Wedding Day

Today is the day that my sister's youngest daughter, Jaclyn, is getting married. I know she will be a beautiful bride because she is a beautiful girl. Her sisters were beautiful brides; her mother was a beautiful bride. Today I'm not there and it breaks my heart, but the bigger heartache is that the most important woman at a wedding, other than the bride, is the bride's mother, and today, the bride's mother will not be there- at least, the guests will not see her there. I know she is there of course, sitting next to the love of her life in the front pew. Smiling at her daughter and offering words of encouragement. Laughing at the antics of her grandchildren. Filled with pride for Jennifer and Kelly, sisters of the bride, also trying to fill in as mothers of the bride. I think she probably can't stop smiling. Selfishly, I hope she is not too disappointed in me for not being there. I think she would understand. We are cut from the same cloth. Today is Jaclyn's wedding day! So I am reminded of another wedding day, Barbara's wedding day. I remember only a little... my mother planning and saving for months....buying the wedding gown- when everyone else was wearing big, full, flowing wedding dresses, my sister chose a sleek, flattering sheath with a long train, only someone with her figure could wear. I remember her taking me to the hair stylist, where they made me look like a 40 year old woman. (I was 14 and wanted to look like Cher. Barb was really mad at me when I washed all the hairspray out.) I remember her getting dressed in the basement of our church in Flossmoor, Illinois- the dress had about a hundred tiny buttons down the back and down the sleeves! What I remember most is seeing her start down the aisle on our father's arm; her beauty was ethereal, everyone literally gasped when they saw her. No princess or movie star could look as beautiful as my sister looked at that moment. And then I started to cry- it suddenly dawned on me that she was leaving home and not coming back. They would live on Long Island, near her new husband's home town. I guess I was making too much noise because the groom's sister, next to me in the wedding party, kept trying to tell me to "shoosh!" Then everyone started giggling and she pointed to the bride and groom, kneeling at the alter: someone had painted the words 'HELP ME' on the bottoms of the groom's shoes. I stopped crying and started laughing.

Jaclyn, I hope you have lots of laughter at your wedding, and no crying. If you and Joe love each other even half as much as your mom and dad loved each other, you'll have a very happy life together. And if you do even half as good a job at raising your children as they did, some day you and Joe will watch your children get married, and enjoy the same pride and delight that your mom and dad share today.

Pennsylvania Snow

Pennsylvania gets a lot of snow, but I've heard that the most memorable snow was the "big snowstorm" of Thanksgiving, '47. As I remember the story, one day it was a beautiful, sunny, crisp autumn and the next day the earth was covered in three feet of snow. It was Thanksgiving, and the roadside cabins my parents rented to travelers were empty. Service stations (including their tiny service station) and county offices were closed, so the highways remained impassible. Early that morning, my mother was surprised to see four young men trudging through the snowdrifts, headed for her front door. They were tourists from Italy on an American cross-country adventure, and they had spent the night huddled in their car. My mother invited them in to get warm and have some coffee and breakfast. With heavily accented and broken English they explained that they had been traveling west when they were caught off guard by the sudden snowstorm. They had been searching for a place to spend the night and wait out the storm when their car skidded off the road in the dark. My mother opened two cabins, dressed the beds in fresh linens, and lit the pot-bellied wood stoves. Then she invited the Italians to come up to the house for meals, until the plow came by and the tow-truck could pull their car out of the snowdrift. My mother remembers this as her favorite Thanksgiving, she and my father and their two small daughters sharing our American traditions with the Italians. The Italians exclaimed over the turkey, the dressing, the pies...she graciously accepted their praise. But, there was one dish they wouldn't touch, no matter how much she coaxed. The jellied cranberry sauce, pushed out of a can and sliced onto a plate, caused them to react with fear and disgust. Later in the day my father was able to discern that they had believed the dish to be slices of congealed blood. Of course, my dad thought this was hilarious, and we heard the story repeated every Thanksgiving.
The next day the snowplows came by, and afterward the tow-truck came to pull the Italians' car out of the snow and out to the State Highway. The Italians waved good-bye to my mother and her little family, leaving Thanksgiving memories and a seedling of family lore.

Christmas Magic

My mother was an expert at making much from little. Nothing demonstrated this more than Christmas. My mother's Christmas trees were a work of art. After my father draped the colored lights around the tree, every fragile glass ball and bubbling bird were carefully hung from the branches by my mother or my sisters. Then the real artistry began as my mother delicately draped the tinsel, strand by strand, until the tree looked to be covered with shimmering icicles. Finally, she created magic under the tree with a small lighted church nestled in 'angel hair' snow next to a small frozen pond (mirror) alight with graceful sparkled ice skaters. I loved to crawl under the branches and gaze at that tiny village in the snow. This first photo is of my brother Bob and I, Christmas 1957. This is taken at my grandmother's house: artificial tree, a chair from the sun porch brought inside for the winter. It appears that this is the year I received a toy skunk for Christmas; I remember the skunk, he had a molded plastic face. Plainly, my mother has given me a home permanent for the holidays. My brother and I are dressed in our best clothes and I'm sure we have been warned to be on our best behavior. My grandmother's house was not a place for children and we were severely warned by our mother, "Don't make any noise; don't touch anything..." Christmas would have been a long day of sitting quietly on the scratchy navy blue sofas, highlighted by a formal dinner at the long white tableclothed dining table. The finale would have been my grandmother's famous apple and pumpkin pies. One Christmas, as the dessert dishes were being cleared, my grandmother asked my sister Barbara what she thought of that pie. My sister honestly answered, "Good, thank you, but I like my mother's better." Time stood still as the room came to a silent halt. "What was that?" asked my grandfather in his gruff Swedish voice. My grandmother gave my sister a piercing look, then turned to the kitchen to continue the dinner clean-up. My grandmother had perfected the passive-aggressive cold shoulder, and pity the person who suffered its intent. My mother hustled us home early that Christmas, packing the station wagon to the roof and bundling us against the driving snow.
The two photos below would have been taken in our own Fairview, Pennsylvania home. In my mind, Christmas was a grand production in our home that couldn't possibly be matched in any other place. My parents grew Christmas trees and sold them, choose and cut, from our property. Our own tree would have been one unwanted by paying customers, so perhaps a little crooked, or with a gap in the branches that needed to be hidden next to the wall. The photo of me as a baby would have been 1953, the other one also me, 1956. We would have received only one or two gifts for Christmas. My mother worked very hard to make it seem like more. I usually received a doll from Santa, or perhaps a doll cradle. My mother would have brought out all my dolls and stuffed animals on Christmas Eve and placed them around the tree. I would come out Christmas morning, excitedly searching for the new face amongst the toys. Our other gifts would be wrapped, a pair of lacy socks, or warm mittens. Sometimes she would wrap things that we already had; a mended sweater, or a repaired bracelet. Money was very scarce, but my mother still managed to make Christmas magic at our house. One year I received a muff made of white rabbit fur, and oh how I adored that gift! I felt like a princess.( a muff is a cylinder shaped object to keep a girl's hands warm, usually wrapped with fur on the outside, and lined with wool and satin) The gift I remember as the most magical was a battery operated bear, a mother bear in a dress and apron sitting in a rocking chair, feeding a bottle to a baby bear in her lap. As the mother bear rocked, she would pull the bottle away from the baby's mouth and he would let out a squeak, then she would put the bottle back to his mouth. It was my most treasured possession. One Christmas, when my brother was about 5 or 6, he asked for a Casper the Talking Ghost. He loved the Casper cartoon on TV, and that year they were advertising a Casper doll, with a ring at his neck to pull and hear one of 3 phrases. It was all my brother talked about, but it was an expensive item, and a doll (although it was more like a stuffed animal), so my mother decided that a truck would be more appropriate and it fit the budget. She was sure he would forget about the Casper doll by Christmas. Well, my mother was wrong; my brother ran excitedly to the tree Christmas morning and then burst into tears. He was inconsolable. Tears popped from his little blue eyes (his tear ducts are misshapen). The whole family stared in disbelief at this heartbroken little boy as he cried his eyes out. So, I quickly made up a story and told him that Santa ran out of Caspers after he gave them to all the poor children and the little children in hospitals, but he was already working on making more Caspers for next year. Amazingly, he bought the story (I guess he didn't know we were the poor children) and he didn't forget it. The next Christmas my mother, lesson learned, scrimped and saved to put a Casper the Talking Ghost under the tree. My father just shook his head; a doll, for heaven's sake.
Once we moved to Illinois, my mother started another tradition: lunch under the Christmas tree at Marshall Field's downtown Chicago. Marshall Field's had a restaurant in the center of their store, and it was open to the ceiling four stories above. Their Christmas tree filled every bit of that four storied space. My mother and I would dress in our best dresses and coats and take the Illinois Central to downtown. After walking for what seemed like miles in the sharp cold air, looking at all the animated Christmas scenes in the blocks-long windows of Field's and Carson Pierie Scott, we would have lunch together next to the Marshall Field's Christmas tree. In the first years it was my sisters, my mother, and I, but as my sisters went off to college, on this rare special occasion I had my mother all to myself. More of my mother's Christmas magic: in a large and busy restaurant, she had managed to reserve a table for two right next to the tree for a glamorous, and extravagant luncheon.
My mother told me once that when she was young, she would receive a single orange in her sock for Christmas, no other gifts. I suppose that's why it was so important to her to create a magical Christmas for us. We all carried on the tradition, and have created Christmas Magic with our own children, sometimes taking the magic a little too far and spending far too much, but always with the tree and decorations and traditions of Santa. I'm sure my mother made unbelievable sacrifices to make sure we had something under the tree Christmas morning, the beautiful Christmas tree she so carefully decorated. Today, as another year slips away, I will disassemble our own lovely Christmas fir. With every ornament and decoration I carefully wrap and put away for another year, my mother's Christmas magic will be in my heart.

Goodbye Christmas

Christmas has come and gone, and with it my beautiful girls. I anticipated this Christmas with such excitement, I wanted to slow its coming, in order to slow its departing. All my girls were with me for Christmas, and we all knew that it may be the last time. But Christmas rushed in so fast, as it does, and rushed out again. Whitney left two days ago, flying to San Diego on her way to her new life in New Orleans. I didn't think my heart would ever stop breaking; it took everything in me to let go of her and watch her walk out the door. And now Kerrie and her family, Jamey and Karsen, have gone down the driveway, headed for Seattle as I waved and waved to them, tears streaming down my face, their car smaller and smaller until it turned onto the highway and I couldn't see it at all. Oh my goodness, how I miss them so! This is what I have wanted for them since the day they were born: happiness, love, success, adventure, fulfillment...but I didn't realize the sacrifice it meant for me; that for them to fly, I would have to let go of them. I didn't know how much the letting go would hurt. I didn't know how hard it would be to keep from calling out, "Wait, don't leave me behind!" Selfishly, I wish I could go back and change the things I said or did to encourage them to be independent. Why did I have to push them so, and expect so much of them? Why was it so important to me that they reach for the stars? Why couldn't I let them settle for what was here and safe and close at hand? Thinking that, I am all too aware that it is entirely possible that nothing I said or did to sway them or otherwise damage them would have any effect on their choices in life; that it is possible, even probable, that they would have become the fabulous people they are in spite of my fumbling mothering. Just the same, I wish it had been different; that time had moved more slowly, that I had been less busy, and less worried; that I could have savoured it more, or remembered it well. I once had a friend, long ago when Kerrie was in preschool, who told me about the day her daughter was born. Her own mother came into the hospital room soon after the birth and asked, "What do you have, a son or a daughter?" "A daughter!" she was beaming, but her mother began to cry. When she asked what the tears were for, her mother told her, "Your heart will break a thousand times." I think of that story often, whenever my heart is breaking.

Road Trip Dad

There was nothing my dad liked better than a road trip. It wasn't about the destination, it was about the planning and the drive. He researched everything down to the last detail and travel was no exception. My dad would have loved the Internet; and GPS- he would have been among the first to buy one. I doubt he would have had much use for it, though; once my dad read a map or traveled a highway the route was retained in his brain forever. He never met a road he didn't like, and he never forgot a route.

Here he is with my sister, Barbara. Perhaps he's making vacation travel plans, or maybe a visit to one of his brothers. My mother would have chosen the vacation destination; it would have been to some place of historic significance. A visit with relatives would have been my mother's decision, as well. My dad's job was to work out the travel details and do the driving. If we didn't have someplace to go, he would just take us driving. Almost every Sunday was spent doing the "Sunday Drive". Mom and Dad in the front seat with one of my sisters in the middle; my brother and I in the back, with a big sister in between to keep us from killing each other. We would spend hours touring the countryside looking at cows. We didn't have seat belts then and we'd hang out the windows like dogs, letting the wind blow into our mouth and yelling, "Mooooo!" We didn't have air conditioning then, either so if it was warm weather the windows were all the way down and the wind roared through the car. One of my favorite drives was to O'Hare Airport. We never traveled by airplane, but O'Hare had an observation deck and we loved to stand out there with our fingers in our ears, smelling the exhaust and leaning into the wind created by the jets. My brother and I would pretend the noise deafened us and say, "What? I can't hear you," when our parents would tell us it was time to go home.

Like other dads, my dad would never stop for directions, but I don't think he needed to because he was never lost. Also like other dads, he didn't like to stop for bathroom breaks. Our family had strong bladders from all that waiting between rest stops!

I wonder what my dad would say about today's gas prices. The price of gas was never an issue when it came to the Sunday Drive. Whatever the cost, it was a small price to pay for a day of family entertainment. Weekends were family time; go for a drive and have a picnic at the Forest Preserve, or play croquet in the yard and barbecue hamburgers with the neighbors. We didn't play sports or run from activity to activity like today's kids. We didn't play soccer, we played the 'ABC' game using billboards or competed at out of state license plate spotting. I don't know if my dad's excursions did anything in the way of preparing us for life, but to this day I can remember the state slogans and color combinations on the license plates...and I'm betting my sisters and brother have taught their own children and grandchildren how to play the 'ABC' game and have even gone on a Sunday Drive now and then. Thanks Dad, for making happy memories.

Christmas Card

The Bowes family Christmas card, 1959. Clockwise from top left: Barbara (15), Becky (18), Richard, Patricia (19), Christine (6), Edna, and Bobby (3). This is the only time I can remember having a family photo Christmas card. It must have been a very extravagant thing to do at the time. The reason we were able to afford it was because an African American photographer had moved to our small Illinois town, and was having a tough go of it. A neighbor recommended him, from his church charity work. The price was right because, well, he was the wrong color. His family was living in a rental, a shack really, not near our house, for heaven's sake, but down the road, back in the trees. His son and I, both about 6, got a ride home from school from the neighbor occasionally. I actually told the boy once, "My mom says your dad's a good photographer, for a colored man." I thought I was paying him a compliment, couldn't understand why he looked so mad and was so anxious to get out of the car and away from me. I don't even know if that was something my mother had said, or something I just made up because I thought it would be a nice thing to say.
So, here we have the Bowes family in their cut-rate Christmas photo. Of course, Pat isn't really a blood relative. She was a neighbor of one of my father's brothers in Pennsylvania. One day while Pat was visiting our cousins, my sisters were also there, excitedly telling their cousins about moving to Chicago. Pat said she thought that was just about the best thing that could happen to a girl and my mother said, "Come with us then," or something to that effect. Pat's parents said, "One less mouth to feed," or something to that effect. She really wasn't their daughter, anyway; she was a foundling, just like you hear about, a baby left in a basket on the doorstep. They were a poor coal miner's family, but they took her in and raised her as their own- until she came with us to Illinois. She left Pennsylvania and never looked back. My mother also said, "Come with us then," to her mother-in-law and one of my dad's nephews, and they came, too. The farm was sold and we all moved to a little brick box of a house on a dusty highway in flat, wanna-be-suburban, ex-cornfield, Marcum, Illinois. Nine people moved into that three bedroom, one bathroom, less than a thousand square foot house. It was a new, modern development house, nothing like what you'd see in the farm towns of Pennsylvania. There were 5 model homes on the highway, and we were lucky enough to get one of them before the developer went broke and skipped town. My dad's nephew soon returned to Pennsylvania and went into the service, but everyone else stayed; we had arrived. Yessir, look at those Bowes people, they moved to Chicago and got their picture on a Christmas card. Well, aren't they somethin'.

Thank you, Bud and Irma

Here I am with Bud and Irma. It looks like I'm about 7 years old, so this would be about 1960. The photo with the pony looks to be a year or two later. Sadly, I don't remember exactly who Bud and Irma are. If my sisters were still here, they could probably tell you all about Bud and Irma. I only have a dim memory of these people who were once so important to me.
I can remember each of their voices; I think Bud had been in the military, and I know they lived in Pennsylvania. They were not relatives. The reason Bud and Irma are important to me is because they liked me. Everyone adored my brother, who was three years younger. He was always the crowd favorite, with his dark hair and fair skin, freckles across his nose and bright blue eyes. He was active and noisy, and everything he did was hilarious. Even I thought so. I was skinny and too tall for my age, with brown hair and eyes. I was shy and quiet, afraid of almost everything. Everyone loved Bobby. Bud and Irma loved me. I loved Bud and Irma. After we moved to Illinois, nearly every family or holiday vacation meant traveling 500 miles to Pennsylvania. We would stay with our Grandma Palmquist and Robert (her husband since the 1930s). My mother would drag us around to visit relatives, or the local historic sites, but for me, the highlight of the trip would be a visit with Bud and Irma. They always had a little gift for me, a cupcake or a tiny doll. One time, knowing my love of horses, Bud arranged to borrow a neighbor's pony for me to ride. How I loved Bud and Irma! I don't know when or why we stopped visiting Bud and Irma. I think they moved to another state, but that could have been just a story my mother invented to pacify me. I'm sure Bud and Irma have long since passed, but I have held their love in my heart for more than fifty years. Thank you, Bud and Irma, you meant the world to me.