Other People’s Children

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Coming East

I have been cleaning house, little by little, all week long, in preparation for my daughter and her family’s visit.  If you follow My Pajama Days, that would be Emily, DW, the Tortoise, 13, and the Hare, 9.  Plus Luna Puppy, or course.  Some people may ask, “Why are you spending so much time cleaning when you’re going to have a houseful tracking in a truckload of sand every day?” People who ask aren’t mothers.  That’s just what mothers do.  Everything has to at least start out in order before it descends into controlled chaos. My husband likes it when we have house guests because he says the house never looks better.

Besides, there is such a joy in preparing for a visit with my children, especially since it happens only once a year.  Yes, we do visit them in their homes, but it’s not the same as having them here where I get to pamper them and feel like the mama again.

I have been looking forward to their visit for months now.  I have many more things planned and dinners I want to cook than they have actual days to spend with us.  After five fabulous days with them, the laughing, the sharing, the reminiscing, the boogie-boarding and sand castle building, they will leave me to put things back in order, and I will stand at the doors of their empty rooms, listening to the silence.

Two and a half years ago we left San Antonio, a city we loved, a city where we owned our own house outright, a city where we had many dear friends, a city our children had grown up in, and moved to Virginia so we could be closer to our children.  Even though they live in Boston and Michigan, this is so much closer than Texas.  Plus, we’re only two hours away from my brother and sister-in-law.  So, in spite of the fact that we now have a substantial mortgage again and are living on one income and my teacher’s pension, it’s been the right choice for us.

The bonus, my husband says, is getting our niece in the bargain.   K. is my husband’s goddaughter, and when we lived in Texas, we rarely got to see her.

K. deep in conversation with Old Ben

Since she lives only a mile from her parents, my brother and sister-in-law, we get to see her quite often.  Now this precious young woman is getting married this month and we’ll have a new nephew to dote on as well (T. already loves my chicken enchiladas!).  The two of them will come and stay in one of those empty rooms, from time to time, making the house not so empty anymore.

I love to watch my husband with my niece.  When he talks to her, he has that dad-like quality in his voice again.  He’s already got a project he wants to work on with his new nephew.  Male bonding.  No, these are not our personal children, the ones we paid for with a credit card (as I like to tell my own kids), but they are our children nonetheless, and it feels so good to love them.

I never thought about how much our parents missed us when we left them in Connecticut and moved to Texas all those years ago.  I never thought about how my grandparents must have felt when we were growing up and they only got to see us once a year.  I know now.  Yes, I wish we could see our children more.  We miss them more than they will ever know, but it’s amazing how providential it is that we are not left lonely because we have these two cherished young lives to be a part of.  And, God willing, we will be the best Great-Auntie and Great-Uncle on the planet!

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Walking to Rosie’s

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Coming East

Money jingles in your pocket.
I grasp mine, fist tight,
short legs pumping to match your stride.
We walk past manicured lawns,
sweet scent of summer flowers,
porch swings empty in the afternoon heat.
You reach for my hand at the corner.
We cross the street and turn.
The house disappears.
For the first time, I am let loose in the world.
Delicious!
The screen door slams behind us.
Fans whirr and cool our sweaty faces.
You head straight to the cooler, its motor droning,
pull out two Nehi’s, orange for you, grape for me.
You slap two nickels on the counter.
I pry open my numb fingers and do the same.
Studying your pensive face as you choose your penny candy,
Slowly, deliberately,
I wonder why candy picking demands such care.
I quickly pick three licorice whips, waxed lips, and a Mary Jane.
Leaving the store, I hear money jingle in your pocket again.
I have nothing to clutch but my bag of candy and my grape Nehi.
When we reach the corner, you grab my paper sack
holding my hand as we cross the street.
We walk back leisurely to the house where our family waits,
Mama and Papa, our baby sister,
back to our grandparents, whose house it is.

It has been more than fifty years
since our last summer vacation to that Ohio neighborhood.
Couldn’t find it again, even if I tried.
Rosie’s is surely gone, as is Rosie,
if she ever existed.
No one who waited for us that day
is still waiting.  All gone now,
even our baby sister.
But I return there time after time in my mind,
remember how I felt that day with you, dear brother,
the world opening up in a new way,
the adventure around the corner.
I wonder how many adventures
we still have left to share.
One thing I know:  When we turn the corner,
we will hold each other’s hand,
walking to Rosie’s all the way.

This is a poem I wrote for my brother.  It is such a lovely summer day today, and it made me think of those magic days I got to walk to the store with my brother.  Thought I’d share.

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When I’m Sixty-four

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Coming East

“Good night, Darling.  Even if you don’t need me, I still love you.”  I rolled over in bed, closed my eyes, and waited.  I didn’t have to wait long.  After nearly forty years of marriage, my husband knows better than to just say, “Okay,” and go to sleep.  He knows this is one of those tests, and we’ve been married plenty long enough for him to get it right, every time.

“Of course I need you.  Who would take care of me?”

This all started in direct response to a delightful, funny blog post I read yesterday from Domestic Fringe.  This blogger admitted her husband always pumps her gas for her.  It got me thinking because my George still puts gas in my car after all these years.  I had to make him promise not to die before I do because I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere past the first week of his demise.  I suppose I could move to New Jersey where only full-serve exists, but I put a clause in our wedding vows that precludes that (“Whither thou goest, I will go, except to New Jersey.”  Sorry, New Jersey, but when you have billboards that say, “New Jersey doesn’t’ stink,” I find that highly suspect).

That blog post prompted me to think of all the things I need my husband to do for me besides pumping gas.  For one thing, I need him to get rid of the dead bodies.  I have finally gotten up enough nerve to kill bugs in the house but not to remove their remains.  I once offered my son two dollars to remove a dead lizard in our sunroom in San Antonio.  He was five at the time.

I have no trouble mowing the lawn in our postage stamp yard, but I need George to use the line trimmer.  That thing terrifies me.  I have visions of me losing control of it and it ripping me to shreds.  I need my husband to do all the painting in places that are too high for me to reach without getting on a ladder (I have acrophobia), change lightbulbs in ceiling fixtures (see previous parenthetical comment), fix minor plumbing problems like running toilets, change the air conditioner filter (it’s in the ceiling; enough said), balance my checkbook and handle all other major finance business such as taking minimum distributions (I have no idea what that even means, but when he mentions it’s time to do it, I just nod and say, “Sounds good to me.”), and the list goes on and on.

That, of course, leads me to ponder what he needs me for (well, okay, there’s that, but I mean other than that), and I struggle to put anything on my side of the equation.  Okay, my husband doesn’t cook anything on the stove besides eggs, but he’s great at grilling.  I suppose he could learn to cook, but that would require him to actually read a recipe and follow it, and he’s not an engineer.  According to my father, only engineers are capable of figuring out such complex stuff.  My father was an engineer.  Obviously.

Even though I clean the house, my husband is perfectly capable of doing that himself and wouldn’t have to do it very often if I weren’t around.  I’m the one who usually trashes it.  My philosophy is, “Why clean today?  It will only be a mess tomorrow.”  For the life of me, I can’t think of anything to put on the list of what my husband needs me for.  Okay, we’re back to that.  Maybe it’s enough.  Anyway, my husband has promised we’re going together in a blaze of glory.  I’m holding him to it.

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The Most Memorable Field Trip

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Coming East

This post comes from a weekly memoir writing prompt provided by The Red Dress Club:  Write a memoir post about a memorable school trip. Word limit is 600.

In May of my senior year in high school, 1966, I had to choose between going with my English class to see Shakespeare’s King Lear at the Shakespeare Theater in Stratford,  Connecticut, a distance of about fifteen miles, or going with my Problems in American Democracy class on a trip to Washington, D.C.  Never having been to Washington, it wasn’t a hard decision.

Unfortunately, the previous years’ seniors had made fools of themselves and embarrassed our school during an overnight field trip, so the school laid down the law:  No field trips could last more than twenty-four hours.  We left on a Greyhound bus at midnight for the six-hour drive and had to return by the next midnight.  I didn’t care; I was going to see the Capital, a new experience, and joy of joys, I was going to miss school for a whole day!

Though it was midnight when we departed, we were all wide awake with the excitement of the trip.  The bus was noisy with lively chatter and transistor radios.  We thought we were a typical high school group coming from our typical little Connecticut town of Fairfield.  Events of that trip would change our outlook forever.  For on that day, many of us came face to face with racial prejudice for the first time.

By five-thirty we were in Maryland, on the outskirts of Washington.  Our advisor decided it was a good stopping time for breakfast since nothing would be open yet in the Capital.  The bus driver pulled into the parking lot of a diner, and we all poured out of the bus, eager to stretch our legs. We were told the restrooms were located around back, so we headed there.  When we got to the back, we stopped and stared.  In ugly big black letters, a sign hung over two water fountains.  One said:  Whites only.  The other:  Colored.  The laughing and chattering ceased.  We had studied the Civil Rights Movement in class, had seen pictures on T.V., but it had never made such an impression on us until we stood looking at those two signs.

It was easy to say we weren’t prejudiced, living in a town like Fairfield, Connecticut.  There was no segregation in our schools, but if you were to look at my yearbook, you wouldn’t see one African-American face.  If you were a person of color back then, you couldn’t afford to live in Fairfield.  You might say it was a sort of de facto segregation.  I don’t know what the demographics were in 1966, but I looked them up for the 2000 Census and found that of the 57,340 residents of Fairfield, 54,630 of them were white and only 623 were black.  I’m sure it was tipped even more to the white side when I was in high school.  No, we weren’t at all  “typical” teens from a “typical” town.  We were sheltered, indeed, from the harsh realities of life for many people.

I wonder what we would have done if there had been a classmate among us who was black?  Would we have turned around and gotten back on the bus and refused to eat there?  Would we all have encouraged our minority friend to drink from the same water fountain as we did, in spite of the sign?  What would we have done?  We never had to decide what to do, but I like to think we would have done the right thing.

After breakfast, when we got back on the bus, we were a quieter group, sobered by what we had seen, and we were deep in our own thoughts of what it meant in our lives.  But I can tell you, when we finally got to our nation’s Capital, and stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the events in our nation’s history and the on-going struggle of our fellow citizens to have the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution meant more to us than they did a few hours earlier when we first stepped on that bus.


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Crossing the Bar

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Coming East

There’s an old New England saying, “A sea child dies on land,” and my sister, Karen, was definitely a sea child.  She was born and raised on the Connecticut shore but moved to Texas as an adult and seldom got to see the ocean after that.  Karen would have been fifty-five years old today.  She’s been gone nearly two years now, and every day, when I look at her picture on my kitchen counter, I think of her and miss hearing her voice.  I miss her laughter most of all, a gentle laugh that was mostly at herself.  Or me.

I was nearly eight when Karen was born, my brother going on ten.  I’m afraid my brother and I know very little of her young years because we were so much older.  I don’t know who her friends were, what she liked to do and where she liked to go when she was in high school.  I do know that music was in her soul.  She loved singing and playing the piano and guitar.  On an old computer of my father’s I found a file with my sister singing “Amazing Grace” in that sweet, soft voice of hers.

We never shared bedrooms when we were growing up, but I remember on the night before my wedding, Karen wanted to sleep with me in my room because it was the last time she would have her sister living in the house with her.  I wish I could remember all that she said that night, but I do know she gave me advice on marriage that made me laugh, though I kept it to myself.  We talked late into the night, a good way to end my years of living at home.

Karen became a nurse and worked in an operating room most of her career.  When she was in her early thirties, she joined the Army Reserves, partly, I suspect because my brother was a military man and she greatly admired him, even though he used to call her “Chipmunk Cheeks” when she was little.  Brothers.

The three of us, 1956

Shortly after she enlisted, Desert Storm got under way, and her reserve unit was called up.  She served as an operating room nurse for an emergency evacuation hospital in Saudi Arabia.  It was there she contracted hepatitis C, and seventeen years later it took her life.  So you can say she was a casualty of war, even though it took a long time.

I like to think that Karen is just standing on the far shore as I stand here on mine, both of us staring across the water as the ocean between us gets smaller and smaller over the years until one day we will be standing on the same shore together.  I couldn’t let today pass without stopping a moment to remember Karen’s birthday.  It matters very much that she lived, and I know she touched countless lives.  I also know, as a sea child, she would have loved Alfred, Lord Tennyson‘s poem “Crossing the Bar,” so I will share it with you in her memory:”

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Worn

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Coming East

Inside Cape Henry Light

Stairs inside Cape Henry Light

Gravestone of Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women

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My Marilyn Monroe Moment

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Coming East

I have an old photograph of me at the top of the Empire State Building, my dress blowing in the wind that always exists up there.   I remember that day well, even though I was only six.  My husband says he has never been to the top, even though he grew up in Connecticut.  I smile, because I have this picture and the memory that proves I was there.  Who would know where the picture was taken if I weren’t here to tell them?  There is nothing written on the back.  At least there is a date on the front from the developing that says 1955.  If my children were to see this picture, they would never know where I was standing when I had my Marilyn Monroe moment with my dress billowing about me.  It’s not important, I suppose, to anyone but me.  But I want it to matter because it is a moment in my life that keeps slipping away, little by little.

That’s the thing about pictures.  Old ones are wonderful to look at but frustrating when you don’t know the circumstances.  I even have old ones I took after my last parent died that show people I don’t even know.  Who are they?  Are they friends?  Family?  Where were these people when they were captured on film?  I don’t throw them out because somehow they were important to my grandparents or my parents, and I can’t part with them if only for that.

The other day I was going through some old photos and found one of cacti.  Yes, cacti.  On the back was written a detailed description of the photo, including the month, day, and year.  I looked on the back of many other photos with people in them, and nothing was written.  Why is it that the cacti were more important than the people?  Or was it that when the other pictures were taken, the people never thought ahead to a time when a granddaughter or a great granddaughter might be looking at those pictures and want as much information as she could get?  Maybe they were enjoying the moment and not looking to a distant future.  But now I am left with so many questions and no one to give me answers.

Here is a picture of my grandmother, my mother’s mother.   When was it taken?  How old was she?  Was she married to Daddy Bill yet?  Had she given much thought to what shape her life might take?  And what about the picture of my grandfather trying to pull my grandmother into the ocean?  At least there is the imprint of the date on the front of the picture, so I know my grandfather was only a year younger than I am now.  I can surmise they were in Florida at the time, since I know they used to leave their cold Ohio home in the winter to spend time in Clearwater.  I love the playful look on my grandfather’s face, and I love seeing how vibrantly alive and healthy he looked because his health deteriorated not so many years after that.  And Grandma?  I can’t see her face, but was she smiling at Daddy Bill’s antics?  Did she give any thought to that time so many years ago when the earlier picture was taken and think, Yes, this has been a good life.  This is what I had hoped for.

A picture of my father’s father and my mother sitting on a bench in Central Park shows my mother laughing.   What had my grandfather said to her?  What year was it?  It had to be before 1956 because my grandfather died that year at the age of 59.  I want to know everything about him because I adored him in the seven short years I knew him.  The pictures of him make me hunger for stories about his life, stories that will never be told anymore.

I wonder if years from now my children will be looking at old pictures and wonder what the circumstances were or who the people were.  Will they sit, like me, full of questions and wish they had asked more?  I could put descriptions on the back of some of them, though there are so many memories that are lost now.  And nowadays, we take pictures digitally and save them on computers or CD’s or DVD’s, nothing to hold in our hands and flip over so we can read an inscription.  Technology doesn’t always make things better.  Anyway, like I said, it probably isn’t important to anyone but me.

But, just in case it does matter, here is a picture of my husband and me at my youngest son’s wedding last August.  We are sharing a quiet moment, pulled away from the celebrating guests, to reflect on this wonderful event, how fortunate we are to have the family we have, and how blessed we are to be welcoming this precious daughter-in-law into it.  Now, if my children or grandchildren see this picture one day, they won’t have to wonder, What were they thinking?

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Movie Night

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Coming East

This post comes from a weekly memoir writing prompt provided by The Red Dress Club.

This week’s memoir writing prompt by The Red Dress Club, asked us to fill in the blanks:

The first time I ______________-ed after ____________________-ing.

Every Saturday night after my mother died, my husband and I took my dad to the movies.  I think it started with my father singing the tune, “Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week.”  How do you leave him alone after that?  Though it was our treat, my father always insisted on buying me the popcorn, just like he did when I was little.  And, just like when I was little, he’d grab my hand if the movie was a scary one.

It didn’t matter what was playing at the theater.  It could be a nail-biter or a snoozer, but Saturday night at the movies became sacred for the three of us.  If we visited our sons at the University of Texas in Austin, then we’d see a matinee so we could get back to San Antonio at a decent hour.  My husband would pay for popcorn and soda for the boys, but my dad  bought mine, as usual.

One afternoon at the movies was memorable in how awful the movie was.  Our sons had suggested we all go and see “Magnolia,” a film that got rave reviews from the critics (not always a good sign).  The language and subject matter were awful, including drugs, suicide, graphic sex (if I remember correctly, because my eyes were closed part of the time), and, to make matters worse, it was one of the longest movies I’ve ever sat through.  When we finally emerged into the twilight after three hours of torture, my youngest son said, “You know the only thing worse than watching that film with your mother next to you is having your grandfather sitting on the other side.”  My father cracked up.

When my father died, I couldn’t bring myself to go to the movies anymore.  How could I sit in the theater without my father beside me?  Both my husband and I missed our Saturday nights with him, and Saturday nights indeed became one of the loneliest nights of the week.  Then, after a few months, my husband said, “Let’s go to the movies tonight.  Dad wouldn’t want us to give that up.”  Reluctantly, I went with him, bringing a wad of tissues with me.  As the lights dimmed and the opening credits started, I looked to my left where my father always sat.  The tears came, but it felt right being there.  And then my sweetheart passed me a bag of popcorn and said, “I’ll buy you popcorn from now on.”

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Indian Burial

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Coming East

I was puttering in my garden yesterday and found a circular clay object, left by the previous owner, that said, “Toad Abode.”  I don’t know if toads used to live in our courtyard, but I haven’t seen them in the nearly three years we’ve lived here.  That was not the case when we lived in San Antonio, and those little creatures will be forever etched in my mind.

One summer we decided to get rid of a dead tree that had disgraced the back yard for several years.  Memories hung in its hollowness, children sitting in its branches, the imprint of the rope from which a tire swing had dangled.  Now all that was left of the tree was the trunk, and it stood in the way of a flower garden I wanted, provided a haven for termites, and offered no shade but its shadow.  It was time for it to go.

We debated the best way to approach the demise.  Lacking a chain saw, my husband, George, tried to use his band saw instead.  After ruining the blade, he abandoned that idea.  Next, he tried his axe and chipped away at it Saturday after Saturday, but after pitting the blade with little damage to the tree, he decided that wasn’t an option either.  We left it alone for awhile after that, figuring it would eventually keel over in the next strong wind.  But neither zephyr nor blue norther could have its sway with that old tree.  I guess its anchor to the earth had fingers we couldn’t see.  George decided that fire was the last resort.

It would be an easy task, he explained when I expressed my opinion on the dubious wisdom of his decision.  His plan was to infuse the trunk with charcoal lighter fluid, have his trusty hose ready, and let the ensuing inferno “engulf that sucker.”

“But what if fire only kills the bugs that are eating it slowly?” I asked.  “Wouldn’t we be left with it hard as a rock?”

“You mean petrified?” George asked.

“Scared to death,” I replied.

Our boys decided to come out and see the conflagration.  The four of us stood like druids around the hollow pillar and my husband doused it with lighter fluid.  When the match was struck and applied, the holocaust was less spectacular than we had anticipated.  Blue and yellow flames licked at the mottled bark rather than swallow it whole.  We watched as the fired settled into a quiet blaze.

It was then that we saw them, specters arising out of the smoke, glazed eyes glistening, broad and flattened bodies frozen by fire.  We realized  that we had unwittingly given the toads an Indian burial, burning them along with that rotted tree stump.  Dozens were coming from underneath the tree where they had made their home.

“Anyone want frog legs for dinner?” Matt, our nine-year-old offered, giggling nervously, trying to dispel the horror of the scene.

Ben, three year younger, wailed, “They’re toads, not frogs,” and sobbed.  My husband hosed down the toads, but it was too late.  Many of them had begun curling as we watched in amazement, not able to turn our eyes away.  When we were sure that no more toads were coming, we sat silently watching that old tree burn, sickened to think what we had done.

Eventually, after a month of Saturday burnings, the tree became soft enough to yield to George’s axe, and it was removed.  The image of that first burning, though, could not be erased.  Who would have thought it was so hard to kill something that was already dead?

That was many years ago.  Yet I still think of that Saturday afternoon and the lesson it taught me.  Even when things die, they maintain a certain connectedness with the earth.  They serve a usefulness even in death.  My parents have been gone quite a while now, but I still feel their presence and influence in so many ways: in my zestful approach to life, in the way I cherish my spouse, my devotion to family, my love for the Lord, and oh, for my love of singing.  Just like that tree, my parents’ roots go deep.  I wish I’d known before we burned the toads.

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Summer Sneakers

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Coming East

Every time I look down at my feet when I’m wearing my “new” black Converse sneakers my thirteen-year-old granddaughter gave me when she outgrew them, I have to laugh.  I look like I’m wearing clown shoes, but I don’t care.  They make me happy, almost as happy as the new pair of white Keds I would get each summer.  Remember getting new white sneakers?  The ones that made you run faster and jump higher.  The ones you had to keep away from your brother so he wouldn’t stomp on them.  The ones you got the first day of summer vacation and had to make last until the first snowfall or until your toe poked a hole in the top edge, whichever came first.  The ones that all your friends noticed because their eyes were focused on the here and now and the only future was “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow because I want to go to the beach.”  I mean those white sneakers.

I remember a white-sneakered summer in the small coastal Connecticut town where I grew up.   My mother took me to the dry goods store in the center of town.  We walked up the steps to the second floor, me tingling with anticipation, my mother clutching her red pocketbook.  It was the first day of summer vacation and I knew exactly what I wanted, walking right past the Buster Brown oxfords with the little dog Tighe smiling up from his place on the inside of the heel, and marching to the display on the back wall.  I could have chosen the red ones or the navy blue, but only the clean, bright white Keds would do.

After Mother bought them, I was obsessed with avoiding every puddle, every patch of dirt, every freshly mown lawn that might yield grass stains, even developing a stiff-footed, awkward way of walking by leaning back on my heels to avoid making creases, and generally drove myself crazy for a week in order to keep those Keds in pristine condition.  Then one day my brother asked me if I wanted to go with him to pick berries to surprise our mother in the hopes she’d make us a pie.  And in my exuberance to spend time with my brother, whom I adored, all thought about my sneakers flew out of my head.

I grabbed a bucket and ran to keep up with him.  We cut through the back of a neighbor’s yard, walked along a path through the woods, and came to the edge of a clearing lined with mulberry trees sagging with the weight of their abundant crop.   We picked two bucketfuls in no time, but as we headed back, I glanced at my feet and remembered too late that I hadn’t changed my shoes.  My once white sneakers were infused with blood red juice stains.  My brother was stunned when I started bawling.  When the source of my distress turned out to be my mortification at the destruction of my shoes, he was even more perplexed.  If you saw how my brother dressed, you’d understand how little fashion mattered to him.  But, sensing that this was a girl thing, he put his arm around my shoulders.

I trudged home, dreading the inevitable tongue-lashing I was sure to get.  Even my brother’s arm around my shoulders didn’t help to assuage my melancholy.  As we approached the house, I saw my mother standing in the front yard, arms akimbo, wearing her favorite red apron with the white rickrack. My brother was the first to speak as he lifted the bucket high for her to see.  “Hey, Mom, Susan and I picked these berries for you so you could make a pie,” he said.  Then he added, “You’re the best pie baker in the world!”   I held my bucket up for inspection, and my mom said, “My, oh my, those berries look good!”  And then she looked at my feet.  I hung my head and waited for it to come.  My mother put her hand under my chin and tilted my face towards her smile and said, “Let’s go in the kitchen and wash these berries, and you can help me make the pie crust.”   Then she ushered me inside with a gentle swat.

When I woke up the next morning, at the foot of my bed were my sneakers.  Yes, there is something about new white sneakers with pale puce splotches, smelling strongly of bleach.  And that was the best mulberry pie ever!

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