Vets on My Mind

On the radio this morning a story about the very young widows of Iraq war soldiers. If you have time, you must listen to this. I often wonder about the families of the soldiers lost in the war, especially the younger wives and children. Courage is the one word that describes these women, especially Taryn Davis, who went out looking for others like herself--at 21, she lost her husband, and realized she didn't know how to find other young women in the same position. She found 5 others and started the American Widow Project.

My husband is going through skin cancer treatments right now. He believes it started when he was in Vietnam. The doctor says could be, but it's not listed as a service-connected problem, like Agent Orange. In his life, the time he spent in the Marine Corps serves as his watershed years, the place where he divides his life into "before" and "after." I believe the same is true for thousands of other vets.

The Queen Elizabeth II ocean liner is being decommissioned today, to be a tourist attraction in Dubai. My mother sailed to America on the first Queen Elizabeth as a British war bride, and my English granny often came to visit us via the Queen Mary. The old ships had a place in my life, although I never saw them. Hearing that the QEII is being retired reminded me of the family stories of the older vessels, and of my mother's stories about her journey to America to begin a life in a place she knew only one person--her soldier husband, my Dad.

My soldier sons are all home now, and only one remains in the military. I send a salute to all mothers who must see their sons off to service with pride and fear fighting for ascendancy in their hearts. Being the mother of a soldier is not easy; watching them leave for war is terrifying; welcoming them home cannot be described; knowing what they think and feel about their time in service is difficult. But being proud of them? That goes without saying.

If you want to do something to say thank you to a veteran, or to help a vet's family while he or she is serving overseas, check out my article on Two Lane Livin' newspaper website.

Remembering Mom: Edna June Connelly

She was the light
of our life,
the foundation
on which
we were built,
the knitter
who held the strings
that kept us
together.

Her voice was a song
with an English melody
and her arms softly
welcomed all sorrows.


She left without warning,
and the hole in our hearts
has not begun to heal.


Two years have passed,
and yet
I still expect
the phone to ring
and hear her asking,
"Hello, dear,
how are you?"
and actually
want to know.


June Connelly:
June 13, 1937-December 28, 2005

Christmas Traditions

I was raised in a large family---a lot of love but not much money. Extravagant gifts were not an option. We had to find other ways to make our holidays merry and bright. Now I find that many of the things we did are right in vogue as people look for ways to consume less, enjoy more, and live more gently on this earth.

My mother, a British WW II war bride, brought many holiday traditions to the US with her. She started the day after Thanksgiving--that was Fruitcake Day. When the batter was ready, everyone stirred three times each and made a wish. This was the signal that the holiday season had officially begun.

Saint Nicholas Day was the next holiday event. On December 6th Mom would wrap small gifts for each of us--a pencil, eraser, handkerchief--nothing expensive, but the gift beside our plates at dinner was always exciting. She usually re-used wrapping paper from the year before for these tiny gifts.

The Christmas Parade: We never missed it! The parade, held at night, passed the corner of our street. We'd bundle up and wave to the floats and to Santa at the end, then rush home for hot chocolate. Sometimes we'd go caroling in the neighborhood, stopping in at different houses to visit briefly and enjoy cookies and maybe some apple cider.

The Manger: Mom set up her nativity scene at the beginning of Advent, but the manger would remain empty until midnight on Christmas Eve. The Wise Men were also not present---they began their journey on the other side of the living room, moving a little each day until they finally arrived on January 5th, Epiphany.

The empty cradle was a challenge. In order for the baby Jesus to have a soft bed, we had to do good deeds, each one rewarded with a straw for the cradle. Some years I'm afraid His bed was a little hard! We stayed mindful of that cradle all month, and tried to do things that would earn a straw to add to the pile.

The Christmas Elf: this little fellow also moved about the house, watching children and reporting on behavior to Santa. We didn't want to be caught being naughty if the Elf was watching.

Cleaning: "You can't decorate dirt," Mom would say. So we'd polish the old house until everything shone--silver, wood, brass, mirrors. The house would be fragrant with the smell of floor wax and lemon oil. Then it was time to put up the tree and decorations.

The kissing ball: Mom re-decorated the ball each year with ribbons and greenery, and hung a sprig of mistletoe in the center. When we got older, we were allowed to help. She used scraps from sewing, ribbons from packages, any little bits and pieces she could find to make it glittering and pretty. It was usually hung in the dining room door and I can remember Dad catching her under it many times. We all loved to see them kiss.

The tree: Always a live one that we cut on a friend's farm, it was always lopsided and oddly shaped, and always decorated by Santa after midnight Mass. The tree would be put up a few days before Christmas, and the lights strung. The living room ceiling was twelve feet high, and the trees usually had to be trimmed to fit under them.

Decorations: lopped-off branches from the Christmas tree, holly, and a vine we called running pine were the main ingredients for our decorations. Greens were piled atop the mantles, around the front door, and twined down the stairs. Red ribbons and gold beads were added as we vied with each other for the best trimmings, re-used year after year and carefully stored away.

Yule log: made from a piece of the trunk of a former Christmas tree, Dad drilled small holes in it that we filled with greenery and Christmas bits of glittery stuff. Three larger holes held candles. The Yule log was always on the mantle in the living room, and the candles were lit on Christmas Eve to light in the Christ Child. A candle was placed in the window for the same purpose.

Christmas Day: On Christmas morning, we could see the tree through the crack between the big sliding wooden doors of the living room. It was shining and glimmering in the dusky light of dawn, and when the doors were finally opened--only after every single person in the house was present--it was a wondrous sight to behold. My parents collected Christmas balls, adding a few each year, making some, getting some for gifts. My last year at home, over 1000 balls hung on the green branches.

Gifts: with thirteen children to buy for, money didn't go far. We liked to buy for each other too but our money was practically non-existent. We learned to be happy with small gifts. Stockings were stuffed with apples, oranges, and nuts. We'd buy a pack of pencils and wrap one for each sibling, or penny candy, and wrap the gifts as carefully as if they had great value. They did--our hearts were in them. It didn't matter that the gifts under the tree were small--there were plenty of them and the joy when they were unwrapped was genuine. We’d have to hurry to get ready for early Mass at 7:30am.

Open House: Homemade eggnog, the fruitcake, and many other homemade goodies graced the table on Christmas night as friends and family came to visit. What happy times those were for a kid--lots of good things to eat, lots of noise, people singing carols, laughter. We baked for days before Christmas to prepare, always the same traditional fare--sausage rolls, mincemeat pies, wedding cookies, stollen (a sweet bread flavored with almond and laced with candied cherries), date bars, decorated sugar cookies, and so on.

Boxing day: this was the day after Christmas when we went visiting, usually wearing some of our gifts (mittens or toboggan hats knit by Mom, or new socks or a hanky from Granny).

New Year's Eve: even the littlest ones were allowed to stay up and see the New Year in, although they seldom stayed awake until midnight. Unspiked eggnog for the children and perhaps something a little stouter for the parents! Leftover goodies from Christmas, along with ham and rolls, were placed on the table once again for a repeat of the holiday feast.

Epiphany, January 5th: On this day our Wise Men finally made it to the crèche, and since they gave gifts to the Child, we also received small gifts at our places at dinner. This ended the 12 days of Christmas for us, although the tree remained decorated in all its glory until January 11th, my parents' anniversary and the occasion for more merrymaking.

And then the holidays were officially over, the decorations were regretfully taken down, and we looked ahead to the start of the next season--and by then it was only 10 and a half months away!

Centreville

When I was a little girl, we lived in a small house my father built in Centreville, VA. Back then Centreville was a small place, not much more than a crossroads really. There was a hardware store, a general store, a diner, and a gas station. There must have been a post office too, but I don’t remember it. We lived on Beanblossom Road. The little house survived until about 10 years ago when it was finally torn down. Now it is impossible to recognize the place it stood.

That three-room house in the woods was a great place for kids. By the time we moved out of that house in 1956 there were six children, three boys and three girls. The house only had two bedrooms, but that wasn’t important because we spent most of our days outside, playing in the woods. Dad made us a playhouse, and we all had our secret hiding places under bushes, in gullies, or behind rocks. There were other kids who lived a short distance away, so we were never without someone to play with. Our house didn’t have running water and because the soil wouldn’t percolate we couldn’t have a septic tank. We had a chemical toilet, a sort of upscale outhouse. We heated with wood, and I remember there was a big vegetable garden.

The thing I remember most about Centreville, however, is my parents. They met in England during World War II where my father was stationed with the Army Air Force. After the war they lived with my father’s parents in Falls Church until the little house was finished. My mother was a beautiful English girl, with long auburn hair and a pretty cupid’s bow mouth. Every afternoon she would change into a clean dress and put on red lipstick before my father came home from work. We would all line up along the walkway to meet him. He would stride up the walk, looking so strong and healthy in his work clothes and with his lineman’s tools.

One year for my mother’s birthday Dad built her a rose arbor, painted white, with two seats built in. We loved to sit out there. Sometimes Mom would fix us a tea party, and we would sit like little ladies in the arbor sipping our tea. Other times we’d pick green persimmons for my mother, and she would put them in a wineglass on the table, telling us she would enjoy them later. We’d forget about them of course, and she’d quietly dispose of the puckery persimmons when we were playing.

Mom loved to braid our hair and wrap our heads in “crowns--Judy’s blond and shining like gold, mine with deep red lights in it, Mary—did Mary have braids? I don’t think so—she had black, curly, shining hair that bounced when she toddled around.

I was only five when we moved, but I remember so many things. A hurricane (what year was that? was its name Hazel?) that covered the ground with hailstones the size of shooter marbles. Mom lit a kerosene lamp and all of us gathered around the soft light shining on us while the wind and rain whipped the windows.

I remember:

• Playing in the woods—the pine needles a carpet of brown under our feet, pricking into my bare soles as I ran
• riding my Fire Chief car
• my secret hideout
• the playhouse where we got stuck on the roof and Dad had to climb up with his lineman's boots and rescue us
• the maroon-colored daybed with its rough upholstery that we slept on
• the pump in the kitchen sink (not a faucet)
• The chemical toilet outside, with it's half-door (there's another whole story about that little building!)
• the way the front door opened off one side of the house, hidden from the front and the road and very confusing to salesmen who would walk aroud the house, and even look underneath for a trap door
• Roses blooming
• visiting Dessie Deems who lived down the road with Nappy and his ancient pickup truck (see it in the picture above?)
• the way we’d aggravate the old neighbor lady woman by chanting naughty things about our underwear
• Joe cutting my hair, just one braid, leaving the other
• falling off the swing and cutting my knee open, how it looked, not really bleeding but more like the inside of an orange, only red.
• The ambulance ride, the hospital and my baby bottle that they took from me and put on a high window sill in some room (operating room? Emergency room?).
• Appendicitis--the old cellar on Signal Hill Road at Aunt Helen’s house (who was she, anyway? not my real aunt) with its slimy, slippery walls
• the green apple tree that hung over the cellar. I ate so many apples, I got appendicitis. What game were we playing when I went in there? Hide and seek?
• The path through the woods that went to the Moran’s house,
• rolling on 55-gallon drums
• putting the washtub on Mickey Moran’s head and banging on it with a hammer.
• I remember the soil being poor, with moss in the yard. But the roses did well, I remember that.
  
  All these memories, and yet I was only five years old when we moved. It doesn’t seem possible that I could remember so much, but I do. . We really lived in that house, you see; we lived like kids who were given the freedom to roam the woods, to play outside for hours because there was no television to keep us in, and to be alone outside because no one worried much about strangers in those days. Perhaps they should have, but they didn’t. We were free-spirited, full of make-believe games, and full of the joy of just being a little kid in a big woods in a tiny country community in the 1950’s.
  

Turpentine and Family Reunion

As I said earlier, a roller coaster. I'd contracted for two gigs months before I knew Derek was leaving this weekend. I had to follow through. It meant a lot of driving--I'd intended to stay overnight and drive from one to the other. Instead, I drove home each night, a 3-hour drive one way but worth it to be able to spend more time with my sons and their children who came home this weekend to see Derek before he left.



My first performance of the weekend was at Greenbrier State Forest near Lewisburg, WV. For the first time in my 12-year storytelling career, I had an attendee argue with another attendee--in the middle of a story. Fortunately I was able to pull them back into the story, but the park naturalist told me later he was afraid he'd have to separate them! It was a new experience, certainly.



What were they disagreeing about? Turpentine! Seems one lady thought she needed to inform everyone right then and there of the dangers of using the wrong kind. An elderly gentleman disagreed, said he'd used all brands and had no ill effects.


That disagreement sent me back to my research. Although I've been telling this particular story for years and had researched it way back when, I figured I'd better refresh my memory and check on what this lady was saying.


She was sort of right and sort of wrong. There are, it turns out, several kinds of turpentine. Most are derived from certain kinds of pine trees. There is, however, a synthetic type called "turpentine substitute" or "mineral turpentine" that might have been what she was referring to.


True turpentine is derived from pine trees. It has been proved to be dangerous if ingested or inhaled. Old-timers used it (and many still do) for all sorts of purposes--for cuts and bruises and scrapes and bug bites and bee stings and head lice, to name a few. It is the internal uses that cause concern, and everything I have read advises against it. I'd warn against external use too--this stuff can be pretty potent.

Here are some websites about turpentine:
Zora Neale Hurston spent some time in a turpentine camp. This website includes photos, history and more.




Wikipedia has a lot of good information about turpentine



The maritime world used turpentine for many things.



Horry County, North Carolina, produced a lot of turpentine, as attested by this article.

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The next evening I was in Bluefield, WV to tell stories for a family reunion. Not the first time I'd done such a gig, but as in the past I wondered if anything I had to say was better than their own family stories.

I needn't have worried. The stories I told, mostly my own or my husband's family stories, were right on target. I was surprised when a lady hurried up after the set to tell me that her mother was also a WWII British war bride and that I was the first person she'd met with a similar background. We'll be talking again in the near future, comparing notes on what it was like to have English moms in America.