To paraphrase Jane Austen -- "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the ultimate role of the 'older' sister is to torture the younger sister..."
My sister Kathy has always been my 'sweet comic Valentine' and often the fodder for some of my very best stories -- mostly because she's one of those people who is funny without even trying.
As a child, I can vividly remember thinking that she was placed in my family purely for my own personal entertainment. Polar opposites in almost every way -- she was always boy-crazy, I managed to get all the way to senior year without a single date. She was tiny and thin - a real fashionista who made her own clothes and I was size 12 at age 12 and wore clothes based solely on comfort and availability of plaid.
Classic Kathy -- came home from her very first day of school ever and proclaimed herself "in love" with the first boy she met -- a young man named Marlon. I never met Marlon - never laid eyes on him -- but in a Classic Laura move, immediately sat down and wrote a song about her experience. With six -- count 'em -- six verses.
And I mean a SONG -- got out the staff paper, sat at the organ and wrote a song. With harmony that I taught to the neighbor kid -- so we could follow Kathy around and serenade her - literally until she'd cry:
Marlon and His Big Blue Truck
Music and Lyrics by Lolly Baker
Marlon and his big blue truck
Marlon and his big blue truck
On the first day of school
They sat in the lunch room
Planning their wedding day
Marlon and his big blue truck...
Call me if you want to hear the melody... I could go on...but you get it -- And I would follow her right to the door of her Kindergarten room singing it at the top of my voice.
I don't think she and Marlon made it to Halloween.
But my tortuous creativity where Kathy was concerned didn't end with music -- oh no -- as the years passed, I found new - non-musical ways - to make her miserable.
We spent many an hour traveling in the old Grand Torino station wagon - to North Carolina, to Florida -- with the four kids bouncing around in the back. And after a few hours of "I Spy" and "The License Plate Game" one of my siblings would request a story from me.
And while I am one of those fortunate people who can read in a moving vehicle with no problem, their favorites were the stories that I made up -- usually involving a family (not unlike ours) going on adventures in their own backyard.
The premise was simple -- Laura and Jeff, the Clickatat Twins, lived on Clickatat Lane in Mumblestown, PA with their little sister, Kathy. Laura and Jeff would go on magical adventures in the woods, riding bikes, finding treasure - and Kathy, to their dismay, always wanted to tag along.
Regardless of the particular story or adventure, they always ended the same way -- with Kathy getting sprayed by the neighborhood skunk. Always. And usually, Officer Kirkpatrick would have to take Kathy home to be washed with tomato juice AGAIN, whilst the Clickatat Twins would go off on another lark.
The "Kathy and the Skunk" stories - as they came to be known amongst our family and friends were a hit -- much to Kathy's mortification. My brother and other sister (and let's be honest - most of their friends) would beg me for "the next installment."
And I would further torture Kathy (think Lucy promising Charlie Brown that THIS time she won't pull the football away) telling her that THIS TIME, Kathy would NOT get sprayed by the skunk.
But, of course, she always got sprayed.
And she would make me swear to never write another "Kathy and the Skunk" story -- and I'd promise -- and then some time would pass and someone would ask for the next installment, and off I'd go.
I think I finally stopped telling them sometime in high school.
But -- if you really want another installment...I could probably be persuaded... (insert maniacal laughter here)
Happy St. Valentine's Day and Happy 41st! May your day be both Marlon and Skunk free!
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
There is nothing like a dame...
My Irish-American grandmother was a real character. She was christened Elizabeth Irene Ryan, but came to be known after her marriage as Betty Baker. And Betty Baker, as my grandmother loved to say, was a dame's name -- Betty Baker was a 'broad.' Grandma was a dame and proud of it.
She was 89 when she died...and I was 20 -- so for all of my life she was elderly and for most of my life, she was in a wheelchair and almost completely blind. But these distinctions slowed her down not one wit.
I loved going to stay with her when I was very young - we would make sand tarts and watch Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas. She'd teach me songs from when she used to perform in Minstrel Shows back in the teens and 20's -- in black face, no less. Once she covered my whole face with black shoe polish and didn't understand what the big deal was when my Dad arrived to pick me up and almost had a stroke!
She was an uber Catholic and a Kennedy democrat. I once heard her tell the lady across the hall that if you weren't a Kennedy democrat, you might as well be a communist. Later that I night -- after asking my Dad to explain what a communist was, I heard him ask her to please "refrain from 'getting her Irish up' in front of his impressionable 8-year-old."
But that was Grandma.
When I was 10 or 11, Grandma had to move into a nursing home. And she was heartbroken. Until she got settled in and realized that their were now 100 or so new people that had never heard her stories! And half of them weren't Catholic!
So she spent her last ten years attempting to convert her elderly partners-in-arms, and rabble-rousing at the home. She also got involved in scary arts and crafts -- a doll she made for me during this time period sits on my nightstand to this day.
It was a bit startling to me to speak with a family member earlier this week and realize how little they recalled about Grandma Baker -- particularly with my memories so fresh -- so I thought I'd make a small list of Grandma-isms -- to remember her on this special day.
1. Grandma always called her sofa a davenport. I'm not sure why -- but I can hear her in my head saying that I "daresn't put my feet on the davenport."
2. She had the most beautiful hands. Her face might have been wrinkled by the time I knew her, but her hands were smooth and lovely, always.
3. To this day, whenever I get a whiff of Ben-Gay, I think of her -- severe arthritis made it her fragrance of choice late in life. She also used an abundance of "Shower to Shower" baby powder.
4. She could "put on the Irish" with the best of them. I'd walk into a room and she'd look up and say "'tis herself" as if we were in Belfast.
5. On Grandma's right foot, her big toe didn't have a toenail -- I'm not sure why -- but when I asked her about it as a little girl, she told me that it was what happened when little ladies didn't use their manners. For weeks, I'd check my feet each morning when I'd wake -- to make sure I still had all toes intact.
6. Grandma went to her grave convinced I was attending a Jewish college. She couldn't wrap her head around the fact that Temple University was actually named after a Baptist temple -- not that THAT would have gone over any better with her.
7. She had a weird tendency to whisper words that she 'thought' had negative connotations: "Ethyl has the cancer" ... "my new nurse is from Mexico" . Further she always seemed to put "the" before any disease: "the cancer"..."the gout"... "the arthritis"...
8. Once, during Christmas Eve dinner, she overturned her entire glass of red wine on her dinner plate -- and INSISTED on eating her food covered with the wine -- telling everyone that it "tasted better that way," and "you should all try it."
9. I can't use a packet of Sweet-n-Low without thinking of Grandma -- she would hoard them, and then give them to us as gifts in later years. I don't think my parents had to buy artificial sweetener for at least two years after her passing. She would also save paper placemats that had puzzles on them. Rolls and rolls of them -- and she never seemed to notice that they all had the exact same puzzles.
10. Grandma had a touch of both hypochondria and fatalism -- my ENTIRE life, every time I said goodbye to her, she would say "Give me a kiss, honey -- it will probably be the last time. And don't forget to pray for my eyes."
And finally...Grandma loved to hear me sing. When I'd walk into her room, she'd shout out "Sing Al Jolson for me honey!" And I would drop to one knee and give it everything I had, whilst she watched, with tears in her eyes, probably an old memory running through her mind ...
Instead of singing the famous "Mammy," I'd substitute "Grammy..."
"I'd walk a million miles for one of your smiles my GRAAAAMMMMMY!"
Happy Birthday Grandma -- you old Groundhog you!
And don't worry -- I won't forget to pray for your eyes
She was 89 when she died...and I was 20 -- so for all of my life she was elderly and for most of my life, she was in a wheelchair and almost completely blind. But these distinctions slowed her down not one wit.
I loved going to stay with her when I was very young - we would make sand tarts and watch Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas. She'd teach me songs from when she used to perform in Minstrel Shows back in the teens and 20's -- in black face, no less. Once she covered my whole face with black shoe polish and didn't understand what the big deal was when my Dad arrived to pick me up and almost had a stroke!
She was an uber Catholic and a Kennedy democrat. I once heard her tell the lady across the hall that if you weren't a Kennedy democrat, you might as well be a communist. Later that I night -- after asking my Dad to explain what a communist was, I heard him ask her to please "refrain from 'getting her Irish up' in front of his impressionable 8-year-old."
But that was Grandma.
When I was 10 or 11, Grandma had to move into a nursing home. And she was heartbroken. Until she got settled in and realized that their were now 100 or so new people that had never heard her stories! And half of them weren't Catholic!
So she spent her last ten years attempting to convert her elderly partners-in-arms, and rabble-rousing at the home. She also got involved in scary arts and crafts -- a doll she made for me during this time period sits on my nightstand to this day.
It was a bit startling to me to speak with a family member earlier this week and realize how little they recalled about Grandma Baker -- particularly with my memories so fresh -- so I thought I'd make a small list of Grandma-isms -- to remember her on this special day.
1. Grandma always called her sofa a davenport. I'm not sure why -- but I can hear her in my head saying that I "daresn't put my feet on the davenport."
2. She had the most beautiful hands. Her face might have been wrinkled by the time I knew her, but her hands were smooth and lovely, always.
3. To this day, whenever I get a whiff of Ben-Gay, I think of her -- severe arthritis made it her fragrance of choice late in life. She also used an abundance of "Shower to Shower" baby powder.
4. She could "put on the Irish" with the best of them. I'd walk into a room and she'd look up and say "'tis herself" as if we were in Belfast.
5. On Grandma's right foot, her big toe didn't have a toenail -- I'm not sure why -- but when I asked her about it as a little girl, she told me that it was what happened when little ladies didn't use their manners. For weeks, I'd check my feet each morning when I'd wake -- to make sure I still had all toes intact.
6. Grandma went to her grave convinced I was attending a Jewish college. She couldn't wrap her head around the fact that Temple University was actually named after a Baptist temple -- not that THAT would have gone over any better with her.
7. She had a weird tendency to whisper words that she 'thought' had negative connotations: "Ethyl has the cancer" ... "my new nurse is from Mexico" . Further she always seemed to put "the" before any disease: "the cancer"..."the gout"... "the arthritis"...
8. Once, during Christmas Eve dinner, she overturned her entire glass of red wine on her dinner plate -- and INSISTED on eating her food covered with the wine -- telling everyone that it "tasted better that way," and "you should all try it."
9. I can't use a packet of Sweet-n-Low without thinking of Grandma -- she would hoard them, and then give them to us as gifts in later years. I don't think my parents had to buy artificial sweetener for at least two years after her passing. She would also save paper placemats that had puzzles on them. Rolls and rolls of them -- and she never seemed to notice that they all had the exact same puzzles.
10. Grandma had a touch of both hypochondria and fatalism -- my ENTIRE life, every time I said goodbye to her, she would say "Give me a kiss, honey -- it will probably be the last time. And don't forget to pray for my eyes."
And finally...Grandma loved to hear me sing. When I'd walk into her room, she'd shout out "Sing Al Jolson for me honey!" And I would drop to one knee and give it everything I had, whilst she watched, with tears in her eyes, probably an old memory running through her mind ...
Instead of singing the famous "Mammy," I'd substitute "Grammy..."
"I'd walk a million miles for one of your smiles my GRAAAAMMMMMY!"
Happy Birthday Grandma -- you old Groundhog you!
And don't worry -- I won't forget to pray for your eyes
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