by Kathy Brasby | Jun 26, 2015 | Seasons
Agnes leaned over the lunch table, her eyebrows bent together.
“My brother-in-law is here but he won’t speak to me.”
I had joined her table at the nursing home just before lunch was served. I glanced over my shoulder at a white-haired man staring down at the table before him. He didn’t look like he talked to anyone. “Really? That’s too bad.”
She nodded. “I’ve spoken to him several times but he turns away. And do you know what else? He’s changed his name from Bob to James!”
I knew her brother-in-law lived 300 miles away and so I took a deep breath. “That’s frustrating for you, I’ll bet.”
“Well,” she settled back in her chair, “I just go on. What else can you do?” She studied me for a moment and then leaned forward again.
“And then there’s a woman who denies her own children.”
How did I answer this one? “Really? That’s awful.”
Agnes tilted her head. “I know. I asked her one day about her children and she claims she doesn’t have any children. She even told me she had never married. How could she forget her own husband?”
“I can see that upsets you.”
“I went up to June and asked her, ‘Do you know Melvin Roberts?’ and she said she’d never heard of him. He was her husband for 40 years. How about that?”
I knew June, too. She sat at another table in the dining room, waving at newcomers and chatting happily with others at her table. And I knew she’d never married and her last name wasn’t Roberts.
“Do you think you’ve confused June with someone else?” I asked.
“Oh,” Agnes studied my face. “I can see they’ve convinced you, too.”
Once I would have defended my position. Once I would have tried to change Agnes’ mind. But I knew she’d forget our conversation tomorrow no matter what I said. Kindness won out.
“Well, family is important to you, isn’t it?” I said.
Her face relaxed. “I’ll never forget my husband or children.”
She probably wouldn’t. But the brother-in-law was in trouble.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jun 23, 2015 | Stories
Our family has always dreamed of crafting those extravagant cakes like the Food Network highlights.
Some of the kids invested time on 4-H cake decorating units.
A 4-H project manual builds basic skills so unit one zeroes in a simple icing, a couple of tools, and a one-layer cake with the goal to exhibit the best project at the county fair.
The cake part proved to be a problem for daughter number one, who baked her show cake the afternoon before it had to be entered. When the edges of the cake wouldn’t release from the pan, she solved the problem by cutting away the edges.
Most of the cakes entered were 8” round but hers was more of a 5” lumpy. She slathered on icing but it was like trying to hide Mount Everest under an ice cream cone. No champion ribbon that year.
Daughter number two was the creative sort stifled by the rules for the unit. When she was required to form a mat of frosting stars, she didn’t understand why the cake couldn’t show through. It would be like hiding the tuba in the marching band.
No blue ribbon that year, either.
Our son, at age 10, signed up for cake decorating and even went to a workshop where he and 25 girls learned the fine art of placing stars of frosting on waxed paper. This, of course, made absolutely no sense to him except he licked clean the frosting after the workshop.
We found out later that he signed up so that he could be in charge of the family birthday cakes. He figured if he’d finished cake decorating, I’d let him do the cakes.
And lick the frosting, too.
His show cake came together on a hot summer day with frosting that needed a lot more sugar than he put in the bowl. Imagine a lava flow sliding across his design.
The lava-icing flow continued until he got the cake to the fairgrounds. His frosting border resembled the outline of Texas.
No blue ribbon that time either.
But he didn’t need any cake decorating classes to take over the birthday cake tradition in our family. I had once served crumbs molded like the foothills of Colorado with icing drizzled over the top. I had hoped for a puppy shape but that didn’t work out either.
So I had no cake decorating tradition to enforce.
I let him take care of the birthday cakes.
I was in charge of licking the bowl.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jun 19, 2015 | Seasons
Harvey’s eyes lit up when his wife walked through the front door of the nursing home and made her way to where he waited.
“I’ve got great news,” he said. Her eyebrows lifted. “I walked last night.”
“You did?” She glanced down at his wheelchair and his limp legs.
“I’ve been practicing,” he said. “I can show you.”
“Uh, well—“
Harvey leaned forward, gripping the armrests on his wheelchair. “I just need you to help me get started.”
She glanced around the lobby. “I don’t think I can help—“
“Oh, you under-estimate yourself. We can do this.” Harvey settled back in his wheelchair. “I practice every night.”
His wife sighed. “I think we should wait for a little help. I can’t do this alone.”
She knew that he hadn’t walked in over a year, not since he had fallen.
“All right. We can wait, I guess.”
Dreams, more vivid than the orange sunset, captivated Harvey’s days. Many of his nights included walks to friends’ houses, to the basement, and to the park.
She patted his arm and gave him a hug. “How are you feeling today?”
“Good. Did I tell you that Jerry visited me last night? I don’t know why he came but we had a good talk.”
Harvey’s wife smiled. Their oldest son lived 2000 miles away and only came on special occasions. She was pretty sure he hadn’t slipped in during the night for a visit.
“And did you enjoy talking with him?”
“Of course. He’s planning to move here soon so he can live with me.”
“I’ll bet that made you feel good. He loves you a lot, doesn’t he?”
Harvey nodded. “I guess so.”
Every day, Harvey’s wife came to kiss his forehead and hear his dreams. She loved him a lot, too.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jun 16, 2015 | Stories
I know you know where chocolate milk comes from and that red cows don’t produce strawberry shakes.
But rural people often laugh at the misconceptions that non-rural people have. Some of the simpler wrong notions include the idea that black cows give chocolate milk or that bulls have horns and cows don’t.
And it is frustrating to hear people comment that we don’t need to have all those dairy cows because people can get their milk from Safeway instead.
I once had a college roommate mock me because I didn’t know that buttermilk came from melting butter into milk. The fact that I had seen buttermilk come from the actually making of butter in a churn didn’t impact her at all.
But one of my favorite stories came when a non-rural family came to visit.
“Can we come over this evening and watch you milk your goats?” This phone call came from our neighbor who had weekend guests wanting to experience some rural flavor.
So they came. The neighbor brought a dad with two teenage boys. The dad, Jim, had experienced a slice of farm life from his days visiting his grandparents on their farm. This was warm nostalgia for him.
Not so much for the teenage boys.
They were willing to wander around outside pestering the ducks before Dad ordered them into the milking room.
“This is cool,” he said. “Get in here and watch.”
So I milked and answered questions from Jim while the boys leaned against the far wall with their hands in their pockets. Then they all went home.
My neighbor called me the next morning. “Jim said thanks for letting them come over.” And she laughed. “And the boys came back here to announce that, after seeing where milk came from, they are never drinking milk again.”
“Whew,” I said. “Good thing they don’t know where eggs come from, then. They might never eat again.”
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by Kathy Brasby | Jun 9, 2015 | Stories
The secretary and I were the only two women working in this shop. There’s something about rubbing elbows with a bunch of guys with oil stains on their hands that can give you willies at night.
The secretary was deathly afraid of mice. We’re talking leap-over-chairs-on-your-way-to-the-parking-lot kind of afraid. This was not a good thing to reveal to our crew but there it was.
I wasn’t overly fond of them myself but determined not to admit to it. But they still tested me. I was in charge of checking in shipments – large and small – at our business and so one day found a small plastic bag on my desk. This wasn’t unusual and I flipped the bag to check the shipping tag.
A dead mouse was stapled inside the bag.
I dropped the gift and looked up to see our service manager and parts manager peering around the corner. The service manager threw his hands in the air.
“It wasn’t my idea!”
And the parts manager put his hands up, too. “I didn’t put that bag on your desk.”
I ignored Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
They didn’t harass me again. They were in search of more hysteria. But one day our secretary came back from lunch to find a brown lunch bag on her desk. Stapled shut. Shuddering with mystery.
She ran screaming to the break room, certain they had trapped a live mouse for her.
After shaking her hands and sobbing, she still refused to enter her office. So the service manager retrieved the bag from her office and brought it out, where he sliced off the top and set the trapped frog free.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum spent the afternoon freshening up the secretary’s desk before she’d return to work. Boss’s orders.
Something good did come out of it, though. Whenever the two guys got the idea to go in search of mice, they remembered four hours of scrubbing a desk and sat down until that idea passed.
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