When I called to wish my dad a happy birthday, after I had done so, Mom got on the phone and told me Aunt Cathy had died. Aunt Cathy was really Mom's aunt, and my great-aunt, but she was always Aunt Cathy. She was married to my grandmother's baby brother, a wonderful man who she survived by 10 or 11 years, and they had three kids, five grandkids and four great-grandkids (by the time Aunt Cathy died).
My grandmother was the oldest of four, so there was quite a gap between her and Cathy, but despite the age gap and despite my grandfather moving the family from Pittsburgh to Elyria, my mom still grew up spending time with her cousins and her aunts and uncles. Mom and her siblings attended Ed & Cathy's wedding, but were deemed too young for the reception, so they were bundled off back home while their parents went. Mom remembers that Gramma brought them each a piece of cake, but that she was still mad because it wasn't the same. That may have been what inspired her to allow my brother's and I to come to the wedding of Ed & Cathy's younger daughter.
Since Mom and Dad and I left at 7:00 a.m. to be at the church by 10:00 (with a generous margin of error for Pittsburgh traffic and directions), we had lots of time to talk about that wedding, my grandparents, and Ed & Cathy. When we arrived early enough to grab a cup of coffee, Mom and I got a case of the giggles when Dad could not get the voice-activated Google maps to understand "McDonalds". But we found one, and I had a quick iced coffee and Dad had a cinnamon thing (or McThing, who knows?).
The church was large and modern, the soloist/organist was a phenomenal musician and the priest did a good job despite the fact that he had never met Aunt Cathy. Apparently, her church doesn't have its own priests, but relies on visiting priests from other parishes. The one who performed her funeral mass was built on the same lines as Shaquille O'Neal. He also had a very good singing voice.
The trip from the church to the cemetery was a long one, so more Mom and Dad and Jammies chatter ensued. I mentioned that it was the only time we could run red lights in a car with out-of-state plates and not get pulled over. Fortunately, as part of the procession we did not have to interrupt our conversation to listen to the GPS. A large part of the chatter was Mom remembering where Uncle Henry lived, or Uncle Bill, or Uncle Ed, and whether or not she and her siblings had visited. Two of Uncle Henry's children were at the funeral, and Mom made sure to get e-mail addresses for everyone.
The 'graveside' service was actually at the mortuary at the cemetery, and everyone else went straight from there to lunch. Since Mom wasn't about to have visited Pittsburgh without visiting her parents', grandparents' and sisters' graves, we followed the hearse to the grave site. When we left, we got lost in the cemetery, but found our way out in time to truthfully tell Mom's cousin that we were on the way to the restaurant.
Lunch was very nice, and I got to know two of my first cousins once removed more than I did 10 years ago. They're very impressive young men, and Aunt Cathy had reason to be proud of all of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. When we left after many hugs and some tears, Mom asked if anyone wanted an ice cream cone or a milkshake, and Dad didn't, but I did. Since we were right by the Pennsylvania turnpike, we got on and stopped for our sugar fix at a service plaza. Mom got a milkshake, I got an apple & caramel sundae, and Dad got a frozen coffee drink.
Shortly after we left the service plaza, traffic started to slow up, and then it stopped. We sat at mile marker 225 for an hour in the hot July sunshine, with the car turned off and all the windows open. After a while, people were getting out of their cars and walking forward to try to see what was going on, a few cars managed to turn around and go back east on the westbound shoulder, and three assholes on motorcycles rode up the shoulder to try to get to the head of the traffic. Dad hoped that there would be a cop waiting for them. I just hoped they crashed and totaled their bikes!
After an hour, the traffic started to move, and we drove west to mile marker 223, where we were directed across the median and onto the eastbound turnpike, where we had to go 9 miles back to get to an exit, then wait in line for another 25 minutes to actually get off the turnpike. It turns out there was a horrible accident and the whole turnpike was closed. Although I had joked (before learning why we were stopped) that Mom's craving for ice cream got us stuck, it could very well have been that it saved us from being part of that accident.
Mom and I were relatively pessimistic about the people zooming up the left hand lane and whether they'd cross back into the right line just at the exit and Dad said he didn't want to hear us being negative. So of course as we tried to find an alternate route back home, Dad called the voice on the GPS a "chirpy little bitch", told it to shut up and told Mom that the frustration had to come out somehow!
After a stop for gas (for the car), cheese popcorn (for Mom) and almonds (for me), we got back on the turnpike and had an uneventful trip home the rest of the way. I slept for a bit in the car, then took a short nap on my folks' couch, then came home to a very, very hungry dog. Fortunately, LMPP forgave me as soon as the food hit the bowl, and does not seem to be holding a grudge.
One of the things Mom said as we left the church was that she was grateful for a happy childhood. I am equally grateful for mine, especially as I have grown up and learned that happy childhoods are not as common as they should be. Aunt Cathy was part of that happy childhood, and it's hard to imagine a trip to Pittsburgh that doesn't end with seeing her.
Showing posts with label Nostalgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nostalgia. Show all posts
Saturday, August 01, 2015
Monday, January 20, 2014
That didn't work out the way I had it planned...
As a duly appointed deputy clerk, I had today off along with the rest of the county employees. I had promised Mom a trip to Nordstrom Rack and lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, so when the chance came to have lunch with an author friend in town from Baltimore, I had to pass.
I slept in until 7, which is the longest Little Miss Piggie Pie will let me sleep, then had my coffee, read a bit, noodled around on the computer, then got dressed and drove out to Hudson. Dad was working on an antique clock which he had inherited from his grandfather, and Mom was getting ready. Even though today is a no-mail day, Mom asked me to zip through the Post Office drive-through so she could mail some letters. We did so, and just before we got on the expressway, my intestines attacked me, and I wound up driving us both back to her house so I could wash my pants (beige, of course!).
No sooner was I in one of Mom's robes and feeling happy to have lost enough weight to fit in one and my pants in the washer than my stomach and guts started cramping. Mom gave me a Vanity Fair to read, I got myself a glass of ice water, Dad went back to bed and Mom went upstairs to work. By the time my pants were dry, I was not up to going shopping, let alone going shopping and out for lunch. Mom and I rescheduled for Sunday, and I came home and slept for the rest of the day.
I slept in until 7, which is the longest Little Miss Piggie Pie will let me sleep, then had my coffee, read a bit, noodled around on the computer, then got dressed and drove out to Hudson. Dad was working on an antique clock which he had inherited from his grandfather, and Mom was getting ready. Even though today is a no-mail day, Mom asked me to zip through the Post Office drive-through so she could mail some letters. We did so, and just before we got on the expressway, my intestines attacked me, and I wound up driving us both back to her house so I could wash my pants (beige, of course!).
No sooner was I in one of Mom's robes and feeling happy to have lost enough weight to fit in one and my pants in the washer than my stomach and guts started cramping. Mom gave me a Vanity Fair to read, I got myself a glass of ice water, Dad went back to bed and Mom went upstairs to work. By the time my pants were dry, I was not up to going shopping, let alone going shopping and out for lunch. Mom and I rescheduled for Sunday, and I came home and slept for the rest of the day.
Monday, April 30, 2007
American Idyll
Recently, I read Jeannette Walls' "The Glass Castle." One of these days, I have to review it for Lists of Books, but until then, let me just say it reminded me how lucky I was. I was eighteen months old when my parents moved from Edwards AFB to Hudson, so I have no memories of my birthplace. What I do have is a lot of very happy memories of my childhood. The house my parents bought was a ranch built in 1957, on about two and a half acres of land, with only one neighbor.
My brothers and I had room to run, a dog to run around with, books to read, each other to play with, loving parents and a wonderful extended family which got together monthly to celebrate birthdays and holidays. Granted, junior high and high school were unutterably miserable for me, but I had an idyllic childhood. I remember things like the paths Dad used the lawnmower to cut for us through the meadows, making a life-size red-winged blackbird nest for a school project, hours and hours of playing with my brothers and a zillion stuffed animals, each of which had a name, a personality and a storyline.
Every year, there were two indicators that Christmas was coming. The first was the mouse on the clocktower, a simple teardrop of grey fabric with ears, whiskers and a plaid vest. A few years ago, people with no sense of history decided the mouse was too shabby for Hudson's precious image, and he was eviscerated, and a small portion of his fabric used to make the nose of a nauseating cartoon-like mouse. The second sign of Christmas approaching was the display at the Terex plant. Nine earth-movers would be lined up in front of a huge dump truck along the front of the plant property. The dump truck held a large Santa figure, and the earth-movers were painted to look from the side like reindeer, with the one at the front of the line having a red blinking light on its bucket to show it was Rudolph. Sadly, I don't have any pictures of the display, and I think Terex stopped doing it well before the plant closed in the '80s. I don't have any pictures of the old mouse, either, and I'd poke my eye out with a sharp stick rather than take a picture of the new one.
Another icon of my youth is being disassembled even now. In 1978, the old oatmeal mills were revamped into a hotel and shopping center called Quaker Square. All but three of the shops and two restaurants are gone now, replaced with offices and a conference center. What is now the conference center used to be an Italian restaurant called the REA (Railway Express Association, I think), where I had my first taste of freshly made Italian salad dressing loaded with herbs and olive oil. Upstairs from the restaurant, for a small fee, you could visit a huge room filled with model trains, all running through the room in landscapes containing every accessory a train fanatic could ask for.
*sigh*
When the restaurant folded and the building was "re-purposed," the model trains were put into storage. Now, the owner of Quaker Square has decided to sell them all off. What used to be the little newsstand is being renovated and stuffed with trains, tracks, houses, stations, absolutely everything, and will open sometime in the next month. Every morning and evening, I walk past the shop, seeing a bit of my childhood on shelves with price tags on it.
Growing old is better than the alternative, but I wish the reminders weren't quite so painful.
My brothers and I had room to run, a dog to run around with, books to read, each other to play with, loving parents and a wonderful extended family which got together monthly to celebrate birthdays and holidays. Granted, junior high and high school were unutterably miserable for me, but I had an idyllic childhood. I remember things like the paths Dad used the lawnmower to cut for us through the meadows, making a life-size red-winged blackbird nest for a school project, hours and hours of playing with my brothers and a zillion stuffed animals, each of which had a name, a personality and a storyline.
Every year, there were two indicators that Christmas was coming. The first was the mouse on the clocktower, a simple teardrop of grey fabric with ears, whiskers and a plaid vest. A few years ago, people with no sense of history decided the mouse was too shabby for Hudson's precious image, and he was eviscerated, and a small portion of his fabric used to make the nose of a nauseating cartoon-like mouse. The second sign of Christmas approaching was the display at the Terex plant. Nine earth-movers would be lined up in front of a huge dump truck along the front of the plant property. The dump truck held a large Santa figure, and the earth-movers were painted to look from the side like reindeer, with the one at the front of the line having a red blinking light on its bucket to show it was Rudolph. Sadly, I don't have any pictures of the display, and I think Terex stopped doing it well before the plant closed in the '80s. I don't have any pictures of the old mouse, either, and I'd poke my eye out with a sharp stick rather than take a picture of the new one.
Another icon of my youth is being disassembled even now. In 1978, the old oatmeal mills were revamped into a hotel and shopping center called Quaker Square. All but three of the shops and two restaurants are gone now, replaced with offices and a conference center. What is now the conference center used to be an Italian restaurant called the REA (Railway Express Association, I think), where I had my first taste of freshly made Italian salad dressing loaded with herbs and olive oil. Upstairs from the restaurant, for a small fee, you could visit a huge room filled with model trains, all running through the room in landscapes containing every accessory a train fanatic could ask for.
*sigh*
When the restaurant folded and the building was "re-purposed," the model trains were put into storage. Now, the owner of Quaker Square has decided to sell them all off. What used to be the little newsstand is being renovated and stuffed with trains, tracks, houses, stations, absolutely everything, and will open sometime in the next month. Every morning and evening, I walk past the shop, seeing a bit of my childhood on shelves with price tags on it.
Growing old is better than the alternative, but I wish the reminders weren't quite so painful.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Halloween melancholy
Yesterday was road trip day. Mom had a meeting in Steubenville, so I rode along and navigated. The directions came from Dad's brand-new map program, and were a bit confusing at the end, so she wound up being about fifteen minutes late. I dropped her off and visited the Fort Steuben mall, was fairly underwhelmed and returned to the parking lot to sit in the car and read magazines. When the meeting ended, we went to the post office, then lunch, then Mom dropped a bunch of paperwork off at the county court office.
I fell off the wagon cigarette-wise last weekend, and Mom caught me smoking, so that made for a bit of a quiet drive for a while (btw, I am now back on the wagon!) as we headed out of Steubenville for Pittsburgh. The directions for this leg of the trip were flawless, and at this point, it was still sunny and reasonably warm. The sky started to cloud up as we reached the Penn Hills section of Pittsburgh, and by the time we got to Great-Aunt Cathy's house, it was raining. We were in the house only long enough to look at some pictures and for Mom to show some to Aunt Cathy, then the three of us headed out to find the Allegheny County Memorial Park. Mom's cousin Mary Lou had provided excellent directions, and we didn't have any problem until the last intersection, which was a five-way and not well-marked. Mom asked at one of the gas stations, and we found the cemetery.
Having gotten there, Mom had to do a fair bit of driving around until we found the correct portion of the cemetery, and then the real looking started. As with most cemeteries these days, this one now allows only flush-to-the-ground markers, and Mom and I had to clear leaves off about fifty of them before I located our family (to Mr. Betts--I am very sorry I tripped over your headstone and fell on your grave. I slipped in the wet leaves and caught my foot on the edge. Please forgive me). I cleared the leaves off the family stones, and Mom escorted Aunt Cathy from the car to the plots. The most recent marker is my great-uncle Ed's, from last July. Aunt Cathy talked about how she met him after his discharge from the Army during WWII. My grandmother's parents, Hattie and William, are buried there, as are my mom's twin sisters. Joyce and Nancy were born in 1937, and Nancy was stillborn. Joyce died 8 months later of SIDS, and while I never spoke with my grandmother about this, it has to have shaped the rest of her life.
About half of my grandmother and grandfather's ashes are interred with the family. Grandpa wanted his ashes scattered over the Pacific outside of Santa Barbara, where he and my grandmother had so many lovely vacations. Gramma wanted both of them to be buried with the twins and the rest of the family. She wouldn't explicitly go against Grandpa's wishes, but she couldn't bring herself to carry them out, so Grandpa's ashes stayed in the hall closet for the eight or so years between his death and hers. When she died, Mom and her brothers did the sensible thing and divided up the ashes, burying half and scattering the other half. Aunt Cathy made a reference to the family legend of Grandpa's father, whose ashes were put on a train in Pittsburgh to be buried at the family farm in Ohio. When the grieving family got to the train station--no ashes. Great-grandpa may still be riding the rails to this day, and as he worked for the railroad all his adult life, it's fitting.
On the one hand, my trip to the cemetery made me oddly happy. I was glad to have some time with Aunt Cathy, who is amazingly sweet and pretty damn sharp for 84, and glad to have grown up in a close and loving family. On the other hand, a selfish part of me looked at all those joint headstones--"Harriet & William," "John & Mary," "Edward & Catherine," and just felt like such a failure for being the only one in the family to be unmarried. *sigh*
As I'm sitting here writing this, it just occurred to me that the opening scene of the first "Night of the Living Dead" opened with a visit to a Pennsylvania graveyard on a grey and gloomy day. I'm terribly pleased I didn't think of that yesterday while we were there!
We got lost several times on the way from the cemetery to the restaurant Aunt Cathy recommended for dinner, owing to the rain, the early darkness, some vagueness from Aunt Cathy (who drives very little these days) and some inattention from the driver as she and her aunt discussed their addiction to ice cream. Dinner was lovely, even if I did eat myself sick and the restaurant was full of Steeler's memorabilia. After we dropped Aunt Cathy off at home, we got lost again trying to find the PA turnpike, and when we did, it was pouring rain, the road was full of big trucks, and it was pretty scary. When we crossed the Ohio border, we both took a deep breath, which turned out to be a mistake, as someone must have hit or scared a skunk recently. Eww. Nonetheless, the trip was much easier from that point on--the rain even stopped!
We were at Mom & Dad's by 9:40, and I was home and drying my feet by 10. All in all, it was a good, if sad, Halloween day.
I fell off the wagon cigarette-wise last weekend, and Mom caught me smoking, so that made for a bit of a quiet drive for a while (btw, I am now back on the wagon!) as we headed out of Steubenville for Pittsburgh. The directions for this leg of the trip were flawless, and at this point, it was still sunny and reasonably warm. The sky started to cloud up as we reached the Penn Hills section of Pittsburgh, and by the time we got to Great-Aunt Cathy's house, it was raining. We were in the house only long enough to look at some pictures and for Mom to show some to Aunt Cathy, then the three of us headed out to find the Allegheny County Memorial Park. Mom's cousin Mary Lou had provided excellent directions, and we didn't have any problem until the last intersection, which was a five-way and not well-marked. Mom asked at one of the gas stations, and we found the cemetery.
Having gotten there, Mom had to do a fair bit of driving around until we found the correct portion of the cemetery, and then the real looking started. As with most cemeteries these days, this one now allows only flush-to-the-ground markers, and Mom and I had to clear leaves off about fifty of them before I located our family (to Mr. Betts--I am very sorry I tripped over your headstone and fell on your grave. I slipped in the wet leaves and caught my foot on the edge. Please forgive me). I cleared the leaves off the family stones, and Mom escorted Aunt Cathy from the car to the plots. The most recent marker is my great-uncle Ed's, from last July. Aunt Cathy talked about how she met him after his discharge from the Army during WWII. My grandmother's parents, Hattie and William, are buried there, as are my mom's twin sisters. Joyce and Nancy were born in 1937, and Nancy was stillborn. Joyce died 8 months later of SIDS, and while I never spoke with my grandmother about this, it has to have shaped the rest of her life.
About half of my grandmother and grandfather's ashes are interred with the family. Grandpa wanted his ashes scattered over the Pacific outside of Santa Barbara, where he and my grandmother had so many lovely vacations. Gramma wanted both of them to be buried with the twins and the rest of the family. She wouldn't explicitly go against Grandpa's wishes, but she couldn't bring herself to carry them out, so Grandpa's ashes stayed in the hall closet for the eight or so years between his death and hers. When she died, Mom and her brothers did the sensible thing and divided up the ashes, burying half and scattering the other half. Aunt Cathy made a reference to the family legend of Grandpa's father, whose ashes were put on a train in Pittsburgh to be buried at the family farm in Ohio. When the grieving family got to the train station--no ashes. Great-grandpa may still be riding the rails to this day, and as he worked for the railroad all his adult life, it's fitting.
On the one hand, my trip to the cemetery made me oddly happy. I was glad to have some time with Aunt Cathy, who is amazingly sweet and pretty damn sharp for 84, and glad to have grown up in a close and loving family. On the other hand, a selfish part of me looked at all those joint headstones--"Harriet & William," "John & Mary," "Edward & Catherine," and just felt like such a failure for being the only one in the family to be unmarried. *sigh*
As I'm sitting here writing this, it just occurred to me that the opening scene of the first "Night of the Living Dead" opened with a visit to a Pennsylvania graveyard on a grey and gloomy day. I'm terribly pleased I didn't think of that yesterday while we were there!
We got lost several times on the way from the cemetery to the restaurant Aunt Cathy recommended for dinner, owing to the rain, the early darkness, some vagueness from Aunt Cathy (who drives very little these days) and some inattention from the driver as she and her aunt discussed their addiction to ice cream. Dinner was lovely, even if I did eat myself sick and the restaurant was full of Steeler's memorabilia. After we dropped Aunt Cathy off at home, we got lost again trying to find the PA turnpike, and when we did, it was pouring rain, the road was full of big trucks, and it was pretty scary. When we crossed the Ohio border, we both took a deep breath, which turned out to be a mistake, as someone must have hit or scared a skunk recently. Eww. Nonetheless, the trip was much easier from that point on--the rain even stopped!
We were at Mom & Dad's by 9:40, and I was home and drying my feet by 10. All in all, it was a good, if sad, Halloween day.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Nostalgia
Certain kinds of nostalgia are good. I was thinking about Christmases past recently, remembering with some sadness the mouse on the clocktower in my former home town, a houseful of family and friends, how my brothers were pretty good kids most of the time and especially at Christmas. *grin*
Then I got home and got a clothing catalog all full of '70s retreads. Ewww. Gauchos were ugly then, they're ugly now. That kind of nostalgia you can keep far from me!
Right now, I'm listening to Kevin Gilbert's rock opera "Shaming of the True" and noticing how full it is of '80s references. I wonder if he would have updated it if he'd lived, how it would have sounded, who would have performed in the movie if there was one...
Disjointed thoughts, but that could be the result of the Vicodin. That stuff also gives me dreams so vivid they damn near qualify as hallucinations. It made the possum nightmare really bad Thursday night. *shudder* Hopefully, no dreams tonight, unless I am dreaming of someone buying out a Lush store's Christmas inventory for me.
Then I got home and got a clothing catalog all full of '70s retreads. Ewww. Gauchos were ugly then, they're ugly now. That kind of nostalgia you can keep far from me!
Right now, I'm listening to Kevin Gilbert's rock opera "Shaming of the True" and noticing how full it is of '80s references. I wonder if he would have updated it if he'd lived, how it would have sounded, who would have performed in the movie if there was one...
Disjointed thoughts, but that could be the result of the Vicodin. That stuff also gives me dreams so vivid they damn near qualify as hallucinations. It made the possum nightmare really bad Thursday night. *shudder* Hopefully, no dreams tonight, unless I am dreaming of someone buying out a Lush store's Christmas inventory for me.
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