Catherine Sevenau's Blog: Writings~Rambles~Rhymes, page 61

Two Cents a Cut-Out

From Behind These Doors, a Family Memoir

1945 • Sonora ~ At six, Betty opened her first business. She admired the ads featuring beautiful cigarette girls wearing long gloves, short skirts, high heels, and satin pillbox caps—and particularly applauded the ingenuity of the lacquered trays they carried like a personal shelf, supported by a handy strap encircling their pretty necks.

Getting up early one Saturday morning, she set to work constructing one of those trays from a cardboard box she got from the store, borrowing a belt of Dad’s for the strap. Then she made a little flat-topped cap from stiff butcher paper, mixing flour and water in a bowl for paste to glue it together, and braided a half-dozen rubber bands for the chin strap. Waiting for the pasted flaps to dry, she spent the next couple of hours carefully cutting out glossy pictures from Mother’s stack of Colliers, Cosmopolitan, McCalls, and Good Housekeeping magazines with Mom’s good sewing scissors.

By midday Betty set up shop in front of the Sonora Inn, sporting a pair of Mom’s long black gloves and clomping back and forth in a pair of her dress heels, hawking pictures to passers-by, singing, “Cut-outs, cut-outs, two-cents a cut-out. Or get yourself a deal: three for a nickel and you get yourself a steal!”

Within the hour Mom heard from a customer about the new commercial endeavor, hotfooted over to the Inn, and with smoke steaming from her ears snatched Betty by a braided brown pigtail and stomped around the corner on home, hauling my sister by her hair, pictures flying, heels dragging, chewing her out royally for embarrassing the family.

Betty didn’t mention the thirty-two cents she’d made that was jingling in the bottom of her shoulder-strap purse.

On the Fence

At 4:00 in the morning, I’m jolted from a sound sleep by a long, eerie howl—and on high alert by the following one. They sound as if they’re coming from the top of the staircase just inside my bedroom door. It was either a deranged person, or a crazed animal.

I’ve wondered what I’d do if an intruder broke into my house. Well, I found out. I turned on the light. I was afraid, but whatever was in my room, I had to know what was coming my way.

But there was nothing there. The howls must have come from the deck off my bedroom. Whatever it was, it was big, and in my mind, getting bigger. I didn’t open the door to the outside (I’m not stupid), but did lift the blinds. Nothing was there either. The morning before, I’d watched a fox sitting on my back fence for fifteen minutes, and I knew bobcats and mountain lions had been spotted in the surrounding neighborhood a few blocks away. It could have been a coyote, a bobcat, or maybe even a mountain lion. I puzzled how a mountain lion could get on my small second-story deck in the first place, and more to the point, why? My rational mind raced for a rational explanation.

Completely unnerved, I left the light on, slid back into bed, and calmed down by reading, checking my email, and logging onto Facebook. An hour or so later, I was able to go back to sleep for a while.

I’d been working on final editing of the family memoir I finished twelve years ago. A monthly open mic event that I co-host was that evening, and I read two short pieces from the memoir, both about my mother. Sometimes I’m hesitant about reading this stuff aloud. It’s one thing to have others read it when I’m not in the room, it’s another to make eye contact and read it aloud to an audience. What follows was a portion of a piece that I read.

Betty, Claudia, Carleen

  Mid 1946 • Sonora, California

[image error]Squatting on the front stoop in the low afternoon sun, Betty, all of six, and Claudia, just four, sat wondering what kind of trouble they could get into when their plans were cut short. An eerie howling, like a trapped animal with its foot caught in a snare, floated through the front screen door from the top of the staircase above them.

“What is that?” They whispered, giggling and poking each other.  “Owoooooooooooo! Owoooooooooooo!” They imitated the sound as if they were wolves calling to one another in the woods.  “Who is that crazy person?” Betty wondered aloud to Claudia.

Carleen, who was twelve, overheard them. “Shut up,” she hissed through the screen door. “It isn’t funny, it’s Mom.”

Something happened to Mom, something snapped. That was the first time my mother tried to kill herself. They took her away for a while to get better, but she never did, not really.

When I got to the part in the story about the eerie howls coming from the top of the stairs, my hair stood on end. I’d picked this piece to read before the howling in my room the night before. I made my way back to my seat, in wonderment of what was too parallel to be mere co-incidence. Synchronistic events occur quite often when I work on the book, and I know there are no accidents.

This morning I spoke to my niece, Julie. Her response was, “That was no animal. You had an otherworldly experience. Maybe your mother hasn’t passed over yet.”

“My rational mind prefers not to go there,” I told her, “though she’s shown up before, so I’m not surprised she might be here again.” I didn’t mention it could have also been my sister, her mother.

What if it was my mother in my bedroom two nights ago, and if so, what was she trying to tell me? Then again, what are the chances of a large wild animal stalking me on my upper deck in the middle of a downtown Sonoma? Either of those are just as likely as confronting a maniacal intruder who was not in my room. Any of them are possible, none of them make sense, and all are disconcerting.  However, the two screams were the most disconcerting.

Where am I with all this? Much like that red-tailed fox visiting in my backyard last week, I’m on the fence.

This morning I spoke to my neighbor and asked if she’d heard anything at 4:00 a.m. on Friday. You know what she said? “I did! I shot out of bed like a cannon and flew down the stairs thinking that whatever it was, it was after my cat. When I went out back, there was nothing there.”

Then I told her my story and asked, “What do you think?”

She said, “I don’t know. All I know is it was one of the most unearthly howls I’ve ever heard, and it was coming from the direction of right between our houses. I’m on the fence with you. I can’t say it was an animal, and I can’t say it wasn’t. But whatever it was, it was loud, it was scary, and it was close by.”

 

 

Nothin’ But Trouble

August 1948 • Sonora

I was welcomed into the family two years after Mom’s first breakdown, but not by her. She didn’t want another child; she wanted out. As far as she was concerned, I was a fifth burden tacking on eighteen years to her prison sentence. Another eighteen years of not wanting to be a wife or a mother, of not wanting to cook and clean and cry every day.

Just after midnight, Mom gave birth to me by optional cesarean, which was in vogue if you were wealthy. We weren’t. She wanted to have her tubes tied without Dad finding out, and Mom’s doctor was willing to do it for her. If she had it done while having a Cesarean, no one would know. It was illegal for him to perform this kind of surgery without a husband’s permission and it could’ve gotten them both in a lot of trouble. He’d been my mother’s doctor for years, though, and knew it would be the end for her if she had another child. Mom wasn’t concerned about it being against the law or a mortal sin. She was barely hanging on to her soul as it was.

Sonora Union Democrat notice:

CLEMENS, In Sonora, August 16, at the Sonora Hospital, to the wife of Carl Clemens of Sonora, a daughter, at 12:10 A.M.

Plucked from my mother’s womb, I missed the struggle from one world to another. With no heroic journey or victorious birth cry, no wonder I don’t how I got here. I was short-circuited from the beginning.

None of the kids knew Mom was pregnant, although apparently it had not occurred to my parents that questions might arise upon my appearance. Larry was fourteen and clueless. Carleen, thirteen, found out in catechism the month before I was due. Stunned, she said, “Not my mother!” She knew you had to have sex to have a baby and she could hardly imagine her parents doing such a thing. Of course, Carleen didn’t tell any of the rest of the family.

Larry, Carleen, Betty, Claudia

Betty, now nine, was off climbing fences and protecting the weak but took the news in stride; I would be her next foundling. Claudia, at seven—and up until I came along the baby of the family—found out when she went to the store after spending her usual morning in the library. When Larry told her she had a new sister, she was happy about this news, but that was before she found out she wasn’t allowed to touch me. The first time she saw me was when Mom held me up to the second floor window of the old Sonora Hospital. I was born a block from our house in the Bromley Sanitarium, a small two-story building on lower Washington Street where many Sonora babies were born. On my arrival home, Claudia, who was curious to see what I was all about, was continually ordered, “don’t touch the baby, don’t touch the baby,” so she didn’t have much to do with me, deciding early on that I’d be nothin’ but trouble.

Laying me on the dark mahogany dining table to change me, Carleen told Claudia to watch me and turned to get my diapers out of the sideboard’s bottom drawer. I rolled off onto the floor and wailed. Claudia, casually leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, got slapped and hollered at for not watching me. She was watching me all right, she just wasn’t about to touch me. She was no longer the fair-haired baby of the family, had lost her mother’s attention, was forbidden to suck her thumb, and wasn’t one bit happy about any of it. I sucked the two middle fingers on my left hand and rubbed Mom’s earlobe with my right. When Mom gave me cotton balls to rub between my fingers instead, Claudia sulked, “Mom never bought me any damn cotton balls.”

Pinball Wizard

1932: Colusa to Los Angeles, California

Shortly after marrying, my parents (Carl and Babe) moved to Los Angeles where Dad landed a job with the highway crews building the three-lane Ridge Route Alternate, which later beceame U.S. Route 99 at Grapevine. A hard worker, he was always employed, even during the Depression when many were without jobs.

1934: Watsonville, California

Two years later they moved to Watsonville to be near Babe’s older sister, Verda, and my father got a job working for the Union Ice Company through Verda’s husband, George. George Day became Dad’s closest friend, and they worked for years at Union Ice. Before refrigerators, people had iceboxes in their kitchens or on their porches and Dad delivered 50- to 100-pound blocks to homes on a regular basis. He filled the commercial ice vending machines at all the restaurants, and one of his accounts was the military base with its hundreds of tents and soldiers near Watsonville.

He also delivered to taverns, sporting goods stores, tobacco shops, and bus depots. It was in the taverns where he discovered pinball. The machines were a nickel a game and paid out in beer or cash. A player could win or lose from four to five dollars dollars in a night, and in 1934, the average weekly labor wage was $19.00. Dad started playing just a few games at the end of a hard day, but before long he was hooked. Not until he and Mom couldn’t cover their bills for a couple of months did he realize how many games he’d played and how much he’d lost. His compulsion, and mom, put a scare in him, and he never touched a pinball machine again. She’d already grown up with a gambler for a father and she wasn’t about to put up with being married to one.

When my dad was younger, he’d done some gambling with his friends. In California he gambled some more—gambling he wanted no one in his family to discover since it was the money he’d inherited from his closest brother, Aloysius, or Louis as the family called him, who died in a car wreck on his twenty-fifth birthday.

************************************

May 6, 1929, local newspaper, Rochester, Minnesota:

YOUNG MAN, 25, KILLED HERE ON HIS BIRTHDAY

Aloysius Clemens, 25 years old, of St. Paul, son of Mr. & Mrs. Clemens of Cascade Township, was fatally injured shortly before noon yesterday, his birthday. The coupe he was driving collided with a car, struck the guy wire of an electric light post, hit a tree, seemed to jump in the air fifteen feet, then turned turtle and landed upside down at the north end of the street. His brother, Lawrence, who was with him at the time of the original impact, was uninjured save for slight lacerations of the legs.

Lawrence Clemens, in his testimony, was brief. He said that he and his brother were going back to their father’s home in the country west of Rochester and that they were going quite fast. He said he thought their speed was 35 miles per hour. He testified that he believes his brother did not see the other automobile coming onto First street, from the south. He, himself, saw it just before the impact. The windshield of their car was broken and the top was off after the accident, he said.

The coroner’s jury returned a verdict that Clemens’ death was caused by an automobile accident. The blame was not fixed.

Clemens is survived by his parents and a number of brothers and sisters.

Arrangements for the funeral had not been made yet this morning. The young man had come down from St. Paul Saturday night for the purpose of celebrating his twenty-fifth birthday at his home a mile west of the city. All was in readiness for the birthday dinner when it was found that candles were lacking for the cake, and the brothers, Aloysius and Lawrence, volunteered to drive to Rochester to get them. Following the accomplishment of this mission, they were hurrying back to the birthday party when the crash appeared.

************************************

Louis’ $2,000 life insurance policy paid double indemnity for accidental death. After covering the costs for his funeral, the balance was split among his nine brothers and sisters, totaling a bequest of $340 to each. Dad, living in Seattle at the time, bought City Bonds with the money he inherited from the brother he’d loved so much. He lost those bonds in a poker game, along with his father’s gold-plated pocket watch. His big-mouthed brother Lawrence, who’d come to California with him for work, spilled the beans when he returned home to the family farm just outside of Rochester.

Dad must have won or bought the watch back at some point; today it rests on my brother’s mantel. Dad gave it to Larry when my brother was in college. It’s an Elgin Commander top-winder with 17 jewels, manufactured in 1910. The front and back covers are engraved with mountains, birds, and vegetation, and the fob has a small compass attached. The case is engraved Elgin Case Company, Illinois, USA, with Guaranteed 25 years on the watch itself. It still works today.

Dad was a top ice-refrigerator salesman and then became the manager and foreman of the ice delivery crew. He worked for Union Ice from 1936 to the summer of 1943, about the time electric refrigerators ended the need for home ice deliveries.

1943: Sonora, California

In 1943, the family moved to Sonora (my parents had four children by then; I didn’t appear until 1948) where Dad got a job managing the Sprouse Reitz store on Washington Street. The former farmer, construction worker, and pinball wizard comfortably settled into small town life: working, raising his family, and escorting my mother to weekly Friday night Bingo at the community hall.

Queen Bee

I am the Queen Bee. You know how I know? My friends tell me, and I also have a pair of blue bikini panties with a queen bee on them that proves it. I have been known as the Carrot Juice Queen, the Dance Floor Queen, and the Queen of Curb, Gutter and Sidewalk. I don’t like to show country property. For one thing, it wrecks my high-heeled shoes, and for another, there might be something out there that could get me. I am Her Highness in my family, Her Oneness in class, and Her Eminence at my work.

I am the Queen of Complaint and the Queen of Control. And why not? This world would be a much better place if everyone would just do it the right way. Besides, if I didn’t try to control everything, well who would? It might just all fall apart. I am clear it is up to me to be in charge. It’s the Queen’s job!

I am the Queen of Funny. Every once in a while though I hang out with my sons—just to make sure I don’t get too queenly. You see, my sons don’t think I’m so funny. I just think I have what you might call a “timing problem” with them. I gave my younger one a cartoon and in it this therapist is slapping his patient upside the head telling him to: “Snap out of it!” The caption in the corner reads SINGLE SESSION THERAPY.

“I suppose,” he said, “you think that’s funny.” I thought it was hilarious. Apparently he didn’t. He takes after his father.

I am also the Queen of Confusion. I know right from left because I salute the flag with my right hand. But in dance class my teacher would say, “Now come forward on your right foot” and I’d do that and my partner would lean into me and whisper politely, “Your other right foot.” I do know up from down however. Look, there are plenty of gas stations out there if ever I need more directions than that.

Last week I went to see a healer as my bones have been aching so much. He told me, “Your bones are fine, it’s your mother. She hasn’t passed over yet, and she needs your help to get to the other side.” They must not have any gas stations where she is. I’m 53 now—the same age she was when she killed herself 33 years ago. He said she was my spirit guide, said I had a lot of work to do soon and would need her help, said she couldn’t help me until her journey was complete. He told me to put food and water for her on my altar every day, to pray for her and my ancestors before I went to sleep at night. “I’d be willing to do that,” I said, and thought, “I’ll place some there for Michael too, just in case he’s still wandering around.”

As a kid, I knew I wasn’t a queen. I was invisible and it didn’t seem to matter if I was there or not; sometimes I’d sneak a look in the mirror to see if I really existed. I thought something must have been wrong with me, and if I could be perfect, well, I might be able to fix what was wrong. It’s been a big job.

But I’ve been making up for all that these last few years—and what I know in my regal heart is that everything is perfect, and that surrendering is my work. I’ve wired it up for almost fifty years to protect this Queen of Hearts and it’s taking some time to undo these bindings, piece by piece. I have to be careful as I think my heart might be cracked as it hurts so much sometimes. I have help, too. I have honeybees in my heart, making honey from my fear, shame, resentment and guilt.

I now know I have the heart of a queen, filled with courage and love. You know how I know? My friends tell me. And sometimes, when I take a peek in the mirror, I can see it too.

Catherine Sevenau

March 26, 2002

Queen Bee: original version

Lineages

(Listen to Audio)

I am.

I am from

Leinen and Nigon,

from Chamberlin and Hoy.

I am from Clemens and Chatfield,

from Surdam, Sumner, Smith, Shade, Mastick, and Tomlinson too.

From Matthew, Isaac, Finley, and Charles. From Barbara, Eliza, Emily, and Nellie.

I am from soldiers who fought for the Union and from a nurse who tended them.

From singers, shopkeepers and teachers, from miners, writers, and preachers.

From wagon trains and railroads. From hard work and harder lives.

I am from cattle ranches and farmlands, from sowing and plowing and reaping.

From whiskey and ale, from betting and bad odds—and from the fall-out of it all.

I am from Noreen and Carl, who were like sin and prayer.

What ever in the world made those two think they could stay together?

I am from dime stores and small towns.

I am from sweet peas, green peas, and green tea.

I am from one-pot meals. From white beans, white bread, and white rice.

I am from holy water and rosaries, from Hail Mary and Our Father, from mea culpa.

I am from Little Women and Nancy Drew, from I’m a Little Teapot and The Hokey Pokey.

From pop-beads, pee-wees, paper dolls, pick-up-stix, skate keys, comic books, and jacks.

From coin collections and stamp collections and collections of cobalt blue glass bottles.

I am from bad kidneys, bad eyes, and bad blood.

I am also from a long line of sharp-tongued women.

From list makers, rule makers, and rule breakers—from umbrage and resentment.

From complaining, carping, and keeping score. From they don’t speak… we don’t speak…

Sometimes it seems impossible to do it differently, to break this invidious pattern of ours.

And sometimes it is easier to not even try.

I am from good intentions and unattended sorrows. From courage and hope and grace.

I am from extended arms, extended kindness, and extended family. I am grateful.

I am from a company of strangers, this family, of it, but not in it,

watching from the sidelines, taking notes, sifting through

our story and writing down our history, wondering

what directs us, what pokes us and prods us

and has us be who we are, questioning

how I fit into the whole catastrophe,

and, at the end of the day—

knowing I belong.

I am they.

I am me.

I am.

                                                                          Catherine (Clemens) Sevenau, Nov 2006

[Hover mouse over pictures]

[See image gallery at sevenau.com]

Small Fry Reveries, from Queen Bee

Television

Oma, you don’t have a television,” Satchel says to me in surprise.

“You’ve known me for four years, and you’ve just noticed?”

“Why don’t you like TV?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like TV, I just don’t have one.”

“Did you ever?”

“Of course. I had one when your dad and Jon were growing up, but when they both moved away to college, I let your dad take it to school.”

“Didn’t he get in trouble with his teacher?”

“No, he wasn’t going to a Waldorf college,” I say, trying not to laugh. “He didn’t take it to his classroom. He was twenty years old and brought it to the house he lived in. It was for him and his roommates.”

I can see his little wheels spinning. “So, Oma. IF you had a TV, where would you put it?” He takes my hand and leads me to face the logical spot over the fireplace. “You could put it there!”

“That will never do. First of all, it will wreck my decor, and secondly, why do I want a television set?”

My grandson looks up at me with his soft brown eyes and says dreamily, “For me.”

“Darling, I’m not getting a TV, not even for you. Pick out a book and I’ll read you a story instead.”

2007

Hatfields and McCoys

My ten-year-old grandson calls and says, hi Oma, it’s me, Satchel, and I say, hi Satchel, it’s me, Oma. He asks if we are related to the Hatfields and McCoys. I say no, we’re related to the Chatfields and Hoys. He says WHAT?!? I say, I can tell by your voice you’re disappointed. Our family isn’t nearly as interesting and I’m sorry, but the only connection is that they rhyme. They’re from the South, we’re from the North. He says, quite sadly, oh, right, okay, bye Oma. I say okay, bye Satchel.

I’m curious as to why he’s watching that show on TV, on a school night, at that hour, not to mention that he attends a Waldorf school that frowns on television. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that his mother is not home.

May 2013

Stand By Me

Three weeks ago the boy child (age 11) stood by my side at my book-signing event at Readers’, and read aloud a portion from Passages from Behind These Doors. The girl child (age 6) asked me beforehand if she could read some of it there, too.

I said, “Sure, just one problem.”

She said, “What?”

“You don’t know how to read.”

She laughed and said, “Oh yeah, I forgot.”

That changed last night. Side by side in my bed, propped up on pillows, she read her first words to me. Some words that make no sense, like ‘when’ and ‘this,’ and big ones too, like ‘remember.’ I helped some when she was stumped.

After ten minutes she lays her head back and says, “Whew, I’m sweating.”

“I understand, it’s hard work reading a whole book out loud for the first time.”

When she finished the last page, she had a huge smile.

When she closed the cover and carefully laid both her hands on it, I cried.

December 2014

Queen Bee Released

Hi, here’s the latest buzz…

Birthing a book is like birthing a child. It takes a long time, it’s a lot of work, but it’s totally worth it. Most of the time. I think. But it’s done, and I’m over the moon. My second book, Queen Bee, Reflections on Life and Other Rude Awakenings, I’m delighted to announce, was released for publication on January 25, 2016.

Queen Bee is a compilation of short pieces I’ve composed over the years. Some are from my blog, many I’ve posted on Facebook, others I’ve written recently. A few are in memory of those who have passed. There is a chattering of exchanges with my young grandchildren; most are snippets, others are longer conversations. There is a section about my ancestors. I’ve spent years disturbing the dead in my family, digging up their stories, poring over their records, studying their faces in their photographs. I write to create their legacy, and mine.

My book launch at Readers’ Books in Sonoma is on Thursday, February 11, 2016, at 6:30. If you are local, do come! It was an overflow crowd for my first book, so if you’d like a seat, come early so you don’t end up outside the door. I’ll read from Queen Bee, we’ll visit, I’ll sign books, you’ll drink wine and eat cake: it’s a party! For those of you on Facebook, I’ll post an invitation. For others who can make it, the address is 130 E Napa St., Sonoma CA, 707-939-1779.

Queen Bee is available in paperback at Create Space and Amazon, and soon to be released as an eBook. Actual books will arrive at Readers’ on February 5. Nothing like cutting it close…

My website may also answer any questions you have. Sevenau.com, or email me: csevenau@earthlink.net.

Thank you for including me in your circle of friends.

Catherine

 

Putting Pen to Paper

Why write? It’s complicated. I never had any intention of becoming a writer, to externalize my life and expose it on paper. But as life would have it, I had a meltdown as the result of a course I was taking, and out of that emotional quagmire, I wrote a short piece called “Queen Bee.” That’s how all this started nearly fourteen years ago. I had a deep curiosity about my mother, so I rounded up the family, gathered their stories, put pen to paper, and the result of all that became my first book: Passages from Behind These Doors, a Family Memoir.

Every story matters, and if I can find meaning for myself, perhaps I can help others find it. Isn’t that the main task of a storyteller? My writing reflects the best parts of me and it gives shape to my life. It’s good for my soul. It’s also an effective way to get my inner voice to pipe down. Writing is a way to be seen and heard, to have something useful to say, and the courage to say it. I can get on a royal tear about things, and yes, I can be vaingloriously all about me, but it provides me an opportunity to better understand myself, and to present myself on behalf of something larger than me. It allows me to ask the questions I consider worth asking, and perhaps, to answer them. It allows me to clarify my thoughts and ideas, to explore the stuff I wonder about or am afraid of.

I write about my mother, and about her mother. I put in black and white what I know, or think I know. I write about possibilities and perspective. Incidents that crack me up or make me weep spill onto paper. I do wax poetic, but my lines rhyme, which I hear is out of style. I write about what matters to me, about sin and prayer, hope and gratitude, about where I beg to be healed. I write about those I love and those who irritate me, even when they’re one and the same. I chronicle stories of fools, friends, and family. I write to smuggle the stories from my mind into yours.

Queen Bee, Reflections and Rants on Life and Other Rude Awakenings, my soon to be published second book, is a compilation of short pieces I’ve composed over the years. Some are from my blog, many I’ve posted on Facebook, others I’ve recently written. A few are in memory of those who have passed. There is a chattering of exchanges with my young grandchildren, most snippets, others, chunks of longer conversations. There is a section regarding my ancestors. I’ve spent years disturbing the dead in my family, digging up their stories, poring over their records, studying their photographs. I believe I’ll heal my soul by gathering us together and telling our tales. I write to leave our legacy.

I invite you to careen around with me, reading these stories that live in the back seat of my mind. It’s always lovely to have company. We can hold hands across the pages and share tears in between. We can snort and hoot and holler. And hopefully, by the end, we’ll tell one another it was a great trip. Life, even with its continual barrage of rude awakenings, is always a ride.

Conversations With the Boy

Oma and Satchel, August 16, 2010

Looking Good ~

During a birthday party for Brooke, I sat in the corner hanging out with the little kids. They were each piping up with how old they were when Satchel reaches up and pats me on the head and says, “My Oma is 62, but she looks really good for her age. She could pass for 60!”

November 2010

Hatfields and McCoys

My ten-year-old grandson calls and says hi Oma, it’s me, Satchel, and I say hi Satchel, it’s me, Oma. He asks if we are related to the Hatfields and McCoys. I say no, we’re related to the Chatfields and Hoys. He says WHAT?!? I say, I can tell by your voice you’re disappointed. Our family is not nearly as interesting and I’m sorry, but the only connection is that they rhyme. They’re from the South, we’re from the North. He says, quite sadly, oh, right, okay, bye Oma. I say okay, bye Satchel.

I’m curious as to why he’s watching that show on TV, on a school night, at that hour, not to mention that he attends a Waldorf school that frowns on television. I’ll bet his mother’s not home.

May 2013

Tupperware!

My dilemma is solved: Tupperware! I saw a cartoon with two older women paying their respects to their friend lying in an open Tupperware casket, with the caption, “Edna would be so pleased… look – Tupperware!”

My grandson asked me if I wanted to be buried or cremated. I told him cremated because it’s less expensive and makes a smaller footprint on the earth. Then I told him the REAL reason I don’t want to be buried is because I don’t want the bugs to eat me. He decided he’d be cremated too. I said he was a little premature in his planning, and I prefer that he go after me, but that I didn’t imagine either one of us was proposing leaving anytime soon.

And now you’re wondering why I’m having this conversation with a ten-year-old. Well, he asked.

October 2013

Anger Issues

Satchel asks, “Oma, do you know anyone with anger issues?”

I snort and say, “Do you mean besides nearly everyone in our family?”

Then we talk about Greek mythology and he tests me on all the gods and goddesses and thank Zeus, I remember. I can’t remember where I left my keys or my purse, but I’m pretty darn good recalling the underworld, Hermes, and Aphrodite.

January 2014