I spent most of the day today sorting out desk drawers and shelves and in doing so, I found an old journal that had a number of sketches about family members. I’ve been looking for photos to go with them but it then occurred to me this would make a fun prompt. So, if you are interested, please write a sketch of each member of the family you grew up with and send me a link. If you have photos, all the better. Here are my sketches:
1956 Betty, Patti, Dad and me.
Family Memories
My sister Betty could have and would have slept around the clock if we’d let her.
My sister Patti expressed an early proclivity for the dramatic, as was evidenced by her Halloween costume when she was 9 years old: my mother’s lace curtain wrapped tightly around her hips, a silk scarf criss-crossed over her non-existent breasts with a bare midriff in between and a strand of pearls draped over her forehead above a purple-veiled lower face.
My Aunt Stella was a staunch born-again Christian who traded her disappointment in her loving but quiet and reserved husband for a more spirited relationship with her creator.
My dad’s eyes, still as mischievous at age 70 as those of a 10 year-old prankster, seemed to snap with pleasure as he told a tall tale so convincing in its authenticity that it seemed wasted on a mere farmer––being more suited to a snake oil salesman, a lawyer or some other lowlife character.
When my mother married my father and moved north, she brought a sense of southern pride with her––one she tried to imbue her daughters with, but in the case of her youngest daughter, that quality ricocheted and rather than instilling within her an inflated sense of self, it instead made her vaguely ashamed and even more determined to mine the lower social orders of their small town where adventure lurked––more attractive than any false sense of nobility
My grandmother’s insistence that every second of the day be turned to some worthwhile pursuit seemed to skip a generation as her industrious son struck a balance between back-breaking labor and the complete leisure it earned him at the end of his long workday on the farm and ranch. Once finally home, he became a permanent fixture in the rocking chair that was labelled, “Pa’s chair” in the mind of every family member. The minute he came into the house, spilling wheat and cockleburs from his pants cuffs, he fell into “his” chair, grabbed up a “True West “or “Saga” magazine, and invited the nearest available daughter to “rub Pa’s head.” There he sat at a 45 degree angle, feet up on his foot stool, not moving except for the turning of pages until the supper summons came. Returning to his chair afterwards to read a bit more, he inevitably nodded off until bedtime, at which point he exchanged gentle upright rocking chair snores for his heartier prone ones.
. . .
My father’s hands that I had once watched as he pulled a foal and later as he presented to me a baby mole––blind and struggling to be free––that he had rescued and brought to safety––were what I saw as I observed my own square-palmed hands removing the cap still pulled firmly down upon his head as he sat sleeping in his favorite chair. “Time for dinner,” I started to say, but before I could get the entire sentence out, I gasped as, the cap removed, I watched a stream of bright red blood trickle from a huge gash in the top of his head down his forehead, the side of his nose and his cheek. I dashed to the bathroom, returning with a wet washcloth, a roll of toilet paper, towel, bandages and antiseptic ointment, but as I gently wiped the laceration, a strip of skin and flesh came totally free of his scalp so I was essentially scalping my father. I pressed the clean toilet paper against the fissure which literally bisected the top of his head, then squeezed the tube of antiseptic gel into the open wound before using half a box of Band-Aids to tape a long strip of many layers of gauze over his bald pate. At least there was no hair to worry about later when it was time to change the bandage.
“What happened?” I asked, as he came fully awake during my ministrations. As he had kneeled to change a truck tire, he explained, the jack had slipped, dropping the truck on his head. He seemed more sheepish than wounded, and I could see that it was embarrassment over his own ineptness in allowing the accident to occur and that this is what had caused him to keep his cap on. How he thought he would get away without exposing his wounds and telling us the story, I don’t know, but in retrospect I realize that once he had regained consciousness after the accident, he had headed back to town to lay his tired body down in his favorite easy chair––a wounded creature delivered to his own lair.
When I was young, I yearned to savor
places with a different flavor.
And so I did, for years on end,
enjoying each roadway’s bend.
Much as I loved to sail the sea
and trek through jungles, fancy-free,
then bring their memories home with me,
now I find I’d rather roam
deeper into my own home.
Examine subtleties of flowers,
the building-prowess of wasps in bowers,
seek mysteries of a closer kind,
whatever treasures I can find
roaming my corridors of mind.
Mother, Judy and Patti on my very first vacation–enroute to visit Aunt Margaret in Idaho via Yellowstone! No doubt sister Betty was taking the photo.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 