Marriage, adding machines and new homes

While some -- in their study of history -- learn about battles, events that led to wars, or who signed what and when and where, I was always interested in what ordinary people who were living during those times were doing.

I am grateful Mom told me stories about her life on the farm, about life during the depression, about getting electricity on the farm, about dating Dad, about what she did during World War II, and about their life when they were first married. Mom had hundreds of stories and I'm glad I listened. I am grateful I have a memory to write them down.

When she could still converse Mom talked a lot about the early years of their marriage.

Dad was home on leave from Europe when they got married on August 4, 1945. While they were on their honeymoon the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. And the war ended.

Dad was going to ship out to Japan after his leave, but instead he spent six weeks in Washington state before coming home. Mom stayed with her in-laws while Dad was gone. It was while she was staying there she learned the importance of not using a man's razor to shave her legs.

Mom told me Grandpa came downstairs one day with pieces of toilet paper stuck to his face with his razor in hand asking if anyone had used his razor.

"Did you tell him you had," I asked her?

Mom was surprised. "Of course I told him. I had to. I did it."

I think if it had been me I may have kept my mouth shut. But that's just me.

Dad returned and I would imagine life slowly returned to normal. He got a job and they settled into married life. They rented a farmhouse -- with no running water -- near Mom's sister and brother-in-law. I can only imagine what life must have been like living in that house. Mom said it wasn't so bad in the summer, but running to the outhouse in the dead of winter was not fun. Heating water on the stove to wash diapers was a lot of work as well. My two older sisters were born while they lived there.

Life continued and eventually Mom and Dad built their first home in Grand Rapids. The house was had in-floor radiant heat and my sister remembers a breakfast nook where Mom and her brother Jim sat and had coffee a couple times a week.

When King and I were first married our rent payment for married student housing at the university was $165 a month (including utilities) Mom told me the house payment for their first home was $42 a month and she worried how they were going to afford the payment. She also tells how the house was so new they hadn't yet laid the carpet when Dad was offered the opportunity to move to Hamilton and help manage a dog food company his brother-in-law had started.

I'm not certain if I actually remember that first factory or if I remember seeing photos of it. But it was in a Quonset-style celery coop. I do remember the juniper bushes in front of the office and the stairs to the office with a pipe railing that my younger sister and I would play on while visiting Dad at work.

I also recall going to work with him one afternoon while my mother and younger sister went to the

doctor. I was a wonderful afternoon filled with interesting people and a remarkable adding machine with lots of buttons and number. I merrily punched buttons and listened to the machine as it made a clacketedy-clack sound and numbers would appear. The more buttons one pushed the more noise it made. . .That is until the unthinkable happened. I pushed too many buttons at once. The machine whirred a little and then stopped. I hid under the desk. I may have still been hiding there when Mom arrived to take me home. Dad was pretty unflappable.

"Take a look at what little Iodine did," was all he said. But I remember that dread feeling and the crushing realization that I had done something very, very bad. I'm sure Dad, being the ever-resourceful person he was, removed the cover and used a paperclip to un-stick the buttons.

That same adding machine was still in use when I was in sixth grade. I know because I tried to do my math homework on it. It was a dismal failure. . . Perhaps he never did fix it.

The little old lady in the wheelchair

My daughter called the other day and asked if I could dig up a photo of her with Mom and one of her brothers.

"Do you know the one I'm talking about Mom" she asked. "It's the one where we are walking down the trail with Mittens (our dog)."

Yes, I knew the photo -- it was taken when our youngest son was about a year old. We had just moved to a new house -- it was in the woods east of Mount Pleasant, several miles from where the Soaring Eagle Casino is today.

Mom and Dad came to visit to check out our new digs. It was a big house and they spent the weekend with us -- for the first time not having to kick the boys out of a bedroom so they could have a place to sleep.

The entire family wasn't in the picture as King, Dad and our oldest son were playing golf. I was carrying the baby in a backpack. Funny how some photos can bring back memories like they were yesterday.

Mom arrived with a measuring tape in hand, ready to measure windows and sliding doors for curtains.

She almost always made the curtains for wherever we found ourselves living. For years our curtains were always made of unbleached muslin. They go with any decor -- especially my decorating schemes, which tend to be  Early Marriage. Even today, on the eve of our 39th wedding anniversary, our house is decorated in furniture cast-offs.  Our one piece of new furniture is a rather large recliner that King has claimed as his throne. It is only after he retires for the evening that one of us reaches for the Scepter of Power, claim the throne, lean back and watch television shows of our choosing.

Dad was the same way. He watched television in the evening, switching from channel to channel, watching a little bit of everything. Mom would sit in the living room next to him and mend clothes or hem curtains. (We moved a lot).

When I look at Mom today -- hunched over in her wheelchair, staring at Heaven knows what, absently folding her napkin over and over again -- it's sometimes difficult to remember the woman who took our children for walks and sewed my curtains.

Photographs like the one I dug up for my daughter are a good reminder of the woman who was in them. May we always find comfort in these little reminders.

Church Ladies love to cook

After my sisters and I went through Mom's things last summer, I brought home several boxes of odds and ends that I promptly put in the spare bedroom to go through at a later date.They've stayed there until this week when a son moved home temporarily. I pulled out the boxes to make room for him. It seemed like a good time to see what was in them. Inside were Better Homes and Garden cookbooks and a lot of church cookbooks -- created by the women of  whatever church Mom was attending. . . Haven Reformed, Glenn United Methodist, First Reformed.

Church Ladies love to cook. And nothing says love like a Church Ladies cookbook.

Whenever the Church Ladies decided to write a cookbook as a fundraiser Mom always contributed. She had a list of her favorite "go to" recipes that she would pull out and send off for the fundraising effort.

Buried in her pile of cookbooks was the source of her recipe inspirations -- a spiral-bound notebook with "My Favorite Recipes" on the cover Not a very original original title. The notebook looked as though it had been purchased from a school fundraiser. But inside that little unremarkable spiral bound notebook was a lifetime of recipes clipped from newspapers and pulled from magazines. Some were glued to the pages, some were simply stuffed between the pages. There were some pages with recipes written in Mom's neat handwriting.

I spread it all out on our dining room table and looked through them all. It was like having a little bit of Mom right there with me. I could almost hear her say, "I like this one. I served it at the Glenn Church breakfast," or "Dad didn't like this one, but I might try it again with less seasonings."

The pages also contained little notes from Mom: Use 1/2 cup butter instead. This one is a keeper. You Bet! (I'm guessing it was a particularly good recipe).

There was a long hand-written page with the recipe for "Friendship Cake" or, as we called it, "Herman Cake." The margin had "From Don Mac" written in it. . . Don Mac was a very dear friend of Mom and Dad. Mom used her "Herman Starter" to make zucchini bread, which Mr. Mac particularly liked.

There were letters from my sisters with recipes they shared with Mom. It was a little piece of everyday life that was so very much a part of Mom. There were recipes from the Wayland Globe and The Gratiot County Herald (I never worked at the Globe, how she got the recipe I'll never know). There were recipes from neighbors written on notebook paper and recipes written on bank scratch pads. There were recipes from the 1970s, 1980s and some from the 1990s. I wish I could find some older ones but I'm guessing those are long gone.

My how things have changed. I have a collection of recipes as well. Unfortunately mine are on my hard drive. When I am gone or demented my children won't be able to go through them and see my handwriting and my notes about how to tweak a recipe or what works and what doesn't. There is something definitely lost in the age of hard drives, Pinterest and Facebook.

I thought about transferring everything from my hard drive to paper and making a recipe box for the kids. But my handwriting is anything but neat. And as much as I'd like to preserve things for my children, it seem like a lot of work. However, the other day I found a program on the computer that can create a font with my handwriting. . . one click and drag of a mouse and everything is there . . . almost written by me. 

Pookie and Pineapple

It was 10 years ago this month our daughter graduated from the Naval Air Technical Training Center in Pensacola, Fla. She was an air traffic controller in the Navy for a number of years. It seems like yesterday and it seems like a lifetime ago.

King was in the middle of the winter semester and could not get away for the graduation so the plan was I would drive Mom and Dad to Pensacola to watch the graduation and then we would drive across the state to stay at one of my sister's condos in St. Augustine. I would drive them down, leave the car with them and fly home. My sister would drive them back later in the spring.

We made a vacation of it and I took our two granddaughters with us. They were 5 and 10 at the time. Mom and Dad were in their mid-eighties. 

In truth,  Mom and Dad made the trip almost every winter, but my sisters and I decided the drive to Florida was bit much for Dad to handle. Mom had quit driving sometime in her 70s.

So we packed the car and got ready for an adventure.

I never quite understood why, but Mom and Dad seemed to think they didn't have grocery stores in Florida. So they packed about four weeks worth of food. That's food for five, plus suitcases and entertaining games, books and puzzles for two children and three adults packed into a Nissan. I had to insist they leave their food behind, but I promised Mom and Dad I would take them grocery shopping once we reached our final destination. They were dubious and Mom did manager to smuggle a couple of boxes of cereal into the trunk that promptly exploded once the trunk was closed. We vacuumed Rice Krispies for weeks.

We traveled slowly -- making a lot of pit stops and visiting whatever sites were available between Grand Haven and Pensacola. I did most of the driving. My one mistake was allowing Dad to drive around Nashville. He decided since there were five of us he could travel in the commuter lane -- at 80 miles per hour. Has anyone ever ridden in a car with an 85 year old man driving 80 mph? It's terrifying. I sat in the passenger seat praying. He looked over, "What are you doing?" "Oh, nothing Dad, just singing to myself. Could you watch the truck in front of you?"

I drove the rest of the trip.

We spent several days in  a hotel in Pensacola. And we developed a routine . . . Mom, Dad and I would get up in the morning and make our way downstairs for coffee and bagels. When the girls got up later in the morning we took them to iHop.

The girls on the beach in St. Augustine.

We were eating second breakfast one morning when the girls announced they needed different names for great-grandma and great-grandpa. Having two grandmas on the trip was too confusing for them and calling them great-grandma and great-grandpa was too much of a mouthful. So they decided Dad would be called Pookie. I have no idea where the name came from, but Dad rather enjoyed it. But finding a name for Mom was a challenge. Our oldest granddaughter watched as her sister slathered her waffle with a load of pineapple syrup. "That's it! We'll call her Pineapple."

Dad loved it. Mom was quite offended. "Do I look like a prickly old pineapple?" Nonetheless, the name stuck for several years until the girls outgrew nicknames.

Those are the memories that endear our hearts to our grandchildren.

The little old lady in the bread aisle

This month King and I will celebrate our 39th wedding anniversary. Yes, it is a long time. We've been married longer than most of my co-workers have been on earth.

Thirty-nine years. Wow. And what do I think about the accomplishment? That's 39 years of trying to come up with meals. King does not cook. I was amazed the other day when he made himself a fried bologna sandwich with a fried egg. (Ok, he's not good at healthy choices, but the point is -- he cooked).

Mom and Dad were married 66 years when Dad passed away. That's 66 years of cooking and meal planning. Dad did not cook. Not even a fried bologna sandwich. If Dad wanted a dish of ice cream, Mom got it for him. If Dad wanted a lemonade, Mom jumped up and poured him a glass . . . with ice.

And no, Dad was not demanding. He did not insist. But they were of the generation where cooking and cleaning was Mom's job. That is what a housewife did. Mom laid out his clothes every morning. She cooked all their meals. She made the bed. She cleaned the house. She paid the bills. She balanced the checkbook.

After Dad retired they started doing more things together. Dad helped with the dishes. He helped make the bed. They even shopped together. There were times when Mom commented on the fact she would like to do some things by herself. But I don't believe she EVER told Dad that. She would never have wanted to hurt his feelings.

As they got older and Mom started having memory problems, their shopping together became somewhat of a chore. Mom had a very difficult time making decisions. Looking back, we should have seen the signs, but we didn't.

Dad liked raisin toast for breakfast. Mom would stand in the bread aisle and contemplate the type of bread to purchase. While she was agonizing over bread, Dad would become impatient and march down the aisle ready to move on to the next item on their list. Mom would get angry at his leaving her behind and march behind him and tell him he should wait for her. Dad would look irritated, shake his head, and continue on to the soup aisle where the process would start over again.

Mom, being deaf, would kind of be in her own little world. She would do her contemplating in the middle of the aisle. People would become irritated at the little old lady standing in the middle of the aisle and huff around her. Mom had no idea. Dad could see this and it bothered him that she was so oblivious . . . it was an exhausting, vicious circle.

After being married 39 years there are plenty of things King does that makes me crazy. Not being perfect (although King claims I think I am perfect) I am sure there are things I do that drive him insane. I can only imagine what it will be like after 66 years.

But oh, how Mom and Dad loved each other. On what was to be our last trip to the Golden Brown Bakery in South Haven before Dad died, we sat in the dining room and had our coffee and pastries. Mom and Dad used to bring our children there for a treat when the kids were small. We talked about those visits and the things small children do that endear themselves forever into the hearts of grandparents. On our way out I stopped and purchased some pastries for King and our granddaughter. Mom and Dad continued out the door -- holding hands. The cashier looked at me, tears in her eyes.

"Sixty-six years the end of this summer. We should all be so lucky," was all I said.