memories – Page 15 – Home's Cool!

Believe it or not!, Husbands, Inspiring, Wisdom, Wives

All My Men Have Been Good to Me – Husband

Posted on March 28, 2011March 27, 2011 by Katharine

They hoped he wouldn’t love me, but he did. They predicted we wouldn’t last, but we did. Vietnam tried to separate us, but it didn’t. They said we’d never get anywhere, but we did.

And at least half of it was due to the only man who would give up his seat to me, forty-something years ago.

We were hardly more than children, but love and stubbornness led the way. Milestone after milestone whizzed by until it seemed there was no stopping us.

Bumps in the road gave us strength, new direction, and adaptability, a great combination.

Now, six children homeschooled and raised up and out of the home, mostly it’s just us. And that was really all I needed in the first place—all the rest was frosting.

Buying and selling houses and cars, fixing broken things, building what we lacked, sweating at laboring, always taking the frugal route, he provided, always provided, so I would not have to leave our nest, was free to tend our babes in peace, not harried. I love the life I acquired with this man who spent himself so willingly for my freedom.

Then there is the wisdom. They say still waters run deep, and for him, it is true. When he spoke, the words were worth listening. When he spoke, other women feared.

And patience. Married to a woman who “needs a mute button”, he always listened, always listens. Always knows the answers to my confusions,

Let the world belittle marriage and commitment! Let them rant against fidelity and sanctity! Let them screw their brows into frowns and suspicions! Let them pretend they are happy without loyalty and truthfulness! Let them blow!

I cannot hear it.

I have spent my whole life with my best friend and would that I had another life to do it all again.

Brothers, Inspiring

All My Men Have Been Good to Me – Brothers

Posted on March 25, 2011December 16, 2014 by Katharine

I have two brothers. God knows I could not have stood any more. And I don’t mean that in a mean way.

My brothers spoil me. They are extravagantly generous to me. If I had one more brother, I would pop.

First, they endured my obnoxious childhood foibles as a sister. I know they learned their extreme patience from living with me for all those years. If I wasn’t trying to get them to play dress-ups with me, then it was playing school. Which was worse? With me taking charge of everything, it didn’t matter!

Second, they grew up to be strong and loving husbands and dads. They gave me wonderful nieces and a wonderful nephew, and have raised and are raising them right. I rejoice in knowing they all, all, all are my family.

Third, they call me, visit me, write me, and bring or send me gifts. Just recently this lovely bouquet arrived at my door. I can hardly believe it. When they visit, the closest one travels about 500 miles. This is devotion, friends. I wish I could grow to deserve it.

But I see similar devotion in my sons, for their sister and it gives me such hope.

Blessings of Habit, Good ol' days, Inspiring

All My Men Have Been Good to Me – Dad

Posted on March 24, 2011March 10, 2015 by Katharine

I wrote of my dad already, but left much unsaid.

A WWII veteran, my dad was a factory worker. He lifted heavy bags of plastic pellets into a machine that turned out knobs, duck calls, and laundry baskets, at high temperatures. He seldom took sick leave and came home exhausted every night. For that he received $100 per week and a party sometime in December.

Yet he had such energy left for tomfoolery! He played with us kids as if he were one himself. Airplane rides (on his feet), jigsaw puzzles, carom games, goofy drawings, and croquet were among his repertoire. He made the stand for our carom board, himself, without any plan or pattern. He also made several bookcases and two desks the same way. And he repaired our toys.

One play activity he initiated with us was about trust. Did he think it through and decide to teach us trust? Maybe not—he was having fun. He encouraged and coaxed us to fall backward into his hands, if we believed he was strong enough to catch us. Was that ever hard to do! And how insulted he acted when we were scared to try it! He never dropped us, though, and we learned something, I think.

When his family grew, he built an addition to the house, himself. Alone. He hired help with digging and pouring the basement, and with the rafters. All the rest he did with our help. We gained a new living room, bedroom, basement, and bath. It was hard, but he did it. He wired, plumbed, hammered, sawed, plastered, sanded, and varnished. And I still can back any nail out of any board, no matter how bent or stuck. Just ask my kids.

He kept a huge garden, too. Corn, tomatoes, beans, and cucumbers, I remember. Sometimes he hired it plowed in spring, sometimes he could only afford to burn it off and attack with a shovel. But he had a big-wheeled cultivator and we pulled weeds. And there is still something about pulling weeds that pulls me into the garden.

How I loved to sit on his lap while he watched television! Mostly I did not watch, but just nestled and played with his hands. I twirled his wedding ring round and round his finger and rubbed the calluses on his palms and ridges on his fingernails. Sometimes he would give me one quarter of one of his Throat Disks from their slender tin he kept in his pocket. He also had a smaller tin of tiny, black Meloids that were too spicy for me.

One thing bonded me to him more than any other. When I was very little, he would give me piggy-back rides. He sat on a big chair while I climbed up to grab hold around his neck, then he stood up and bounced me around the living room. What fun we had! The day came, though, when the ride was over, I slid down his back, and my leg caught on a screwdriver in his back pocket. I screamed. He was absolutely heartbroken. I had never seen a grown-up cry before and it riveted me.

Oh, to be that concerned about my own precious children!

Blessings of Habit, Good ol' days, Inspiring, Wisdom

All My Men Have Been Good to Me: Grandpa

Posted on March 23, 2011December 16, 2014 by Katharine

My grandpa used to gather us kids around to play a mouse game with us. He somehow folded his handkerchief into a cylinder shape with a tail and would hold it in his hand and stroke it like a pet mouse. Then he would talk us into petting it, too. Suddenly it would jump up his arm while he acted surprised and we nearly jumped out of our skins, although we knew what was coming, each time. It was the only kid entertainment at their stuffy parsonage, and we loved it, couldn’t wait to go there and beg to play the mouse game. Oh, the giggles!

Imagine my awe and shock when my mother revealed to me the truth: my grandpa never did like children much. Imagine!—Oh, just imagine!—What dedication to doing right prevailed in this man who did not like little children yet took them into his arms and blessed them with a silly game!

Outside of that game, our activities with him were on adult level. He lived in St. Louis, and took us often to Shaw’s Garden and the Climatron. Anyone who has ever been there knows a child can be totally impressed with such a ho-hum-sounding activity. I was. I loved it there; the waterfalls that ended in fish-filled pools with floating lava rock amazed me. That the birds could live there for our enjoyment, that we could climb stairs to be near the treetops, that the birds were used to us, was unbelievable. I grew up to be an amateur botanist and birder.

After retiring from parish life, he took a simpler job as proofreader at a large publishing company. Twice he took me there to see the processes, every step conducted in house, in the good ol’ days. I remember a long set of cover-less books aligned side-by-side with an enormous screw clamp, waiting for their corporate edges to be gilded. I grew up to be a writer.

Grandpa also had a pump organ and played very well. He would not let us play on it unless we could pump it ourselves and knew an actual song to play for him. My brother was better at that, but when Grandpa took us to the big, old church that had a real pipe organ, when the organist was practicing, it was sublime. I soaked in it and grew up to prefer richly chorded classical organ music.

One activity bonded me to my grandpa more than any other thing: milk toast.

For the uninitiated, that is a bowl of torn-up toast, doused in milk, to eat with a spoon like cereal. A-a-ah!

I liked milk toast and none others of Grandpa’s fourteen grandchildren did, that I know of. He liked to eat a bowl of it every night before bed and if we were there, he would make me one, too. We sat together at their antique oak dining table that was covered in hand-made lace, old man and little girl, happy as coons in corn, eating a meal he prepared just for me.

Blessings of Habit, Good ol' days, Inspiring, Wisdom

An Odd Egg

Posted on March 21, 2011February 22, 2017 by Katharine

What a difference in these two eggs! Each appeared during this flip-flop season we call “spring”.

Spring is such a time of turmoil in our area—flower and leaf buds popping out everywhere, new birth, chickens beginning the new laying season, tornadoes—I wonder how we survive it.

Spring’s natural beauty forces us to love her. The amazing fragrances and forms of blooming things, the pearlescence of eggshells and the fragility of baby chicks, the mew of kittens, the peeping of hidden frogs, all work on us, draw us to that perennial love affair with spring.

So we roll up our sleeves, kick off our shoes, and pull our hair up into ponytails to catch the sun on our skin. We pull weeds, freshen flags, mow too soon, plant too soon—anything to be outdoors, to come inside smelling like spring. We paint lawn furniture, divide potted plants, and attend herbal festivals, filling our lives with projects to prepare us for spring.

But no-yolk and double-yolk eggs most remind me of spring. My dad had a collection of odd eggshells that appeared on the same day as tornadoes. He always said the tornado scared the hens and caused them to lay odd eggs. I think he believed that. Maybe it is true. He labeled each shell with the date of its corresponding tornado and displayed them on egg cups, for which they were far too large or far too small. He always loved curiously humorous events.

He’s been gone, now, about 12 years. So much has changed. I doubt he ever guessed I’d be telling the whole world about his eggshell collection, one day. I doubt he ever guessed what an impact he had, in the daily humor of life.

But I do not doubt he lived life, squeezed everything he could out of it, love it, with one hand held palm-upward, trusting, waiting for some blessing to fall into it, be it only an odd eggshell.

And he was not disappointed.

Good ol' days, Homemaking, Inspiring

Weekly Photo Challenge: Home

Posted on March 16, 2011December 7, 2014 by Katharine

My Secret Recipe for a Home

Winter’s laundry hanging by the wood heater.

Homegrown bouquets.

Porch plants sharing spaces with us in winter.

A teakettle that whistles.

A coffeepot, not a coffee maker.

antique drip through — Antique Drip-through

A few herb plants growing around the house.

A garden plot.

A rosebush or two.

roses — Scented Rose Bushes Getting Ready to Bloom

Homemade curtains and crocheted do-dads.

Quilts made by someone you know.

Lots and lots of ancient books.

Art made by someone you know.

wolf — My Teenage Daughter’s Lobo Portrait

Little places for the little people you love.

toddler chairs — The Reading Readiness Room

A well-worn broom.

Floor lamps, pillows, afghans, lace, birding books.

Oh, and lots of love, laughter, tears, and prayers.

Blessings of Habit, Good ol' days, Homemaking, Wisdom, Womanhood

Spring into Cleaning with Excitement!

Posted on March 10, 2011December 2, 2017 by Katharine

Lots of places I read about spring cleaning. It can be a big guilt trip. Why?

Long ago, when women did spring cleaning, they had time. Today, women have been robbed of their time. The perceived need for each person on this earth to work for pay has led to no one doing the non-paying jobs like cleaning. Or if someone does clean, that someone is tired and only half cleans.
Long ago, when women did spring cleaning, they had help. No, I don’t mean slaves or servants. I mean neighbors. Today, women have been robbed of their neighbors. Oh, we have plenty of houses all around us, but during the day, they all are empty. The perceived need for each person on this earth to be somewhere else has led to no one being at home. Women used to help each other in a frank and nurturing way. Now women play cut-throat office politics.
Long ago, there was less stuff. If you only have one of each thing you need, it all gets easier. But we’ve been robbed of our contentment. The perceived need for each person on this earth to have more money has led to everyone spending more. Gotta buy something, right? So we load up on quasi-Mediterranean, do-nothing props from Mercenary-Mart to fill our ranch-style mantels to overflowing.
Long ago, houses were smaller. Actually, the smaller house is enjoying a revival, right now, but that will only drive the prices up. How sad that many of the Palladian palaces are sitting empty. That’s one way to keep the dust levels down, but the truth is: we’ve been robbed of any kind of moderation or restraint. Vacuuming literally, for miles, can discourage.
Long ago, women knew how to do spring cleaning. Today we are one generation removed from information about many how-to’s, but I think I can help.

Catch this blog tomorrow for a totally radical way to knock out the spring cleaning without actually doing spring cleaning. That’s right—you will love this plan for a totally clean house the easy way.

See ya’ tomorrow.