Storytime

It's off to Kelseytown we go . . .

Timmy and Roberta will pick up Gram and drive to Janet's house for Thanksgiving. Janet's husband, Dick, will drive to Manchester and bring Uncle George back for dinner. Gerry is going to Fran's. Stephen and Gretchen are eating with Gretchen's family. Fred and Peggy are having the neighbors in.

Hal and I and our four children will have our bird here, and Cathie and the baby will join us.

Late in the day, everyone will drive to our house and we will have turkey sandwiches and dessert together. Except for Cathie who finds it uncomfortable in a family gathering with her ex and his new wife.

Janet will bring pumpkin and apple pies. I will make mince and lemon meringue. Gretchen will bring brownies. Being married only a year, she says her pie dough is not ready for company.

Gerry's got the wine. Fran has a case of soda for the kids. Dick says he has a bottle of scotch he'll never drink and will bring it along. Hal says good, he's got the feeling he is going to need it.

Cathie says not to bother with anything special for the baby; she will bring jars of baby food. Uncle George will bring a box of chocolates because this way he knows he will get to chat with everyone.

Chris will keep an eye on the younger boys, his brother and twin cousins, to make sure they don't try walking the barn rafters or take shots with the BB gun at the hornet's nest in the tree, especially if we haven't had a frost yet.

Kim will make a point of talking to Karen so she doesn't feel left out this year. Kim and Tracey will take turns playing with the baby so Cathie can visit. Tracey will watch the table when the food comes out to make sure the cats do not help themselves.

Hal will be careful not to make the drinks too strong because everyone has a long ride home. Mine, he can load. On Thanksgiving day, I do not get any further than the doorway of the kitchen.

Nobody is to ask Tim how teacher negotiations are going. Nobody is to mention the election around Kim. Nobody should make a point about Cathie and the baby having joined us for dinner. And if anyone asks how Chris is doing this semester, change the subject. Quick!

If it rains, the basement will have to be cleaned and the clothes folded and cleared off the ping pong table. And somebody should check to see how warped the paddles are, and if they are any balls.

If the weather is chilly we will light a fire in the living room and the women can sit in there. The men we do not have to worry about because they'll be in the family room watching football games.

Getting ready for a Thanksgiving gathering takes a lot of planning, preparation and telephone calls.

Cathie has called to ask if I know what time her ex may be coming. She says she really misses being a part of the family and seeing everyone, She wonders if there might be enough time for her to stay and say hello, and have everyone see the baby before his arrival.

I say, I'll call and ask.

He says Cathie's staying longer is fine with him, just tell him what time the rest of the family is coming and he will come an hour later.

I say, okay, I'll call everyone and find out, afterwards get back to him and then call Cathie and tell her it's all arranged.

Thanksgiving takes patience.

But when the day comes and we gather together.......

When Uncle Dick throws an arm around Scottie's shoulder and says he's getting so tall...

When a twin says to me, "Aunt Jo. I got an A on a story in creative writing".......

When Gerry ruffles Karen's curls and teases, "Tell me about your latest boyfriend"........

When Michael and Chris exchange tips on the places to ski this winter and maybe, they can meet.......

When Uncle George, looking more frail than the year before, puts down his box of candy to brush a tear running slowly down his cheek.....

Then you know that down to the last cranberry, it's worth the effort, and it's not the food that nourishes a family on Thanksgiving Day.

As I remember Halloween....

By JoAnn Dolan

I hate Halloween.

Scottie's crying because he doesn't know what to wear for a costume and every suggestion I make he says is dumb.

I bought a big pumpkin which he carved and now there are seeds all over the house and the shell is rotting on the porch.

Hal says he'll have to work late and the older kids say they're going to a party at their friends.

I don't know how I'm supposed to take Scottie around the neighborhood and still be home to answer the door.

I think I will eat a Hershey bar.

I looked for my favorite sweatshirt and found it hanging in a tree, a soggy mess, stuffed with leaves and a noose around its neck. And just wait until Hal finds out the other half of the dummy is his favorite jeans.

Kids ringing at the front door. Kids banging at the back door. Dogs barking. Worrying about running out of candy. Worrying about not having enough change for the UNICEF boxes.

I wonder if a Mars bar would help.

My friend Lynn loves Halloween. She has great ideas for costumes and her kids wear them too. They're always winning prizes. She even makes costumes for herself.

One Halloween for the trick and treaters she dressed up like a skinny old witch, and when the children knocked at the door, in a cackling voice, she invited them to help themselves to poisoned apples.

She ended up sorry though because the children were really scared and the next year when she dressed up like the Queen of Hearts and baked them tarts, nobody came.

I considered dressing up like a witch, figuring the effort one year would pay off for the next. My family said it wouldn't work and could even double the attendance with the kids coming from all over town to get a look at the fat witch.

I ate a Tootsie roll.

Never have I been able to win with Halloween. When my girls were small and in nursery school I bought patterns and material and spent days making a black and white panda outfit for one and a bunny suit with furry, floppy ears for the other.

The girls were pleased...until they went to school and all the other kids were in store bought jobs.

My children have shed more tears over costumes for Halloween than on any other occasion.

And I find this puzzling. When they go trick or treating, it's dark, and they go to the door in crowds, so who knows who's behind the mask or inside the box or under the sheet. The candy gets doled out, the pennies dropped in the UNICEF boses and poof, they're off to the next house.

One Halloween, quite late, this guy came to the door in baggy brown pants, a green and white stripped shirt and a tie with polka dots. I handed him a candy bar and asked where his UNICEF box was and it turned out to be just Hal coming in from work.

It was my last Snickers bar so I took it back.

If Halloween ended with getting the kids into a costume and out the door to trick and treat it might not be so bad, but when they come back it's more grief.

It's late and usually there's school the next day but they refuse to go to bed until they've emptied their bags and taken an inventory.

They stack it and count it, size and separate it, throw out the apples, and then begin the serious business of trading it.

A Baby Ruth for a Milky Way. An Almond Joy for a Crunch bar. Six jelly beans (no blacks) plus four molasses chews for eight candy corn and two chocolate kisses.

I say I'll take something with nuts.

They say, "What you got to exchange?'

"ME, EXCHANGE?"

I spend a week listening to them bicker over costumes. I give one kid the sheet off my bed and lend another one my broom. I buy pumkins, candy, and flashlights for them to carry, and cook a supper they don't eat. I rob my piggy bank and all night answer the door to their friends.

And then they come home with grocery bags---my grocery bags---- filled to the brim, and want to know what I got to swop for one of their treats.

I got nothing! Nothing but ungrateful kids.

In this Place, with this family, on this fall day

By JoAnn Dolan

Fall has come: wood begins to stack beside the well, our neighbor brings a bluefish, the sky is an azure blue, deepening to black in the late afternoon. The days are quiet, serene with the children in school. The trees rustle in the soft wind; the colors in the garden are red and yellow and rust.

We close the windows at night and take out the blankets. It is warmer outside than in. Soon we shall begin fighting about turning on the heat. Hal will say, "If you keep moving, you'll stay warm." What he doesn't say and I know he is thinking is.."and the house might get cleaned."

With each new fall there are inevitably changes in our family and some rituals that flow as naturally as getting up in the morning.

The big change in the household this fall is the girls have gone off to college. I find myself torn...one moment rejoicing in walking through a room and not finding it cluttered, the next moment aching because one of them is not sprawled on the couch with the newspaper, with orange peels on the table, sneakers, socks on the floor.

On this first Sunday in fall, Hal was up early and on his way to Glenwood Field to help with the opening preparations for the midget

football season. This event in itself establishes that summer is gone and fall arrived.

I took Scottie down to his father. Groups of fathers worked on various parts of the field...some measuring for the marking of boundary lines, some rebuilding the refreshment stand, others surrounding a truck from which juts a goal post. I can see the men talking but I can't hear their words from the car. One waves.

Scottie runs across the field, yelling "Dad! Dad!" Richards' old dog Waldo slowly gets up, wags his tail and starts to meet him.

On this Sunday, Scottie is the only son to join the working crew---the others of past years have outgrown the thrill of riding in the back of the truck, of being asked to get a tool, of just being part of that exclusive club--a man's world.

One thing has not changed--Waldo struts the field, while the other dogs eye his seniority, remaining by their masters' sides.

On this Sunday in autumn---and I'm not sure just why---I am compelled to leave the daily tasks to record some scenes of our family. I want for my memory the sight of a teenage son, Chris, walking in the door, tired, his long hair still wet from the showers, books in one hand, a varsity football uniform under his arm. I say, "Hi", he says, "What's to drink? What's for supper?" Nothing unusual, and the routine will be replayed a hundred times again, but I want to remember the sweep of his arm dropping books on the table, and clothes on the bench.

Someday I want to be able to close my eyes and still see a school paper lying on the table that says, Scott at the top, and the printed letters below reading, "We are in second grade. We will learn new things."

I want to remember how Fat Fred, the retreiver, lies down on the floor, stretches and sets his head on his paws; how the flag billows at the top of Hal's crooked handmade flag pole, how the trees cast shadows over the riding corral's white fencing in the late afternoon.

Before it's moved I want to imprint in my mind Scott's wagon with its harvest of small orange pumpkins and remember the disappointment in his voice, the shrug of his shoulders, when he said, "no one wants to buy my pumpkins."

Scottie's friend, Mr. Jones, gave him the pumpkin seeds and I want the picture of the two of them riding their bikes down the street...Scottie's short legs pumping hard and fast to keep up with Mr. Jones' long smooth push on the pedal.

There are so many things I never want to forget, Hal's crispy grey curls, Kim sitting on the back steps with a phone in her hand, Tracey playing the organ, her touch soft, mellow, often sad, and Scottie, warm and sleepy from bed, pausing on the way to the bathroom, saying, "Good morning, Sunshine."

One rare Saturday, Hal slapped brushes in all our hands, and side by side, in the hot sun, we painted the side of the house, listening to UConn football on the radio.

Yet for all the treasured moments I would not like time to stand still or turn back.

There is so much to come, and more to do. I want to walk along an empty shore. I want to go with Lynn, Jeff and Scott, on our annual foray of plucking fat, red apples from the branches with a long pole and hear Lynn exclaim over each one, "Oh, oh, it's so magnficant." On Saturday is Morgan's first football game and I want to be on the sidelines. Later I want to hear the replay between father and son. I want to know what the coach said, how tough it was out on the field and the details of the good plays, and somehow ease the agony of the plays that lost the game.

I want to make jam and pickles that no one will say, "Are you sure this is safe to eat?"

I want to go to the mailbox and find letters from the girls, then sit on the front step, in the shade of the tree whose leaves are turning orange, and read about a roommate, a mark in class, a date. I want Thanksgiving to come and for them to come home.

It is not the passage of time that I worry about but rather that I may not be appreciating the essence of life. Perhaps, this is why I am compelled on this day to begin stuffing these scenes into my head like the squirrels stuffing nuts into their nest for winter.

I remeber so little of our early years of marriage, of the girls as toddlers. I was in a rush for the future to come...for Hal to get his college degree, another job, a new location, to buy a home, to have money in the bank, to feel successful, secure and happy.

But life, like the seasons, proved to be continually changing. What brought joy became a worry, what was achieved faded into boredom, what was endured produced satisfaction, what was annoying made me laugh.

No, I do not wish for time to stop, to turn back , or to go forward------it is enough to be in this place, with this family, on this fall day.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Hal and I are into our annual summer battle over the yard. It's his grass versus my flowers.

Hal says, "not flowers, weeds." But I contend if you look closely enough you can find a petunia in almost any garden patch. Which goes to illustrate the basic differences in Hal's and my outlook.

I see something and usually can find good. Hal sees the same thing and invariably finds a flaw.

In springtime when I am enchanted by the profusion of forsythia in bloom, Hal declared it a pruning job. In summer when I spy a plump, red raspberry ready for popping in the mouth, Hal spots a Japanese beetle. After I've spend a morning under the hot sun mowing his lawn, Hal says when are you going to trim around the borders.

In summary, Hal is a picky, perfectionist, pessimist, while I am an easy going, appreciative, optimist. Hal describes it other terms. He is a worker and I am lazy.

I would never deny that Hal works hard. He prides himself on work. He makes work out of everything. He'll be lying on the couch, eyes half closed, watching his Yankees play a game on tv and claim he's "working" to rebuild his energy to go out and "work" in the yard again.

I, on the other hand, approach my gardening for leisure, as an opportunity to relax. Cleaning the house, kids, cooking, living with Hal are work. I refuse to turn a budding marigold into a toilsome task. I prefer to enjoy my gardening, weeding when the spirit moves, when the sun is not too hot, or company is coming.

Naturally, Hal knows this. So what happens when I am in my garden? Hal looks over, sees me lying contentedly on my stomach, poking around a posy and calls, "Jo, I am running out of gas for the mower, will you run downtown and get some more." Since he is "working" and I am relaxing, I, of course, am expected to run the errands.

Hal believes nothing comes easy. Thusly, he has to worry about his lawn, whether it needs mowing, or watering, or another spreading of lime. Was it cut too short or too long, why did that blade of grass turn brown?

Hal reads gardening books, sends away for pamphlets, takes soil samples, reads directions, and follows them. His hero is a neighbor who can make compost in 14 days and on the 15th use it for top dressing.

I freely admit this involvement is too much for me. I prefer the natural method of gardening, stick a plant into the ground and let nature take care of its own. Who should know better?

At any rate, the conflict over the yard gets down to pretty basic terms. Hal wants to mow down my gardens, and replant with grass seed, making our yard nice, tidy and very green.

And I respond with my usual protest, "touch a petal and I'll stamp on your grass."

In the decades of our fighting, I have been fairly successful in defending my flower gardening.

I lost a border garden to a hedge of hemlocks that Hal said we owed to the neighbors as a sound barrier for my hollaring. I also lost an azalea bush that the children gave me one Mother's Day and Hal refuses to admit mowing down, insisting it could have been pulled underground by a cinch bug. Remaining is the garden at the back of the house, off the dining room, out of sight to passerbys.

The petunias and marigolds are planted and I am prepared to protect them through another summer of Hal's conniving, runaway mowers, accidentally scattered grass seed and voracious cinch bugs.

And if Hal gave it some serious thought, I think, even he would have to admit, this will take work.

Three Little Kids, Dragging Wet Towels

When my kids were small, we spent everyday at the town beach. It didn't matter what the weather was...cool, breezy, raining or even blowing a gale, we were there.

I'd spread out a blanket, perch a kid on each corner and settle in the middle and we were ready for another day of paddling in the water, collecting rocks and shells, eating gritty sandwiches and drinking warm kool aid.

To be honest, I didn't take the children to the beach everyday because I was a good mother and thought it was healthy for them. I really don't enjoy spending the 8 hours at the beach, but the kids did.

They were awake at 6, by 7 o'clock in their bathing suits, and at 8 asking, "When are going swimming?" At 9 o'clock they were chasing each other through the house, by 10 o'clock I couldn't stand it any longer and we were packed up and on our way.

We'd come home late in the day, sunburned and tired, and they'd fight for another hour over the bathtub. By 6:30 when Hal arrived home from work, they'd be fast asleep on the floor side by side, three little brown bodies in white underpants, and I'd be dozing on the couch, still in a damp bathing suit, breakfast dishes in the sink, beds unmade and nothing for supper.

Hal complained. I protested that this was the only way to handle his children. He said I should discipline them.

One day I tried. I said, "If you kids don't behave, we're not going to the beach!" That night Hal agreed discipline wasn't the answer.

In water our kids were happy and productive. Out of touch with water, they sat listlessly in front of tv or kicked each other in the shins.

Even as infants, they loved water. They cried in cribs, playpens and carriages and gurgled in their baths and wet diapers. Their favorite toys were overflowing sinks, the dog's water dish and mud puddles. On rainy days, with sticky fingers, they had races with raindrops running down the window panes.

My last resort was to fill the bathtub, plunk them in and say, "Drown for all I care."

I envied my friends with their placid children, daily scrubbing floors and going about housework, their little ones happily playing at their side or riding trikes on the sidewalk.

Of my children's formative years, I have a panoramic picture of an endles journey from pond to seashore, from bathtub to pool, three little kids dragging wet towels.

As much as the children loved water, they hated swimming lessons. They pleaded, "We don't need them. We swim good."

But it was an hour I didn't have to watch them and a chance to turn over and even up the tan, so I always insisted.

Complaining all the way, they climbed the YMCA rating charts, from minnow to fish to shark and into life saving.

Eventually, the children grew up and I no longer spent my summer days at the beach, but they did.

They were up at 6 a.m., and by 7 o'clock in their bathing suits, and hitching back packs over shoulders, ready to pedal off to work as lifeguards and swim instructors.

At night they told stories about their day.

One said, "My kids were so bad...all they wanted to do was play."

Another added, "We had two medical emergencies and a near drowning. I can't believe how careless people are......."

A third worried, "One of my kids keeps bringing me presents. Yesterday he gave me M&M's and today a nickel. I don't how to tell him no without hurting his feelings."

Together they discussed techniques in training courses, how to discipline kids without their thinking you're mean and how to separate a three year old from his mother.

They argued about whose nose peeled the most, and hurt the most...and who took the sunglasses...and the last towel.

The house was strewn with the tools of their trade...sunhats, whistles, sweatshirts, clipboards and sand. Hal asked, will they never learn to pick up and I, being summoned several times a week, to drive them to an early course, or because of a flat tire, or a sudden summer storm, wondered if it would ever end, this chasing to the beach after three kids, dragging wet towels.

Author's note: But end it did, and all too soon. Thanks Kim, Tracey and Chris for the lovely summertime memories. Love, Mom

When the Lilacs Bloom

Lyndsay, our Syracuse freshman granddaughter, stopped by with a pair of pants to be hemmed; and as she was leaving asked, "Nana, is it okay if I pick some lilacs?"

I was shocked. I couldn't believe I hadn't suggested it first.

In our family lilacs are a special flower.

Our yard is filled with lilac bushes, not the nursery manicured kind but giants of overgrown branches on ancient stalks as thick as logs reaching 20 feet into the air.

The lilacs were here when we moved into the house 46 years ago, and I like to think of their parentage having been planted in 1800's when it was the Philo Kelsey homestead.

When our kids were growing up, I had a yearly custom I called, 'lilac day." I scrubbed the house, and then got out every vase, jar and container that would hold water and filled them to overflowing with lilacs. I placed them on table tops, in empty corners, on window sills, fireplace hearths, in the upstairs bedrooms and in bathrooms.

The kids would arrive home from school, and Hal from work, and everyone would exclaim, "Mom cleaned the house!"

When the lilacs were in bloom, we always knew Scott would make a trip home from college. When he began his career, and moved from city to city, he always dug a lilac bush to take with him.

The lilacs were blooming when Lyndsay was a little girl and making her first confirmation. My mother was alive then and visiting from Cape Cod. In her 90's, she didn't feel up to copping with the church crowds and reception so stayed at home. After the festivities, Lyndsay's dad, our son Chris, brought Lyndsay over to share the occasion with her great-grandmother.

Lyndsay and her sister Taylor had just finished picking lilacs to take home to their mother and were sorting them in the kitchen when their father said, "Come on, we're late, we've got to get going." Lynsday was wrapping a strip of paper towel around the stem of a lilac. Round and round, she neatly wound, the tip of her tongue sticking out of the right side of her mouth---always her signal of intense concentration, and determination.

"Come on, Lynds," prompted her dad. I didn't want Lyndsay's special day to end in a tantrum of anguished tears so I urged him to be patient.

Lyndsay finished her task, took her bouquet of one lilac into the living room where her great-grandmother was sitting on the couch, placed it her hands and said, "This is for you."

The grown up, 19 year old Lyndsay picked two huge armfuls of lilac, adding sprigs of azaleas and karia, another old fashioned flower, of tiny yellow rosettes, in the spirea family, and white narcissis. "I hope it doesn't get any bugs in my car, " she said. I quipped, "When it was your parents' car, you wouldn't have cared." She responded, " You're right."

The next day, on Mother's Day, I received a call from her mother, saying that Lyndsay had presented her with the most beautiful bouquet of lilacs, adding, "I know it was your idea."

"No!" I protested, "That was totally Lyndsay's idea, your daughter's gift to you."

On the Wednesday following Mother's Day, I received a card in the mail from Lyndsay's father. On the front it said, "To Wonderful You," The message inside read, "...you're an exceptional woman and mother, wise and thoughtful in many ways, wonderful in even more. Happy Mother's Day" Love, Chris.

I ordered myself, "Don't you dare think what you're thinking, that someone else bought that Mother's Day card for Chris to send."

And then I thought, no, he probably did choose that card by himself because miraculous things do happen in our family when the lilac are in bloom

It's a Great World

I promised to give you the scoop on Clinton's taxation Tea Party Saturday but I didn't take into account that I couldn't be in two places at once. My assignment was in the back parking lot, at the Landing with my decorated garbage can collecting tea bags from the Drive Thru.

The Rally was held on the front steps of the town hall, so I missed Brook Cunningham's lovely voice singing the national anthem, and WTIC talk show host Jim Vicevich wowing the crowd with his speech, as did a steady stream of other orators, and Tom Callinan with his folk songs.

From my station, I received repeated expressions of appreciation for the opportunity to send a collective message of protest to our representatives in Washington over the debt they are imposing upon future generations of our children.

Not a kook in sight, just the familiar faces of people a lot of us knew, and my brother! (photos)

And speaking of family, on the eve of the Tea Party, Hal and I drove to Massachusetts for an overnight to attend our nine year old granddaughter, Benny's Grandparents Day at school.

We weren't sure we'd be invited back after last year when Hal got the car stuck in a foot of mud because he forgot to release the parking brake--which he never uses but because Benny was with us, took the extra precaution.

Benny's school contains grades kindergarten through sixth. A part of the grandparents' program is a concert in the gym with all classes participating. Benny's third grade played two songs on their recorders. The kindergarteners' Le Petite Chorus sang "What a Wonderful World"--- which brought tears to my eyes because there is no such world to safeguard their innocence.

The program ended with the Sixth graders singing a boistrous "Life is Good!", with its ups and downs and getting knocked around and bouncing back on your feet.

I don't know that it was intentional, but the contrast between the kindergartners' world and the sixth grader's world provided a dramatic demonstration of the changes that occurs in a mere a seven year period in a child's life.

And to me, it serves as an allegory for today's politicans' promises (for tax dollars) to provide a trouble free world, when for people a great world is being able to take the ups and downs and be a master of challenges.

The part which tickled me were the name tags we wore which identified the names our granchildren called us. In addition to the familar ones-- Hal was not the only "Grumpies" ---there was Ni Ni, Nona, GaGa, Ummy, Mr. Ed, Bams, Buba, Mimi, TaDa, Bibi and Grandpere.

Two more stories and I'm through. Benny took Hal for a walk in the woods to see her fort. She came back with a branch, explaining that it was birch, tasting like birch beer, and Grumpies had found it for her. In an aside, she said to me, "I wondered why Grumpies was chewing on a tree."

We gave Benny some money for her piggybank. I asked, "You do have one, don't you?" She responded, I want to show you something, and scampered up the stairs to her room, coming back with three identical, small sized plastic boxes. In tape on the top of one was marked "Spend", the second one said, "Save" and the third, "Give."

I hope you'll come back again. Thanks for stopping by. "Nana"