Remembering Gussy

The moments we have together can be so fleeting and can seem so inconsequential. Life is structured that way, I suppose, so that humans don't realize how precious each moment is or how normal interactions shape who we are. In this post, I want to share my rememberings about my dad's youngest sister who passed away two days after her 52nd birthday in November from cancer. I am not sure that there are any words that make her death less tragic. She was the aunt who still lived on the farm when I was a little girl, the one most available to us when we visited. Although we did not see each other often in recent years, I have many memories connected to her  - and most of them make me smile. It's strange, isn't it, how family and friends are in our lives and, whether in the foreground or background, they comprise important bits of our stories.

So, in the form of a small tribute, I would like to share some of the scraps of memories I have about my Aunt Stephanie, although we called her Gussy.

• When we were kids, she lived on the farm and was still in school. After all, she was only a decade older than me! We went to watch her cheer lead at some basketball games. When she was at home on the farm, she would read stories with us, bake cookies and cakes, and sometimes sit down at the piano and play. She and my other aunts would play with my long hair. I loved the attention. My brother and I loved to visit the farm in part because of my youngest aunt hanging around.
• I can remember going outside to climb and play on bails of hay during a particular Christmas visit in the snow. We ascended to hide and peek down on one another. I can also remember riding in the car with her and cranking up the music. It was so cool.
• Once I wrote a letter to the farm and addressed it "Uncle Gus" as a joke that seemed funny to me as an adolescent. My Uncle Steve and my Aunt Gussy didn't open it for some time because they weren't sure who it was for! That was goofy.
• My two youngest aunts were really close and lived together in a nearby town when they were probably in their twenties. Joe and I got to visit and hang out with them in Bowman. That was really cool! My memories do not totally connect but I can remember them taking us cruising and also to the movies, perhaps to get us to be sleepy so we wouldn't be so attentive at a movie that kids normally wouldn't watch... We also made cookies, of course.
• When my aunt went to school for a while in Dickinson, we exchanged old-fashioned, snail mail letters. I loved pen pals and had several. Aunt Gussy wrote back and forth with me quite a bit to tell me her happenings and respond to mine. Even in the last years, I would pop a postcard in the mail now and then to randomly say hello. Sometimes, my aunt would send me a card with a stick of gum in it. That always made me smile. It's kind of cute, right?
• There were a lot of celebrations that happened in North Dakota. Anniversary parties for my grandparents and the weddings of almost all of my aunts and uncles. This was a blast. Getting dressed up and running around with the other kids, watching the grown ups dance, and just enjoying the big family. I remember my aunt at these events as she paid attention to all of us rugrats. I even remember her pretty (and fun) wedding when I must have been in junior high school!
• Gussy had a really dry sense of humor that made people laugh. She made up a song about Missoula, Montana that still sticks in my memory. She would tell stories about her dog that were hilarious. Some of her jokes weren't very funny except for the telling. We loved her for that.
• I really looked forward to seeing my aunt as an adult and thought it was cool to have her around. She visited my family in Wyoming when I was a teenager and lived with us for a short while. Because they lived "Out West" (to my family this means Washington state), we didn't see each other often. But I do remember looking forward to seeing my aunt when there were gatherings here and there. It was always special when they came, and I was super excited when she came to celebrate my wedding to Uli a decade ago. 
• When I went to Seattle for a conference a couple of years ago, we met up for an evening to have dinner and wander around the city. She and Troy were great hosts, and I enjoyed reconnecting with them. In fact, we talked about coming out to visit at some point with Uli. That would have been fun.

All in all, I would not say that my aunt and I were particularly close in recent years. But she will always be part of my tribe and a piece of my story. It is heartbreaking that she left us all so soon and was so sick. It happened so fast and so unexpectedly. I loved that even when she must have been feeling really icky, we exchanged emails, often with her stories of baby bunnies in the yard or a short note about her faith and peace. I imagine this small tribute might have made her smile - I hope it would have - and she may have had other stories to add. I'm grateful that these shiny fragments remain to remember the moments we shared together. Rest in peace, Aunt Gussy.

Post #38: In the Mood for an Interlude

Setting aside Brazil for a moment, I am brooding about other people, places, and times today. In this seventh week in country, the thoughts close to my heart today are far, far away. It's peculiar how this lifestyle is one that supersedes arbitrary boundaries, even if entirely by necessity. Since graduating from high school, I have explored many parameters, moving first from Sioux Falls to New York City and the continuing to Stará Turá to Guadalajara to Monterey to Craiova to Brașov to Tartu to Arlington to Tartu to Astana to Jakarta to Arlington to Brasília. My intention is not to boast but rather to share how my sense of place overwhelms.  This attention to naming is somehow coupled with a lack of attachment to their definition - in my mind one runs right into another. It doesn't matter that I am in Brasilia because I feel that pieces of me are everywhere, attached to each and every one of you and the different trails I've traipsed. The biggest piece of me is connected to my sense of home place and family. That core piece has been quivering as some of the boundary lines that have not changed over time are imminently and irreversibly being altered.

The one constant in the list of places above is the square red house I returned to, the living room in which I played cribbage with my father, the petunias I planted with my mother, the countless cups of coffee drunk with those stopping by to visit, the bedroom where my best friend and I played school, store, and barbies, the rooftop on which my red tabby cat Tigger meowed each morning until I got up to let him in, the split level steps at the bottom of which my first dog laid to greet with thumping tail for visitors, the driveway in which we held a block party and rehearsal dinner for my wedding, the backyard which I and my brother mowed a few thousand times, the yard which served us for snowforts in blizzards, improvised imaginary zoos and acrobatic stages, and hastily constructed daredevil bike tricks... There is so much connected to that spot of earth - I could literally go on and on and on. 

My childhood home in Wyoming

My experience is not unusual as I suppose all adults eventually have to say farewell to a childhood home for various reasons and become less tethered to their youth. What strange luck for a self-professed world wanderer and vagabond to have grown up in one place for so long and to have remained connected to the same steps and walls and bright marigolds year after year. The house is just a place - the people are the ones that make it special. And yet, when this property belongs to someone else, I will feel a bit of a hole. I feel it already, knowing that it is empty of junk drawers and the pictures that hung on the walls. All to say that I am feeling surprisingly sentimental while grappling with this loss of space.

At the same time, I am preoccupied with one of my favorite aunts (actually, I would probably say that she was my childhood favorite, but it is plausible that another aunt might read this, so I'll hedge a tiny bit). My Aunt Gus is only ten years older than I am, and, when I was a child, she was still at home with my grandparents. This was incredibly awesome - our aunt was young and funny. We got to spend more time with her making cookies, doing chores, and watching her cheer leading. I loved penpals as a kid, and she was also the aunt who would answer my letters when she was in college and beyond. My aunt, the youngest of 8 kids has been attacked by insidious cancer and she is not doing very well. I can easily imagine her dry wit and the sound of her voice as she made up a song or did something goofy. I am completely flummoxed and sad about her illness. I just don't understand and I hope that she knows however far away I am, I am hugging her close to my heart.

A visit with Gussy in Seattle in 2017

And what happened to me today in the midst of brooding? An old friend called out of the blue to say hello and to listen. Sometimes those dissipating boundaries work equally in my favor.

Post #11: Nursery and Landscaping

Those of you that know me (and are related to me) understand that the title of this post runs deeper than a few shrubs or the retailing of petunias. When I say the two words "nursery and landscaping," deep conditioning has me almost humming.


Green Acres Nursery and Landscaping with its yellow and green sign, t-shirts. and old-school mesh baseball hats was my childhood. My parents' hard work and passion for the business and helping beautify my hometown was not easy but it was always remarkable. Following my parents around the nursery and shop in my summer flip-flops, I learned about potentilla bushes and the fiery colors of barberry (not to mention those sharp barbs). It has been a long time now, but I know that I learned how to run tickets and compute taxes without using a calculator because it is faster -- and it builds character. We knew how to tough it out, and my little brother and I made contests out of carrying bags of fertilizer or watering potted plants. We also got our hands and our feet and, actually, our whole bodies dirty with work. Nurseries are whole body experiences, I suppose. When I was a little girl, I wasn't always grateful for some of those chores (especially weeding), but now I realize that it molded me. Even now with my transient lifestyle, I always have plants in my house and on my balcony or in my yard, if I have one. My hands are a lot softer than those of my mother or my father were and I may have to wear some frilly gardening gloves, but I like the feel of dirt sifting through my hands and the satisfaction of surrounding myself with greens and flowers.

But enough nostalgia and waxing poetic. This post is actually about Brazil. Through a new acquaintance, we were put in touch with a local nursery and invited out yesterday for a tour of the premises and to meet the owner, a German-Brazilian landscaper, poet, photographer, and renaissance man. The visit was enchanting and he narrated our visit through his yard, stopping to point out interesting trees or explain the growing season and climate. Although the plants at Pau Brasilia are exotic in comparison to those that grow on the high plains of the Thunder Basin, I felt right at home. We had a great visit and learned a lot not only about plants but also natural reserves in the region, the history and building of the city of Brasília, the eclectic poetry and writings of the owner, and the rhythm of business here in the dry and wet seasons. Delightful - we will definitely return to explore and perhaps even get our hands in some dirt.

The entrance of the store and lot at Pau Brasilia 

A belly tree with spikes on the sides to keep the animals from climbing to eat its delicious fruit!

At home on the prairie

After almost a year in the jungle, I jetted for the prairie to celebrate Independence Day with family in North Dakota. The clover never looked so yellow nor the air smelled so sweet as it did on this sojourn. The one week visit back home rejuvenated me, cementing family relationships in celebration and a fair share of mourning. Choking out my disdain for everything urban, the skies restored my wholly Western heart with their wide open blues and cool night-time breezes.

We made new memories. Some of those that are stuck still deeply in my soul include making ginger snaps with my nephew Cohen, my mom posing like a supermodel at the 4th of July parade, Grandma Fern's 90th birthday party and the colossal family gathering of aunts, uncles, and cousins galore at Aunt Kim's, sitting at "the Ponderosa" lodge and looking out over sheep, bull, and other animals while breathing the sweet air deeply, getting bitten by vicious and hungry mosquitoes, setting off fireworks with my brother and his family in the middle of the street in Hettinger, chatting with uncle Steve about the origins of coffee and other trivia that he has such a good memory for, eating breakfast with my dad, the trauma of seeing our cheeriest, cutest, ball-chasingest, cuddliest dog get sick, wither, and die, the disbelief and tears that still follow memories of Skip, planting marigolds and tomatoes for my dad, and holding each and every moment tightly to my chest so that I can remember each one even after a 30-hour, multi-continent plane ride.

Here are a few snapshots of the journey.

Photo Essay: Out with the old in with the new

It was a dazzling finish to 2012 and a bright start to 

2013. Take a look!

Christmas in Aachen 

with my parents and Uli's parents (unpictured) -- forgive me! I was too excited to think about taking pictures. Some memories include the Aachen Christmas market, a great trip to Hoensbruck castle, buying mustard outside of Monschau, delicious food and cozy atmosphere by the candle-lit tree, and my family all around. It was a wonderful, wonderful holiday.

After Christmas on the Rhein

in Rheinfels Castle with my husband. Three days of luxury in a spa hotel complete with a full-body massage (from Uli for Christmas), sauna, and gourmet dinners. It felt good to get outside and hike along the Rhein and to really get away from it all. It felt like the right way to reflect on all the year has brought us --  our joy in new jobs and new friends and also difficult health battles for those we cherish and heart-breaking times for my best childhood friend who passed away in 2012. 

After Christmas Swiss Style

in and around Zurich. We visited Uli's friends from university living in the area and found good company for games, hiking in the snowy mountains and monastery in Einsiedeln,and culinary adventures of cheese fondue, raclette, and Swiss chocolate. We survived the drunken anarchy of the streets of Zurich to see the fireworks show and stayed up all night on NYE playing a new German board game, Village. We adventured in the city and marveled at the streets, stained glass windows by Chagal, Giocometti, and Polke (the latter my favorite), and the price of living in Zurich (making Astana look like a bargain!). I even saw Swiss cows (sans bells, unfortunately).

King for a Day 

because I found the plastic king in the three-kings bread (a Swiss tradition similar to the bread "rosca del reyes" in Mexico). I do feel like a king with so much abundance and so many blessings. It is not a bad way to start 2013, not a bad way at all.

Summertime

...and the livin' is easy...the fish are jumpin'...and the cotton is high...

Bright blue skies, the shining sun, and a few lazy moments in between travels and visits have made the season come alive.

A few summer highlights (as I've been a remiss blogger in the last year):

• Travel fiasco and overnight near the baggage claim in the Colorado Springs airport.
• Pinochle, Wyoming motorcycle rides, silly niece and nephews, long chats with old friends and relatives, quality time with Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister-in-Law, aunts, uncles, Grandma, and Skip, the wonderdog, too.
• Spur-of-the-moment visits to old Baltimore friends and PowerGrid with newer DC friends.
• Swiss cows with bells, spectacular views of Lucerne, new friends, and Swiss cheese.
• Elegant weddings, wanderings, hanging out with in-laws, German cake-time, butterbrot and champagne.
• Climbing the Eiffel Tower, strolling the Seine, visiting sites and taking in the smells and tastes of Paris.

Summertime sure is sweet...

Lucerne

Swiss Cow with Bell

The Eiffel Tower

An American in Paris

Strawberry jam and toast

This morning, I stumbled to the kitchen to put on a cup of coffee before making breakfast - two slices of buttered toast with strawberry jam. Without rush, I sat down to eat, news radio on and a newspaper open on my kitchen table. Biting into my toast, I glanced down at my feet, toes recently painted "Revlon red."



Phooom! I was taken straight back to my grandmother's kitchen in central Wyoming, mint green colored kitchen cabinets, red geraniums on the sill, Fiestaware dishes, and Formica table. With backcombed hair maintained through weekly visits to the hairdresser, striking blue eye shadow and red lipstick as well as a huge collection of beads and costume jewelry, my grandmother always ate toast with strawberry jam for breakfast, often while mulling over a crossword puzzle in a housedress, and always with red toenails.

Funny how such a small moment can trigger such a vivid memory. Even funnier when you can see those pieces of your personal history - family and friends - reflected in the way you go about doing things. We are who we know and have known... we have in us where we are and where we have been.

Family memories seem to strike me when I least expect it. Humidity and heat followed by a sultry summer storm take me right back to my other grandparents' farm and the summers we spent there, stealing grandma's chocolate chip cookies from the deep freeze in the basement, helping to do chores, playing Uno and rap poker with my grandpa for ice cream, picking peas in the garden, and attempting to ride Smokey, the most ornery horse. Early morning dishes clanging and the smell of pancakes, mealtimes signaled by a triangle hanging by the door, coffee for anyone who might show up, and quiet evenings eating peaches with sugar and a bit of cream on top. We fixed ourselves up to go to "town" in the car, but we liked getting dirty even better so we could help bale hay or drive around on the tractor with grandpa.

They were good summers that my brother and I spent visiting our grandparents' homes. From the time we were really small kids until we were through high school, we spent one or two weeks every summer at the North Dakota farm, and, until my grandma moved to Gillette, we spent a week each summer in the big city of Casper. The contrast between my two sets of grandparents could not have been bigger. However, I am glad that I got a chance to really know them, to understand where I came from, and to internalize those details about their habits and lives. And, I am most grateful that memories surface on quiet Saturday mornings when I least expect them.

Christmas time is here

happiness and cheer... love and dreams to share... beauty everywhere... joyful memories there...oh, that we could always see...such spirit through the year...

Here's wishing all of you out there who are dear (and, sadly, not always so near) to us a Christmas that is filled with all that is wondrous, magical, and worthy!

(Greetings from balmy Florida and the Magic Kingdom)

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. Luke 2:14

(and some angels who visited our snowy backyard in Tartu)

Sturgis 2010

From 08-07-2010 Sturgis

need a bike trip

I wish I may, I wish I might
Get on my bike
and leave tonight.

I want to go, I want to ride
Out on the road
and live outside.

If I could, I want to roam
My bike and I
The road's my home.

~ posted by Microbe at Meanderings on Two Wheels




Ah! Yes! Life on two wheels is good.

A red toenail tribute

A time to keep silence... My blog has been pretty quiet lately. I guess that is because I, too, have been feeling a little bit quiet these late autumn days. The gray days here in Tartu are perfect for quiet reflection and even a bit of brooding, and I guess I have had a few things on my heart that weren't ready for sharing quite yet.

A time to speak... Tonight I did a major house cleaning and later showered and painted my toenails bright red. They are really bright and shiny and actually kind of pretty. I don't usually prefer red polish or even wear it during the winter, but I painted them in a tribute to a very special woman, my grandmother who peacefully passed away two weeks ago today.

A time to mourn... You would think that it would be quite easy to say goodbye to someone who hasn't around for a while. My grandmother was in the nursing home after suffering from one or more strokes a few years ago. On my visits to see her over the past four years, she hasn't usually recognized me or often times even herself. Pleasant enough I suppose, her existence was a strange one of living amongst other equally disoriented elderly people. Knowing that her time finally came and she left us gently to find peace is very comforting to me.

A time to weep and a time to laugh... I take this night and this time to remember a woman who was a true lady and, at the same time, begin to let her go. My grandmother, whom I often called "Grandma Casper" to distinguish her from my other grandmother by using the place where she lived was colorful, distinctive, and dignified woman. Here are a few memories of those things that made her special:

• In the fashion of her times, my grandmother had two first names rather than a first and middle. Although spelled with a space between them, her name was Mary Ellen and never just Mary or simply Ellen.
• She loved ice cream, sweets, and popcorn, and, much to my delight as a child, she always had a candy dish full of hard candy (the best ones were butterscotches) in her living room when we visited.
• For most of my childhood, my grandmother lived in a big, old house two and a half hours south of my hometown. My brother and I spent a week visiting every summer, and we spent hours sorting through an old wooden toy box on the porch and discovering toys my mom and uncle had when they were kids (a seeming impossibility at the time -- how could such grownups have once been little? ). The basement was stuffed with boxes and discoveries just waiting to be made. We made trains out of boxes and spent afternoons navigating the backyard with them.
• When I was a little bit older, I would get up early to go walking at the mall in Casper with my grandma. After morning exercise, we treated ourselves to cinnamon raisin biscuits dripping with frosting at Hardee's.
• She had a signature dish that she fixed for my mom, homemade chicken and noodles. The aroma filled the whole house and it was the yummiest part of a visit. She also had these special multi-colored dishes in that house that we always ate on. I loved them because everyone got a different colored plate.
• For the holidays, she always made a kind of pistachio salad with whipped cream and maraschino cherries. She liked to make celebrations special in some way and often brought small, seasonally-shaped chocolates that she propped up beside each dinner place setting.
• She was a competitive and quick-witted Scrabble fiend. She always played for points, and I can remember serious games being played after dinner on our visits.
• Grandma Casper wore her hair backcombed with a little curl in the front and went to the "beauty shop" to have her hair done once a week. She maintained it carefully between visits by wrapping her hair and tucking it into a hairnet at night. In my memories, she also wears blue eyeshadow and bright red lipstick. As a girl, I remember getting my own hairnet to wear to bed so that I could be like my grandma.
• Her cars were always Buicks and, before driven, they had to be to be shiny and clean.
• She was a loyal Wyomingite and UW Cowboy football fan. We traveled to California twice to watch the Cowboys lose the Holiday Bowl -- the entire family decked out in matching brown and gold!
• Every summer, she made the best strawberry preserves that I can ever remember eating. When visiting, we ate them on toast at breakfast time while Grandma did the crossword from the newspaper.
• More than these particulars, I remember my grandmother as a lady who may have seemed fussy at times but had a lot of dignity. One of her signature features was her long, beautifully painted fingernails and her toes which were always, always painted a bright and brilliant red.

A time to dance... Thinking about my grandmother as she was when she was still a lady is much better than contemplating some of her final and rather incoherent days. I am happy to know she is now in peace and I am glad I have so many fine memories of who she was. Looking at my red toenails peaking over the top of my laptop as I sit here, makes me smile and dance in celebration of who she was. So, I post this red toenailed tribute in honor of my grandmother, knowing that she is still with me and hoping that she watches on with a smile and brightly colored toes.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. ~Ecclesiastes 3:1-