Tag Archives: family

Memories of My Father

childhood; stuff; family, ,

My father passed away when I was 13. It was a bright spring day in April, and I had been on a 4-H trip to a furniture factory or something. I suspected something was wrong when some friends of our parents came to pick me up at the parental meeting point after the trip.

The days leading up to the funeral are a blur, but at the viewing or after the service (not sure which) I remember sitting next to a schoolmate who had also lost her father. The only thing I can recall about our conversation was speculating together about what they did to tomatoes to make ketchup thick. Was it flour, other thickener, some kind of cooking magic? We couldn’t decide.

I like to think my father would have enjoyed that conversation. Not only did he love food (which one can see in the photos) and my mother’s cooking, but he enjoyed discovering things. No one could not disturb him, or even get his attention, when he would sit down in his easy chair to read the Reader’s Digest or another monthly publication.

Many of my best memories of my father revolve around food some way. I remember his pride in growing vegetables, first in our expansive New Jersey backyard and later when we moved to Vermont and had an even bigger space to plan out and tend. I hated pulling weeds and picking beans, but I learned a lot from those early gardening days, and honor that practice with my own vegetable garden, though it is not nearly as large and productive as my memory of his. But my husband and I are particularly fond of growing tomatoes.

He also loved hunting and fishing, and brought wildfowl and fish back to my mother – a city girl who did not always appreciate trying to figure out what to do with the spoils. If I am remembering this correctly, in the fall there would sometimes be dead ducks hanging upside down on the clothes line.

I’ll have to ask my mother (who in her early 40s had to become mother and father, and has been a widow for over 50 years). My sister, college-bound at the time, also had to grow up a lot faster than she might have, and chose to attend a college closer to home. We’ve never talked about that period right after my father’s death much. We should someday.

One of my favorite memories of my father was one night, after he and my mother had purchased one of those gadgets that sliced vegetables, probably “as seen on TV” or advertised in the Sunday paper or a magazine. It purported to slice anything with neat, picture-perfect precision, even ripe tomatoes.

I’d gone upstairs to bed, but was woken by very loud laughter in the kitchen. My mother and father were putting the slicer to the test with ripe garden tomatoes, and it obviously was not living up to its hype. I am not sure if I snuck downstairs to see what all the hilarity was, or if my mom told me about it afterwards, but apparently tomato mush was everywhere. Being frugal, I am sure my mom made tomato sauce out of it the next day.

She could have made ketchup, I suppose, but that was the job of the Heinz company. And, if she had, there would have been no mystery to discuss, to soothe my profound loss.

Our family in our New Jersey living room. I’m the little one on the right.
My father in his young, non-double-chin days on the left, and with my mom at some beach or other on the right. That’s a (backyard) farmer, or fisherman’s tan if I ever saw one!

As the World (Keeps) Turn(ing)

childhood; stuff; family, ,

Our family has watched daytime soap operas since before I was born. One of my earliest memories is coming home from kindergarten and watching the soaps on CBS (As the World Turns and The Guiding Light) with my grandmother who babysat us after school while my mom was at work. Years later, my mother, my sister and I got semi-addicted to Days of our Lives, which is one of the few hold-outs of revamped weekday daytime TV. (Most soaps were not so lucky, and got axed in favor of more talk shows and game shows.)

My mom is in assisted living now and I usually call her once a week. One of the things we talk about is “the soap.” We rehash the plot, fill one another in if we missed a day or two, and discuss how ridiculous the storyline has become (or always was?) and always question why we still waste our time watching it.

But, I think right now, “Days” and other fictional distractions are just what we need. While they do sometimes confront “real life” current issues (though not often or particularly well) the soap is taped so far ahead that the storyline now exists in a refreshingly pre-COVID19 bubble. People go from place to place, discussing their problems over meals at the local hang-out, and the most talked-about medical test proves or disproves the paternity of someone’s baby. Unlike watching a movie or TV show with a fixed time period, it just, well, goes on like normal life is supposed to, albeit in a heightened dramatic fashion.

And here we are, in our own real-life soap operas which take place mostly in our our homes, with a reduced cast of characters appearing in person. I haven’t taken a lot pictures in the past couple of weeks, except things I want to share with my remote family members, friends and co-workers. But here are some snaps from my recent activities.

I cut my own bangs and took a selfie. Ugh my face looks terrible… but my hair looks OK.

Like many other people I have been experimenting with new recipes, including this naan bread using self-rising flour (the only kind left at the grocery one day) and Greek yoghurt. Not bad!

I ordered our ginseng friend and colleague Jim Hamilton’s novel… I can read it and call it research, right? It’s a good story so far.

“STAY WELL” is my new sign-off to everyone. We’ll see this through and get to the other side, just as everyone on Days of Our Lives has for 50 years on NBC!

Encountering the Ghosts of the Past

childhood; stuff; family, Hilton Head Island, memories, ,

Last week, my sister and I embarked on the task of cleaning out my mom’s condo.  Mom is now in assisted living, and has everything she needs in her one large room.  (“Needs” and “wants” might be different things… let’s say, she has everything that could possible fit there and then some.)  So, the accumulated remaining possessions that were left in the closets, under the beds, in the cabinets, on the shelves, in the drawers, on the walls, were left to be dealt with.

This is not our childhood home, but the retirement home of my mom.  Still, some of the items dating back to our childhoods made it to this location, in a couple of enormous boxes in the corners of the spare bedroom closets.  These brought back memories, mostly fond and but some not-so-fond.   From my old report cards (which recorded your height and weight back then along with your academic achievements) I was reminded what a fat little kid I was.  Our old slightly beat up Madame Alexander dolls reminded me how I once shamelessly abused my sister’s doll by cramming corn flakes into its eyes.  A tiny set of metal pots and pans reminded me that, as children, we had a functional small electric stovetop – how many times did we come close to burning down the house with that beast?

We kept a few of the items that we just couldn’t part with – my sister took, among other things, the pancake pitcher and griddle, and we vowed to make pancakes served with sausages, maple syrup and applesauce at Christmastime like our Dad used to for dinner sometimes.  I took the family photos in various media – slides, loose snapshots, arranged in albums, framed.  We brought more small knick-knacks and mementos to my mom. But many of the items will find new homes via the many boxes we donated to a charity shop, or, if they were too far gone, have been deep-sixed in the dump.  It’s just the way of things.

It was sad, and exhausting, and frustrating, but we got through it, with the help of some friends and our husbands.  Ghosts have been encountered, dispatched, and banished along with about a ton of stuff.  The memories remain.