Archive for the ‘Memoir’ Category

Growing up in a small farming community way back in the 50’s when the internet and science fiction and there were only three networks, going to the Mower County Fair was grand entertainment. My brothers, sisters and cousins loved the Midway rides and always gave me a hard time because I wasn’t game enough to go on anything wilder than the Merry-Go-Round. Of course, they would go on everything, walking like drunken sailors when they emerged from the Tilt-A-Whirl. We all enjoyed the Tom Thumb doughnuts hot out of the grease from the travelling carnival booth. And we never missed getting malt served by the Dairy Princess at the Dairy building. Or to at least gaze at her likeness carved in butter. That does take a specific kind of talent to take a block of butter and shape it into the face of a small town beauty. But I my favorite display of creativity was the 4H exhibits – especially the Clothing & Textiles. Tissue paper, pins, needles and thread along with intuition of color choice and choosing just the right fabric for the design came together with prize winning results. Butterick, Simplicity, McCalls, even Vogue patterns were brought to life in simple garments by aspiring seamstresses to more involved and complicated ensembles expertly executed by accomplished artesian. My older cousin won a blue ribbon one year for the dress and coat she made for a special division called Make it with Wool. It was worthy of a Marlo Thomas That Girl costume.

While I had no illusions about making anything so grand (Miss Lowe gave me a D in the sewing section of Home Economics class), I knew that one day I’d make something beautiful too. And I have. I’ve made lots of beautiful somethings. I’ve sewn everything from curtains to costumes and lots of clothing in between.

Now when folks are talking about ways to economize, sewing has become popular again. I think it is inspiring and exhilarating to be able to express yourself with a needle and thread. Starting simple and small with a pillow or curtain is a great beginning. Who knows, maybe I’ll see something of yours at the fair.

Summer is a favorite time of year for families to gather for reunions and as a child I remember attending the annual Underwood picnic in Blooming Prairie. Aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews and various friends who became adopted family gathered in the church basement to trade stories and eat a covered dish lunch. The church basement was always clammy with the humid summer air even when you stood in front of the one oscillating fan in the place. Little kids with red Kool-Aid lips gave grandmas and great aunties big sticky kisses at the urging of laughing mothers.

Aunt Betty, Little Mary and Uncle Dick

didn’t put in enough of the flavor packets. But it did us no good to say it needed sugar, there was no sugar to put in! They remembered the cream for the coffee, but no one used sugar.  That was before the days of sugar substitutes so no Equal or Splenda either.  Obviously, we survived and can laugh about it now – the year we had colored water at the picnic!

Little Mary and Marilyn - Lake Hanska Bathing Beauties

Nebraska, the boat came to the farm to be part of our summer entertainment. Since I didn’t have the responsibilities of the maintenance of a boat motor, nor the upkeep of painting and varnishing a wooden boat, I have very fond memories of great times on the water in that boat. I also have fond memories of splashing around in the water with my older cousins. Marilyn was the only daughter of Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Veronica. She had a wonderful laugh, a generous nature and very sweet to her little cousin. I can almost feel the sun on my back and the water lapping against the black inner tube when I look at this picture.  -

When I was about 12 my brother, Allen, and I went to Farmer’s Union Youth Camp for a whole week. The only time in our childhood we had a camp experience. Five days of sleep away camp. I don’t know if we would have had the opportunity to go except for the generosity of our neighbor on the next farm, who happened to be childless and the president of the local chapter of the Farmer’s Union. During Arts & Crafts we painted ceramic fruit. Allen painted an apple, I painted bananas. My mother had them hanging in the kitchen for a long, long time. I remember hiking up steep trails around Whitewater State Park, sleeping in bunk beds, eating with 100 other kids and enjoying a very liberating experience among peers rather than being George and Florence’s oldest boy and oldest girl. At the end of the week we even put on a show of skits and other various forms of bad to mediocre entertainment which was hilariously funny from what I can remember.

I hope you can reach back into your memories to find a summer experience to bring you a smile or two.  I may just go pick up some paint and a ceramic bit of fruit and recreate one of my favorite experiences. What about you?

Happy Father’s Day to everyone this weekend! I hope you have a chance to celebrate with those who have nurtured you in a “fatherly” fashion whether they were of the male gender, or called upon to find that spirit within herself. My Daddy was the strong, silent type Gary Cooper type and a stubborn Norwegian who could be vocal to let you know when he was upset about something, but he also knew how to have fun and he loved his kids. We watched TV together - Ed Sullivan, Lassie, especially Gunsmoke, and Bonanza were favorites. And because farmers couldn’t get away easily for lengthy vacations, Sunday afternoons were special family outings with the boat. It was also difficult to do just about anything together with a family of 8! Living in Minnesota there were lots of lakes around, but somehow we ended up going to an Iowa river for our adventures. It was strange to see Daddy in anything other than his bib overalls, denim work short and Red Wing boots, but to go to the river he wore trunks and matching terry cloth shirt my mother purchased at JC Penneys. You couldn’t pay him to wear sandals, so he always wore his bedroom slippers with his bathing trunks. Mommie would make a picnic of fried chicken, or sometimes Daddy would grill. He had a special trick to get the charcoal to heat up really fast – douse it with lighter fluid! Guess that’s why his hamburgers always tasted like lighter fluid. My brother would attempt to get up on water skis, and the rest of us would splash around in the shallow, muddy water waiting for our turn to get to ride in the boat. Sometimes we’d float on black inner tubes and ride the “waves” into shore the passing outboard motors created when they sped by.

My wish for you is that you’ll have a chance this weekend to make a special Father’s Day memory and let those you love know how much you care!

This afternoon I took a break from preparing for a Cretivity Workshop I’m hosting on Saturday by puttering around the house and rearranging my collection of Pink Depression Glass. Details about my presentation and my desire to do a good job for the participants became clear as my  perspective and my energy shifted while I washed and handled the delicate pieces. I thought about family and friends who had given me the many plates, bowls, pitchers and sugar and creamer sets over the years and it made me smile. I have a pink measuring cup sitting beside a green measuring cup because my I discovered a pink Depression Glass measuring cup casually in use at my friend’s summer cabin as if it were a Woolworth plastic cup. When I pointed this out to her and offered to do a trade she declined as the item belonged to her parents, but she did understand my attachment. Her husband went on eBay to find another one, but didn’t realize he was getting a green one. She gave it to me at Christmas, apologizing because it wasn’t pink. I love it that much more. I have since gotten a pink measuring cup of my own, and I display them side by side. The memories associated with the pieces keep me connected with the family and friends who gave them to me. They are all precious to me.

Creating a Texas wedding – Michelle Style

With this ring Michelle and Travis are wed

On Memorial Day weekend family and friends gathered under a brilliant sky as blue as the state flower to help witness Michelle, my niece, and her beloved, Travis, exchange vows.  Michelle didn’t have to read “It’s Your Wedding – Not Theirs,” (the book I’d edited with Fr. Miles O’Brien) to have the confidence to make her own distinctive choices about the wedding. Everything was al a carte Michelle-Style.  She chose a beautiful location in the country where she wasn’t tied to a specific florist, caterer, DJ or printer. I was even included in the preparations when the mother of the bride, my baby sister, Joyce, called to ask me to come early from California to Texas so that I could help with the flowers. We were continuing a family tradition of sisters helping sisters prepare for their weddings. When Joyce got married, silk flowers were very popular and I made all the flowers for her wedding. Joyce has the bridal bouquet I made for her on display next to her wedding picture. I have the basket I carried as a bridesmaid in my home next to a shot on that day of all the sisters posed in the church where we all were baptized, made our first communion and confirmed.

Michelle's wild flower wedding

It was quite a heady, not to mention fragrant, experience being able to choose among the varieties available for the bouquets and boutonnieres. Deciding what to buy didn’t seem to be a problem for Michelle. “I like anything that’s different and colorful,” she told us as we stood in the Flower Farm Barn. That’s how the guys ended up wearing a Texas Thistle instead of a rosebud. And that’s how we ended up with her bride’s bouquet consisting of: Hydrangeas with powder blue tips, white Iris, hot pink Gerbera Daisies, deep blue Orchids, burgundy Peonies, pale green Phlox, pink Tuberosa and Queen Anne’s Lace. All of the five bridesmaid’s bouquets were whimsical and colorful hand-tied works of art. A riot of wild flower color and greenery adorned the tables at the reception and surrounded the wedding party during the ceremony.

It was a beautiful day full of love and joy. I’m so glad I can say I had a very small part in helping create the finishing details. I’ll cherish the sweet memories and wish the young couple all the best as they start their married life together.

Living a Simple Abundant Life – May 2009

Create A Mothering Spirit Within Yourself!

As I watched my daughter drizzle glaze on a fresh batch Poppy Seed Muffins for my Mother’s Day brunch, I marveled at how far we’d come since our first Mother’s Day together. It was a double blessing in that we also celebrated her baptism that second Sunday of May 1984. I was awash with emotions as I held my infant because I was thrilled to at last be able to perform that simple, yet oh so significant, act. There was a time when I was afraid I’d never hear someone call me Mommie.

Mary and Tess on our 1st Mother's Day May 1984

Five years of questions and tests, interviews and forms, wondering and waiting, our infertility diagnosis was resolved with adoption. On April 10, 1984 my husband and I entered Catholic Charities as an anxious couple. We emerged with a beautiful baby girl. Our new little family fulfilled my life long dream.

If this May hasn’t brought you breakfast in bed, sweets, or a fragrant bouquet, it’s not too late to provide those things for yourself. While it is true we would like to receive them from others as an outward sign of their love, respect and appreciation for us, the reality is they don’t think to do it. You can satisfy your need to be comforted and nurtured by taking care of yourself. Start small because I know this is a hard concept for many women to grasp. We are not used to being on the receiving end of such gestures. Soak up the afternoon sun for 15 minutes before school gets out, rent a DVD and spend the afternoon lost in your favorite celluloid fantasy with a big bowl of popcorn, or perhpas buy yourself some flowers along with the weekly groceries.

A Christmas memory

n a cold Minnesota Saturday afternoon in late December my mother is clutching my little sister’s hand as the crowd of women and children in their Sunday finery swirls around us. This much activity is not the norm. The sight of my mother in heels, hose and her “good” fur-trimmed coat meant a special occasion. The fact that we were accompanying her meant that something very extraordinary was happening: Santa was coming to town. Three-year-old Louise grips her brown paper sack of hard ribbon candy and popcorn ball in her mittened hand. Brownie, Danny Brown manager of the Adams Furniture store dressed in his clip on bow tie and short sleeved white shirt, was busy passing out the gift bags to impatiently waiting children. I’m a very mature 7-year-old who has important accessories, along with my personal stash of candy, in my shoulder bag which was now hanging around my knees. Five-year-old Gale, my little brother, sees a friend behind us and twists around to try to talk to him. We’re hot and sweaty after coming out of the warm, stuffy furniture store into the cold afternoon air. We’re wearing heavy winter coats, snow pants and boots.

If you are a grown up lady you don’t have to wear boots in winter unless there’s lots of snow. There are some women who treated the Saturday event almost as if it was any other Saturday. They came to town with their heads wrapped in scarves to thinly disguise the curlers underneath in preparation for their appearance in church on Sunday. They went about the business of getting their weekly groceries at Johnny Wagner’s Super Value, mailing a Christmas package of homemade divinity to their cousin at the post office, followed by picking up red and white stripped candy canes at Schaefer’s Drug Store. What made this day unusual was that these women, including my mother, brought their children with them because the Merchant’s Assn had a wonderful marketing gimmick.

They put their heads together and decided to encourage the farm families to come to town to shop by sponsoring free movies for the children on the Saturday afternoons in December before Christmas. Vernon Schaefer, father of 5, devout Catholic, member of the Merchants Assn who sold insurance and also ran the Adams Theatre, choose appropriate films for young children approved by the Catholic League of Decency. I think we saw Babes in Toyland every Saturday one year.

On the Saturday before Christmas the air was full of electricity as adults and children filled the stores and sidewalks awaiting Santa’s arrival. Seated his La-Z-boy throne, centrally located in the middle of the furniture store, Santa heard all the children’s Christmas wishes. I wanted a real baby doll with beautiful crocheted clothes. Louise wanted a real puppy to could sleep in bed with her.

That wasn’t something that you wanted to hear from someone you share a bed with. Gale wanted a real tractor he could drive to farm the garden.

We were a typical Midwestern farming community in the 50’s. Sacred Heart Catholic Church stood down the crushed rock road yards from my back door. Little Cedar Lutheran Church was directly across the street from my cousin Linda’s house at the other end of town. Marshall Lutheran Church was out in the country. We passed it going to my grandparent’s farm. My dad grew up there and two of his three sisters still lived there along with his parents.

We were not a diverse community. Migrant Mexican farm workers picked potatoes near Blooming Prairie, but that was miles from us and we certainly never came in contact with them. I never saw a black person, except in Missionary pictures of pagan babies, or Life magazine until I was 10 years old.

You wouldn’t know it to look at us, but my two brothers, my sister and I were all the result of a mixed marriage! Our definition of a mixed marriage meant that one party was Lutheran and the other was Catholic. My father was raised in a very strict Lutheran home. My mother’s mother was a devout Catholic who attended daily mass. Grandma was a favorite of the nuns and they often walked past our house on Friday, baking day. Grandma always generously gave them a fresh loaf of bread to take back to the convent.

Despite the fact that we lived a block from the center of town, we kids were never allowed to run wild like a pack of Indians. Getting uptown for the December movies was a mixed blessing. A small taste of the high life, while we were expected to be on our best behavior because after all Christmas was only days away! The unfairness of the pressure to be good.

My mother had a firm grip on her handbag in one hand and my sister in her other leather gloved hand. Mother hurries us along as Louise stared at her reflection in the Adams Furniture Store window. The bank president is passing buffalo nickels out in front of the Farmers State Bank and then it’s across the railroad tracks and home. I can almost feel the cold metal against my warm palm where I slipped it inside my mitten for safe keeping. A nickel bought a lot in 1957.