Friendship Journeys

 As we age, our old friends are dearer and acquaintances become closer. When we travel, strangers respond to our open smiles and share their lives for an hour at dinner on a riverboat. They tell their stories from wheel chairs in airports and waiting in doctors offices. Now we can surmise their life stories from facebook and through other social media.
 Recently at a sale, I ran into two girls/ladies/women that I knew from school. The two Cindys. And they are aging well. They were a year behind me in high school. We did not run in the same circles,  and my friends and I considered them rivals of a sort for the attention of the available males in town. Their group - Cindy, Cindy, Nora, Carolyn, Jan and Becky-cruised the "ave" in a Cindys station wagon. As we passed on Myrtle Avenue, they were always having a good time. We were jealous of their good time and that they belonged together to something. Now I know that "something" just turned out to be a long lasting friendship of girls.
 Over my years at Pepperidge Farm, I went to Cindy with my insurance problems. She was open and helpful to me, and I responded to her friendship. Then we worked a short time together in quality control, and we became better acquainted. I liked her and wondered at that jealousy of my younger years. I knew Carolyn from grade school at Steuben where we were buddies together with Ann and Kathy. Our daughters, Amy and Jennifer, were in school together and even in each others weddings . We crossed paths often and shared chatter about families. I never did get to know Nora. Jan worked at the hospital in registration where she occasionally had to help me. I think I offered friendly conversation, but she never accepted. That's okay. The same with Becky who also worked at Pepperidge. They did offer me respect though in the work positions we shared.
 The two Cindys spoke their enjoyment of the recent get together of the group. They are still mourning the recent loss of Jan to cancer. I could feel their sorrow. It made me think of what a blessing it is to be able to share our lives with others and to empathize with the ups and downs of their life's journey. Jan will always be with them-not forgotten.
 The second Cindy (now Cynthia) greeted me that day with a smile and received one of my never ending hugs. I cant help my hugging. Somehow, I sense that is what people need from me at certain times. Cindy told me she enjoyed seeing my pictures of children and grandchildren on facebook. I also follow hers and am able to show concern and attention to her family's trials and triumphs. Her joy in her grandchildren is evident. And concern for her aging parents is a path I know, and I feel in my heart what she faces. Cynthia also worked at Pioneer Rubber/ Sherwood/ Mapa when I did. She stayed on in a management position when Mapa made a move to Tennessee and still lives there. When my Mother passed, she was able to help me with a life insurance question. At that time, her kindness to me meant a lot. Even now, it makes me tear up. Cynthia also mentioned that she enjoyed reading my stories on my blog. Little did she know that she would be a character in one. And Cindy mentioned quickly my art and talent which is a recognition I appreciate. My goal here is to bring at least one smile.
 Friendships can begin and end and rest awhile. Some are lifelong with wet and dry spells. They can be antagonistic and forgiving. I once did not speak to my best friend for over a year because of her use of the word hillbilly which I find very offensive.  After a time, I was able to let it go, and she welcomed me back as if nothing happened. A lot did happen to me during that time and someday I will share with her. A high school friend moved away for nearly 20 years, but has returned and our relationship is better because of separation and experience.
 People often say "I wish I knew then what I know now" and life would be different. Who can say different is better?  We are led by God who sees every move and thought we make. And lets us learn and develop into loving beings to shine His light out to others in friendship.

Mother and her flowers

Written on a cold winter day: 

 

 

 

Today, January 3rd, in the mail, I received my first seed catalog. Leafing through the pages, I was reminded of my mother’s love affair with her flowers. The family always had a large vegetable garden to feed nine people, but Mother’s true pleasure came from the flowers she nurtured. From the early sixties, at Ray, Ohio, I remember the begonias, coleus, geraniums and sultanas (now called impatiens) that she planted on either side of the front steps. They grew into profuse bushes in the early morning shade and wilted in the intense afternoon sun. She watered them using the metal bucket and dipper faithfully every evening, despite the other chores that a family of nine created. Visitors always commented on them and few left without a start of the plants. At the end of the season in the fall, she potted many of the little starts and took them inside the house. They grew slowly in the cool, sunless winter days. But when spring came, they quickly sprouted new leaves and were soon ready to be transplanted in the beds, starting the cycle for her all over again.

Houseplants, mainly philodendron, were always plentiful in her home. One year at Ray, the plant vined so much that she let it grow along nails she placed all over one living room wall. One of our Saturday chores was washing and polishing the many leaves. When she moved from the farm to the condo, she took a philodendron in a five gallon pot with her. She had it staked with a wooden slat and tied with twine. That was one thing about her gardening- she used whatever was available for a stake regardless of the appearance to the plant.  At the condo, the plant continued to climb and wind around the stake, and she worried daily what she should do with it. It needed transplanted, but into what and how would she do it. I finally convinced her that she could just trim it back and let it start over. Mother cut most of the plant away, but it was never the same. I think she let it decline as she was doing herself. She could no longer care to water or feed the plant.  When her furniture and belongings were divided, Carol took the philodendron and added it to her plethora of houseplants.

Mother spent most of her life on a small farm near Willard, Ohio. When we moved there in the early 1960s, the place was truly depressing. Junk everywhere. The house needed lots of work. My parents set to work right away cleaning the place up. Translated, that meant lots of work for us kids. There was lots of space between the house and the barn for a vegetable garden. While we hoed the beans on hot afternoons, it seemed like acres. Mother kept room for her flowers, though. Along the west edge near the apple tree, she planted orange poppies that bloomed every spring. One summer, she planted several rows of dahlias along the garden path that led to the barn. The showiest ones were the large dinner plate dahlias. They were wine colored (her word), yellow, and velvety red. Mother knew just how to arrange the plants for the best effect. When visitors pulled around the curve of the driveway, they could not help but see their beauty. The dahlias gave her great pleasure as well as frustration. The bulbs had to be dug every fall, tagged and stored in the basement after the first frost. The tagging was the hardest part. She did not have plastic tags we can get now at any nursery, but instead used an old white sheet torn into strips. Each strip had the color and size written on it with magic marker then was wrapped around its group of bulbs. Needless to say, sometimes in the spring, she had to deal with surprises since the cool dampness of the dirt basement was not the best environment for maintaining legible markings on the cloth. She often had to guess at color and size which led to a great variation in the color arrangement in the garden. When she began to set the bulbs out in the spring, she always saved some to pass along to friends and relatives. If you admired one of her dahlias, she had the bulbs to send home with you.

As the farm took shape, Mother was able to focus her attention to placing beds of plants and shrubs around the house. I remember the many flower and seed catalogs that came in January and how she spent hours planning her order. I loved her excitement. Her roses were from Jackson & Perkins. Unless she went to the greenhouse and could not resist a certain color. Other plants and seeds came from Burpees. Unless she went to the local greenhouse and saw a certain plant she couldn’t resist. As the years passed, a variety of perennials were available at greenhouses like Corso’s.

In the spring, she bought primroses and pansies. For the summer, she first bought begonias, impatiens and marigolds. Columbines, lupines, sweet william, hollyhocks, lilies and coneflowers and black eyed susans began to fill in a lot of spaces. The advantage to her was that the perennials came up every year and reproduced profusely. She would just thin out the new plants in the spring and start a new bed or find an empty spot. I don’t think she ever thinned them and threw them away. Another way Mother got plants was to start them from seeds that she gathered each fall. The seeds were dried and put in some sort of container-tins or in little white rags tied in bunches. Many zinnias and marigolds got their start in the big old washtub. Mother loved mums in the fall but became aggravated that they soon lost their exotic colors to the original white or yellow.  In the spring, she loved all the colors of the irises, but hated dividing the bulbs and pulling the nasty grass from between the rows.

One year she bought a small greenhouse. Together we bought packets of seeds and spent spring evenings filling the little pots with soil and pressed the seeds into the soil. We had flat after flat of all the varieties of our dreams. My brother Ralph built shelves to hold the flats of pots. He also rigged a heater for cool nights. We waited anxiously for the seedlings to arrive. They finally did -all at once. So many plants! Tall and spindly as if reaching for the sun. We had to thin and rotate and water. As they grew, we realized we only needed a small amount of them for ourselves. I think we gave plants to everyone we knew. We used the greenhouse for several years. I’m not sure why we stopped. I think we had enough. I know that I never had a place for all those plants and realized I did it to help her. And she did it to help me.

At any time of the day, Mother could be found doing some kind of work in her flowers. For the hot sun she conceded to wearing a straw hat and a long sleeve shirt to ”keep her freckles away”.  She did not wear gloves. If you visited her, she had to wash up for you. Any visit included a tour of her flower gardens. She had to show off a new variety or just any thing that was in bloom always offering a start of this or that  She forever pushed those begonias at me, but I still don’t like them even if they are red and double. While she showed me around  the other flowers, she continued to work and plan -pulling a weed here and there or wondering where to transplant overcrowded plants or some worry about a plant that wasn’t thriving. She is the only person I know that demanded her money back if a rose or peony or lily did not produce. Not only at a greenhouse but thru letters to J&P and Burpee’s. And she got satisfaction.

 

Over the years, Mother’s flowers grew far and wide. Not only into all the beds that she placed here and there in the yard and garden, and around the house and garage, but in my gardens and every garden of friends and relatives.

As I work in my own flower beds, I think of her. The wind waves the pink cosmos and I remember that she called them standing cyphers. When I get a whiff of the sweet william near the front door, I remember that she gave it to me. As I watch the humming birds on the coneflowers, I am reminded of  her full, wild gardens at the farm.

Each spring at the greenhouse, I still buy something just for her.

 

School Friends

School Friends 
3/27/14


Yesterday I traveled to Lodi Ohio with Chris to meet Arlene for lunch. Both are high school friends that I have been in contact with occasionally since graduation. Our friendship was centered over our freshman and sophomore years.
 After 6th grade at Steuben school, all the outlying students went to junior high at the high school on split sessions until the new junior high was completed. We were outsiders to town kids already familiar with each other and knew the established social hierarchy. My sixth grade friends were spread out over different class groups I now realized were arranged due to scholastic achievement. My best friend soon found a new town friend and was able to acclimate to the new surroundings. I think I never did. I don't remember any friends from 7th or 8th grade. My life was secret and I kept to myself for survival. Those memories are cold and gray and alone among the class mates who had money and privilege and made fun of my speech and my clothes and lack of social knowledge. The thing that saved me then was that I was smarter than most of them. And I had a family to go home to for awhile.
As a freshman, I remember that Arlene and I met in Mrs. Rineharts Algebra class and ate lunch together. After eating, we cruised the halls, flirting with boys we passed and those we could see through classroom door windows. In the winter, I did go to a few basketball games with her and did stay overnite once at her home on Ash St. My sisters could drive and thus I was able go to some school events. My parents both worked second shift at Pioneer Rubber and with one car, we were severely limited in after school and other social activities. Arlene never stayed the night with me. I knew my home was different from hers and was afraid of being judged again and maybe losing her friendship.
Anyway, the school year ended and we didn't see anyone from school over the summer. I worked at Holthouse Bros farm in Celeryville during the break. The season before my freshman year was my first job. My first checks were $15 per 40 hour week and Saturday mornings. That summer, the  federal minimum increased and I was raised to $45. The ready acceptance of Carol and Brendas little sister by the experienced workers, I suppose gave me some pseudo confidence  for the next years in school. The money also raised my socioeconomic level. My clothes matched that of other girls.

Somewhere during my sophomore year, I met Chris through Arlene, I guess. We had a study hall together and did go to some ball games together. Once, I went to her house and we listened to music-the Stone Ponies singing Different Drum. Arlene had moved past us. She had a steady boyfriend. I saw her in classes and lunch but her focus was on the boy.

During junior and senior year, Arlene and Chris began attending the Vocational School in Shelby to study cosmetology. Several of those first mornings of school, I tried to talk with them, but they had already moved on. And I adjusted again with Carol and Suzan and Ruth.

Years later I ran into Arlene after she married a Smith guy and attended our New Haven church. And Chris and I reconnected when she worked at a local flower shop. They were simple chats but a reconnection still that remained and for me came to fruition at yesterdays meeting. Years of life have come and gone for me, but the occasional thought of how they must have really liked something about me have helped sustain a life. Friendship increases in value with time. Truth. I am glad that Arlene and Chris and I can laugh together in this age.