Stories My Mother Told Me and Other Memories of Mom

Joyce Ramer (left) and Doris Wilson

My earliest memories of my mother Joyce Ramer Gochenour was watching her blond ponytail swinging across her neck as we went downstairs from our apartment. I remember a lounge outfit of black pants and a quilted red jacket trimmed with gold roses embroidered on black. I remember the music she played on the record player.

Mom did not write down her memories but she told some stories over and over and I never forgot them. Some of these stories have been shared from Dad's memoirs. Here is how Mom told them. 

Joyce Ramer baby photo

Mom was born Juy 26, 1931 in Kane, PA, the first child of her parents Lynne O. Ramer, who taught mathematics and history in the high school, and Evelyn Greenwood Ramer.

1935 Evelyn Greenwood Ramer and Lynne Ramer

After graduating from Susquehanna College and seminary, and earning his teaching degree from Columbia, Lynne taught at Hartwick Seminary in New York State from 1926-1930. Evelyn Greenwood, age 17, was his student. He fell in love with her. That summer he traveled the country, working odd jobs to pay his way. He came back at summer's end to ask for Evelyn's hand in marriage.

Lynne took a job teaching mathematics at Kane High School in Kane, PA.

The Ramer house in Kane, PA was a duplex

Evelyn Greenwood Ramer and daughter Joyce

Kane HS yearbook photo of Lynne Ramer

Following Mom's birth came her sister Nancy in 1934, and then twin brothers Don and Dave in 1935. By age 21 my grandmother was overwhelmed running a house with four children. My grandfather was raised on a farm and orphaned at age nine. He had worked his way through college and seminary by working in the school kitchen. He could do anything and often stepped in to handle things when his 'child bride' was overwhelmed.

Birth Certificate of Joyce Ramer

Evelyn Greenwood Ramer and Joyce

Joyce Ramer's school class photo. 

Joyce Ramer

Nancy and Joyce Ramer. Don't you love those 1930s dresses!

The Ramer kids spent summers with Eveyln's parents Delia and Cropper Greenwood at their home in Watervielet, NY. Cropper had immigrated from England and sent money for Delia's passage. They lived in Troy, NY where Cropper was a chauffeur for Thomas Connor. Delia was a nurse and took care of Johnny Monroe, who had no heirs, and Johnny left them the house to repay her. It was a large house in the country, with a wide pillared porch.

Cropper Greenwood at his home where the Ramer kids summered

My Aunt Nancy told me there was a hill they liked to sled down. Mom said they loved listening to the radio, especially liked Fibber McGee and Molly.

Mom liked meat but hated peas. Her brothers hated meat. She did not understand why the siblings couldn't just trade for the foods they preferred. Instead they were not allowed to leave the table until they cleaned their plates. They hid the food in the soil of the potted plants and along the ledge under the table. Gramps did not allow elbows on the table while eating. A rap on the knuckles awaited offenders.

The Ramer Kids: Joyce, Nancy, Dave and Donald at
Charlie and Annie Smither's home in Miltoy

As a girl Mom went ice skating on a river. One day she and her friends were skating and she broke through the ice, going under water. She could see the blue ice over head. Luckily, she was pulled out and survived.

Joyce Ramer

In 1941, when my mom was thirteen or fourteen, my grandfather lost his teaching job. The family moved in with my Great-grandparents Greenwoods, and Evelyn's brother Freddie got Lynne a traveling sales job selling frozen foods to stores across New York State.

Then WWII brought work at the Chevrolet aircraft factory in Tonawanda, NY where he worked as a testing engineering. He needed to prove he was an American citizen and returned to Milroy to search for a birth certificate. He wrote later he did not find it, but people vouched they were at his birth and he got the job.

1952 Lynne Ramer at Chevy Aviation Lab, Tonawanda NY

The Ramer family moved into the Sheridan Parkside housing project, quickly built duplexes to house the war time workers in the local factories. Fred Greenwood and his wife Dot moved to the projects, too. Their daughters Patty and Lynda where born there. At the end of the war they moved back to Troy, NY.

Moving was an adjustment for Mom. Her gingham dresses were acceptable in the rural school she came from but in the sophisticated 'city' school she was out of style and needed a new wardrobe. She liked men's jeans and shirts for casual, skirts and blouses and sweaters for school, and always saddle shoes with white wool socks.

Fashionable Mom posing in men's jeans and shirt, saddle shoes and a Navy hat

Mom's teenage years living in the Sheridan Parkside Projects, jitterbugging at the local dances, and hanging out with her friends, especially Doris Wilson, were her happiest memories. They did not have a lot of money during the Depression but her mother sacrificed so Mom had new dresses for the prom, and she always had a quarter to give Mom for the Saturday movie.

Mom said the Project kids hung together and were not integrated into the Kenmore High School. The 'new kids' of the projects had their own social gatherings, dances, and  hang-outs.

Mom loved to dance. She was the jitterbug queen of the Project. She danced with the boys and when there were no boys she danced with her girlfriends.

Mom and her friends would fool around in the Sheridan Park. One winter Mom and her girlfriend watched as the guys turned their backs and pissed their names into the snow! She claims she didn't see 'anything'. (She did have two little brothers.) Another time the gang used their heels to dig their names into the sod of the golf course. They were, of course, caught and punished.

Mom on the right

Mom's best friend was Doris Wilson. Even after she left Tonawanda they kept in touch. She told me that no matter how far the distance or long the time, when they were together again their relationship never changed.

Mom's sophomore photo (left)  from Kenmore HS

Doris told me that Mom could get miffed and give her the 'silent treatment'.  After a day or so, Doris would make the first move: she knew Mom loved tuna fish sandwiches, so she'd made a big sandwich and take it to Mom. After that they were always best buds again.

Doris Wilson and Mom

Mom also loved saltines and peanut butter. One time she was sitting on the steps of her Project house and a boy passing by commented, "No wonder you're so fat." That hurt. Mom also relished baked bean sandwiches, and after we moved whenever she returned to Tonawanda she stocked up on Grandma Brown's Baked Beans.

Mom saw my dad on the bus and tried to get his attention. She was fifteen and Dad was sixteen--and very shy, even though my Aunt Pat Ramer told me that all the girls all had a crush on him. To get Dad's attention, Mom stuck her leg into the bus aisle as he came along. He tripped. It didn't work; he didn't talk to her. Then Mom got a mutual friend to bring Dad to her house when Doris was with her. He didn't talk, just watched those silly girls wrestle. It took a long time before Dad came out of his shell, but Mom finally got her man!

My folks' love affair did not go smoothly. They had their problems. All the kids smoked in those day, as did the adults, and Mom took up the habit at age 16. Dad came from a conservative family. He demanded that Mom give up smoking. She told him that no one was going to tell her what to do. She was not a woman to be ruled. They broke up for six months.

Mom dated another boy during that time while Dad moped about. He started smoking too, and came and apologized to Mom and they got back together. Mom said she was lucky she didn't stay with the boy she'd been dating as he later was charged with bigamy!

Mom told me many of the same stories that Dad wrote about, including how he took her to Putt's farm in the Alleghenies and left her in the woods while he went hunting. She sat there a long time, alone and got mad at him: some date! Dad would pick her up on his motorcycle and take her to school. One time they hit a bump and Mom was bounced off. Dad kept going, not noticing. Mom got mad. On their honeymoon at Niagara Falls in January, 1949, Dad brought comic books because it was too cold to sight-see. He thought he was providing entertainment. Mom got mad: some romantic honeymoon!

Mom's graduation photo from Kenmore HS

Mom worked as a comptugraph secretary at Remington Rand in their first year of marriage. Mom said she'd leave the vegetables in the pot on the stove in the mornings to make dinner faster at day's end. Mom never liked working. When her girl friends started having babies she told Dad she wanted to start a family.  Mom quit work while pregnant with me. She was 21 years old when I was born and Dad was 22.

Mom and me

I was a cholicy baby who cried all day and all night. In those days babies were fed formula, and I couldn't digest the milk. Mom took me to her parent's house in the Project so my experienced grandmother could help.

Dad had been greatly disappointed that I wasn't a boy. I was to be Thomas. He avoided me until one day when Mom left me in his care. While changing my diaper, a job I'm sure Dad disdained, I smiled at him. That changed everything. I was OK. Seven years passed, and two miscarriages, before Dad got his son, my brother Tom.

Mom and I on the right, Dad and Linda Guenther on the left

Mom told me stories about my antics that got me into trouble.

The old house had rats and poison was placed in the crawl spaces. One day I came out the front door of the house and saw a dead rat. I had never seen a dead thing and was heartbroken. I picked it up--by the tail--and brought it to the door, crying for Mom. Mom was horrified. She yelled at me to drop the rat and go wash my hands. I did drop it..On the floor of the house on my way to the sink! Mom had a fit. She said after she threw the rat out the door and it came to and ran off. It wasn't quite dead yet!

I was an artistic child. I loved crayons and paper dolls and the illustrations in the Little Golden Books Mom brought home from the A&P grocery store. My artistic experiments got me in trouble.

Mom wore bright red lipstick, and it fascinated me. One day I got a hold of it and colored all over the wall. I got a spanking. Another time I found the baby powder and poured it out all over the rug. I got a spanking. I drew pictures of princesses on the inside covers of her books. I don't know if I got a spanking for that because my grandfather's books were similarly decorated--perhaps by Mom.

Mom did support my artistic interests. She gave me drawing sets from John Gnagy with pencils, erasers, sandpaper sharpener, paper, chalks and pastels. They are still available at http://ow.ly/p37j306FIlF.

Mom loved to paint. She took up painting classes at adult education in the school. She did Tole painting, decorating a metal wastepaper can and letter holder. After trying watercolor she switched to oil painting. I would sit and watch as she explained her process. Later in life she took oil painting classes with a local artist. Mom could get in the 'zone' painting, losing track of time.

One of Mom's early paintings owned by Alice Ennis

Mom also loved to read. She liked historical fiction, especially about the kings and queens of England. It must be genetic, because in college I fell in love with British Literature. Mom stayed up late into the night reading and sipping Pepsi. Which explains her unwillingness to get up early in the morning!

The Club. Mom is on the right, my Aunt Alice is next to her.

Mom stayed in touch with her Project girlfriends. They had The Club, meeting monthly of friends. They went out, or gathered at each other's homes for food and cards.

Mom was always singing snippets of songs, which I wrote about in Songs My Mother Sang Me which you can read at http://ow.ly/ofa2306BMbD. She also played records of her favorite hit songs. Two recordings I vividly recalled I later identified as The Poor People of Paris by Les Baxter and Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White by Perez Prado. Her love of dancing never left her, and I would come home from school to find Mom watching American Bandstand. She also loved going to the Ice Capades and I remember going many years.

Mom loved home decorating and decorating for holidays and wrapping presents with bows. At Christmas I looked forward to the decorations she brought out: a Santa face, the cardboard fake fireplace, the aluminum Christmas tree with blue ornaments lit up with a changing color light. You can read about my posts on 1950s Christmases at http://ow.ly/8Xoc306BM2f.

Christmas 1955

Doris told me that if someone liked something Mom had, next time Mom saw them she would give them what they had admired. She loved giving gifts. Christmas was so much fun for her. I always had a big pile under the tree. I wanted to grow up and have lots of money so I could give it to children who did not have what I had.

*****

When Mom reached puberty she developed a skin condition, psoriasis, an autoimmune disease. Her condition worsened with each pregnancy. She also had psoriatic arthritis. After my brother was born she suffered her first major joint loss. Mom wore a neck brace and she had a device hanging from the door which was used to keep her neck stretched. She lost mobility in her neck. She also lost flexibility in her finger joints.

Mom was devastated by the psoriasis and as a teen was concerned she would be 'unloveable'. The psoratic lesions in adulthood covered her trunk, legs, and arms, her scalp, and deformed her nails. Mom took to wearing long pants and long sleeves. She tried every treatment the doctors offered.

The list of all she underwent is pages long. As a teen there was mercury ointments. Tar ointments came later. Long soaking baths with bath oils loosened the scales but left her with bright red patches. She took aspirin for the joint pain until it ruined her stomach. When I was a teenager Mom applied a tar ointment and wrapped herself in plastic wrap, then had UV light treatment until she developed pre-cancerous lesions.

I was grown up and married when one day Mom asked me if I had ever been ashamed of her. I was stunned. Mom was always looked young and pretty. I remembered her long, blond hair when I was a little girl. She loved a party. She taught my girlfriends to jitterbug, still organizing parties but now for my friends.

Having a mom with disabilities and health problems was just normal. I learned to see through people's appearances to who they were inside.

*****

Mom told me that when she was a little girl her mother took her by train from Kane, PA to see her Greenwood grandparents in Troy. There was an African American porter on the train, the first person of color she had ever seen. She asked my grandmother why he was brown. Grandmother quipped, "because he is made of chocolate." Mom went over and bit his hand to see. How Grandmother explained things to the porter, I never learned.

Mom obviously learned that people are people regardless of differences in appearances. During the 1967 race riots in Detroit, when we lived a few miles up the road from Detroit, Mom was angry at neighbors who voiced their prejudices against African Americans. My teacher in Civics taught us that there was only one race, the human race, and Mom's reaction confirmed his teaching.

A few years later, during one of Mom's many hospital stays for a new treatment for psoriasis, her roommate was an African American woman, They bonded and afterwords Mom went to visit her. She came back very distressed. She was embarrassed to live in so much nicer a house and area than her friend. How could she invite the woman to her house when she had so much?

What was this 'so much' that we had in the 1960s? A 1920s house with a tiny kitchen, one bath, and a dirt driveway. K-Mart clothes and Depression era dinners heavy in the casseroles that stretched dollars. One car. No vacations, except visiting our Tonawanda relatives. We also had security, values, decency, warmth, love.

When Breath Becomes Air: Finding Purpose While Dying

Patient: one who endures hardship without complaint.

I know about cancer. My parents died of it.

Mom had psoriatic arthritis and psoriasis that had been controlled by Methotrexate, allowing her a better quality of life during her last years. But she always feared an dependent old age, unable to take care of herself.
She had been a lifelong smoker until the birth of my son when she decided to give it up. It turned out to be easier than she ever imagined.

She was fifty-seven, recovering from a broken knee, when she convinced her doctor that her excruciating back pain was not normal. A CAT scan revealed cancer spread through her body, in her lungs, pancreas, brain, and bones. She had weeks or months.

After her first chemo she came home and called all her friends and relatives, calming chatting and telling them the news. She instructed me on the value of her Depression glass collection and what jewelry was 'good'.

She wondered if I remembered my grandparents who had died before I was three, hoping that our two-and-a-half-year-old son would remember his doting grandmother. It was her only regret, for she had given up hope of ever having a grandchild and had found joy as a grandmother.

Two weeks later she was in the hospital, choosing morphine over pain, leaving behind a weeping family and devastated husband.

Fast forward sixteen years. My father had found a girlfriend and was enjoying life when his Non-Hodgkins lymphoma came out of remission. Whereas Mom accepted the news, Dad was determined to fight the cancer. I stayed at the hospital with him during the day, and my brother came after work. He held on for ten weeks before the oncologists allowed his removal to Hospice. Dad was 78. My brother and I were now all that was left.

I have uncles and a grandfather who died in their early fifties. It is hard to lose someone 'before their time'. I feel for my cousins whose dads passed when they were young adults. What is harder to accept is when death comes to people under forty, or thirty, or even as children.

*****

"I was driven less by achievement than by trying to understand, in earnest: What makes human life meaningful?"

Paul Kalanithi was driven to understand the most basic question of life: What makes life meaningful? What kind of life is worth living? Can a life cut short, on the cusp of reaching its potential, still hold meaning? He studied medicine, biology, philosophy, literature, and poetry searching for understanding. He attended Medical school to "bear witness to the twinned mysteries of death, its experiential and biological manifestations: at once deeply personal and utterly impersonal." He realized that physicians must understand their craft intellectually but also morally.

Had I been more religious in my youth, I might have become a pastor, for it was the pastoral role I'd sought.

At age 36, soon to graduate and begin his career as a neurosurgeon and planning to start a family, Paul was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

        "And with that, the future I had imagined, the one just about to be realized, the culmination of             decades of striving, evaporated."

The cancer could be managed, held off, for an uncertain length of time. As a doctor Paul understood his case, the options and the probability of their effects. He was also now a patient, needing to make sense of his options and potential, finding what would give meaning to his time left on earth.

I began to view the world through two perspectives; I was starting to see death as both doctor and patient.

His love for language, writing, literature, and deep medical and scientific knowledge allowed Paul to express and probe his experience as a dying cancer patient, leaving behind this memoir.

Paul tells us about his patients and what they taught him, and about being a patient and what he learned. We hear about the rigorous and crushing work of residency and how a slight touch with a scalpel can be irrevocable. As a cancer patient, he had to decide how to live--oriented towards life or death--and whether to have a child he won't live to see grow up.

...even if I'm dying, until I actually die, I am still living.

Paul did not live to finish his memoir. The moving epilogue is written by his wife. The Forward by Abraham Verghese warns us, "Be ready. Be seated. See what courage sounds like. See how brave it is to reveal yourself in this way. But above all, see what it is to still live, to profoundly influence the lives of others after you are gone, by your words...Listen to Paul. In the silences between his words, listen to what you have to say back. Therein lies the message."


When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
Random House
Published January 2016
$25 hard cover
ISBN: 9780812988406

A Birthday Party for My Quilt Friend Shirley, 91 Years Young

Our weekly 'sit and stitch' quilt group in Clawson was organized 16 years ago by several quilters who were told 'it will never work'. To prove the nay-sayers wrong, today 38 gals came out to wish one of our founders a happy 91st birthday!

Shirley Wiliams

Marilyn Brown (red shirt on left in photo below) organized the group to make Shirley Williams a signature quilt. Marilyn also put the quilt top together. She received enough blocks to make a double sided quilt! Barb Lusk, machine quilter extraordinaire, Set aside her Christmas rush jobs to get it quilted in record time.

 Many of us made blocks with Cardinals, Shirley's favorite bird. Each block is signed by the maker.

The flip side of the quilt includes a variety of blocks.

Esther Gadwa whipped up several of her fancy cakes, a cheesecake and a Lemon Curd cake, all made from scratch. She even makes ricotta cheese and lemon curd from scratch. We never lack for luscious deserts!

We had a lovely time.

Shirley has shared stories with me over the last two years. She had the most romantic story I have heard.

When she was a young woman she was engaged to be married. She was at a dance when she saw a handsome young man, returned from the service. She decided he was the man she was going to marry. She did not tell him she was engaged, broker off her engagement, and, well, married her guy!

He was a pilot and Shirley also earned a pilot license. They lived 'Up North' near Houghton Lake. She loved it there.

I love these quilters, and the quilt community.

Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman who Ruled an Empire by Julia Baird

Julia Baird's new biography Victoria The Queen was revelatory, bringing the complex woman and queen Victoria to life. Baird has presented an engaging read with enough surprises and conflict to propel the reader.

This is the only biography of Victoria I have read. I knew many stories, such as how Charles Dickens had a crush on the teenage queen and how Victoria long mourned Prince Albert. I'd seen the movie Mrs. Brown and the PBS Masterpiece Theater series about Disraeli. I did not know much about her family life and the lives of her children.

Victoria's family life was complicated from birth; as a girl she chaffed against her overprotetive mother. As a teenage queen she revelled in her freedom and enjoyed dancing and flirtations, yet took her power seriously. The queen who wanted to avoid marriage fell into a lustful love for her cousin Albert and enjoyed 'fun in bed'. The queen lost her surity under Albert's insistent guidance; he did not believe women should rule. Albert was poor in health and after successfully usurping Victoria's governing role, partly by keeping her pregnant, he up and died on her.

The bereaved widow withdrew from society but found other men to lean on for emotional and personal support. First with ghilley John Brown, who became her trusted constant companion and helpmate, and after his death with the Indian charlatan Abdul Karim. The nature of her relationships has long been debated. Baird reveals health issues that likely prevented the queen from taking a lover.

She brought her personal likes and dislikes into her relaitonships with her Prime Ministers; she detested Gladstone's personality and his push for Irish Home Rule, but fell to Disraeli's charm and attention.

There are surprising moments revealing Victoria's rebellious, wild side and heartbreaking stories of her children who married badly or died young. Most surprising was how the Victorian Age mores and values reflected Albert's intellectual, high-minded personality more than Victoria, who was very open minded.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Victoria The Queen
Julia Baird
Random House
Publication Date November 29, 2016
$35 hard cover
ISBN: 9781400069880

My Regency Redwork Pattern is Featured in Willow and Thatch's Gift Guide!

Regency Redwork, inspired by Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

I was contacted and told that my quilt pattern Regency Redwork is part of  the 30 Lovely Jane Austen Christmas Gifts guide of etsy items from Willow and Thatch. You can see the guide at http://ow.ly/rKbw306AMAw

Willow and Thatch is a website dedicated to period films and costume dramas including Materpiece Theater, BBC, and period movies.They love all things antique, vintage; farmhouse and country gardens; and traveling to places inspired by period film locations.

Elizabeth and Charlotte

I based my Regency Redwork quilt on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, using many of the same patterns developed for my Pride and Prejudice storybook applique quilt. I have been selling both patterns on Etsy for several years. Read more about my applique version at http://ow.ly/aV7T306AMuk
 

Mr Collins greets Darcy

Bingley asks Jane to dance

Darcy hands Elzabeth a letter of explanation

Lydia with soldiers

My patterns were taken from copyright free illustrations and art contemporary with Jane Austen, including dance manuals, illustrations, and drawings.

Other items in the gift guide include jewelry, wall hangings and textiles, cookie cutters and recipe cards, tote bags, dolls, paper products, cards and jumping jacks, shower curtain, Kindle cover, calenders, clothing, candles, and craft patterns.

My etsy store is found at http://ow.ly/jyas306AMXu
The name of my store is explained at http://ow.ly/dDSU306AMPs

I am honored that my pattern was chosen to be highlighted.

My Memories of Growing Up in Tonawanda: 1959

Wearing Mom's skirt and shoes for dress-up. 1959.
A reader informed me the car is a 1957 Ford Sunliner
which I believe belonged to Skip and Katie Marvin.

1959 was the first year I remember. The teacher told us America had a new state--Alaska. Learning there was a dated YEAR made a big impression on me. Suddenly time became linear, not a circle of revolving knowns.

1959 changed my life. The next few years were some of my happiest.

It was the year Disney released Sleeping Beauty. The year Barbie was born. I watched Bonanza, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Twilight Zone, Rocky & His Friends, and 77 Sunset Strip. I have said that Twilight Zone taught me many of my core values.

My family went to the drive-in and watched Journey to the Center of the Earth. I adored that movie! 1959 movies that I later saw on television included On the Beach, Operation Petticoat, North by Northwest, The Diary of Anne Frank, Miracle on 34th Street, Ben Hur, and Anatomy of a Murder.*

It was the year my brother was born.

Here I am holding Tom

It was the year Mom bought her first new furniture, a hutch, a turquoise couch, matching chairs, and rock maple colonial tables.

And it was the year I met my best friend, Nancy Ensminger, in Girl Scouts. Our moms called us The Two Nancys, always together, and different as night and day.

Nancy Ensminger at my Military Road House

Nancy had a big brother, while my brother was born a month before I turned eight. Nancy was easy going, happy, cheerful. I was wound up, intense, and tended to be fearful. Nancy had long dark braids. I had artificially curled blond hair. We both were horse crazy, liked to read, wanted to write, and had vivid imaginations.

We spent hours pretending. We played with my Beyer model horses. Grandma Gochenour went to the Goodwill in Tonawanda and brought me home Auburn model animals: fox, bear, chickens, ducks, cows--every kind of critter.  Mom bought me plastic animals from the store: models of dogs, knights on horses, cowboys and Indians. Nancy and I created personas and story arcs with them. There was Red Scott Collie, our hero, and his girl Snowball the Poodle. Their buds were two huskies, Dusty and Goldy (gray and gold colored, of course!)

Gone Fishing Barbie outfit

We played Barbie dolls. My Midge doll became "Philip** the Boy From Mars" by dressing her in the Going Fishing set of jeans and a plaid shirt.

The dolls also acted out musicals. Nancy's brother Bruce had a record player and recordings of Camelot and Oklahoma! I memorized all the songs while our Barbies or plastic animals played the roles. "Poor Jud is dead, poor Jud Fry is dead..."

Nancy at the field behind her house in 1965. The open land went to
the railroad tracks and Sheridan Park housing.

Nancy's house was on Military Road. Behind her house were open fields, barren and hilly. We roamed there, acting out other favorite story arcs: we were orphans in Scotland who solved mysteries, riding our horses across the landscape.

The fields behind Nancy's house. 1965

We imagined turning the shed behind her house into an office where we would publish our newspaper. We would write the stories and sell the paper at school. Nancy wanted to grow up to write stories and become a missionary to Africa where she would tame a Zebra. I wanted to be an author.

Nancy and I in junior high and as juniors in high school

My world was now full of friends. My cousins, the scout troop, the Rosemont girls, Nancy, and the children of family friends.

The Randalls were family friends who lived on Rosemont. Their daughter Jackie babysat me. She was great! And her brother Mike, a year younger than I, sometimes came to play (likely when no boys were around) and we traded comic books and acted out astronaut fantasies. I was interested in the Space Age and Mike and I both believed in life on other planets. Once we walked to the store across from school to buy penny candy.

Mrs. Erickson, my third grade teacher, did not like me. She always had negative things to tell Mom. I remember she would not say 'Hitler',  or "helicopter' because she would have to say 'hell'. She liked boys better than girls.

Mrs. Erikson once took me out into the hall and shook me by the shoulders and told me to stay there. Why? because I had a 'lazy tongue' and did not articulate. (I learned to articulate in choral singing later.) Another time she sent me back to Second Grade, Miss Hurley's class. There sat Mike. I was so embarrassed. Mike grew up to be an actor, puppeteer, and weatherman, well known to Tonawanda folk.

Mom's best friend Doris would come over with her son, Tom. One time I was showing off, climbing over the railing of the porch. Tom said he could do that but I didn't want him to. I wanted to be the only one to do it, and besides I was older and thought he was too young. Well, he was accomplishing the feat when I tried to stop him. I grabbed him and managed to pull his pants down! Was I in trouble...again.

I liked to climb the willow tree. It had a nicely curved branch a few feet off the ground. I remember the girl across the street would climb it with me.

In 1959 Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty came out and Mom took me to Buffalo to see it. I was enthralled; a part of me always wanted to be a princess. Mom said I could look like Sleeping Beauty, if I lost weight.

Sleeping Beauty by Madame Alexander, 1959
Or, What the Dog Ate

My Great-grandmother Greenwood gave me a Madame Alexander Sleeping Beauty doll for my birthday. Mom said it wasn't to play with, it was too expensive. I couldn't undress her or comb her hair.

But I took the doll to Christine's house to show her. I set it on the ground while we played in her back yard. My Pepper had followed me; she found the doll and chewed on it and ruined it. I was devastated. Mom tossed the doll out. I took better care of the Little Women dolls Great-grandmother gave me, which I still have today. As an adult I bought myself a 1959 Sleeping Beauty doll to replace the one lost in childhood.

I started piano lessons when I was eight years old. I had enjoyed tinkling on the piano at the Kuhn's house when we visited. My Grandmother Ramer and Mom regretted giving up their piano lessons and since I showed an interest, they determined I was going to play! My grandmother bought me a used piano.

My teacher lived in the Sheridan Park project.**. I remember holding my two quarters in my hand as I walked down Ensminger Road to my lesson, and studying them while the previous student finished their lesson. I had John Thompson books which were geared toward teaching students classical music, basic theory, and offered brief biographies of the composers. Hence started my love affair with Classical Music.

My brother Tom and his godparents, Katie and Skip Marvin and Tom Richards

My brother Tom was born in August 1959. He was the cutest thing, with ruddy checks and blond hair and big eyes. Where I had been colicky as a baby, Tom was quiet and stoic. I liked him way better than any old Tiny Tears baby doll.

Me, Dad, Tom and Mom at Great-Grandma Greenwood's house in Kenmore
I have that student lamp on the table!

...Until he started teething and drooling all over. Yuck. And the he started crawling and walking, which meant I had to keep my crayons and scissors and paper dolls picked up.

Tom on Mom's brand new turquoise couch.

On the bright side I was the big sister and could boss him around, make him play school, and best of all I could read to him. I loved reading out loud. I loved sharing my favorite books.

Nancy 8 yrs, Tom 3.4 yr. Gramps wrote I was the
image of my mother.

Tom had vision issues just as I did as a girl, and it made him clumsy, too. We were watching Babes in Toyland on television, Tom sitting on the piano stool, when he fell off and hit his head. He had to be taken to the hospital for stitches. I was not blamed, but I felt guilty. I was the big sister and should have been watching out for him.

Nancy and Tom

Aunt Alice and Uncle Kenny lived in the upstairs apartment where I lived as a little girl before my family moved into the downstairs apartment. My cousin David was born in 1958 and Beverly in
1961.

Tom, David Ennis, and me. The pool was under the willow tree. Rosemont Ave is in
 the background. I remember I had come home from Day Camp on this day in 1960.

David and Beverly, Easter. Note Mom's starched frilly table doily.
Don't ask about the plant in the bird cage.
I have not a clue.

Cousin Beverly and I. Easter.

I loved roller skating but the sidewalks were uneven and I spent summers with scabbed knees, and yes, I picked at them. My Grandmother Gochenour and Aunt Alice went roller skating in Tonawanda**** and started taking me along. It took a while to learn how to stop while roller skating, but I loved it, especially when everyone gathered in a circle to do The Hokey Pokey.

Dad bought me a new Schwinn two wheel bicycle; the store was just next door, behind the Texaco gas station (which was next to my family's Ashland gas station on Military Rd.) It was blue and had streamers. I loved riding the bike. One time I was riding down a street several blocks away and saw a girl in her yard. We talked and made friends. I believe her name was Nancy Pritchard.

Grandma Gochenour bowled and took me along to watch. She went to the bowling alley across the street at Military and Ensminger Roads, built after the Ensminger house was burned down by the fire department. One time I met a boy who was also with his grandmother. He talked my ear off about baseball. I didn't know, or care, about baseball. I sat and listened politely, of course.

Mom, Me, Dad, Tom and Grandma Ramer. Easter.

Mom redecorated the house. The dark wood wainscot was painted turquoise, the wall paper was light brown, white, and turquoise. Dad made wood valances for the windows. Mom bought Colonial style furniture. I still have the hutch!

Mom's new furniture. 

Mom gave me that brown chair in 1972. The upholstery was still good.

 

I still have this hutch!

We went to Putt's farm in the spring in fall, went on group picnics with the guys from the garage, boated and fished on the Niagara River, took trips to Watkins Glen. It was a rich life. I loved the smell of mowed grass, the sight of the gas flame burning at the gas works along the Niagara River which I could see from my window, my school, my family.

Then my dad decided running a garage was strenuous, that we needed health insurance for Mom's health issues, and that Detroit was the answer. We would move near my Ramer grandparents and Dad would find work in the auto industry. It was spring, 1963.

* If you want to know the real important things that happened in 1959 check:
 http://www.onthisday.com/events/date/1959

** I dont recall knowing that Philip was Nancy's father's name.

*** A reader reminded me the piano teacher's name was Mrs. Cota.

****The same reader reminded me it was the Rainbow skating rink.

The Mortifications by Derek Palacio

In 1980, in response to a failing economy, Fidel Castro announced that Cubans were free to leave Cuba through the Mariel port. The Mariel Boatlift transported 125,000 Cubans in 1,700 boats.

Derek Palacio's first novel The Mortifications tells the story of Soledad Encarnacion, wife to a Cuban rebel, who decided to take her twin children Ulises and Isabel on the boatlift to America for a new life. They settle in Connecticut and seem to be adjusting to their new lives, but internally they drift apart into separate prisons, never really free of Cuba or the man they left behind, father and husband Uxbal.

"Know this above all: fate is family, and family is fate."

Uxbel wanted to change the world. Soledad's shorthand records it. Isabel takes a vow of silence to prevent altering what must be, her voice poison. Ulises delves into words, the Classics, especially Aeschylus' The Oresteia, finding catharsis and ecstasy. Each follows a lonely path until recalled to Cuba, where the family is finally reunited.

"Don't forget that forgetting is a sin."

The characters struggle with their inner demons, working out their own salvation.

The novel grapples with so many ideas and character insights I had to stop reading and think. Do words change lives, and can silence protect us? What is home? What do we owe our children, our parents, what promises must be kept? What is the nature of God, of Jesus, of faith? How should we die? How should we live? How should we love each other, ourselves?

Palacio has written an amazing first novel, taking readers on a journey, revealing how life can batter and burnish the human heart until it shines.

*****

Thinking Deeper...

Catholic symbolism permeates the novel.

There is meaning behind the character's names:

• Encarnacion, incarnation in English, refers the manifestation of God in human form as Jesus Christ through the Virgin Birth. 
• Ulises, Ulysses in Latin or Odysseus in Greek, is the hero of Homer's The Odysseus, the poem about the Trojan War and the long journey home.
•  Isabel shares a name, as Ulises learns, with the wife of the conquistador Hernando de Soto, who became the first female governor of Cuba during her husband's absence. 
• Soledad is Spanish for solitude, a name given to Mary the mother of Jesus.

The tradition of mortification of the flesh is alien to me as I am from a Protestant heritage. I thought that understanding it better would shed light on the novel.

Humans live in a fallen state of grace; that is Adam decided to do what he desired instead of following God's command. Ever since, humans have needed to control their desires to be a child of God.

Self-denial is the killing of human desire which controls our emotions and enslaves us. Sometimes we use self-abuse to purge our human desire, such as wearing hair shirts or flagellation. Mortification ('mort' means death) is a way to controlling our desire, a discipline that brings freedom.

In Galatians 5 Paul writes that "the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealous, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like."

The Encarnacion family become mired by these fleshy addictions. Uxbal is an alcoholic, a factionalist who dissents against Castro's government. Soeldad has a relationship with a man not her husband, but who loves her; she loves the Uxbal she sees in Willems. As cancer ruins her body, Soledad insists on abusive sex. Isabel and Ulisesalso use sex for their own purposes, and they share jealousy over the other's parental relationships.

Isabel had listened to Uxbal's singular religious concepts, and inspired by her experience caring for the dying, decides to enter the convent.  She is asked to teach the deaf through sign language. Returning to Cuba, she plots to create her own fatherless child who might life a life unencumbered by the sins of a family. Ulises ends up choosing, Christ-like, to substitute for his father's sins.

I will be puzzling over this novel for a while.

I received a free book through a Twitter giveaway. It in no way impacts or influences my review.

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