They're writing songs of love, but not for me

I glanced at the calendar in the kitchen today to see that my grandparents will celebrate their 73rd wedding anniversary this month. 73 years! How many people even live that long?

Curious, I dug through a box of photos, and found so many that had me smiling, and a few that made my heart sad, to see how youth has turned to old age, to see their faces and know just a little of how their lives were lived and what was in their hearts.

My grandmother, Festna, in 1942. She wrote everything on the backs of her pictures, and on this one she wrote: "Festna Lawrence, taken at the 2nd turn in the road from the house going toward Diamond Springs Elizabeth, Ark. Age 24. Taken in Baxter Co." I wonder what she found so fascinating about the rocks.

"Homer Lawrence, Pfc. Jewell L. Lawrence 37257154. Camp Shelby, Miss, just home on a furlough, from Alaska. Taken in June 1945 at Arthur Green's place at Beedeville Ark." My grandpa's the one on the left. The "L" stands for Lee, which is what he goes by. He would've been 32 in this picture.

Left: "Mrs. Festna Lawrence. Taken in 1945. I sent this to Lee while serving in the US Army in Germany." She's a large part Native American. Can you tell?

Right: My grandfather holding my mother, my uncle Curt on the left and my uncle Jerry on the right, in 1956.

My grandma married my grandpa when she was 17 to escape her abusive father, and my grandpa, at 22 and growing up with a hobo father who taught him how to jump trains, simply wanted someone to take care of his home. They were married 10 years before having any children, and while in France during WWII, my grandfather wanted to divorce my grandma for a woman he met in Paris. He didn't; I figured it out one summer sleeping in my mother's old room at my grandparents' house, and my uncle Jerry was born 9 months exactly after my grandpa returned home from the war.

I used to sit next to my grandpa on the couch and watch Wheel of Fortune with him, work on crossword puzzles, ride with him into town for a newspaper in his white pickup truck. I used to sit on the edge of his bed, his room smelling of mothballs and dust, as he finger picked "Silent Night" on his guitar. Now my grandpa, at 95 this August, doesn't remember who my mother is, or that he was ever in a war. I hate the time that passes.

Hymn to the Fallen

This morning feels very, very long ago indeed. I went to bed at 12:30 last night, waking 3 hours later to take my parents and brother to the Milwaukee airport, where they flew to Idaho to visit my oldest brother, whom I have seen once for a few hours in the past 3 years. It's been a day to romanticize about, starting with a sunrise through the van windows that I described in my journal as making me feel "touched by God's fingertips just as the clouds were with rays of light. To be such dusky blue and filled with pink and peach and glorious white is a transformation of sheer brilliance, and I marveled at it, both in myself and the sky....God somehow seems nearer in that peaceful transition, the calm before the day begins. I love His nearness."

After leaving my family at the airport, I drove to Bayshore Town Center and parked behind the Cheesecake Factory in anticipation of its opening at 11 a.m. Five hours was a long time to wait, but Milwaukee is almost an hour away and I wanted to take advantage of my being there, for "I shall not pass this way again." (If this blog were a Barnes & Noble Classic, it would have a little asterisk next to that quote and a footnote explaining that it derives from a poem I don't even remember reading, save for that one line. Only B&N would go into more detail than that. Once in Persuasion they defined the word "graceful." Uh, if the reader doesn't know the definition of graceful, he probably shouldn't be reading Jane Austen.)

Speaking of Barnes & Noble, it was about 20 steps down from the Cheesecake Factory, and opened 2 hours earlier! So only to wait from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., I read my Bible (the boys in Acts amaze me to no end), took a nap in the back of the van with my pillow and blanket (you'd think after 3 hours of sleep I would've slept longer than a half an hour, but I think the radiance from the Factory flowed through my veins), journaled, and emerged from the van at 8:30 to meander around the town center. I browsed Kohl's (it being the only thing open), telling the cashier, "I wasn't going to buy anything, but then I saw how bored you were and thought I better," then turned the corner at 9:03 to enter Barnes & Noble. I wish I could explain the joy that fills my heart upon beholding B&N. My breath caught in my throat when I realized it was two stories. The utter joy.

I sat with my knees and back resting against opposite arms of a cushy chair by a second story window, the morning light streaming onto the floor. A lady sat down next to me, a man a few chairs away, and a pre-teen boy and teenage girl across from me. I could only read a chapter before the high-pitched chatter of the girl on her cell phone drove me to distraction, and I abandoned my relaxation to purchase my items and retreat. (Didn't I sound like Jane Austen just then? What does "relaxation" mean??) I walked out with Barnes & Noble Classics of Howards End (I think E.M. Forster is vast becoming a favorite of mine), Wives and Daughters (I had no intentions of buying Elizabeth Gaskell's unfinished novel [she died before she could finish it], but it was so luscious and pink that I couldn't put it back on the shelf), and Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen, to me, is like those chocolate chip cookies that you don't really like, but you keep eating them anyway, and you never find out why. What does "cookies" mean??). I love "buy 2 get the 3rd free" days at Barnes & Noble.

Trader Joe's was next on my list, where I resisted organic fruit and spinach lasagna and grabbed a bag of whole grain pretzels I first sampled at Annie's apartment in May. I decided to pass on the chocolate covered soybeans, though. Sorry, Annie.

Upon passing Bath & Body Works, from somewhere in the deep cavernous recesses of my mind I pulled the memory of Mrs. Jespersen's hand soap, which I remember loving the smell of over spring break. So I entered the store, not remembering what it was and smelling every bottle I came across until I recognized the scent of Japanese Cherry Blossom. Rubbing it on my hands brought back chocolate cake and singing by the piano and Enchanted and overflowing toilets and tired feet after hours of walking around big, cold, and windy cities. Of course, on the path of finding Cherry Blossom, I also found Plumeria, which was sweet and feminine and summery, and made me think of pink parasols and canoes, for some reason. I couldn't choose between the scent of memories made and the scent of memories to be made, so I resolved to shell out the cabbage for both bottles. Turns out they were on sale (wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles) and I saved a whopping $11. Golly gee whiz Pete cow Sam Hill.

So with my Connecticut in a Bottle and Scent of 1910 (which I affectionately nicknamed them) in tow, I finally entered the Cheesecake Factory. I took my piece of heaven and carefully tucked it into my pre-prepared cooler in the van with the care of buckling a little child into a car seat, and headed for home. I thought about my day, and remembered the tragic sight at 4:15 this morning when we'd pulled out: my dad had stuffed our old G.I. Joe case we've stored our plastic toys in since the womb into the green garbage can at the end of the driveway. I had fretted over its demise, wishing I would've known it was there earlier so I could've saved it to store journals or letters or simply save a box of memories from being tossed into a landfill. So when I remembered it on my drive home, I suddenly became anxious to return home before the garbage men had their way with it. I wondered how the police officer would take it when I explained the reason I was speeding was to dig a wooden case with a G.I. Joe decal on it out of our trash. "Ah," he'd respond, "American heroes." Of course he'd understand. Policemen themselves are American heroes.

Still a ways from my house, I saw that trash cans and bags were still piled at the end of peoples' driveways. I've never been so happy to see garbage before. I wasn't soothed until I had pulled into my driveway and plucked the dusty, worn, half-falling-apart case from its plastic green coffin. I opened it for nostalgia's sake, releasing the scent of Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spider-Men and G.I. Joes, though it was empty now of all but a few dust balls and cobwebs. I'll clean it off and find something to put in it, and I'll remember the sound and feel of our childhood hands rustling over their plastic action figure bodies with loose joints at the knees and worn paint on their feet and hands, as we searched for the right sword or torch or mask to equip our men. I'm not a pack rat, by any means, but there are some things that should just not be gotten rid of.

However romantic my day has been, I sit here now in an empty house pitying my loneliness. My cheesecake was eaten to a Jimmy Stewart movie, and the cat won't answer my conversation starters. ("Wouldn't it stink if I fell down the stairs? No one would know I was here." "I'm going downstairs. The DVD player won't work." "I will not feed you tuna fish, so don't bother asking.") I guess listening to war movie themes (We Were Soldiers is probably the most depressing) and songs like "Alone Again, Naturally" and "Mr. Lonely" doesn't help my mood much. I don't think I was meant to be alone. And this is only day 1 of 11.

My hands smell like spring break.

Adventures in Laundering

Funny thing is, I have no adventures in laundering. Not even a funny anecdote. I go to work at 12, I work for 8 1/2 hours until my feet hurt so bad I can hardly stand, and I come home and go to bed. I pass my time at work while folding towels (whose rough exteriors are scraping the fingerprints off my thumbs) by singing songs and imagining novel characters and making up a new set of 7 dwarfs with my coworkers (because I have those now). (If you see a new Disney movie out starring Baldy, Drippy, Sniffly, Blingy, Krispy, and a few others, you know someone famous.)

I spend my time before work watching the Food Network (and shows I recorded off of Food Network the night before), watching movies (Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Stewart seem to be common threads in the movie-themed bedspread of my life), reading books (out of the four Jane Austen books I've read, Persuasion was the only one I didn't find boring, so that's the one I'm reading again), and being off my feet as much as possible. On my days off, I bake (bran muffins and an Alton Brown-inspired cheesecake that turned out terribly wrong) and watch more movies and read more books.

But I can now fold a fitted sheet like nobody's business. King size is my favorite, because I'm king size, if you know what I'm sayin'. (I don't.)

Back to Jimmy Stewart: his birthday was a few weeks ago. He would've been 100. I remember when he died, we were in a hotel on our way to Florida for vacation. Dad had bought mango ice cream and Mom was upset because why did he always have to try unusual things? She's a vanilla kind of gal. We were watching the news and I thought how unfortunate it was that he had died. But I was only 10, so the sadness didn't linger long. I liked the mango ice cream.

I have Born to Dance recorded off of TCM from sometime last summer, and I watch this scene over and over, because it just thrills me. (My favorite part is: "The way they chase after me, babe, it's a crime, and the way I make love is an art. So let's find a corner and start. What'd'ya say?")
I watched Destry Rides Again the other day for the first time since probably 10th grade. Herr showed it to us in German class, though I'm not sure why. The only thing German about it is Marlene Dietrich, who sings absolutely atrociously. Have a listen, and cringe. The movie's fantastic, though.

I'm also in love with Frank Sinatra. But I think I've already mentioned that a few times. The library is fast becoming a place of worship with dozens of classic movies at the tip of my library card. And when I can't make it, I simply worship at home with TCM. (My, aren't I being sacrilegious this morning?)

I've been reading quite a few books that are either about or take place during WWII. In Steve Kluger's Yank, he includes actual letters from soldiers to the magazine Yank. This one is my personal favorite thus far:

I don't know who started this idea if pinups, but they say that it is supposed to help keep up the morale of the servicemen, or something like that. Here is my idea of the help it is. In the first place, I would say that 24 out of 25 of the men in the service are either married or have a girl at home whom they respect and intend to marry as soon as this war is over....How many of you GIs would like to go home and find the room of your wife or girlfriend covered with pictures of a guy stepping out of a bathtub, draped only in a skimpy little towel, or see the walls covered with the pictures of a shorts advertisement or such pictures? None of you would. Then why keep a lot of junk hanging around and kid yourself about keeping up morale?...I would much rather wake up in the morning and see a picture of a P-51 or 39 hanging above my bed or over the picture of my wife, whom I think is the best-looking girl in the world, than of some dame who has been kidded into or highly paid for posing for these pictures.
-Pfc. Joseph H. Saling
Myrtle Beach AAF, South Carolina

Pour in the blue of a June night

Dad asked last night if I wanted to make him French toast this morning. I told him I've never made French toast before, but that didn't phase him. "Better you experiment with me than your first husband," he said. That's true. My father will eat anything. Many times my brother and I have pulled things out of the refrigerator, asking Mom, "Is this still good?" Dad replies, "I'd eat it," which gives us no indication of its edibility, and we proceed to throw it away. However, I wasn't lying when I told him I'd never made French toast before. I awoke at 5:54 this morning after dreaming I'd made a delectable dish of French toast with spices and seasonings that left Dad in awe of my culinary talents. He'd told me last night that he was leaving for work at 6:45 this morning, so I left myself plenty of time to add dashes of nutmeg and cinnamon and vanilla. He didn't get up until 6:45, and when I put the bread on the skillet it formed a thick, barrier-like coat of egg around the bread. I gave it to my dad with a warning (he probably wasn't expecting to have to march around the toast 7 times and blow a trumpet before eating it), cooking up the next piece of toast. He drowned it in syrup. I could hear its warbled cries. Then, what made it worse was his thinking it would be fun to pretend he was critiquing my dish on a Food Network show.
"This side is a little burnt," he said judgmentally. "It has a bit of a burnt flavor."
I didn't laugh. He tried to figure out what I'd done wrong. "Well, let's see. You added milk..."
"Oh," I said. "Was I supposed to add milk?"
He looked at me as if trying to read any joke lines in my smile, but all that was there was an ironic, slightly embarrassed grin that promised next time I would remember the milk.
"Did you butter the pan?" He asked. No, I hadn't buttered the pan. "Well, it's better you make me eat this than your first husband," he said again.
"First?" Will my French toast be so bad that no husband will remain married to me long? Next time I'm going to add honey and not tell him. Dubious.

Yesterday I mowed the lawn - or the pathetic attempt grass has made at growing amidst straw and stones - in the syrupy warmth of the late afternoon sun. The palms of my hands are internally bruised from pushing the mower through the stubborn stalks of wiry weeds with leaves like elephant ears. Wisconsin is a foreign country, I'm telling you. when I went to bed last night, the air was completely still. My curtains hung limp in front of my open window, and I turned on my ceiling fan to circulate the stale air. This morning the thin, cold wind won't stop blowing, and my curtains remained at a 90-degree angle from the wall until I closed my window with chills. Now it howls through the cracks of the house.

I fell asleep last night to the occasional "moo" of cows at the farm across the street, a pleasant, summery sound that added bass to a tenor and baritone choir of crickets and frogs, respectively. This morning, however, the moos are overlapping themselves in their frequency, and I'm curious to know whether something is happening over at that farm that perhaps I don't want to know about.

This song has me dreaming....

The view from the end of my street on a June evening:


Be this sunset one for keeping
This June bug street sings low and lovely ~ Iron and Wine

humor me

Yesterday while sitting in a coffee shop with my dad reading Of Mice and Men and drinking a bitter brew of some sort of nutty coffee, two young high school guys came in. One of them held a battered Snow White folder with duct tape around the edges. (At this point I wasn't really reading, if you couldn't tell.) They stood around awkwardly until a cute girl their same age came in.
"Hey," they greeted her. Boys that age are so suave.
"Hey," the girl replied. Class.
"How are you?"
"Good."
Then another guy came in. The girl greeted him enthusiastically with a hug. One of the boys who had already been there complained, "Why didn't I get a hug?"
The girl stammered, "You...have facial hair."
Oh, truthful adolescence.

We passed this sign in Sheboygan the other day, and for some reason I find it funny:

Smile
May is mental
health month
call 211 for help

Dad came up with this at dinner one night, and it's just ridiculous enough to be funny, in a pitiful sort of way:

What fruit does a monkey sleep on?
An ape-ricot!

Dad informed me this morning at breakfast that he knows a man who recently planted a church in a town called Northpoint. They rented a board on which to advertise their church, but because each letter cost money, they wanted to abbreviate their title. It read, "Join us at No. Point Church."

This is why I love the 1940s: Glenn Miller. Fred Astaire has nothing on those Nicholas Brothers!

And speaking of the 1940s, today is the 64th anniversary of D-Day. I should watch The Longest Day to commemorate, but that, in fact, is the longest movie. So I simply remember what I never experienced, in my small way of honoring unimaginable sacrifices.

"No, you get out and knock those Germans out, and then you can have a cup of tea." ~ An English D-Day veteran on the History Channel

paying with trees

The goods:

The 1940s are eating me alive, and I like it. I've been listening to the early years of Frank Sinatra (A Voice in Time [1939-1952]), and I am in love with him. You can listen to him here. I thought Jo Stafford sang the most romantic version of "Embraceable You," but I cannot resist young Sinatra. He reminds me of the mocha cheesecake I baked Wednesday night: rich, creamy, delicious, and mm-mm good. No one can sing "it's not that you're attractive" and make homeliness sound appealing like Frankie.

I am 280 pages into The Count of Monte Cristo. I could be so much farther, and I am ashamed of my lack of motivation to read.

My room is finished! Except that Paul Newman keeps falling off my wall, the painting (and re-painting a lovely Summer Afternoon - smother, Chickery Chick!) is finished, my Gone with the Wind wall is in order (more like my GWTW room is in order - how did I acquire so much Windy paraphernalia? I blame Sarah), and I have only a few odds and ends that still need to be nailed and taped. Paul, stop falling off the wall in the middle of the night. You are loud and getting bent.

The bads:

I have officially applied for six jobs, and I think it's rotten. Starbucks was probably my favorite application. They asked me, "What do you like about coffee?" I like that it smells like roasted winter mornings, that it reminds me of my father, that it complements 8 o'clock lectures so well, that it's the color of warmth and security....Would any of these things make me more eligible for a job brewing and serving and smelling like beans? Then they asked me, "Have you ever been to a Starbucks before?" ...Are you kidding me? Um, no! What are star bucks? How much are they worth in American currency?

Yesterday Mom tricked me by telling me I should apply at Kohler, then dragged me (and I mean dragged me; I have never said "No" so firmly to my mother in all my life) into their showroom where they displayed three floors of toilets, sinks, faucets, and bathtubs. Couples and threesomes of old ladies walked around admiring the lovely painted and marble productions. I couldn't swallow an 8,000-dollar bathtub, even if it did look divinely inspired.

I'm tired of trying to sell myself to places at which I don't even really want to work. If it weren't for workers, they wouldn't have a business at all, so why aren't they the ones trying so hard to get us, instead of the other way around? I'm bitter. If anyone needs a nanny, I'm good with kids, I like apples, and I know a great little place with three floors of bathroom fixtures where we can spend hours....

I'm-a gonna raise a fuss, I'm-a gonna raise a holler
about workin' all summer just to try to earn a dollar....
Sometimes I wonder what I'm-a gonna do
but there ain't no cure for the summertime blues....

in the summertime, when the weather is fine

My forearms are speckled with yellow paint. I told Mom I wanted Lemon Curd, but she said it was too bright, so I settled for Chickery Chick. If I had gone with Lemon Curd, I think it would have been like staring into the sun, because as it is, I feel as though I have captured a Pedestrian Crossing street sign and smeared it all over my walls. Mom tells me that it won't be so bad when I put up all my posters, and so I give thanks for Mom, who saved me from Lemon Curd, and for Paul Newman, Frank Sinatra, Aragorn, and Scarlett and Rhett, who will be shielding my sensitive eyes from the brightness of my walls.

My side muscles (I'm sure there is a much more accurate medical term for those, but I think "side muscles" is sufficiently descriptive) are sore. Yesterday Dad and I took a 2-mile hike on the Ice Age Trails, a hilly, rocky, woodland formed from glaciers many moons ago. The sky was contentedly blue and the air was tinted green with leaf-filtered sunlight. Dad made me use a pair of his hiking poles, and at first I hoped against hope that we wouldn't pass anyone on the trails, but after about a half a mile I hoped the guy we saw noticed with what ease I used the helpful sticks, leaping down hills and climbing rocky terrain with speed and efficiency. It was lovely with white flowers off the path bobbing their heads to a 65-degree breeze. I think my poles deserve to be named, after we bonded so mightily in our adventures yesterday. I'll give that some thought.

Yesterday I baked a banana cake for Dad's 59th birthday. Grandma Krauss made the best banana cakes, and its her recipe. I have a picture of us frosting a banana cake, me wearing a pink skirt and matching pink shirt that used to be white until Mom washed it with the reds. I've made banana cakes at least three times before, but this time we didn't have buttermilk. I knew, somehow I just knew deep down, as though the Holy Spirit was whispering to my heart, how important that buttermilk was. But Mom said to try regular milk. Oh, why did I listen? Why didn't I forgo the project or run next door to ask a neighbor? Who couldn't spare 2/3 cup buttermilk? And we all know how friendly Peggy and Phil are, after I "locked" myself out of the house over Thanksgiving break. But I didn't listen to the Holy Spirit, if it really was Him caring about my buttermilk. I used 1% milk. And it's probably the most pitiful cake I've ever made. It broke apart like I imagine those glaciers did that formed the Ice Age Trail. It all sort of sunk in in the middle, slumped like a tired soldier's shoulders at the end of the day. So pitiful! The frosting didn't even make it all the way around the cake. Dad says it still tastes good, but I feel as though my child graduated college with a bachelor's degree in biology and hopes of medical school, but then lives in my basement eating chocolate covered peanuts and watching MythBusters. It was capable of so much more.

I have three major books on my "To-Read" list, and I am counting on you to keep me accountable. This summer, I want to complete Robinson Crusoe, The Count of Monte Cristo, and at least one Jules Verne novel (I have about four to choose from). After those, I have some books I want to re-read, like To Kill a Mockingbird (only for the 4th time) and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I wonder how much of this I will accomplish this summer. I wonder when my parents are going to realize I haven't applied for any jobs yet. I wonder if my retinas will slowly sizzle every time I open my eyes in my newly painted room.

The past two nights have proved an interesting - and I hope not a habitual - experience. Around seven or eight in the evening, a wind blows in from somewhere and blows harder and longer than I have ever felt or seen wind blow. The temperature drops and suddenly the smell of cow manure fills the air. I understand Wisconsin is America's Dairyland (or so say our license plates), but this haunting wind of invisible death makes me want to shove towels in the cracks of the doors and light cinnamon candles until winter comes. I'll be sure to mark "day 3" in my journal of fertilizing habits if it happens again tonight, and if you don't hear from me again, the cold fingers of odorous farm winds have choked me to death. Think of me when next you enjoy a bowl of ice cream or a glass of milk. Your dairy products were the cause of my demise.