New England Spring, 1996

Apr. 8, 1996
This morning looks like a winter wonderland in Connecticut - storm #13 for us.  The trees are loaded down with confectioner's sugar.  The bird feeder is piled high with marshmallow fluff - white everywhere and the sun is trying to break through, so it puts a sheen on everything.  I planted 32 pansy plants and now they are hiding under a blanket of white.

We had a good time at Beth's 16th party and it sure was nice to talk to you.  One of my fondest pictures (in my memory) is of the little girl with sparkling eyes, at my front door, saying, "You missed me, didn't you?", as though you had come to take care of me, instead of my taking care of you.

How is my tree?  Let's put a swing on that long branch and swing up to the sky!

Apr. 21, 1996
The rain came, the wind blew, and the pans on the porch filled with water.  It was a game to see if I could make it into the house without spilling the water.  Good old New England weather - one week 17" of snow and next week 7"of rain in a few hours.  But the trees are budding and the flowers are blooming, and the grass is growing...  Today was a beautiful day - smelled like Spring, the sky was so beautiful, changing much of the time, with the trees budded, reaching up to the heavens.  Grampa mentioned sleeping out tonight and I think it is a good idea - if it doesn't rain.

I love the poetic phrases Grammie uses in these cards.  Her writing style was always this way, with a bit of poetry, humor, and conversation - as though she was just talking to you on the phone.  The tree she mentions is a grand old London Plane tree on the library lawn at Vassar College.  It once had the longest unsuspended branch in the world.  What a swing that would have made!

Trees and Rodents! March, 1996

Mar. 24, 1996
And just guess what we saw out eating with the squirrels and coming out from under the oversized gazebo - 2 rats - one a real big fat one - the other smaller.  Don't know what we are going to do about them - get Beth to increase her rat population.  [My sister, Beth, had a pet rat - smart, sweet animal, actually!]


Today is nice, but we are going to a memorial service in Unionville.  We'll probably see lots of older people that I won't recognize.

Enjoyed your letter.  Did you send me this poem, or did I find it someplace else?  Wish I could remember!

"There is something mysteriously

beautiful about a dead tree

As it stands no longer resisting

the winds that strip its bark

and twist its trunk.

In sunshine, rain, or snow,

it seems to suggest a power

long after life has gone."

Grammie loved old, majestic trees, and even dead ones.  Every time I see a dead tree standing still among its younger peers, or alone in an open meadow, I think of her.  She could see the beauty in a thing many people find ugly or beneath their notice.  "A dead tree has character," she would say, pointing out its gnarled limbs and ravaged bark.  It, too, has a story to share.

With the power of the internet, I think I have found the origin of this "poem."  It is not a poem at all, but part of a presentation entitled "Trees Are Our Roots" by Ron Taven of the University of Missouri's Department of Horticulture for the annual conference of the International Society of Arboriculture in San Diego, California in August 1979.  The line "In sunshine, rain, or snow" has been added.  I sure wonder how Grammie came across those particular lines!  She was always cutting snippets out of newspapers and magazines - perhaps it found its way into an issue of Reader's Digest...

Mar. 31, 1996
I'm sucking on a butterscotch - mmm good!

This afternoon we were sitting out in our oversized gazebo in our lounge chairs, and I noticed 3 big holes in the blanket we leave out there.  So we pulled back the top mattress on Grampa's chair - it was fine.  We pulled back the top mattress on my chair and - lo and behold - there was a mouse nest and the pieces of the blanket - that's not all - there was the mouse.  I had been sitting in the chair for about an hour - it's a wonder I didn't squash him.  Well, we gave that mouse a talking to - told him he was invading people territory and it was time to leave.  Then, Grampa showed him the door.  

He must have squeezed in under the door - no wonder there were no nests in the birdhouses this winter...

We have 8 birdhouses up and today a sparrow couple have decided to move into one.  The birds are starting with their mating songs and the air is full of music.  We got a bit of yard work done, but we spend a lot of time sitting and watching the birds.

Grammie loved seeing wildlife of ALL varieties, but she did not enjoy them in "people territory!"  The mice loved finding cozy places to live around Gram's house.  One spring, my sister Beth and I were helping Grammie clean out her birdhouses for the new birds to move in.  As we lifted the top of one birdhouse and peered in, two beady little eyes stared back at us.  We were so surprised to see the mouse in the house that we hopped back.  The mouse, upset by our disturbance, jumped out of that house onto Beth's shoulder, scampered down her arm and leg and bounded off under the stone wall in the back!  Gram, Beth, and I stared at each other with wide eyes for a moment longer before bursting into laughter - that mouse was more surprised than we were, we thought!

Degrees, Mar. 18, 1996

Yesterday, we went out to breakfast and then at noon, we went to a corn-beef and cabbage dinner.  I was so full - but Grampa was in "pig" heaven...  We have been watching the squirrel work his way onto the hanging feeder - but when he gets there - Grampa chases him down below.

I was figuring how many colleges I have been to, and I have come up with 20 (one in England) and 3 prep schools (1 in England).  But alas I didn't earn a single degree.  I do have 3 degrees though - an M.O.M., a G.R.A.M., and a G.G. degree.

A short note here - but full of insight into a longing Grammie never fulfilled.  Gram married right out of high school when she was 18.  She had been accepted at Simmons College outside of Boston, but declined to go because of her marriage ("I was married when I was 18 and wow! - did my chores begin then!").  By the time she was 23, she had 5 children, and a husband who turned out not to be Prince Charming.  Grammie was always quite candid with me that her one big regret in life was getting married so young.  She loved learning - did very well in high school - and would have excelled in college.  But, for whatever reason, she chose a different path.  She loved her children dearly, but she regretted her decision to start a family before she'd had a chance to further her own education.

Her love of reading and learning has been passed down to many of her children and grandchildren.  And she was certainly proud of all her progeny, and her role in their upbringing.  But I've always wondered, what would her life have been like if she had chosen the other path all those years ago?  Would she still have married young and had a large family?  Would she have become a teacher or librarian and worked for a while?  How would her outlook on life be different?

Those years with 5 young children and a not-really-there husband made a significant impact on a young woman.  Money was tight and she was often on her own.  Perhaps it was the loss of her own education that made her value those opportunities even more.

Degree or no, she did eventually become a librarian's assistant at Hartford Public High School - when she was 50 years old.  It was a job she adored.  "I was the secretary and I earned $62 a week to start.  When I retired I was earning $225 per week.  I worked there for 17 years.  Did anything and everything necessary in a library and I loved it."

Perhaps she never did go to college, but life experience taught her a hell of a lot: perseverance, self-reliance, and hope.  In the end, she earned the only degree that truly matters: love from her family, to whom she taught so much.

Days in February, 1996

Feb. 5, 1996
Sunday we took Grampa's daughter Missie and her husband up to Canaan.  Missie wanted to go to the Falls where she had gone as a little girl.  Well - we didn't find those falls, but we did go to the falls Grampa and I had found years ago.  When we got to the road - it was not plowed but a car had been down there.  It is a very narrow road - but of course, we decided to go.  We had come this far - we weren't going to stop now - praying all the time we wouldn't meet a car and that we would stay in the track.  We made it and it was beautiful - the snow was so clean and real white.  The icicles hanging beside the swirling water were so pretty.  I took some pictures but really don't think they will do justice to the real beauty of it all.
As Grampa and I came home from Missie's we had the pleasure of a full moon.  We haven't been out at night for a long time.

Feb. 11, 1996
On a rainy Sunday afternoon...

Grampa is watching some weirdo movie - shoot 'em up, bang 'em down.  So I guess it's a good time to get my weekly writing done.

Uncle Peter was up in Vermont a week ago and Aunt G. wanted her chimney cleaned.  Someone gets up on the roof with an evergreen tree with a rope tied to the end of it.  Then the tree is lowered doen the chimey, with someone on the other end.  The tree is pulled up and down and loosens the soot - great to clean up.  Well, Peter climbed on the roof - tree and all, but the rope broke - tree got stuck.  I got laughing so hard at the picture of all this, that I forgot to ask him just how he got the tree unstuck!  So much for clean chimneys.

Grammie and Grampa loved to drive in the country, taking winding dirt roads that led who knows where.  Grampa had a good sense of direction, but Grammie did not.  The joke was that Grampa always had to make sure she had a full tank of gas in the car when she went out, since it was easy for her to get lost.  Some of my favorite driving memories happened with Gram and Grampa.  I remember taking the back roads with them up to Vermont - a longer drive but a more leisurely one.  We didn't have to rush to get there; we meandered and took our time, watching the scenery for stone walls and "moo-cows."  It was from her I learned the old wives' tale that when cows lie down, you should expect rain.  So I'd watch for cows along our drive to check the weather!

Up in Vermont, time was always slowed down.  The ever-changing modern world never seemed to encroach on the farm - even so modern an idea as a chimney sweep!  Uncle Peter was a sport - always helping out up there.  I can just imagine the look on his face when the rope broke, and I can hear Grammie laughing and laughing at this story.  Some modern conveniences might be worth it, after all, though I bet that was the freshest-smelling chimney around!

Bed and oven, Jan. 28, 1996

Grampa and I had quite a day on Friday.  It started out like any other morning, but after breakfast I decided we should start using our new exerciser.  So - I got on the machine and Grampa sat on the corner of the twin bed, and creak-crash!  The corner of the bed caved in!  The side rail cracked the whole length - such a surprised look on Grampa's face.

We did our exercising anyway.

Then it was time to get lunch - a new recipe.  I had things most ready for the oven (which I had turned on) - the phone rang - a salesman - and when I got rid of him and turned around - there was a lot of smoke coming from the oven.  I started opening windows - the smoke alarm finally went off.  The smoke alarm, attached to the burglar alarm, started screeching and the phone rang.  It was the alarm company wanting to see if everything was OK.  Well - by this time, Grampa finally came into the kitchen - he had been watching a cooking show.  Probably thought the smell and smoke came from the show.  So I couldn't put our dinner in the oven till I cleaned the oven - so we had something else to eat.

Then - it came time to clean the oven - what a job!  When I had rendered down some suet for the birds, unbeknownst to me, it had leaked into the oven - hence - the smoke and smell.  Or maybe the oven just needed cleaning.  So in order to clean the oven, I practically had to climb into it.  As my hindender was sticking out and my head was well into the oven - the thought came to me - where are Hansel and Gretel.  I don't want them to come push me into the oven!

This letter puts a smile on my face every time I read it - what a day!  We all have occasional days like this, where one thing after another seems to go wrong.  It can be hard to let go and laugh at the end of such a day, but I can see the smile on Gram's face as she wondered where Hansel and Gretel were.

In later years she would sometimes tell me, "I had to laugh, or else I'd cry."  Life got harder as she and Grampa got older - as it does for most of us.  Friends and family depart, our bodies no longer behave the way we expect them to, our minds do not always obey us, either.   But when we can take a breath and ponder for a moment, it helps to find a bit of humor among the other emotions crowding our minds.  True, Grammie was not always able to do this as she aged, but I still feel it is she who most often revealed this wisdom.

Winter rain, Jan. 21, 1996

And then came the rain - it poured and the wind blew.  We had all available piepans out on the deck and the drip, drip, drip made its own song.  Grampa was amazed at how much one of the bushes had grown - till we went out there, and found out it was our cedar tree uprooted.  So now we are going to have a flag pole made out of it.

On Sat., Jan. 20, my 38th (I think) great-grandchild was born to Jim and Betsy (Uncle Tim's son), Mary Margaret - to be called Meg.

Grampa just came in - wants to know when we are going to have supper.  He has been sitting out in the oversized gazebo and he hasn't gotten dressed yet.  We went down to get milk - Grampa in his pjs and slippers.  I guess you know who went in for the milk.

Mon. morn - Grampa has taken the car over for lube etc. and I am having a cup of coffee and watching 2 squirrels at the feeder.  One chases the other away and then comes back and feeds his face while he is watching me.  You can go right up to the window and talk to him before he scampers away.  It almost looks like Spring, we can actually see the green grass, and right now there is some sunshine.

I can just imagine a day like this - windy, rainy, where you don't want to get out of your pajamas... I love how Grammie still makes it poetic and humorous.  She noticed all the little things that most people pass by: the song of a leaky roof, the silliness in a trip to the corner store, the tantalizing signs of a new season peeking around the corner.

Just today, in the heart of an Indiana February, my 4 year old son mentioned it seemed like summer.  "What do you mean?" I asked him, as I looked out at the frigid, snow-covered world.  "The birds are chirping and it's sunny," he replied matter-of-factly.

He can see it, too, Gram...

At the Farm, Dec. 12, 1995

When we came up here last Tuesday we walked into winter - cold.  And on Wednesday morn there were 5" of snow to greet us - so white and such beautiful shadows on the snow.  And we didn't have our cameras.  Then on Saturday it snowed some more 7 1/2".  It has been bitterly cold and I would love to go out, but I have a bad throat and although it is slowly getting better I don't want to go out in the bitter weather.

Uncle Peter came up early Saturday morn and started packing books.  He took home quite a few boxes but there are many more to go and Aunt Gertrude wants to look at each and every one of them.  Well, I was here when the first boxes were taken from the barn and put on the library shelves and now I am here to see the dismantling of the library.  But I'm sure Uncle Allan is happy to know the books are going to Uncle Peter and your Dad.

Winters at Rowen Farm were often harsh, but so beautiful, with the pure white snow covering the hills.  Some of my best sledding memories come from there - whizzing down the long, long hills with my sister.  Our great-uncle Allan went, too - when he was in his eighties!  We thought that he was just the coolest person.  He was a Latin teacher, and his library at the farm was a place of intrigue.  It was an addition to the farmhouse, and he had it lined floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall with bookshelves chock full of books.  There was a fireplace, and a few assorted chairs and tables.  I recall books on those, and on the floor as well.  It seemed to be overflowing with the written word.  What treasures, what ancient knowledge, might we find among the pages?  Our favorite was the edition of the Oxford English dictionary that filled an entire shelf, all on its own.  This edition was several volumes in size, and contained etymology as well as meaning for the words.  We loved looking through it to discover bits of the history of our language.

Once, we measured the total length of the OED volumes - about 4 feet in all!  Our young selves were convinced it was the longest book in the world - right there in our great-uncle's library...

Porch sleeping, Nov. 21, 1995

Last night, just as we were ready to fall asleep we heard what sounded like a herd of elephants surrounding the house.  Well, it was a raccoon coming to the bird feeder.  His paw prints were on the stairs this morn and he must have peeped in the door at us.  Grampa got up and took down the feeders and the suet for the rest of the night.  This was one time that I'm really glad the porch is closed in.

Notice the palm tree growing the in the "deer basket."  The tree really has grown since we first planted it.  The plant beside it is a cactus and has been beautiful.  It blooms twice a year, in the summer and in the fall.

After my high school graduation, some friends and I took a trip to Disney World.  I brought back a little palm tree for Grammie & Grampa.  I figured that if anyone could get a tropical plant to grow and thrive in the cold Connecticut winters, it would be them.  I was right - that palm tree lasted for years.

This picture shows the window in Gram's dining room - full of plants and knick-knacks.  It sure brightened up many a dreary winter day.