom.  Think about it and when you want to move.”  Claire wiped her cheek as she turned away, then pursed her mouth into a smile as she turned to look back at her mother.

One year later, Rosie was sitting at the dining room table again, this time with her grand-daughter Leonie.

“I’m sure your apartment will be nice, Grandma.  Don’t worry.”

Claire and her sister were packing clothes into boxes.  Her brothers—Joe, Don, and Ron—were carrying furniture out the door and into the back of Ron’s truck: a double bed, the new red recliner, a dresser, a tiny desk, the T.V. and its stand. 

A few months before, Claire and Rosie had gone to Sunrise Assisted Living and filled out a lease for Rosie’s apartment.  They had lunch, too, and Claire thought it was good.

Today, Claire and her siblings left Rosie at home with Leonie while they set up Rosie’s new apartment.  Minnie was busy arranging Rosie’s clothes in the closet.  Claire made the bed once it was moved in.  Ron hung pictures.  Joe unpacked dishes and put them into the two cupboards in the tiny kitchen.  Don hung up shelves and arranged Rosie’s collection of egg cups on them.  Nobody was smiling.  Everyone had a furrowed forehead and looked as if they were going to cry.

“I’ve got a joke,” said Ron, all of a sudden.

“No jokes today, Ron.  I’m not in the mood,” Claire said.

“No, seriously, you’ll appreciate it.”

“No, we won’t,” said Minnie.

“Come on, I know you will.  It’ll be O.K.”

“Go ahead, Ron, but don’t be surprised if we don’t laugh,” said Claire leaning over a corner of the double bed which she had just covered with a flowered bedspread. 

“I found this on the Internet.  One day, a famous man went to a nursing home to see all of his friends again and see how they were doing. When he got there EVERYBODY greeted him [because, of course, everybody knew him]. One man he noticed didn’t come up to him or say anything to him, so, later, he walked up to the man and asked him ‘Do you know who I am?’ and the old man replied “No, but you can go to the front desk and they’ll tell you.’”

Claire was sitting on the floor next to the bed.  She rolled over and held her stomach as her laughter erupted.  Minnie stopped sorting the clothes in the closet, turned to look at Ron, and made a loud, long musical chuckle.  Joe stopped unpacking dishes and guffawed.  Don stopped arranging egg cups, smirked, and exploded into a happy groan. 

But Ron laughed most of all.  His big frame started jiggling first.  He opened his mouth wide, showing his perfect white teeth, and a deep, cascading huh-huh-huh-huh-huh sprang into the room, reverberating off the four walls and enveloping his sibling audience. 

Everyone expelled their laughter like a long exhale, then grew silent and looked at each other.

“O.K. That was funny,” said Claire.  “You’re so good at bringing out the humor, Ron.”

They worked for three hours, setting up picture frames on the wide window sill, arranging a bouquet of flowers on the dresser, placing the T.V. remote next to the tiny side table beside the recliner.  They plugged the beside lamps into the outlets, set the digital clock with the huge numbers, hung the towels in the bathroom, and arranged the soap and lotion on the bathroom counter. 

Soon the studio was perfectly arranged in its décor of pinks and greens.  The blinds of the window let in the afternoon sunshine, and the window was open to allow the autumn breeze to filter into the room.

Claire and Minnie drove back to Rosie’s house to pick her up.  When they got there, Leonie and Rosie were still sitting at the dining room table.  Rosie fidgeted with her hands and Leonie looked up with worry in her eyes.

“Your beautiful studio is ready, Mom,” said Minnie, putting on a smile.

The three girls drove Rosie to Sunrise.  They guided her through the front lounge.  On one side, other residents watched T.V. in a common room.  The lounge had an autumn wreath over the front arch.  They pushed the button on the elevator while talking to the assistant at the front desk.  They took her arm and guided her down the hall to her studio, and then opened the door.

Rosie stepped into the room.   She walked through the tiny kitchen, past the bathroom, and into the conjoined bedroom and living area.  Her head swiveled from side to side, surveying the bed and its bedspread, the digital clock, the lamps, the recliner, the window sill with all its pictures, the dresser with the vase of chrysanthemums, the T.V. stand, and the tiny desk with its statue of Mary and cup of pens.  Then her head swiveled up and back to inspect the egg cup shelves, the collection of spoons, the large family picture of her and her children, the trees through the window, her wedding photo, and the metal picture of The Last Supper.   Finally, a small, almost imperceptible sound escaped from her lips—a cross between approval and satisfaction.

Her children and grand-daughter guided her to the recliner and helped her sit down Claire sat down on the floor to her left. Minnie knelt down right in front of her. Ron sat on the bed and stretched his tree trunk legs out in front of him. Leonie sat next to her mother Claire, and Joe and Don sat on the floor on Rosie’s right and leaned their backs against the wall under the window. Rosie looked down at them all and her eyes shone as blue as a California sky.

The Imagination Grandpa Story 3: The Multiplication Staircase

 Grandpa walked into Rosie’s hospital room with a handful of daisies.

“I brought you some flowers today, Rosie,” he said.  He grabbed one of Rosie’s tall water cups from her side table and put the flowers right into the water left in the cup.

Rosie smiled.  She was so happy to talk to someone who wasn’t a nurse or a doctor. 

“I used my imagination this morning to make up a new story for you,” said Grandpa.

“I’m ready to hear it!” replied Rosie.

So Grandpa began.

The Multiplication Staircase

Rosie lived in a house that was older than her grandmother.  Her family’s Berkeley home was a cottage really, a tiny home with a brick staircase leading up from the street.  On both sides of the stairs, hydrangeas grew in the spring and summer under the shade of the ancient redwood trees that stood like giant sentinels on each side of the steps. 

Every front yard on Rosie’s street had one or two coastal redwood trees, natives that had been planted when the houses were built in the early 1900’s.  None of the houses matched, but each of them looked cozy with their open front porches; low-pitched gable roofs; and earth-tone sidings of wood, stone, or brick.   The street was a tidy three-block stretch of narrow sidewalks, and, on the east side, a 43-step stone staircase descended to Euclid Street where, her mother told her, a street car once stopped to take passengers to San Francisco.    

Rosie was born on this street–Hawthorne Terrace, and had spent her eight years of life walking around all the winding streets and staircases with her mother.  Now, she was in third grade, and every day when she walked from school to home, she paused on Buena Vista Way, a hilly street, where she could see a staggering view of the San Francisco Bay—Oakland, the Bay Bridge, San Francisco’s ever-changing skyline, the small and big islands in the Bay, and the Golden Gate Bridge. 

But today, when she reached the section of Buena Vista where she could get the best view, she was lost in thought.  Today, Rosie had failed her math test.

Failed. 

She just couldn’t memorize her multiplication tables.  The numbers got all jumbled up inside her head, and when she sat at her desk staring at the test, the numbers filled her mind with fear and confusion. 

Rosie turned right on Euclid while a tear dropped onto her cheek.  She wiped it off quickly with her fingers and took a sharp left to ascend the 43 steps to Hawthorne Terrace.  Rosie grabbed the black wrought-iron bannister and pulled each foot up the cement stairs, one by one.  Usually, she counted the stairs to make the trek easier, but, today, she thought about how she had to tell her mother that she had failed her test. 

Rosie slipped on one of the stairs, her body twisting around the arm that held onto the bannister, like a flag being whipped by a cruel wind around a flag pole.  She rammed into the bannister as she fell, hitting her hip hard on the vertical bars.  She let go of the bannister and plopped onto a cement stair, her legs crossed beneath her. 

How did Mom climb these stairs without falling when she walked to the store or caught the bus on Euclid Way?  Every day that Rosie had to climb them, she ran out of breath before she reached the top and, often, she fell and scraped a knee or grazed her hands. 

Mom was snipping the hydrangeas in the front yard when Rosie finally reached home.  “Hey, buddy, how ya doin’?” Mom said, standing up from her garden stool, her hands clutching her shears.  A pail of old blossoms stood next to her stool.  The hydrangea bushes were bursting with vibrant pink blossoms behind her—each flower bursting like a ballerina’s dancing tutu on a crowded stage of dancers. 

Rosie looked down at her shoes, one of which was untied and dragging behind her.

“What’s up?” Mom laid her shears on the stool, stepped over to the stairs where Rosie was standing, and put her arms around her.  “Did something happen at school today?” she asked, lines furrowing her brow.

“Well, you’re going to be disappointed,” Rosie said, staring but not seeing anything.

“You must tell me anyway,” Mom said.  “Otherwise, I can’t help you.”

Finally, Rosie sat down on the brick steps next to Mom and told her about the test.  “I just can’t remember them,” she said, wringing her hands in her lap.  “Not only that, when I was climbing the stairs today, I fell and hurt my hip, bloodied my leg, and scratched my arm.”  Rosie rubbed her hip and showed her mother her injuries.

“Hmm,” said her mother.  “We’ll have to think about how to solve your problem, and I believe I have an idea.  Let’s first have a snack and rest, then, we’ll figure this out.”

Rosie and her mom ate slices of apples and cheese while they sat on the front porch watching the bees flitting among the hydrangeas.  Rosie told Mom about how she had painted a pink hydrangea with dots of watercolor paint during art time.   “I can’t wait until you see it, Mom,” Rosie said, her face lighting up as she spoke.  “I think it’s really good.  After I used pink dots to make the flower, I used a leaf coated with bright green paint as a press to make the flower’s leaves.” 

Her mom put her arm around her.  “I can’t wait to see it.  Maybe we’ll have to frame it when you bring it home.  Well, it’s time for your math lesson,” she said.  “Let’s take a walk.”

“What?” Rosie looked up at her mother with a question on her face. 

Rosie’s mom stood up and reached for Rosie’s hand.  She pulled Rosie to her feet and they walked down the brick stairs together. 

“Where are we going, and what does a walk have to do with math?”

“You’ll see,” said Rosie’s mother.  When they reached the narrow street sidewalk, they turned left and walked north where another set of stairs on the street rose up to Scenic Avenue.  This staircase was made out of thick eight-foot wide old railroad tie planks, each dark step set into the hill and secured with large, iron bolts.  The bannister was built out of redwood posts with a diagonal lattice in-between.

Rosie’s mother sat down on the bottom step and gestured for Rosie to sit down next to her.

“Aren’t we going to climb the stairs?” Rosie asked, rubbing her forehead with the back of her right hand.

“We will,” said her mother.  “When you’re ready.” 

Rosie sat down.

“Multiplication tables are like addition which repeats itself,” said Rosie’s mom.  “We’re going to practice the two-times-table while sitting on this step.”

Rosie looked up at her mother out of the corner of one eye.  “Hmmp!” she said.

“Two times one is just a single two.  Two times two is two 2s.  If I hold up two 2s with my fingers and count them—one, two, three, four, I find out that I’m just adding two—two times.”

“That makes sense,” said Rosie.  She nodded her head and counted her mother’s fingers.

“If I add another two, then I have four plus six,” said her mother.

“And another two is eight.  Another two is ten.  Six twos is twelve!  This is easy,” said Rosie. 

Rosie and her mother sat on the bottom step while Rosie figured out how to multiply two from one to twelve.  Her mother tested her several times and soon, she wasn’t making any mistakes. 

“Time to move,” said Rosie’s mother.  She inched herself up to the next big step.  While Rosie and her mother sat on the second step, Rosie practiced the three times table.  She used her fingers at the beginning, but pretty soon she was seeing the number three multiply in her head and she soon memorized all the threes up to twelve.

“Let’s go up,” said Mom, scooting up one more stair.

Rosie memorized the four times table in less time than she had memorized the three times table.  The breeze felt good on her face and the velvety, seashell-shaped gardenias blooming on the bushes nearby filled the air with a heavy perfume.

“One more up,” said Mom, lifting herself with her arms to the next step.

First, Rosie’s mom counted in fives, “5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45. Can you do that?” She asked Rosie.

“I don’t know,” said Rosie, but she tried anyway.  “5, 10, 15,” counted Rosie all the way up to 60.

“You just gave me the answers to all the five-time tables,” said Rosie’s mom. 

Rosie’s eyes opened wide.  She started with five times two and the rest were easy.  Before her mom could even move, Rosie rolled herself up to the next step. 

Rosie worked hard memorizing the six-, seven-, eight-, nine-, and ten-times tables.  Each time she completely memorized a number’s multiplication table, Rosie and her mom moved up another step.  After ten, they practiced the elevens.  After the hard elevens, they practiced the twelves. 

By the time Rosie had memorized from the twos to the twelves, Rosie’s stomach was growling.  It was almost dinner time.

“The final challenge,” said Rosie’s mom, rising to the next step.  Rosie followed her. 

On each step, Rosie’s mom tested her with a time table from two to twelve.  Each time Rosie got the right answer, until, just before the top of the stairs, she got the answer wrong for 11 times 11. 

Rosie’s mom wasn’t worried at all.  She just worked with Rosie on the same step while Rosie reviewed all the answers for the 11 times table.   Then, Rosie’s mom tested her again, “What’s 11 times 11?” she asked.

“121!” shouted Rosie, clapping her hands together and raising them above her head like a champion.

“Up to the last stair!” said her mom.  “You’ve won the championship of the Staircase Multiplication Tables!” she said, clapping wildly. 

Rosie shook her head in disbelief.  Just a few hours ago, she had been crying about failing her math test, and, now, she knew she’d never fail a multiplication test again.

“How’d I do that, Mom?” 

“You just climbed one step at a time until you were ready for the next one,” said Rosie’s mom.

Rosie looked up at the cloudless, azure blue sky that rose upward into forever and ever.  She imagined all kinds of staircases up there: wooden, cement, tile, and marble stairs; ascending and descending stairs; stairs with flowers growing through their cracks; stairs in the rain; stairs with tears of joy and sadness; and stairs full of families and friends.

Rosie wrinkled her brow and stared down the stairs for a minute, reaching out for her mother’s hand.  She knew that she would always have to climb staircases, but, now she knew how—one step at a time.

 

“Wow,” said Rosie, looking up from her bed at Grandpa who was now sitting in a chair beside her bed.  “I need to learn my multiplication tables, too.”

“You won’t have any trouble at all,” said Grandpa.  My imagination just showed you the best way to learn them.”

Grandpa put on his beret, stood up from his seat, and bent over to kiss Rosie on her forehead.

“Your imagination is a genius!” said Rosie, her eyes glistening like diamonds. 

The Imagination Grandpa Story 1: The Clock Man’s Wise Clocks

Photo by Ella de Kross on Unsplash

Instead of going to Third Grade, Rosie was in a hospital bed with tubes connected all over her body.  Rosie’s heart had a problem and the doctors took her into an operating room one day to fix it.  Now, she had to lie down in bed all the time, and she couldn’t play.

The day after the operation, Grandpa Joy came in to visit Rosie.  He wore his blue jean jacket that had lots of pockets.  When he came in the door, he took off his beret and placed it on the table beside Rosie’s bed. 

“Should I tell you a story?” he asked.

“O.K.” said Rosie.  She was so bored just lying in bed. 

Grandpa started his story. 

Once upon a time, an old man owned a clock shop.  The shop was a huge room, and clocks covered every inch of the four walls.  He had clocks with black hands, silver hands, gold hands, and bronze hands.  Some clocks had round faces with 12 birds to mark the numbers.  Some clocks were carved out of wood with long pendulums hanging from the clock faces all the way to the bottom of the cases.  On one wall, a whole line of coocoo clocks hung silently, their birds frozen in various stages of entering or leaving through the coocoo doors. 

In the middle of the great room, large trunks were propped on their sides, and, against these great boxes, grandfather and grandmother clocks leaned silently.  No ticking escaped from their chambers because all the them were broken. 

In fact, all of the clocks in the whole store were broken and quiet.  The only noise in the vast room was the scratching from a mouse family that lived inside one of the walls and came out whenever the old man dropped crumbs and bits of cheese from his sandwiches.

One day, a young man came in to buy a clock.  He smiled at the old clock seller when he opened the creaking door and walked right up to the counter.  This young man wanted a clock to give to his wife for her birthday

“What kind of clock should I buy for my wife?” the young man asked. 

“Well, a grandmother clock might be nice,” said the old man.  I have several of them leaning against these big trunks.  Which one do you like?”

The young man hemmed and hawed.  He tucked his first under his chin and looked at the clocks with big eyes.  He peered into the clocks’ faces, and inspected inside the glass doors that held the pendulums. 

“I like this one,” the smiling man said.  “but it doesn’t seem to be working.”

“All of these clocks are broken,” said the old man.  “I get them from people who no longer want to fix them, and I save them until someone new comes along that will appreciate them.  Some of these clocks are over a hundred years old.  When someone wants to buy one, I fix it until it works perfectly again.”

“Is an old clock be better than a new one?” asked the young man.

“I’d say so,” said the clock man.  “Old clocks have seen so many years go by.  They’ve watched girls and boys fall in love, lovers get married, babies being born, Christmases and Easters and Passovers celebrated.  And as they’ve watched these stories, they’ve saved these memories as wisdom to pass onto their next owners.  A new clock is just a metal face or a wooden box, but an old clock is a treasure chest of life.”

The smiling man stood in thought for a long minute, and then looked straight into the clock man’s face.  “Well, someday my wife and I would like to have a family, and we’re going to need a lot of wisdom when we do.” 

He peered again into the Grandmother clock standing next to him.  Her face shone like mother-of-pearl and the numerals glistened in the tiny spotlights that hung from the ceiling.  The face was set into a rosewood box and the rose-bronze pendulum matched the numerals.

“I’ll take this one,” said the smiling man.  “My wife will not only love how beautiful it is, but she’ll also love the stories that come with it.”

So the clock man fixed the clock.  He bought new wheels and whirs and inserted them behind the face so that the hands of the clock started moving and the pendulum swung gently from side to side.  He rubbed the face until it shone like a pearl and the rosewood until it gleamed like a shiny chestnut, and he cleaned and dusted every part inside and out.  One week later, the clock was ready.

The next day, the smiling man came into the shop.  With him, he brought a pile of blankets.  He looked around for his clock and his eyes found it standing under a single spotlight, glistening like a mermaid in the sun.

“My wife is going to be so happy,” the smiling man said.  “I can’t wait to get this home.”

The two men helped each other wrap a small blanket around the pendulum inside the clock case.  They covered the outside of the clock with more blankets and tucked the blankets securely so the clock wouldn’t get broken.  Then the smiling man paid for the clock and carried it out the door, his eyes shining like buttons. 

For a whole year, the clock man ate his sandwiches inside his clock shop where only his silent clocks kept him company.  Every day, he dropped crumbs and cheese bits from his sandwiches, and the mouse family darted into the room to pick them up, then rushed back to the hole in the wall. 

People came in to give him their old clocks, and other people came in to buy one of the broken clocks.  The man worked hard to make the clock customers happy, but he was lonely.

Then one day, the smiling man opened the creaking door and stood back.  Inside walked a young smiling woman holding a baby in her arms.  The smiling man walked in behind her.

“I want you to meet my family,” said the smiling man.  “This is my wife Sharon and my new daughter Rosie.”

The old man was so surprised that, at first, he couldn’t speak.  He just stood by the counter and opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish for several long seconds.

“I’m so happy to meet you,” he finally uttered.  “Did you like your birthday present?”

“Oh, yes!” replied Sharon.  “My birthday clock is so beautiful that it inspired me to name our new daughter Rosie, like the beautiful rosewood and the mother-of-pearl face.”

The clock man beamed like a shiny copper penny.

“You were right about old clocks,” said the smiling man.  “Sharon’s clock not only inspired us to name our daughter, but it also reminds us to sing every hour, and that makes us happy.”

The old man’s face lit up like a flashlight.

“Would you mind if we visited you once a week so that Rosie gets to know you and learns about your shop of wise clocks.

The clock man looked around his clock shop as if he had never really looked at it before. These clocks were all potential friends, he thought. Then he looked back at the rosewood clock family and knew then that he’d never feel lonely again.

Grandpa was finished with his story, and Rosie looked up at him with shining eyes.

“That was a wonderful story, Grandpa,” she said.  “That baby had the same name as me?  Was it a true story?”

“No, Rosie.  I used my imagination to make it up.  Of course, the idea for the story is true.”

“What do you mean Grandpa?”

“Well, I wanted to tell you a story that started with you, and so I told my imagination to use your name to invent one.”

“Oh, I like that Grandpa.  That makes me happy.”

The Grandpa kissed Rosie’s cheek and tucked her blankets around her.  “When I come back tomorrow, I’ll tell you another story,” he said.  “Meanwhile, you can use your imagination to keep you company until your next visitor comes.”

“O.K. Grandpa.”  Rosie snuggled into her blankets and feel asleep a few minutes later, her face glowing . . .

Taunting Mr. Kingsley

On Saturday, I went with my mother to Cornhill Market. We waited at the wooden bus stop for the red double-decker bus which arrived tardily after 8 a.m. Side by side, we sat for the forty minute ride to town, propping empty market baskets on our laps.

Up ahead in the old seats, I noticed a hat that looked familiar–a collard-green hat with a tuck on the top and a medium brim all the way around. The man wearing it wore a heavy wool coat. HIs big neck was lined with sagging skin and his hair was pewter gray. Mr. Kingsley, it was. I swallowed hard.

Mr. Kingsley was the man who monitored the children on the school bus. He was old, and when it was cold outside, he stomped his heavy, brown shoes on the metal floor in rhythm with the turning of the wheels on the bus. Every day, he wore a full length wool coat and beat his covered hands crossways against his chest to keep warm. Like a teapot, each blow on his chest released a burst of steam from his mouth.

As our market bus followed the rolling hills of farms and meadows, I watched the collard-green hat nod over the old man’s chest. Once in a while, I gazed out the window at the squares of empty fields covered in frost.

The children on the bus feared Mr. Kingsley. “Keep away from that door, you ragamuffins!” he yelled at the boys who wandered out of their seats.

We created stories about him. We told each other how he lived in a dark castle, dined alone at a long, wooden table, and ate the legs and arms of poor children for dinner. After dinner, he sat in a huge arm chair in front of a blazing fire, reading the gospel of Satan and blowing smoke rings with his pipe.

Soon, the frosty fields outside my window dissolved into the red brick factories and churches of the town Bury St. Edmunds. The bus would soon leave us off at the bus station near Cornhill Market.

I had never provoked Mr. Kingsley, but had laughed heartily at the boys who did. Some boys, those with a higher dose of daring, knocked off his hat when his back was turned, baring his baldness as if it were a hole in his armor. Kingsley would swirl around and swat at them while they tossed the dull hat from one seat to another.

Once, when his hat fell into my lap, Kingsley snapped it up and scowled into my face, “You’re naughty children, you are. Some day you’ll pay for this. Just you wait.”

The bus rolled into the station at the corner of Cornhill Market. In my haste to get off before Kinsley saw me, I dropped my basket in the aisle. I bent down, grabbed the basket’s handle, reached for my mittens which had fallen out, and hurried behind my mother to the exit.

“Meet me here at 11:30,” my mother said as she set out with both baskets towards the food stalls which filled the market. The stalls were covered in a kaleidoscope of colorful awnings which shaded slanted displays of farm vegetables, baskets of berries of all kinds, fish on ice, and jars of mincemeat, currant jellies, lemon curd, and pickles. I waved to my mother and rushed away before Mr. Kingsley appeared behind her.

First, I walked briskly to the shops surrounding the open market. In the chemist shop, I climbed the stairs to the second floor to smell the scents of the bath cubes lined up like tiny gifts. I closed my eyes and imagined gardens full of blooming flowers: violets, roses, sweet peas, and jasmine.

When I opened my eyes, I saw Mr. Kingsley coming up the stairs and heading my way. I dropped the bath cube I was holding and heard it crumble inside its wrapper. Some customers blocked his way, and I circled around several perfume aisles until I reached the stairs, skipped down the steps and out of the store.

My breath made puffs of smoke in the cold air. I must have left my scarf in my basket, so I swaddled my collar around my neck and looked for an escape. Curry’s Book Store was just around the corner of the market, so I decided to go there to hide and keep warm.

“Could you direct me to the young adult section, Sir?” I asked the man behind the counter.

“Yes, darlin’. It’s in the very back behind the dictionaries.”

I passed through the rows of best sellers with the big signs until I reached the very back of the store. Scanning the shelves, my eyes lit upon a section full of fairy tale volumes. Stooping down, I read the titles and slipped one out titled Old English Folk Tales. At the end of the bookcases was an empty space in the corner. I squatted up to it with my back and scrunched my body into its opening until I was hidden and began to read, raising the book to cover my face.

Every few minutes, I leaned out to see if Mr. Kingsley had followed me, but I seemed to have lost him. I read “Herne the Hunter,” a scary story about a ghost who haunts Windsor Park with a pack of hounds.

Suddenly, I heard Mr. Kingsley talking to the man at the front of the store. Soon, I heard his heavy shoes pacing toward the back, so I jumped up. Holding my breath and clenching my hands inside my pockets, I poked my head out, scooted, slipped behind the shelves of dictionaries, and crept along the rows at the edge of the store until I reached the door and escaped.

What would he do if he caught me? I imagined being stuffed into a black laundry bag, hurled over his shoulder, and carried on his back across open fields all the way to his black castle.

The market clock pointed to 10:30. Running into the stalls, I searched for my mother’s coat and ocean blue scarf. At every vendor, ladies in navy coats were selecting potatoes and turnips, tasting berries, and talking over codfish.

I dashed in a zigzag across the square to Moyses Hall, the town museum. Kingsley wouldn’t guess I was in there. Children never went to museums by themselves.

Moyses Hall, a massive flint and stone house, was the largest building surrounding the square. It was shaped like two huge but simple houses, connected by a thick stone pillar. At the base of the pillar was a smooth stone with the year 1180 carved into it. I had been inside during a school field trip and learned that it was once housed a Jewish family, and built as strong as a fortress. An air of mystery hid in its shadows as if the ghosts of the family were still there, witnessing the visitors who wandered in and around their former hearth.

I ran inside and caught my breath against the cold stone wall beside a life-sized suit of armor. After a few minutes, I wandered around the glass cases filled with cracked cups and bowls, fat statues of gnomes and dwarfs, hand shovels, coins, torture chains and screws. I read all the display descriptions waiting for the next hour to pass until I would meet my mother at Purdy’s, next to the bus station.

At 11:30, my mother was waiting. Two fat baskets leaned together on the ground next to her feet. I ran, anxious to hear the security of her voice. “Hi, Mom! Can we get some sausage rolls?”

“Claire, I already bought them from Purdy’s. Let’s hurry or we’ll miss the bus.” I didn’t tell her about Mr. Kingsley following me. She didn’t know how the children taunted him, and she wouldn’t like it. We boarded the bus and perched the heavy baskets on our laps.

Heavy shoes stomped up the back stairs. They sounded like Mr. Kingsley stamping his feet on the metal floor of the old school bus. I hunched my shoulders and bent my head down behind the basket on my lap.

A gruff voice bellowed right behind us: “At last, I’ve caught up with you.” Mr. Kingsley towered over me in the aisle. His eyebrow hairs stuck out like bent stickpins. Looking up, I saw the yellowness of his teeth and the gray hairs inside his nostrils, and I shivered as a chill swirled at the base of my neck and crept down the back of my coat.

“Mr. Kingsley?” my mother said with her eyes opening wide.

Mr. Kingsley thrust his gnarled hand into his oversized pocket. I squeezed my eyes shut. Seconds filled with silence. Cautiously opening my eyes, I saw that Mr. Kingsley was holding my red plaid scarf out to me. “Claire, I saw you leave the bus this morning. You dropped your scarf on your way out,” he said, a smile spreading beneath his salt and pepper mustache.

My mouth dropped open. I reached out a hand, took the scarf, and twisted it self-consciously around my hands. “Thank you.”

“Well, I have more shopping to do before I go home. I’d better get off this bus before it takes off. See you Monday, Claire.”

“Goodbye Mr. Kingsley. Stay warm,” said my mother.

The picture of Mr. Kingsley’s twinkling eyes lingered in my thoughts as I rolled the scarf around my neck.

“What a nice man Mr. Kingsley is,” my mother said. “and I’m glad he found your scarf. Get warm now.” My mother smiled and looked out the window.

The bus jerked into motion. Maybe Mr. Kingsley didn’t live in a black castle and eat children for dinner. Maybe he liked children instead and that was why he took care of us on the school bus.

The next time I saw him, I would smile and wish him a “Good morning.” Maybe those boys would get to like him, too.

Retirement Richness: Nourishing Relationships

Photo by Ekaterina Shakharova on Unsplash

When people think about retirement, they often struggle to think about what activities they will do to fill their days.  Some take up golf.  Others start biking.  Others work for the local food bank.  Retired teachers go back and teach a single class, and retired nurses volunteer for essential posts at the local hospital.   

I have a suggestion about another way to think about retirement and a rewarding focus for this special opportunistic time in life. 

Relationships are key to our happiness, and during our working years, we often fail to nourish them due to time constraints or career responsibilities.  In retirement, however, people have more time and can be more flexible with it.  I suggest spending some of that time to renew old relationships and build fulfilling new ones. 

One of the most gratifying sources of happiness is a positive relationship with a significant other.  When I retired, my husband had already been retired for a few years and he was just waiting in the wings to spend more time with me.  After a few weeks, we settled into a flexible routine for our retirement days.  We both have individual activities, but we consciously set aside several times during our day to spend with each other.  For example, on most days, we eat lunch together.  We sit down at our dining room table with a bowl of homemade soup or some takeout from a local restaurant and we share 45 minutes feeling grateful for each other and for the wonderful food and food providers in our lives.  Before we start eating, we even express our gratification to make it formal.

Another way we spend time together each day is by sitting down to talk at 4 p.m. until we eat dinner at 6.  Part of that time, we may sit outside if the weather is fine or make dinner in the kitchen.  We talk about foods we love, friends we talked with during the day, and what is happening in our extended family.  What makes this time so special is that we are both committed to being present with each other.

If you have been blessed with grandchildren by the time you retire, you can spend more time with them to enrich not only their lives, but also your own.  One retired couple that I know visit their grandchildren three afternoons a week after school to help them with their homework or to play games.  They interact with their grandchildren before the parents come home from work and they don’t stay for dinner.  They are not babysitting since the children’s nanny is there too.  The focus is on developing meaningful and loving relationships.

Retirement is also a wonderful time to spend more time with your own children.  By this time, they will be busy in their own careers, but retirement gives you the flexibility to meet them during times when they’re available and to participate in the development of their lives.  For example, one morning at 9:00 a.m., I helped my daughter practice for a future interview for a new job using Google Meetups.  Throughout the day, I play chess with my son using an app on my computer.  When they are free, we go for walks together.  I babysit my daughter’s dog while she gets her hair cut which keeps me in tune with her interests.  The key is to participate in their lives so they have time for you and feel comfortable sharing their life with you.

Perhaps you have retired and your parents are still living out the twilights of their lives.  Retirement gives you extra time to spend with them, too.  One person I know cuts his mother’s lawn every two weeks.  A woman whose mother lives in an assisted living facility visits her once a week to play games, help her with her tax return, make crafts, or eat a meal together.  I know from personal experience that this late-in-life time with a parent can prove to be the most cherished of all.

One extremely rewarding opportunity in retirement is renewing the relationships with siblings.  I come from a large family and have nine siblings.  Recently, my siblings and I have started keeping group chats going throughout each day.  We discuss family history, our goals, our exercise activity, problems. And more. I recently helped one of my brothers write his will and apply for retirement.  I helped another brother buy cremation services, and I got help from one of my sisters to plan a memorial service for someone.  This renewal of our relationships takes me back to the carefree days of my childhood when we played in the backyard until dark.  Only now, we are seasoned and more diverse in our experiences which makes our conversations so much more interesting.

Even relationships with extended family can blossom into beautiful connections.  As soon as I retired, one of my nephews asked me to read the novel he was writing and provide him with feedback.  I jumped at the chance and carved out a space in my schedule to achieve this.  From our connection, we have become much closer, I have helped him form a writer’s network, and we converse all the time. 

One of my mother’s sisters is a prolific letter writer, so I’ve decided to write her letters back and enjoy hers, too. Sometimes, instead of writing letters, I send her a short story that I’ve written about my mother or some other family member. She loves the connection, and writing letters helps me slow down and enjoy my connection with her, and through her, with my late mother.

When I was teaching English at a community college, I rarely had time to meet with my girlfriends, and, now that the pandemic has curbed my activity as well, I’m still not seeing them enough, yet I still am refreshing my friendships with my treasured women friends in a variety of ways.  One friend and I share our blog postings with each other, providing support and inspiration.  With another friend, I share new recipes, wine ideas, and plans for future travel.  Another friend and I go for socially-distanced walks and enjoy our spiritual connection with nature all around us. 

I’ve noticed that my husband works hard at nourishing his guy friendships as well.  He plays golf about once a week, not for the purpose of playing a great game, but for the opportunity to spend time with three of his favorite buddies.  They talk about travel, the news, sports, and their family lives.  One of his childhood friends keeps him in contact with friends from grade school, high school, and college.  They share pictures of their former sports’ teams and provide financial support for old friends who fall upon hard times.  On golf days, he comes home rested and happy, and, with his old friends, he and I share lots of laughter.

In retirement, our lives take on a new perspective.  We aren’t teachers, managers, salespersons, congressmen and women, cashiers, hairdressers, or waiters anymore, but the summation of those deep and diverse experiences that our careers have created; we, then, also may wish to develop new friends to accompany us in our new pursuits.

A few years ago, I joined a chorus comprised of mostly retired singers.  I only sang with them for three and a half years, but when I quit the chorus, I didn’t quit those cherished friendships.  Now, I attend their concerts as a listener instead of a performer.  I support their individual singing events, and I’ve made even more friends through my association with them.  I share their joys, witness their talents, and happily rejoice in their accomplishments.  And through all of these musical experiences, I nourish my own love of music.

Retirement is a new beginning—a time to rediscover the people who make us bigger than ourselves, better with company, and happier with connection. 

Patrice’s Spanish Lesson

photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

Every day after dinner, Mama sat with me at the dining room table to teach me Spanish. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to say “hola” instead of “hello,” “adios?” instead of “goodbye” or “Me llamo Patrice. Tengo ocho años.”

“Why do I have to learn Spanish?” I asked Mama.

“Grandpa lives in Guadalajara, Mexico, and we’re going to visit him this winter. You can speak Spanish with Grandpa when you see him.

Reading English was hard enough. Learning Spanish words only confused me more. Besides, it was silly to learn words that meant the same thing as the words I already knew. I wanted to play jump rope, not learn Spanish.

Mama taught me more Spanish words every day. She taught me how to say the colors of the rainbow. She told me that, in Mexico, children went to una escuela instead of a school, and they counted uno, dos, tres instead of one, two, three.

One day, Mama said she had a surprise. “Today, I’m going to teach you Spanish words for your favorite games,” she said. “‘¿Quieres saltar la comba?” means ‘Do you want to jump rope?'”

I loved jumping rope. If I had to learn Spanish, at least I could think about something I liked to do. Later, as I jumped rope outside, I made a song of the new words: “¿Quieres saltar la comba? ¿Quieres saltar la comba?”

When Grandpa met Mama and me at the Guadalajara airport, he gave us big hugs. “Hola,” he said. “Como estan?”

“Hola!” said Mama. “I missed you.” I just smiled and said nothing.

“I thought you were learning Spanish, chica,” said Grandpa.

“I don’t need Spanish. You speak English, Grandpa. I can talk to you in English.”

“I like speaking Spanish, Patrice,” said Grandpa. “That’s what people speak in Mexico.”

“It’s silly, Grandpa, and I feel silly doing it,” I said. I took Grandpa’s hand and told him all about the airplane trip on the way to the car.

Grandpa’s house was beautiful. It was surrounded by high walls, but inside, all the rooms opened onto a central courtyard filled with brightly, colored flowers. A yellow-tiled water fountain made into a fish and seashells trickled into a blue-tiled basin.

I stood with Grandpa on the steps to the garden. “I’ve never seen a house so pretty,” I said, looking at all the pots of flowers.

“In Mexico, you’ll see and learn many new things,” said Grandpa. “Come, let me show you your bedroom before my friends arrive for dinner.”

Soon, Grandpa’s friends arrived. In the dining room, Grandpa introduced Mama to the grownups, Ricardo and Mari. Beside Mari stood a girl with a long black braid and big brown eyes. “Patrice, this is Anana. She is eight years old, too,” said Grandpa.

Anana took a few steps away and leaned into her mother’s skirt. Her dark eyes opened wide as she looked at me. Grandpa smiled, said something in Spanish, and the grownups walked into the kitchen.

I felt small standing in the middle of the room with Anana and her big eyes. “Do you want to play hide and seek?” I asked nervously. Anana just opened her brown eyes wider.

“Do you want to play with puppets?” I asked. “I brought some with me from my home.” Anana inched around the other side of a pillar and hid one eye against its plaster.

This isn’t any fun, I thought. Grandpa invites friends over for me to play with and they don’t even talk to me. I looked at Anana hiding behind the pillar, then ran to my bedroom.

My jump rope was lying on top of the bedspread. I crawled onto the bed, wound the rope around my hands, and thought about Anana. What big eyes she had, so dark compared to my blue ones. Anana’s black hair was longer than mine, too. I wished my hair was long enough to braid like hers.

Things in Mexico were different than at home. Anana wore a fancy dress with ruffles and ribbons. I looked down at my shorts and Tshirt. Why did she get so dressed up to play, I wondered.

There was no one to play with and strange things to get used to. All my friends were far away.

I crawled off the bed with the jump rope in my hand. The brown tiled floor was perfect for jumping, so I swung the rope over my head and began to sing, “¿Quieres saltar la comba? ¿Quieres saltar la comba?” like Mama taught me. On the third jump, I stopped singing and slowly lowered the rope in front of me.

“¿Quieres saltar la comba?” I repeated slowly, over and over again. I opened the bedroom door just enough to peek through the crack. Anana was still out in the courtyard, leaning on the pillar. I inched my body through the door and slowly walked out to her.

When she turned toward me, I held out the jump rope and asked, “¿Quieres saltar la comba?”

The brown eyes smiled. “Si, si, yo quiero saltar la comba!” She reached out, took the rope from my hand, walked out to the patio, and started jumping. I followed her into the sun and sat down on a step to wait my turn.

The sun felt good on my face. Remembering the Spanish numbers Mama taught me, I began counting out loud in rhythm with Anana’s skips, “Uno, dos, tres . . .”

Squirrel Art

One summer day, Curly and Twirly waddled up to the school. They flatterned their round bodies, took a deep breath, and inched their way under the art room door.

“What a wonderful place to live!” exclaimed Curly. A large bookshelf held piles of colored paper. The faucet over the wide, deep sink dripped drops of water.

Using his tail, Curly opened a cupboard door. Stacked on the bottom shelf were bags of beans and flour. Using his strong teeth and paws, he dragged a sack of beans off the shelf and tore it open. Twirly kicked a bag of flour. It teetered over the edge and fell onto the floor. The cupboard’s latch tore a whole in the side.

Flour, flour, flour flew everywhere. It dusted the chairs and low table like a frosting of snow. The squirrels nibbled some flour. They cracked some beans in their jaws. They jumped up to the chairs and slid across the table. As they hurried back and forth, their paws made prints in the flour.

Curly noticed the footprints first. He stood up on his hind legs and turned all around for a better look. “Look, Twirly, our footprints make a design!” he said.

Curly stepped into the flour with both feet and made a four leaf clover. Twirly used his big toe to trace a footprint daisy. They drew straight lines and wiggly lines. They outlined pictures of all the animals that lived in the forest beside the school. They danced, they pounced, they skated all over the floor. Finally, they grew tied and fell asleep under the table.

The next morning, Curly and Twirly awoke; their back were stiff from lying on the hard floor.

“We need beds,” said Curly.

“Let’s make pretty beds, said Twirly. They chose green construction paperr that reminded them of unripe nuts in the spring. They ripped up yellow paper that looked like buttercups. The red paper was as deep as the poppies they had seen in the fields. The blue paper looked like the summer sky. Soon, inside the corner of the cupboard, they each had a rainbow-colored bed of construction paper.

The squirrels spent every day exploring the art room. One morning, Twirly reached for the handle of another cupboard and swung on it until it opened. On the top shelves, he saw row of colored liquid in jars. Inside them was the most beautiful thick dew Twirly had ever seen.

“Look Curly, delicious dew!” said Twirly. Twirly crawled onto the bottom shelf, pulled himself up onto boxes until he reached the jars of dew. His paws were too small to turn the wide, white covers. He squirmed in behind a bottle and pushed it with his two feet. It landed on the floor with a crack. Thick, yellow dew oozed from its side.

Curly climbed up and inched his body behind a red bottle and pushed. Twirly squirmed behind a green bottle and pushed. The green bottle hit the side of the table on its way to the floor and splattered green-colored dew from one end of the room to the other.

The squirrels climbed down to taste. Twirly dipped his paw into green dew, stuck it into his mouth, and slurped. “Yuck, it tastes like dirt!”

“It makes the sides of my mouth stick together,” grimaced Curly, who was trying to wipe paint off his tongue. He waved his paws in the air, flicking it off his furry paws. A pattern of dots settle all over the floor.

“Whee!” exclaimed Curly. “Wow!” yelled Twirly when they saw the dots on the floor. Curly thought hard for a minute. “The children don’t drink this dew,” he said. “They decorate with it.”

“Let’s do that, too,” replied Twirly.

Curly and Twirly spent the rest of the summer decorating their new home with colored dew, paper, and flour. Curly painted dots on the cupboard doors. Twirly created a carpet of patterns with flour and footprints. They had never been happier.

One morning, when the squirrels were still fast asleep inside their bedroom cupboard, a key turned in the lock.

“What happened here?” a lady’s voice exclaimed. Curly and Twirly rubbed their eyes and knelt behind a crack in the cupboard door to see who it was. A woman, wearing an artist’s apron, stood in the doorway. A group of children ran in behind her.

“Are you teaching us art today?” one child asked, her eyes bright and shining.

The woman didn’t answer. Her eyes opened wide as she gazed around the room. The children’s eyes glistened as they, too, noticed all of Curly’s and Twirly’s art work.

“It must have taken someone all summer,” said another little girl, “to make the art room look so beautiful.”

Curly and Twirly smiled, then hid behind a cardboard box until everyone left.

The squirrels knew they ahd to leave their comfortable home now that the children were back. They had to find new beds and more food.

As Curly and Twirly slipped under the art room door, they grinned at each other. This time, they didn’t have to leave everything behind. Curly now knew how to paint dots anywhere he lived. Twirly would always remember how to make a footprint carpet.

“I’ll paint lines on our pillow,” said Curly.

“I’ll draw zigzags on our blankets,” Twirly exclaimed.

By the time they reach the flagpole, they had thought of dozens of new ways to decorate their new home. What a beautiful home it would be.

Great Grandpa’s Copper Pennies

Some eye remind me of blue china plates. Some are as green as pine trees. Others are as dark as chocolate truffles with eyelashes resembling ruffled paper cups. But my great grandfather had eyes the color of copper pennies.

His name was Leon, and his eyes took on the glint of a new penny when he smiled–a smile that spread out wide like he was a grown-up pixie with a face full of childish adventure. His smiled possessed a spark of mischief for which everyone forgave him because his mischief was wrapped in an effervescence of charm.

My father drove Mom and us kids to Winona, Minnesota from California during the summer when I was four years old. That was the first time I ever met Great Grandfather even though my father had told us many stories about him as we sat at the foot of his brown arm chair, our arms propping us up from behind. Dad sat back in his chair, one foot perched on the other knee, his face hazy behind the smoke of his pipe.

In one story, Dad told us how he moved away from home when he was fourteen to live on Great Grandpa’s 761 acre farm, a collection of wet emerald hills and valleys, prime for alfalfa crops, acquired piecemeal through the years. After school each day and even on the weekends, my father drove the tractor, tilling the soil. “That’ll keep you outta trouble,” Great Grandpa had told him.

Dad described the big, rambling, clapboard house that Great Grandpa had built on the property. A porch, big enough for stacking up piles of firewood near the front door for the winter, spread across the whole front of the house. The house was two story, had running water and two inside toilets, modern conveniences for the time it was built. Built as the mansion for Great Grandpa’s plantation, it was nevertheless a humble abode, reflecting the unassuming personality of its owner. Furniture was utilitarian and sparse. The walls were hung with religious icons and little else.

In 1961, when Leon sold his farm to the State of Minnesota to be The Memorial Hardwood State Forest, vandals ransacked the house, trying to find the still Leon had built and used during Prohibition to produce liquor for himself and his friends. Sheetrock was slashed and kicked in, floorboards were pried up and cupboards were destroyed in the search for a secret chamber; the chamber and still were never found. My father believes that the still is buried in a hidden grave somewhere among the hills of the fields, rust and useless now.

Great Grandpa was one of the first babies to be born in the town of Winona. His father Ignacias founded the town with his four brothers during the 1850’s. An ideal location on the Mississippi to set up a sawmill and take advantage of the logging industry farther up north. By the time Leon began farming, he had passed his family sawmill obligations to the Brom family who later became his relatives when his son Leon Jr. married Lillian Brom, my grandmother.

Years before Prohibition, Leon took on the job as Winona’s first sheriff, but this too has passed by the time my father arrived on Great Grandpa’s farm in 1943. By then, Leon had earned a reputation as a respectable farmer and had contributed a significant amount of money to build Winona’s first Catholic church, St. Stanislaus.

Perhaps my father inherited Great Grandpa’s looks from being around him so much. All the men of my father’s family line bear an uncanny resemblance to each other. In pictures of them as toddlers, they have white-blonde hair and doughy-soft limbs. Later childhood pictures show how they grow into strong-limbed young boys, hardy-looking, and clear in complexion. As young men, they are debonair and tall. Eventually, they mature into handsome broad men with rounded edges, kind creases around their eyes, and erect, stocky frames. Their chests and arms provide strong hugs and they are masculine enough to accept love in return.

I have a picture of Great Grandpa Leon when he was 96 years old. He is standing, holding a fishing rod, his eyes cast down and his thumb resting on the handle of the reel. His wrinkles are life creases: the knob of his chin, slightly bulging jowls, cheeks puffed out as if they are storing nuts for the winter, and eyes recessed under a frown of concentration. His hair, thinned since youth, glows a lustrous white. His face and posture are regal like that of an older priest or religious man.

Leon lived until he was ninety-eight years old. Up until his last two years, he fished down at the family boathouse on the Mississippi or chopped wood for the fireplace. On Sundays, he spent an inordinate amount of time at church. The pastor was his friend, and he showed his friendship by spending time and money on the parish. Perhaps, Leon was playing all his cards carefully to reserve that scarce space for himself in heaven.

That summer when I was four and first visited Winona with my family, Great Grandpa Leon was already over eighty years old. My father drove our station wagon onto Grandma’s graveled driveway on a hot and sticky June afternoon. Us kids tumbled our of the station wagon and stretched the endless cross-country miles out of our crampy, gangly limbs. Giddy with excitement to explore the new town, we asked for permission to scout out the neighborhood. The three of us set out down Sixth Street toward downtown, striding under the sprawling shade of the great leafy high-arching cathedrals of elm trees that protected our blond heads from the hot sun.

We had barely walked a block when we met a man with the glint of a penny in his eyes. He looked at the three of us, and, slowly, a smile brightened up his face like a church candle lit at Mass on Easter Sunday. Stopping in front of us, he poked his hand into his pocket and pulled out a fist full of candy.

“There’s enough for all of you,” he said.

Shy at first, we were hesitant, but looking up into his glowing face and sparkling eyes, he looked trustworthy. Kind creases softened the skin under his eyes and the honey hue of his irises cast diamonds of light into the air.

“Thank you very much,” we repeated over and over again, clutching our tiny, wrapped packages of pleasure.

Running back to Grandma’s house, we found Dad and Mom sitting with Grandma around the metal kitchen table. “We met a very nice man who gave us this candy!” we exclaimed in unison like angels with new wings.

“Don’t you know who that was?” Dad asked, turning around from looking out of window. “That was your Great Grandpa.” Dad sat back in his chair and laughed, then leaned toward us and opened his eyes wide until we could see the copper pennies in his irises.

A Belly of Snow

Where I live it never snows.  Hardly ever rains.  Winter starts and finishes with fog huddling close to the ground like a damp layer of dust coating a glass tabletop.  The one day it did snow, I was stuck inside.

“You have to stay in the house, Carlota,” said Mama, tucking the blanket around me in my wheelchair.  She was always so careful with me.  “The ramp to the yard is icy and dangerous.” 

Usually I liked Mama’s special attention, but sometimes it got in the way.  Like now.  I wanted to feel that snow, ball it up in my hands to see if it stuck.  It would be fun to make a snowman.  I thought about how I’d carve the cheekbones and eyebrows on the head.  Javier, my little brother, would help find bark and sticks for the eyes, nose, and happy mouth.  I’d wrap my red scarf around its neck.

I pressed my face against the window, the glass feeling like a jar of chilis just taken from the refrigerator.   The yard was all white, the trees draped with snow lace doilies.  I watched Arnoldo, my older brother, Maria, my sister, and Javier playing in the yard.  They were lying back in the snow, swooshing their arms up and down to make angels.

Mama carried baby Jessie to his bedroom.  As soon as she was down the hall, I wheeled myself over to the door, opened it, and rolled out onto the patio.   The air gripped me like the draft from the freezer, chilling and exciting. 

“Carlota, what are you doing out here?” Maria asked.  “Mama told you to stay inside.”

“I’m just coming out for a little while, to see what it’s like. Mama won’t mind.”  I turned to the ramp and stopped at the top.   The cement looked slick and glossy like a mirror, reflecting the snaking branches of the mulberry tree.

With my hands gripping the rims of the wheels, I inched down the ramp, braking, almost going nowhere.

“Careful, Carlota. It’s really slippery there,” Arnoldo said.  He dropped a fistful of snow.  Javier gawked at me.  Maria’s mouth opened.  I couldn’t tell if their faces showed fear or admiration.

The chair twisted on the ice, and I lost hold of the other wheel.  The chair slid across the glassy surface, crashing into the rail, thrusting my chest and head over the side like I a floppy, rag doll.  My rib muscles throbbed. 

Maria, screeching, ran to me, grabbed my collar, and folded me back into the chair.  Arnoldo gripped the wheelchair’s handles, braced himself against the opposite rail, and pushed me back up to the patio.

“Are you all right?” Maria asked, hunching down and peering into my face.

“My chest hurts .  .  .  where I hit the rail,” I said, breathing hard.  I rubbed where the wood had stopped me, feeling to see if my ribs were broken.  “I’m O.K.”

“You almost killed yourself, you fool!” Maria said.  “Does Mama know you’re out here?”

I didn’t answer.  I looked down at my legs and noticed that my shoes were jammed behind the footpads.  Javier lifted my feet and placed them on the pads.

“Let’s cart you back in there before Mama finds out what you did,” Maria said.       Javier held open the screen door as Arnoldo drove me back into the house.  Long before Mama came out of baby Jessie’s bedroom, I was back, looking out the window.

I leaned my arms on the sill and breathed mouthfuls of fog onto the glass.  Arnoldo was shaking his head as Maria squawked at him and flapped her arms. 

After a while when she calmed down, Maria walked out into the yard under the naked walnut trees with Arnoldo and Javier following behind.  As I looked at the sky through the craggy branches of those trees, a tear drizzled down my cheek onto my lips.

Stupid wheelchair!   I wanted to be outside.   I wanted to play in the snow with everyone else.   It wasn’t fun being cooped up in here with nothing to do.

I was surprised Maria didn’t tell Mama what I’d done.  Instead, she told Arnoldo to get the red wagon from the patio and pull it out under the trees where the snow was smooth and thick.      

My brothers and sister filled the wagon with a mountain of snow.  I watched as they packed it in, patting it with the palms of their mittens, building it higher than even the wooden slats on the wagon’s sides.  Arnoldo dragged the wagon up the yard to the side of the house out of my view, everyone trailing behind him.

I sighed, turned my chair away from the window, and rolled over to the desk where I laid my head on my folded arms.  I had nothing to do, and, now,  couldn’t even watch Maria and the others playing.   Was Maria still mad at me for scaring her?   Is that why they went to play where I couldn’t see them?

“Carlota, go to the garage. Maria is asking for you,” Mama said from the kitchen.  I could hear the chopping of her knife on the cutting board. 

As I turned my chair around towards the garage door, I felt a flutter in my chest, a lump in my throat.  Would Maria tell Mama what I had done?

I opened the door and rolled down the ramp.  Maria, Arnoldo, and Javier stood in the middle of the garage floor, next to the snow-filled wagon.  They were all smiling with big, toothy grins.  Arnoldo patted the snow like it was a big belly.  Javier laughed so big that I could see the spaces where his two teeth were missing.

I squeezed my eyes shut.  Something good was about to happen.  Something warm and comfortable and happy just the way I liked it.  Like when I woke up in the morning and smelled fresh tortillas.  Like when Mama gave me her ribbons and sewing kit to decorate my doll clothes, or when Daddy wrote poems to me on the back of my birthday cards.  This something would be like that. 

“Now you can have snow, too,” Maria said. 

I wheeled over and braked abruptly in front of the wagon. “Help me build a snowman!” I shouted as I dug a hand into the cold, white mound.

Outside the garage window, sunshine peeked through a gray cloud.  The snow would be melting soon.  Daffodils would poke their heads through the dirt liked it hadn’t been cold at all.

It never snows where I live. It hardly ever even rains.