This morning, this afternoon, and tomorrow

Another pancake breakfast this morning, this time in Geauga County, home of real pancakes, real butter and real maple syrup. Good sausages, too.

My daughter Beth, her mother and her husband here. Beth broke a lot of her arm last December, in an awful fall. It's not progressing as well as could it should, but she's a long way from where she started.

We all futility waved  the refill sign around, until Francis took the matter under his six foot charge.

Beth, her mother and her mother-in-law. You remember Grandma Ruth. There is no picture of Caroline and Laura today; they tend to move as unit when together, and fade in and out of sight.

Back home this afternoon, here is Toby, attempting to recover from springing ahead for daylight savings. I took a bit of a nap before supper, too.

I sewed two more quilt tops this afternoon, and Laura put several more together, before retreating to her room to exercise her thumbs.

The winter storm forecast starting tomorrow afternoon is now up to 9" of snow. I'm beginning to take this personally.

Lunch with Ruth

Ruth, my daughter's trophy mother-in-law, and I went to lunch at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens last Friday. I stopped to admire Melvin's jade tree. I thought I would have to look carefully to find it, and it's right in the lobby!

Then I joined Ruth in line for tickets to the orchid exhibit.

Look what was in front of me!

The whole front entry was islands of orchids.

Ruth says, when the exhibit ends in a month, she will have that most purple orchid.

(So would Laura if she saw it.)

A display down a hall way. The theme is "Cuba". 

Ruth said the unnaturally colored orchids have been fed colored water. A long discussion of watering orchids ensued among all the visitors.

This island of orchids also included dresses from a Cuba/orchid themed contest. Ruth reaches for the "keeper" from among the dresses.

Now, the fun.

We went into the glass room, to look at tropical plants, birds, butterflies, ants, bugs...an ecosystem in a glass room.

I lifted my camera to take a picture of glass and mist and a tall plant. The view was foggy.

I tried again. I seemed to have on the lens cap.

I looked. The lens was totally fogged.

Why not. I took many pictures through the steamed lens, and blew a lot of light through them after I downloaded.

Three butterflies.

Bromelid.

Orange butterfly.

An astounding blossom.

Back at floor level, I dried the lens and shot normally.

The glass house is small paths through an overwhelming amount of tropical growth.

Three frogs. 

Phew. The desert, and prickly things.

Two tortoise.

A lizard, with an attendant.

The previous lizard was stolen! Ruth said the thieves were taped, but not caught.

Now a docent is by its side at all time.

It sees us!

A good day yesterday

I went to lunch with Beth and Ruth yesterday. We had a very nice server, who took good care of Ruth and me while we waited for Beth.  I screwed up my rudeness courage, told the server I liked her haircut and could I take a picture to show my granddaughter. She went down to camera level for the front, then the back, and told us in cosmetology terminology exactly how the cut is made. That was over my head.

She is growing out the same basic cut as Emily has, and this is its current iteration. After school I showed it to Emily, who needs a haircut. Emily would leave the long side a bit longer, but have the back cut identically. However, she is waiting for the teal to fade more so she can have it dyed purple (I think). I like the cut so much I’ll do it myself, next trip to the barber.

It’s only a week since the holidays ended, a week back to school and work. I try very hard to focus on the good and bright spots of being an old grandma in charge of two abandoned girls, and work on the hard spots in the background. Offstage. The second semester of the school year began Monday. It is going well for Emily; so well she has almost left us in spirit and is waiting for her body to transport to college, too.

I asked her jokingly if she has selected her roommate yet, and learned she is about to open that module of the Hiram website. I saw all this happening in my mind’s eye last fall. Band uniforms had to go to the cleaner after the last football game, and the dry cleaner receipt turned in. Seniors, however, had to turn in the uniform, too. I asked about the Memorial Day parade. “I won’t be marching in that!” replied the young woman who has lived and breathed marching band since I dropped her off for camp, four years ago.

But I can see the sadness index rising for Laura. She was ten when she landed here, a hardened little soul with no father, an absentee mother, the tail end of a string of siblings not much interested. I didn’t help a lot in the beginning. I treated Emily and Laura as a unit, sending them to the same summer and after school activities. Emily, of course, flourished and Laura tagged along. My great epiphany a couple of years ago sent Laura off on her own, to drama and art classes. She had the courage to try for and be accepted as a sixth grader to the jazz band.

Laura’s her own person now, with long hair of many colors, thanks to her art box of felt markers. She wears tall boots and denim jackets, and hasn’t resolved losing her first, false “boyfriend” last summer. Her father showed up for the first time in a year at Christmas and her sister is leaving in a few months. It’s tough to be fourteen. Her sad little face has come home no happier all week, and no changing it.

I climbed the many steps to Mrs. P’s art studio yesterday to fetch Laura, rounded the corner and heard peals of laughter from the studio. Mrs. P. hurried out. “I have to block you right here, while Laura finishes up. It’s a secret.” Mrs. P is half my size, and I laughed out loud. Laura came out laughing, and I got a hug. Next class is the big reveal of the fashion project they have worked on since summer. Emily and Aunt Janice are invited, too.

Laura’s Christmas blues are not banished, but they are lifting. Regular routine is a good thing, Mrs. P and her art class one of my salvations. We will work harder at happy these next several months; Emily will only be a phone call away, Laura will go to marching band camp in August and we’ll see what she thinks of being the only child.

There are no paper report cards during the year; the electronic cards were released yesterday. No matter the other issues in their lives, both these girls stay focused at school. Perhaps it’s the best constant in their lives. Each made the honor roll, with distinction. And Laura aces gym, now. It’s a long time since fifth grade, when she failed gym because she wouldn’t do push-ups.

Laura - A in gym

Emily

Ruth

My daughter’s mother-in-law was seventy nine last December. She has been a widow for several years. “I am a Kraut;” she told me. “We’re tough.”

Before she was a Kraut, Ruth was Lithuanian. The country was invaded by Germany; she, with many other women and children, set out on a forced march to the German countryside, to work on farms. Many did not survive; her grandmother was left along the road to die. I believe that’s when she quit being Lithuanian; their guards on the march included young countrymen conscripted into the German army. Cousins, she said, selected her grandmother to fall out.

Ruth says her childhood on the farm was very hard work, but not unkind. Her father had been swept away by the war, but she remained with her mother until she was twelve. A cousin a bit older than she was in her life, too, and the two of them were involved in adventures of any farm children.

Her mother was very strict; Ruth very rebellious. She knew her cousin intended to go into the village one day and probably get a sweet treat from the little shop. She knew even if he brought something back for her it would be gone before he arrived, so she determined to go with him. If she kept him moving and on task, they would be home before lunch, before her mother knew she was gone.

She had them briskly returning home when he lagged. She turned; he was holding a grenade and had pulled the pin. Even a little seven year old girl knew a problem. “Throw it,” she yelled. He threw it straight at her. Her left leg shattered.

She recalled people coming, being lifted from the road. When she woke again she was in a hospital; her mother was there. It was a Russian field hospital; her mother spoke fluent Russian, and was not about to let her daughter die. Ruth was a long time recovering, her mother returned her several times to the Russian doctors. She rolled up her trouser leg to show me how fortunate she had been, and I wonder how such wounds were able to fill in. She still carries shrapnel.

Ruth’s mother died when Ruth was twelve. She was an orphan, passed among several German families until about the age of sixteen, when she was in the home of a German barrister who helped her with schooling, secretarial training and finding a job. She walked everywhere, arriving hot and dusty or cold and muddy. It was her life; she knew nothing else.

Eventually she moved with a friend to the big city, Berlin. They worked in the same legal office, shared a flat, and read the writing on the not yet erected Berlin wall. One summer they took holiday together, to West Berlin, and simply did not go back. She met a young American, married him and came here. That was many years ago; her son has been married to my daughter since 2000. We think we did an excellent job of selecting ourselves as mothers-in-law to each other.

A while back Ruth and I were visiting a little museum that included a small gift shop. I saw her attention fixed on something as we came in, and on the way out she paused and told me to select between two figures of roosters in the display. They were very realistic, especially the bona fide feathers. She purchased it for the cousin who threw the grenade.

He has been in this country for many years, and suffers now from very advanced dementia. He recognizes little of what is going on about him. When they were children on the farm, there was a rooster that followed him everywhere! Not her, just him. Ruth was very jealous of that rooster.  She bought the shop rooster for an upcoming birthday. I asked later, and Ruth said he called her by name, and called the rooster by the name he called the one so long ago. He held and stroked it all evening.

Ruth says she is a tough Kraut. I say Ruth is the history we are repeating because we do not remember.

 The big smile in the superman shirt is my youngest granddaugher, Caroline, and Ruth's oldest. If Ruth had a childhood picture of herself, it would be that little face.