Birth-Days

Both of my children were born near the end of February and they would tell you their mother or their father - sometimes both of us on phone extensions - will re-tell our stories of their birth-days on their birthdays. Even after all these years, even after they've each added their own experiences to the family birth lexicon, they listen patiently.

At the time this photo of me was taken by Arthur, I was hours - many, many hours - away from motherhood. I loved that coat - mid-calf length, the most wonderful understated blue-gray color, with a soft belt, here tied above what they call baby bump these days but in those days, you were just pregnant. Purchased at Hess's in Allentown just weeks before we moved back to Potter County, I'd had my eyes on it for months, waiting for the big end-of-season 50% off sale.

Bonnie from Dr. George's office called on a Tuesday afternoon to tell me doctor had decided that, it being 21 days beyond my calculated due date, he should induce labor. I was to report to the hospital around 8:00 p.m. and he would come after office hours to begin the induction process.

We took a stroll around the farm on that cold, snowy February afternoon after I called Arthur at work in the darkroom of The Potter Enterprise, weeping, and he hurried home to comfort and distract me. He snapped this photo up by the milkhouse with our trusty Minolta SRT-101 35mm camera and later this picture shared proof sheets with photos of our baby daughter.

It was the same time of year, late February, four years later that the splash of amniotic fluid spreading across the floor at the top of the stairs heralded the beginning of labor - again a long, long labor - that brought our son into our world in our bedroom.

I wrote about that birth experience in an article I submitted to Redbook magazine, recently unearthed from a long-forgotten box of paperwork. 

Birth-days in the year 2024 - the two of us, gray-haired grandparents now, still in this place where we raised those two young Metzgers, still in awe of these two human beings we call our daughter and our son.

Words That Matter

I'm sure it's an experience shared by us humans - that moment when something you read, or see or hear stops your brain for an instant. For me, it's sometimes the shudder of goose bumps rising on my arms, or as if a small voltage shock passes through me, or a sultry breeze rearranging wisps of hair.

And it was like that with this little poem by Naomi Shihab Nye:

Ever since the pandemic and ever since I started putting the 7 as the decade of my age, as I go about the day with its duties, chores, responsibilities, there's this constant hum in my head – my time here on this big blue marble is limited. 

And now, this poem - so few words, with so much meaning for me - this baby boomer sitting at her desk on this cold winter morning, surrounded by so many shoes that simply do not fit anymore. But by the same token, there are those shoes - you know the ones - those you reach for when you know you're gonna be on your feet all day, or the whimsical ones, or the slouchy ones, perhaps the slippers and,  especially, the ones that make you smile.

So on this late winter Saturday morning, I'm taking off the ill-fitting shoes and reaching for those that fit today - especially the ones that make me smile. 

Writing Practice

 Pages of a novel I wrote while in high school have been lurking in this notebook since the 1960s.

I can remember writing in study hall in Mrs. Tronetti's reading classroom near the high school library, in one of those desks with the book rack under the seat. I favored a fountain pen - blue ink with the cartridges that slid into place. and it tended to smudge a bit on the coarse paper - even though the cover of the tablet boasts of superior quality paper. I remember the vague discomfort of stockings attached with garters under my dress and the care taken to be ladylike in posture to keep from giving anyone a glimpse under the skirt. We girls were not allowed the luxury of wearing pants or jeans to school except on the last day of the year.

After 60+ years I'm still writing.  I've filled pages and pages with words put together in notebooks of all sorts since those Goldenrod tablet days. My youthful handwriting is unrecognizable to me - much like my handwriting of 20 years ago and even a couple of weeks ago.

Much of what feels like my 'real' work is accomplished these days on my little laptop computer. Hard drive, thumb drive, backup drive - all available with a few keystrokes. There's a novel (or two) in progress, a memoir of sorts, family history stories, short stories, essays, blog posts.

It's rather solitary work - just me and my computer trying to avoid the myriad distractions of life that take me to less solitary pursuits. But still I persist - and sometimes I'm getting it right. And sometimes, it all feels wrong and clunky and like yet another cliche.

Writing Practice - of the sort taught by Natalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron - still calls for writing by hand, even if it's for 10 minutes, every day, no editing, no judgment. Pick a topic - any topic - set the timer, and write. "Keep the hand moving," she says even if you write over and over the same thought. 

And this new year, I have the joy of opening a new notebook - and the joy of putting on paper those first few lines with a new fast-writing pen!

ADDENDUM: JANUARY 25, 2024

Arthur stomped the snow off his shoes on the porch before stepping into the steamy kitchen where I was stirring a pot of pasta for our dinner. He had made the late-afternoon trip to the mailbox and handed me a manilla envelope. "This is for you," he said. And this is what I pulled out.

A brand new Goldenrod tablet and I bet he paid more than the 25 cents stamped on the cover. 

Mille Bornes

December 26, 2023:

It's quiet this morning after Christmas at our daughter' s home in Arizona. The coffee's strong. The heat is cycling on, the dog has been out and is crunching on her breakfast. Two red Christmas stockings lie on their sides, random boxes of Tic Tacs, lip gloss and Lindt chocolates spread across the coffee table, along with the spurned new toothbrushes.

We played a new game last night, divided into two teams of two as the sumptuous Prime Rib dinner moved through our digestive systems.

It's called Codenames - billed as "a fast paced party game that's sure to keep the whole group entertained, great for families, friends and total strangers alike." 

The six of us divided into two teams and it was interesting to see how everyone worked through the puzzles - both as clue givers and clue receivers. You see, part of the fun is giving clues that you think might strike a chord with your team - while at the same time baffling your rivals.

Addendum: January 10, 2024:

 I think that when we packed up the car to depart on Wednesday, we were likely even in our wins and losses though I'm sure the children, being rivals as well as siblings, would disagree.

Codenames wasn't the only game we played together. Many rounds of Monopoly - or Mono Poly as Rowan dubbed it, along with Apples To Apples, Yahtzee and one more try with one of our old family favorites - Mille Borne.

Mille Borne has been English-ized since Arthur and I played it back in the 1970s. Gone are the all the French words with the exception of "coup fourre" and of course, the game's title.

Our old cards underneath the smaller
modern ones

All Mille Borne players look to the coup fourre to win the game for it provides certain advantages as well as adding to your point total. Coup fourre translates from the French as as 'dirty trick' or 'foul play' when you take a cursory glance at Google. But it actually comes from the world of fencing where it is a counter-thrust where one parries his opponent's thrust and counter attacks in the same maneuver.

The children and their parents were not fans of the game when we introduced it to them a couple of Christmases ago and it's still true after giving it another go this year. As the kids would say, "Grandma, it's lame."

So that new version of the Mille Borne game came back with us and if you'd like to play it, I'm donating it to Goodwill and maybe it will still be there when you check.

And Arthur and I might just give our old card game another try one of these winter evenings!

Corn Silk

My mother is 100 years old and for some weeks before her October 31 birthday loomed, she was thinking through what she would say when asked her longevity secret.

And it came out when she celebrated with her friends at Cole Manor. "I never smoked. Not ever. Not even cornsilk"

And just like that, little Janie prowls around the shanty in the backyard, looking for the corncob pipe she remembered one of her brothers poking down between the floor boards.

Corn silk - harvested from the stand of sweet corn in the Bradley's back yard or carried away from corn husking on newspapers on the drooping back porch.

Corn silk, packed into the bowl of the pipe, lit with an Ohio blue tip - multiple blue tips. Curls of sweet smelling smoke. Neighbor boy David and Janie, taking smoke into our mouths, eyes watering, blowing it out. Pretending to send smoke rings into the summer air like my father makes as he lights a cigarette with a click of his Zippo at the dinner table.

Foundations

 

A photo to inspire my morning writing rambles - on this day it's this one –  the flower bed at the foundation of the big porch that stretches across the back of our home. 

I took this picture on Friday - a sunny, breezy warmish day as weather pundits warned of a weekend of cold temperatures, wind driven rain and general gloom while organizers of outdoor events fretted. It tells the story of October - mildewy squash leaves, vigorous nasturtiums that threaten to overtake the drive behind the house and lots of weeds.

But today, my eyes went first to the stonework that shows up on the lower right. Arthur and middle school-age son Joey spent much of a summer laying that foundation as we embarked on the never-ending rethinking of this old farm house.

The stones for this project were carefully curated, foundation stones from long-ago buildings around the farm and rocks from moss-covered piles that grew in forgotten corners of the crop land with each turning of the soil. In the corners are huge chunks of sandstone pulled out of the rubble when the Potter County Jail was renovated some years ago. 

Building foundations from salvaged materials was a topic of conversation around the dinner table  as an old friend joined us for homemade deep dish pizza. We had years of catching-up to do and shared experiences to remember. 

But it was his story of sourcing foundation rocks during his construction of the gazebo on the courthouse square that reminded me.

"We should probably write that down someplace," I had said all those years ago as the great stone foundation grew in our backyard. 

And this is the writing down of it.

with one of the ever-present barn cats
and sweet Julie our second black lab mix

 

Heritage

 

See that fellow on the right? He's my maternal grandfather who was just 29 years old then. My memories of him are as a very old man, with a wrinkled face and enormous ears. 

But lately, he's been close by, much closer than in his lifetime, as I mine the papers and photographs he left behind when he departed this realm in 1969.

My grandfather - known as Grand-daddy to his grandchildren - died while I was a student nurse at Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre. I was not happy in nurse's training and was determined to complete the term in order to harvest my college credits, and then leave the program. It was December just before the holiday break and my mother chose not to tell me my grandfather had died.  I came home to the news that he was gone and the bedroom he had occupied just off the dining room at our home on North East Street was back to being my parents' bedroom. 

He wasn't at his big rolltop desk in the front office of The Potter Enterprise when I went to work there, writing 'society' news to give Mary Domaleski a break. Obituaries, births, meeting recaps were all handed to me and I worked from a ramshackle office on the second floor of that drafty old building, typing copy on an old Underwood manual typewriter.

Access was gained through the office of the new editor - Del Kerr - who taught me a lesson that I still use today. A cigarette guttering in an overflowing ashtray on his broad desk, he handed me a slip of paper. He instructed me to write one word on that paper - it was simple. THE. He reached out his hand, took it and I watched as he crumpled it and connected with one toss into a nearby wastebasket. "When you write, throw that word away!"

The time working at The Potter Enterprise between nursing school and beginning at Penn State Behrend one year later brought me many things - a love for small town newspapering, journalism, writing and the love that has shared my life. It was in that old front office on a wintry Saturday morning that I first made eye contact with Arthur as his grandmother sent him into the office to pick up her tax collector notices. 

The October issue of Potter County Historical Society's Quarterly Bulletin features some excerpts of Grand-daddy's unpublished memoir recounting his time in Cross Fork during the lumber boom. I have been transcribing from that old yellowed sheaf of newsprint, held together by a row of corroded staples and rusted paper clips.

There are more stories to mine and more pictures to copy but I look at this picture and am immediately drawn to notice his posture with his hand on his hip. That's a look many of his descendants have inherited.