Grandparent Memories

 I’m glad I was raised with grandparents who were born in 1875 and 1879(both great grandmas) and 1898 (both grandpas) and 1908 (mom’s mom) they didn’t change much in the things they considered essential as they aged. The never had, so why do I need now list; included electricity, and indoor plumbing, and a phone, or TV. There was a wood cook stove with a built in rectangular reservoir for hot water, coal burner for heat, outhouse, thunder mug under the bed, and buckets of water with a washboard and wringer for laundry. Gardening and bartering and auctions and canning and drying and sewing and quilting were daily things. I thought it was weird but nowadays my own list of never had, don’t need dates me just as completely - no dishwasher in this house. 

My grandpa was born in 1898 and my grandma in 1908 and this is how my grandma responded to everything. Show her some gloom and doom prediction and she’d list several other times people thought the world was ending. Laugh at a haircut and she reminded my mom that she once cut her hair into a Mohawk and dyed it red with mercurochrome. Show her the Pacific Ocean and she says Yellowstone Lake is about the same thing, take her to the redwoods and she grumps, “they don’t look red to me.” If I ever said “I wish it was the weekend (or my birthday, summer or Christmas)” she would counter with, “don’t wish your life away.”

And now she has been dead since 1989 and I still hear her voice telling me there is nothing new under the sun and this too, will pass, faster than you want it to.

One morning when I was about four I went out to the rabbit hutch we had next to the kitchen porch for my pet bunnies. The rabbits were gone and our American badger was inside snarling. At me. I ran inside, my grandpa went out, and somehow, for the rest of my childhood there was a tanned badger pelt with long claws clicking against the wood on my child sized rocking chair’s back spindles.

My mom’s paternal grandmother was born among the Sioux in 1875 and died in 1973 when I was ten after sharing my bedroom the last two years of her life. The family talked much about her and her husband homesteading and driving stage for Buffalo Bill but I never even heard about the Pine Ridge Reservation relatives until they came for her funeral. I can’t imagine the changes in her life, but since no one talked, I have to. Born and living there through both Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee, then married at 17 to a white stage driver and disowned by her dad for marrying a white man, so unable to visit her mom until she was 57 and her Dad died. Moving to Cody, Wyoming before there was a town and raising four sons and living to be 98. How different the world she arrived in than the one she left.

My maternal grandmother never got over growing up in a farm family of eight kids, all born around 1898 to 1908. And never forgot storing things when they were abundant, to use year round. So when the fields were bursting, she had her own crops but teamed up with mom and her cousins to share their crops and labor.

Emma Belle Lafferty and Frances Ralbon Slack

Lawrence Slack

Emerson Miller and my brother Lance

Lawrence Slack T age 17

We made sauerkraut, braided onions and garlic, canned so many types of beans, corn, pickles and tomato. And then everyone had more than what they had grown themselves in their “root cellar.”  They didn’t dry or smoke much when I was a child. And I’m not sure why, but suspect they felt indulgent using the freezer for those items like meat and fruit. Or canning jelly, and applesauce and pie cherries. I don’t do anything like the volume they did, but we trade our apples and pears and plums for garden goods and can some things. And keeping water here is essential as power cuts my well, many times we’ve figured out a way to get water from the well without the pump but never installed a hand pump on the kitchen sink which several of my family members had. Here we closed schools a month ago, and people shopped like it was tsunami season, and a bunch of items haven’t come back yet, but I have a big order in for today at curbside pickup and we could have gone another month before filling that if I wasn’t getting specifics for three birthdays and Easter. Ugh, sorry. Once again I’m rambling.

“What Was Your Mom Like When,. . .?”

 

I’ve never known anyone who was so compartmentalized in my life, as my Mom. When I think of her, it is with intense love, and great regret. I miss her, but I always felt conflicted. We were best at getting along once we lived a thousand miles apart. She was a loving person who had trouble believing she was worth loving and I wish I had understood her more when I was younger. She changed a lot, so that when I remember my Mom, who was 24 when I was born, I remember a different woman than my brother, who was adopted only 4 1/2 years later, remembers. My youngest brother, born when my first brother was 8 and I was 12, had a different mom altogether, even though to the world we all had Priscilla June Miller as our mother. 

When I was a child, Mom was loving, demanding, scary, and unpredictable. She was Eleanor Rigby from the Beatles song, “wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door.”

I understood that line as soon as I heard the song, instantly remembering the screaming woman who had out “the board” to spank me, dropping it in the potato bin when the doorbell rang, the furious scowl transformed into a delighted, welcoming smile as she smoothly pulled open the inner door, unlatched the screen door and beamed, “come in, come in.” to the Avon lady or neighbor who had just “popped in for a visit.”

She might drag me from bed in the middle of the night to beat me with every hanger I had left on the floor of my closet, or to hug me and cry that I had never loved her. But she always smoothed on some lipstick, pulled a precurled wig over her hair, donned a dress with a big twirly skirt and high heels before taking me to school or church. She always kissed me goodbye at the door or before letting me out of the car. 

I didn’t understand as a child, the damage done to her soul by being the odd one out in school. I heard the stories of having to wear two pink Terry cloth towels her mom had sewn together into a “dress” and having to wear thick woolen stockings and a crown of long braids wrapped around her head when the popular girls wore Bobby socks and saddle shoes and a high, short pony tail dancing with every movement. I saw her make excuses to avoid meeting my friends moms, and missed the “they won’t like me” behind the excuses. I knew that her friends were mostly poorer, needier, happy to have her bring groceries and canned food when we came to visit. I missed the belief that no one would like her if they didn’t need something from her. She couldn’t trust friendship without strings attached. 

Later, through my Dad’s devotion and my brother’s needing an advocate, and being there for my Dad during a drawn out cancer battle, she began to see her own worth, but by then I had moved away, and then dementia set in and I was missing her, even if I was in the room with her, and again, I didn’t really understand how her stiffening body betrayed her, and made her need support, until she was gone and I found her in my own aches and fears. Now sometimes I cry or scream for my mama - missing the woman I never really convinced that I loved her and wishing there could be another opportunity to tell her she was enough for me.

My First Big Trip

 My first big trip is one I never have remembered. I wouldn’t know about it except that it was a favorite memory of my Mom and Dad and one they told me about several times.

    We went across the country from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh on Amtrak. Or the other direction. My Dad grew up in the Pittsburgh area and most of his siblings were still in that area, but his Dad and the oldest Sister (Dorothy, who had raised him after his Mom died when he was seven) had moved to Orange, CA and another sister lived in Anaheim. I was only 6 months old. They got lucky and their sleeper was in the forward facing nose of the train so they looked out from bed, over the empty tracks in front of them. I think that view at night with the stars and moon and ever changing landscape must have felt like having their own private universe  

    The one thing that they loved was a young boy named Anthony Bonaducci who was about three. The boy was fascinated by their baby with red hair like his and he kept coming back to talk. He also had a scam going that made them laugh. He would drop a piece of paper in the aisle and then tap the shoulder of a man sitting near by. “Hey mister, there is garbage by you. If you give me a dime, I’ll throw it away for you.”

    It was many years later when I was playing the Partridge Family album that my cousin gave me for Christmas. My Dad pointed at one of the pictures on the cover and said, “He looks like what Anthony Bonaducci would look like if he has been older.”

    Of course, Danny Bonaducci did look a lot like his big brother. That was confirmed later in a Tiger Beat Magazine story. Back then I couldn’t just Google the info I wanted.

    Then in 2017, we booked tickets on Amtrak for my husband, youngest son, his daughter and I to go from Klamath Falls, Oregon to Denver, Colorado to visit my Father in Law for Christmas. But Papa Harvey died on December 4 and we ended up traveling via Amtrak for his funeral and a family reunion instead. Now my granddaughter can’t remember that trip but my stories remind her. During the journey she was enthralled the the beautiful views and enjoyed meeting new people and never bored of snuggling with her Grandpa and her Dad and for once getting as much of their attention as she wanted.

Laura Goode, Dec. 15, 1953 - March 7, 2022

 

Today I learned of the death of Laura Dee Goode. She died 1600 miles away, and nearly two weeks ago but until today her family did not know it. On March 6 my husband talked to her, and she responded with shock and irritation when he said she was nearly 70. She won’t get there now, not with her 69th birthday still nine months in the future she will never see. 

When I was 18, I met her youngest brother and once we were dating, I decided to travel with him to visit his family. She told us we could stay in her house but she would be out of town for that weekend. We got there to open doors and a welcoming note and that is exactly who she was back then.  Generous, welcoming, the life of any party. My husband assured me, well not yet my husband, that “she will love you because I love you.” And she did. Even when we lost a python in her house that first visit and had to leave her a note of warning as we left. (Greg’s roommate had asked us to take it to the Reptile Gardens near her home because it had gone nine months without eating after being bitten by its last meal. She found it in her dryer months later and sold it.)

As we grew older and I got to know her, she became a bit more unstable. Life wasn’t kind to her. Her only son died when he was in a custody battle for her grandkids. He stepped in front of a moving train and she lost him, and any chance of every seeing those beloved grandkids again. She also suffered from chronic pain and tried about every thing from pain clinics and drugs to meditation and acupuncture but always the pain shaped her life. 

She also was not exactly smart or stupid, but she didn’t think the same way other people do. She wasn’t cruel on purpose, but she said whatever she was thinking, and it was often harsh. She didn’t think people should be offended if she meant to honestly let them know something they could fix, but still people would resent being told their sink was stained, their shirt was threadbare, their recipe needed more of this and less of that and they really needed to take a shower and pick up their crap.  Why does everyone get so upset? She did think differently, so she was always repeating the punchline of a joke, and then frowning and saying, “I don’t get it?”

That was life for Laura, a joke she didn’t quite understand told by family members who talked too loud and too much but always were welcomed in her kitchen to a big pot of spaghetti sauce and a lot of love. 

But she was eternally naïve, she wanted to be loved and she wanted to help people, and she gave everything, over and over, not just to stray cats, and homeless women and the men she let in her heart and home until once again her mental issues chased them away. She picked up people from anywhere and when she was used and abused, she did it again. This life tested her and has finally left her. 

I’m so sorry, that it wasn’t easier for her, but I’m grateful for the way she opened her door and her heart and welcomed me into her family. 

Dad, as I knew him when I was a child.

 
This year I got a gift, which is also a challenge. It is a year of writing the answers to Storyworth questions  which will be assembled in a book after a year 

 
Paul Edward Miller was 27 when I was born. He had survived a stint in the Army as a Morse code operator in Manila. He had relocated from the Pittsburgh, PA area where he had been one of the youngest of more than a dozen siblings and nieces and nephews raised jointly by his Dad, Brother-in-law and oldest sister after his mother died when he was 7. He married my mom, and they had a difficult time conceiving and then had miscarried a baby boy before I showed up in the 4th year they were together.

Dad loved kids, and he was a playful and energetic companion. He had nicknames for me, the neighbor kids and my cousins that made us laugh and feel special. He worked hard and came home to scoop me up and onto his shoulders, but after playing he wanted to sit down, put up his feet, drink a beer and watch the news. “Hey kid, you make a better door than you do a window.”  Meant we were blocking his tv view. Kids were fun, but blood made him faint and he only ever changed one diaper. He had iron clad ideas, he had gender roles, boys got motorcycles and had to mow the lawn, girls helped their mom and never got the motorcycle. No wife of his was going to keep working once there were kids to raise. He didn’t have kids so he could go out and party or leave them behind on a vacation, but his equal share in raising us was bringing home the check and being there when he wasn’t at work. Mom never really got a break.

When we adopted my first brother, I was almost 5, and then 12 when my brother Lance was born. Dad did learn to be softer with having a Down’s syndrome baby, he loved all three of us intently and would have easily given us everything he had. He was smart, maybe the smartest man I ever met, certainly could have been a Jeopardy champion. As a child,  his family financial status meant he had been tracked to a technical high school and never allowed to consider college. His first new pair of pants were for 8th grade graduation and he tore them that same day, scrambling over a chain link fence. His sister who was only a year younger than he was, never let him forget that he had dropped her only doll in a bucket of water, which made her go bald.

He was raised in a prejudiced time and place but saw people as individuals and was often amazed that the people he made friends with were always exceptions, “he’s not like a real Mexican” to the stereotypes he didn’t question. He used words like “Hunkie, Wop, Nigger, and Polock” in the jokes he repeated and as the term used to name items like Brazil nuts and cabbage rolls. I don’t think he ever questioned that until he had kids in Jr. High, and by then he had met enough exceptions to begin to change his language. He never really met a stranger, just friends he didn’t know yet. He taught me to love people and to have an obnoxious sense of humor and I miss him every day.

When I became a mom he loved being a grandpa. He played tirelessly with my boys and my brother’s three children, but that was cut short when esophageal cancer killed him just before his first two grandchildren turned 4 and only 5 months before the birth of his 5th and final grandchild. I often made decisions on how I was going to parent by reminding myself that he would have given anything to be able to say, “yes, I’ll take you fishing. Or Yes, I’ll play with you and read to you.” So I said “Yes” a lot more. 

when I cried my three year old assured me, “the part of us that is the strongest, never dies, and the part of Papa Paul that loved us was the strongest part of him.” He was a complicated, loving human born in complicated times and nearly impossible poverty, but he grew to be a generous and wonderful man. 

Dixie Dawn Miller Goode, January 03, 2022

Nostalgic Christmas 1987

In 1987, Greg and I went to China as exchange students from Oregon. We went with about 15 other Oregon Students and 30 from SUNY. It was challenging and life changing. When we came home at Christmas time we really felt like Santa and the Mrs., because we had gone with two suitcases and came home with 14. Mostly filled with gifts. We were blessed to have both of our families close enough to each other that we could spend Christmas with one set, drive seven hours and spend Christmas with the other. 

Back then it felt like we would have these wonderful homes to return to every Christmas. Now of course they are both gone, and the memories are tinted with the knowledge of what and who has been lost, but even in the sadness is a new understanding of how lucky we were to have the older generations- missing their own childhood families and homes, but still recreating the magic for us. 

Christmas Letter, 2021

 

Greg and Dixie Goode

Crescent City, CA

2021 Holidays

 Merry Christmas, Happy Thanksgiving, delightful Birthday, Happy New Year! May you have something to celebrate and someone to love in 2022.

My something to celebrate and someone to love is still the same people. The last couple of years have been filled with their share of problems and worries, but every day has also been filled with people I love. My family and my friends are amazing to me and I think that they make every day Thanksgiving. 

This year all of my grandkids are back to in person in school, or preschool. The youngest in preschool, the middle in Kindergarten and the oldest in Second Grade. Of course the whole, in person or distance learning, to vaccinate or not, to enforce a mask mandate or not, is not just a political issue - but to the kids it is almost a non issue. They just want to feel secure and to have a predictable routine, and to have people around them who are friendly and caring. For them, school is school. They were too young to really remember it any way but how it is. 

Greg and I are still struggling with health issues, but the masking and hand sanitizers and distancing has made it one of the healthiest years ever as far as the bronchitis and ear infections, colds and flu that normally plague the families of school teachers. 

Greg managed to squeeze three surgeries into one insurance year, so hit his maximum out of pocket early with a knee replacement on June 30, a carpal tunnel surgery in early November and the other knee replacement scheduled for Dec. 16th.

The two he has had already were both successful and he is getting around so much better. 

I still don’t have a diagnosis but I do have an appointment with a UCSF motion disorder neurologist. Not until January 10, and this first one via zoom, so I don’t have to drive to San Francisco. That is a very good thing because it can take me ten hours or more, especially now when not moving causes stiffness and PAIN  The general issues I have all seem to circle around Parkinson’s type motion disorders. There is one I think it might be but I haven’t had it diagnosed yet, “Stiff Person Syndrome” which is a boring but descriptive name that makes most people laugh and say, “oh, I have that too.”

I move like the tin man, except when someone touches me, or I’m cold, or I haven’t moved in a long time, like 20 minutes. Then I startle, jump, shake and all my muscles spasm so hard that they injure my hip or my knee or my shoulder. I used to be able to hide the pain if Daisy climbed on my lap, or Greg reached to hand me a cup of coffee and I started to lean forward, but now it’s progressed to these spasms where my face twists, I scream and everything goes rigid and shakes. It feels ridiculous. 

Anyway, there are less and less things I am capable of doing, but the things I can do, I still consider myself blessed with. I have my grown up children and young grandchildren and my crazy partner who has always been my favorite and now I have an enforced abundance of time with my family by virtue of being unable to teach. Though I am depriving my students. I can just see the delight they could take in knowing that if they startled me, or even just approached in plain sight and put a hand on my arm, I’d twitch like a marionette. No snakes or bugs or tacs on my chair, required. 

I’m hoping that my referral to UCSF leads to answers which let me announce I’m doing much better by the next Holiday Letter you receive. I hope you also have a better year in 2022.  I hope we all find health and happiness in the coming year  

Much Love,

Dixie and Greg