Hoarding Friend(-ship)

 

Doug and Dick were friends. No, they were best friends in a relationship that spanned six decades and included their wives and extended to their children, grandchildren and even great grands.

They, as most friends do, shared many core values. They were hard working in their small businesses and believed in participating in making changes instead of just complaining. They loved their families and where tireless ambassadors for the states in which they lived (Dick in Rhode Island and Doug in Vermont). They valued common sense which they often perceived to be short supply. They could be tough task masters but also kind and generous. Their early morning (4 or 5 am) email threads were legendary sessions sharing tidbits about business, politics, finances and family; it was as bracing a start to the day as that first sip of joe. Dick mentored Doug in ham radio and Doug showed Dick how to strip furniture. 

AND they were both borderline hoarders!

No attic, basement, closet or shed was immune from stashes of miscellany that these two thought might be valuable or useful – someday. Dick’s collection of “stuff” was top-heavy with radio paraphernalia of every shape age and size. Doug’s stash included a Home Depot’s worth of hardware, tools, plumbing parts and small motors.

SO, that is the back story. 

Doug passed away in December of 2014. 

We, his family, are still finding odd bits of interesting things in backrooms and cubbies some seven and a half years later. One day I found a small brown plastic radio high up on a shelf. The Bakelite case was cracked and the dial, sporting a graphic of an airplane, was dingy though intact. Perhaps Doug had saved it for his friend. Perhaps Dick could salvage something from this shabby radio remnant? Perhaps. Off to Dick it went.

Yesterday, I was gifted the little brown vintage radio back. In the months it had been with our friend, it had been lovingly restored to working condition using old radio tubes from his “hoarded” stash. It appears to be a somewhat rare -- and maybe valuable -- little 1940-1950s electronic treasure that was used to monitor air traffic. Dick is the one in a million that has/had the parts, the knowledge and the desire to fix up this long-hoarded relic, this bit of history that honored a frugal and saving lifestyle and a four-generation friendship.  

It was a gift touching beyond measure and will have a place of honor. Not to be too maudlin, but if we could hoard friends like these, wouldn’t we?

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My mother, Maisie Schweitzer

 I wanted to post this on Mother’s Day. But I was too busy watching my great grand-children run and swing and tumble together in the welcome spring sunshine.  I rarely get caught up in -- or bogged down by -- holiday memories of departed loved ones. If a memory creeps across my mind it is usually humorous or has profound significance.

 So it was this Mother’s Day. I obsessively watch “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” because that is my mother’s era and because Mom could be talked into dancing a mean Charleston -- without the benefit of alcohol or weed.  I imagine her flair and sass and clothes to be just like Miss Fisher’s.  I construct this image in my head from partial cues; a slightly bawdy photo, a flapper’s headband in an old trunk, a pair of satin heels. I like to think of her that way but of course that would have been a version of her that existed long before I was born. 

 My actual memories of her are embodied by chocolate chip cookies and gallons of tomato soup with crisp grilled cheese sandwiches. The memories include hours of musical practice on the piano or saxophone, church on Sunday, gymnastics on Tuesdays and Campfire Girl meetings on Fridays. She was a joiner and participant and she expected me to be too.

True confession:  She failed to make me musical. I can barely find middle C on the piano and I have not so much as looked at a saxophone in over 60 years.  I am not a “clubby” woman and mostly avoid anything beyond an occasional book club. Like most mothers and daughters, Mom and I locked horns, butted heads and disagreed on boyfriends, clothes and lifestyle.

What then were the profound lessons that flitted across my mind?

 I learned even from our differences.  Differences do not need to alienate … if you do not let them. Love goes deeper, broader and wider when enhanced by listening and respect. We learned this together --sometimes with tears and sometimes with side-splitting laughter at our absurdities.

She was a fierce advocate of education for women before it was popular and accepted. She was deeply spiritual, turning over to God without reservation the depth of her gratitude and fears and longing.

AND, she was adamant that no one in the family speak ill of anyone else in the family. Like Disney’s Thumper she held to “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.”  I am not naïve enough (nor was she) to believe that never happened behind closed doors or in private thoughts. But she set a tone of positivity. She would have positively loved the rough-and-tumble camaraderie of her progeny, generations removed on this Mother’s Day 2022.  She would have giggled and laughed and scolded. And no doubt injected a dose of positivity because she believed in its benefits so wholeheartedly.

Thanks Mom …

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The predicted late winter snow storm is ramping up with its companion wind, gusty and brittle.

It is mid-March and Vermont has already had a few days of balmy, faux spring tricking my senses into believing that wintertime has passed. Now, my sense of time is reversed, plunged back to January. 

As if I needed more disorientation, the news reminds me that today is also when we change our clocks, losing  a precious hour of sleep and throwing my circadian rhythm into disarray. I can now put to rest my November procrastination of changing my car clock. How did time go so fast?

I think I have a partial answer. For my great-grandson, Carter who is 10, a year is one tenth of his life, a relatively large fraction and long portion his life. For me, a year is quite a different matter, only a small fraction of my octogenarian life. I blink and a year has gone; the announcement of a pregnancy is now a bouncing baby.  

The time represented by the last couple of years has seen such drastic changes … people moving in and moving out … businesses closing, job concepts altering, politics changing, controversy and conspiracy rampant. Never a fan or believer that the “good old days” were all that good, I am exercising a woman’s prerogative to slightly change direction. I want to blink and again experience a simple, more trustworthy time. But who among us has not occasionally chanted Elizabeth Akers Allen’s poem (even if we did know the source)?

     Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,

    Make me a child again just for tonight!

 But this cannot be. 

Despite the momentary time-warping disorientation, there are orientating markers. The glorious sun rises on another day. The morning coffee brewed and savored and the pesky cat meowing to be fed anchor my morning and defy time and age. There are chores to be done … the fridge needs cleaning and the laundry needs doing. A birthday card needs sending and a child needs hugging before the sun flames below the horizon of another day.

Time to get to it ...

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