And Now, Dad’s Parents - Weepy Wednesday, Episode 2

Two weeks ago, I told you what I knew about my maternal grandparents and how and when they passed away. Today, I'm over on my dad's side of the family. There are a lot more holes in their story, but at least I do have memories of Grandma.

Dad's dad was born in Germany in 1886, and his mom in 1888. They married in 1906 and had three boys and three girls. In 1923, Grandpa immigrated to the US with his oldest son. The following year, Grandma came over with four of the other children. One daughter, Hannah, remained behind. I've never known why and have found absolutely nothing about her online, except that she is listed as still living in Germany when Grandma died in 1968.

I'd like to think I got some of my determination from my grandma. She came over on that ship by herself, certainly not knowing any English, with four children in tow, between the ages of six and twelve.

 Their passport photos tell the story. My dad is on the far left. This picture of his sisters always reminds me of those two little girls in the original movie, "The Shining", for some reason.

Anyway, they settled in Chicago, where one of dad's aunts was living with her husband. Dad was only nine years old at the time. He never talked much about life in Germany. He did say, though, that they had a hard life in Germany, and that when the Great Depression hit the US five years later, they didn't live in poverty any worse than they had in the Old Country.

My grandpa died before that, though, in January of 1929. I've been told he died of Black Lung and that he had worked in coal mines in Germany.

Grandma didn't mourn his passing for long, as she remarried sometime later that year. It was more out of necessity. She still had kids at home that she needed to support.

According to the 1930 census, she and her new husband were part-owners of a delicatessen in a Chicago suburb. By 1940, the family was living on a farm way up north in Tripoli, Wisconsin. Her second husband passed away sometime between then and 1945, when my parents met.

So, poor Grandma was widowed twice, one daughter was left behind in Germany, and another one died in California of a heart condition when she was only 43.

I don't really remember much about Grandma, except for the old farmhouse she lived in in Tripoli. On the dining room table, there was always a tablecloth with fringes on it, and I remember braiding them or combing them out with my fingers.

She died on May 15, 1968. Mom said I was too young to go to the funeral, so I stayed with one of my aunts from the other side of the family. The saddest part, though, was that her grandson, my cousin Ben, died in Vietnam on May 7, and I don't know that the family got the news until after Grandma had died.

They are buried side by side in the local cemetery. Wie Traurig.      

And I don't know why I can't find a picture of Grandma's headstone.

In with the New, Out with the Old

 

Jesus answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Luke 10:27, New Living Translation)

I know that I have told you this before. I am no theologian, and you couldn't call me a Bible scholar. I know way less about the Bible than I do know. I've read through the entire book only two times, and even then, some of those Old Testament stories are still way over my head.

So, I want you to read the following with that in mind. This is just a thought I had; if I got it wrong, don't be afraid to let me know.

When most people read the Old Testament, they don't get a lot of warm, fuzzy feelings about God. He instituted a long list of rules and laws for the Israelites to follow. You've read the Ten Commandments? Easy-peasy to keep compared to what God lectures on in the book of Leviticus and repeats in Deuteronomy.

On top of that, God was always instructing the Israelite army to wipe out another city, country, or ethic group. He clearly did not want them associating with anyone who was not of the Jewish faith.

When you read all of that, it's easy to believe that God is not as loving as a lot of believers say He is. He always loved us and always will, but everything changed in the New Testament.

God came to live among us as a human, as Jesus Christ. He preached love for your friends and enemies. He cut down all of those laws in the Old Testament, not just down to those Ten Commandments, but to two rules.

Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. (Which was taken right out of that book of Deuteronomy, but is also in three books of the Gospel.) And, love your neighbor as yourself. (And when asked who our neighbor is, He answered that we need to love everyone – friend, foe, and foreigner alike.)

So what changed between the Old and New Testaments, or did anything change? I think the big thing is that God came here to offer us forgiveness from our sins. With all the weight of the world on Jesus' shoulders, that weight was lifted off of ours. We didn't have to fight anymore; all we needed to do was ask for forgiveness and spread the love.

Turn your life over to God. And love and accept everyone, treat them with kindness and compassion. You don't have to agree with them or condone their behavior, but you can still love them and pray for them. (Especially in our current political climate.)

"But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

        “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. (Luke 6:27-35, New International Version)

Wishing it was Stifling Hot Outside

Journal of Our Journeys, Chapter 13

Beach Houses and Old Houses

Besides their yearlong residences, one of our relatives in Virginia owned a beach house on the Atlantic Ocean at Virginia Beach, where we stayed for a few days when we visited in 1972.

          All the houses along the beach were on stilts, looking like cartoon-figure ostriches. The beach was many yards from these buildings, so why they had to be up so high was beyond me.

          "The water can indeed reach this high at high tide," I was informed. "And in hurricane season, it can reach even higher."

          Hurricane season! Living in the upper Midwest, we occasionally experience tornadoes. Trees pulled up by the roots, and roofs off of barns blown into the next forty, but these storms rarely made the national news. And no tornado that I know of ever had a name. But a hurricane? That was something that only happened on the evening news with Walter Cronkite.

          There, in Virginia, however, where I only saw ocean waves lapping peacefully at the shore in mid-June warmth, a tropical storm could become a hurricane and wreak havoc on the best-prepared. All the plywood in the world could not save a beach house if Mother Nature meant to have her way with things.

          After allowing us to be awestruck by the beach house, Mom decided we needed to learn a little history.

          Up the Potomac River from Virginia Beach lay the historic site of Jamestown, the first permanent settlement of the white man in the New World. It seemed too primitive to me to be considered anything permanent. And the replicas of the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria were surely way too small to have journeyed across the vast Atlantic. How cramped those pioneers had to be! It was impossible to compare these vessels with today's cruise ships.

          Further up the river, historic Williamsburg was a much more refined destination. Many years later, when my son was 14 and returned from a trip there with his class, his first comment was, "You can only see so many old buildings."

          His second comment went something like this: "A couple in authentic period costume was in front of an authentic old building. My buddy was about to take a picture when a minivan drove into view and parked, ruining the whole picture."

          When I visited Williamsburg for the first time in 1972, things were only slightly more authentic because the minivan had not yet been invented.

          Like my son's class, we also visited Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson. I must've secretly shared my son's belief of overdosing on old buildings because, by the time we made it to Monticello, I'd had my fill of historic structures made of red brick.

          A perpetual-type clock over and around the central doorway of Jefferson's home was the only thing that stayed in my mind. The clock was one of his many inventions on display. 

          The stifling hot kitchen was the only other thing that left an impression on my young mind. I cannot imagine the women in their long dresses and petticoats stoking a fire in an eight-foot-square brick room with two tiny windows, while it was 90 degrees outside. Wouldn't it have been easier to open a can of tuna and make sandwiches? That's invention Jefferson should have had in his house.

With the temperature at 27 below outside this morning,
I could stand to be in a stifling hot kitchen. Somebody start a fire! 
This was at Monticello when Hubby and I were there in 2019.

Happy Birthday to Someone Very Special to Me

Last Wednesday, I started a series of posts about saying goodbye to loved ones, but when I realized what today was, I was like – no can do.

In the wee hours of this morning, forty years ago, in a quiet maternity ward in Aurora, Colorado, instead of a goodbye, I said a big happy hello to this seven-pound, twelve-ounce sweetheart. 

Happy Birthday, Nicholas. Momma loves you very much, and I will always keep you close to my heart.  

Even when you cry. 

Or burp. 

But this picture is still my all-time favorite of both my kids. 

Cleansing My Soul

 
But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. (1 John 1:9, New Living Translation)

I found a Bible verse which fit today’s theme much better, I thought. But I decided to open with the one above instead.

If you have followed this blog for a while, you know that I am not averse to sharing too much information. I don’t keep much to myself.

One thing I haven’t shared with you lately is my continuing problems with pain. Constant pain and stiffness in my low back and upper back, pain that pops up in my one knee, then the other, the next day a shoulder, the following day my wrist. This has been going on for nearly three years. I’ve been to lots of conventional Western medicine providers and none of them had any answers.

The day after Christmas, I started going to an alternative medicine, holistic clinic. They did some testing, started me on lots of supplements, and put me back on that anti-inflammatory diet – remember the one from two years ago, where I didn’t eat anything with gluten, processed sugar or dairy? The diet which nearly made me give up my will to eat anything and which caused me to lose thirty pounds, about twenty pounds more than I needed to lose?

So, here I am, trying to work on that diet without get more stressed out than I already am. Still not seeing much relief, but I know this will take time.

But here’s the latest. When I went in on Thursday, they told me it was time to do the “cleanse”. Clean all the sludge out of my digestive track, gallbladder, kidneys and liver. Yikes! Like a colonoscopy prep on steroids.  

Anyway, it went okay. Again, no big improvement yet in my symptoms. (And I know my friends in the medical field will say this is all quackery, but I have to try something.) But here’s what it reminded me of.

It’s important for our physical health to eat healthy foods, exercise, and all that other stuff they always tell you. And sometimes, when the bad stuff takes over, you have to kick it out of your system somehow.

Isn’t our spiritual health just as important? Shouldn’t we monitor our thoughts and actions to make sure we are honoring God? Shouldn’t we purge ourselves of evil?

You must purge the evil from among you. (The same line is in the book of Deuteronomy eleven times!)

So, eat right, exercise, don’t smoke or drink alcohol or do drugs. Then read your Bible, listen to some sermons (at church or on line, just so they are Bible based and follow Christian values), keep the Ten Commandments as best you can, pray, draw closer to God, and talk to Jesus like you would your best friend.

(The picture at the top is Val working at the Saikeri clinic in 2010. Looks like she's mixing something similar to what I drank Thursday night! The picture above is the sunrise at the safari camp at Masa Mara when I was there in 2015. Looking at any of my pictures from Kenya brings peace to my soul.)

When Déjà vu Happens on the Family Trip

Journal of Our Journeys, Chapter 12

Tennessee 

In 1972, someone decided to invite my oldest sister, her husband, and their two oldest children to join us on our family vacation. They all packed into a two-door Road Runner, towing a pop-up camping trailer behind.

The plan was to travel together to Tennessee, see Nashville and Chattanooga, then split up. Judy and company would drive on to Florida to visit a friend while the rest of us would swing through Virginia to see relatives there again.

The Country Western Music Hall of Fame must not have done much for me, because I don’t remember any of it. All I can see is the photograph of my niece and nephew outside the building in matching outfits, the girl in pink, of course, and the boy in blue. It was reminiscent of how Mom had dressed Pat and me not too many years before. 

The Wax Museum of Country Stars scared me; the figures looked so life-like. Either Pat or Dad kept saying, “Look! That figure just moved!”

Chattanooga was much more interesting. Ruby Falls and descending hundreds of feet below the ground to get to it was awesome. The falls were a torrent of water, causing the heart to pound and the stone floor to shake.

Rock City, acres of rock gardens through wooded paths and narrow passages of solid rock, had been the dream of Frieda and Garnet Carter.  They also invented Tom Thumb golf, which would one day be known as Miniature Golf. Rock City also had Lover’s Leap, a rock outcropping several hundred feet above the valley floor. 

To get to it, a person had the choice of crossing a solid rock bridge or a Swing-Along bridge held up by cable. Naturally, Pat charged across the swinging bridge, Dad swinging it all the way. I plodded across the rock bridge, scared enough by the chasm below that I certainly didn’t want to feel as if I would be tipped right off of it.

Following the beauty of the outdoors, the trail went indoors to Mother Goose Village, a cave-like place with cubby holes filled with figurines lit by Black Light. I was already old enough to think the characters were somewhat lame, but the black light was mesmerizing. We laughed at each other’s glow-in-the-dark teeth and any white on our clothes.

Shortly after Chattanooga, my oldest sister's family headed southeast while we drove due east to Virginia.

The first night without them, we camped in Cherokee, North Carolina. I don’t need the camper log to vividly recall that little town on an Indian Reservation. Sometime during the night, I woke up with a severe stomach ache. Soon, I was in the toilet with diarrhea – not a good thing in those close quarters. Next, I was throwing up. Mom says she wasn’t overly concerned until I started passing blood; then, it was time to pack up camp and find a hospital.

I don’t remember how we got there; all I remember is lying on a gurney in the Emergency Room. I slept on and off, while Mom sat at my side the entire night, and once when I was asleep, I dreamed about Cheerios. What in the world was up with that? And more importantly, why do I still remember that all these years later?

The Déjà vu thing is that over Spring Break in 2008, my mom, my daughter Val, and I drove to Virginia to visit those same relatives. By suppertime of the second day on the road, as we drove into Danville, Virginia, we decided to have dinner at the Kentucky Fried Chicken and then find a motel for the night.

The only problem with that was the sandwich that Val ordered. Hours after going to bed at the Super 8 on the other end of town, Val started vomiting. By three am, my mom and I decided that enough was enough, and we dragged my poor teenage daughter into the car to begin searching for the nearest ER.

The night clerk at the motel tried to be helpful, but in the dark of the night, her directions made no sense. We just started driving, hoping to run across a big blue H sign.  

The Danville Regional Medical Center is a nice, modern facility, and I recommend it if you are ever in the area with a crisis in your car. 

It didn’t take the doctor (was his name really Dr. Dan, or was I sleepwalking at the time?) long to diagnose food poisoning, and we had no qualms about accusing the Colonel. With IV fluids and Compazine running, Val was able to fall asleep in her hospital bed. Grandma and Mom, on the other hand, dozed fitfully in our hard plastic chairs, our heads bobbing and jerking, until they released Val at seven am.

Thankfully, there was no third ER visit on other trips to Virginia.  

Mom’s Mom and Dad, Weepy Wednesday, episode 1

It maybe doesn’t sound like I have the cheeriest series of blog posts planned, but you know I will throw in what humor I can. But I have lost so many family members in my lifetime, that I wanted to take time to pay tribute to them all. Hopefully I can find a funny story or two to share.

I never got to know my maternal grandparents. My mom’s dad died a few years before I was born, and her mom passed away when I was only two and a half.

Grandpa was born in Wisconsin in 1876. His parents had been born in what was part of the Germany Empire at the time, but is Poland now. They had nine children after they moved to the United States and settled in Wisconsin. After his first wife died in 1893, Great-grandpa remarried and had four more kids. Sadly, because child mortality was so high back then, three of those thirteen kids died before they reached adulthood.

Anyway, back to Grandpa. He worked at a logging camp in northern Wisconsin, and that’s where he met my grandma. He was seventeen years older than her, which wasn’t an unheard-of age spread for the time.  

Along with her younger sister, Grandma was a cook at the logging camp, where Grandpa worked. They were married in 1912, when she was only nineteen, and worked at the logging camp for at least another five or six years, because this picture shows them with my uncle who was born in 1916.

Anyway, the way my mom described it, Grandpa died from congestive heart failure at the age of 82. This picture was taken three years before he died.

Besides raising three kids and working on their farm, Grandma continued cooking and baking for anyone who wanted to eat. After her husband died, my dad turned the porch on the side of their house into a separate bakery, so she could sell her baked goods. I sure wish I could remember how they tasted, or it would have been nice to have inherited her talent in the kitchen.

By the fall of 1963, she had lost a lot of weight. She attributed it to having worked so hard all summer in her bakery, but Mom finally convinced her to go to the doctor. He found what sounded like a uterine mass, and he got her connected with a specialist in Madison.

My mom shared this story many times over the years. They were in a hotel room across from the hospital in Madison on November 22, when they heard the news that Kennedy had been shot. I picture them huddled around the small screen of the black and white TV, watching in disbelief. 

Grandma hung on until the following June. Everyone seems to have loved her, and her pies, pastries, and breads remain legendary. I wish I would have known her.

Okay, sorry, I didn’t have much of a funny story this time. I’ll work on it for next week.