Make It A Double!

Just as I think the embers are smoldering on The Letters project, a little puff comes along to reignite my time-traveling journey. And I believe it’s my grandmother Fleur’s hands that command the bellows.

I rented office space for the hundreds of letters written to my grandmother (dating back to the late 1800’s) that I now am the enchanted keeper of, in a perfectly preserved and maintained 1920’s apartment building, kept untouched by time. Just like The Letters who now reside in apartment #311. ‘311’ is a lively, active, and magical work environment with The Letters sharing secrets on a regular basis. I keep a “What Amazed Me Today” Journal to record all that is revealed. Until they go quiet which is what I faced recently. It was as if there was nothing more to say. I considered packing it all up.

I choose to bathe. And I like to think while soaking in the tub. Yesterday I was pondering a life lesson I learned from Fleur…always drink when one flies. I wondered how that hard-fast rule came about and turned to what The Letters shared: She was a child of the Aviation Era, there was a time pre-flight and post- flight. Her first flight while in her twenties, was with a pair of stunt pilots barnstorming across the country who briefly landed in her hometown, Titusville PA. Spectator turned passenger, they just whisked her up in the air. And did who knows what in the stunt department. Her dear friend Walter Critchlow, early aviator adventurer, crashed his airplane, made of paper and balsa wood, and permanently injured his two legs and one arm. (Fortunately, that did not deter him from being a golf champion throughout his life.) Her son Dick started flying lessons before he was eligible for a driver’s license and would report things like “I’m a little rough with landings.” It seems fear and flying might have gone hand in hand with Fleur.

All this pondering is relevant to what just occurred in ‘311’. I reached out to a ninety-three-year-old man who I discovered was a childhood friend of my mother’s brother, Dick. Dick died tragically in his sleep in his dorm room at Cornell University (autopsies never determined cause) at the tender age of nineteen. I hold the entirety of Dick’s life in my hands…starting with letters to his parents as a young boy from camp to his pilot’s log record, his scholastic awards, up to his last letter written just days before his untimely death, proclaiming to be ‘alive and kicking.’

I wrote to his childhood friend Tom who I discovered was in the middle of organizing a Pickleball tournament at ninety-three. His reply to me was the puff to the embers. He mentioned a memoir-writing class where he chose to describe taking flying lessons as a teenager with Dick! And the flame came to life as I hovered over Dick’s pile of letters to randomly pull out one dated August 1944. Sitting in my reading corner, I realized magic just happened again. This one letter that called to me out of all others in the pile, is the one where Dick described his first solo flight, his tail-spinning practices, his difficult landings and that he had just finished playing golf with his friend Tom! Can’t wait to continue down this rabbit hole when Tom and I chat next week. Cheers Fleur! My next drink while flying…Aviation gin please!

Good Deed Indeed!

Choose to Connect…a mantra I try to follow daily. It’s a theme that recurs in my writing as well. And often these musings conclude with happy endings. So I’ll add another to the pile because good news seems thin these days. We need more of it.

In our deep-dive time traveling with my grandmother’s letters (dating back to the late 1800’s), my research partner, Betsy, and I became enamored with a photograph of my grandmother perched on a wall with seven of her ‘besties’ at the women’s college Sweet Briar in 1921. We call the photo the Sweet Briar Girls. They straddle the wall with their skirts hiked up, exposing their rolled stockings and (clutch your pearls!) their KNEES without a care in the world. We’ve spent hours identifying the girls and contacting some of their descendants with the grand hope of a meeting at the wall in honor of these bold young women. (That journey of discovery and connection merits its own telling and is in the queue.) Fortunately, my grandmother’s closest friend Shiney had a son Frankie, who is 89 years-old, and was enthusiastically ‘all in’. We immediately planned a weekend visit that worked with his schedule and contacted Sweet Briar.

Sweet Briar College, located outside Lynchburg, Virginia, is stunningly situated on two thousand-plus acres of rolling hills and centuries-old deciduous forests with an iconic campus of renowned historic architecture. The plantation was donated by the parents of a young girl Daisy, noted harpist and artist who tragically died at the age of 16 in 1884. The women’s college was created in 1901 in her memory and continues today under the auspices of that original decree.

We first perused the Sweet Briar Museum (located in the old Campus Inn converted to the Alumni House) which offered us detailed glimpses of what surrounded the girls in the 1920’s, and then were generously allowed access to explore the College Archives. After hours of pouring through yearbooks, scrapbooks (quite the activity of the day) and boxes of old photographs we realized we had absorbed up to our very limit every 1920’s detail offered to us and that we were famished.

Enter the good deed! As we left the archives in search of Daisy’s Café, we crossed paths with a student who noticed our unsureness and offered us assistance. She happily offered to lead us to Daisy’s and while walking we started a conversation that ended up continuing throughout our visit to the Café. Her name is Rachel, and she was a graduating senior with a double major in Creative Writing and Music Education. And she chose to connect. We listened to her description of life as a current Sweet Briar student, and we informed her of the traditions dating back to the 1920’s. We were astonished to find Sweet Briar’s rituals and traditions continue to be steeped and deeply-rooted. (Although the spectacular pageant of selecting a May Queen And Court, fully regaled in flowing gowns and head-to-toe floral arrangements, did not make it through the birth of feminism in the 1960’s, a Sweet Briar girl still wears her college ring on her left hand if she is not married and switches to the right hand when she ‘crosses over’).

As we finished our snack, Rachel informed us while looking at our photo of The Sweet Briar Girls, that she could lead us to the wall! And off we went to a surprisingly high bridge that connects the top stories of two original dormitories. We were shocked at how cavalier the girls seem in the picture, as Betsy and I gingerly tried to recreate the pose without vertigo setting in. Those girls were something! Steely women actually… after just experiencing the ravages of both the 1918 Spanish Flu and World War I, they were fearless on that wall. We left Rachel that afternoon with her contact info and her offer to assist us the next day during our planned visit with Frankie.

Unfortunately, that plan went awry when we learned that Frankie had contracted Covid. He was well enough to meet us virtually thankfully, so we met Rachel once more and she delivered us back to the wall. We all shared a very poignant moment thinking of the friendships formed before us and celebrating the new ones established…all from a moment captured in time. Rachel that day was wearing jeans that were signed like a yearbook. She mentioned she chose those instead of having a Sweet Briar ring for her college keepsake. She then deposited us back to the Alumni House and we bid adieu to our Sweet Briar visit.

As Betsy and I reflected on the weekend, we both agreed that Rachel was an unexpected bonus to our journey and decided to honor her generosity by offering her a Sweet Briar ring as a thank you. The Alumni House hosts a Fancy Hat Lunch for graduating seniors. That afternoon, they pulled Rachel aside from the lunch and we face-timed together. I informed her from a writer-to-writer viewpoint, my obsession with connection. And that she practiced connection in spades. I told her that I would send her a copy of each of my books and she was thrilled. And then I mentioned to her that it was evident how deeply connected she was to Sweet Briar and that we were concerned her jeans might wear out someday, so we were giving her a Sweet Briar ring as a more permanent keepsake. Perhaps a tear or two was shed with big smiles all around. The next step for Rachel was to go to the bookstore to have her finger sized and to choose an inscription. And this is what we learned later…. Rachel inscribed her ring A&B, ’22. Anne and Betsy are now etched into Sweet Briar’s fabric. It’s amazing how paths can change in an instant if we choose to merge in life instead of repell each other. Stay tuned… The journey with The Letters continues.

Going Forward/Going Back

I discovered a rough writing prompt from last year as I began my January ‘tidy up my life’ process, starting with sorting out my desk. I chose to respond to the concept of ‘going back’.  Looking through the rearview mirror at that moment in time, when we were in a fleeting happy post-vaccination New Era, only drives harder my thoughts on that day--

June 2021

Is there such a thing as going back? I think not. Once we move forward everything rearranges, the universe shifts, and that one unique moment is forever gone. In so many ways, this past year proves the impossibility of going back. We may feel life is ‘back to normal’ but our normal is now the new one. Normal is not wondering what to do with this pile of masks. Normal is not wondering when the next shoe will drop, as if this momentary happy bubble of hugs, and smiles seen (our eyes have been doing all the heavy lifting), and of meals and laughter shared without worry of proximity, and back to hugging some more, is guaranteed. Because we now know that…..

And then the prompt time was over. Pencils down.  What in the world did I think we knew? I can’t imagine finishing that sentence today. I know that masks are the least of my worry. My eyes will still work overtime to convey every emotion I want to share.  I think my next move might be looking at the other side of the prompt. Going Forward. Hmmmm…. And pencils down.

Happy Valentine's Jeffrey!

And who is Jeffrey?  I don’t know.  At least not yet, but more likely, never will. I did send him a Valentine of sorts today. And predictably, it has something to do with my time travel expedition absorbing my grandmother’s treasure trove of personal correspondence dating back to 1903.  The other day, I realized I held in my hand, notes beautifully written by the hands of two of my maternal great-great grandmothers. Notes to their granddaughter, my grandmother, when she was a young woman—providing me with loving lenses through which to see her.

But all this has nothing to do with Jeffrey. Today, I came across in my perusal of a packet of letters dated in the 1930s and ‘40s, a 1944 newsletter written for the Ladies of the Red Cross based in Fort Worth Texas during WWII. It was easy to see why ‘Keep’ was written across the top since a paragraph, marked in the margin, listed my mother and grandmother as volunteer package wrappers for the troops. I started to move it to the ‘Read’ side of my table when I decided to read further the news of the day. That’s when I found it…my pearl.

An announcement of a radio show spotlighted their upcoming guest, a pilot in the South Pacific Air Transport Command.  On this pilot’s first combat flight, he transported precious high-test gasoline to Guadalcanal, surrounded the whole time by aggressive Japanese aircraft.  His return mission carried even more precious cargo…23 gravely wounded soldiers.  Due to the overloading of his craft, no medical personnel were able to accompany the troops, so the pilot not only flew through rough inclement weather, but also administered medical care as he commandeered them all back to safety.

Enter the rabbit hole of researching further this incredible flying Ace. I discovered through his obituary that he was only 22 years old when he flew his heroic mission. It occurred to me that perhaps thousands of valentines being celebrated today, may never have happened if those 23 soldiers had not been lifted to well-being and basically the rest of their lives. Do any of their offspring know their debt of gratitude owed to this man?

 Hopefully, I found his offspring. I made a copy of the newsletter and posted it through the USPS with a brief note of explanation to his grandson, Jeffrey. I felt reading the obituary that he may have been a humble man, one not likely to speak of his heroic actions.  Happy Valentine’s Day, Jeffrey. Cheers to your Grandpa!

Clownie Revisited

Little did I know that Clownie would come out of retirement and reclaim his ‘mostly companion’ status in 2020. Endless hours together and Clownie is ready for a New Year. And for me to Get Back to Life. Patience my little friend, we’re not there yet…

What To Do With Clownie

January equals purge month.  We seem to push the reset buttons starting around January 2nd and I am no exception.  Reset exercise. Reset consumption. Reset accumulation.  It’s the last one that burdens me. After the grand purge of emptying my parents’ home, I cannot bear the weight of my cluttered life collection.

 A convenient January blizzard blowing outside and a house-bound husband recovering from surgery, has me moving full throttle in tossing and reshuffling the endless mounds of paperwork and stuff.  What to do with my descriptive essay from Mrs. Iglar’s 7th grade class?  And how about all the written proof that I once held Very Important Jobs in the corporate world?  And in reducing my wardrobe by half, what vintage piece isn’t going to be the next best thing?  And then there is Clownie. What to do with Clownie?

Few people know that as a young child I was practically raised by a Sisterhood of Nuns. Real nuns. Not the ruler-bearing, hand-rapping, pinching type of nuns.  But ones who devoted their lives to providing nurturing, loving care to infirm elderly people.  As in past vernacular, Old Folks Home; elderly people.

When my parents first moved to Wisconsin with five children from ages nine to two, they rented a large Queen Anne rambler from the Sisters of the St. Elizabeth Nursing Home.  Right next door.

During the early part of  my Wonder-bread formative years (between the ages of two and six), my mother, once all my older siblings were in school, sprung herself from the singular world of house work and became a committed community volunteer and a competitive golfer.  Her attention span towards me, her youngest, had been released of the Dr. Spock grip that had kept her razor-focused starting with my sister, my eldest sibling.  Raising three sons in between us wore her out in the vigilance department. So basically, much of the time, I was on my own.  I knew the rules...a big swat followed if I ventured down the driveway towards the street.  But going across the driveway, through the hedge to St. Elizabeth’s was okay and often encouraged.

It was entering a portal into another world.  Kind of like Oz from the black and white of Kansas City. My memory is of a Halcion pastoral setting. The Sisters toiled in their over-run vegetable garden always bursting with some sort of bounty for their kitchen.  I would mosey between them, often enveloped in their long black skirts, encouraged to help in all their tasks.  They clucked happily to each other in German.  My favorite was Sister Valeria.  She was a cook in the kitchen and I trailed her endlessly.

Learning to cook with love started for me in that huge, cheery, sun-filled room.  I was mesmerized by what seemed like vats of fruited batters whipped up in commercial-sized Kitchen Aids. To this day, I cannot use a spatula to empty a bowl without thinking of Sister Valeria and being intent on getting every last bit. I learned also about thriftiness and cleverness as I witnessed their culinary creations.

Thriftiness and cleverness were part of the Sisters creed throughout their community.  Nothing went to waste.  Bins of broad satin ribbons (saved from the endless delivery of formal floral arrangements) collected with bags of discarded cotton underthings and hosiery, that although were deemed unwearable, were still perfectly usable for their handiwork as they produced endless items for their gift shop.  I was five years old when I received, Clownie, a colorful striped satin-clad sock clown with a hooked nose and embroidered face.  My mostly companion who still sits in my boudoir chair today.  He has not aged well and would frighten a child at this point.  And I am flummoxed. I should have parted with him years ago.

Every time I focus on him, or find him beneath a pile, I think of the Sisters who in their busy, task-driven lives welcomed wholeheartedly this young girl set adrift and who left a core of indelible life lessons with their gentle teachings and love. I wish there was a St. Elizabeth’s home for our stuffed friends.  In the meantime, the verdict is in, Clownie stays. After all, he is the one and only keeper of my every last secret.

https://pleasurablepausepress.blogspot.com/2015/02/what-to-do-with-clownie.html

Pie Squared

How does a coconut cream pie recipe morph into dozens of luscious heirloom iris blooms? Easy, through the simple act of choosing to connect. Several years ago, the vignette below, Divine Pie, was picked up by an inspirational magazine (the kind you’d find in hospital/doctor/dentist waiting rooms, when we visited those places non-virtually). I was dismayed when I saw how they edited and basically rewrote my story and then had the nerve to attach a coconut cream pie recipe that included an Oreo crust. (What??) So, I discarded my complimentary published copies and all thoughts of it. Months later, I received an inquiry from a reader requesting a copy of MY recipe after reading the article. She hoped to surprise her mother on Mother’s Day with a pie. I responded yes and created a legible copy since my original was quickly scrawled after I came across the pie at Miss Belle’s Tea Room in Cameron, North Carolina. (See below.). Shortly after I sent the recipe off, a box arrived from Texas full of flower bulbs. Turns out my reader, Stephanie from Texas, was an heirloom iris cultivator, and the box was my ‘thank you note’. Three summers of non-producing iris shoots later, Mother Nature must have determined I needed a little boost. This past Spring brought the most spectacular iris—verdant stalks, brilliant, unexpected colors and lush blooms in all their bearded, showy glory. That’s a pearl to treasure—by simply saying yes and connecting with Stephanie ever so briefly, I am now the keeper of nature’s bountiful gift. How divine. And oh, so timely.

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Divine Pie

Years ago, I had the privilege of lunching at Miss Belle’s Tea Room in Cameron, North Carolina. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of visiting Cameron, picture a small blink of a southern town in the image of “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Sand sidewalks wrap around gingerbread houses turned into antique/treasure shops, and Miss Belles’ rambling Victorian held court over them all. My lunch buddy and I looked over the daily specials…corn chowder, yes please! Tomato pie, yes please! Curried Rice-a-Roni salad, sure why not? And homemade coconut cream pie, but of course! We were so enthralled with every bite that after a little cajoling, we left Miss Belle’s with the coveted recipes of all four specialty items.

Flash forward to the present. For years now, I have paved my way towards good will and friendship with caregivers and administrative staff at my parent’s retirement community by regularly distributing pieces of Miss Belle’s coconut cream pie. I even go so far as giving whole pies away when extra gratitude is merited. Fellow residents of my mother’s skilled nursing floor also enjoy my pie. About eight months ago, a new resident (a victim of Alzheimer’s) was having difficulty settling into her new, unasked for, living accommodations. Her name is Isabelle; although she may be confused about her surroundings, she is spot on with her piano playing. She fills the dining room daily with beautiful hymns and folk classics brightening everyone’s day and has become instantly beloved. I always make it a point to compliment and thank her for the gift she shares with us. One afternoon, she was extremely agitated and begged for me to take her home. I considered giving her a piece of pie to soothe her; but unaware of her dietary restrictions, thought best not.

This past week I was standing near the nurse’s station on my mother’s floor and someone mentioned my pie. I explained the recipe came from Miss Belle’s Tea Room in Cameron (which closed several years ago) and an Aide pointed out to me, “Well you know, Isabelle used to be the Mayor of Cameron.”! I looked at Isabelle….Isabelle…Miss Belle…and discovered yes, she was the proprietor of the Tea Room and it was her recipe I had been passing out all around her these past months. The next day I invited Isabelle to my mother’s room for pie.

I held my breath as she took her first bite. She looked at me very seriously, shook her head and said ‘now that’s reeaaal good’ in her low southern drawl. I was elated. As I walked her back to her room we chatted about the Tea Room. I asked her if she remembered making corn chowder and she said ‘Yes’. Tomato Pie? Her response a little more pensive, “Maybe a long time ago.” Curried Rice-A- Roni salad? She looked at me as if I were the one a tad bit confused. Little did I know how drastically my world would change after our visit to Miss Belles’. My vibrant mother would become a prisoner in her body due to the cruel twists of Parkinson’s shortly thereafter and the Tea Room would close due to Miss Belle’s failing mind. And now we find ourselves literally and figuratively miles away from our former lives brought together as strangers, but leaving as friends through the simple pleasure of sharing a piece of pie.

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