Searching for the Past

Recently my daughter Shannon and I went antiquing.  We visited two quaint little antique stores in Lawton complete with their resident dogs that greeted us at the door.  Each had an impressive array of china, Depression glass, clocks, furniture, and ephemera.  Browsing through those remnants of the past, I wondered what it is that draws people to antiques.  After all, a one –hundred-year-old plate is just a piece of glass not much different from what we can buy in any modern department or discount store.  I know some people collect antiques with an eye for investment, but for most of us it something more visceral, an urge difficult to define but felt within.      

            I bought three items that day: a Depression glass serving bowl, a cutwork lace table runner, and a postal greeting card postmarked 1916. Of course, each item is a distinctly feminine item and provides a glance into the lives of the women in our past.  I can imagine a housewife in the desperate throes of the Great Depression collecting beautiful glassware when she purchased staples such as oatmeal or flour for her family.  Inexpensive, mass-produced dinnerware was often given as promotional items.  Lacking funds for even essential items, she still would have taken pride in setting a beautiful table.

            When I place the cutwork lace runner on my dining table, I will be mindful of the hours of tedious, painstaking work that went into producing it.  Handwork and quilting were often a woman’s way of creating art under the guise of producing something practical for the home. Women also used these art forms as a way of occupying their minds in times of trouble and isolation on prairie homesteads. In Susan Glaspell’s short story “A Jury of Her Peers,” the main character uses piecing a quilt to “take up her mind.”

            Finally, the 1916 postcard will add to my Victorian postcard collection.  I collect these cards as a tangible way to connect to the past.  People seemed to use them the way we use email and text messages.  They were brief ways to let a special person know that someone was thinking of her.  It seems that most of the cards were to and from women—just like today where women maintain the lines of communication.

            I recently saw the movie Monuments Men, which tells the true story of a group of artists and art historians who saved valuable artwork stolen by the Nazis.  George Clooney’s character says that the mission was about saving a culture.  While Depression glass and needlework are not quite the same as French Impressionist paintings, they are products of our culture.  These everyday items of women’s lives give us links to times gone by.

Pining for Spring

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am through with winter.  I am ready to be released from this frigid grip, but as I gaze out my office window, I see overcast skies, a snow-blanketed expanse of grass, and daggers of ice hanging ominously from the eaves. I desperately need blue skies and sunshine.

            I know people from the northern areas of our continent would call me a wimp.  Well, so be it. Winter misery is exactly why I do not live any further north than Oklahoma.  Other winter-loving friends will expound on the beauty of the snow and ice.  Just send me a picture.  I will enjoy winter’s glories vicariously.

            I have taken to buying little pieces of spring to tide me over until the real thing arrives.  I purchased a wall calendar with illustrations of vintage seed catalogs.  The month of February’s picture of pansies can almost make me forget that my own pansies lie encased in ice on my front porch.  I also bought a bouquet of yellow tulips recently. They sat cheerily on my kitchen table as the snow and ice turned my back patio into a skating rink.  Then desperate optimist that I am, I bought a rose bush.  Yes, a rose bush.  For some unknown reason, one of the local stores had them on sale, so I bought one and carried it home in the freezing fog.  It sits forlornly in my front hall waiting to be transplanted into warm earth.

            Spring will come eventually.  As always in Oklahoma, there will be several false starts, but the season will change, and the earth and my spirits will renew.

Christmas Nostalgia

Perhaps no other time of year can evoke such nostalgia as Christmas. Indeed my favorite childhood memories center on the yearly yuletide celebration.  Looking back, I realize that my mother was the reason Christmas was so magical at our house.

            The whole process started with the selection of the Christmas tree.  As soon as our small town’s old-fashioned grocery store received its shipment of Douglas firs, Mama would be first in line to choose the perfect tree. It had to be purchased quickly, or it would dry out.  Our tree had to be perfectly proportioned and tall; after all, we lived in an old farmhouse with extra high ceilings.

            I don’t remember how we got an eight-foot tree home, but I could hardly wait to decorate it.  However, there was a ritual to be observed.  First, the tree had to be anchored in a bucket of moist soil to keep it fresh.  Then the tree had to stand for twenty-four hours so the branches would naturally spread out.

            Finally, Mama would bring out the Christmas decorations, complete with bubble lights and loads of tinsel. Next came the presents under the tree. My mother did not drive, so she shopped by mail order, which meant that our mailbox was off limits to everyone but her.  Part of the magic of the presents was the wrapping.  Our Christmas gifts were beautifully wrapped not only with ribbons and bows but also with Christmas trinkets and our names in glitter.

            And the preparations continued with lights lining our front porch, a Nativity scene in the living room, and homemade date nut candy.  Of course, all of these accoutrements were not lavish.  The decorations were old and often homemade.  The presents were inexpensive though my mother’s spirit was rich.  I was, without a doubt, a fortunate child, for Christmases past still glitter in my memory.

Hobby Lobby Ladies

Sometime crafters, coupons ready

Crowd the electric doors.

For every Marge, Sue, and Betty

Christmas, hearts be steady,

Has come to their favorite store.

 

They pause in awestruck wonder

Before all that they adore.

 And at the glorious, glittering, plunder

sweep their thrifty plans asunder.

Who cares if they’ll be poor?

 

Cross-stitched sugarplums are dancing

As they traverse the store.

Homemade Christmas crafts advancing.

Their plans to stitch and glue enhancing

That someday stash once more.

October

There is a wistfulness to October with its mellow sunlight and fading summer blooms.  Flowers take on a desperate, anemic look as days grow shorter and nights cooler.  Bask in an achingly beautiful Indian summer day, and tread on frost-encrusted grass the next.  As if to compensate for felling summer’s glory, October arrays the landscape with gaudy, golden chrysanthemums and flashy orange leaves, a poor disguise for impending demise.

            I have lost so much to October.  I hold my breath until its burnished beauty fades safely away.  Too many loved ones have departed this earth, choosing to leave in the bittersweet days of autumn, avoiding the chill of November and the “bare ruined choirs” of winter, leaving me to cry amidst scarlet foliage.

My Life in Books

Recently while touring the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., I explored a special exhibit on Little Golden Books.  Among the many classic tales was one of my favorite childhood books, “Nurse Nancy.”  I loved that book!  Here was a little girl who wanted to be somebody; she had plans for her future, and she explored her options. Being a little dreamer myself, I totally identified with Nancy. Then I started thinking: I could browse through a bookstore or library and trace my life through the books I have read. Here is a quick synopsis of books and me through the years.

                Recently a friend gave me a lovely, worn copy of a Bobbsey Twin mystery. Just thumbing through it, I was back in Mrs. Mefford’s fourth-grade classroom listening after lunch to the adventures of Burt and Nan and Freddie and Flossie.  Fourth grade was also the year I became acquainted with Little Women.  Oh how I wanted to be Jo!

                A year or so later, I discovered Zane Grey and became a fan of the western genre.  I even tried my hand at play writing, setting my dramas in western outposts, complete with beautiful, brave heroines and handsome heroes. In addition to my western fascination, I became a fan of biographies.  My fifth grade classroom had a blue-bound set of biographies of famous people.  Of course, they were mostly about men, but a few outstanding women like Clara Barton inspired me.

                In my early teen years, I immersed myself in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Gone with the Wind. I vicariously suffered through the Civil War with Scarlet O’Hara and endured crushing poverty with Francie Nolan.  It was also during this time period that I read To Kill a Mockingbird. Any mention of that book and I am back sitting on my front porch swatting summer flies while totally engrossed in the lives of Scout, Jem, and Atticus.

                In high school I loved literature class.  I read everything assigned and wondered why anyone would complain about Charles Dickens. Great Expectations certainly met my expectations. I even loved The Red Badge of Courage. Then as an English major in college, I delved even deeper into classic literature and discovered works such as William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and the poetry of Emily Dickinson.  Then in graduate school, my mind was occupied with Victorian poets, Letters of a Woman Homesteader, and Thoreau’s Walden.

                As a young mother, I devoured books while babies slept.  Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife got me through many an ear infection and bouts of colic.  I call it my Chinese period.  Then when my children were old enough to enjoy books, I became caught up in Bearenstain Bears, Curious George, and Little Critter.  Our visits to the library were weekly highlights.  I can still hear Shannon saying, “Get Melie Delie, Mama; get Melie Delie.” That was during our Amelia Bedelia period.  As they grew older, we read together.  My girls loved the Little House books, and Keenan and I shared Harry Potter.

                Over the years I have shared many books with my students—Tess of the D’urbervilles, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby, and The Age of Innocence just to name a few.  What a lucky person I am to have a job that requires reading good books! Any time I want to just kick back and read, I can justify such idleness by saying I am doing research.

                I suppose some people can remember periods in their lives by songs, movies, TV shows, or world events, but for me books serve as markers in my life. I can see in my mind what the world was like even down to the clothes I was wearing when I think about a book I was reading at the time.  I can’t imagine life without the comfort of a book.

Country Mice in Washington

We country mice have done it again; we have left our small-town lair for another big-city adventure.  This time we were sojourners in Washington , D.C., and once again we were wide eyed and a bit overwhelmed.  After all, small-town street smarts and a country sense of direction could get us only so far on a metropolitan subway.  Once we were deep in the bowels of the Metro Transit system, our perception of north and south was not always really north and south nor did our country courtesy always get us a place on the train.  We had to learn to rely on signs and transit maps and to develop an “every man for himself” attitude.   However, by the end of our week’s stay in Washington, we were maneuvering through the transit system like we were born to it.  Apparently old dogs (or mice) can learn new tricks.

We stayed in a hotel in a residential area of downtown Washington, a choice that gave us a glimpse of everyday life in the nation’s capital.  Everyone in that neighborhood lives in a small apartment and either walks to work in a downtown office building or walks to a subway station and takes a train to a job.  What a contrast to western Oklahoma’s wide-open spaces and our SUV/extended- cab pickup culture!  Is it any wonder that everyone appeared slim and fit?  Sidewalks and subways might help shrink my Oklahoma waistline too.

Since we were going to be in Washington for only one week, we tried to pack every day with sights and activities.  We started our itinerary with a satirical political comedy show at the Wooly Mammoth Theater in downtown Washington.  Chicago’s Second City comedy troupe presented “America: All Better Now.”  We laughed as the performers poked fun at some of our society’s foibles and contrasted the here and now with the so-called good old days.  They were equal opportunity satirists , and no tradition, institution, or group of people was left unscathed.

Next, we tried to tour as many museums as possible.  We started with the National Archives.  Of course, we saw those famous iconic documents such as the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights, but I was amazed to find that the National Archives is much more than famous documents.   People research their family histories and anything else that requires primary sources.

We moved from the National Archives to the National Gallery of Art where I stood within inches of original Monets and Renoirs.  Then it was on to the Newseum, a museum dedicated to the history of the press in the United States.  We were there at the end of the day, so we had only enough time to explore the top two floors.  The top floor is dedicated to the Kennedy assassination, and the videos and artifacts bring that terrible day in history back to life.  The next floor down dealt with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  Again artifacts, including the mangled broadcast tower from the World Trade Center, and videos of that horrible day left me in tears.  It was like opening an old wound.

Our next tourist attraction was a Monuments by Moonlight tour where we visited the FDR Memorial, Arlington Cemetery, the Iwo Jima Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, and the Vietnam War Wall late in the evening. Fading light and stillness gave the monuments an eerie, other worldly feeling.  The most impressive memorial to see at night is the Korean War Memorial.  Lights along the path cast shadows on the granite wall where soldiers’ faces are illuminated.  Then life-size sculptures of Korean War soldiers patrol a field.  Each gray, ghost-like face bears a different expression.

Our Saturday was spent at George Washington’s Mt. Vernon.  The mansion, gardens, farm, and out buildings are all meticulously preserved.  Most Americans know the stories and legends of the father of our country, but Mt. Vernon gives a very up-close and personal view of the man himself.  One comes away with newfound admiration and gratefulness for his courage and vision.  Washington, of course, was a slave owner although he did free his slaves in his will.  I think what this says of him is that he was a man of his times, and all people are a mixture of good and not so good.

On Sunday, we attended church service at the Washington National Cathedral, a magnificent place that has to be seen to appreciate.  We finished our tour of the city with the Library of Congress, The Holocaust Museum, The Supreme Court, the Capitol, and Ford’s Theater and Petersen House.  Each attraction was impressive in its own way, but the one that totally immerses the visitor in horror is the Holocaust Museum.

It takes at least three hours to walk through the main exhibition that tells the story of the Holocaust from the beginning to end.  While in the museum, viewers are absorbed and engulfed in an unimaginable world. Artifacts, films, letters, photographs, and survivor stories hold visitors in an evil trance.  At the end of the tour, visitors’ sensibilities are shocked even further when they view a huge pile of the victims’ shoes.  Clothing and shoes were taken off the bodies of the dead from the gas chambers.  Shoes of every style and size were heaped in a grim mountain.  Needless to say, I was emotionally spent at the end of the tour.

For elegance and beauty, the Library of Congress would surely rate at the top of the list.  It surely says something profound about our country when the most magnificent building in the capital city is devoted to knowledge and learning.  Aside from being awestruck at the beautiful building, I was excited to see Thomas Jefferson’s original library, which was the beginning of the Library of Congress.

Next the Supreme Court and the Capitol gave us a good look at the workings of the Judicial and the Legislative branches of government.  We actually sat in the courtroom where Supreme Court cases are heard and decided, and our Capitol tour gave us an up-close look at statues and rooms that we had only seen in pictures.  While these sights are impressive, it is Ford’s Theater that gets visitors both intellectually and emotionally involved.

First of all visitors tour the museum and learn about the times leading up to Lincoln’s assassination.  The horror of the Civil War and the brokenness of our country are difficult to fathom.  Then inside the theater a park ranger relates in vivid detail the events of the night Lincoln was shot.  The tour concludes with a visit to Petersen House, the boarding house across the street from the theater where Lincoln died.  Viewing the bed where Lincoln had lain dying transported me back to 1865, filling me with sadness and a sense of futility.

Then it was time to board the plane for our journey home.  Our Washington D.C. trip will live in our memories as one of the best vacations.  Our vacation spirits are sated for the time being, but soon this country mouse will put on her white sneakers  and grab a guidebook and become a totally unabashed tourist again.