family – Tess Perko's Blog

The Multiplication Staircase

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

“I brought you some flowers today, Rosie,” he said. He grabbed a tall cup from a side table and stuck the flowers into the water in the cup.

Rosie smiled and scooted up in bed, pulling her two leg casts with her. She was 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.

“A girl named Rosie lived in a house that was older than her grandmother, a cottage 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 ancient redwood trees that stood like giant sentinels guarding the home.

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

“Rosie had spent the eight years of her life walking around the winding streets and staircases of her neighborhood 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, at the top of a hill, where she could view San Francisco Bay—Oakland’s downtown, the Bay Bridge, San Francisco’s ever-changing skyline, the small and big islands in the crystal blue water, and the Golden Gate Bridge.

“But that day, she was lost in thought. Rosie had failed her math test.

“Failed.

“She couldn’t remember her multiplication tables. When she had stared at the test, the numbers got jumbled inside her head. She became confused and scared.

“Rosie turned right on Euclid as 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. She grabbed the black wrought-iron railing and pulled each foot up the cement stairs one by one. Usually, she counted the stairs to make the trek easier, but, that day, she was worried about how to tell her mother she had failed.

“Suddenly, Rosie slipped. Her body twisted away from the rail like a flag whipped by wind around a pole. Hanging by one arm, she swung back and rammed into the railing’s vertical bars. Finally, she let go of the banister and fell hard onto a cement stair, her legs tangled beneath her.

“How did Mom climb the stairs without falling when she walked to the store or caught the bus on Euclid Way? Rosie always 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 a pair of shears. The hydrangea bushes bloomed with vibrant pink blossoms behind her—the flowers like ballerina pink tutus on a crowded stage. A pail of old blossoms stood next to the stool.

“Rosie looked down at her shoes, one untied, the shoe string dragging behind her.

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

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

“’Tell me anyway,’ Mom said. ‘Otherwise, I can’t help you.’

“Rosie sat down on the brick steps next to Mom. ‘I failed my math test. I can’t remember my multiplication tables’ she said, wringing her hands in her lap. ‘Not only that, when I was walking home, I fell, bloodied my leg, and scratched my arm.’ Rosie rubbed her hip and showed her mother her injuries.

“’Hmm,’ said her mother. ‘I have an idea. Let’s first have a snack and rest. Then, I’ll help you 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 described 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. ‘It’s really good. I used a leaf coated with green paint as a press to make the flower’s leaves.’

“Her mom put her arm around her shoulders and squeezed. ‘I can’t wait to see it. We’ll frame it when you bring it home.’ Her mother then rubbed her hands together and wiped them with a napkin. ‘Now, 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 huge iron bolts. The stair rail 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.

“Rosie’s mother held up two fingers. ’Two times one is just a single two. Two times two is two twos.’ She held up two fingers with her other hand. ‘If I 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 two more, I have six,’ said her mother.

“Rosie felt a flutter in her chest. ‘And another two is eight. Another two is ten. Six-twos is twelve! This is easy!’

“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 they sat on the second step, Rosie practiced the three times table. Rosie 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.

“The breeze felt good on Rosie’s face and the velvety, seashell-shaped gardenias blooming on the bushes nearby filled the air with an exotic perfume. Rosie memorized the four times table in less time than she had learned the three times table.

“’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 learning the six-, seven-, eight-, nine-, and ten-times tables. Each time she completely memorized a number’s table, she 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 the twelves, her 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 successive step, Rosie’s mom tested her with a time table from two to twelve. Rosie got all the answers right until she got to 11 times 11. Her mind went blank.

“Rosie’s mom smiled as if she didn’t have any worries at all. She 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. When her mom tested her with 12 times 7, Rosie got the right answer. ‘You’ve won the championship of the staircase times tables!’ her mom 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 did it by climbing one step at a time until you were ready for the next one,’ said Rosie’s mom. It is really that simple.’”

Grandpa folded his hands in his lap in the chair beside Rosie’s hospital bed.

Rosie looked into his hazel eyes. “I need to learn my multiplication tables, too.”

His eyes glittered like a green field wet with raindrops. “You won’t have any trouble at all. My imagination just showed you how to learn them.”

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

Rosie threw her arms around his neck. “Your imagination is a genius!”

“See you tomorrow,” he said.

After Grandpa left, Rosie looked out the window at the cloudless blue sky that rose upward into forever and ever. She imagined all kinds of staircases up there: wooden, cement, tile, and marble ones; ascending and descending stairs; steps with flowers growing through their cracks; stairs in the rain; stairways filled with people feeling joy and sadness; and steps full of families and friends. So many kinds.

But it didn’t matter how many stairs there were. She now knew how to climb them, one step at a time.

What I Learned about My Dad’s Vietnam Deployment from Reading The Women by Kristin Hannah

Photo by Kirt Morris on Unsplash

I was fifteen years old when my father went to war in Vietnam, not old enough to understand the news or to pay attention to adult worries. But I remember my dad standing at the front door with my mother hanging onto him, tears streaming down her face.

When my dad came home, we expected that he’d sit in his big armchair set in a corner of the living room, gather his children around his feet, and tell stories about what he saw. But he didn’t. He sat in his armchair, staring at the blank television with furrows in his brow for hours each night after work and during the long afternoons on the weekend. We crept past his chair silently afraid of his morose temperament.

When I discovered The Women by Kristin Hannah, I thought it would be an opportunity for me to learn about my father’s Vietnam experience that he never shared with us. The book tells the story of a young woman, Frances Grace McGrath, who becomes a nurse and signs up to serve in the army in Vietnam in 1965. She joins the Army Nurse Corps since the Air Force and Navy require her to have more clinical experience than she has.

Frances, known as Frankie, is inspired to sign up for service because her father has a wall in his study of the family’s military heroes, and she wants to be on that wall. The only woman on the wall is her mother in a wedding picture. Just before her brother leaves for the war, one of his friends tells her that women can be heroes, too.

My father, on the other hand, tried to avoid going to Vietnam. By 1965, he had been in the Air Force for twelve years and was a senior flight mechanic, a valuable skill for a war being fought with helicopters and airplanes. 1965 was the year that President Johnson increased troop deployment to Vietnam and began direct combat operations to shore up the South Vietnamese defense against the communist Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. My father petitioned not to be sent, so he was deployed instead to Mildenhall, a U.S. Air Force base in the United Kingdom. I was only nine years old. The bad news was that he had to leave his circle of friends in California to serve there for almost four years. The good news was that his family could join him, his wife and all nine kids. We came back to California in 1969. But this alternate deployment did not protect him from being shipped off to Vietnam.

In 1972, when the war was raging and tempers were flaring at home about it, I still didn’t know much about the war even though I had seen pictures of U. C. Berkeley students protesting it on television.

In April 1972, my dad closed the front door on his family and flew to serve at Cam Ranh Bay, an air base Vietnam used for the offloading of supplies, military equipment, and as a major Naval base. My father was assigned to serve as the senior flight mechanic on a huge transport plane known as a C-5B, a plane that can transport a fully equipped combat unit with oversized cargo. He wrote numerous letters home. In one, he writes about how he sprained his ankle in the shower. In another, he describes how a bomb went off outside the plane, the noise ringing in his ears.

I know my father took soldiers to the front lines and brought home dead men in body bags. He didn’t tell us that, but when I read about the use of C5-B planes, that’s what I learned. I know also that the planes were used to rescue Vietnamese women and children and bring them to the United States. Once, my father described how they had to shut the cargo door to keep out the hordes of civilians trying to board the plane.

After my father died and I was helping my mother with his estate, I came across some paperwork relating to a lawsuit about Agent Orange. Apparently, my father had been exposed to it in Vietnam. I had heard of it and thought that it was some kind of chemical used in a war. In The Women, I learned that it was a deadly herbicide used to kill jungle foliage to prevent the Viet Cong from hiding. Exposure to it causes cancer, birth defects, and other illnesses. My father died when he was 76 years old from heart trouble. His grandfather had lived to the age of 98 years old. Could he have lived longer if he hadn’t been exposed to Agent Orange?

Dad only stayed in Vietnam for eight months. He came home early since President Nixon had decided to withdraw U.S. troops by January 1973. Dad flew into Beale Air Force Base and my mother rushed to see him as soon as he landed.

By 1972 in the book, Frankie is home, experiencing nightmares and guilt for being part of a war that Americans didn’t want. She had seen soldiers without limbs, chest wounds, and mangled heads. They haunted her in her dreams, and when loud noises went off around her, she ducked for cover.

I don’t know if my father had nightmares like Frankie. I don’t know how the war protesters made him feel. Unlike Frankie, whose military service was ignored by her family and country, I think my father had emotional support waiting for him at home. My parents had a large community of friends in their church, who rallied around him when he returned. Finally, after months of grim silence, he got out of his armchair and settled into life again. A few years later, he retired from the Air Force and went back to school to get his contractor’s license. His last job was building candy stores for See’s Candies.

Frankie’s story taught me how the women who served in Vietnam received little or no credit for their valor even from their own families. As a woman, I’ve experienced a lot of inequality, so the story affected me deeply. But as the child of a soldier in Vietnam whose life was profoundly affected by a parent’s suffering, I’m thankful that it uncovered some of the mystery of my father’s Vietnam deployment.

A Eulogy for my Sister Carol

Photo by Cristina Anne Costello on Unsplash

Good morning. My name is Tess, the third child in a family of ten children and Carol’s older sister. Carol was the sixth child in our family, born on October 20, 1960 at Mather Air Force Base hospital in Sacramento.

As a baby, Carol was a pretty little blonde girl with fine hair and features that mirrored her mother’s: a long forehead, an awfully straight nose, and a smile that created dimples in her cheeks.

Carol loved, loved, loved music.

She enjoyed old-fashioned country music by the likes of Hank Williams who wrote “Hey Good Lookin,” which she heard when Mom and Dad played the radio.

When Carol still lived with us, Beverly, Carol’s oldest siter and another musician in the family, sang songs to her, such as “Do, Re, Mi” from the musical Mary Poppins and “My Favorite Things” and “Edelweiss” from The Sound of Music. Carol smiled, laughed enthusiastically, and sometimes rocked to the beat.

Just before Carol died, Ron and I visited her in the hospital. She was anxious, and the only noises in the room were the beeping of the medical monitors. We turned on some music by the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. Immediately, Carol turned her head toward the music speaker and calmed down. Her eyes gleamed with joy.

We believe Carol would have been a great musician if she hadn’t suffered from Cerebral Palsy.

Carol possessed determination.

Even though she didn’t speak, Carol had ways of letting people know what she didn’t like. Whenever someone tried to brush her teeth or feed her sour fruit, she clenched her mouth closed to prevent anyone from getting anything past her teeth.

While she was in the hospital, Carol demonstrated determination as well. She didn’t like having oxygen tubes in her nose, so she moved her head from side to side until they fell out. One time, after I had inserted the tubes back in, Carol used her left hand to accurately bump the tubes out of her nose and above her head. A look of satisfaction spread across her face as she became free of them. I laughed out loud realizing that her spirit was still strong and impressive.

Carol was sometimes mischievous and annoyed.

One time when Margaret visited Carol while she was living in transitional housing, she found a caretaker feeding her.

Margaret knew that Carol had been attending school to learn how to eat on her own, so Margaret said to Carol, “Carol, you know how to feed yourself.”

Carol swallowed, looked up at Margaret, and laughed heartily.

Apparently, she was hungry, and, if she had to feed herself, it would take much longer. She knew what she was doing.

When Carol was annoyed, she set her mouth in a tight straight line to let us know. Her expression was so like the countenance of Mom’s face when she was irritated that we recognized it easily.

Carol enjoyed the support of a loving family throughout her life.

Our parents’ greatest gift was a strong family bond, and Carol was an integral part of our family unit.

Carol lived with our family for nine years. When she was a little girl, I lifted her onto the swing and pushed her. She raised her face to the sky to feel the breeze. I also took her by the hand and walked her around the back yard so she could see the animals. Her eyes followed the ducks and chickens as they strutted around for food.

When we flew to England to live for almost four years, I sat next to Carol on the plane. I thought I was luckier than my two older sisters because they had to take care of more siblings than me. As long as I took good care of Carol, Mom was happy. I danced stuffed animals in front of her, fed her the airplane food, of which she didn’t complain, and sang her to sleep.

After we returned from England, my parents decided to arrange for Carol to live in an assisted living home. One of her homes was in Santa Clara. At the time, I worked in Santa Clara, so, once a week, I visited Carol and fed her dinner. Sometimes, I was able to take her outside to enjoy the warm sun and soft breezes by the Bay. We sat on the expansive lawn under the shade of an oak tree, and I told her stories about the people in our family while her hazel eyes stared at my face.

Margaret and Liz also visited Carol in Santa Clara. First, they went to Great America for a day of fun, then called Carol’s facility to see if they could visit. Since they were arriving after visiting hours, they knocked on the back door. Once admitted, they sat next to Carol in the sitting room and told her about their day at the amusement park. Since Margaret and Liz love roller-coaster rides, they described the thrill of bouncing up and down and all around, and Carol stared at them, probably day-dreaming about a calmer choice such as “It’s a Small World.”

Finally, my parents arranged for Carol to move to Sacramento so she could live closer to them.

Once, while visiting, Margaret took Carol to Starbucks and ordered her a Strawberry Créme Frappuccino. She wheeled Carol outside since it was summer and she wanted Carol to enjoy the good weather. Margaret held the Frappuccino up to Carol’s mouth and told her not to drink it too fast or she would get a brain freeze. Carol eagerly sucked quickly through the straw for a few seconds, then let the straw go, wrinkled up her nose, and squeezed her eyes shut. Oops, she got a brain freeze.

When Carol moved to a home in Penryn, she was extremely popular with her roommates. She had more visitors than anyone, and her roommates thought she was Miss Congeniality. When we visited her, not only did we talk to Carol, we spent time with her friends. The joy on all the faces was rewarding. We felt popular, too.

Mom and Dad supported Carol throughout their lives, making sure she was well-cared for wherever she lived. Often, they brought her home for holidays such as Christmas so everyone could see her. Carol even showed up at Mom and Dad’s 50^th wedding anniversary at St. Mel’s Church, accompanied by her caregiver.

Later, after Dad passed away, Mom visited Carol as often as she could even after she moved into an assisted living facility herself when she was 89. Whenever Carol saw Mom, she didn’t have eyes for anyone else. She gazed into her face with a tender look of love, often accompanied by a smile.

Mom was a dedicated mother; she called Carol’s home every Sunday afternoon to check up on her. Our parents also purchased a burial plot for Carol next to their own so she could rest beside them.

Closing

We will miss Carol. Like any sibling, she was our friend, our companion, our entertainment, and most of all our teacher. She inspired us to slow down our racing lives to enjoy basic joys and connection with her. She showed us the value of unconditional love and how to practice it. She taught us that family bonds go beyond childhood and are maintained by commitment.

Our lives were and still are enriched by hers, and we are grateful to God that she was our sister.

Cousin Love

No one ever talks about their cousins, except my family. I have 44 first cousins that live all over the United States and beyond. I have friended many of them on Facebook. Many receive Christmas cards from me, and I visited many in Wisconsin and Minnesota this last year. I feel as close to my cousins as I do my own siblings.

My parents assured us that we would enjoy being from a large family since we’d always have friends. They were right. Even though I don’t see my cousins on a daily basis, they bring me so much joy and satisfaction.

My cousin Tim lives in Montana. He recently retired as the Superintendent of a tiny school district. Since I was a college professor, our careers were focused on helping students and improving education. We also comforted each other when we went through our divorces by sitting in a car in San Diego in the middle of the night and sharing stories after his brother’s wedding.

My cousin Roslyn is a high-school history teacher in Michigan. We both believe that students are better off when they learn history from more than one perspective and understand the difference between equity and equality since we worked with those concepts in the classroom. Roslyn is my philosophical partner in our extended family.

Carolyn lives in Winona, Minnesota. She raised her son as a happy single parent and now has two grandchildren. Yesterday, she posted a picture of her front yard packed with snow where she had painted flowers on the three-foot snow walls beside the path to her front door. What a creative spirit!

Cousin Dan lives in Japan with his wife and two pretty daughters. He works for the United States Navy and leaves his family for months at a time while stationed on the U.S.S. Reagan. I love his mustache and fun-loving family, who spend their afternoons searching for pottery on the beaches and artistic manhole covers in the towns.

My cousin Arlie is a handsome devil who has worn his once-dark-but-now-gray curly hair both long and short over the years. Once he drove a truck full of Wisconsin cheese to my parent’s house in California. We ate cheddar for weeks. Now, Arlie rides horses with his wife and works at an auto store. Even though we have little in common, at every reunion, we share heart-felt cousin hugs.

Patty lives in Boston and is married to Steve, who completely adores her. They go to baseball games and concerts on date nights, and inspire the rest of us not to give up on love. Patty sure knows how to pick a good partner.

Diane lives with her husband Matt in Minnesota. Now this is a fun girl. If you want to kayak in the Winona Lake, she’ll do it. She knows all the best restaurants in town and will even accompany you to the local spice and Polish museums for an afternoon. If you’re up for it after dinner, she’ll go with you to a bar for a beer and sit outside with the mosquitoes. One year, I watched on Facebook as she and Matt took their motorcycle on a cross-country trip through Minnesota, South Dakota, and Montana. Wow, what a woman!

Scott, a happy tall guy with a strong build, owns a dairy farm in Minnesota where he produces thousands of gallons of milk per day for American milk-drinking consumers. If you ask, he’ll take you on a tour of the farm and you’ll see where the calves are raised, cows are milked by machine, statistics are collected for each animal, and cow manure is recycled. Even a town-girl like me learns something every time I visit his farm.

I could go on talking about Lisa in Florida, Marilyn in Ohio, Marjorie in Minnesota, Randy in Minnesota, Karen in Wisconsin, Dewey, Joanne, Debbie, Denise, Renee, Kathy, Scott, Jim, and more, more, more, but you get the idea. I have interesting cousins in my life, and I interact with them frequently enough to maintain vibrant relationships.

Thank you, Mom and Dad, for maintaining such close family ties over the years. My cousins are an essential part of my happiness. I love them.