Monthly Archives: February 2021

WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD

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We have been searching for our perfect dream house for almost a year. It’s a tight real estate market. The interest rate is low at 2.6, and every house that comes up for sale is snapped up in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. That’s a weird expression, isn’t it? I guess it means that it happens quickly, but still a weird comparison.

Free Spirits Marie & Stan

We find a house on a real estate website, and by the time we contact the realtor, it has already been sold. Or the realtor contacts us, and we go to see a house, and it is a total do-over or, in some cases, knock it down and start over from scratch.

I was on my way to work when I had to take a detour from my regular route because of a car accident. It was really off the beaten path. As I drive down the road, I notice that there’s a For Sale sign on the house to my right. It was a three-story Georgian Colonial House. Perfect, I think to myself. I pull over to the side of the road and call my realtor. Strike while the iron is hot and all that. Her answer machine picks up, so I leave her a message. “Hello Stella, this is Karen Wilcox. I just found a house that’s for sale on my way to work. I’m going to text you the address. Could you please, please check it out. If it’s anywhere near our price point, would you set up an appointment for James and me to see it asap? Thanks, so much. Karen.

I text her the address and the name of the realtor and realty company that listed it. I’m really stoked. I pray that no one will buy it from under us. I’m afraid to get my hopes up again only to have them dashed. And then I recall my mother’s old saying, To live without hope is to cease to live. So, I’m going to keep my fingers crossed until I hear from Stella.

I have a busy day at work and don’t even have time to check my personal texts or emails. And I didn’t even think about the house I saw for sale until I was on my way home. And I realize that I didn’t have to take the detour that I took that morning. When I saw that house, I want it so badly.

As I pull into our apartment complex’s parking lot, I‘m again reminded of how much I want to have my own house, driveway, and yard with a garden. We’ve been living in this apartment for almost ten years. I cannot even think about living here another five years. I pull into my parking space and turn off the car and grab my purse and briefcase.

Today is one of the days that I have to cook. I am trying to think of what I can cook for dinner. I climb up the three flights to our apartment and unlock the door. I can hear Bowtie, our Tuxedo cat purring on the other side of the door. I open the door, and he rubs against my legs.

“Hi Bowtie, hi Bowtie. Come on, let’s go in, and I’ll get you something to eat.” I pull off my jacket and hang it in the coat closet. I drop my briefcase on the desk and sigh, knowing I have at least two hours of work to do tonight after I cook dinner. I regret I didn’t put something in the crockpot to cook before I left this morning.

I have about forty-five minutes before James gets home. And then another half hour because he likes to decompress for about a half-hour before dinner. So, I have time to put some brown rice in the rice cooker with some veggies. And I can defrost some fish fillets and bread and cook them in the toaster oven. I start the rice cooker and go in and take a quick shower.

What a long day it has been. It feels like days ago since I left for work. And that reminds me of the house I saw for sale this morning. After I jump out of the shower, I check my text messages and, sure enough, I heard from Stella. She set up an appointment for first thing Saturday morning for us to view the Georgian House. God, I hope it doesn’t get sold before Saturday. That’s how cutthroat this market is.

James arrives home; he looks exhausted. His job is an hour away, and he has to drive through a great deal of traffic on an expressway to get to and from work. I think that is what bothers him the most. I have to admit that the driving won’t get any better if we live in the suburbs. But at least he’ll be coming home to our own home and not a one-bedroom apartment with a tiny kitchen and one bathroom.

If we live in a neighborhood, we could go out for a walk when the weather is nice and see people and families, not just people jumping in and out of their vehicles and dashing up to their apartments in a rush.

I call James into the dining room. The dining room is a table and two chairs next to the stairway. The door to our apartment is at the bottom of the steps. You wouldn’t believe how much we pay to rent this place and it isn’t even maintained. It hasn’t been painted or the carpets cleaned, let alone replace. I’m so over living here. The worst part is there isn’t even any green space, just a parking lot, nothing more.

After James takes a seat and I bring the dinner to the table, James says, “dinner looks, great honey. Thanks so much. Anything new at work today?”

“No same old, same old. I had to bring about two hours of work home with me. My deadline is tomorrow. Oh, but there is some good news. This will cheer you up. Today on the way to work, I had to take a detour off my regular route because they worked on the road. And guess what?”

“I don’t know, why don’t you just tell me? I don’t think I have the energy for any guessing games.”

“Oh wow, you are exhausted. I saw this beautiful house for sale, a Georgian Colonial house. And I contacted our realtor, and it’s still for sale. And we have an appointment to meet her there on Saturday at ten 0’clock. Can you believe it?”

“Really, you’re not just yanking my chain, are you?”
“No, of course not. It is a two-story brick house. Beautiful windows, great entranceway. It has a small garden in the front with a brick wall on the property line. I couldn’t find it on the internet, so I don’t know what the inside of the house looks like. But by the size of the house at least three bedrooms, two baths. Can you believe it?”

“No, it’s hard to believe; I hate to get my hopes up and then be disappointed again. But I will try to remain optimistic.”

“Me too. I can’t wait to see it. I know I will love it. I just have this feeling that this is going to be our house.”

“Almost too good to be true, but I will keep my fingers, and my toes crossed if that will help. After all these months, it didn’t seem like it would happen.

“Oh, I almost forgot there are several chimneys, so I’m certain it has at least two, maybe more fireplaces. Can you imagine us sitting in the living room on a cold, winter’s night roasting marshmallows or making popcorn over the fireplace?”

“It sounds like heaven. What was the neighborhood like?”

“You know James; I didn’t even look at the neighborhood. I was so enthralled by the house. And that it’s perfect and in our price range. Can you believe it?”

“It’s hard to believe Karen; I can’t wait to see it either. Let’s think positive thoughts.”

It was an unbelievably busy and stressful week at work. I’m so looking forward to seeing the house on Saturday. I’ve had my fingers crossed for so long I can hardly move them. I haven’t heard from our realtor, and I take that as a good sign. But somewhere in the back of my mind,  I have this fear that the house must have some fatal flaw, or it would have sold long ago. I know I’m pessimistic. It’s hard not to be. We have been disappointed so many times.

On the short drive to see the house, I talk non-stop about nothing just to keep myself distracted from thinking the worse, that we will drive up and see an Under Contract sign. Or that Stella will call at the last moment and cancel. But none of that happens, and James and I arrive in front of the Georgian property without incident. I scan the whole front yard and don’t see a Sold or Under Contract sign, and I sigh in relief.

James puts the parking brake on but leaves the heat running because Stella hasn’t arrived yet. Just as I’m thinking, Where’s Stella? Where’s Stella? She pulls up behind us. She gets out of her car at the same time as we do. “Good morning, Karen and James; how are you two on this fine day?”

We laugh because this is the same thing. Stella says every time we see her. If there were a snow blizzard, she would say the same thing. She is an optimistic person. Probably one of the things I love about her the most. “We’re fine, Stella, we are really excited about seeing the house. Did you find out any information about it or its owners?”

“Well, I can tell you this the owners were elderly and passed away within two months of each other, and the house has been empty for over a year. The realtor I spoke to said it’s a beautiful house, well-maintained with no real problems. But for some unknown reason, no one has made an offer on it. Shall we go inside, or do you want to take a walk around the property first?”

“Let’s go inside first, shall we. I’m so excited about seeing it. I couldn’t sleep all night.”

“Alright, let’s do that. Oh, one other thing. When the owners passed away, there were no living relatives nearby to clean out the house. So, whoever purchases the house can keep all the furniture or sell it if that’s what they choose to do. But I imagine that the house needs to be cleaned from top to bottom since it has been empty. Let’s go in, shall we?”

“Do you have any idea why the house hasn’t been sold? Does it need a new roof or some other expensive repair done?”

“Not that I have heard from the realtor I spoke to. But if you decide to make a bid on it, it would certainly make sense to have an inspector come and look over the entire property from top to bottom. It would be well worth the expense, Karen. I can give the name of someone I worked with before; however, if you know someone, that’s fine. Let’s go, shall we?”

As we walk toward the house, I fell more in love with it. The outside of the house is pristine, aside from the fact that the grass hadn’t been cut in a long time. And the landscaping is overgrown. As we step up onto the front porch, Stella punches the key code into the lockbox and pushes the door open.

It has a large entryway in ceramic tile. I can see that underneath the dust and dirt is a work of art. “Wow, look at this floor; it must be the original flooring. Magnificent.” To the right of the entryway is the living room with Victorian furniture and a brick fireplace. And beyond that are double doors into a dining room that looks like it could seat ten people. I walk through the double doors, and I can see that the furniture is antique. It wasn’t in pristine shape but still wonderful. The upholstered cushions on the chairs will need to be replaced. The china cabinet still had china inside of it.

Beyond the kitchen is a door. I step through it, and there is a small pantry and a kitchen. The kitchen has appliances that appear to be from the 1950s. They will have to be replaced as well. But still, it was charming and welcoming. “Oh, James, come look at the kitchen.”

As I look at the kitchen, I glanced out the back door windows. I noticed that the backyard is small, but there is a large two-car garage and a small pond with a waterfall. I think to myself, good less yard work to do. “Hey James, there’s a two-car garage and a small pond out here.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, come have a look. Let’s go outside and see if there are any fish in there.”

As James comes into the kitchen, he looks all around and says, “will you look at this kitchen. It feels like we just stepped into the 1950s; everything is hot pink and turquoise. And look at this stove, a double oven above the stovetop, and you have to pull out the range. It’s hidden. Wow, can you believe it? I wonder if it still works. The electricity is turned on.

We step out the back door and realize that the back steps are a death trap. Every time we took a step, the bricks would move under our feet and fall to the step below. “Woah, we better look back here after we are through looking at the rest of the house. These steps aren’t safe to walk on.”

We walk back through the kitchen and the living room and up the stairs to the second floor. There are three large bedrooms up there and two full baths. As we came down the steps, we stand in the living room and look around. “you know James, I would want to buy this house for the living room alone. The beautiful fireplace, the built-in bookshelves, the walk-in closet, and all this awesome antique furniture.”

“Me, too, but still. I think we have to get an engineer here to look the place over. And make sure there aren’t any major repairs that have to be made that we don’t have the money to repair or replace.

“Karen, let’s take a look around the grounds and then, on the way home talking about whether we want to make an offer. We can tell Sheila the offer is contingent on what the engineer says about the house, of course.”

“I agree, James. This is going to be our house. I know it is. I’m in love with it already.”

“I have to admit I love it too, Karen.”

The engineer comes two days later and inspects the property from the roof all the way down to the basement. There are some minor repairs but no big issues. Our realtor, Sheila, made our offer, and the sellers accept it almost immediately. We are somewhat surprised that they didn’t make a counteroffer. But, didn’t think about it too much. I want that house so badly. When I receive the call from Sheila, I immediately call James and give him the good news.

A month to the day after we made our offer, we went to settlement. We go out to lunch to celebrate the purchase of our first home. The engineer found no immediate problems. The basement is dry; however, they did mention that the roof would probably have to be replaced in the next ten years or so. We decide that by then, we would have replenished our savings and be able to afford it. Plus, we both expected pay increases in the next year.

After lunch, about ten minutes after we arrive at our new house, our movers arrived with our belongings. I was busy cleaning and know I would be busy cleaning for the next week or so. All the floors were the original hardwood and hadn’t be cleaned or waxed in a decade. We worked all that day and were just finishing up when the doorbell rings.

I see the top of the heads of several people in the windows on the front door. And I thought, who could that be? We don’t know anyone in the neighborhood yet. I yelled up the steps.” I’ll get it, James. I run my fingers through my hair and hope I don’t have any dirt or cobwebs on my face. I put a smile on my face and pull open the front door. I’m about to say, Hello, how are you when I saw my new neighbors standing there. There was a middle-aged woman, a teenage girl, and a middle-aged fit-looking man.

I open the door and stand there transfixed by surprise, unable to utter a single word. Because standing before me are three people completely nude, naked, without any clothing of any sort, naked as Jaybirds, naked as the day they were born.

They smiled in unison and said, “Hello.”, and then the woman says, “we’re the Henderson Family. We live two houses down on this side of the street. We just wanted to be the first people to welcome you to our neighborhood. We were so afraid no one was going to buy this beautiful home. We knew it would be hard to sell because of our community’s nature, but we didn’t think it would take as long as it did.

She reaches out her hand to shake mine. I hesitate for a moment since I had never shaken a naked woman’s hand before. “Hello, and thank you. What may I ask is the nature of the community?”

She looks at me as if I must have lost my mind or something. And she says, “Well, of course, I was referring to the fact that we are Naturalist, or perhaps nudist is a term you would recognize?”

My husband and I look at each other with our mouths open and then snap them shut. We look at them. Both of us keep our eyes averted. And the woman says, “Harry, I don’t think they knew.” And they all burst out laughing. And then she says, but don’t worry, it’s not a requirement. We are open-minded, you don’t have to participate, but you have to accept and not judge our community standards. As we will be about your lifestyle.”
I look at James, and he looks at me, and he says, “of course, we knew. Thank you all for coming by. We appreciated your warm welcome, and then he takes a step backward.

I suppose he’s fearful that they might start hugging us. I did the same.

Then the woman who was doing all the talking says, “oh, forgetful me. I forgot to introduce ourselves. I’m Jillian, and this is my husband, William, and my daughter, Sandy. We’re so looking forward to getting to know you all. Oh, I brought you a basket of fruit as a welcome. I hope you like tropical fruit.”

“Oh, we do, thanks again. And I forgot to introduce ourselves as well; I’m Karen, and this is my husband, James Conway, and down there at your feet is our cat, Bowtie, she’s very friendly. We hope to see more of you all in the future.” And that’s when I started laughing and couldn’t stop myself. Talk about putting your foot in your mouth. They all started laughing and then so did we. They thanked us and went on their way. We backed into our front door and sat down on the floor. “Well, that was a surprise,” says James. And we laugh until we ran out of breath.

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THE DAY WILL COME

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Fortune Teller from Sheroes Entertainment.com

Once every couple of years, my siblings and I get together, and we hire a psychic to predict our futures. I know it sounds ridiculous. I’m a skeptic of the group, but still, I go along with them every time. We rarely get together, so I prefer to think of it as a family outing.

And however slim, there’s a chance we might actually find a real psychic to tell us our futures. My sisters truly believe if they find the “right psychic,” they will hear whatever it is that they need to hear.

Personally, I would like to hear good news for once, even if it is fictitious. The psychics in the past have told me I will develop a nerve issue and even that I will get Lupus. Thank god those two things never came to pass. They told me my daughter would eventually decide to have children and have twins, a  boy and a girl. My daughter is now past childbearing years and never wanted children. So, I take everything they say with a grain of salt.

Not that I believe in a god any more than I believe in psychics. But I do understand why people want to believe in god. It’s reassuring to believe that there’s this Supreme Being up there watching over us and keeping us safe. And he’s offering us an eternity of happiness after we pass away and that we will see all our loved ones that have passed again.

I do not try to talk anyone out of their beliefs because what is the point? For one, they won’t believe me, and two, who am I to take away their hope? Even if it is false hope.

The day finally arrives when we’re all going to see the psychic. It’s being held at my oldest sister Irene’s house in her living room. The rest of us sit in the kitchen, awaiting our turn. And even though I do not doubt she is a fraud, I know that no one has psychic ability. I still sit there waiting my turn to talk to her somewhat anxiously. And in addition to that, I believe if anyone were going to have any psychic ability, it would be me. Yes, I know that is a ridiculous statement to make,  considering I have said there are no “psychics.”  But even I have my moments of being illogical.

I’m a  sensitive person. My feelings are easily hurt. In addition, I am sensitive to how other people are “feeling” even if they don’t say anything. I can tell when people are not truthful. Yes, I’m able to read body language,  but it’s  I feel what they’re feeling. That is the ability I think these psychics have, the ability to sense what others are feeling. They don’t have the ability to foresee the future. And I think people give “psychic” hints by the questions they ask. And if all the participants are related, they will tell the psychic things, and she or he can put all this information together and make predictions, not unlike creating a quilt from different patches.

The psychic arrives as we all patiently sit in Irene’s kitchen. We share pleasantries and drink coffee or tea and eat homemade cake. It’s my favorite yellow cake with white icing and shredded coconut. I could eat a couple more pieces, but I stop at one.

She walks gracefully into the living room. It almost seems like she is floating. She’s an attractive thirty-something. Her hair is long and wavy, halfway down her back, and light brown with blond highlights. She has the palest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. It’s hard not to stare at her. Her eyes are mesmerizing. And her smile could light up the darkest room. She stands in the middle of the living room and introduces herself, “Good afternoon, my name is Aislee.  I’m from County Down Patrick in Northern Ireland. I’m from a family with a history of psychics going back over hundreds of years. A gift that was inherited from my great, great, great, great grandmother. All the women in my family have this gift.

She has a beautiful voice with an Irish lilt to it. It’s wonderful to hear. I could listen to her all day even if everything she said were full of malarky, as my mother used to say. She scans the room and makes eye contact with each one of us. I have the urge to look away from her, irrationally feeling she might look deep into my psyche and read my deepest thoughts. I know I’m being illogical, given the fact that I don’t believe in psychics. She is convinced I give her that.

My older sister, Irene, is the first person she “reads.” All of us bring paper and a pen with us to write down her “predictions.” We never discuss what the “psychic says until after she leaves, and not everyone wants to tell others what was told to them. I have recorded all the predictions told to me over the years. And not one of them came true. I can’t speak to my sister’s experiences.

I’m the last one to go into the living room to sit for the reading. I say, “Hello.” And she says, “Good afternoon, Kathleen. How are you feeling today?” No, she didn’t miraculously know my name. She has a list of our names. And since I was the last one, it was just a matter of elimination of who she already spoke to.

“I’m fine, thanks for asking.”

“So, Kathleen, you’re the youngest in the family?” Again, she knew that ahead of time.

“Yes, yes, I am.”

“Do you have any issues that you would like to ask about or anyone who has passed over that you would like to ask a question?”

I stare at her for a moment and wonder what I should ask her. I know it seems disingenuous to speak to these mediums or psychics, anticipating that everything they do or say is some trick. Maybe I want them to have this ability on some level. Maybe, I would like to know the future. I have many experiences in the past that could have turned out better if I had known in advance how I could avoid them or mitigate the problem before it happened.

“Well, I don’t know if you can answer this question,  but I often think about my older sibling that disappeared when I was relatively young. Can you tell me what happened to her? Do you know if she is still alive somewhere? Or if she suffered before she died?

Aislee closes her eyes and becomes quiet, almost too quiet. It seems as if she has gone to sleep. And after a couple of minutes, she opens up her eyes as if she’s waking up from a dream. You know when you begin to wake up from an afternoon nap. And you’re not sure where you are or what day it is, like that. She keeps blinking her eyes as if the light is too bright. And then her eyes open really wide as if she’s surprised by something unexpected.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes, but I have something to tell you. Your sister, Carol,  ran away from home with some boy. When she was in high school, she was no longer alive now,  but she passed away recently from an illness of some kind. I’m sorry. That’s all I can tell you right now.”

“You’re kidding? Did any one of my sisters tell you her name? Tell me the truth.”

“No, no one told me her name.”

“Can you tell me where she was living after she ran away? Or who she ran away with? Was she still with the same person until she passed away?”

“No, she was alone when she passed away. That’s all I can tell you right now. Maybe I will be able to tell you something more at another time.”

“Alright, I guess that’s all for now. I walk out of the room in shock. And when I return to the kitchen, I grab a glass and fill it with cold water from the tap and gulp it down. I rinse the glass out, walk over to the kitchen table and flop down in the nearest seat.

My sister, Terri, stares at me for a moment and says, “You look like you saw a ghost. What happened?”

“I’m not ready to talk about it right now.”

“OK, but now I’m really curious.  I thought you didn’t believe in psychics. What have you so spooked?”

“I said, I don’t want to talk about it right now. I have to think about it for a while. I know there has to be some trick to it.”

After Aislee left, my sisters and I sat at the kitchen table. I still hadn’t said anything about what Aislee said to me. And then my sister, Irene, said, “Spill Kathleen, what did she say to you? You’re not leaving here until you do. And in unison,  my sisters said, “spill.”

“OK, OK. Aisling asked me if there were any questions I wanted to ask or anyone I wanted to contact that had passed. And I said no, but I would like to know what happened to my older sister, who disappeared when she was a teenager. We never heard from her again. And then I asked if she was still alive. Aisling said, your sister Carol ran away from home with a boy. But she’s no longer alive. She passed away recently from an illness. And then I point-blank asked her how she knew my missing sister’s name. I asked her if one of you had talked about her. And she said, no.”

“She also said it was possible she would be able to tell me more sometime in the future. And now I want to know if any of you told her about Carol, or did any of you even mention Carol’s name?”

They all sit at the kitchen table with their mouths hanging open and say in unison, “I didn’t mention Carol or another sister.”

“Irene, you are the oldest. Do you remember anything about Carol’s disappearance? Or do you remember anything that our parents believed happened to her?”

“Honestly, Kathleen,  I don’t remember many details. That was a long time ago”, said Irene. And Mom and Dad didn’t talk to any of us about it. I do remember Dad seemed angry for a long time, and Mom cried and cried. Even years later,  I recall hearing her cry in their room at night. After a year or so, neither of them mentioned the disappearance or Carol at all, for that matter. I don’t think either one of them ever got over it. That’s probably why they were so overprotective and controlling of all of us when we were teenagers.

How about you guys? Kathleen looks at her remaining sister. Terri looked at Kathleen and said, “No, I don’t really remember much at all. Maybe I blanked it out. And you’re right. Kathleen, Mom, and Dad were never the same again. And they were extremely controlling with us as we got older.”

“I’d like to know how come the three of us never talked about this before. Did either of you ever ask the other psychics about Carol?”

Both Irene and Terri shook their heads no.

“Wow, that is really weird. We all acted like Carol never existed. We are really messed up. And I think we started this psychic thing because of Carol. At some subconscious level, we all wanted to know what happened to her. But none of us said it out loud.

“But at the time, did you two talk about it at all? Were the police involved, was her disappearance publicized? Did the neighbors or the townspeople look for her at all?”

“Honestly, the only thing I remember is one night Carol didn’t come home, but I didn’t hear about it until sometime the next day. Which was a Saturday, and I used to sleep- in since it wasn’t a school day. I heard a loud knocking at the front door, and then Mom and Dad let them in, and I heard them talking to the person at the door. I got up and looked down the steps, and there was a cop and a guy in a suit standing in the vestibule. I tried to hear what they were saying, but it was kind of muffled. And then I heard what sounded like Mom crying, and Dad sounded angry. “

“What about you, Terri?” I had my radio on pretty loud, and I didn’t hear anything. When the cops left, one of them slammed the door hard, and that’s when I came down to find out what was going on. Mom and Dad looked really upset., Mom was crying. Irene was in there with them,  and tears were running down her face. She looked over at me, and I started crying even though I didn’t know what was going on.”

“Yeah, I remember that because that’s when Dad said Carol didn’t come home last night. We called her boyfriend’s house, and he didn’t come home either. I guess they ran off together. We called all of Carol’s friends, and they all said they didn’t see them last night and don’t know anything that could help us. That’s when we called the police. The police just told us that they would put an All-Points Bulletin out. And they suggested we start posting pictures of Carol around town to see if anyone had talked to her or her boyfriend and might know where they planned to go. I guess the police are going over to the boy’s house now to talk to the parents.”

Mom and Dad kept calling the police every couple of weeks, but the police never found them, Nor did they have any idea where they went. The officer contacted all the police in the state, and then later, the FBI got involved, but as far as I know, they never found any trace of them.

We didn’t talk about it anymore because Mom got so upset. And Dad would be angry for days when we did. So, after a while, we all stop talking about Carol. As if she never existed. Every once in a while, one of the kids at school would say, “Hey, did you ever hear from Carol?” We never did, and after a few years, no one asked anymore.

“So, life just went on as if Carol never existed. And now we hear from Aislee that up until recently, Carol was alive. Why the hell wouldn’t she contact us? What happened to her? I can’t believe this. On the other hand, I’m glad I finally talked to you guys about it. Sometimes I used to think Carol was a figment of my imagination since no one ever talked about her. Even when Mom and Dad grew old, they never mentioned her. And I couldn’t find any pictures of Carol in our photo album.”

“Oh, Dad got rid of all the pictures because Mom would spend whole days staring at the pictures of Carol and crying. After Dad died five years ago, when I went through his personal items, I found a picture of you, me, Irene, and Carol when we were young in Dad’s wallet. I still have it.”

“You have it. Do you have it with you?”

“Yes, it’s in my wallet in my purse. Hold on; I’ll go get it.”

“Here, Kathleen, here it is. That’s Carol holding you in her lap.”

I took one look, and tears started streaming down my face. “Yes, yes, that’s her. She looked just like Mom. Then we all started crying and hugging each other. Kathleen said, you know, we could post this picture on the internet and see if anyone recognizes her. I don’t know how helpful it would be since she was just a kid in this picture. I could post a picture with the story of her disappearance and see if anyone knew her. It couldn’t hurt.”

“You know, it feels better to talk about Carol out loud. I thought of her so much over the years. And I wondered what happened to her. Why didn’t she try and contact any of us in all these years since she only died recently? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I agree, Terri. It doesn’t make sense. But we were all really young back then, and we didn’t really know what was going on with her. Maybe she got pregnant or something, or she was doing drugs. Let’s try and see if we can find someone that might have to know her. And you know what else? I bet some of her old high school friends might have pictures of her in high school, and then we can post them. What do you say?”

“I say, let’s go for it. Tomorrow I will call the High School office and see if they have records going that far back and get a list of the kids in her class. And then I’ll check out the internet and see if any of them are still living in the area or maybe some of their relatives still live in town, and I can talk to them. What do you say?”

“Let’s go for it, Kathleen, do it. I’ll help. Once you get the list, I’ll take half and start making calls.”

“Hey, me too, you guys, we’ll all do it.”

And that is how we began our search for our long-lost sister, and in the end, that was what brought us all together more than once a year. We realize that we were a family, and we needed one another through thick and thin. So, our sister, Carol, was the reason we are now a more loving and caring family.

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BOOMER

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Twins Susie on the left & Karen on the right

“Yeah, I have to confess I was born a long time ago. No, not in the caveman days, as you seem to think. But, in the 1950s. You don’t have to bug your eyes out like that. You are young, so young that your Wisdom Teeth haven’t fully erupted yet. Why don’t you sit down and let me tell you a story, and maybe you can come to a better understanding of why people my age have a different perspective than your generation does.”

Many people have described my generation’s childhood as idyllic. And in some ways, it was idyllic. That is if you only scratch the surface. And secondly, even though most middle and working-class people lived in similar homes, most kids attended public school. It doesn’t mean that everyone’s childhood was perfect. Every family was different than you might realize.

I grew up in the small town of Maple Shade. It could have been any small town in America. But mine was in New Jersey on the other side of the Ben Franklin Bridge from Philadelphia. Most families were large. There were six children in my family. Why you may ask would anyone want six kids? There was a reason for that, lack of adequate birth control. And the fact that many families were either Irish or Italian and therefore Catholic. And the Catholic church put the onus on birth control.

In other words, if you were Catholic, you were forbidden to use artificial means of birth control, including condoms. They did allow the rhythm method of birth control that meant keeping track of when the woman ovulates. This was not a guarantee of unwanted or unplanned pregnancies. As I have explained, many families were large. I had friends who had fourteen siblings in their families. When the birth control pill was first made available, only married women were allowed to get it with their husbands. Doctors would not prescribe birth control to single women.

I recall when I was about fourteen or fifteen years old, my mother confided to me that when she was younger, she envied women in town who only had two children. I can remember being somewhat taken aback by her statement since I was number six in our family. It made me feel like she thought I was a burden that she wished she hadn’t had. I don’t think she meant to hurt my feelings. She was expressing how she felt being a mother of a large family. Still, her statement hurt me.

My mother was a kind and caring person. She put all her energy into being a parent and wife, which left precious little for herself. I rarely saw her sit down. In fact, even at meals, if she took the time to sit down and eat with us. She would get up and down, wait on everyone, and clean the table off and wash the dishes. She never asked for help, and none was offered. She wasn’t a great cook, but she was a great baker of cakes and cookies. Almost all the meat was fried except for roasts, which we had once a week on Sundays. She fried the meat in the bacon fat leftover from the bacon she fried on Sunday mornings.

The rest of the time she spent cleaning the house, endless washing of clothes, and ironing. I remember coming home from school, and she would be standing at the ironing board ironing the seemingly bottomless basket of clothes and sheets. There was no wash and wear clothes back then.

My mother was a quiet woman; she would listen while I recounted my school day. She undoubtedly grew tired of my complaints of how I hated schools and the nuns that taught me. Since from my perspective, they were mean spirited. In reality, they were overcrowded with fifty or sixty students in each classroom. Whenever I had a  difficult day and had been punished for one reason or another, my mother would offer to go up to school and talk to the nun in question. That would put an end to my complaints for a while. Since I was terrified at the thought, she might tell the nuns what I had said. And I believed they would go to even more extraordinary lengths to punish me. I had already been locked in the boiler room all day, had my head banged hard on the blackboard, told I was stupid daily. And compared unfavorably to my sister.

Now you may think this was just because I attended a private school. But no, corporal

high school graduation picture

Susan Culver- high school graduation picture

punishment was the norm in all schools in those days. And so was verbal abuse.

“Oh, you want to know if I have any good memories. Yes, plenty. Because my mother and most mothers back then were so overworked, they didn’t have time to micromanage their children. We were often told to “go outside and make sure you are home on time for lunch or dinner.”

And the fact is, neither my father nor my mother ever questioned what I was doing or where I went. If my mother said, what did you do today?” I would answer, “I was out riding my bike with my friends.” And no further questions were asked. Even if I had been gone for five or six hours, I guess it was all a part of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell mindset of their generation.

And believe me, they should have asked, because my friends and I would ride all over the place on our bikes. Sometimes several towns away. We used to sneak into swimming pools at the hotels on route 73, which were only a fifteen-minute bike ride from my house. I used to like to take long walks by myself and often talk to people I didn’t know. If someone asks me if I would like to come in and have a cookie, I would say,” Sure, I love cookies.” And off I would go with strangers. Luckily, no one ever hurt me. My parents never ask what were you doing all day? If we came back alive, then all was good in their minds.

There was no stranger- danger back then, no fingerprinting; on the other hand, the schools did have a bike safety lesson, so we all knew we were supposed to ride our bikes on the right-hand lane. So, there was that; we were completely unprepared.

And corporal punishment wasn’t off the table if you got into any terrible trouble, like talking back to the teachers or your father. Suppose you didn’t have a desire to live longer. Talk back to your father, and even I never did that. Well, I did talk under my breath, but my father was partially deaf and didn’t hear me.

We weren’t given an allowance, so if you wanted to buy anything, you had to become an entrepreneur at an early age. I started babysitting when I was about eleven. I loved little kids, but I really didn’t have any experience since I was the youngest in my family. It was a learn on the job kind of thing.

I used to walk all over town and pick-up soda bottles. Then I would take them to the local store and turn them in for either 2 cents or 5 cents. After I got the money, I would spend it on candy at Schuck’s. It was a store that sold candy, hoagies and had a soda fountain, and had a Jute Box in a separate room, and the teenagers used to dance in there.

You could say that my generation was the first to recycles glass bottles and then spend it at local stores, which benefited everyone. Plus, we picked up the glass bottles that were left in the street.

If I didn’t spend the money on candy, I would feed my addiction to comic books. I was a die-hard enthusiast for Superheroes and Wendy the Witch, and Casper the Ghost. I used to buy them and then sneak them into the house. Before I graduated from grade school, my father found my comics stash and it was the last I ever saw of them. Of course, I never questioned him. Since I wasn’t interested in my father being angry. You didn’t want to see my father angry, believe me. It was a terrifying sight.

When it was time for me to enter high school, my parents decided to continue our Catholic School education. We had to take a test to get into the Catholic high school. There were two Catholic High Schools, Saint Mary of the Angels Academy and Holy Cross. By some miracle, I passed both tests. My parents thought an all-girl school was the best choice.  So away, I went to four years at St. Mary of the Angels Academy in Haddonfield, NJ. I wasn’t a good student as I rarely put much effort into schoolwork or homework due to being told how stupid I was since first grade by the nuns and my father. So, I thought, why bother? I won’t be able to do it anyway. I had no self-confidence at all.

People try to keep in mind if and when you have children that children believe what you tell them about themselves. If you tell your child he or she is stupid repeatedly, they believe you.

In my senior year, the Principal of St. Mary’s Sister Eileen Marie called me into her office and told me they had found a job as a dental assistant for me in a nearby town. Since I had nearly all the credits I needed to graduate; I started working part-time there until I graduated. And so, I did, and I worked there until I was twenty-one or so.

I found out that I was indeed quite competent, capable, organized, friendly, and outgoing. And the most surprising thing of all I realized that I was not stupid as just about every adult told me most of my life, but I highly intelligent. I believe Sister Eileen Marie had insight into me that even I wasn’t aware of until I started working. And also, Sister Venard taught me French for four years. She encouraged me and assured me repeatedly that I was indeed capable of learning French. And here I am some fifty years later, still able to read and write French to some degree. And for these two dear sisters who believed in me, thank you.

And so, straight out of high school, I had a full-time job that taught me many things, including a sense of responsibility, being organized, and be reliable and trustworthy. And I believe I have done just that my entire life. I have always given my all to every job to every commitment I ever made.

When my parents were in their last years, my mother developed dementia, and my father was diagnosed with lung cancer and emphysema. These were long, sad, painful days. They passed away eight months apart.

The years when my children were young, and I watched them grow and learn and hopefully taught them what they needed to know in life and left them with some happy memories that will remain with them long after I’m gone. I was fortunate to learn what intelligent and incredibly talented people they would become.

At thirty-six, I decided to go to college. I didn’t have the opportunity to do that at the traditional age out of high school. My parents didn’t have the money, and at the time, I wasn’t inclined to go to school when I graduated from high school. Then, my father believed and shared with me that it was a waste to send girls to college since they would end up just getting married and having children. This was not an unusual belief for fathers in 1969. Girls and young women were not looked at as people that really needed higher education.

I prepared a portfolio of my work and applied at three different schools: Temple University, Moore College of Art also in Philadelphia (an all-girl university and Hussian School of Art, which was at a school that concentrated on graphic arts and illustration. I was accepted into all three schools. I was offered a full scholarship for my first year at Temple and grants for some of the three years after that. I never made a better choice than going to school. It was hard because my children were relatively young, my oldest was six, and my youngest was three. I graduated in the top 10% of the entire Temple graduating class in 1991 with a double major in Graphic Arts and Art Education with a teaching certificate when I was forty-years-old.

If I had a wish, it would have been that my parents were still alive to see me graduate. I wonder what my father might have said to me on my graduation day.

After graduating from college with a teaching degree, I found out that schools were phasing out art in schools across the North East, and retiring teachers were not being replaced. I was unable to find a teaching position. It was beyond discouraging.

I decided to find a job helping children. I worked at a residential treatment program in Alloway and New Jersey called Ranch Hope. I was a houseparent responsible for kids from the inner city, Camden, NJ. The courts had adjudicated them. These were boys at risk because of poverty, drugs, gang violence, family problems, or kids who grew up in foster care tossed from one family to another. When I left, I was the Assistant Supervisor in Turrel cottage with fifteen boys ages fourteen to seventeen. Also, I took these boys to Scared Straight Programs in Federal and State Prisons to speak to prisoners and hopefully learn from their experiences.

My next position was in Camden, NJ. At Project Cope, I worked with five churches with kids at risk and matched them to mentors in the churches. I also visited all the prisons in South Jersey and Philadelphia area to talk to incarcerated parents about their at-risk children.

And now here I am thirty years later after a lifetime of hard work of being a wife, mother, student, and advocate. I’m retired, it’s true. In the last four years, I have become politically active. My husband Bob and I were volunteer Captains working in Elizabeth Warren’s Campaign for President. During the last election, I was a volunteer for the Democrats in Johnston County here in NC.

I  started this blog in 2018 and wrote one or two stories a week since that first story was published. I volunteered in the NC courts protecting at-risk children with the Guardian ad litem. And I volunteer three days a week at an animal sanctuary taking care of exotic birds for the past four years.

I look to the young people to take the torch I and the rest of my generation carried, and it’s time to pass it on. And know that I and the majority of my generation worked hard, did what we thought was right. I know we made mistakes along the way. And we tried but did not always succeed in leaving the part of the world we lived in a better place. Nothing was ever handed to us. We worked for it every day.

Please try not to judge us too harshly. Know that most of us did the best we could and forgive us for our mistakes along the way. Be aware that your generation and the ones that come after you will judge you as you are doing to us; your generation will make its share of mistakes and realize as you get older.

And here I am now in the Winter of my life and have concluded that overall, I have lived a good life with ups and downs as everyone has. There had years when things were so bad that I didn’t want to get up out of bed, but I did anyway.

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TICK-TOCK, TICK TOCK

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The last two years have by far been the most difficult years in my entire life.  I’m not trying to be overly dramatic or garner attention or sympathy. I’m just stating the truth. Yes, I’m speaking from my perspective. Who’s else would I speak from?

Home in Moorestown, NJ

First, my mother developed terminal cancer, and then my father started exhibiting memory issues that worsened over time. I’m an only child, and there was no one else to help me. In addition, I have a high-pressure job. I couldn’t just stop working and stay home with my parents. Who was going to pay the bills?

After my mother passed away, I had to make the difficult decision to place my father in an assisted living residence. I wasn’t selfish. I

was practical. The day-to-day care of my father as he declined was more than I could handle. I was exhausted. Sometimes, he would roam around the house at night and come into my room crying that he wanted to kill himself or just come in and wake me up several times a night.

I never got enough sleep. I had to bathe him and change him several times a day because he became incontinent. He had to be watched while he ate. Because sometimes he forgot to chew his food and would choke on it. You can’t possibly understand how stressful and exhausting it was unless you experienced it yourself.

I made the decision that was the best for both of us. He was safe. And caring people took care of him twenty-four hours a day. I saw him as often as possible. He passed away after six months while he was living in the nursing home. After he fell and broke his hip, I did the best I could; it wasn’t my fault that he fell.

My script is due in less than a week, and I can’t afford to be late. On the other hand, I don’t want to send in a script that will be rejected. I have a reputation to uphold. I’m running out of capital, and so I’ve been writing non-stop scripts hoping that one or all of them might get approved and get me back in the black and out of the red.

Being a writer is not an easy job, not by any means. You spend a lot of time alone. Writing is a lonely job. Then there’s the additional bugaboos, procrastination, and writer’s block.

My biggest problem is procrastination. I can find reasons to delay writing for hours, days even. After all, I’m a creative guy. I have to take Al to the park. He hasn’t been anywhere except in the backyard for a week. I need a haircut. I have to get a haircut; I’m starting to look like a hippie. I haven’t had a decent meal for a week; I go out to lunch with a friend. This takes care of loneliness and hunger at the same time, a twofer. Unfortunately, I like to have a shot or two or three when I go out to lunch. And that tends to put a dent in both my creativity and my typing.

If I’m able to get past the procrastination, the blank page can deter me for quite a while. But eventually, eventually I get an idea and type away, and before you know it, I’ve finished the script or the screenplay, the short story, or even the book.

But it doesn’t look like today is going to be one of those days. I’m staring at the laptop screen, and I find myself humming “Troubled Waters.” And then, out of the blue, there’s a loud knocking at the door. It startles me so much that I scream out, “holy shit.” And then I laugh at myself. Who do I think it is, the bogyman? Or the bill collector? No, it can’t be that no one really sends out bill collectors anymore.

Well, that’s not entirely true once last year, I fell six months behind in my car payment, and they came and towed my rental car away. I have terrible credit. I’m not entirely reliable in either paying my bills on time because of lack of funds or just plain undependable, I guess. I make good money when I work. But as I said, I have a problem with procrastination and the fear of the white page.

I hear the knocking again. It is more insistent and louder. Al starts barking in earnest and goes so far as to stand up and look towards the sound of the knocking. Al isn’t a very energetic dog. He sleeps about fifteen hours a day. But the loud knocking keeps disturbing his naptime. Finally, we both get up and head toward the front door. Al takes the lead, barking the whole way. If you ever heard a Basset Hound bark, you know it’s no joke. It can be loud and resonates through the whole house. The knocking continues.

We arrive at the front door, and I look out the glass windows on the door. I see a brown cap. He’s still knocking. I quickly unlock the door with one hand and pull it open. I hold Al by his collar with my other hand. A surly face is on the other side of the door. “I have a delivery. You have to sign for it.”

I grab the clipboard and quickly scribble my illegible signature. And then he hands me a small package. I take it and shut the door. “Asshole,” I say to the closed door.

Al and I retreat to the living room, and I sit down on the couch, and Al lies down on the area rug and falls asleep in moments. I will never understand how dogs can fall asleep in a single moment. I envy him.

I carefully open up the small package. Inside I find a key. It looks old. Like the kind of key that my grandparents had on their doors. The one that could open all the exterior doors. I think they used to call it a Skeleton Key.

The key is taped on a handwritten note. It bears the legend; this key is for the house that belongs to you now. You are the last living member of the family now. If you have received this key, it is because I am no longer among the living. There is a signature on the note, but it isn’t legible, no phone number, just an address. 2567 Crofton Way, Moorestown, New Jersey. It sounds familiar, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

“Come on, Al, let’s go have lunch, and then I will try and find out what this is all about.” Al doesn’t answer me. Al isn’t much of a talker, probably because Al is a Basset Hound.

And then the two of us head toward the kitchen. I sure could use a strong hot coffee right now. I pour dry dog food into Al’s bowl and make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Whenever I’m stressed, I eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Probably harkens back to my long-ago childhood days. I spread the peanut butter twice as thick. And I pour myself a steaming hot coffee. I’ll be the first to admit I am addicted to caffeine. Al looks up at me as if to say, any dessert?”

“No, that’s it, Al. How about I let you out in the backyard to relieve yourself.” Al looks up at me with his sad Basset eyes as if I’m asking him for a payday loan. He reluctantly heads toward the back door. I hold it open, and he goes out into the yard and is soon consumed with smelling all the smells. A Basset Hound is really all about the nose and smelling.

I pick up my phone and google the address. And Google magically comes up with the information that the address is the former home of none other than Cecile Menlo, my mother’s brother, who has apparently passed away.

Cecile Menlo, wow, now that’s a blast from the past. I scrounge up a memory of my long-ago childhood. I have to dust it off it was that old. I drink down the first cup of coffee quickly and scorch my throat. I pour a second one and sip it ever so slowly as my childhood memory comes flooding back to me.

It was in the mid-sixties I was in middle school. And that my friends were a long, long time ago. But still, those are the years of my life that I always felt I were the happiest. The endless summers with no responsibilities, swimming at the lake or my neighborhood friends above ground pools, riding my bike all over town. As long as I was home for meals on time, no one questioned my whereabouts or what I had been up to.

And then there were the summers I spent with my uncle Cecile Menlo. He lived in a house in Moorestown, NJ; it was so enormous, so over the top, it was hard to believe it was real. He had made big money as one of the original investors at RCA in Moorestown, NJ. RCA was a large facility that developed and manufactured government apparatus. And eventually became a division of RCA Government and Commercial Systems.

My uncle retired at forty, which was unheard of since most people worked until they turned sixty-five or older. Summers at his house were a kid’s dream come true. He had several pools and tennis courts and property so immense it would take hours, if not days, to see it all. He used to show movies on a screen so large that it felt like you were at the movie theater. He had horses, and I used to ride all over the property. My friends would come over, and we would play crocket or swim or hide and seek. His Fourth of July parties were out of this world. He had fireworks that could be seen all over Moorestown by everyone that lived there.

My uncle was a big influence on me as a child. He taught me self-confidence and said if I worked hard enough and long enough I could achieve anything, I set my mind to it. He was the one adult that encouraged my creativity. Everyone else thought spending most of my time writing stories was a waste of time: even my parents, but not my Uncle Cecile.

As I sit here thinking about those summers with my uncle, I wonder how I ever lost contact with him, he meant so much to me as I was growing up. Why did I drift away from him? And then I remembered that when I first achieved some fame with the first books I got published, I let go of all the people from my past and left them behind. I made new friends with the rich and famous.

I vaguely remember that my Uncle reached out to me over the years, and I never contacted him. I was too important, too busy to care about an old relative. And now here I am, all alone in a house struggling to make ends meet. Struggling because I don’t have the self-discipline to work hard and work smart like my uncle always told me to do.

And here he was, reaching out from the great beyond once more to give me yet another opportunity to do better. And to lift me out of my self-indulgence and self-pity. I have to admit to myself that I don’t deserve his help, but I need it. And this time, I decide I will do the right thing. I’m sure I don’t need a huge house and property. But I could sell the house pay my bills, get back on my feet. And then invest whatever money is left to help kids like I was. Kids who needed someone to care about them and mentor them and encourage them to realize that they too have what it takes to make something of themselves when everyone and everything around them says differently.

I pick up the phone and call the lawyer whose name and number are on the letter I received. “Hello, could I speak to Taylor Brown. My name is Johnathan Cummings. I received a letter and key this morning stating that I was the sole beneficiary of a house that once belonged to my Uncle Cecile Menlo in Moorestown, New Jersey. Would you possibly have time to speak to me in the next couple of days about this inheritance?”

“Tomorrow at one o’clock would be perfect, thank you. I will see you then.” I hear Al scratching and howling at the door, and I go over and let him in. He rubs his neck against my leg. He does this to put his scent on me. So, all the other dogs know I belong to him. But to tell you the truth, Al is my best friend. “Al, guess what, tomorrow we’re going to take a road trip, and you’re going to get to see a place where I spent the best years of my life when I was a kid at my Uncle Cecile’s house in New Jersey.”

Al looks up at me with his big, sad eyes and his doggy smile and lets out a howl. I lean over and hug him. And say, “who’s the best dog in the world, Al? You are Al, you are. And I smile at him and feel the best I’ve felt in years.

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