Category Archives: My Memoirs

You Ain’t No Miss America Lady

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Well here it is picture day, isn’t that just grand, as my mother would say. All the kids at school are always so excited about picture day. For a couple of reasons; one we go to Catholic School, and therefore we have to wear hideous uniforms everyday.

The girls’ uniform is a wool, maroon jumper with a pleated skirt,  and a button-down white shirt with short, sleeves, and lucky us, a Peter Pan collar. No matter how fat or thin you are, you look horrible in this outfit.

I never get a new uniform because they cost a lot of money, which my family doesn’t have. We have six children instead. I’m the youngest. Sometimes I have to wear the same uniform for several years, and by the time Karen passes on her old uniform to me, the one I’m wearing waist is up under what I suppose what will someday be my boobs.

Anyway, I was saying I never get a new uniform, I get to wear my twin sister Karen’s hand me downs because she is a bigger size then I am. To top off this outstanding look, is the OLPH beanie. Which is also maroon, and has a peak in front, and a little maroon covered button on the top.

Sometimes if it is a first Friday, we get to wear a mantilla on our heads when we are all herded to group confession. A mantilla is a round piece of lace, also maroon. What’s with maroon already? Why pick the ugliest color in the world? We Catholic kids get to wear it for eight long years. Probably has something to do with the fact that we have original sin. And they are trying to get us used to the idea of eternal damnation.

Wow, that’s another story I could write a book on just the whole Catholic Church, Mass, and Confession ordeal. I’ll tell you about it later. Anyway, I was saying, the boys are not blessed with the whole horrible uniform thing, like the girls are. They get off easy with wearing black pants, white shirt and a tie. I’ll tell you life is just not fair. I know this and I’m only eleven years old. So, get used to it.

Back to picture day, everybody was looking forward to it because they don’t have to wear the ugly uniform for one day of their pathetic lives. I knew it was going to be torture for me, and I guess my sister Karen too.

Last night, my mother said,” Susie and Karen, after dinner I want you two to get a bath and wash your hair. Oh, and Susie don’t forget to wash out the shampoo.”

Jeez, one time you forget the rinse part of the hair washing and they never let you forget it. “Yeah, Ma, I know wash and rinse, wash and rinse.” I take my sister aside and say, Karen,”let me go first. You always take too long.”

“ Ok Susie, but if you don’t clean out the tub before I have to use it, I’ll make you sorry.”

“ Yeah, yeah, I’ll wash it already.” I go into the bathroom with my pajamas in hand. My favorite ones with the cats all over them, luckily, they are my favorite because I only have one pair.

I would like to wear them, all day everyday, I love pajamas. I hope someday, people will be able to wear their pajamas all day. I have told my mother this many times. And for some reasons she keeps saying, “Watch what you wish for Susie, you may grow to regret it.”

She has a lot of sayings like that like, keep making that face, and it might stay like that. Keep crying, I’ll give you something to cry about. She sounds mean but she’s really not, she just doesn’t put up with a lot of complaining.

She never complains about anything, I mean never. If she ever got run over by a car, she would just get up and take an Aspirin. She thinks aspirin is the answer for all that ails you, cuts, sore throats, Charlie horses (which I get in my legs all the time.)

If Aspirin doesn’t do the job there is always Vapor Rub, or as a last resort butter and sugar mixture, which is disgusting. Let’s not forget Exlax, God forbid.

I don’t tell my mother when I’m sick, unless I feel like I am close to death, if I see the light at the end of the tunnel. One time I had a really bad toothache, it hurt a lot. It hurt all the way up into my ear, especially after Sister Saint Joseph clapped her hand against it because she thought I wasn’t listening.

So finally, my older sister notices that the left side of my face is swollen up. And says, to my mother, “ Hey Mom I think there’s something wrong with Susie. Her face is all swollen up on the one side. Didn’t she already have the mumps?”

My Mom says come here, “Susie let me have a look. She looks at my face , in my ear, and then, open up, what is going on in there? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, she has a big cavity, and an abscess in there. She’s going to have to go to the dentist. Oh God, your father is going to be fit to be tied. Do you ever brush your teeth Susie?”

Next thing you know, I’m at some dentist in  Philadelphia, the only one that my parents could find open on a Saturday. By then, I was in such pain, I didn’t care what they did to me, as long as the pain stopped. And sure, enough he had to pull that sucker out of there. He told my parents that they should be ashamed that my mouth was in terrible shape, and had all kind of cavities, and it looked like I never took a brush to them ever.

My parents were pretty upset with this, and my Mom got a job after that so she could pay for my sister Karen, and I to go to the dentist. I had to have three teeth pulled out, and so many fillings, I lost count. My father was pretty mad at me about that for a long time. My mother checked my teeth  every day after that. I never had a moment of peace.

Back to the night before picture day, I get my bath, and do a quick rinse on the tub. When I come out my mom calls me  to the kitchen and says, “ Susie, I am going to set your hair, so it looks nice for picture day. Good Lord, I’m thinking will the punishment never end? What did I ever do to deserve this? My mother sits me at the table she has long strips of white cloth about an inch wide (probably an old sheet) and starts rolling up sections of my hair and tying the rags in a knot at the end.

The next morning, when my mother unrolls my hair into long curls, she has a big smile on her face and says,” Oh Susie, you look just like Shirley Temple.” I look in the mirror, and I see that I am transformed from my usual straight hair, pulled back in  a ponytail to God knows what!

Then Karen, comes in and my mother says, I have a surprise, your brother Harry bought you two dresses for Easter, but we decided you could wear them for picture day. She shows us twin dresses, yeah, that’s right twin dresses. Identical visions of blue satin, and blue chiffon that are fitted at the waist, have a bow in the back, and best of all big, I mean really big puffy pleated sleeves that come down to our elbows. “ Oh, I can’t wait, go put them on.”

Karen and I go up to our rooms and put these fashion nightmares on, when we get upstairs, we discover to my horror , that there are matching crinolines that we will get to wear all day at school. You just cannot imagine how uncomfortable they are.

I have it on for about two minutes when I realize that until now, I didn’t fully understand what the expression hell on earth meant. I have only my sneakers to wear, or my school shoes, so I opt for the sneakers, at least one part of my anatomy won’t be suffering.

We come down the steps, Karen, is walking like a queen. She always did like being dressed up. She is just not normal! I walk down the steps like I’m walking the last mile to the death chamber. My mother claps her hands when she sees us. I have never seen her so excited, my father has his camera out and takes a picture of us together, in front of our glass fireplace. He says, “you look beautiful.”

It’s almost worth the torture to see my parents look so happy, and my father has a big smile plastered on his face. Which is a sight I have rarely seen. Together we walk to school, I can only imagine the horror that awaits me, and Karen is grinning away.

When we get to our classroom, all the kids are excited. The girls are all wearing their Sunday dresses with shiny patent leather shoes. They have barrettes in their hair, and I could be wrong, but I think some of them have on lipstick.

The boys have on corduroy pants, dress shirts, and bow ties. Their hair is all slicked back with Brill Cream. But nobody, I mean nobody looks like Karen and I, when we take off our coats, everybody looks at us as one. Their eyes are big, their mouths round. Sister says, oh now don’t you two look beautiful. You look like you belong on top of a wedding cake. You two can be the first to get your pictures taken.

I think oh my life is complete. I can never top this experience. The only thing that would top this is if , I have to have to marry Robin Schultz my nemesis!

SHAKE THREE TIMES, THEN IRON

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I read in the news today that the Hasbro toy company is tossing out the iron token in the Monopoly game since they consider it to be a passé` icon. Their argument is that only our grandmothers, or perhaps great grandmothers would recognize, in our high tech, high def world such an old fashion household appliance.

This may be overwhelmingly true for the Millennial Generation. I’m sure they don’t own irons. And it’s possible even their mothers shunned this homely gadget.  Perhaps viewed as a shackle that chained their mothers for hours in the kitchen. When they could be out in the world making a real difference for themselves, and their future generations. I have to confess that I too, hate to iron. However, as a frequent sewer, I consider it to be a necessity, not a pleasurable activity.

On the other hand, some of my warmest memories of my childhood revolve around the kitchen, and my mother bent over the iron. My mother was a prolific ironer; she ironed everything from our clothing, to sheets and pillowcases. You name it if it had been in the washer; eventually, it did its time on the ironing board as well. She kept a 7-UP bottle filled with water and plugged it with a metal sprinkle head as her constant companion. She would sprinkle all the stiff dry clothes with the bottle.

These were the days before wash and wear, permanent press, before we had a dryer. The clothes were hung on a line in our backyard to dry, regardless of inclement weather. My mother would clip them with wooden clothespins to a clothesline that was suspended by two metal poles cemented into the earth.

Even Hurricane Hazel didn’t knock that sucker down, it held. When the clothes were dry, my mother brought out her wicker clothes basket, gather the clothes to be ironed. We were a family of eight, so there was an unending supply of things that my mother deemed in need of ironing.

When I arrived home from school at about 3:00 pm, I would find my mother ironing. Perhaps even in the early sixties, this was a passé activity. I not knowing any differently believed all children’s mothers spent hours daily washing and ironing their clothes.

I can picture it so clearly as if it were only yesterday. I run at fast as I could home from school, burst in the front door. My mother was always home, standing there perhaps suspended in time waiting, waiting for me to come home, and tell her all the news of my day.

“Hey Mom, I’m home, I’m starving, anything to eat?”

“Oh Susie, there you are, I was beginning to get worried. How was your day? What did you learn today? Where is your sister Karen? She would pepper me with questions, not giving me a chance to answer her. “Let me get you some milk and cookies. Daddy went shopping today, and he bought your favorite, Fig Newtons, won’t that taste good?”

She would quickly run over to the refrigerator, and fill a tall glass with cold milk, and put two or three cookies on a plate. I would pull out a chair and have a seat next to her near the ironing board. She would get back to ironing and I would tell her about my day.

No matter how insignificant or mundane my day had been my mother would give me her undivided attention. She made me feel as if I was in that moment the center of her life, in a world where I didn’t often feel I was important at all.

Those few moments my mother and I talked were the most life-affirming, and memorable of my life. I can still hear the hiss as the iron struck the damp clothes; smell the fragrant air that perfumed the basket of clothes. And most memorable see my mother smile and hear her gentle laugh at the stories I told her while she ironed her afternoon away.

Perhaps in this hurry up, can’t get things done quickly enough world, we should stop for a moment, and take a breath, and listen to what our children tell us. How they experience the world, how they feel, and let them know that no matter that the cell phone is ringing, or we have dinner to cook, places to go, meetings to take. That just for those few moments suspended in time, we are there, really there for them to lend a listening ear and an open heart.

 

 

POCKETS By Susan A. Culver

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I stand outside the red front door of my parent’s house for five minutes before I’m able to gather the courage to go inside. As I pull open the door a rush of memories of myself as a child, then a teenager in a Catholic school uniform and then as a young mother with my own children travel swiftly through my mind.

I walk through the front hallway, I’m once again reminded that the once bright yellow walls and lime green carpet are now dull and dirty from years of my father’s smoking. The air is stale and musty.

The house feels empty of life and filled with sorrow. I take a deep breath and go into the kitchen. I haven’t been in the house since my mother passed away three months earlier. She  suffered from dementia for the last five years of her life. Each day of her final journey had been marked by a new loss until finally there was nothing left but a mere whisper of the loving woman, she had been during her seventy-six years of life.

Only one week remains for me to clear out the house out before the new owners will arrive. I had put the difficult task of cleaning out my mother’s room off for as long as possible. I felt paralyzed with grief since her death.

I walk through the kitchen into the hall and slowly open her bedroom door. The room feels cold and empty. I look down at her bed, where she spent her final hours. There folded at the foot of the bed is the cream-colored afghan that I had crocheted for her while I was pregnant with my first child.

As I open her closet door a familiar fragrance fills the room. It’s my mother’s perfume Jean Nate’. The aroma surrounds me like my mother’s embrace.

I begin taking the well-worn house-dresses out of her closet, laying them across the bed. I don’t think anyone else will want the,m, but I can’t imagine throwing them away. Then I see a plastic clothing bag hanging in the back of the closet. I unzip it and find my mother’s favorite blue coat. The coat I made for her sixtieth birthday.

I  taught myself how to sew while I was in high school. At first, I made simple skirts and shifts and as my skills and confidence grew I made coats. The first coat was this blue one for my mother. She had encouraged me from the beginning of my journey with sewing as she had with everything I had attempted in my life. She would say softly, “You can do it, Susan, keep going you’re doing a wonderful job.”

When I finished the coat, I feet proud of it, I made of soft pale blue cashmere wool. I searched flea markets and vintage clothing shops until I had found the perfect buttons. They were mother-of-pearl shaped like roses, my mother’s favorite flower. I hand-bound the buttonholes and sewed the lining in place with tiny stitches.

She wore that coat every Sunday to Mass on the cold winter mornings for almost fifteen years. I offered to buy or make her a new coat, but she never wanted another one. Saying she didn’t want to wear anything else.

I held the coat in my arms close to my heart. It brought back so many memories of my mother.  The first time she wore it, I heard her telling all her lady friends, “My daughter made this for me. Look at this fine stitching and beautiful pearl buttons.”

I put the coat down on the bed and look through each pocket, making sure nothing is left inside. I find her rosary beads. The ones my father had made for her for their fiftieth wedding anniversary. The beads were handmade from dried roses and came all the way from County Cork in Ireland. Where my mother’s parents were born.

I found a slip of paper handwritten in fading ink with the names of all her children and their birthdays. At the bottom of the paper were the names Stephen and Gerard. My twin brother’s who only lived a few days. The children my parents never spoke about. But I knew my mother prayed for them every day of her life.

In the inside pocket, I found my mother’s prayer book. Its pages were worn thin from decades of use. As I pick up the prayer book, Holy Cards come tumbling out. I knelt down to pick them up.

Among the Holy Cards, I see a folded note. I carefully open it. The handwriting look familiar, I realize it’s my own. A note I wrote and placed inside the pocket of the coat when I gave it to my mother on her sixtieth birthday. I can see it has been read many times. It read, ” I made this coat for you my wonderful mother. Each stitch represents the love I received from you each day of my life. I hope it makes you feel as loved and protected as you always made me feel.

Love your daughter, Susan.”