My mom was the youngest of three sisters. I love looking at old black and white photos of them from nearly 100 years ago. The sibling bond is a unique one. You share memories, for better or for worse, of growing up in the same home with the same parents. These three played dolls together, had to get the same kind of haircut, and no doubt shared a bed, a room, sometimes their clothing as hand-me-downs. The things that shape you as person are often bound up with your siblings, for better or for worse.
These three little girls kept up with each other their whole lives, though the oldest one went off to New York, followed by the middle sister. Eventually the middle one went through some tough times and came back to her roots in Minnesota and stayed. When their mother was dying of cancer, all three sisters sat vigil with her in the hospital. My mom told me later that they laughed like crazy with each other, and they wept together as they witnessed their mother slipping away. And the sibling bond strengthened, as it does when you share that kind of intimate experience.
Photographs capture a moment in time, and these are just a few of the many that we have from those years. All three of these little girls have passed on now, but oh, how young and vibrant and funny they were back then. The years have marched on, but the memories remain.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
The blog post must march on, but the memory of it will be deleted in the morning.
We lived in a big, drafty house when I was growing up. The only sources of warmth in the winter were the radiators, sprinkled throughout the house, with one in most of the rooms. Sometimes the radiators were warm and comforting to lean against. Sometimes they were very hot, not enough to burn, but enough to keep you from wanting to be too close.
We spent a lot of time in our living room and dining room, both of which could get uncomfortably cold even with the radiators radiating. My mom’s solution was to make a huge quilt which she hung up as a wall to separate the living room from the entry way, which we always called “the foyer.” Sometimes that quilt meant the difference between having a room that was livably warm and one that required sweaters, blankets and mittens for added bulk.
Mom could have just hung a blanket or two up, but she took the time and effort to make a beautiful quilt, one that I didn’t appreciate nearly enough at the time. You see, this was no ordinary quilt; it was embroidered with our names, our parents names, our grandparents’ names and the names of ancestors further back than that. Mom added the names in the white channels around the squares. This was before sewing machines could be programmed to do such things. She did it with her own clever hands. Our names (my siblings and me) were the darkest colors and each generation back from us was embroidered in successively lighter colors. It was an exquisite heritage quilt! Occasionally I would look at the names, but mostly the quilt became a wall, one that we did not dare leave pulled aside on those cold days.
When did she have time to make this quilt? How is it that I have no memories of seeing her work on it? How long did it take her to sew all those names on it? What a triumph it was!
Recently I heard from my youngest sister that this quilt and one other were in Mom’s cedar chest that she’d taken when Mom died. She didn’t think she’d ever use the quilts and offered them up to the sibs. “Me! Me! Pick me!” Well, no one else wanted them and they now reside in our house. For the first time in its whole existence, the quilt is covering a bed. I marvel at it and wish I could tell my mom, “Oh, what a wonderful work of art and family history you did! God blessed the work of your hands.” And I would hug her and kiss her dear cheek.
I might feel rather quilty if I have to delete this in the morning.
Amongst my mother’s things I found a couple old notebooks which contained the minutes from our family meetings between June 1964 and October 1971. Talk about buried treasure! I typed them up and sent them out to my siblings so they could join me in this walk down memory lane.
My father was the president, Mom was vice-president, and our oldest sister, Leslie, was the secretary. She would have been almost 11 at the beginning, and 18 years old by the time we had our last meeting. The meetings were fairly sporadic, although I think the goal was to meet every month. Everybody in the family attended.
The purpose was to allow for family discussions about chores, allowance, TV privileges, vacation ideas, general complaints, family plans, etc. Some things were voted upon; other things were decided by parental decree. The secretary formed her own version of shorthand to communicate the essentials. The minutes give a charming glimpse into our family life, at least I find it charming.
Below are some sample entries (not complete minutes) to give you an idea of our family culture.
June 18, 1964. We had a subject on the use of the basement. Mom and Dad want us kids to ask them before we go down. They decided the number of how many should be down. The limit was four. No arguments are to be had. Private discussions.
September 1, 1964. We had a subject on jobs for the winter. After supper Lynn will take out chairs, others alternate three jobs: Dishes, wiping dishes, and sweeping. We alternate day by day.
School supplies. On first day come home. Tell what need, then buy.
October 23, 1965. We had the Secretary’s report. We had Treasurer’s report. No allowance if jobs aren’t right, or if there is too much static. There was old business.
Halloween costumes: 1. Paul = bum 2. David = hobo 3. Lynn = clown 4. Sarah = pirate 5. Leslie = undecided.
September 3, 1966 The meeting was called to order by the president. Minutes were corrected. Treasury was approved. New allowances: 1. Lynn – 20 cents 2. David – 40 cents 3. Paul – 50 cents 4. Leslie – 60 cents No grum. or gr. with mo. regular jobs. Lynn helps more in kitchen.
Television 1. Preview weeks 3-17 of September 2. One show a week per person 3. Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays 4. Right attitude 5. You can watch when you’re sick at home.
November 11, 1966. The meeting was called to order by the president. Secretaries report was approved. Treasurers report was approved.
Each child plans a family night.
Xmas – give small presents to each member of the family.
Family plans – skiing, sledding, public library, field trips, natural history museum, Swedish institute, art museum.
April 2, 1967 The formalities of the meeting were satisfactory. O.B. Didn’t go to library. N.B. D.B. wants to go to the library. Le.B. had a complaint. It was overruled.
January 7, 1968 Secretary and Treasurer’s reports given and corrected as needed. Complaint Session. Daddy – kids be more polite to each other. Lynn – Sarah doesn’t help too much with the sweeping. David – Sarah kicks too much.
Meeting was adjourned. It was followed by a session of games and charades, after which it deteriorated.
June 9, 1968. Old Business. Can’t go to N. Y. Because Aunt Betty’s family is moving in June instead of August. Present plan for summer vacation is: Park Rapids, then Duluth, camp along the way. St. Croix. Mabel Lake.
Summer routine. More consideration for house, more help, less grumpy. Meal time – regular assignments for every meal we have together. Be responsible for your place. Put milk away, etc.. No big fusses about extra jobs. Trading on individual stuff. Careful of lights and water. Try to keep fighting down. Be considerate! (Or else!)
October 17, 1971 New business: Mom wants us to join in the picking-up project. Also in putting-down project (a corollary of previous project.)
Sarah wants family night Sunday night. We amended it to 4–7 and made it optional. “Let’s be flexible.”
Meeting adjourned against strenuous protest.
And that was the way our last meeting ended, “against strenuous protest,” a phrase which makes me laugh. One wonders what the protest was about. Or why we didn’t have any more meetings after that. I love that my parents made that a part of our family life for a time. We had a lot of fun together as a family, in spite of the occasional bickering and fighting.
Dad used this gavel at our meetings; he made it in high school.
I will have to delete this in the morning against strenuous protest!
When I was young, my mother and her dad, my grandfather, worked secretly to make a large dollhouse for us kids for a Christmas gift. Mom bought some very special doll furniture for it, but soon realized that we were just going to break it all, so she boxed it up and put it in her closet. I don’t think at the time we appreciated what a grand edifice it was, but I hope that we played with the dollhouse enough to give my mom and grandpa true satisfaction after having spent so many hours of loving labor over it.
I’m the last one on the right
Fast forward about 30 years. After four boy babies, we finally had a girl! I called my mom and dad almost immediately and asked them, “Do you still have that dollhouse?“ When the answer was yes, I claimed it. It had to be extricated from the storage area under the basement stairs. Dad had removed and discarded the four stately columns in front of the house in order to make it fit in the storage area, much to my mother’s dismay. I claimed the special boxed up furniture, too. In my childhood it had seemed a great injustice to have those items unavailable. I let my children play with them, and guess what? They broke a few pieces. Oh well.
It was a bit of a fixer-upper. The roof was gone (also removed to make room for storage). My husband made a new roof and I cut up little pieces of sandpaper and stapled them on for roofing tiles. The kitchen and bathroom linoleum were in bad shape so I took those out and replace them with new shelf paper. Several of the doors were hanging off their hinges (they still are). My husband bought new lights for each room and set it up so we could plug it in and turn them on. I repainted the house and opened it for business.
Fast forward another 30 years. The dollhouse is in our basement. It is quite large and I don’t know if any of our children will have room for it. When we have families over with children, which we do fairly regularly, I like to show off the dollhouse and let children play with it. The last family we had here had a lot of young children, and we left them completely unsupervised with it. When I looked at it a couple weeks later, everything was higgledy-piggledy. I couldn’t even find the dolls! That was over a month ago.
Today, I went down the basement to do something that had nothing to do with the dollhouse. Straightening up the dollhouse was not on my to-do list. Nevertheless, when the spirit moves, one must move with it. I spent over an hour taking everything out and putting it back in its proper place. I have always taken the world of dolls very seriously. It didn’t sit well with me when the missing dolls showed up crammed into one of the closets.
I wonder now if children have forgotten to play with something like this. Do they need a little guidance? I like to think of them moving the dolls around the house in a purposeful way, like setting them down at the dining room table to eat, and putting their food on the table for them. After supper, the family could sit in the living room while dad reads the Bible. Perhaps mother could play the piano. Grandpa and grandma would sit in their comfortable chairs by the fireplace and read the newspaper.
The dining room. There’s even artwork on the wall!The kitchen. I love those 1960’s chairs.Leslie’s room. I would have loved to have a vanity like that.Andrew’s room. Someone needs to control his hair.The living room where Mom and Dad are sitting, while he reads from the Bible.The library!Grandpa and Grandma’s room. Don’t they look cozy with their newspapers? The bathroom – very posh.
The next time we have a family over, I will continue to welcome the children to play in the dollhouse. But I might stick around for a while to show them how it’s done, to spark their imaginations as they play with this little family in their little house.
I’ll have to resist the temptation to be too controlling; I already feel the impulse welling up in me.
I’m going to have to straighten this post up in the morning.
Note: I wrote this post for my previous blog, “Further Up and Further In” back in 2012. My father passed away in 2013. I reprint this in honor of his memory for Father’s Day.
What do you see? Do you see an old man? Of course you do, for that is what he is, an old man nearing the end of his journey. He sleeps most of the time, rarely talks, doesn’t remember much. And that, if you don’t know him, is all you can see when you look at these photographs. That is the limitation of photography and, in fact, a limitation of our eyes. We can only capture what is visible in that moment in time; we don’t see the broad spectrum of what makes that person who he is; we don’t see the rich and varied history of his life.
You see an old man. I see my father. You see white hair, age spots and wrinkles. I see the gentle, good-humored, kind and dependable man who helped raise me. You see his current uselessness, while I see a gymnast, a musician, a band teacher, a fisherman, a handyman, a fellow who worked hard, dressed like Mister Rogers and was lovingly faithful to his wife. You see a man who no longer interacts with his world; I see someone who read to his children, took them on endless camping trips, went swimming with them often every summer, told funny stories, whose knees creaked as he came running up the stairs at night saying, “you kids settle down up there!” and who much later quietly grieved the loss of his oldest daughter. And even what I see isn’t all there is to the man. Think what his wife and parents could tell, what they could add to our understanding of his life. Yet with all of that, our picture still isn’t complete, for only God knows the deepest parts of a man’s soul.
What do you see? What can any of us really see? Pray that the God Who Really Sees would open our eyes and give us compassion for those who can no longer tell us who they are.
Me in my Dad’s lap. Leslie, who died in 1987, is also in the photo.
I love you and miss you, Dad!
Will I delete this in the morning? I didn’t last time, apparently.
I’m going to feature a special guest artist this week. She’s six years old and loves to draw. Let’s call her “Lovey.” Lovey has been making drawings for me as soon as she could scribble on paper. As she got older, her work often featured hearts (lots of hearts!). When she was learning letters, she’d spell out the word “Grandma” as “Gramu.” I love those kinds of early spellings, don’t you?
On our recent visit, Lovey created a masterpiece, a drawing of the two of us. She apologized for using black for my hair, saying she didn’t have a gray pen, which made me laugh. I like the way we are wearing matching outfits and how slim I look standing next to her. It’s all in the artist’s interpretation, right?
She also created a bookmark for me which you can be sure I will treasure. She caught a good likeness of our cat, Luna!
Do I sound like a proud Grandma? Of course! But I think she shows early promise. Keep an eye out for her in the art world in years to come! In an effort to protect her privacy, I asked my AI servant to make a facsimile of her instead. So here it is, the AI version of Lovey, the Artist!
I’ll probably ask my AI servant to delete this in the morning.
(We are back from our wanderings. As is customary, I thought I’d keep up with posts while we were gallivanting about, and as is also customary, I did not.)
As I said in a recent post, I have a vast repository of letters written by various members of my mother’s family going all the way back to the early 1900’s. My mom (bless her amazing heart) typed them all up so that they are easy to read. She assembled them in books and titled them accordingly. The one I’m looking at now is titled “Another World. 1900 – 1919. The Age of Innocence.” I thought you, my loyal readers, might enjoy a few snippets of letters from my great-grandmother Nettie to her daughter, my Grandma Lois when she was away at her first year of college. She tended to write in long run-on sentences which adds to the charm. I mean, if the apostle Paul can do it, why can’t we?
George and Nettie on their wedding dayin May 1888
September 26, 1910.
My Dear Lois,
Well I have just returned from Aunt Alices she is still sick in bed and has suffered terribly this last week. Annie [one of Lois’s sisters] was down and staid with her one day and I went one day and then Rosie brought Myrtie to stay with her and she has been there since Thursday after noon she went home for one night and came back to-day. I think Aunt Alice looked better to-day and she told me to thank you for the card you sent her and tell you that she would write to you as soon as she is able.
…Aunt Amelia’s folks are looking for a horse again as Willie thinks of being Married in about two weeks and Alma and Will want Ada [Lois’s little sister] for their flower girl. I have not told Ada yet for I thought it would only set her to asking questions but I think that means that I shall have to make Adas white dress that I got the Embroidery for I got quite a pretty Pattern for it yesterday. Ada has just run in and says tell Lois I haven’t time to write to her to-day but I will write some other time.
…Papa says tell Lois I will write to her during the week. He is getting along fine with the Lloyd job – guess he will nearly finish this week.
Good night. With love from Mama
How do you like that casual mention of Will and Alma thinking of being married in two weeks, and Nettie not panicking about having to make a dress for it (and embroider it!) in that amount of time? How lovely for Lois to get these letters with updates from home and promises of letters to come.
The photo below was taken in 1910, the same year as the correspondence. I’ve done some labeling and hope you can read it. It’s the only photo I have with Lois and Nettie in it.
In another letter, Nettie tells Lois how bad she feels that she was unable to contribute a baked good for a box of food that went to Lois from family and friends. She tells Lois,
…that is all I know about your box. but could not send anything I had to bake for I have not had wood to bake anything with for when we were out of wood we could not get any at the yard so I had to nearly scratch the earth for what I have had to get my meals with. So I thought I would let you know Who to thank as it was not your Mother much as she would like to have been one of them, My Dear girl. But she sends a whole lot of love as you may be sure she always will for I have missed my Lois so to-day.
Imagine having to scrabble for wood in order to do your cooking. I am not nearly thankful enough for the appliances that make my life easier.
Sadly, Nettie died just four years later at the age of 46, a couple years before Lois got married. Her obituary states “She bore all her suffering without a word of complaint and expressed herself ready to go and meet her Savior when the death angel called.” That is what we call a good death.
I am looking forward to meeting Nettie in glory.
I’ll probably scrabble for wood to burn this post in the morning.
When my mom died a few years ago, we ended up with some of her things, including her old walker and cane. I’m not even sure why we kept them, but I suspect inertia had something to do with it. They got deposited in the garage and very quickly disappeared from mind and sight…until my knee replacement surgery began looming on the horizon.
Mom had both her knees replaced when she was in her 80’s. By that time, my dad was living in a memory care unit in a health care center just a few blocks from home. After the first knee replacement surgery, Mom ended up going to that same place for rehab, but on a different floor. She hated her rehab experience there, although I can’t now remember why. When she had her second knee surgery, I offered to come up and stay with her for a few days so she didn’t have to go somewhere else. In those days, the surgery wasn’t outpatient, like it is now, so she would have had a few days recovering in the hospital first.
I picked her up from the hospital and drove her to the house where I’d grown up. They must have given me information about her medications and activity requirements, but in general, we can assume that I was almost entirely ignorant about what recovery from knee replacement surgery was really like. I didn’t stay long – probably three nights, since I felt a need to get back to my own family. I was nervous about her being able to go up and down the stairs without falling, but she assured me she was okay. I knew that a couple of my siblings would be able to check in on her regularly, so off I went.
Now that I’ve been through this same surgery, I wish I could tell her how brave she was to go through it all by herself, especially at that age. I wish I had stayed with her longer, too. The first couple of weeks after my own surgery, I leaned heavily on my husband for help with the medication schedule, meal making, errand running, ice machine management (which included coming down at 2:00 a.m. every night for one and a half weeks to refill the ice machine with frozen water bottles), and comforting companionship. He was always sitting right there in the room with me if I needed anything. My dad would absolutely have done the same for Mom if he’d been able.
I would love to have been able to compare stories with my mom after I had my surgery, to find out how the physical therapy and rehab went with her, to learn more about what she thought about her new knees, and whether or not she wished she’d had the surgery done earlier. However, it was oddly comforting to have the use of her walker and cane. I think perhaps she would have been glad to know that even though she couldn’t be here to encourage me along the way, she helped me nonetheless by leaving behind those sturdy tools of support that I couldn’t have imagined needing. Underneath it all lies the unfathomable providence of God.
“O, the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways.” Romans 11:33
I’ll probably put this in the blog garage in the morning, out of mind and sight.
I’ve been watching a show called “Portrait Artist of the Year,” in which 12 artists compete during each episode to win and go on to the next level. They get four hours to paint the subject (various people of note). It’s fascinating to watch how differently these artists tackle their paintings. There are three judges and two other people whose only purpose seems to be to chat up these poor artists who are working so hard to get done on time. I’ve quite enjoyed it. It takes place in the UK, which means you also get to listen to a wide variety of charming accents in the mix.
But as I’ve said before, doing a portrait of any kind is difficult. Watching so many extremely talented people start with a blank canvas and end up with recognizable people on it after four hours is a marvel, even with all the variety in styles.
On that note, here’s a sketch I attempted of my brother.
If I were really brave, I’d show you the photo that’s based on. But I’m not. Also, I can’t imagine spending four hours (or more) on a single painting, so you can tell I’m not very disciplined.
I reverted back to animals after that. Specifically some owls.
When they do a show based on bad sketches done in very little time, I might have a shot.
My brother achieved 70 years recently, so naturally a poem had to be written in honor of this grand event.
That’s him on the left and me on the right when we were young and splashy
Seventy years hath David B. “I don’t feel very old,” said he. “Speak for yourself,” opined one knee, While his back groaned, saying “Golly gee!”
David objected, “I feel quite spry.” His neck interjected, “That’s a lie!” His bones just creaked with a little sigh, And his brain took a break, saying “no reply.”
But David persisted, “I’m fit as a fiddle!” His ears said, “What? Did he said ‘riddle?’” “No rich food,” said his tummy in the middle, (“But chocolate’s okay, if it’s just a little.”)
“I guess I’m getting on in years,” Old David said, now switching gears. “But full speed ahead! No time for tears.” And the crowd around him gave three cheers.
So three cheers for David B! (In three years, that will be me!)
Did you know that this post is getting on in years? Time to delete!
