mothers

Knocking on Heaven’s Door

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I spent the past week at home attempting to get through a bout of influenza. It began on Saturday night with a heavy headache and by Sunday mid morning I was on my way to the ER with a fever and the stomach turning effects of taking two types of cold medications too close to one another.

There is something to be said about the calming effect that a hospital brings. No, seriously! When you have been in the ER as many times as I have, the plastic crunch of a hospital mattress, the sterile smells, and the incessant beeping of various machines is comforting. You know, for the most part, that you are safe now. You know that you are in capable hands that will make you get better and if things get worse, at least you won’t die alone at home in the bathroom in that raggy robe covered in cat hair.

My first stint in the ER was at the age of 3 when my dad suffered a massive heart attack. Mom put me in an umbrella stroller and rolled me up and down the halls, not so much for my entertainment but to calm her own nerves. I remember the smells of bleach cleaner, hot food that had no flavor, and a slightly metallic smell that I have never been able to place. So fascinated was I by this world of people moving briskly and importantly down shiny halls wearing snow white jackets and speaking in tongues about charts and MRIs, that I failed to realize the seriousness of my dad’s condition; I thought that giant of a man was merely sleeping. Halfway through my dad’s recovery a nurse shot him up with 3 times the amount of morphine he was supposed to have and Dad went up to knock on heaven’s door for the second time that week. The nurse was later caught after a number of patients were killed as a result of her “mercy” Killings. Dad survived and after a bout of pneumonia he was released to go home.

Things changed ever so slightly after Dad came home. The shiny packs of Marlboros disappeared, Mom was cooking out of a book entitled “Don’t Eat Your Heart Out”and Dad seemed humbled in a way. He spent more time playing with me. I was able to convince him to turn a giant box from our new microwave into a boat in which we had many high sea adventures. I am sure that in that hospital bed my dad, like every one else who has ever looked death in the eye, made a bargain with God that he would change his ways if only he was given more time on this earth.

I have been on the sending end of many such prayers in my own life. At age 5 laying on the operating table before tonsil surgery as the doctor asked me if I wanted grape or bubble gum scented knock out gas I remember promising God that I would never get in trouble at school again and that I would not ask for another matchbox car as long as I lived. Then the grape scented gas filled my nostrils like that first whiff of a Mr Sketch purple marker. Oh how I coveted a set of those markers but my Mom viewed fruit scented markers as a gateway drug of sorts so I had to get my fix at friend’s houses and in the waiting room of the dentist office. Waking up from surgery I was an instant celebrity. The doctors and nurses could not stop exclaiming over how large my tonsils had been. They made it sound like I had been born out of nuclear run off and was able to produce monster sized useless organs that wowed the medical world. My hospital bed was covered in new toys, balloons hung from the tray table, and there was a never- ending supply of popsicles and ice cream. I had died inside a Mr Sketch marker and woke up in heaven!!

My subsequent hospital visits were never as lucrative as the day my tonsils were removed but in a way they mirrored each other. There were the prayers, the promises, the feeling of being safe and the belief that when I woke up everything was going to be better. Isn’t that what we all experience when faced with a serious illness or medical event? Laying on that lumpy bed as a haggard nurse attempts to poke us with a dull needle we are blatantly reminded of our mortality. We bargain with God and make promises to be better people and to never ever take our health for granted again. We lay there in a fit of self-pity and illness induced misery cursing all the days we wasted while we were healthy. We frantically write bucket lists in our heads of all the things we are going to do once we bust out of the hospital.

But, as is true almost every time, we arrive home, saved from the brink of death, go to work the next day and forget completely all the plans and promises we made to improve our lives. As with New Year’s resolutions, promises made on one’s near death-bed are quickly forgotten once life kicks in again. Like a bloodthirsty landlord, life is demanding to the point that we feel selfish when we try to work on ourselves and insignificant when we try to make a difference for others.

I too have failed miserably at following through with my grand plans but found other ways to make things happen. So many times I vowed to join a fitness club then look through the windows of a 24 hour fitness facility to see all those other women in their synchronized Fabletics outfits and I turn around, put on my boots and start hiking the hills and woods of my home. I plan to volunteer then run across a child whose family home burned down and I buy her a replacement for the beloved toy she lost in the fire. I take food to those who don’t have family, I help out the instant I see someone in need. Yes volunteer organizations are wonderful and necessary but sometimes you can’t wait for a group to find an area of need to work on. Sometimes you just need to go out into the world and help on your own with no coordinator or committee. Afterall, didn’t those who have made the most difference in this world throughout history start out with a single act of kindness?

The problem with life is we make things too complicated for ourselves so that the simplest of things turn in to major undertakings that require too much of our already depleted energy. We fail to get started and so we set aside our plans all together only to write them down again when some disaster befalls our lives. Hospital beds are a comfort but also that place where we are allowed too much time in which our lives flash before our eyes and we depress ourselves when we see how little we have accomplished. By what measure do we gauge the success of our efforts? A very inaccurate one I would suspect.

The point of all of this is that sometimes life gives us wakeup calls. Sometimes we are thrown against the wall and reminded of our mortality for a moment and then we are returned to our everyday routines. The choice is ours what to do with the extra time we have been blessed with because we all know that it could go either way. Our lives can be snuffed out in an instant with no second chance to make our mark on this world. I was reminded of this recently when someone very dear to me passed away suddenly. He was diagnosed with leukemia and within two weeks we had lost him. For a year he had battled pneumonia and diabetes then the leukemia. I watched him go from making plans to do more in the years he thought he had left to just saying “I cannot fight anymore.”

My plea to all of you is to do everything. Put nothing off until later or tomorrow or next month. Do not wait for a catastrophic event to wake you up to the reality that there is no tomorrow there is just right here and right now. Open that door for the lady with her arms full of groceries, pay for the order of the person in line behind you, make a child smile, cook something and share it with a neighbor who has no one to share a meal with. You do not have to be Mother Teresa to make a difference. Just shut off your mind and all its voices telling you to stay out of it or that you don’t have time or that you won’t make a difference. Wake up and let your heart do what it was designed to do, just love.

To Move or not to Move

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Have you ever been faced with a decision that involves turning your entire life upsidedown?

My 83 year old father needs me and my family has asked me to move back up to the area where I grew up so Dad could live with me on a hobby farm.

Suddenly all I have been working towards may be right at my fingertips but at the wrong location on the map. My life along the Mississipi may be far from ideal but everything I love is here. Hunting, fishing, the river and bluffs which I lose myself in when I need a moment to myself. Can I find that kind of peace back home?

I have been one who is able to adapt to whatever surroundings I find myself in and some how find something to love about that place. I know I could do the same if I moved but is a move what I need?

I see in my minds eye the farm I always dreamed of owing with a barn, chicken coop, granary, and charming farm house. I see myself holding classes on cheese making using milk from my goats, canning, quilting, making hay with my own equipment, giving Dad the quality of life he deserves and a place for him to putter around.

Then I think about my life here. The backwater marsh where I duck hunt and disappear into when I need a break from the world. Russet sunrises over the water, whistling wings overhead, frost on cat tails, and feathers floating on mirror-like ponds. The deep forests of the bluffs which I climb to hunt deer, turkey, antler sheds, and morel mushrooms. Those moments of awe when oak give way to cedar groves carpeted in rubicund needles and velvety moss the color of emeralds. The view from the cliffs when you can see the sweep of the Mississippi; a seemingly slow, lazy giant whose personality is as attuned to the weather as the tide is to the moon. Long days spent on frozen backwaters pulling dinner from beneath the ice with just the cry of a bald eagle on ice kissed air to let you know you are not entirely alone.

My love for this place is palpable, undeniable, and unending but so too is my love of family. So I asked my dad today during my break what he wanted from me. He said he is overwhelmed by everything but he was thinking of selling his house and getting an apartment by Mom’s nursing home. He didn’t sound convincing, I could hear him giving up by the tone of his voice. For all our differences we are alike in the color of our eyes and the fact that we cannot be confined or contained to a vanilla apartment with no yard to care for, no view to contemplate over morning coffee, and no use for hands that itch for work.

I nervously brought up the subject of moving and he instantly started jabbering away about a Ford 8N he saw for sale and a hay rake and baler. The excitement in his voice was something akin to that of a child discussing a trip to Disney. So now, I am torn. Tomorrow he may change his mind and stubbornly refuse to leave the house he has lived in for 50 years, I never know what to expect from him.

As for me, I will do what I always do and play it by ear. And if there is one thing I have learned since Mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s is that the disease is more of a rollercoaster for the family than it is for the person with the illness. Mom is happy and content in her new home and she knows she is sick but makes due. As for the rest of us, the fear, uncertainty, expense, loneliness of missing mom as she used to be, and all of the sudden changes are paying a toll. I wish I could just buy a farm, move everyone in and go back to the good old days but life doesn’t work that way. So I guess you can just count the blessings, enjoy that which you do have, and adapt to whatever comes next. Never think that things can’t change because they can and they will whether you are ready or not. As in control as you think you are there are bigger hands that hold your life in their palms and you just have to trust that everything, good or bad, happens for a reason.

Quilts and Kraut

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In the basement of my parent’s 1920’s house is a back room that was always used as a root cellar. Wooden shelves lined the walls and it had a musty, metallic, damp smell like a rusty coffee can full of dirt. My mother kept the shelves full of glass jars that she put up every year of peaches, cherries, pickles, sour kraut, salmon, tomatoes, tomato soup, wax beans, and other assorted vegetables from the garden. A single naked bulb hung from the ceiling and 60 watts would illuminate the room and colorful jars like sunlight through stained glass. I cannot even count the number of times Mom found me down there as a small child in the middle of one of my adventures, spoon in hand, eating cherries straight out of the jar their dark sweet syrup running down my chin to stain my shirt.

Mom would simply shake her head and shoo me back upstairs. As good natured as she usually was, I still think I feared her wrath even more than that of my dad and his menacing leather belt.

Mom grew up the youngest of 4 children on a rattle trap farm. Her dad was a hard worker but lived the life of a sharecropper, never owning his own land. He put in crops, raised livestock, raised his children, and still found time to teach his daughter how to hunt, fish, and trap. By the time she was a teenager, Mom was running her own coon hounds across Carver County and cashing in on the good prices for pelts. She was also an impressive cook, seamstress, and farm hand. When I was a child it seemed like there was nothing she couldn’t do.

Mom made sure she taught me everything she could think of that I would need to survive out in the world from sewing to canning. She knew that there were grocery stores but argued “what if” something happened. You need to know how to do things just in case. So she would put on her calico apron and fire up the black enamel canner on the stove bringing water to a boil. One by one she would drop fat tomatoes from her garden only to scoop them out a minute later and drop them in ice water for easier peeling. She repeated this process and all of the other steps canning involved while polka music played in the background on KCHK radio station out of Hutchinson.

When I was really little I had the grandest job in the world during canning season (or so I thought.) Mom would shred large heads of cabbage on a medieval looking kraut cutter into a 10 gallon Red Wing crock, sprinkle it with salt and sugar, then place a stoneware platter weighted down with a rock on top of it all. Every day a cheesecloth was lifted from the crock, the rock and plate removed so that I could take the old wooden kraut stomper and go to work on stomping down the cabbage to get the juices to release. The pungent smell of fermentation would burn my nostrils but I stomped away. Then with a sharp “Schon gut” (very good), Mom would replace plate, rock, and cloth and the kraut would wait another day.

Another favorite event for me as a child was bread day. Mom would haul out her big aluminum bread bowl that had a matching lid and all the ingredients she would need to make her famous German potato bread. My job was to put a boiled potato through the potato ricer and smash it into the warm water and yeast mixture. The riced potato would form a fluffy island in the middle of the foaming yeast water and I would poke at it with Mom’s slotted spoon that was used just for baking. Mom would add the final ingredients then get to work on kneading the dough into a soft silky mass. A quick brush of the dough with butter and she would drape a freshly laundered flour sack over the bowl. Soon the dough took on a life of its own. Rising and growing until the lid of the bowl slid to the side and Mom knew it was ready. She would knead the dough again and then form loaves into dented bread pans that I had brushed with Crisco.

There is no greater smell on this earth than that of bread baking in your mother’s kitchen. Mom would pull massive loaves out of the oven, brush the tops with butter and put them on racks to cool. My treat was the “kinder” or end piece smeared with butter and Mom’s homemade strawberry freezer jam that tasted of summer on the coldest of days.

Mom’s quilts were another thing that kept the chill out in winter. She would set up her rickety quilting rack in our large living room and attach her latest masterpiece for the process of quilting. I would sit under the stretched quilts for hours watching the flash of the needle in Mom’s hand move quickly with stitches so perfect that no machine was necessary. I played with scraps of material and clumsily sewed clothes for my teddy bears, puppets, and misshapen potholders. When the quilt was done, Mom would give if one sharp shake and spread it out gloriously on the floor for all to see. What once was mere strips of cloth had been magically transformed into intricate patterns that looked like the workings of an engineer’s mind and not just the simple art of a farmer’s daughter.

So many memories are ignited in my mind at the slightest of things. The smell of bread baking, the flavor of fresh kraut, the sound of canning jars sealing with a pop, the feel of a sun bleached quilt on my skin when I am sick. All of these things and so many more have the power to transport me back in time to my mom’s classroom of life. The lessons she taught me were far more valuable than anything I learned in college. She taught me about survival, of making due, of turning ordinary things into works of art that can be handed down and cherished for years to come; much like the memories that she handed down to me. The older I get, the more I embrace the simple life Mom held so dear and all of the hard work that it entails. Every year I put up glass jars of fruits and vegetables to use the year round and to share with others. Perhaps that is the most important thing mom taught me. No matter how little you may have there is always something you can share with others. Whether it be food, love, lessons, or just the silent company of someone who cares.