What Do You Do With Their Clothes?

Mother never got to the point of being ready to part with Daddy's clothing after he died. All of us kids were ok with that. It was her decision to make and we weren't going to rush her. Even after she died, the thought of getting rid of his clothes (and hers) was painful. I'd heard of others who had made quilts or teddy bears out of loved ones clothing. There are a few people in our family talented with sewing and other crafts. I have never been one of them. Sewing was never an interest of mine. But after Mother died, I wanted to give it a try. She used to sew clothes for all of us and now that she was gone, the idea of sewing appealed to me. I found a teddy bear pattern and bought some remnant fabric. My bear turned out ok. I then asked my sisters if they minded if I tried making teddy bears out of Daddy's clothes. They liked the idea. Some of my dad's denim overalls, navy Dickie pants and flannel shirts were chosen and I sewed a teddy bear for each of my sisters and myself. It wasn't easy for me, since I am far from being a seamstress. One poor bear had to have his head sewn on three different times before I got it right. First I attached it inside out, then looking to the side instead of forward, and then I finally got it right. The bears are far from professionally sewn, but they remind us of Daddy and it's a way to hold onto a bit of him. My kids have asked me to make Grandpa Bears for them too. That is one of my projects for this fall. I also would like to make some Grandma Bears out of my mom's clothes.





Lake Itasca, Sept 1983

Daddy and his favorite sweater

While using Mother and Daddy's clothes to make bears is a way to keep their memory close, there is one piece of Daddy's clothing that will not be used. It is his favorite sweater. I believe my mom said that the sweater was bought at Matt's Clothing Store in Caledonia back when my sister, Kathy was attending secretarial school in Winona. That was in the late 1960's. I don't have any pictures of him wearing the sweater that date that far back, but through the years, that sweater shows up in many pictures. It is a simple cotton, zip up blue and white striped sweater. It is probably one of the flashiest things he ever wore. Early on, he wore it for occasions where he wanted to dress up a bit, but not wear a suit. In the late 70's and 80's when Mother and Daddy went on bus tours around the country, the sweater went along. In Daddy's later years, the sweater was worn at home as well. It was an extra layer when he was chilled (which was often). And it was easy to get on and off as it became tougher to dress him. It also was machine washable, which was a bonus.



The summer before Daddy died, he was having trouble breathing and we took him to the emergency room in LaCrosse. He was wearing his favorite sweater. I remember the nurse in emergency telling him how she loved that sweater and that he better keep an eye on it or she might take it.

Maybe Daddy should have been buried in that sweater when he died. But Mother had a new suit for him that he'd never been able to wear, so that was chosen. His sweater now sits on top of a cabinet in their bedroom. I love to see it there. When we visit, I will take it down, hold it up to my face and try to find a trace of his scent on the sweater. I have even slipped my own arms into it to try to feel his embrace once more. 

Seeing pictures of Daddy in his sweater brings back decades of memories. Most of Mother and Daddy's clothes still hang in their closet or are tucked in their dresser drawers. We know they no longer need them, but that doesn't mean we don't still need them. I know that eventually most of their clothing will be given away or used to make remembrances. But Daddy's sweater will remain, just as our memories of him and Mother will.

When Life Hands You Black Walnuts

Outside the back door at the farm house, just beyond the clothes line, stand two black walnut trees. There is another along the east side of the house as well. The trees have been there for decades. My dad never liked those trees. He always claimed that they were the last trees to get their leaves in the spring and the first to lose them in the fall. The way he talked, one would think the black walnut trees only held onto their leaves for a couple of weeks. In reality, I think they probably get their leaves in May and start losing them by late August. I think Daddy saw summer as lasting about as long as those trees held their leaves....so in his mind about two weeks. He loved summer. It couldn't get too hot for him. Especially as he and Mother got older, they always seemed to be cold. I kid you not when I tell you that when we would visit in the dead of winter, we would pack shorts to wear in the house. They kept the wood furnace stoked to 80 degrees. As we would be sweating even in our shorts, Mother would be saying she felt a little chilly. So for those 2 weeks every summer when the temperature hit 80 or better (and the black walnut trees had their leaves) my dad was happy with the weather. I can't tell you how many times I heard him say in early June that it wouldn't be long until those trees would lose their leaves and the snow would be flying. Yes, my dad could be a pessimist, especially when it came to the weather. If I say anything remotely negative, Eric will call me Earl or tell me that my dad lives on in me.

Those black walnut trees had a worse issue than the length of time they held their leaves. That issue was the walnuts themselves. I love english walnuts. But have you ever tasted a black walnut? They are extremely bitter. I'm not sure that any amount of chocolate could even tame their bitterness. But the biggest problem with the walnuts was the mess they made. They are green as they hang on the tree during early and mid summer. Then by late summer, as they start falling from the trees, their outer coating is beginning to turn black. They are very oily and if you've ever picked one up without thick gloves on, you know they stain your hands yellow and leave a smell on your hands that you will not soon forget. If the nuts are not picked up, and are run over by the lawn mower, the outer coating squishes and makes an oily mess. To actually get to the nut itself, you need to remove the outer coating and dry the nut. Then you have to crack the extremely hard shell to get to the nutmeat. Once you taste that bitter nutmeat, you will wonder why you bothered spending so much time getting to it.

I dreaded the end of summer because it meant going back to school. But even worse, it meant going out and picking up pail after pail, feed sack after feed sack of black walnuts so the lawn could be mowed. Did I forget to mention that these trees were prolific in their production of walnuts, year after endless year? We didn't know anyone who wanted the nuts, so we would dump them in a pile off at the far side of the farm.

There was talk over the years about cutting those trees down, but it never was done. I'm not sure of the reason. Someone would've had to be hired to take them down, and that would have been expensive. Plus, it would have left a lot of bare lawn. We'd heard that black walnut trees release a toxin into the ground that makes it difficult to grow other things where they have been. Maybe the trees remained for those reasons. Or perhaps Daddy wanted to keep those trees around to prove how short summers were. Whatever the reason, those trees still stand today.

Daddy was always good at woodworking and I believe I was in high school when he started making several different kinds of wooden crosses for his family to display on the walls in their homes. One of the kinds he made used black walnuts. He dried the walnuts shells. Then he put them in a vice and cut the sides off of the nut to make it flat. He then glued them to the beautifully finished crosses. One of these crosses hangs next to our kitchen table.

On my morning walks, there is a black walnut tree that hangs over the walking path. In the past few weeks, the tree has started to drop walnuts. They are still green, but I know some strong winds we've had have made them fall. Every time I see them lying on the path, I think of Daddy. One day I stopped and picked one up, just to smell it's pungent scent. It's funny how that smell took me back to my childhood.

It was then that it occurred to me that Daddy had used those walnuts he despised so much to make something so beautiful. Those walnut trees that made his pessimistic side show had been used to create something that represented his eternal optimism. After all, isn't the cross a sign of true optimism? It's a sign of knowing where you are going when you leave this earth. So when Eric calls me Earl, I take it as a huge compliment.  As I look at that beautiful black walnut cross that Daddy made, I am reminded that our time here on earth is fleeting...not much longer than the black walnut leaves cling to the tree. But because of Jesus and the cross, we can be eternally optimistic, because we know that our physical death is not the end. There is more to come.

So, I guess the moral of this story is: When life hands you black walnuts, glue them to the cross.

Pop

I keep seeing Soda Stream Machines for sale in different stores. The machine basically adds carbonation to tap water. You then add flavored syrup to the carbonated water to make soda pop. My kids think they are the coolest thing ever and want me to buy one. I have no intentions of buying one. I don't think it helped my case any by telling them that Grandma bought one back when I was in high school in the 1980's. It's true. Little did we know way back then that Mother was a trendsetter. I don't know who manufactured the soda maker we had, but I know that Mother bought it from the Schwan man. It was out of character for her to buy such an extravagance.

Growing up between the towns of Caledonia and Spring Grove, we drank our share of Spring Grove Pop. I think I was an adult before I realized how cool it was that a tiny little town like Spring Grove had a pop bottling operation. While I'm sure we tried several of the flavors over the years, the one I remember the most is strawberry. We used to buy it by the case. And when I say "by the case" I mean a wooden case with glass bottles that you returned to the store when you were done drinking the pop. I loved Strawberry Spring Grove Pop as a kid. In fact, just thinking about it today, I can still taste it. Except, it is not a pleasant memory now. Whenever we had the stomach flu as kids, Mother would lay us down on the couch in the TV room. She'd give us a pillow and blanket. Next to us she would place a dining room chair. On the chair she would put an ice cream pail....our barf bucket. As soon as we started to feel better, she would give us some strawberry pop. Maybe she figured the sugar would give us our energy back. I never questioned it back then. I just was happy to be feeling good enough to drink the pop. But to this day, I associate Spring Grove Strawberry Pop with having the stomach flu. (Luckily, there are still several other yummy flavors to choose from. My current favorite is Lemon Sour.)

I don't actually remember drinking much pop growing up. I do remember in 1976 when 7UP had a cool idea. In honor of the Bicentennial, they sold special cans of 7UP. Each can had a picture of one state on it. On the back of each can was a "piece of a puzzle". When you had all 50 states, you stacked the cans into a pyramid in a certain order and when you looked at the back, all the "pieces of the puzzle" formed a picture of Uncle Sam. Mike and I were determined to collect all 50 state cans. I remember going to Albert's Grocery in Caledonia. (By the way, all these years later, I can still clearly picture where different items were in that store.) Mike and I would go to where the 7UP six packs were and carefully try to search for the states we still needed. Doing this without accidentally pulling cans out of the plastic holding the 6-pack together was no easy feat. I recall thinking that we were behaving very badly by searching through the pop like this. Of course, it didn't stop us. I would have been 10 in 1976...the same age Lauren and Evan are now. I could totally see them doing the same thing. The funny thing is, I can't remember if we ever collected all 50 states or not. I wonder if Mike

remembers. If we did, I sure hope he kept them.

Searching through the 7UP cans in Albert's was nothing compared to what Mike and I used to do with pop cans back at the farm. I'm sure it was all Mike's idea, since he was 4 years older than me. Mike would take a can of pop outside and shake it for several minutes. Then, he'd pull the tab on top of the can. As the pop shot several feet in the air, I would snap pictures. (At least I was smart enough to be the one behind the camera documenting the bad influence that Mike was on me.) I also happen to remember one time when Mike opened a shaken can of pop in the kitchen. I recall hurrying to clean that mess up before Mother discovered what we had done. I don't remember ever getting caught doing this. I can only imagine what Mother would have said. It probably would have been something about all the kids in Africa who would be so thankful to have a can of pop to drink that they would never dream of doing such a thing.

I have looked for the pictures I took. I know what photo album I had them in. They appear to be missing. While I think I may have taken them out to scan into the computer a while back, I have to wonder if maybe Mike removed them many years ago to get rid of the evidence.

I remember hearing several years ago that they changed the pressure of the carbonation in pop cans  for safety reasons. Maybe Mike and I weren't the only ones to shake the cans and then open them. I suppose some kid pointed the can toward their face when he opened it and lost an eye or something. I don't know if it's true that they changed the pressure or not. I bet I could convince Mike to shake up a can and try it. All I ask is that he wait until I am there with my camera!

When I think about how out of character it was for Mother to splurge on the soda making machine from Schwan's, a thought comes to mind. Perhaps she knew all along about how much pop Mike and I wasted with our antics. With the soda making machine, you added the carbonation into an open bottle of water. There was no pop top to pull to open the can. There were no kids shooting pop sky high just to take pictures of it.  Maybe she figured buying the machine was saving money in the long run. Perhaps she was beating us at our own game without us ever knowing.

Yet another thing for me to ask her when I meet up with her in Heaven some day.

Surprise Treasures

Today I cleaned our master closet. It is a huge walk-in closet that we added a few years ago. I knew it needed cleaning, but even I was surprised by the two bags full of junk that went in the garbage. There was also a huge bag of clothes to be donated to next year's church garage sale.

I carefully straightened the pile of things I have from after Mother died. There are sympathy cards I received, pictures we displayed at her funeral and Mother's beautiful handprint that hospice gave us. It might sound kind of creepy to those who haven't lost someone, but I watched as the hospice worker inked Mother's hand and carefully pressed it onto several papers for us, after Mother died. It was done very lovingly and I know Mother would have approved. It is so neat to put my hand up to her handprint now. Even though I can no longer see her, I know there is not much more than the thickness of that paper separating us. I can feel her with me and hear her words of advice and encouragement.

When I opened my bottom drawer in the closet to straighten it, I knew some of what I would find. I have two Ziploc bags that contain dried roses from Mother and Daddy's funerals. I opened each bag and took a sniff. I expected to smell dried roses. But I swear that what I smelled was Mother's homemade raspberry jam. I know it sounds crazy. It was probably my mind playing tricks on me, but I sat there with my eyes closed and could see the farm kitchen with a bowl of freshly made sweet raspberry jam cooling, with a wooden spoon resting across the top of the bowl.

Under the bags of flowers, was one of my dad's white t-shirts, right where I knew I'd find it. I still don't know how it came to be in our house, but it is here to stay. Daddy always wore a white t-shirt under whatever he was wearing. As he became unable to dress himself, I helped him into and out of those t-shirts many times. It was sometimes hard to get his arms to bend and I often teased him that trying to get those t-shirts on and off of him was like trying to skin a raccoon. Daddy was little and actually wore a men's size small t-shirt. After he died and we were back at our house in Maple Grove, I did a few loads of laundry. As I was folding the clothes, there was a white t-shirt. It looked too small to be Eric's and too big to be Evan's, so I looked at the size tag. It was a men's size small. That meant it had to be one of Daddy's. Noone else I knew wore that size. But how it ended up in our laundry is beyond me. Mother and Daddy's room at the farm was downstairs. All the other bedrooms and all our suitcases were upstairs. Sure, I helped do their laundry, but their clothes were always put away downstairs. I decided that how it ended up home with me didn't matter. Apparently it was meant to come home with me. I told Mother about it and asked if she cared if I kept it. Since she had a drawer full of the t-shirts, she didn't mind. Whenever I come across that t-shirt it makes me smile.

As I made my way thru the closet, I came across a lot of crumpled pieces of paper. Most were old receipts or other things that were taken out of a pocket and left on a shelf. I looked thru them to make sure they weren't important before I tossed each one. I reached for yet another folded up piece of paper and as I opened it, I gasped. It was Mother's writing. It was a grocery list she had made. The strangest thing is that this is not the first time this has happened to me. A couple of months after she died, I was cleaning our hall closet and I found a different grocery list of hers. I knew that one had to have fallen out of my purse as some point and gotten hidden behind other things. I put that one away for safe keeping. The list I found today was longer. There is something about seeing her handwriting that is so amazing. It's not like she had super neat handwriting. It's just so obviously her's. And seeing something so ordinary as a grocery list in her handwriting is like a little hug from her. I wonder if I maybe found this list in one of the pockets of the clothes in her closet after she died and brought it home for that reason. I can't remember for sure. But no matter how it got there, I believe that I was meant to find it today.

After Daddy died, we went through his dresser and found two tiny little notebooks where he had written some of his favorite bible verses. His handwriting was undeniable. After he had his stroke, his right hand was a bit crippled, so his writing always had a bit of a jerkiness to it. It was rare to see him write much of anything other than his signature. But Bible verses he took the time to write. Many of the verses were ones that he had engraved on grandchildren's confirmation plaques. Others were just some of his favorites. Several months after he died, Mother told me I should bring those notebooks home with me. They are safely tucked away and I take them out every now and then to read the verses that meant so much to him and also just to see his handwriting. Again, it's like a little hug from him.

When I decided the master bedroom closet today, I figured that when I was done I would feel good about having a neat and organized closet again. I do feel good about that. But I also have a peacefulness and happiness inside myself. I know it's from feeling those little hugs from Mother and Daddy today. And that whiff of homemade raspberry jam didn't hurt either!

Windows

Shortly after we moved into our house, we bought a swing set for our kids. It's similar to other wood swing sets you see today. Now, several years later, our kids have pretty much outgrown it.

On the farm, we had a swing set that was typical for those days. It was metal and had a glider, two hard plastic swings, and a lawn swing. I think it also had a short slide and a trapeze bar, but I don't remember for sure. The swing set sat on the east side of the house, just outside the laundry room window. Mother could keep an eye on us through the window while she was doing the six loads of laundry she did every day.

We used to like to swing so high that the poles of the swing set frame would leave the ground. But our favorite thing on the swing set was the lawn swing. It was basically two seats with backs that faced each other. It was attached to the top of the swing set with metal bars and their was a footrest that connected the two seats at the bottom. As one person swung forward, the other swung backward. If you think this sounds boring, well, it was. So to add some excitement, we liked to stand on the backs of the seats, facing each other and see how high we could make the lawn swing go. It never failed. Just as soon as we had it flying high and the swing set poles were leaving the ground, we'd hear a familiar rap on the laundry room window. As we looked up, there stood Mother, with a disappointed look on her face, shaking her index finger at us. As the obedient children that we were, we would immediately stop and start using the swing set properly. Until, of course, we noticed she was no longer looking out the window. Then the fun would start all over again. Until we'd hear the next rap on the window.

I never could figure out why she never let us have any fun. Then I grew up and had kids of my own.

On the other side of the house, facing west, was the kitchen window. When Eric and I would visit the farm with our kids, this window became a part of our leaving ritual at the end of the weekend. As Mother and Daddy got older, it became difficult for them to go outside to see us off when we would leave. So, we would say our good-byes inside the kitchen. There were hugs and 'I love yous' and 'see you next times' and bags of Grandma's cookies handed out. Then we'd get in our van, drive a few feet in the driveway and stop the van. Here we could see the kitchen window perfectly. We'd stop, open the van window and sliding door facing the house and all wave good-bye as Mother and Daddy stood at the kitchen window waving to us. There were many times that Evan would be pouting or crying as we waved, because he hadn't had enough time at the farm. It wasn't always easy for Mother and Daddy to even make it to the window to wave good-bye, but they both did for as long as they could. After Daddy died, Mother still would stand and wave to us. At the end of our last few visits before Mother died, no one stood there waving as we left.

What I wouldn't give to see Mother and Daddy standing at the kitchen window waving to us again. Or even to hear that familiar rap on the laundry room window. I'd be thrilled to look up and see Mother shaking her finger at me. But if I close my eyes and look through the window into my heart, I can see and hear both as if it were yesterday.