517 Hillcrest Drive

This is an entry I posted on my "real" blog in February of 2011, after one last trip with my brothers to empty out the house. I thought about it today--November 15-- because it would've been my dad's 92nd birthday if he were still here. The house we lived in on Hillcrest Drive in Spring Valley is the home I remember best.

 

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Mike, Margot, and I were in Spring Valley yesterday to pick up the last of what we wanted to keep from Mom and Dad's house. The house is empty of furniture, the walls are bare, all that remains are a few cleaning supplies and a couple of waste baskets with the last few items to throw away. A few hours of work by Spring Valley's version of the Merry Maids, and it will be ready to go on the real estate market on February 15, as scheduled. I only lived there during my junior and senior high school years and the summers on either end, but my parents lived there for much longer. It was my mom's home for nearly 40 years, and my dad's for 50. And of course, it was the place my three siblings and I called home.

Mom was a homemaker and Dad taught and coached in Spring Valley when they decided to build a new house. A teacher's salary didn't offer a luxurious lifestyle like it does now (ha ha!), so Dad's summer work in the 1950's and 60's was being a carpenter, a skill he learned alongside his brother (my Uncle Art) and their father (Grandpa Fred Reps). Dad and some of his teacher friends did much of the work on the house, from basement to roof, and Mom and Dad did most of the finishing work inside. Mike pointed out yesterday that Mom often said how proud she was that she and Dad had designed the layout of the house, which is probably why we had that great laundry chute to mess around with! I think Mike got stuck  in it once...

Our family of five moved to our brand new split-level in the summer of 1960. The house seemed huge to us, and it probably was by 1960 small-town Minnesota standards. We had two bathrooms and a family room, which was a big deal back then. Mary Jo and I shared the largest of the three bedrooms. Our room was painted pale yellow and adorned with floral bedspreads. The closet had two big storage drawers, and a laundry chute that we loved, except when Mark threw his dirty clothes into our closet without opening the chute.

Mark's single-person, small bedroom suddenly needed to become a room for two when we found out about Mike's impending birth in April of 1961. Mom and Dad kept baby Mike in a crib in their room for a while, and then Mike and Mark became roomies.  Their bedroom had a closet that was extra deep on one side for storage leading up to the attic. Whenever I went into their room at night or when Mom and Dad were gone, I made sure the closet door was closed so attic creatures wouldn't descend into the rest of the house. And I was 13. What a wimp!

I remember the first night we slept in the house. Friends of my parents had spent the hot and humid late summer day driving back and forth between old and new, loading and unloading furniture and boxes, emptying 608 North Huron Avenue, and filling 517 Hillcrest Drive. That first night was hot (no air conditioning) and, while our beds were assembled and in their respective bedrooms, everything else was in boxes stacked around us, waiting to be put away tomorrow. The house smelled new and wonderful. I drifted off to sleep feeling happy that we'd moved, but a bit out of place in the unfamiliar surroundings. There was work to be done yet to make the house completely livable--carpeting and furniture for the living room and sealing some of the hardwood floors were at the top of the list. But it was a big adventure to be in our brand new home and we kids didn't mind the minor chaos as much as Mom did.

For 50 years, everyone from Grandma Kirsch, Grandpa and Grandma Reps, Big Uncle Mike, other aunts and uncles, and the few cousins we had came and went. Larry/Dad and I got married and we brought our babies, who became adults in the blink of an eye, and soon they brought their significant others. Eventually, they got married and brought their own babies. We came and went for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmases, weddings, funerals, and most often just to visit.  It's been too quiet in that house since September. Soon a new family will move in, and people will come and go once again, and call this house their home.

Two cheery little pieces of writing I came across today

Mean, median mode

“It is possible that we are past the middle now.”

--Robyn Sarah, “Riveted”

I am past the middle. I’ve passed the middle. I cannot live to 120, so actually I’ve been past the middle for quite some time now. I don’t know when I stopped thinking about half-life, but it must have been somewhere before the middle.

8/18/09

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Post Holes

Open meadow, no lines of demarcation to

Confine the buttercups

Nor to define the constant workspace of butterflies, ants, and honeybees

Sun, rain, a gentle breeze

Nourish the tall grasses until

Snow and cold cover them in gentle silence

Years of open meadow

Diligence of butterflies, ants, and

honeybees but eventually

Post holes appear

One by one, spaced at uneven intervals

Meadow morphing into corral

Fence posts installed like wooden crosses

One by one into the post holes

Until only mine is left to fill.

    5/06 first draft; revised 7/07

Two moments in time, not so different

After Larry's by-pass surgery...

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I should wait with this one. It is hard to read, but I don't know if it will get easier in another year, or two years, or more. We're so lucky surgery went well, and Larry's prognosis is excellent. Still, each time we go for another Mayo Clinic visit, these memories come back.

5:00 p.m. on September 5, 2014

The early September sunlight shines through the window,

lovely, soft, and cool

I’m here, across the room from you, looking out at the light

you are almost a silhouette

against the window, your features barely there.

Minutes ago you heard the news, that it’s cancer. Not that

we didn’t expect it, knowing for weeks but not sure which of the

possibilities would win the biopsy battle.

It’s the old foe, you were told. A renal cell tumor,

a traveler through time

here to remind us of our mortality.

We’re given hope and optimism and appointments. Not ready

yet for that which is inevitable for each of us. “Years and years”, he said.

We believe him. For now.

                                                                                                9/5/14

Honeybee

I posted this little piece on my regular blog some time ago. Up it goes again, as will some other pieces from the past, so I can have them all together, here. I took a screen shot of "Honeybee" because I love the little bees and the font, which I wouldn't have been able to include any other way!

Six Kinds of Pleasure

Six Kinds of Pleasure  

Owen giggle, side kick in the air, intensity of play, visualizing to create, protector of little ones, sports and more sports

Westy sweet lisp of words, dynamo, snuggle on his own terms, flat out enthusiasm, instigator, hockey in the summer winter spring fall

Miles changing so quickly from little boy to boy, spatial understanding with puzzles & Legos, conversation with adults, tolerance of Westy/intolerance of Westy, swimming is his thing

Hannah bilingual, piano, Bouncing Bulldogs, dramatic spin, sensitivity, reader like Grandma Bene—“a book in each hand”

Vivi bilingual, persistence, imitation of her big sister, her own person, snuggler, observant

Ethan ultimate crafter, ultimate planner, ultimate rule maker, loves drama, sports-theater

Fall 2014 draft

Inspired by

Three Kinds of Pleasures (poem by Robert Bly)

I started this when the cousins were here for Christmas in 2014, and didn’t get back to it, unfortunately. Ages then were: Hannah (7.5), Miles (7), Ethan (5.5), Owen (5.5), Vivian (4), and Westy (4).

There have been no serious shifts in personality since then!  9/13/15

July 1999

July1999

Oppressive heat and humidity

Beautiful narrow road flanked by brilliant green leaves as I wind along the gravel

Modern artsy looking home, it’s now a hospice, surrounded by woods

Dad walking down the driveway, intent on his cigarette, sees me.

Mom’s inside.

We open the door to enter a large and airy vestibule, turn down a hallway

I glance in a room that holds a large jetted tub. Above it a swing-like harness hovers. That’s how she gets her bath. I shudder

Mom’s room, comfortable chairs, a wall of windows to look outside. Her hospital bed covered in quilts.

She’s tired. Weary, really, but she smiles when we walk in.

We talk. Dad goes outside for another smoke. Mom decides some pudding would taste good

I open the cup, dip in the spoon, and feed her. “You used to do this for me,” I say. I stifle my tears. She tastes the pudding, barely, but says it’s good.

Later, some women come in and ask if they can do healing touch for Mom

Mom nods, smiles, they move their hands and I think I should see the energy they try to give her

She’s tired. I move to the other side of her bed and sit, while she sleeps.

9/13/15

I’ve been thinking about my mom, after sending an email to her sister Mary Alyce. Annie was in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago and on a whim, I suggested she call Mary Alyce and maybe visit her. Annie, always willing, did just that. Since then I’ve been thinking a lot about Mom and what I knew of her relationship with Mary Alyce. Mary Alyce visited Mom at Seasons Hospice a few days before she died, then returned to Arizona. That was the last time I saw her, so I am especially glad that Annie went to visit her and found her healthy and happy.

The destination matters

9/27/15 (Vivi’s fifth birthday!)

I’m sitting here at my computer, deleting blog post drafts I started and never finished. Most of them are only a title, perhaps a line or two, that weren’t completed and so never were published. Larry sat down in the living room to talk to me about his anxiety concerning his upcoming trip to Oberlin to be a part of a fund raising group for the Class of 1967.  He’s dreading the travel, flying, being gone, and said he’s working on his attitude. Well, guess what I stumbled across from August 2010, before a trip to Boston for Larry to receive a teaching award. An unfinished blog entry…

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Here's another post that won't get posted. I need to write this stuff down now and then I can decide later whether to write more, dump it, or what.

We're going to Boston next week. I feel a little bit excited at odd moments, but mostly I am dreading riding on an airplane, being at airports, the inevitable heat and humidity, not having decent clothes to wear, and wondering how to have a good time. Larry and I aren't good travelers. I am pretty sure he thinks he is a good traveler, but we really don't know how to be tourists. The idea of being a tourist isn't very appealing to me. I'm quitting here. It will just be a litany of complaints if I keep on. If I could lose 50 pounds, shrink in height about 4 inches, not have fibromyalgia, tolerate heat and humidity, believe in something, and have a better attitude, I'd have something to write about.

Back to 2015.  I remember five years ago, having traveled to Chapel Hill to be there for Vivian Claire Dellon’s birth. I don’t remember dreading the trip, I only remember being happy to see that new little baby and her big sister.

Which one of us this time?

Today Larry has an appointment at the Mayo Clinic. An oncology appointment for scans and a consult. Follow-up from his surgery last fall to remove a malignant renal tumor from his pancreas. I came across this piece, which I wrote in December, 2014. Today we talked about the feelings of dread that come with visits to Rochester now. No particular reason for concern this time, but the dread is always there.

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So obvious that it will be a gray day before everyone arrives. Clouds, dampness. That chill, depressing us. It’s especially depressing you.

When I was working, I’d find myself frantic beyond words or thought at this time of year. Everything had to be done for work, for home. There was never enough time even though I borrowed it late into the night, then slept fitfully the last short hours until the alarm, simultaneously planning for the last few days of school, jumping out of bed to add one more thing to the list next to my purse.

Today it was time to vacuum the floors in the living room, dining room, and kitchen. I’d finished prepping the sausage balls we’ll have along with other delicious odds and ends on Saturday evening. Christmas dinner will be earlier in the day, and we’ll have other goodies instead of supper, between the kiddos’ gift extravaganza and the HGE, which is adults only.

Vacuuming. Where was I? Lost in thought, taking my time, wondering what my mom used to think about when she was vacuuming and doing the last preparations before we all descended on her and my dad. I’m thinking now that Dad probably did the vacuuming, since it was typically his job anyway.

Dad got the ham ready. Mom made the wild rice, and other things we always expected for Christmas dinner. In later years, when we were grown up and away, we’d come home to krumkake, which surprised me because it’s so Norwegian and we aren’t.  Once they bought a krumkake iron, though, they became experts. There were always Spritz cookies. Always, since the beginning of my Christmas memory. Little trees, which I loved. Wreaths, and that swirly thing, which wasn’t as artsy as the trees.

There was a certain feeling about Christmas that I miss now. Snow is part of it, and the crisp coldness, sunshine making twinkles out of ice crystals and icicles.  Darkness, too, but only as background for the lights and the color of ornaments and decorations. It’s a darkness that wraps a person in comfort and safety, emptying the mind of worry and sadness. Today, though, I’m sad. I couldn’t tell you why exactly, but some of it has to do with Larry’s sadness. He was sick for too long, and has been better in the last few weeks. Feelings of gratitude and relief for him have been substituted with other worries. Six weeks of antibiotics completed should be a lifted burden. Instead, he seems concerned that living without antibiotics will make him sick again, or that there is a lingering and hidden infection just waiting for him to be off guard to make it’s nasty play again. Maybe there is. Is there?

I think I said it at the start. One of us is going to be depressed or stressed before our family is all together. That’s how it is.

12/24/14

Lake George

An article in the Star Tribune a week ago about a visitor to Red Lake County, Mn, inspired me to dig into a memory about the former Lake George in Spring Valley, MN.

The Sham of 10,000 Lakes: The Lie That Was Lake George

When I was a kid, I went to Lake George to swim. This lackluster body of water, I was told, was man-made and not one of the thousands of natural lakes Minnesotans take pride in. Small and muddy though it was, it served its purpose for me and for my naïve friends, who had no idea what a real lake could be like.

For all of my childhood and throughout my adult years until today, I believed that the county I lived in and where fake Lake George was located was the only county in Minnesota without a natural lake. I staked many a “getting to know you” activity on it when I was in college and in my teaching career. When asked to share What is one thing that makes you different from everyone else in the class? I regularly responded, I’m from the only county in Minnesota that doesn’t have a natural lake, just a man-made one! The others often took pity on me for growing up without at least one of Minnesota’s 10,000-plus natural wonders nearby for recreation.

Everything changed today when I read the essay Christopher Ingraham of The Washington Post wrote as an apology to Red Lake County in Minnesota for calling it “America’s worst place to live.” That’s another story, and a good one. As I was enjoying Ingraham’s description of visiting Red Lake County and the warm and friendly welcome he received from its citizenry despite his widely-read condemnations, a small piece of information popped off the page. Ingraham stated, “…there aren’t any natural lakes in the county.”  What?? Red LAKE County has no lakes? Not even one? But it wasn’t just the lack of a lake in a county named after the largest lake in the state that got to me.

Stunned and reeling from what I’d just read, something I’d come across in the newspaper not long ago but had suppressed because of its potential impact on my beliefs, came creeping out of my memory.  At the time I read it, I was sure it was a mistake. In a Star Tribune story about the Jeffers Petryglyphs near Pipestone, the author had mentioned that Pipestone County has no lakes.  Today I had further proof that everything I knew to be true about Fillmore County’s status as the single Minnesota county with no natural lakes was turning into a lie.

What to do next?  I was getting frantic. Aha! The Department of Natural Resources would tell me the truth, wouldn’t it? It had to. The DNR keeps lake stats on its Lake Finder page. Find a lake by name, or by county. Easy, or so I thought. 

My first stop was a facts page so I could find out the truth about which counties are truly without even one lake. Oh no! There are FOUR of them…Mower, Olmsted, Pipestone, Rock…NOT A MENTION OF FILLMORE COUNTY!  Hey DNR, what about Silver Lake in Rochester, which is in Olmsted County? Were all those geese and ducks that made the shores of the lake slippery and disgusting with their poop deceived the way I was? Was Silver Lake an optical illusion?

Confused and discouraged, I searched the individual stats pages for the four lake-free counties, expecting a big “zero” for number of lakes in each. Guess again. Mower County lists six lakes, including the LeRoy Sandpit, of all things. Pipestone County boasts eight lakes, four of which are unnamed, and Rock County’s stats show five lakes. Olmsted County lists—get this—eighteen-- and yes, Silver Lake with its excessive fowl excrement is among them.

So even the DNR site has conflicting information. Are there lakes in those four counties or not? Of course I had to check the Fillmore County stats, where two ponds in Lanesboro made the list. These can’t be real lakes, can they? Maybe the DNR identifies man-made “lakes” in no-lake counties so residents and visitors can find places to fish or swim. Sure enough, the Mill Pond right here in St. Peter, behind the police station, is listed as one of twenty Nicollet County bodies of water designated as lakes. 

While I think the DNR needs to identify lakes being natural or not, the only thing that doesn’t make sense to me yet is why I was lied to as a child. Even my brother knew the secret that Lake George was a fake, making Fillmore County barren of natural lakes. When he was collecting stories for a book for the Spring Valley Historical Society, he discovered that long before we were born, Lake George was formed as a holding pond for water that could be cut and stored as ice after it was frozen. It was where they made ice for the city. Nice bit of history to know.

Despite the deception I’ve believed and shared all these years, memories of swimming at Lake George on hot summer days, playing on the muddy beach, and searching the dried up fake-lake-turned swamp for aquatic life on biology field trips in high school don’t depend on Fillmore County being a lake-free oddity. My brother has great memories, too, as do hundreds of kids who lived in our little town. Now another question looms:  who was George?

9/7/15

P.S.

A little nosing around on the internet uncovered this article.

http://www.hometown-pages.com/Content/Social/Social/Article/Winter-pastimes-on-Lake-George/-2/-2/40893

Among other things, it describes how the original lake, built for recreation in the 1930's, eventually dried up, so a smaller version was dug and given a sand bottom, making it usable for swimming. The story includes a reference to the Lake George's namesake, I read the article once and promptly willed myself to forget George's full name in order to retain a tiny bit of the mystery of the non-lake from my childhood.  :o )

 Lake George, west side of Spring Valley, 1930's

Westy, when he was almost 3

In less than 6 months, this little boy will be a 5-year-old. He was only 3 when I wrote this. Time truly flies... 

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Westy

Westy is almost three. Six days remain of his two-ness.

Always a blondie, sometimes a fireman, sometimes a lumberjack

Who knows what the day will bring?

His mama and daddy say he’s prone to tantrums,

which frustrates them and makes Miles roll his eyes and

shake his head.

His grandpappy and I say he’s prone to cuteness,

which delights us and makes us smile.

This little boy tilts his head and lopes with confidence. He honors

his big brother by watching him with intensity, and copies him with pride.

He’s almost three, this sweet child. The babiest, who melts my

heart when he looks at me with his blue eyes and says,

“Y-you want to play with me?”  Of course I do, Westy. Of course I do.

10-9-13  jmp

Last day of being five

I picked up Ethan and Owen after school on Tuesday, April 28, the last day they were five years old. We went home to enjoy Dilly Bars with Grandpappy. I had been mulling over the idea of having a conversation with them about their upcoming birthday, taking some notes, and creating a poem or little story based on their comments. As with many of my ideas, this one took a turn in a different direction, so I went with it. Here’s as much of the conversation as I could get down on virtual paper! I didn't identify the speaker--I started to, but it got out of control very quickly!

 

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Me: When is your birthday?

“Our birthday is April 29. It was supposed to be May 29, but Mommy couldn’t hold us in because we were kicking hard.”

“Gayle said she might not recognize us when we’re six tomorrow.”

Me: What are some things you remember about being five?

(Puzzled look)

“We burped.”

“Getting ice cream with you.” (They were eating Dilly bars while we discussed being 5.)

Do you remember anything else?
“We went to Gustie basketball practice. And games.”

“And a Gustie baseball game. Only one.”

“We got so much presents on our birthday when we turned 5 last year.”

“Playing soccer at the park. Will you guys come to see us play soccer sometime?”

“We have swimming lessons.”

“Zander has 9 cavities.”

“We go to kindergarten when we’re five.”

“We’re not five anymore. Tomorrow we’ll be six.”

(Gpa asked about when they had their first school bus ride.)

“We had that when we were four, when we went to preschool.”

(Then they admitted that their first ride on a yellow school bus was when they were five.)

“Someone was bleeding on the bus today.”

E and O named some new friends:

“Calvin, Max, but we knew him in preschool.  Ian A. and Ian B.  Ian B. is his nickname. Juddie Buddy.”

Gpa: Is there is a girl named Montana in  your class?

“We knew Montana because she farted at the beginning of the school year. She has loud burps. She only likes Laila Osborne and Mailinn.” (sp)

“We learned to read. Ms Depuydt taught us how to write at the beginning of the school year.”

“We learned how to read from Mommy and Daddy.”

Me: Anything else you remember about when you were five?

“Christmas with our cousins.  But I really only remember the presents.”

“And Easter with Miles and Westy. We got to have an Easter egg hunt.”

“We made ganola (O)/gamola (E) bars and buscetti at school.”

(Later, in the car on the way to their house Bunker Lane, Ethan took a look at a stick pretzel he was about to put into his mouth.)

“This is a peakalow.” 

I asked, “Is it a piccolo?” Ethan:  “No! A PEAKalow.”

E and O explained they also learned about a flute and a clarinet in music class. We reviewed what instruments Mommy, Daddy, and the aunts and uncles played. When I said that Daddy had played a trumpet, Owen was enthusiastic: “Oh I LOVE trumpets!”  Be glad no one played drums.