Judy Shank Cyg's Blog: Fantasy, Books, and Daily Life, page 15

My Sister and the Snapdragon Choir

Summer brings memories of the growing world of green, flowers, annuals, scents, and my family.

My sister JoAnn taught me to pinch the heads of (ripe) snapdragons to make them sing. Once she showed me the trick, we never passed anyone’s patch of snapdragons without pinching their funny heads and singing a round of Handel’s “Hallelujuh Chorus,” or making them talk in growly voices. They looked like Pookie from Soupy Sales, and I couldn’t resist them. Made no difference who might be nearby. Snapdragons were grown to sing.

Summer fields with Queen Anne’s lace and chicory. Tiger lilies gathered in corners of yards. Tea roses spilling down our trellis off the garage. Wild catnip drawing every feline in rolling delight. Lawn mowers buzzing from neighboring yards.

My Grandma Schaffer’s house on Columbia Street in Pontiac. She loved flowers. Her backyard had rows of cosmos, zinnias, marigolds, and impatiens growing along the fence, down one side, across the back, and up the other. In late summer, I’d follow her with a Dixie cup, as she collected seeds to replant the following spring. Cosmos flowers remind me of Grandma.

I followed Grandpa as he mowed the backyard, admiring the green stripes and skipping around the poplar toward the back. I was fascinated by the crackle of its leaves. Any poplar tree reminds me of Grandpa mowing the lawn, even the patch in my backyard in Roseville, which grew in a hollow in the backyard, so close to the water table, I had periodic ponds around the trees that drew ducks.

Grandma also grew morning glories and sweet peas against the house. I have a vivid memory of helping her on the back porch step, snapping green beans for her signature dish of green beans, potatoes, onions, and ham, which simmered for hours on the stove. In that memory, I associate the sweet peas near our heads with our snapping, as if we were shelling sweet peas, instead.

Mom inherited that love of flowers, and planted peonies and bleeding-hearts in our yard. We picked the large, fragrant peony flowers to float in a bowl on the kitchen table, then spent the next few days squashing ants that took their time coming out of the sugary interior. It made no difference how long we rinsed or shook the blossoms, there were always ants, but the blossoms were worth it.

By midsummer, every grocery store and roadside stand offered brilliant, stunning gladiolus (“sword lilies,” from “gladius” or Latin for sword). We had special vases to hold them, and they immediately pulled attention to wherever they stood in full glory.

When I lived in the same house on Caroline Street as an adult, I admired the edging at Cranbrook Gardens near the reflecting pool, ferns at the back with snow-on-the-mountain (Euphorbia marginata) along the front, so copied it. I planted cinnamon ferns with snow-on-the-mountain around my house to admire the contrast of green and white. Easy to maintain, too, since I wasn’t the gardener my mother and grandmothers were.

For example, I never did manage to keep my irises standing tall from the moment I tied them and drove to work until I came home again, where I looked forward to seeing their lovely flowers against the corner of our front porch. Instead, they bent to the ground, as if searching for something, which they obviously lost daily.

In early summer at Cranbrook Garden, forget-me-nots filled the green lawns against the woods, and sizzled bright blue in the shade. That sight I couldn’t reproduce.

I grew impatiens in front of my apartment in Mt. Clemens because they mounded beautifully and were quick to flower. Any dry periods or too much sun made them wither, but as soon as I watered them, they sprang up in bright colors again.

I miss my Michigan ferns, the irises and glads and tiger lilies, and especially my favorite flower, Queen Anne’s lace. There is a wild carrot in Florida, but not my eye-catching spicy-scented lacy flower.

Yes, we have orange blossoms and azaleas and highway phlox, and I can find any number of sword ferns, and do, to fill pots and gardens and jam jars, but the burst of Michigan green and bloom is an annual memory for me.

Enjoy your Michigan summer.

I still do.

And by the way, JoAnn, when I join you, we’ll not only pinch our celestial snapdragons to sing “Hallelujah!” but also “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” since I mean to be part of God’s Bluegrass Choir!

Barber Bob Part Two

Our community in the Heights never showed more clearly than during celebrations or hardship. We’ve carried this sense of belonging from our early days there to wherever we are now, across the globe or in the same area.

Back in December, I wrote a post about Barber Bob. He’d thanked me for sharing memories of growing up in the Heights and we met for lunch to continue the pleasure. I met him again at my Cracker Barrel with his wife Karen, when we promised not to deluge her with our childhood memories, but hear about their life since then.

Both occasions were as sparking as a party.

I received a message from Bob this week that his health is not going well. “Hail to Old Avondale,” he says, but adds that his remaining kidney now requires dialysis. Sadness, Bob. At our age, there are so many health issues, and some of us have gone ahead to the Sacred Realm.

So, on Father’s Day, it seemed appropriate to share an article with you about Barber Bob when he was only 22. Not only does it show his determination and energy level, it highlights the kind of man he was and is. After all, this is a day to commemorate what we admired and loved in our fathers.

Fathers. Certainly, we had all kinds. Mine is gone now, and we all miss him—his wisdom, his humor, and yes, even his advice. Dad read almost constantly, was brilliant and interested in everything, a man of faith, music, a man proud of his country and his service to it, a man who loved my mother beyond the day he died and did his best for his children.

Bob has children, too, who love him, even more than we do. Many of you are fathers, whether you produced them or inherited them or nurtured them, and we all had fathers.

During my early years in the Heights, neighbors took up collections for each other in times of sickness or hospitalization or funerals. They carried hot casseroles and desserts to those unable to cook, and our lightning-speed rumor network made certain that we knew when there was need, (as well as juicy tidbits).

I associate that kind of caring with the Heights, and miss it in my current small town, although my neighborhood tries to keep that sense of kinship alive.

You will see that sense of caring in this article about Bob, and he continues to live his life in this kind of service where he can, in love for his wife, family and community, and interest in everyone around him.

Happy Father’s Day, Bob, and thank you for sharing this article.

Happy Father’s Day to all of you.

Turkey in the Straw and Creamsicles

Differences in family finances showed clearly when the ice cream truck song was heard.
When the Good Humor truck’s “Turkey in the Straw” wafted around the neighborhood, excitement rose. “Mom, Mom!” We begged for cash.

Stopping the ice cream truck was a rare pleasure, but we cherished every moment, every painful choice (mainly, based on available funds), and every bite.

There were six of us eventually, so money for ice cream trucks was always a luxury. Sometimes we stood in our yard and watched luckier kids pore over the delicious choices. One only-child girl on our street always got the most expensive bar on the list, every time an ice cream truck came through. Mom used to remind us that she might be lonely for brothers and sisters, but there were times when each of us would have traded the rest as annoyances.

I agree with Mom now, miss the ones no longer with us, or far away in miles. Miss Mom, too, and Dad.

When I was young, the ice cream truck was as thrilling as Christmas morning. Well, almost. Good Humor claimed over 85 ice cream products. I’m certain our neighborhood truck didn’t carry that many. I remember creamsicles, chocolate éclairs, strawberry shortcake, toasted almond, popsicles, and chocolate-covered vanilla bars.

In our family, the last was reserved for Dairy Queen’s Dilly bars, another summer favorite from visits to our great-aunts, great-uncle, and great-grandma in Milwaukee.

Good Humor started in Ohio in the 1920’s. Harry Burt, with his children, put together chocolate-coated ice cream on sticks. He set up a dozen vending trucks with freezers and bells (from his son’s bobsled) to hawk his product.

To finally get a patent, Mr. Burt went to Washington D.C. with a five-gallon pail of Good Humor bars to sample, and his patent was granted.

Good Humor trucks were used until 1970, but by that time, other companies drove through our neighborhoods with a variety of tunes.

The unique sound of chimes from an ice-cream truck is produced, at least in part, by Nichols Electronics with their electronic music boxes. Chimes carry well, well enough to stir and torture eager young ice-cream lovers.

It's the sound of school summer vacation.

Of course, we inhaled popsicles from the grocery stores, too, and even the Tupperware version, made with Kool-Aid or juice in those plastic molds with the short plastic handles. Those went quickly, the first pulls being tart and rich with flavor, leaving shaved ice to crunch.

Kool-Aid was a summer drink in our house. Mom encouraged us to use one cup of sugar, but I doubt that the concept of too much sugar was a reality in young minds. Consider how much we tried to put on Saturday morning cereal for cartoon-watching.

My friend Kay introduced me to iced tea one summer, spooned from Nestea jars. My first glass was well-sugared, but I switched to unsweet afterward. I’m more of a tea snob now, use very hot tap water, peppermint bags, and Celestial Seasonings fruit sampler blends for a non-sweet, crisp, refreshing Sangria-like iced tea.

Of course, peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches were a summer lunch, but Kay liked cheese-and-mustard sandwiches, which I thought wonderful at the time.

I still like creamsicles.

When I lived in the same house, grown and with children, the sound of the ice cream truck chimes sent my offspring bolting into the house, begging for cash. I doubt that I had much more available than Mom did, but we managed the occasional treat, and I’d wait with them, past the sidewalk and near the edge of the street, to make sure that the truck stopped. Had the sizes shrunk or was my memory colored by delight in the moment?

Even more exciting than Good Humor bars was the hand-dipped cones of Superman ice cream, a Michigan specialty of Blue Moon, Red Pop or black cherry, and lemon or vanilla, for the red, white, and blue colors. I could see the black-and-white image of Superman against the American flag, proudly upholding honor against crime as I savored a cone.

It's not easy to recapture vivid childhood memories. Superman ice cream can do it. Lawn mowing on a summer afternoon can do it. Looking back on fireworks in the School Hills can do it, as well as the fall festival at Auburn Heights Elementary.

The chimes of an ice cream truck can do it.

And no, Good Humor bars don’t taste the same out of a grocery store box.

Thursday Nights with a Carafe and a Song

No series of memories would be complete without my partner, my Guild guitar.

I didn’t start out with a Guild.

The Beatles. Bob Dylan. Peter, Paul, and Mary. Folksongs.

Both my parents played piano. I, foolishly, allowed the chance for piano lessons to escape, but we were a musical family. Grew up with classical, soundtracks, sang along to musicals. I wanted to play and sing “Blowin’ in the Wind.” (Beatle songs were unexpectedly more difficult to play.) So, at 15, I bought myself a used acoustic from down the street with my babysitting money, for $15.

The strings stood so high over the bridge, you had to jump down on them to form chords. I was determined, though, and practiced until my fingers bled. Developed callouses crusty enough to sand a car, but learned chord progressions from books and from ear.

Took my guitar babysitting with me. Played Peter and Gordon’s “Dona Dona” for Carol and her siblings when they were young. Played at school. Played at home.

When I was 16, Mom and Dad bought me a beautiful Goya, and the world of music was mine. Years later, after using heavyweight strings on a silk-and-steel guitar, I cracked the bridge beyond repair, and bought a Japanese brand with a sweet sound.

My sister Janet, who sang like Julie Andrews and played any instrument, was married with children, but my sister JoAnn and I put our voices and guitars together for Mass and for fun. Learned as many songs as we could—“The Wayward Wind” and ballads and “You Get a Line and I’ll Get a Pole” and anything that caught our ears.

Thursday nights with a carafe and a song was a time and place—my kitchen table, coffee or wine, hours of practicing what we knew and writing originals.

In 1977 I took a few guitar lessons from Earl’s run-down shop. He was a fascinating man with a love for music stronger than the desire for profits. His old cash register was stuffed with bills that fell out. He hung guitars, fiddles, mandolins, and ukuleles around the walls, with the quality instruments in a front closet. Local pickers would stop by and pull down an instrument to play and visit a while. Earl leaned toward the uke, and recorded his own compositions.

I’d discovered bluegrass and was determined to save for a Martin D28, so paid him installments.

“I know you’re committed,” he’d say, “but I have the perfect guitar for you.”

I was committed and deaf to his suggestions, until I brought in the last payment and he begged me to try his offer first. If I was still determined to choose the Martin, he’d never mention it again. He brought out the Guild D40.

Angels sang as soon as I strummed. I stared at him and he grinned. “Told you,” he said. I was in love. Confused about the curious shape of the guitar, though, I asked about the cutaway.
“For playing more than four frets,” he said, “you know, lead licks up the neck.”

Right. My poor Guild never saw that action, but it went everywhere with me, even camping and to work at Christmastime.

JoAnn and I continued our songwriting and were responsible for the music at a Mass every Sunday and occasional feast days. Oh, those were magic times, pure enchantment.

When I volunteered at Cranbrook Institute of Science, the program director Janet asked if I’d be willing to write comet songs and open Dr. Brandt’s talk on Comet Halley, the NASA comet expert. Yes indeedy, Nefertiti!

So I researched comets, wrote ballads and bluegrass tunes about them, and demanded that JoAnn fly up from Florida to sing with me.

I remember looking down at the first row of the auditorium where Ray, astronomy director, and Dr. Brandt sat. Dr. Brandt tapped his foot and grinned, and announced afterward that he needn’t continue because we’d said it all! One of the proudest moments of my life, and for JoAnn and me, the height of our “career.”

When I moved to Florida, of course, my Guild came with me. I volunteered to be songleader for Masses at St. Anne’s, played with JR and Paul and Sandy for years before I retired. I learned old favorites like “In the Garden” and “The Old Rugged Cross,” and again, harmonies were pure delight.

My Guild and I have been partners for years.

Still, when I retired from choir leading, I realized that my beautiful guitar deserved more than to stand in a corner in its case, and passed it on to my son David for his birthday.

I still love music of all kinds, still hear chord progressions and finger them in my mind, still miss JoAnn.

Come and sit down, sing me a song,
Bring the old times back to me
Strum up a chorus, I’ll sing along
You and I made fine harmony

Pour me some coffee and I’ll pour you some tea
Then sit down, we’ve got a new harmony
Thursday nights with a carafe and a song,
One new song, one old, and one of our own…

The Magic of Cranbrook

Six miles from Caroline Street were stars, lasers, a collection of Michigan minerals, and wonder.

I once sailed with Rush through the constellations on laser trails. Typed 90 words a minute on a laser keyboard for bursts of patterns and colors. Saw the Andromeda Galaxy through a telescope in an observatory.

From the first exhibits in 1930 to today’s panorama of science, the Cranbrook Institute of Science was a playground for my family and me. After attending a family astronomy series by my (later) friend Ray, my children and I fell in love with the museum.

When I signed up to learn more about the laser shows, I became an enthusiastic volunteer. The best job I’ve ever had was to be one of the fortunate laser show operators in the planetarium. The designer and director of Lasera, Mel, “Laser Captain,” also became a friend.

In those days, the two lasers were water-cooled, which could cause a problem with water pressure when school groups took their bathroom breaks at the same time. We fired up the argon and krypton lasers, logged the times, and set up the control board in the planetarium. Picture this, 360 degree music around you, stars and laser patterns above, while you soared in space.

When the planetarium was free, I practiced the shows, matching pattern movements to music with joy sticks, effect buttons, and keyboard. My children had the run of the science museum. What a wonderful way to celebrate science.

One Friday night at a late Rush show, I stood at the planetarium door taking tickets when I heard, from farther down the line, “Oh, good, it’s her.” No accolade could be more welcome. We all had a good time in the Rush shows, and I never squelched audience enthusiasm. I sang with them.

Rocking in Space, with its variety of artists, was the most popular show I worked on. One weekend, Mel and I did so many shows together, from the school groups on Friday afternoon, to extra weekend shows for Girl Scouts, to the evening performances, that when I left late Saturday night, I glanced up at the full moon and fully expected to see Doug’s programmed rocket man dance across the face of the moon to the Police song. “…feet they hardly touch the ground walking on the moon…”

After Mel introduced me to the walkways and gardens around Cranbrook House, I spent many hours there, year after year. My sister JoAnn and I strolled the garden paths around the manor house. I dreamed about tea on the terrace overlooking garden levels to the reflecting pond. Walked barefoot down Daffodil Hill in the early spring. Strolled to the Japanese garden past summer woods, and savored the luxury of elegance and beauty.

George Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth bought a farm in 1904 in the countryside of Bloomfield Hills, and over the years, were determined to use their wealth to share arts and sciences and beauty with others. They built their beautiful home, schools, an art academy, a science academy, and Christ Church Cranbrook with its carillon.

Occasionally I toured the inside of the house, and of course, dreamed about living there. In fact, in one of my fantasy series, I used the house as the Portal Guardians’ home base.

My sister and I always avoided the tiny room at the front of the house, though, and felt a distinct aversion to the mirror inside. We were convinced that the eerie feeling we got when we crossed the narrow room came from that mirror, and if we looked too long, we’d see other times and places.

Wish I could go back with her today and peer into eternity.

When spring and summer roll through Michigan, I heartily encourage you to visit Cranbrook gardens and the house and the science museum, and experience the magic for yourself.

Oh, and Ray? Thank you for the Andromeda Galaxy.

And Mel? Thank you for the laser rides through the cosmos.

Barefoot on the Grass

What do I miss about Michigan summers in the Heights?

Weeping willows. Queen-Anne’s-lace. Cherry trees. Dandelions. Full-sized squirrels. Robin songs.

And real lawns.

The first thing I noticed after I moved to Central Florida was the difference in trees and grass. Grass? There wasn’t any, except for those willing to order sod and pamper it.

The first sight in the Heights each spring of Kentucky Bluegrass, mixed with Perennial Ryegrass, created green like the First Creation, and the scent of mowed lawns was a heavenly fragrance no perfume-maker can reproduce.

Mind you, our lawn on Caroline Street was nothing like a luxurious carpet of soft green, but included tufts of crabgrass and my favorite, patches of wild violets.

Wild violets, viola papilionacea or viola sororia, are considered aggressive weeds by those with perfect lawns. We never had to worry about that. I was captivated by the tiny flowers that persistently showed up spring through summer, through lawn-mowing, weeding, and picking. Left unchecked over years, they scattered themselves in the backyard and added purple color, tiny tangled forests for denizens of faeryland.

My Great-Grandma Miller had an even more fascinating lawn-dweller. She lived on Grant Street in Avon Township with her two acres of garden, field, and cottage. She also had a hand pump in the kitchen for many years, outhouse, and spooky old shed, filled with hoes, rakes, and ghoulish nightmares that just waited for the unsuspecting, or so my brother and I believed.

In her lawn, along the long driveway to the house were hens-and-chicks, otherwise known as houseleeks, an alpine succulent (Sempervivum tectorum). They could tolerate poor soil and didn’t mind gravel, grass, rocks, or children. The babies, smaller versions of the mother, were attached by an underground runner. They were unlike any plant I’d ever seen.

“Don’t walk on my hens-and-chicks,” Great-Grandma would call, as we ran outside to play in her fascinating yard, filled with flowers and wasp nests and endless lawn.

“We won’t,” we said, and always did.

The plants made a squeegy sound under our little feet.

The lawn at the Hall’s house across the street, shaded by maples, was as soft as a carpet, but we never trespassed, even though I've shared with you the lure of their scrumptious garden, through the wooden arch, behind the house.

Some front yards lost grass to children’s games, and most, including ours, produced pickers, burweed, surprisingly, part of the Asteraceae or daisy family. Nothing pretty or welcome about sticker weeds. They were usually easy to see, since they preferred sunny, bare spots in the yard, but were also sneaky about sending out shoots as a ground cover to create more hidden torture.

Stepping on one of those patches barefoot sent the walker jigging and hopping to try and remove the barbs. That included dogs and cats, although they usually avoided the burweed, maybe because they were closer to the ground.

Mowing such a motley collection of flora could be an adventure for another reason.

Yellow jackets.

Social predatory wasps (Vespula) were aggressive, evil-tempered, and territorial to a memorable degree. You brushed them away from your plate or watermelon when eating outside, but they were dangerous if you disturbed an underground or hidden nest.

For a few years, when our children were little, we lived on Henrydale Street. I enjoyed mowing the lawn. Got me out of the house and into fresh air, surrounded by the scent of grass. Our son was a toddler, so to mow the backyard, I’d distract him with his father’s lawn tractor, (and yes, I preferred the push mower).

One afternoon, he was driving his tractor, as usual, kicking the sides, turning the wheel, and making motor noises when I made a return sweep and noticed a swirling cloud rise around him. Arghh! I let go of the mower and ran, grabbed him, and took off as fast as I could, the stream of angry yellow jackets behind me. I couldn’t make the turn into the back door, so continued to the front, where I managed to get us inside safely.

The only bites our son had was where he touched my arm. The little buggers had come out of their tractor nest to see what the disturbance was when I rushed in, so they went after the moving enemy.

Excitement, hazards, escapades are available in your own backyard if you step on a picker or mow over a yellow jacket nest. Those thrive here, too, by the way, and are just as cantankerous.

But at this time of year, I miss real dandelions, wild violets in the lawn, and Great-Grandma’s hens-and-chicks.

And I wouldn’t step on them, either, Grandma.

The Ghost of Mrs Graham

It all started with my Grandma Russell’s paint-by-number of the classics. We hung Pinkie (Thomas Lawrence) and Self-portrait with Her Daughter Julie (Elisabeth Louise Vigee LeBrun) and Blue Boy (Thomas Gainsborough) in the living room and dining room, and the Honorourable Mrs Graham (Thomas Gainsborough) on the living room wall leading upstairs.

Mind you, the pictures were not small, framed reproductions for an arrangement, but large enough to command attention, which Mrs Graham did.

Her role began innocently.

“Where’s my book?”

“Who took my glasses case?”

“Mrs Graham,” my brother and I told the younger ones. “She waits until we’re asleep and climbs out of the picture.”

“Oh, yeah? Then why can’t we see our stuff?”

“She hides everything behind her skirts.”

That seemed logical, and the enigmatic glance of the painted lady looked off to the side, as if unwilling to meet our eyes. She wasn’t content to stop at that, though, and appeared to my brothers one night.

They shared the front upstairs bedroom, and saw the illuminated face of a woman slide across the floor toward them with open mouth. Another night, Steve reported a woman in an old-fashioned gown bending over him.

We developed a fear of my Grandma’s painted reproduction. The stairs to the upstairs began to creak after dark, one step at a time, starting from the bottom, as if she was making her way upstairs. We knew that the stairs always creaked, since we were familiar with the sound from our own feet, but at night, there were no feet to cause the sound.

One spot, in front of my sister’s doorway, turned cold, always that spot, and unquestionably chillier than anywhere else.

Night jaunts were no longer enough for our spooky lady.

One summer afternoon, Janet and a friend were alone in the house. Her friend Sue walked out of the kitchen and stopped.

“What a funny shadow,” she said, and pointed to my sister near the front door. “It moves when you do, but a second afterward, and isn’t wearing shorts, but a long skirt.”

Janet levitated toward Sue, who reported that the shadow stayed in the same spot before it slowly faded.

My parents owned a grand piano, since both played, and our ghost took up the pastime. She had a terrible ear for music, though, and pounded on the keys like a heavy cat stomping back and forth.

Kay and I heard her one summer afternoon.

We were alone in the house. My parents went grocery-shopping, and my siblings were outside, up and down the street. We locked the two screen doors so we could pilfer popsicles from the basement freezer without getting nabbed. My head was in the freezer when the piano pounded away.

“You didn’t check every room,” Kay and I accused each other, and argued that we had, so we tiptoed upstairs.

No one was in the living room and the piano keys were going up and down.

We were out of the house in seconds.

Our constant reports irritated Mom who moved the picture from the bottom of the stairs to the stairway wall where she wasn’t as visible. Still, her occasional non-musical performances went on sporadically, until her grand finale.

After dinner and dishes on a weekday evening, I chose a corner chair to read. Steve stretched out on the couch. Dave sat at the piano bench, his back to the piano, his elbows on the keyboard, watching cartoons with the three youngest, who were stretched on the carpet in front of the TV. The show was interrupted by the sound of crashing piano chords.

I glanced up from my book. “Do you mind? No one can hear the TV.”

Steve watched Dave rise from the bench and call for Mom in a spine-curling shriek. He nearly mowed down the three youngest getting to the kitchen.

“Hold on a moment,” she said, into the phone, and turned to us. “What’s going on?”

“Pounding. Behind me,” Dave gasped. “Nobody there.”

“It’s true, Mom,” Steve said. “I could see the piano. It was Mrs Graham.”

He added that Dave never moved his arms until he flew across the room.

Her last act in our house came one afternoon after school, when I was in junior high. I turned the bend in the stairs when a creepy sense of menace came over me. I hurried up and her picture hit me in the head. I hung it again and complained at dinner, but in a chaotic family of six kids, busy schedules, and constant interruptions, my grievances went unheard.

The next afternoon, as I headed upstairs to my room, the eerie feeling was stronger. This time, I pressed myself against the opposite wall and slid up the stairs, my eyes on the inscrutable lady.

Now, I know you won’t believe me, but I’m telling you the truth. That picture quivered before it slipped up the wall high enough to clear the nail hole, fell across the stairs, hit me, and crashed to the steps with a broken frame.

Mrs Graham was relegated to the basement where the picture eventually disappeared.
The cold spot also vanished. The stairs stopped creaking at night.

And we had nobody else to blame for items that disappeared.

A few Christmases ago, my brother gave me a paint-by-number of the eighteenth-century French artist’s Self-portrait with Her Daughter Julie, which I was pleased to hang in my room where I now live.

Neither of us would search for our old nemesis, the Honourable Mrs Graham.

Maybe Mrs Graham freed herself from her dull painted garden and pillar and our dark basement to explore a larger world. She never returned any of the lost items, and the piano never played by itself again.

Ghosts did follow my brother, and even me, after we left home.

But that’s a different story.

Generations of Motherhood

Happy Mother’s Day to every mother, mother figure, here, gone ahead, or soon to be. Mother’s Day is a time travel event, and touches generations.

How could I thank Mom for years of dedication, work, behind the scene hours, baking, sewing, mending, attending PTA meetings and award ceremonies, balancing home and a job, making sure I was ready for birthday parties with my dress and wrapped gift, teaching me to drive a stick shift, use a wringer washer?

Hours of plucking stems and pitting cherries, stirring kettles of them for pies and jellies? Meals and holiday dinners, gift wrapping, Christmas cookies, endless laundry duty, including, in my childhood, ironing?

Mending knees and scratches and broken hearts?

When we were young, we rode our bikes to the Heights (downtown) for Thomas Variety or Shorts to shop for Mother’s Day and/or her birthday. (Since Mom was born May 8th, her birthday occasionally fell on Mother’s Day.) Naturally, our childhood finances were limited, so we chose the brightest (gaudiest) bottle of cologne we saw—Evening in Paris. Mom was loyal enough to wear it. And chocolate-covered cherries, which I learned as an adult, she never cared for, (although Dad did).

We drew homemade cards at school and colored in our appreciation. Mom snickered to Dad once that I signed a card, “From your daughter, Judy Russell.” As if she wouldn’t know?

On Mother’s Day, there’s no way to pin down just one memory, or find the perfect way to show gratitude to our own mothers.

And do we give ourselves credit for our efforts, those of us who are mothers or mother figures? Even with our less-than-perfect attempts at doing everything right?

One year, we gave Mom a tiny trophy and a card that read, “To World’s Greatest Mom.” It had been a horrendous year of upsets and near-tragedy and chaos. She took one look at the card and ran to her bedroom in tears. We were shocked. “What’s the matter with Mom?”

I understood better the year my daughter got me a trophy card with the same message. World’s Greatest Mom? I was certain I was the world’s worst Mom. When Anne grew up, we shared those memories, which helped when Anne got the same card and message from her daughter.

We are all World’s Greatest Mom. Flaws and all, failures and all, tempers and regrets and all. The backbone of the family, throughout the generations.

So, to my great-grandmothers and grandmothers, to Mom, who really was World’s Greatest Mom—and I miss her terribly—I wish a Happy Mother’s Day. (And Happy Birthday, Mom. The party you’re celebrating in the Blessed Realm is a doozy.)

To my daughter Anne and her daughter Katie, you are miracles of motherhood and family life.

Happy Mother’s Day from older-but-wiser to hearts who never give in or give up.

Bless every one of you.

God does.

Dutch Days in the Heights

When we first moved to Caroline Street, there were ditches in front of some of the houses. Culverts, to be more exact, that drained water down the street on our side. In the springtime, as soon as the ice melted, the water burbled its way to the end, and we kids were fascinated by the clear, shallow stream.

For some reason, I called those early thaws Dutch Days. Looking back, I can’t think of any reason why, but when the air was brisk and the ice gone, and mud and grass hinted of coming warmer weather, I imagined Dutch housewives outside spring cleaning.

I didn’t know any Dutch housewives, and can’t imagine why I thought they’d be outside, but the memory stuck.

Spring returns me to those early years in the Heights.

Caroline Street offered friends and trees to climb, yards to explore, a variety of house styles and families. About forty houses in all that ran down both sides of the street made up our world. In fact, I was in junior high before I had a close friend on the next street, Vicki.

In those days, the street sloped to the dead end with enough slant to dare the brave to ride down, no-handed, on your bike, racing with the wind until you had to break. And, of course, occasionally chased by Chester, the Dalmation.

The only haunted house was ours, but only my friend Kay knew that, having experienced our piano-playing ghost a few times.

One house, halfway down the street, was a rental, and I remember three families moving in and out, otherwise, there was rarely a change in who lived where.

We knew who gave whole candy bars at Halloween.

We knew who not to bother, whose yard not to walk across, and who had grape arbors, flower beds, and off-limit garden vegetables. One neighbor raised (and ate) chickens. An early, horrendous memory of chicken bodies hanging from a clothesline haunts me,
especially when one fell and started to twitch. We kids ran screaming from the yard, sure that we were being chased by a headless chicken.

Yards were lined with forsythia, patches wild tiger lilies popped up. Rhubarb grew along the basement walls, and the early stalks were crisp and delicious when freshly-picked, made into pies, or simmered into sauce.

Cherry trees blossomed.

When I think about spring in the Heights now, my memories take the warm, robin-song days and blend them with the earliest signs of the end of winter for one season, but spring was a prolonged affair in my childhood.

Always started with Dutch Days, though, piles of clouds in a blue sky, running water in the culverts, playing outside and running alongside the clear streams until the ditches disappeared.

Years later, the township filled in the ditches and smoothed out the street. There’s no sign of culverts and the slant of Caroline Street wouldn’t offer challenge to any downhill flyer.

There are no culverts where I live now, yet a crisp day with fresh air and the first hint of spring can carry me back, if only for a moment, to childhood springtime and our cherished neighborhood.

And Dutch Days.

How to Know It's Finally Spring

Where I live, spring rushes through, pushed by summer, so that identifying the first signs of spring is like grabbing for the ring on a merry-go-round. Azaleas and highway phlox appear and mockingbirds court, but by the time magnolia trees bloom and the highway phlox stretches across fields and yards, afternoon temperatures are summery, then hot, all within weeks.

In the Heights, where I grew up, spring was leisurely, and we savored each small change that promised the end of winter. I had a mental check-off list and caught as many signs as possible each year.

Icicles dripped and fell from eaves. Snow retreated and offered mud, making our old rubbery, clasp boots a risk. Occasionally, you’d leave a boot behind in the mud as you lifted your foot.

Silver, red, and sugar maples budded so that the tips of trees branches were dotted and softened.

A sugar maple halfway down Caroline Street was my seasonal announcer. One of the first to bud in March, by summer, its leaves blew backward in a coming storm, and in autumn, it burst into flames with color until raking time. The tree still stands in the middle of the front yard, and I miss celebrating seasons with it.

Sugar maples were tapped for sap.

The Troy nature center demonstrates the maple syrup process in their sugar shed with a wood-fed evaporator to boil sap into sugar. The Cranbrook Science museum makes and sells their local syrup, as well. Those first, slow drips into buckets make a finished product seem impossible since it takes about 40 gallons of sap for one gallon of syrup, but there’s no flavor as bright, crisp, and memorable as real maple syrup.

The tapping and boiling sap process began in March, when the air was still cold, and there might be snow and ice in the woods. When we were young, we collected freshly-fallen snow in cups, topped it with maple syrup, and made our own homemade candy.

In the marshy woods, spring peepers and gray tree frogs began a symphony to their frogettes. Trilliums appeared in the maple woods along Adams Road. Marsh marigolds and wild geraniums added color. Forsythia bushes produced a golden yellow froth of blossoms across my Grandma’s front yard in Pontiac.

Wood frogs joined the spring chorus, and returning robins, who set up housekeeping by collecting any nest material that would entice a wife, trilled their lilting melody. Anyone hearing that familiar tune felt encouraged about spring.

Red-winged blackbirds called across swamps and marshes, even visited bird feeders for their avian carry-out. When I was very young, I called their melody a “rain song,” because it reminded me of water.

Daffodils and crocuses braved the cold. Weeping willows became Monet paintings, impressionistic artwork in soft yellow and green.

Snowdrops poked through the snow, and the first signs of grass showed, as bright green as a crayon.

The temperatures swung from cold to chilly to mild, and the sky seemed as soft a blue as a robin’s egg.

Cherry and crabapple trees bloomed, turning orchards into pink and white fairyland.

One of my favorite sights, and one of the earliest in the season, were pussy willows. I didn’t realize how many species of pussy willows there were, but my favorite did look like white kitten fur. If I could collect any, I’d let them dry and keep them as long as possible.

By the time dandelions and lilacs appeared, there was no question that spring had unfolded in the Heights, and lawn-mowing was imminent.

Oh, I forgot to list another sign of early spring, one not so welcome, one that you’re all familiar with.

Snow.