Remembering the 28th of February

1970 Dad was still working and happy

February 28, 1903 in Lawrence, KS my daddy was born.  He was the third son for his dad but the eldest for his mom.  One more brother would follow.

He was certainly a product of his generation but he was also smart enough to figure out that times change and whether you approve or not, sometimes you must accept life on the terms presented to you.  Unfortunately he married a woman who didn't understand that but believed that you had to mold life to meet your own needs and beliefs.  They often found themselves at loggerheads until Daddy would relent and give in to Mother.

Daddy enjoyed his life throughout this twenties and thirties.  He bought automobiles, he traveled, he bought beautiful clothes.  He had a job he absolutely loved.  He lived at home with his mother and dad and they made sure he was well fed, his bed was made, and he had clean underwear.

Then Mother snared him.  He was 38 and she was 16.  She pursued him with all the ferocity of a lion hunting a lamb.  Only living a block apart, she kept a watchful eye on his comings and goings, especially his girlfriends.  She chased after him for three years and finally, when she was 19, she caught him and within the year they were married -- and she was three months pregnant. 

They only managed to product one child, me.   Sometimes I was the delight of their lives; sometimes I was a spoiled, rotten brat.  But to my daddy I was always the apple of his eye, the orchid in his lei, the sunshine after a violent storm with Mother.  He loved me unconditionally and when I was happy, he was ecstatic.

To me he was the calm port those wild typhoons that my mother loved to create.  He was bookish, he enjoyed writing and speaking, he was not coordinated, and he couldn't repair anything.  I take after him in so many ways.

He loved to travel but after he married, Mother decided she hated being away from home.  My grandfather (Mother's dad) took us around the U.S. when I was a kid, but Mother was never happy about going.  Eventually she found a way to stop travel when she and Grandfather bought a cabin in the mountains where we could spend the summers.   

Dad loved being well-dressed and before marriage his clothing came from the best stores in town.  After he married, Mother bought his clothing from the bargain basements.  She let him have three suits -- blue, gray, and brown.  He was allowed one pair of shoes for work and one pair for weekends.  He had a herringbone overcoat and a gray felt hat.  He enjoyed nice ties and sometimes he even wore bow-ties but he never had flashy ones. On weekends he would wear jeans with a western shirt and a bolo tie.

He went to church regularly and became an usher.  Mother criticized him mercilessly about the job he did gathering the collection, but the church loved to have him part of their crew.  They asked him time and again to be on the usher board and Mother couldn't understand why, such a "clumsy oaf" was wanted as part of the visible crew of the church. 

He had a warm sense of humor and never made enemies.  Mother was always mad at somebody or other and she couldn't understand why he didn't take her side.  He forgave easily any wrong done him. 

He loved puns and would spring them on you without warning.

My grandparents (Mother's parents) could not understand Mom's attraction to such a man.  He wasn't wealthy, he was not driven, he had only a so-so job, and he told punny stories they couldn't understand.  My grandfather, who never went beyond 8th grade, couldn't relate to this college guy without ambition or the desire to make the big bucks.  Still, they knew him to always be a gentleman and they supported my parents all throughout their lives and beyond.

Dad loved the mountains, almost more than life.  He had spent his summers in the Pike's Peak area from 1907 and he always felt at peace once he heard the wind in the pines at 8000 feet above sea level.  Some of my best memories are of us driving across Kansas to reach Colorado Springs, then driving up the mountain pass to our "pine rest" cabin.

My dad always had my back.  He once told me that if he vanished, there was a letter in his desk at work, that explained he had stayed in the marriage as long as he could for my sake.  But he never did leave me, he stayed and he loved and he nourished my spirit in ways that food never could.

He wasn't a perfect man -- but he was a wonderful, generous, kind father.

Happy Birthday, Dad!    

Forced to retire in 1971 he was the most miserable man alive; he had loved his job and never wanted it to end; now he was stuck at home every day without the intellectual stimulation he required. 

Restoring a Garden

Marcel Proust wrote:

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.  

As my family shrank precipitously in the last 20 years I have hung on faithfully to the two remaining family members who seem to love and care for me, regardless of my cranky disposition, my coldness of spirit, and frequently my selfish personality.  Yes, I've made a few acquaintances along they way but I've lost more people that I thought I liked and could trust.  I found out these people could not be counted on to support me when times became rough or I became difficult and in almost every case they would not go out of their way to do a me a kindness. 

I was eventually left with only Hubby and his sister in Houston.  I have held on to two Texan acquaintances, though our contact is usually minimal, and they are actually friendships that existed because of my sister-in-law. Still, I always thought that if I asked, they would be willing to reach out to me (us) in a supportive way. 

I had two couples here in the Kansas City that I believed could be counted on for moral support and one of those couples has freely offered physical support as well.  For the last two years theses two generous people have been the lodge pole of our lives, though we actually only see them monthly or even less.

I don't have people I call on the phone to chat with and talk over the day's events.  The closest I come to the hours of time my mother hung on the phone with her friends and her mother (who lived right next door) is the time I spend on the Internet.  For the last 20 years or so my DogTalk friends have been my most constant companions.  I read some tid-bit of news from them every day and I share what my boys are doing or how Hubby is feeling with them weekly (or monthly, sometimes).  I have only met one of them face-to-face.  Though I know they care about me from across the miles, I also know they aren't going to jump on a plane and come pick up the pieces of my life should it smash around me.  They will pray for our healing but they don't send low sodium chicken soup to the hospital when that's all that Hubby can eat and they can't wipe my tears of fear when the doctors utter dire pronouncements. 

When I began to blog, I started reading some wonderful writers and interesting people leading fulfilling lives, at least on screen, and I added a few select people to my list of daily contacts.  Using Facebook added a few others -- and re-connected me with some people from my immediate past.  I chat with at least two of these good people every week and sometimes I think I've become more invested in their lives than I am in my own.  I know about their daughters and husbands and in-laws and when they are sick and when they feel down.  But, once again, our only contact is the written word -- and if my computer fails or the power goes out, our friendship is then lost. 

I honestly haven't been lonely.  But I missed having face-to-face contact, hugs, and out-loud laughs with real people.  I especially missed having a special "girlfriend" to share my life with. 

Then I retired and everybody said, "What will you do with yourself?" Even I knew that holing up in the house with just Hubby and the dogs was not going to be enough of a life for the long haul.

My first outreach was to a woman who had given me a very lovely gift when I retired.  I really didn't know her well but I did know she was an open person with a kind heart.  I suggested we do lunch.  She agreed.  While chatting about our professional life, she thought that other retired teachers would enjoy joining us for a meal and we settled on gathering once a month at some nice restaurant with an open invitation to other women who had worked at our school.  We are now a group of five, soon to be six, and I find I look forward to being with them out of all proportion to the time we actually spend together.  These ladies are not closer to me than my Internet friends but they exhibit a real, true, physical presence in my life.  I find that I really do need that. 

I mentored a young lady my last year teaching; we're very different people and she is so very young but we liked each other.  We were too busy to form a close bond but we did share similar experiences and some of the same students.   Waiting until school was ready to start again this past fall, I asked her to dinner.  She came; we talked the night away and not just about educational things.  Now we meet regularly to talk over school politics, favorite students, teaching techniques, new apartments, trying visits with family, and the best place in town to find a great burrito. 

From 1990 until 2006 I ran a small company doing communication's management for large firms that needed executive level presentations.  During that time I met a few really special people -- the kind you always wish you could hang on to, but often get lost in the business end of work.  One has made a special effort to keep me within range, even though she has moved around the country since our work relationship ended.  She emails, she calls for lunches or dinners when she's in town, she sends birthday cards, and has on occasion, even sent books she knew I'd love.  Another, a younger woman and I always said, "No matter whether we're in touch or not ours is a friendship that will last."  When I reached out to her after retirement, she opened her schedule and her heart and we are back, meeting regularly, sharing stories, comforting, supporting, advising, listening.  Two men from my business days have remained in my life, though more on the sidelines than as part of my inner circle.  Still we do see each other, we share meals, we email, we Facebook, and I know they are at least more than un-embodied voices on a wireless connection. 

When I left teaching almost a year ago now, I would have said I had only one friend I could count on. I hadn't been a friend to those people who had reached out to me so I certainly wasn't able to feel comfortable asking them for support.  Slowly, I'm rebuilding my life around people who have always been supportive and now I think I'm beginning to position myself to be able to be a friend in return. 

An adult friendship is so much more complicated than who you would sit next to on the bus or in the auditorium.  A true friend may forget your birthday but she won't shut you down when you call up and are afraid that you can't meet the physical requirements needed by a sick family member.  Instead, she offers to help you find resources that support you.  This is so much better than a birthday gift or card.  She knows when you are feeling helpless and down and it's her physical presence that can support you through the rough patches.  

Our true friendships are simply priceless.  When you reach out to be a friend, in return those people who have stayed by our side, no matter where we were in that relationship with them, will reach back to help you move into their path.  These are the friendships to deepen and make last.  These are the friends I'm making the building blocks of my life. 

True Love

Hubby has always guarded his keys jealously.  Very security conscious, he has installed dead bolts locks, steel doors, alarms, and every protective device he could afford or install himself.

Me, well, not so much.  I leave doors unlocked, I don't manipulate keys well, I can't remember combinations to alarms or learn how they operate.  If I have to punch in combinations of numbers I'm pretty much opting out of the process.

Early in our relationship (that was 40 years ago, folks) Hubby struggled with my inability to keep up with keys, open locks, or operate alarms. I clearly remember that one of my first horrible encounters with him was the day he installed a dead bold lock on our front door and then told me to stand there and open all the locks that were on the door (screen door lock, two locks on front door).  I couldn't figure out the different keys and it felt exactly like my mother was standing over me in grave and serious disapproval -- which had always lead to physical consequences.  I ended up crying on the front steps which made opening the locks just that much harder.  Hubby watched in utter frustration, unable to fathom what on earth had sent me into a tailspin.  Thankfully, he never put me through such torture again. 

Fast forward seven years and multiple losses of keys and key rings and I found out just how much Hubby really loved me.  One day I came home from my teaching job and found that every lock in the house had been replaced -- and keyed to the exact same key.  Moreover, hanging from the kitchen peg board were five sets of the keys -- so when I misplaced a set, instead of the trauma that has always ensued in trying to find them, I could just go grab a new set and move on.  This was a huge adjustment for him and a wonderful solution for me.  And I adored him for giving up and making both our lives much less stressful.

When I went back to teaching in 2006 I gave up carrying a purse.  I only have one now if we travel or if I'm meeting the Ladies Who Lunch and need to pay for a meal.  Hubby carries the debit card which we use regularly.  This ensures that after losing multiple purses throughout my life, I no longer will misplace money or credit cards.  I put my keys in my pocket if I need them.  Because it's been so cold and Hubby is struggling with the frozen larynx which doesn't operate well in chilly air, I usually go out and start the car warming before we leave the house.  This has meant that my keys are in the ignition of the car. 

Last Thursday night Hubby asked me to go with him to the pharmacy to get a new prescription and, as usual, I put my keys in my pocket.  However, Hubby and I left the house together as it was fairly warm and I just left my keys in my pocket.  I went into Walgreens and got his pills and then we picked up dinner on the way home. When we arrived back at the house my keys were gone.

I never found them, though I asked at both the pharmacy and the take-out place. I've had to use Hubby's keys to start the car and I haven't been able to open the front door without his help.

This morning after walking the dogs in the frigid air, I asked Hubby what he would like for breakfast.  He told me to hold off until he ran a couple of errands and off he went.  When he returned, he brought with him a complete set of car and house keys on a long bungee-cord key ring. He offered them up with a long sigh but never uttered a word of complaint.

This, my friends, is not 50 Shades of Gray love -- this is true love blended with caring and friendship and understanding. 

Space Saving

Not this past Christmas, but the one before that (2008) Hubby gifted me with Cuisinart appliances. I only cook during my summer hiatus from school, and as it was winter and Hubby was the only chef in the kitchen, nobody even bothered to open the boxes.

My first chore this summer was to clean off the counter tops after Hubby had spent the winter / spring splattering them with gravy, tomato sauce, and sundry other disgusting things. As I was thirty minutes into de-crumbing the huge four-slice T-Fal toaster, I notice that the box on the dining room floor contained what was claimed to be a "space-saving" Cuisinart toaster, never used and consequently in no need of cleaning. Now our house is tiny and our kitchen is minuscule. Space-saving sounds good, even though the toaster is only a two-slicer. Opening the box, I found this cute little toaster, with settings on the side (not the front) so it could be stored on the counter side-ways. Space-saving, clean, new -- and Cuisinart. The still operating four-slicer could be moved to school, where the kids could toast up pop-tarts and I could do bagels . . . win / win.

Yesterday evening I called Hubby out to the kitchen to show him that I was finally using the new toaster. He looked at the full-sized microwave and Cuisinart food processor still on the counter - and the biggest Crockpot made, and suggested that I might want to swap out the microwave for the one in the office -- quite a bit smaller. "And, you know, I also gave you a food processor that Christmas."

"No, you didn't. You gave me a blender."

So Hubby pulled out the still-unopened box -- and we were both right. It was a combination food processor / blender -- and half the size of the one on the counter. Now, I love the one on the counter. My sister-in-law gave it to me, oh, maybe five years ago. It has all the blades and can hold a whole head of cabbage at one slicing. But . . . I only use it maybe four times a year. And Hubby never uses it. He still chops by hand.

"Let's open this up and see if we like it!" And we did -- and we loved it.

Yesterday was a dreary, rainy day in KC so Hubby spent the morning at the computer. I toasted some nice oatmeal bread to go with his tea -- and that toaster is twice as fast as the old one.

The toaster, the huge Crockpot (which I will never replace until it burns up), and the blender / food processor are all the same color (white). They now sit on the left-hand side of my sink and there is still some room to chop and peel on the counter tops.

I'm debating about the microwave. Hubby exploded a jar of baked beans in our big one in April -- and yesterday I cleaned all that up. I don't think a smaller microwave will keep him from making a mess (and ignoring it) but I have asked him just how clean the smaller microwave is.

Today I'm tackling the refrigerator. Ours is at least 25 years old but it still works just fine. I'd kill for an ice maker but because our kitchen is so small, we have a smaller full-size frig that just does the basic things. When I removed the crisper tray though and saw that Hubby had spilled an entire jar of honey that had seeped under the tray and then hardened, I wondered just how much a new frig would cost. I'm not sure I'll ever get all that honey removed.

Ancestry

The snow has been falling since Friday night. Now it's just "light" snow, but 24 hours of medium to light snow does pile up. And the Lincoln will not start -- it turns over like crazy but just won't catch. We're waiting until Monday to figure out the problem. Thankfully Hubby got the flat fixed on the van so we do have some means of transportation, just not what you want to drive around the city in when there's 8 inches of snow on the pavement.

The Internet has been my entertainment today. Googling names of folks I remember from my past (you know you do it, too!) I came up with a couple of source documents that linked to Ancestry.com. I'd been watching the ads for the site and thought I might give it a try, so I purchased as three month only membership and set to work to see what might come up.

Mostly just census records and marriage licenses are available, unless someone has actually been doing research on your family, but seeing your family names from the 1700's is a fascinating way to while away a snowy afternoon. My father's side is very well documented, as I knew it would be. Back in the 1920's the family had already done extensive research into their history and could trace back to Wales in the 1600's. It was interesting to see how many branches of the family I'd never heard of had researched my great, great, great grandfather.

My direct generation though is very lonely. My dad only had one child. His brother only had two. It seems no one had researched this branch of the family. My mother's family is even less well represented and they were the ones I was especially interested in. My great grandmother only had two children and one died in childhood. My grandfather only had one child, my mother. And my mother only had me -- with no children. No one appears to have ever researched the family. Add to that, my great grandmother's name was Mary Hill, one of the most common names in the US.

Unless someone has added records to Ancestry, only the scanned census and marriage and death records are easily available. Sometimes you find old year books from high schools have been scanned into the media archives. And you have to pay bonus money if you want to search outside the US (I found many census records available for relatives in Wales but I wasn't going to pay to see them).

I found my marriage license from 1966 but couldn't find the divorce record. Ditto for Hubby's marriage in 1968. Our marriage license never showed up (but since I have a copy of it in my files -- HA!). I tried to find a record of Hubby's children with his exes, but again, no birth records showed. I wasn't surprised because I couldn't find my mother's birth record. The 1920 census seemed to be the most prolific record for my family -- shows how old we are. My maternal grandparents are well represented from the 1900's on here in Kansas City. And so are my paternal grandparents.

I added a bunch of old scans of family photos I had, in case the "Griffith" side of the family which has been doing all the research wants to have them.

All in all, it was a diverting snowy Saturday afternoon. The picture at the top was taken in 1948 -- and I'm the baby on the lap of my paternal grandmother. Dad is the middle man in the back row -- and my mom is seated on the couch wearing green/brown. We were celebrating Christmas Eve at my maternal grandmother's home (black skirt / white blouse).