Memorial Memories

I'm interrupting my cat commentary to give you a Memorial Day memory.  It just seemed appropriate.

Memorial Day is a very important day for my family.  I have many, many memories surrounding Memorial Day.  It's a day that we gather flowers and go to the many surrounding cemeteries to remember our deceased family members.  (It wasn't until much, much later in my life that I realized that Memorial Day was meant to honor veterans.  I thought it was for all deceased people.  So I was wrong.  But I still love the tradition of remembering my non-veteran family members as well.)  It's a day to go from cemetery to cemetery and visit with all of the other family members that have also gathered there.  My mom told me today that my Grandma Hall used to go to the Milo cemetery in the morning and stay there all day to visit with all of the family that would come.

But this isn't a post for Memorial Day memories in general.  It's about one in particular.  I'll probably write about others later in passing.  (Like the time that Brett came cemetery-hopping with us while he was dating Jalin.  And then she broke up with him (or almost did anyway) soon thereafter.  Don't worry, it's a happy ending.  They're married now.)

One day, when I was little, maybe about 8ish? we were at the Milo cemetery.  And my mom was being utterly boring and just talking to people.  People I didn't even know.  About things I didn't care about.  Luckily for me, there were other kids there playing.  I didn't know these kids, and I'm typically not a very outgoing person, so I'm not sure how I ended up playing with them, but I did.  I specifically remember this one spinning gate that Mom tells me has been there since before she can remember.  We were standing on the gate while someone else would spin it.  It was kind of like a merry-go-round.  Except it was a gate.  In a cemetery.  Pretty sure they don't allow merry-go-rounds in cemeteries.

I also remember the dad of one of the girls giving us all gum.  I accepted it happily and eventually made my way back to my mom who asked me where I got the gum.  So I told her.

"Wait.  Are you telling me that you took candy from a stranger?"

I was stunned.  I just stared at her.  Holy cow!  I did just take candy from a stranger!  It was a lot more innocent than I had ever imagined.  I always pictured scary candy-giving strangers to be ones that would pull over in their car on the side of the road and shadily try to entice me to take their drug-laced candy.  Not some nice fatherly figure of a girl I had been playing with.

I think that was the day that the reality of how innocent something scary could actually be.  Sure, my gum wasn't actually laced with any drugs.  And the father really was just a nice fatherly figure.  But what if it hadn't been?  I'm glad my mom took that opportunity to point out potential dangers and how they fit into real life.  It would have been easy for her to just not even notice that I was chewing gum.  Or to just shrug her shoulders when she found out where I got it.  But instead she was observant and quick to use an everyday event to teach me a life lesson.

Thanks, Mom.

Patches

After Pip Squeak died, Mom was done with inside cats. But we lived on a farm and still had mice, so we still had outside cats. Damian and I were the only ones still home and we missed having an inside cat. So whenever Mom and Dad were gone, we'd let Patches inside. (Shhh. Don't tell Mom.) She liked being inside, so even when Mom was home, she started figuring out how to sneak in.

Soon, Patches was a known as a phantom cat. You could put her outside, shut the door, look out the window and see her outside, then turn around and within seconds she would be at your feet. We still don't know how she got inside half the time.

One time I was at Stacie's house for her birthday. Damian called me.

"Tianna. You have to come home."
"Why?"
"Patches is inside."
"So?"
"You just have to come home."
"Can't you put her outside?"
"No. You have to come home."
"Is Mom there?" (At this point I was really confused. Why was it so urgent I come home?)
"No."
"Dad?"
"No."
"Then why do I have to come home?"
"You just do. It's urgent."

So I finally gave up trying to get information out of Damian, apologized to Stacie, and went home. (I'm not sure how I got there. I was only about 12 or 13, so I couldn't drive. Maybe Damian came and got me?) I walked inside.

"So, where is Patches?"
"Up in your room."

So I went up into my room. And didn't see Patches.

"Where?"
"Under your bed.

Maybe this is why he needed my help getting her outside? He couldn't get her out from under my bed by himself? So I looked under my bed. Which, admittedly, was a mess. Perhaps Mom told me I had to clean my room before I went to Stacie's house? I don't know. But like a typical tween, I had a messy under-the-bed. Despite the mess, I quickly found Patches. And her brand new kittens.

We moved my bed so there was a rectangle of mess with a circle of kittens in the middle of my room. We stayed on my bed and oohed and ahhhed over the cute little kittens. Mom came home and declared that they couldn't stay there.

"We're not having inside cats."
"But Moooo-ooom! They're one day old! We can't put them outside!"
"That's where they would have been born if she had stayed outside like she should have."
"But they'll be cold!"
"So make them a box so they'll be warm."

So Damian and I made a box with blankets and put it in one of our sheds and moved the kittens out there. And that's where the kittens grew up.

Patches lived a long life and had a few litters of kittens. But she was also a farm cat, and with that comes a high mortality rate. Poor Patches was kicked in the head by a cow. I missed her. But her posterity live on. Even now, the majority of the cats on our farm are directly descended from her.

Squeak and the dryer

This is another memory that isn’t technically mine, but is definitely part of my growing up memories.

We got Pip Squeak from a friend of my mom’s. She had a lot of cats, but they didn’t like Squeak very much. They would back her into corners and box her ears. The friend just couldn’t stand to see Squeak beaten up like that, so she asked my mom to please give her a good home. So we did.



Because of her experiences, Squeak really learned to love dark, secluded places. She never mewed. She also had a lot of wax buildup that made her very hard of hearing. Which in turn made her a very not good mouser. No, really. Like one time mom was out on our porch (aka laundry room) and Squeak was laying on the floor. Mom watched a mouse run across the room, so she hollered at Squeak to go get it. Squeak just stared at her like “What do you want?” Mom effectively scared the mouse, though. You know that scene in Cinderella where Gus keeps running into Lucifer’s paw, bounces off, then runs right into it again? Well, picture that, except the mouse was running into Squeak’s side. And still Squeak had no clue. Despite her obvious failings as a cat, we still loved her quite a lot. So we forgave her quirks.



One day Mom washed some white shirts, but left them in the dryer too long. Someone had also left the dryer door open. Later in the day Mom realized that the shirts would be all wrinkled, so she shut the door, turned the dryer on tumble press for 20 minutes and left. 20 minutes later she came back, opened the dryer door and saw blood all over the white shirts. Mom’s first reaction was annoyance. “That dumb cat put a mouse in my dryer!” And then came the bombshell. A tiny and very weak, “Mew.”



Mom always pauses in the story here to let the world know that she could handle injuries with her kids. She had made several trips to the emergency room and was able to keep control until she knew that her kids were safely being taken care of by medical professionals. Then she would allow herself to lose it emotionally. Apparently Squeak didn’t follow the same rules. She lost it immediately. Jalin came to the rescue. “Mom, you take care of the clothes, I’ll take care of the cat.”



Squeak was drenched with sweat. She didn’t have any open wounds, so we assume she must have vomited the blood. Surprisingly, she survived the dryer. She hid in the coat closet for most of the day (probably to stay away from us kids that desperately wanted to pet her and make sure she was ok). 

That night my dad was down watching TV and looked down to see Squeak looking up at him pleadingly. Typically he wasn’t really one to hold and pet cats, but he had pity on Squeak and told her to jump on up. But she was simply to weak to make the jump. So he picked her up. And he sat on that chair until the wee hours in the morning, until she was ready to get off; he just didn’t have the heart to make her get off so he could go to bed.



She healed surprisingly well. She finally started to meow. She could hear. She could (and would!) catch mice. She even became a bit more playful and social. She just wouldn’t ever let you touch her tail with any force from that day on.

Pip Squeak

We also had Pip Squeak, mostly known as Squeak. Black and white and wonderful. She loved to sleep with me at nights. She’d crawl under my blankets and curl up on my feet. I loved it, cuz it kept my feet warm all night. And also, I love cats. But Mom hated it. She kept telling me I was gonna get hairballs and she’d have to take me to the hospital to get my stomach pumped. I never quite believed her, but I always had a lingering doubt. So every night she started looking around my room to make sure that Squeak wasn’t in there, then closing the door to make sure she didn’t get in. Then 5-10 minutes later, Squeak would lazily walk out of the closet or under the bed or any number of hiding places, then come crawl under my blankets. She couldn’t leave; Mom locked her in. So then Mom started looking for her and not closing my door until she could see Squeak in the hallway. That’s when Squeak learned to jump up, grab the door handle with both paws, and swing back and forth until the door opened. I think at that point, Mom finally just gave up.

One time Mom was cutting (shredding?) some meat on the pull-out-from-the-counter cutting board. Squeak wanted it really badly. She jumped high enough that her front claws dug into the board, but the rest of her fell back down. She then started doing pull-ups. She’d flex those little cat-arm muscles until her chin was just above the cutting board, then her muscles would give in and she’d drop back down. She repeated that several times. Funny cat. I’m still not sure why she didn’t just jump up onto the cutting board. I’m sure she was capable of jumping that high.

Squeak’s life slowly came to a close. First she got cancer in her eye. It was amazingly gross to look at. It was all red and puffy and just… gross. Mom and Dad took her to the Vet who removed her eye. Which amazingly was much less creepy than it had been. She did great for quite awhile… until the cancer came back. Since there was no eye to remove this time, the only choice was to put her to sleep. I miss that kitty. She was probably one of my favorites.

(There is another story about Squeak, but it deserves its own post, it’s that amazing.)

Squirt

We had a lot of cats growing up. My next few posts will be about each of them, since trying to combine all those memories into one post was turning out to be a novel.

First in my memory was Squirt. We had her for a long time. She was a fantastic mouser. Mom once found some mice in a bucket downstairs and before she finished yelling “Squirt! Come get these mice!” Squirt had run in, grabbed each mouse and killed them. She also had several litters of kittens. I remember once she birthed a litter of kittens in a box in front of the TV while I was watching Sesame Street. I loved that cat.

Calf Mortality Rate

So, this is probably one of my more embarrassing memories. Not because I did anything wrong, mind you, but because no one wants to be known as a calf killer. I DIDN’T KILL THEM! I just… had really, really, awful luck.

The first one I remember was one of three calves we got. Being the very, very creative child I was, I named the three calves “Beauty,” “AndThe,” and “Beast.” I don’t remember the details at all. I just remember that I was the lucky owner of AndThe (I think it was my dad’s payback for me choosing such a horrible name) and that not long after I was given ownership, the calf died.

The next was a very sickly calf to begin with. It was sick enough that we could leave it on the back yard without a fence or anything and have no fear of it getting out. (Can a calf get out if it’s never “in”?) I felt really bad for said calf, so I started going out and talking to it and playing with it during the days. I would take books out and read with it. I bottle fed him. (That wasn’t unusual, though. We bottle fed all of our baby calves.) And slowly, the calf started regaining its strength. I named him Zeus, because I hoped such a strong name would help him get strong again. One day my dad approached my mom with the idea of giving him to me, since I had put so much effort into nursing him back to health. That night, they told me he was mine. The next morning he died.

Last was while my sister, Jalin, was on her mission. My dad got two calves and put them in our live nativity. He told me that one was mine and one was Jalin’s, though I got to take care of both. I spent the next several weeks agonizing over which one I wanted. I watched to see which one was stronger. Which one was cuter. (Well, as much as a calf can be cute.) Which one was nicer. Finally I picked. Jalin’s calf got named Fred (as that was one of her nicknames) and mine was named George. That night (or maybe the next?) it got really cold. Really, really cold. Like, to the point that one of George’s hooves froze clear through. Like, bad enough that the hoof eventually fell off. And even though they ate out of the same trough, drank the same water, had the same amount of sun and space, Fred very clearly surpassed George in health and strength. While he kept getting bigger and stronger, George got smaller and weaker until one day he finally died.

(Yes, it's creepy that the last three paragraphs have ended with the word "died." I told you this is an embarrassing memory.)

The fact that this kept happening was a bit unsettling. Wouldn’t you be a bit weirded out? So, to prevent this from happening, my dad stopped giving me calves. Instead I would just feed all of the calves, then one day Dad would sell them, and just give me the money for one of them, telling me it had been mine.

I always wondered what happened to those calves. I secretly wanted to call up the people who bought them a day or two later just to see if they were still alive, or if maybe my curse was broken once ownership passed to someone else.

This unfortunate trait carried on into my college years with fish, but since this isn’t a college-life reminiscing blog, you’ll just have to live without said story. Hah! In good news, the curse doesn’t seem to apply to children. I’ve made it nigh a year and Kessa is still happy and strong and healthy. [knock on wood.]

Irises

Even as a child I loved flowers. I watched my mom plant flower beds and, like any other momma’s girl, I soon wanted one for myself. So my mom gave me a flower bed just for me. It was just west of the red shed, under the clothesline. I don’t think I planted it, but I was in charge of weeding it. (Surely this was Mom’s dream come true.) That wasn’t exactly what I had been thinking, but it was all made up for by the fact that I could pick my flowers any time I wanted. Which was awesome. Cuz really, who lets their kids pick the flowers that they so carefully and lovingly planted? Though, I only really remember picking them once; on Memorial Day to put on Tamra’s grave.  They were purple irises, by the way.

I think my responsibility over that bed lasted approximately just that one year.  Because I was like any normal kid when I realized that something cool like a flowerbed or a pet required responsibility as well as being awesome.

Bare Feet

I’m a barefoot kind of girl. I remember running around barefoot so much that my feet built up enough callouses to let me run on the driveway without shoes. I’ve pampered my feet a bit more since then, not by wearing more shoes, but by not living with gravel driveways. Somehow tile kitchens and carpeted floors don't build up callouses.  But the memories of my barefoot farm days are still alive. Especially every time I go home and try to walk on the driveway barefoot without nearly as much success as I feel like I should have.

My nemesis, however, were the thistles. For the most part I was safe from them. But there was one patch of grass, under the clothesline, that was determined to get me. No matter what we did, those thistles kept growing. I remember Dad spraying them. I remember taking out a shovel and digging them all out. But they always grew back, determined to break me of my barefoot ways. But time defeated the thistles. Eventually I grew up and moved away from home, protecting my feet from the thistles. Until, of course, I visit home and forget about my nemesis and go flying across the yard in my bare feet.

Hidden Mountains

Turns out, I was just not a very observant kid. There is a mountain range to the west of our house. It’s distant, but it’s definitely part of the horizon. The color, though, is often a perfect camouflage against the sky. It wasn’t until my teen years that I actually noticed those mountains. I very clearly remember being in the car with Mom, looking out to the west and in all sincerity asking the stupidest question of my life.

“Mom, have those mountains always been there?”

Despite the raucous laughter from my friends in the back seat, Mom made me feel a billion times better when she told me that she was a teenager before she ever noticed them, too. Thanks, Mom.

Trust Me, Mom

Ok, I don’t actually remember this one, but I’ve heard about it enough that I think I can do it justice.

One day Mom came downstairs to find me with a rather guilty look on my face, hand in the cookie (candy?) jar with the lid over my hand. I think I was probably hoping that with the lid on, Mom wouldn’t know my hand was in there. She wasn’t fooled.

“What are you doing, Tianna?”

With all the innocence I could muster I replied, “Trust me, Mom.”

Tamra's Flower Arrangement

Mom and Dad had to do something that no parent ever wants to do. They buried their baby girl right after birth. Mom gathered the flowers from the funeral and dried them, then arranged them in a nice glass jar for display. I loved looking at those flowers. I always felt somewhat of a bond with Tamra, so those flowers were special to me. I was also a clumsy, inattentive little girl. One day I was dusting (I think) and wasn’t paying nearly as much attention as I should have. Next thing I knew, the lid had come off and broke. I was heartbroken, but I knew Mom would be even more so. She was sad, but she took it well. Besides, all of the flowers were still perfectly intact. So she moved it into the entertainment center where the glass doors would protect it and we could all still enjoy looking at it.

Piano Lessons

At one point, Mom was a piano teacher. Trying to save money, she tried to teach me piano instead of paying someone else to do what she was perfectly capable of doing. Smart, right? Well, it didn’t work out so well. As many mothers and daughters can probably testify, it’s a lot easier to show respect to someone you don’t know well. So when Mom would teach me and I would get frustrated, I had no inhibitions to say so. I would get mad, I would pout, I would cry. Poor mom. None of her other piano students ever treated her has badly as I did. (Sorry, Mom!)

I had a children’s book called Grandma’s Secret. In that book the Grandma is babysitting her two grandkids for a week. One day the kids just don’t behave well. It finally gets to the point that Grandma is about to snap, so she sends the kids up for a nap. When they come back down, they find that Grandma is gone and her wicked witch of a neighbor has taken her place. She makes them do all of their chores and doesn’t listen to their whining or crying. The kids are all so scared of her (she’s babysat before) that they just do what they’re told. Later they come downstairs to find the mean lady gone and Grandma baking cookies. They’re so happy to see her that they are pleasant and obedient the rest of their trip there. The very last page of the book shows Grandma folding up her wig, glasses, and dress that disguised her as the mean, grouchy, old woman. Turns out they were the same person the whole time.

I remember Mom once reading that book with me. She turned to me and offered to wear a wig and new glasses and pretend to be a grouchy old woman for piano lessons. Maybe then piano lessons would go more smoothly. I laughed and told her that would be silly because I would know it was her under that wig the whole time. Next time, Mom, just disguise yourself. Perhaps for when you’re babysitting grandkids. :)

No Bake Cookies

One day I made No Bake Cookies after school. They were really, really good. And Mom said she didn’t mind that I made them. So I made them the next day. And the next. Turns out I really liked No Bake Cookies! After about a week of this Mom had to put a stop to it. “Tianna, I don’t mind if you cook after school every day. In fact, I rather enjoy it. But please, you’ve gotta stop making No Bake Cookies. We’re going to get sick of them and I’m going to run out of those specific ingredients really fast.” I guess I hadn’t stopped to consider that 3 cups of oatmeal every day for a week added up to a heck of a lot of oatmeal.

I still have that recipe memorized.

Sick Day Rules

Mom had a rule that I hated at the time, but I now see much wisdom in it and will probably enforce it with my kids, too. It was actually a 2-part rule.

1) If you’re too sick to go to school today, you’re too sick to do anything for the rest of the day.


2) If you have a fever, you’re not going anywhere tomorrow, either.

I like these rules now. For the first one, it helped limit us faking sick just to get out of school. Because if we did that, we wouldn’t be able to play with friends after school, either. The second prevented us from getting other people sick and making ourselves more sick. Oftentimes if a sickness is contagious, you’re still contagious after your fever breaks. But since you’re feeling better, you go out and play anyway. And then all your friends get sick, too. Mom’s experience was that if she made us stay in and rest for another day, we’d be good to go. But if she let us go out and exert ourselves the next day, we’d end up with a relapse and would be sick for several more days. I think it was more for her sanity that she enforced that rule. :)

Rocks

Some kids get grounded when they get in trouble. Mom usually struggled with remembering that we were grounded (that’s another story, though) so we got extra chores. During the non-snow months, it was quite often picking rocks out of the garden. The extent of our crime determined the number of rows we were sentenced to. We would go out with our empty ice cream buckets (sometimes 5-gallon buckets) and slowly work through the never-ending rows, pulling out every rock we could find and putting it in our buckets. When the bucket was full, we’d take it out to the drive way and pour them out over all the rocks already there. Then it was back to the garden. Lather, rinse, repeat until our assigned rows were done.

Now, it is interesting to me that no matter how often we did this, and certainly we de-rocked the garden multiple times every year, there were still always rocks out there. The logical part of my mind has been led to draw two possible conclusions from the evidence. 1) When Mom was really mad at us, she’d go gather up the rocks from the drive and return them to the garden or 2) Rocks really do grow and reproduce. A tiny pebble, if left alone, will eventually become a giant boulder. They must grow fast enough to go from unseeable grain of sand to a fist sized rock multiple times a year. But we didn’t have boulders out in our fields, so it must be a young growth spurt that tapers off for centuries. As to how they reproduce, I have no idea. I just report what I see.

Mom swears that she never, ever put the rocks back out into the garden, so if we are to trust her, it must be #2. When scientists prove this, I expect to get royalties.

Dinner Dates

I’m still not exactly sure where this got started, but Mom (and usually Nancy Rowberry) was famous for her crazy dinners. It was a favorite date to bring a group back to my house for dinner where Mom and Co. would dress up in all sorts of crazy get up and serve dinner with some crazy, whacked out theme. For the majority, I was part of the staff. But I played the part of customer here and there, too.

I remember one Halloween doing a spooky theme. I believe there were plastic spiders in the ice cubes, even. The menu was filled with all sorts of gross things that you’d never want to eat. They had three-ish courses with three choices in each. (Perhaps I’m mixing up numbers? This was a long time ago.) Each person would order something, then up in the kitchen we had a decoder. But even better, there was a different decoder for each person. So everyone could have ordered the same thing off the menu and received a different dish.

Another one we brought home Big Juds for the group to eat. But we tied all of their hands to each other. So your right hand was tied to the left hand of the person next to you. Just hope everyone is right-handed, then just ignore your left hand doing the will of the person to your left. To top it off, we had Jud’s sister and her husband (both really skinny) come and entertain as Big Jud siamese twins. They each fit into a leg of a pair of Jud’s pants and put one of his shirts around them. Then they tried to climb up and down the stairs and play the violin. (Cello? I don’t remember.) It was quite entertaining.

There were hillbillies and French artists. I don’t even remember all of them. But I remember never laughing as hard as I did those nights.

Projects

I’m stubborn. (Yeah, go ahead and laugh, Mom.) Especially when it came to projects. Whether it be for 4H, personal progress or school, I seemed to always have projects. Mom was creative; I was not. So invariably, I’d go to Mom for help for ideas. She was full of them. She would spout off idea after idea. I have this very unfortunate trait that I finally pinpointed later in life, but didn’t realize as a flaw in my thinking at the time. I tend to outwardly focus on the negative while keeping the positive internalized. (I am also a helpless optimist in other cases, but that doesn’t apply to Projects.) So while Mom would give me brilliant idea after brilliant idea, I would point out the flaws and holes in all of them. It wouldn’t be long before we would both be in tears as the clock ticked further and further past our bedtimes. By the end, though, I would end up with some fantastic project based off one of Mom’s ideas and combined with several others to fill in the gaps. While we both got more and more frustrated, we didn’t realize that my subconscious was churning all of the ideas together and building something that neither of us could have done alone. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I should have told Mom that all of her ideas had much good to them as well. I didn’t point out the good parts, only the flaws. Luckily, Mom’s patience and determination to help me always got us through the project, turning out amazingness every time. Thanks, Mom.

I remember several 4-H projects. There was a jumper, a hat, and a junk vest for Sewing. I remember muffins for Cooking. I remember a drawing of a rose on piano keys for Drawing. Let’s not even start on the countless record books that I never started until the night before they were due. For school I recall a science project about butterflies, documenting the life based on real-life experience.

I remember another using mini marshmallows in a quart jar to demonstrate what a vacuum does. We filled it about 1/3 full with colorful mini marshmallows and took it to one of Mom’s friends’ houses. She had some sort of contraption that sucked all the air out of jars for preservation purposes. We sucked it all out and recall being amazed at watching the marshmallows grow to huge sizes. They filled the entire jar! I remember wishing we could take the gadget to school with me so I could show everyone else how awesome that was. But I did get to take the jar to class and let everyone gasp in amazement as I took the lid off and let air in and the marshmallows all shrunk to their normal size. Then we ate all of the marshmallows. I also remember that’s when I learned how to spell the word ‘vacuum.’

I remember crocheting a pillow to show the construction of an assigned element. I don’t remember the specific element, but I do remember it being a pink and yellow circular pillow with various colored circles to show the number of electrons, neurons and protons. I remember that being on display for weeks on the shelf above the coat racks outside of my classroom door. I remember feeling so proud and yet so embarrassed at the same time. What 6th grader crochets? But then again, I was a 6th grader that could crochet. I was awesome.

Dishes and earrings

I hated doing dishes. Hated it. I would procrastinate for hours (sometimes days), hoping that Mom would have pity on me and do them for me. (Or more likely, get tired of them stacking up and just do them out of disgust.) I remember many nights Mom would go to bed and leave me up to finish the huge stack of dishes. I would work on them for what felt like hours. Some nights I would just get so tired that I couldn’t finish. So I would go into Mom’s room, wake her up, and in whispers plead for her to let me go to bed. “I promise I’ll do them first thing in the morning!” Some nights she’d cave and let me. Other nights she stood firm to her original decision and told me to get back down and finish them before I went to bed. If there were dishes there in the morning, I’d be in big trouble. I’m sure her decision at that moment was largely based on my attitude throughout the day. But I never recognized that at the time.



One day my friend, Kari, was having a sleepover for her birthday party. It would start out with a trip up to the roller skating rink and then we’d all stay up way too late giggling as girls do. It’d be a lazy Saturday morning as we all played until it was time to go back home. I was excited. Mom said I could go on one condition. I had to finish dishes first. Truth be told, I had plenty of time to wash all of the dishes. But I didn’t want to do them. So I procrastinated. I took my time getting ready. I’d do a few dishes, then decide I wanted to do something else more. Mom and Dad were gone somewhere, so I was left on my honor to finish the dishes before the party. The time got closer and closer and the chances of me finishing dishes before the party got smaller and smaller. Finally I buckled down and worked hard on the dishes, trying to get them done in time. I watched as the clock ticked nearer the time I had to leave and watched as the pile of dirty dishes didn’t seem to get any smaller, despite the effort I was now putting into them. Finally the time came and dishes weren’t done. I had to make a decision.

I chose to go to the party.



We had a lot of fun roller skating. If I remember right, there was a cute boy there that asked me to roller skate with him on the Snowballs a couple of times. That never happened to me. I was giddy. We came back to Kari’s house and started dressing up in her sister’s formal dresses. And then came the phone call. I don’t remember what my mom said, but I remember the dread of answering the phone and the horror I felt as I had to tell my friends that I couldn’t stay the night and had to go home. I remember sitting at the top of the stairs as mom told me very calmly how disappointed she was in me. I remember her pinning a chart up to the bulletin board in the hallway with a clipart picture of an earring in the background. I was due to get my ears pierced soon. My heart sank as I learned that I was grounded from getting my ears pierced until I earned back the privilege. I remember months of doing chores and slowly crossing off the boxes, waiting for the day that I could finally get my ears pierced. It took me 7 months after the previously-appointed time to do enough chores to earn it back.



It was a hard lesson to learn, and I didn’t learn it perfectly (7 months? Really, Tianna?) But I learned it. I had been grounded previously, but I don’t really remember any of the details. But this punishment has stayed with me through the years. It was the day I learned that if you let yourself get distracted from what you should be doing, if you choose not to do those things that have been asked of you, there will be consequences. I don’t get grounded anymore, but I do have to choose between doing the things the Lord has asked of me and the things that I want to do. It’s good for me to remember that if I put my responsibilities first, everything else still falls into place and, more importantly, there is much more joy and happiness afterwards.

Note: Somewhere I have a picture that I want to put on here.  I was hoping to get it before it posted today, but I couldn't find it.  Hence why I posted this late.  Someday, someday...

Broccoli

The dad I grew up with was a workaholic. He knew he had to get things done in order to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads. He didn’t let bad weather or bad moods get in the way. “I don’t want to” wasn’t an acceptable excuse. Even for him. He did it because it had to be done. Because of it, we typically saw a more serious side of Dad. Don’t get me wrong, we had fun moments, but the norm was more calm and mellow.

As Dad got older and started renting out the farm and selling the cows, his mood became lighter and random spurts of pure, unadulterated silliness burst forth. These moments became the highlights of my memories with Dad. I remember telling this particular story to my siblings soon after it happened and got the response, “Wait. Our dad did that?” I’m sure they were all jealous of me being the youngest child and thus getting to grow up with the best part of our Dad. Or maybe I’m just biased. :D



Mom, Dad, and I were sitting at the dinner table one day. It was a typical dinner. Meat, potatoes, veggies. We sat there, mostly silent, eating our food. Here and there we’d talk, telling about our days or whatnot.

At one point Dad reached for seconds of broccoli. Problem was, he still had broccoli on his plate. I felt the need to point this out to him. “Dad, why are you getting more broccoli? You still have some.” To my surprise, he started coming up with the most ridiculous of excuses. “These ones are my friends.” “These ones taste better, so I want to save them for last.” Even mom chimed in and came up with other ridiculous sentiments. We all laughed and went on with dinner.

You think that’s the end of it. And that would have been fun. But it probably wouldn’t have stuck in my memory. Oh no, it gets better. So much better.

Dinner was silent again for awhile when out of nowhere Dad grabs his fork and with murder in his eyes (ok, perhaps I’m overdramatizing just a tad) started attacking the broccoli on his plate. I’m not kidding when I say attacking. This wasn’t an attempt to spear some stubborn broccoli onto his fork. Oh no. This was a full-fledged attack.

Mom and I stared at each other, then at Dad, then back to each other. “Wha-- Dad?”

As calm as can be he looked me straight in the eye and said, “It was pulling faces at me.” He then proceeded to calmly eat his broccoli. Mom and I stared open mouthed at each other. Who was this man sitting at the table with us?

Dad turned to me one more time, a little bit of fatherly sternness in his eyes. “Don’t you ever pull faces at me.”

My eyes still tear up with glee every time I hear the word ‘broccoli’.

The Bad Word

I loved reading. Anyone surprised? One of my favorite series, thanks to Stacie, was The Babysitters Club. One of the girls in the book, Claudia, was fond of a specific phrase used to express exasperation or frustration. It also took the Lord’s name in vain. I remember reading those books, knowing they were books written for kids, and thus were clean, wholesome books. So anything in there was appropriate, right?



One day at the dinner table I learned that wasn’t actually true when I tested out my newly-learned phrase. The entire table went silent. I remember everyone just staring at me. Did Tianna really just say that? Really? I was confused. Did I say something bad? By the looks on my siblings’ faces I was sure I was in big trouble. I remember Mom taking me aside, asking where I learned that, if I knew it was inappropriate, and explaining to me why it was an inappropriate phrase. I remember being surprised that I didn’t get into trouble; I did something bad. Mom was smarter than me, though, and understood the teaching moment for what it was. She knew I had done it innocently and instead of yelling, she taught. It was that day that I really actually understood what it meant to take the Lord’s name in vain.

Occupation: Student

One Sunday I was up in the office off Mom and Dad’s bedroom working on a report that was due the next day for school. This was a common occurrence. I’m a procrastinator, so the best time to do something is just before it’s due.

Dad came upstairs and was doing something in the office. Almost as a side note, he asked me, “If someone asked you, what would you say your occupation is?” Well, it was my Senior year and I had spent many hours filling out scholarship applications that asked that very question so I didn’t even have to think of my answer. “A student.” Dad nodded and accepted that answer. “And what kind of work do you do for your occupation?” I hadn’t expected that question, so I thought a moment and responded, “Studying and homework, I guess.” Dad went back to whatever he was doing and I went back to my paper. A bit later he asked, “What would you think of me if I worked on Sunday?” Then he left.

I just stared at the open doorway for a while. I had never before considered that doing my homework was considered working on Sunday.



That moment had a great impact on my life. I stopped doing my homework on Sunday. At first it was really hard. I had spent years and years waiting until Sunday night to do my homework for Monday morning. Friday nights and Saturdays were for playing, not doing homework. But over time, as I actually did it, it became easier to remember and to sacrifice other weekend time for homework. After a while, it even became preferable. Suddenly Sundays truly became my day of rest. While other people couldn’t go to a fireside or come over for Sunday dinner because of homework, I could do anything I wanted (that was Sunday appropriate, obviously) and not feel any guilt. Sure, there were a few times, especially around finals or when a big paper was coming due, that I really seriously considered putting in a few extra hours of studying on Sunday, but every time that one small conversation with Dad would pop into my head and then it was easy to decide to give my Sabbath day to the Lord. Not to my professors.

Lightning

Changing water was a fact of life. Everyone did it. If you weren’t strong enough to pull tubes out of the ditch, you got to drag them from one land to the next.

I remember one night in particular when we drove out to the land we had behind May Carpenter’s late at night. It was very dark and very stormy. As we were driving over I watched lightning strike through my car window. It suddenly struck me (no pun intended) that standing out in a big open field in inches of water while holding a giant metal tube in my hand wasn’t the brightest of ideas. Who cares if I’m wearing rubber boots?!

By the time we got there, I had quite frightened myself and I begged and pleaded to stay in the car. Now, it wasn’t unusual for me to do outrageous things to get out of doing chores, but my parents must have seen the pure terror in my eyes because they let me stay in the car. Even Damian didn’t tease me about it. I remember praying as hard as I could that no one out there would get struck by lightning.

True story; God answers prayers. :D

Best Friend

I remember one time in Young Women’s when we were talking about our moms. Specifically, our relationship with our moms. It astounded me to realize that many of the girls didn’t talk to their moms about their personal lives.

“I would never tell my mom if I kissed a boy!”

Really? My mom would probably be the first person I told! I remember so many of my friends being shocked at the idea that my mom was my best friend. She knew every detail about my personal life. She knew all about my friends, the boys I had crushes on, the dates I went on, the agonizing “Should I date Sterling now?” saga. She knew about every pitfall, every heart ache, every stumble.

I wouldn’t change that. Ever. I am so grateful that my mom was there as my best friend to advise me, hold me, and cheer me on. I’m grateful that she still is. I pray that she will always fill that role in my life.

Happy Mother's Day!

Dear Mom ~

I wanted to do something special for Mother's Day for you this year. I also wanted to write down and preserve my memories of growing up before I forgot them. What better way than to combine them into a blog? So every day for the next year I am going to post a memory of growing up. Some are lessons I learned, some are just silly memories, some are treasured memories, while others are memories I wish had never happened. I want to preserve everything, the good and the bad. I hope you enjoy reminiscing with me.

Love,

Tianna