Goodbye my Sister

That’s surely not my sister
Lying in the heavy wooden coffin.
Her, with the poofed up hair,
The bright blue suit, hands folded nearly

She's cold, for God's sake,
give her a blanket, wake her up.
bring a smile to her lips,
a glitter to her eyes.

Up Edie, times awasting,
we need you, kid
There are dishes to wash,
pies to bake, hearts to heal.


You climbed higher than I,
In trees when we played.
You pinched my butt, laughed
at my blush and ducked my slap

Come back, my sister, I miss
your mischief, your ready laugh
Me, the older one, promise to listen
Not to laugh and sneer

But the lid comes down
the coffin is lowered.
Tears to tears, dust to dust
Edith doesn't live here anymore.

Her sister 2003
©Natalie Norman Baer

Sunday in the Thirties

This is the four of us on a Sunday. In years earlier than this, Mother would dress us in our best clothes, sit us on the couch and say,"Don't move", while she readied herself to take us to church. I loved my Sunday School with its singing and stories but absolutely hated church, the long dreary sermons, the sitting still, make no noise, relieved only by the ocassional hymn. Mother would say, "You can give one hour a week to the Lord." but I didn't think so, and quit going to service as soon as I got away to college.
Our main meal on Sunday was after church, usually a fat chicken with lots of good, overcooked vegetables, my dad carving at the head of the table and passing each plate down. Afternoons in the years before the war (there was only one war in my youth - the Second World War) were to be spent quietly, no running around outdoors, but playing with dolls was OK. We Baptists (Northern Freewill Baptists) didn't believe in dancing or playing cards on Sunday. But visiting relatives was fine and we'd load up our small Ford coupe, all four girls, Mother and Dad, and be off to visit the Simonini's, my Father's people. They were Catholic and didn't have the strictures of Sabbath behavior that we had at home - as long as my grandmother didn't know about it, we played with flair outdoors.
The war changed all that - fashions of behavior loosened up, we could even shop on Sundays, imagine!!
I wouldn't go back to those prewar years, I prefer the tug and tussle of life as I live it now but those early memories remain tucked away like a delicate handkerchief to take out and touch on this Sunday afternoon so many miles and years away from my New England childhood.
Natalie-Hawaii
©Natalie Norman Baer

The Last of us Four

Here we are, a combination of first generation ItalianAmerican and 11th generation Yankee. We were a happy family of sisters - that's Doris on the left, a real beauty who was laid low by Tuberculosis when only 15 but survived and lived until her seventies, the first of us to go. Next is Nancy, my closest companion all through our lives growing up in Rhode Island and Hawaii in our later lives; I'm the second from the right, a bit shy and oversensitive (I still worry a lot about doing the right thing); last my kid sister, Edie, you can see the devilish gleam in her eyes.
We might have had our spats as children but as adults we were always there for each other.
I miss my sisters, never expected that I'd outlive them all. But life is that way, we don't get to choose, just to love and appreciate each other while we are alive.
As we used to say - "See ya later, alligator".

Dear Moki

March 27
Dear Moki,
Now you did it, bad enough that you jumped our fence and ran away, but you took the grandchildren's dog with you. We miss you both - Kona for his sweetness, you for your bounce and energy. I remember the day you were born - one of eight wiggling bits of life. You were two months old when we chose you, with your white ruff, brown feet, and sleek black coat. The day we brought you home, you jumped out of the car, squeezed under the gate and trotted back to your old home. I brought you back and that night you cried but never puddled the floor.
Soon you were part of the family. "Bedtime", Buzz would call and you'd hop on the couch as we went upstairs. Later we'd hear you quietly pad up the stairs and settle on the landing. You'd crawl as close to our bed as Foolsie the cat would allow. Remember how she had a hissy fit when you got too close? The bed was HER territory. I guess the floor got too hard because sometime during the night you'd tromp downstairs for that soft couch.
So where are you now? Did someone pick you up, did you get caught in a pig trap, fall into one of the big sinkholes? Surely you are too smart for that, But you've been gone a week, I'm not crying anymore but I kiss your dear face, your playfulness - tossing your "Squeekie into the air for us to catch. I miss the sound in the morning: the little mews, tiny woofs, the thump of your tail. I miss you kid, you were our special one.
We left the door open at night the first two days you were gone - I cried when Buzz carried your food and pans upstairs. It seemed so final. It's still there waiting for you. I'd like to say, "come home, all's forgiven", but I don't want to start hoping again, it's too painful.
We love you, we miss you.
Come home.
Mother

March 28
Dear Moki,
Shame on you leaving your dad who stroked you, played with you, watched you outside while you did your business. Last night he had his first dream, (he says he never dreams). He dreamed you came home again.
So, come on, boy, get with it, and show your face again.
All's forgiven.
Mother

April 3
Dear Moki,
Our sorrow is healing, we only hope you are in the care of good people and not down in a sinkhole where no one can hear you,
Dad took down the barrier where the fence had fallen and stacked the wood to plug the holes. Remember how you used to sneak out through the fence? You'd wait until we weren't looking, then zip through with a yip and a ha-ha. Well the ha-ha is on you, isn't it?
Kona's mom still acts cross with me - she doesn't say so but I know she blames us for you leading Kona astray. She has a new dog now, looks like Kona with the Akita face. We went down to the Humane Society to see what is available in case we want to have another friend in the family. Have to think about it. You were lots of fun but a pain in the butt, too.
Well, boy, we miss you. I still tear up but another day is coming and we'll all live through it. You'll not be forgotten, your puppy mischief - the ragged edges of the carpet, the scars on my arm - will always rimind me of you. You'll not be forgotten.
Buck up, wherever you are. You carry our love with you.
Mother

I actually wrote these letters to Moki in 2001. Since then we have acquired two more dogs from the Humane Society but to this day, nine years later, whenever I see a dog in the back of a pickup truck, I look to see if it could be our Moki.
©Natalie Norman Baer

Fear

The Bats
Forestdale, the birth and death of my security, has been my family home since the late sixteen hundreds when three brothers came from the ironworks in Lynn, just south of Boston, Massachusetts. They weren’t the first to arrive in Sandwich, the pretty village at the head of Cape Cod. But they were most likely the first to ask Plymouth, the mother town of Cape Cod, for permission to settle and to cultivate the land just south of that town and call it Greenville. Here some ancestor built the house now lived in by my Great Grandmother Fisher. As their families grew, they added on to what would be called the “new part”. Here I live with my three sisters, the big girls – Nancy and Doris who ride a bus each day too school – and the baby – Edith. I see her on the table, waving and cooing as Mother powders her, lifts her, and puts her in her crib. Daddy is somewhere called “Down south.”

I’m in bed, and beyond the kerosene lamp, the room is dark. But Mother is here, folding my hands and fingers into a steeple, to hear my prayer of

Now I lay me down to sleep
I Pray the Lord my Soul to Keep
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

I add countless God Blesses to keep Mother with me but at last, I have to finish with “Make me a good girl.”

Mother tucks my blanket under my mattress, kisses me on the forehead, picks up the lantern, and leaves me in the dark. I am two and hate to see her leave because I know what comes next: streaking out of the attic through a hole into the hallway, bats flutter around the bedroom I share with my older sisters. What a chit-chit-chit sound they make, their wings whirring. I hide my head under the blanket, fearing those little creatures will fasten their claws in my hair, as we all call for help. I peek out and see Nanna, my grandmother, in her green mobcap and long cotton dress as she waves a dust mop at the bats, saying “shoo, shoo”. The pests fly out the window. She leaves us alone again in the dark to the creaky sounds and musty smell of a very old house.

No one tells me they are gentle creatures. They are simply part of a dark world with shapes and shadows ready to pounce and frighten me. My fragile security has been shattered, not to return until morning comes with its bright sun and warmth.
I like what it is saying, but on its own, it feels incomplete, it’s mmissing its context – how it relates to you; your life.

We lived in our Great-Gramma’s house. It was old when the boys in Blue marched south to fight those in Grey, smells of rotting wood, mildew and mold. At night bats streaked out of the attic. They flapped and fluttered through our room as we cowered under our covers. Nanna came in with her dust mop and shooed them out the window for their midnight hunt. We slept and never know when they returned to their attic roost.

Gift from Nanna Fisher

"Nanna", the severe little woman we were always glad to have come to stay and equally glad to see go. She was our Grandmother - Nanna Fisher - practical nurse, traveler, widow. I remember her white uniform, her white shoes and stockings, her brisk manner in discussing "private parts of the body". It was embarrassing as a child to be asked if I'd had "my bowel movement today."
I did not have a close relationship with her until I was married and long gone from home. She seemed to me to be critical, bossy, not much fun to be with. But her baking was superb, those little freshly cooked donut holes she would pop into our mouths, those Parker House rolls, raisin filled cookies, chocolate cake with frosting to lick from the bowl. I have her recipes but have never matched her skill.
We minded her well, she was tough. I never remember her putting an arm around me. Her soothing touch was more apt to be the sting of iodine on a knee scrubbed of its scab.
But her influence has carried me well through life. She was always herself - her standards of exellence, what she would say that made the difference. "Children don't have nerves." she'd tell me when I complained of a headache. From her comment that she didn't need an alarm clock but could wake herself at will stayed with me and to this day I can wake on the dot of 7:00. To this day I'm uncomfortable lying in bed in the morning - she'd tell us uf we were awake, it was time to get up.
Her true gift to me was the person she was A woman without self-pity, she continued to expand her outlook throughout her life. She advised us when new mothers of with new ways to parent, to raise our children. At that time, she was in her seventies. She read biography and history and staying up with the news right into her nineties.
The greatest gift to me was the last time I saw her. Sitting in a chair with the book "The Pumpkin Papers" in her lap, she spoke of Alger Hiss and Whitaker Chambers. Then, out of the blue, she gave me her gift: "I am ready to go." No whining about aches, no misery about age, she left me that spirit of life, the knowing that age and death is not something to fear.
©Natalie Norman Baer
When that time comes, I too will be ready.

Being Nice

In World War II we fought the Japanese and years after that war we heard that our grade school principal had a GI son who stayed in Japan and married a woman there. It was years before he brought his family to his hometown. What a shock that must have been for our provincial community. After all, George Washington was said to sleep in the tavern across from our Baptist church.
Greenville was a pretty town in those days, full of apple trees. In the fall Mr. Windsor would open his roadside stand to sell a wide variety of applies: Macintosh, Winesap, Northern, Baldwin. We, our family, didn't need to buy any of them in my grade school days - we just ate them off the trees around our home as we walked through the orchards to catch the bus to school each day. Fifty years later when I visit my childhood home, I am saddened to find all the fruit trees around the house are gone and I see only empty fields.
I remember we pitied the French-Canadian children whose parents worked in the fabric mills at the edge of town. Mother would say, "Be nice to them", as we took the clothes we'd outgrown to their homes.
But it is the "being nice," and "feeling sorry" that I speak of today - unknow to my mother it put up a barrier, an unseen wall between us, accentuated us as different. How much richer our childhood would have been had we shared their heritage, heard their family stories of coming to America.
It would be many years before I discovered my Mother was an eleventh generation "Yankee", whereas my Father was one of the first generation Italians to be born here. What we could have shared with our French-Canadian classmates, weren't we also an intesting mix?