Nesting

We hadn't been in our new house but a few days until my husband was off to St. Lewis on business for a week, my nephews arrived to stay a few days, and I had a miscarriage. In the midst of all the stresses of change, our new neighbors--the Wilkins--came from across the street to introduce themselves. This was the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

Adjusting to separate bedrooms took time. Each night, my kids went to bed in their own room but in the morning, I'd find them both in one room.  I used the empty living room to spread out materials for creating Relief Society work day packets or cutting out patterns or laying out, then stacking, layered components for quilt making. It was a "Great Room" where I could set up quilting frames or fill it with borrowed card tables and chairs to seat relatives and business associates for holiday meals or just because. That's how I learned to cook. My plan became one of always trying out at least one new recipe on guests or extended family. That, in my own mind, justified the expense of ingredients different from my regular, limited list and limited cash for such things. I figured that nothing would go to waste. What guest would refuse to eat something I'd made and served! I'm sure the man who ate my first attempt at Chocolate Silk Pie wished he'd declined. I used a recipe given to me by someone who had copied it incorrectly, doubling the butter and halving something else. I was too inexperienced to know that the proportions could not possibly be correct so I made and served it, as written. If my own indigestion was any indication...Oh, that poor, poor man.

My school days friend and former roommate was at the house one evening, working on a project. Sitting there on the floor, there was no mistaking that strange, rolling sort of feeling, similar to something I remembered from a day at beauty school when empty chairs had rolled across the floor and slatted window blinds swayed back and forth. I'd also watched, as a kid, power lines leading from the house to the barn, dance and spark, hitting against each other as the earth moved under my feet. Ruth Ann asked, "What is that?" "Earthquake", I said. "Well, make it stop!" came her answer. Remembering that I had kids in the bathtub, I made a mad dash to save them. They didn't care what was making the water swish back and forth rhythmically. They were splashing and having great fun!

Corner kitchen windows in our first home brought the out-of-doors inside. That first year of seasons held wonderful surprises as vegetation sprang from the soil or changed color. Houses on the street were terraced. One next door neighbor, whose house sat slightly higher than our own, had added a cover over his side porch. My, my what a surprise I got when summer rains came that first year, sometimes sudden and flash-flood like, quickly overflowing street gutters, forming an instant river that swelled up on mounded lawns on either side of the street. Of course, a good amount of water was funneled right down off that slanted porch cover, overwhelming our window well, beyond its capacity to drain. As the well filled, water poured in around the closed window, down the paneled wall inside and out the closed cabinet doors and drawers, soaking everything stored inside and the carpet, all the way to the center of the room. The first time it happened, Frank was traveling out of town. Gene and Pat came immediately, Gene with shop vac in hand, and Pat with her arms filled with towels to soak up as much water as quickly as possible. The mop-up seemed endless but they worked side by side with me. Then Pat ran her washer as long as I ran my own. We hung endless towels on clotheslines at each house. Lifesavers! Unfortunately, it happened more than once during the time we lived there, although we tried several options to correct the problem.

Pat got me started on food storage. I got her family hooked on gingerbread houses. I'd bake the pieces for her, then her family would put it together. Her youngest child was about a year older than my oldest child. Pat had returned to work the year we moved to the neighborhood so her young daughter came to our house after school. Sometimes, my kids and I went with the Wilkins to their family cabin near Provo, Utah. Her baked beans were the Best! We saw fireworks together at Liberty Park. On New Year's Eve, Pat made delicious lasagna and pizza, things I did not cook, making it a real treat for my family. Not one of us could ever resist one of her from-scratch brownies. My daughter still makes Pat's cranberry salad for our Thanksgiving meal.

The Wilkins kids had Wonder Bread at their house. According to my kids, that just wasn't fair. Were we really that poor, they said, that they had to be deprived like that and made to eat homemade bread every day? And so began the trade. I'd walk a nice, hot loaf or two of bread, straight out of the oven, over to Pat's house, something her family didn't have often, and she would hand me a loaf of Wonder Bread to take back to my kids! 

Pat's son was older, with activities of his own but the oldest of the Wilkins' girls became my babysitter. She was "My Edie" to each of them. Her sister, Margaret, always had a new cheer to teach Jenn. Lucy and Todd became best buds for a time. Pat and Gene always seemed to know when I was getting overwhelmed, a young mother with two active kids and a husband forever traveling on business, and often without access to a car. Wilkins seemed to sense when my cabin fever was reaching a fevered pitch and would just appear, unannounced, babysitter in hand, and whisk me off to Baskin-Robbins for a half-pint of as many flavors as she or Gene or I could cram into our own carton. Having uninterrupted, adult conversation and the refreshing indulgence of an "all mine" sweet treat gave me the break I needed. It helped make me a better and more patient Mom when I returned home. There was always a bit of humor, too, when Gene was involved. I could not believe how many flavors he packed into that relatively small ice cream carton my first time out with the two of them! Pat was also in a state of disbelief!

Let's be honest here. I had few social or conversational skills. I had sat on a piano or organ bench just about forever. I had only a high school education plus Cosmetology School. That didn't count for much to anyone unless they needed a free haircut. I had lived a clean life, and had, for the most part, been obedient to the teachings of my parents, and our religion, and figured I'd done exactly as I'd been taught, by marrying a returned missionary, the son of my stake president, and the grandson of an LDS church president, John Taylor, for heaven's sake, and in the Temple! Surely, this must have counted for something, and perhaps in my mind, even a guarantee of sorts for a "Happily Ever After". Looking back, I was ill prepared for marriage or motherhood and was certainly unprepared to cook for, host and entertain high mucky-mucks. Yet, I hosted endless dinners for my husband's business associates, often with little advance notice. I'd get a phone call, maybe, "There will be # coming for dinner in about 30 minutes."

Whether it had actually been said or not, my understanding of the expectation put upon me was that of being on call, to present myself and our home in the best way possible at any time--I didn't have much to work with in that regard--and have the kids (and myself) spit polished so we'd reflect favorably on my husband as a successful family man. Again, my interpretation of that had me scrubbing my kitchen floor sometimes at 2:00 in the morning, after kids were in bed. It was that old, awful tile stuff that required hand and knees scrubbing, then a good waxing. You could have eaten off that floor when I was done with it. A long time passed before I realized that no one had, and that I could back off the need for perfection in the floor, a bit. I learned quickly to prioritize in order to have all elements of the meal ready to serve at the same time, at the correct temperature, kids still clean with hair in place, and myself...well, I really didn't have much to work with there, either! The last thing on my "Do At The LAST Minute" list was polishing that big, picture window in the empty living room. I mean, it was right there, unguarded by furniture or drapes still in one piece, and was a perfect spot for little fingers--my kids and their friends--and lots of nose and lips pressed to shiny glass smudges. I also learned to serve hot, homemade bread with homemade jam and roll the butter into balls, Or offer homemade dill pickles--Pat's recipe made with grape leaves, a crowd and family favorite--with other tidbits I learned to make, as appetizers. If guests had something bite-sized in their hands while they socialized--mostly business talk, actually--or a cold glass of homemade lemonade or yummy slush punch, they didn't seem to mind the absence of booze, not that I was aware of, anyway. I was still attempting to have my house remain alcohol free. There were still some who met me for the first time, in my own home or at business socials I sometimes attended with my husband, whose opening line was nearly always, "And where did you get your degree?" I, of course, was already sensitive about my country bumpkinness so I undoubtedly felt that their noses were lifted a little higher skyward than may actually have been the case. There were times where being an introvert was difficult, as was being young and inexperienced, having differing opinions about what marriage, family, and home was suppose to be, already showing up, but going mostly unnoticed or recognized, as such.

I feel sure I've mentioned somewhere previous that my precocious son had a knack for asking questions of our guests--perhaps some that others wanted to ask but never would have--like asking our guest who was the victim of early onset baldness, "Um-m-m, did you know that you don't have enough hair to cover your head?" Or sitting down on the fireplace hearth beside our Japanese guest, my small son getting right in her face to say, "Your eyes are different than mine. Why?" And I'll slip in another here that happened while I was driving a city street in Salt Lake City near the old part of the city occupied by residents with some wealth who liked to put that on display. I stopped for a light, car windows down for air, kids untethered as was legal in those days. An elderly woman sat on a bench, waiting for a bus. She was dressed beautifully and around her neck, a piece made of mink fur, with head and tail still attached. The light changed to green and as I passed by, slowly, my child leaned his head out the window and shouted, "Hey, is that thing dead or alive?" 

There were times when the kids and I spent odd hours of the day and night at the airport either dropping off or picking up their dad or providing taxi service for his visiting colleagues. I was driving one of those businessmen to the airport. Todd was not yet five but was teaching himself to read, as he'd been doing for some time. He kept up a conversation with my passenger, reading signs along the way, then explaining, in quite some detail for one his age, how the airport radar worked, how the planes flew and on and on. Judging by this man's quizzical expression, I think he wondered if Todd were really a young child or an adult in a small body.

Frank sometimes took his kids--sometimes me, too--to functions for the handicapped. It was undoubtedly hard for him to take care of business with the distraction of family along, but this exposure gave our kids an opportunity for learning acceptance and tolerance, understanding and compassion, even at such a young age. One speaker was a man born without arms. He demonstrated how he dressed himself and accomplished other daily tasks we took for granted. There was awe and laughter as he related his story of traveling by train all night. Come morning, he went to freshen up in the men's room. As the porter came into the room, he was visibly shaken at the sight of this man, balancing on one foot as the train car swayed back and forth, while shaving his face and throat with the other foot, using a regular, non-electric razor. Another speaker, a woman also born without arms, told her story via video, demonstrating how she learned to make fresh bread, chop vegetables, curl her hair, and drive a specially equipped car. We attended Special Education events. Our kids learned to support and encourage those with challenges and to appreciate their own circumstance. Frank did a great service for his kids by exposing them to another way of life, early on.

With all that basement storage space, I canned at least 100 jars at a time of whatever was in season. Living near prime growing areas, Provo to the south, Brigham City and beyond to the north, and local, inexpensive produce aplenty, food preservation for winter months or hard times came naturally. This was also a part of my personal heritage--self sufficiency and sharing--and a big part of the code my church and my parents and relatives lived by. 

Gladine Bullough, my neighbor from across the street and just about the only other mother still at home during the day, heard that the church had opened up the tomato fields of the Stake Farm Project for that year, to anyone who wanted to glean the vines. Gladine had access to their family car that day, a big--really big--station wagon. We gathered up everything we had to put our pickin's in and headed out, early in the morning while the dew would still be on the fruit and vines.

The farm had filled it's quota for Deseret Foods--one of the LDS church's answer to helping and supporting the needy, members or not--for the season but the vines were still loaded. There had been a light freeze that had taken some vines exposing some fruit to frost but with unstaked vines, there were layers and layers underneath with viable tomatoes, both perfectly ripe and not-yet-ripe green ones. We gathered both kinds, filling all our boxes, and then some. It was hard to tell how many tomatoes we'd need for what we anticipated doing with them. Surely, we should have been able to notice that the entire vehicle from the driver's seat on back was a sea of red and green, many layers deep. We kept on picking, thinking that we'd be able to share what we couldn't use ourselves, in the neighborhood.

We made it home with our stash, only realizing how overdone our picking had been as we began to unload. Now, Gladine was married to a persnickety man, a type "A" personality, perhaps. Is that the "Perfection" one? Even I knew that we had to totally rid that car of any evidence that it had ever met a tomato before he got home from work. You know how impossible it is to get a tomato or two home even from the grocery store without a little squish here or there. And tomatoes and vines are VERY fragrant! I thought we had completed the job but my friend knew her husband well and knew she still had work to do to pass his white glove test so I went on home, to try to make a path into my kitchen. It was a perfect week for Frank to be out of town! So I began. Whole tomatoes bottled and cold pack canned. Tomato juice, the same. Green tomato mince meat--Pat's recipe--so, so good, unless you have smelled it for umpteen many hours. Green tomato relish, another absolute favorite until your entire house smells like pungent tomatoes, onions, carrots, and vinegar. There were extra trips to the store, both kids in tow, to find more canning bottles. You can't cold pack can in just any empty glass container. It was a year where everyone had tomatoes, from local farms or in their own gardens. Trying to give some away seemed almost more impossible than trying to pawn off zucchini on a hundred of your best friends, neighbors, relatives, and strangers. And once that dilemma was solved, there was a need for a thorough cleaning of my kitchen, top to bottom, ceiling to floor and everything in-between plus the little feet tracks found elsewhere in the house as kiddies ventured into my space for a "Mamma" moment or two. When all was said and done, I'd slip downstairs often just to look at all those beautiful, filled bottles on my storage shelves.

I probably did all the stereotypical housewifey things but I grew weary of living in the house as we'd found it when we bought it. There wasn't money to do much about that. I'd been sewing for my family, a lot of what my kids wore until my oldest kid put holes through the knees of his jeans--with matching jean jacket--in too short a time. I was making Frank's dress slacks and sport coats, and had my little home-sewing business up and running again, this time saving all my earnings to buy a new sewing machine. My sister, MerLyn, came to visit for a weekend. She said she knew how to afford paint for a bedroom so off to Sear's we went. And sure enough, by bringing home look-alike colored cans, then mixing it all together in one bucket, we had paint enough for an entire room, spending almost nothing. We painted like fools to get it done in the shortest time, while my husband was out on the road, again. I'd already put together a twin-sized quilt top from scraps and mill end fabric--red, white, and blue--of print and plain blocks so between the two of us, we tied that quilt top before she went home to Washington. The carpet was threadbare throughout the house and this room was no different. Todd loved Hot Wheel cars but they would get caught in the fraying rug. Some local carpet dealer was having a close-out sale on remnants of in-door/out-door/kitchen type carpeting. I figured I could swing the cost out of grocery money and my meager sewing earnings but how would I get it home? Totally out of character for me, I called Frank's brother, John, and asked if I could borrow his station wagon. And he said yes! Off I went with two little kids to find the store and truck home a piece of floor covering. Once I got that awkward thing in the house, I didn't dare just pull up the old carpet so I cut the new stuff to size with enough all the way around so I could tuck in under the molding, using a butter knife and stretching it as I went. It was a snug fit so everything stayed in place. MerLyn may have helped me paint a hand-me-down chest before she left--red, white, and blue--or I had done that, I don't remember, but all I had left to do was to replace the closet doors. They were heavy when I'd removed them but found it impossible to lift them back on the track. I made it a point not to bother my father-in-law unless I was having a real emergency so naturally when I called him, saying I needed help, he asked, "What have you done?" 

I think the last time I'd called Grandpa South, we were still living in the Vidas apartment. I had come home from my first ever ski lesson, propped my skis next to the bed and flopped down on what we called a bed, at that time. My baby, Jenn, maybe already walking by that time, but crawling at least, bumped a ski trying to get to me on the bed. It fell and sliced my head just above one eyebrow. I figured the profuse bleeding that followed was emergency enough to call Grandpa. Three stitches later, I was almost as good as new. I'd always had a natural arch in my brows. Those stitches adjusted the arch just a tad. Hey, that was a big deal to me, at the time! My eyes were my one good feature that I could play up. For the other parts of me, I always figured I had gotten in the wrong line when I was being created and someone else was walking around in the body that was really meant to be mine! 

Well, Grandpa South did come again, when I called and together, we got the closet doors back in place. Then he took a look around the room. New paint, looked-like-new chest of drawers, new quilt, new carpet--red, white, and blue tweed--that Todd could run his cars on. Before he'd listened to my explanation and heard that I hadn't spent his son into debt, he said again, "What have you been up to?" then smiled and giggled in his familiar laughing way, as he did when he was tickled about something.

Stayed tuned for more, if you'd care to...