Memories of Grandma.

As I did after the passing of my grandpa and my Grandma Clark last year, I've jotted down some thoughts and memories about my sweet Grandma, Martha Martin.

My grandma was born on her mother's birthday in May 1920 in rural Mahoning County, Ohio. She was the youngest of four children. She told me once that her mother suffered from poor health for the rest of her life after Grandma's birth, and that she always felt responsible for that. Grandma's aunt Mary lived with the family and helped out with the children and the chores to take some of the burden off Great-Grandma, who passed away when Grandma was 18 years old.

Grandma grew up on a farm, and her father sold produce and milk to help support the family. She liked to read her father's old McGuffey readers, and one of her favorite teachers gave her a book of Bible stories and a copy of Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates. She loved to read and play house in the corncrib when it was empty in the spring.

Grandma attended a country school until eighth grade, and wanted to go to high school very much. She loved school, especially spelling and history, and couldn't understand why all her friends moaned about school starting every fall. She was the first person in her family to graduate from high school, and she was the class valedictorian.

She married my grandpa when she was twenty-two, and they moved into a house right up the road from the house Grandma grew up in. She lived in that house for the next 65 years (and lived on the same road all her life!) Over the next 17 years, from 1943 to 1960, she gave birth to three sons and five daughters.

Grandma took care of children all her life--first her own kids, and then all the grandkids who ran in and out of her house over the years. My family lived in Missouri till I was six, and I remember coming to Ohio on visits and staying at Grandma's house. She made me pancakes in the mornings, and I played in her vegetable garden. I remember running in and out of the staked pea plants that towered over my head.

Grandma was a devoted gardener--out of necessity for many years, of course, when the family depended on everything they could grow and can and freeze themselves. But even into her eighties, she was still putting in a garden in the spring and putting up the produce all summer long. The apricot jam she made from the trees in their orchard was my very favorite.

She quilted and sewed all her life, both for her family and for the church relief organizations. Her stitches were in quilts and comforters that warmed her own family, and that were sent all over the world to warm others in need. She made most of her own clothes for many years.

I remember her making me handkerchief babies in church when I was little, which I'm sure was something she did for her own children, and probably something her mother did for her. She always had a flowered hanky in her purse. She would roll the hanky on one side and then on the other and turn it around somehow and then there were two tiny babies in a hammock.

She wrote poetry--some serious, thoughtful verses about her faith and family, and some quietly funny poems about dead dogs, prowling skunks, old age, and other quirky topics. She had a self-deprecating sense of humor, always quick to laugh at her own idiosyncrasies. She was frugal from years of pinching pennies, and she knew how to live on just what she needed and no more.

Grandma was a truly good person through and through. She had limitless patience. (At least, in the years I knew her...as a young mother her patience may have been in shorter supply!) I never heard her say a bad word about another person. She always seemed to look for the good in people. She cared about doing the right thing and making the right choices. She had empathy for others and treated others according to the Golden Rule. I have often thought to myself over the years that if my conscience had a voice, it would be Grandma's voice.

In the past few years, Grandma slowly slipped away, a little at a time. She had a couple of bad falls and used first a walker and then a wheelchair. Her memory started to fade--she still knew her children, but the names of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren became more elusive. It broke my heart a little bit the first time I visited her and had to remind her who I was. But the sweetness of her personality never faded at all. She never complained, never put up a fuss about the difficulties of life in a nursing home.

Grandma loved God with all her heart and soul and mind. She prayed for everyone in her family all her life. She read her Bible every night before bed. She was sitting in her chair reading her Bible when she passed away, as appropriate a death for Grandma as any of us could have imagined.

My cousin Pam and I were talking at Grandma's grave, about how challenging it will be to live up to the example Grandma set for us. I have a very different personality from Grandma...I have always been a cranky, cynical person and I probably always will be. But she and I were both deep thinkers. We both loved to write and read. I inherited her empathic nature, which she passed to my mother, who passed it to me. I inherited her wonder about the ways of God and the spiritual world. I can only hope to be as truly good and truly loving as she was all her life.

Home again.

Oh, what a sad and tiring weekend it was. I don't think I knew before just how tired grief can make a person feel.

As I was flying home on Friday morning, my childhood friend Eric Wenger passed away. My family has been friends with his family for many years--our grandmothers were good friends, in fact. We went to the same church and for several years attended the same school and were in the same class. He was a year older than I.

Eric had a challenging life. A brain tumor and surgery in childhood left him slightly--but only slightly--delayed. He had the sweetest, most joyful spirit. Even after a stroke in his early thirties, which left him wheelchair-bound and unable to speak clearly, he always gave me a huge smile whenever I saw him. A final stroke two weeks ago sent him home to his parents' house to wait for the end, and he went to Heaven on Friday.

It's hard for me to articulate here how remarkable he was and how I felt about him...the feelings run a little too deeply to be easily shared. It was a very sad weekend.

We had a beautiful funeral for Grandma on one of the beautiful cool early-fall mornings that Ohio specializes in. A wonderful breeze blew during the graveside service, and it was good to stand there and feel it on my face. If the measure of a life is how much one was loved, then Grandma had a tremendous life indeed. Which she did.

Here is a link to Grandma's obituary. I'm flying out very early tomorrow morning and coming back Sunday evening. It will be sad, but I'm looking forward to seeing all the family again. It will be good to all be together and remember Grandma. She was precious to us all.

Strange to think I have no grandparents living now. I feel so blessed to have had them in my lives for as long as I did, especially both my grandmothers, who were extraordinary women, each in her own way. It has been nice to think about Grandma this week and remember all the little moments I had with her, and it will be nice to hear more about her from some of the other people who loved her. I listened to a bit of an interview I did with her ten or twelve years ago, and it was lovely to hear her voice and remember her as she was.

My heart is very sad tonight. My sweet Grandma Martin went to sleep this evening and woke up in Heaven. I will miss her so much.

Please keep my mom and her brothers and sisters in your prayers this week, and all of us far-flung family members who will be traveling to Ohio to say good-bye to Grandma.

What I did on my summer vacation.

Ah, the long summer hiatus. Think of me as a TV show returning to my regularly scheduled night and time. (Hopefully.)

I had such big plans for my late summer, but the big kitchen re-do never materialized. Todd is still in search of wood to make new doors, and we had a flood of company in August that made a torn-up kitchen undesirable anyway.

My brother and his family came down the first weekend in August and we headed to the "real" beach, the ocean beach. In previous years, we've taken them to the "river" beach in Yorktown, which is much better for small children, but the girls are big kids now and they loved the ocean.

Here Marissa pretends to be a sea turtle. She was so covered with sand she looked like a breaded cutlet:

My brother and I and the girls, waiting for the next big wave:

Todd's sister Lisa and her family also stopped by for a night/morning on their way to the Outer Banks, but it was such a quick trip I didn't get any pictures. It was fun to get to see them, though.

The second weekend in August, we made a quick trip home to Ohio for a family reunion. Here's me and my sister, she must have just said something funny:

I helped my cousin Janine's son Isaac take a little stroll. He turned one year old a couple weeks after this and I believe is walking on his own now:

Some of us were eating and chatting...my dad and my cousin Alan:

Me and my mom and my aunt Carol:

...and others were kayaking and fishing in the small lake my aunt and uncle have on their property. My nephew Tanner:

My cousin-in-law Rich (Isaac's dad):

These two little cuties, Isaac and my cousin David's son Lucas, are the youngest members of the family, at one year old and two years old, respectively.

The oldest member of the family is Grandma, at 90, who was able to put in a brief appearance thanks to the terrific shuttle service her nursing home provides. Todd (my official photographer) was eating and fishing most of the time she was there, so he didn't get a good picture of her; I hope someone else did.

There are a lot of us when we all get together--and this wasn't nearly the whole family!

Missing were my cousins Jarrod and Mike (away in the Air Force and Coast Guard); my cousins Darrel and Dennis and their families; my brother and his family; my cousin Pam and her husband; and my cousins Dan and Derek, who had just gone back to college after the summer. You can imagine what a crowd it would be if we were ever all able to be together in one spot. I love my big family, they are all very special to me.

When we came home from Ohio, we brought my nine-year-old niece Kylie back with us. She stayed for five days and then flew home--her first time on a plane. We had a great week with her, going to the beach:

Todd took her crabbing several times, which she loved:


Todd also showed her how to kayak:

She and I took a dolphin cruise, too:

Then she hopped on a plane and flew away and I collapsed for a couple of days! I am not used to having a kid around full time! We had such a great time, though.

In the three weeks since Kylie left, I've been laying pretty low. I worked on a stitchery project that I'll share later...I read a bunch of not-so-great books (seriously, I'm really in a slump!)...I watched all ten episodes of Ken Burns' Jazz...I got back into my walking and diet routine that was sadly neglected during the first two weeks of August. Plus all the boring day-to-day stuff, of course.

Hurricane Earl was all set to plow into us here on the East Coast, but decided to just stroll on past and leave us mostly alone, which was just fine with me. We had a windy, rainy morning on Friday and that was it. And in his wake some slightly cooler, drier weather has come along, which is a blessing. I have the windows open tonight--I couldn't tell you the last time it's been cool and dry enough for that!

This fall we are looking forward to having some company and doing a little traveling here and there. We're also really hoping to get some exterior work done on the house. The kitchen re-do is still on the table, but won't get going until Todd finds some poplar for the doors and we get a nice big chunk of time to work on it. And I am just looking forward to (please God!) some cooler weather. This summer has been pretty bad and I am ready to wear jeans and long-sleeves again, although that won't be happening any time soon.

That's all from here!

Rediscovering the library.

I was so disappointed when we moved to southern Virginia seven years ago and I got a good look at the library systems here, first the county system where we first lived, and then the city system where we live now.

I moved here from Columbus, Ohio, a city and a state which both devoted a lot of attention and money toward their libraries. (Granted, this was in the prosperous 1990's--things may be different now in Ohio.) I worked for a while at one of the branch libraries in the Columbus system, a brand-new building with a vast "new books" section, gorgeous wooden bookshelves, high spacious ceilings, a fireplace and cozy seating area--and of course, access to all the books in all the other Columbus branches--millions of books just a day or two away, once requested. And since I worked there, picking up my requested books was simply part of my routine.

We had two libraries close by our home--one was also part of the Columbus system, and was extensively renovated while we lived there, and the other closest library was part of a village system, but a wealthy village with lots of money to throw at its library. That particular library has been renovated twice in the past fifteen years--it's basically a mall with books at this point.

It upset me probably more than it should have, moving to a place where libraries seem more like an afterthought than a prominent community feature. I've mentioned my current library before--a small, squat, dark place whose most interesting feature is that it's named after astronaut Gus Grissom.

Not that I'm opposed to small libraries, necessarily...while I was in college in Marietta, Ohio, I was a regular user of the Washington County public library on Fifth Street. It was a small, old building that smelled like dusty paper. I'd walk there from campus to get my required dose of murder mysteries and other non-college related reading material. Because it was old, it had that hushed, sacred, echoing quality that modern libraries can't quite achieve.

We also had a small old library in Columbiana, Ohio, which was my beloved childhood library, tucked behind the high school on a bumpy brick-paved street. The steps down to the children's section in the basement were blood-red linoleum, narrow, slippery, steep, dark. (Obviously pre-Americans with Disabilities Act.) Every two weeks I would drag a bulging bookbag up the steps and out to the car. My mom would make me write a list of all my books the minute I got home, to try to avoid the ordeal of lost books and fines, which could run into some serious money with a kid who brought home as many books as I did. (That library was torn down years ago, and there's a nice, safe [boring] one-story modern library in a different neighborhood now.)

But the Grissom library in Newport News is small and charmless. It was built out of cement in that decade of architectural shame known as the 1970s. The new books section is sad and sparse. The building doesn't smell of old paper but of damp plastic carpet. And the library workers can be on the surly side. I go there once a year or so, and then I go home, missing Ohio.

But there must be some sort of belated homing instinct deep in my brain, like with swallows or pigeons, because about a month ago, I felt this deep desire to go to the library. For the past three years, I've been using Paperback Swap to fill my book needs (along with occasional trips to Borders) and although I love Paperback Swap passionately, there were books that I just wasn't able to find there, or that were so heavily wishlisted that it would be three more years before I'd work my way to the top of the list for them.

So I printed off a list of books I was looking for and spent some time clicking at the library card catalog computer and lo and behold--I found a lot of them. Not all by any means, but a lot. I brought home a stack, and went back a few days later to pick up another stack that I'd requested from the two or three other libraries in the city system.

I read through most of those (this all coincided with a 100-degree heat wave--good indoor reading weather) and went back two weeks later and brought home (and requested) two more big stacks. This time I also ventured into inter-library loan, which is not a service I've made much use of before, since I'm a person who tends to want books NOW.

I found that the library shelves and seating areas have been rearranged a bit, for a more open feel, which has greatly reduced the claustrophobic feeling. And I've found that early evening visits are the best--there are fewer people and more of a quiet bustle during that time, which is very soothing.

So far this has been the great satisfaction of my summer--bringing home big stacks of library books. The feeling reminds me so much of childhood summers, and that adds an extra layer of pleasure to it. All I would need to do is turn off the air conditioning and plop down on a blanket in front of a box fan with my newest read, and it would be like time traveling! (But I'm not turning off the a/c, not even to time travel!)

Kitchen snowballs.

In true "if you give a mouse a cookie" fashion, my kitchen cabinet project has mushroomed into something a little more complicated. Not terribly complicated, but I can't start working on it just yet.

I was inspecting the cabinets and realized that, like the vanitites in the bathrooms, the countertop sort of wraps around and covers the top inch or so of the cabinet. Which means that the countertop really needs to come off before I start painting. (Otherwise, there's a ridge of paint that you have to sand and then you have to prime and paint that dumb little unfinished gap once the countertop does come off--annoying.)

I was going to start on the bar as sort of an appetizer before tackling the main course of big cabinets. So should we pull off the bar countertop so I can paint before finding a countertop, since it could take a number of weeks to get one in? No. We need to look at countertops now, so I can paint while we wait for it to come in.

I also found some cabinet doors at the Benjamin Moore store that I really liked, and took Todd in to see if he thought he could reproduce them. But since we were there anyway, we had the very nice man run us up an estimate on getting the cabinet doors pre-made from the company (I would paint them myself)...and we also picked out a countertop and added that to the estimate.

Hopefully, the Benjamin Moore estimate will be coming to my inbox today or tomorrow and then we can decide where to go from there. We also got an estimate from Lowe's on the countertops, but not the doors, as their cabinet companies only sell the whole cabinet set-up, boxes plus doors.

I did find a shade of white paint I liked at Benjamin Moore for the cabinets, called "Mascarpone," which is the soft Italian cheese that everyone* on the Food Network always mispronounces as "MARS-capone," which is one of those little things that drives me up the wall.

*Except Giada de Laurentiis, who over-pronounces it: "maaaahs-caaaaar-POOOOOH-nehhhh," which is almost as bad.

The countertop is a laminate called Ebony Star, which is black with lots of white speckles. I know everybody and their aunt insists on granite countertops these days, but in this house, it would be like sewing diamond buttons on a flannel shirt. Plus I don't really like granite, nor is it in the budget.

Then there's the issue of a new backsplash and possibly a new kitchen sink, since ripping out the countertop will probably muck up the tiles that are on the backsplash now, and why put a 20-year-old sink back into a shiny new countertop?

So you can see how these little ideas always, always snowball! The painting will hopefully be commencing in a few days. By which time I will probably have lost my desire/energy/focus to do it! That shiny new countertop will be the carrot to my painting-loathing donkey self, though.

Weekend's here!

Some friends of ours are going on a trip to Utah and had some garden produce to dispose of that wouldn't get eaten while they were gone. I'm already plotting what to do with these adorable baby squash and tomatoes this weekend. Homegrown produce is a rarity around here, like diamonds and rubies. I guess I need to make more farming friends.

On Monday Todd had the day off, so we went antique-hunting in Richmond. The pickings were slim but I did find these two very cute dishcloths:


I found a cross-stitched sampler I really liked too, but it was too much money for a sloppily-done piece. So I (ssh!) had Todd take a couple pictures of it. I'll share them at some point when he and his phone are both home and I can remember. What I'd like to do is print the photos large and use them as a guide for reproducing it. Should be pretty simple. I've been wanting to do a little stitching project for ages.

Today I went and got TSP cleaner, and rollers, and tape, and primer for the cabinets. I brought home a few paint chips, too, so as to get just the right shade of white! I'm ready to start tackling this project, but probably won't get down to it until Sunday, since we have some running around to do tomorrow.

Looking forward to a semi-productive weekend!

Just a note.

I'm home today working on laundry, so when I found this fun collage challenge over at Green Paper, I sat down and played along in between loads. Here's my creation:


And what a fun blog Green Paper is! I found it through another blog, The Feathered Nest, which is also a lot of fun. It's great to find new sources for vintage clip art and creative ideas.

Summer stuff.

We finally caught a break in the weather last week for a few days, and I was able to spray paint the little wicker basket on a stand I picked up for free at a yard sale a few weeks ago.

I just love before-and-afters, so here's the before again:


And the after:


How I love cheap projects! I want to get one or two more small plants to put in it, and maybe some different garden-type odds and ends. This is just a random collection of stuff I grabbed from the house to dress it up.

On the Fourth of July, the weather went back to insanely hot and humid after several wonderful cool days. We have so many projects we want to do on the front of the house, but there's no way to do any kind of sustained work outside in 100-degree heat. So I started thinking about what I could work on inside, and the kitchen cabinets sprang to mind.

I've been pondering what to do with the cabinets ever since we moved in four years ago...they are a nice quality oak finish, but the doors and lower edges are in bad shape. We decided long ago to do the same thing we did with our bathroom vanities: keep the cabinet, but paint it, and make new doors and paint those, too, plus add new hardware. It's worked out really well in the bathrooms.

However kitchen cabinets get much more use and abuse, so the process is a little longer and a little scarier. But since it will be probably two months before the weather is fit to work outside, this seems like a good way to accomplish something despite the weather.

Right now I'm trying to figure out what type of doors I want, and what color to paint them. I know they will be white, but I can't decide whether to go with the same white as the trim in the rest of the house, or whether to use a slightly warmer, creamier white. This all feels slightly terrifying! Nobody really looks at bathroom vanitites (At least I don't) but kitchen cabinets are right out there for all the world to see. Gotta get it right!

So think good thoughts for me as I research and buy my materials and unscrew that first cabinet door!

Fourth of July weekend.

I'm going to post the Memorial Day pictures I took of my front porch for the Fourth of July, since after a month of 90- and 100- degree temperatures, these flowers don't look so great any more.


The white and blue lobelia is all long dead...the red geraniums on the steps have mostly stopped blooming...the red geraniums in the hanging baskets are struggling along, but have about a third as many blooms on them...my beloved blue and white petunia basket that I brought home from Ohio is hanging in there, too, but it has about half as many blooms now.

I've watered and Miracle-Gro'ed assiduously, but I guess potted plants can only take just so much. Now I have very little color left in my beds or on my porch, but I'm not sure I want to try planting any new annuals that will probably just crisp up and die in whatever summer blasts July has in store for us. Ah, gardening...! At least it was nice for a week or two...

Obsolete.

Tonight I'm finally getting around to something I've been wanting to do for ages. I have several cassette tapes here with interviews I did with both of my grandmothers and my great-aunt Helen 10-12 years ago. Every so often I think about them and think that I've got to get them digitized and saved on my computer against the day when the tapes fall apart. Todd got me set up tonight and I'm playing them through and recording them right now.

I'm listening to an interview that I did with my grandma Clark over the phone in May 1998. It gives me a little lump in my throat to hear her voice with the Missouri twang in it. And I sound ridiculously young--I was 27.

You always wish you had done more, don't you? I have 45 minutes of Grandma Martin, about 90 minutes of Aunt Helen, maybe two hours of Grandma Clark. It's not enough.

I remember interviewing Grandma Martin, and some of the memories of her parents made her a little emotional, and I felt intrusive. So I didn't interview her again. Now I wish I had talked to her about her life as a young mother and about her kids and about how she managed to make ends meet. Grandma is still alive but at age 90, her memory is very patchy.

Remembering the face-to-face interview I did with Grandma Clark in 2001 never fails to make my blood boil--we talked for an entire side of a tape, she told me about meeting and marrying my grandpa--and at the end of the tape I took it out and it had not recorded any of it. I've never forgiven Radio Shack for their shoddy merchandise!

When I interviewed Aunt Helen, she sat in her rocking chair and rocked like a little girl, just as hard as she could. Six weeks later, she passed away. I was so glad I had gone to see her.

It is odd to fumble with cassette tapes and stick them in the little player. You realize how obsolete a technology is when you can't remember which way it goes into the player!

Now I'm sitting here thinking about all the other people I should get on tape while I can. I understood, logically, that my grandparents would not be around forever. Now they're gone into death and dementia and I'm looking around in surprise thinking "How did that happen?"

So if I give you a call and ask you to talk into my obsolete technology, you'll understand why, right?

Yard sale finds.

I swear I have sat down to write a blog post and been thwarted at least three times in the past few days. Our internet seems to be dismayed by the hot steamy weather and develops an intermittent case of the vapors. (And it cut out on me again while I was writing this.) That's my theory anyway--we may just need a new router or something prosaic.

I had a great Saturday morning, hitting a few yard sales for the first time in months and months. For quite some time, I've just been sleeping in on Saturday mornings and letting Todd go out and do the hunting and gathering--mostly because my house is brim-full of stuff and I have no more room. But on Friday night I started thinking about some of the things I'd like to do outside, and it occurred to me that yard sales are always a good place to find outside stuff, too.

I found these cushions at an estate sale:


They're very flat, and made from printed panels that were stitched around for a quilted effect. I remember this being a very popular craft 15-20 years ago. They just look so perfect on the patio chairs, don't you think? I bring them in at night so they don't get damp and dirty.

The back deck looks so cool and lovely here, doesn't it?


Actually it was upwards of 100 degrees out there and not much better today. So I admire the cushions from inside where it's cool and dry. Maybe someday I'll get to sit on them.

At the same estate sale, I spotted this doo-hickey:



I think it's supposed to be a sewing basket on a stand, but the top of the lid is all torn. The guy who was handling the outdoor traffic told me I could just take it, no charge.

I was all set to bring it home and chop off that lid piece and spray paint it and reveal a wonderful before-and-after miracle...but the spray paint can says to spray when it's between 45-85 degrees and low humidity. That may mean it will be September before I transform this thing. It certainly won't be happening this week. I want to set it on the back deck and fill it with plants and tchotchkes. Can't wait!

I also got three strawberry jars, those terracotta jars with all the holes where you can tuck plants. When I asked the gentleman at the sale how much the strawberry jar was, he asked me to show him where it was. He told me that when I said "strawberry jar," he had no idea what I was talking about--his dad always called them "10-man urinals." I laughed and laughed! This is a strawberry jar, for those who don't know:


I also got three books, an old-fashioned food mill, and curtain rods for Todd's study. Not too bad.