Yeah, today is my birthday. I’ve never been this old before, well, that I know of anyway for I’m ignorant of such things. Yes, yes, yes, you read it here; I don’t know it all, and it’s never bothered me.
Well there’s so much importance made about ‘knowing it all’. On the other hand, i.e., oppositely, people who act like they ‘know it all’ are very often despised. So what’s a person to do?
I don’t like to be ignorant of things, in most cases; but equally don’t care to know it all because it involves so much of your life; I’m just not ambitious that way. Never have been. I like what I like and that’s it. Interests come to me from experiences with other people, through books, and through stories on the radio.
I have an ear and eye for details and subconsciously remember excerpts of conversation in which either I or others are participating. It seems a natural ability. Maybe I was a prey animal in a previous life and listening, remembering--and skepticism--of what I hear was part of my daily regimen of survival.
On the other hand, I enjoy humor and appreciate natural beauty as humor and beauty are somewhat subjective. Not all people will agree on both.
Like I’ve written, I’ve never been this old before that I know. Another may think me young, if they’re older; and still another, younger, will think me old. I remember those days. It seems like only yesterday. Funny how time flies.
I recall reading something somewhere about time and how time is just a construct of humankind, that nothing changes except as the world turns from day to night, season to season--that everyday is the same and time is only marked by man. Just another one of those ponderable things. But who really cares?
At any rate, here I am, this age, for now.
I was in a nursing home recently--as a visitor. I’ve visited many nursing homes over my lifetime, as my parents and grandparents were pretty old by the time I was conscious of age differences, so if that would be, say nine years old, my dad would’ve been 55 and my mom 51. Only Mom’s mom was still alive up here in Roseau County; she died at almost 90 in April of 1969, so I suppose that was among my first visits to ‘old folks homes’ where old people sat forlornly in wheelchairs, many seemingly ‘out of it’, so to speak, waiting out their final days.
My aunt, Irene (Palm) Davidson Reese, worked as an LPN at the Roseau Area Hospital and earlier, as an aid at a nursing home there that was called, ‘Sheltering Oaks’, and is now called Life Care Roseau Manor. It had a homey feel to it although two people not related to each other sometimes shared a room, which was unnatural for them, and sometimes other residents who weren’t mentally stable would loudly call out to no one in particular, and still others would create havoc simply because they didn’t know any better.
I felt uneasy there.
It wasn’t because I felt I was better than them or that they were strange beings or weird, but that I just didn’t know what to say.
Sometimes I didn’t know if they were listening to me--or even talking to me and not someone who they imagined me to be or someone who they ‘saw’ behind me.
Often, they asked if I was there to take them home, and that saddened me, for when I left the building I had to carefully close the door behind me so not to allow them to leave. Sometimes it tore my heart out, so to avoid that, I wouldn’t come back often.
My Uncle Raymond Palm lived at Sheltering Oaks the last years of his life. He died in 2002 at age 91. He had sat in a wheelchair for 71 years as a result of a fall from a tree when he was 20 years old, on July 3, 1932; back when breaking your neck, was a death sentence. He wasn’t one to complain about his situation having accepted it long ago. He lived with his mother, after his father suddenly died in 1937 after getting kicked in the head by a horse.
Being a paraplegic, Raymond adapted his intelligence to what he could with his available abilities, and with a little help from Roseau area businessmen became a highly successful gunsmith and a watchmaker/jeweler. He in turn supported his mother until she died, and his sister Irene, a primary caretaker for many of his years, upon the death of her first husband, Martin Davidson. He paid for a great deal of his later nursing home care from his own savings. He also gifted my daughter Bonny several hundred dollars toward her college expenses.
Now I am 68. I'm older than I was even yesterday.
Raymond has died. So has Irene. And Martin. And Grandma Palm. And Dean. And Jack. And Karen. And my middle sister Ginger, gone these five years now, this year.
Since it’s my birthday and as good a reason as any to resurrect my memoir of her, I submit:
Ginger was almost 19 years old when I was born. The story was that my mother’s pregnancy didn’t show until very late and rumors had begun that I was actually Ginger’s child.
Ginger’s fondness for me fostered her sense of humor, for just as certain individuals take peculiar glee in tying strings onto a cat’s tail, putting scotch tape on their feet or annoying them with laser lights, Ginger began propping me up on sofas and in chairs, and dressing me in girl’s clothes, Puerto Rican straw hats and big sunglasses then photographing me for family photo albums and to show her friends. Thank goodness there was no YouTube or FaceBook at that time.
I just have to seriously doubt that neither my mother or father, nor Ann Marie or Sandra, took all those pictures of me naked or sitting on the potty chair, so the person I long suspected was, of course, Ginger. It was always Ginger.
Ginger appears to sport the ever so slightly shorter hemlines than her sisters in the old photos of them that I have. Her lower squared necklines, earrings and necklaces, even with a two-year old me perched on her right hip, creates a statement of the innate confidence she possessed. Whether I was dressed for bed, bath or beach, whether barefoot, slippered or sporting sensible shoes, I’ve grown to suspect Ginger had a hand in the activity or selection--though it was noted on the back of one photo Ann Marie had bought me the western boots that went with my cowboy outfit, all of which I still have by the way. Thanks Mom.
In a sibling group shot when we were all dressed for church, Ginger holds my hand in front of the garage on Des Moines Street. She cradles my neck in a photo taken on Ann Marie and Clair’s farm. She and Sandra sit at the end of a playground slide somewhere and I stand at Ginger’s feet.
I was ring-bearer at Ann Marie and Ginger’s weddings.
After the older girls got married and Sandra went to nurses training, the folks got me a dog, but it was small consolation for all the attention I had received when the girls were home.
When Ginger and Jim moved into an apartment after they were married, she used to take me for rides in their ‘53 Ford--a vague memory and perhaps inaccurate. Clair would know. In those days before child restraints in automobiles, I’d ride in the front seat. We would be traveling along and she’d smile and say, “Let’s SPEED!” then accelerate fast, pushing my back against the seat. We’d laugh, oh we’d laugh.
When I was in the sixth grade I won an art scholarship to the Des Moines Art Center that included art classes every Saturday morning. When Dad couldn’t drive me there, Ginger would. We’d spend the day together and often I would spend the weekend with her and Jim. On the days at the arts center, we’d tour the gallery’s collection, looking in the classrooms, smelling the odors of clay and oil paint. We’d talk about the modern art pieces and exhibits, thus I learned art appreciation from Ginger. Being exposed to the art world expanded my mind and imagination and Ginger helped promote my enjoyment of it. She treated me as an adult though we could often share a joke and laugh like children. She was so fun.
Ginger appreciated abstract art, although she said she wasn’t an artist herself. Her home on Brinkwood Road is a unique art piece in and of itself. She and Jim, but I think it was mostly Ginger, decorated it tastefully with large and small paintings, originals and prints, modern furniture, small sculptures, large-leafed green plants and cacti. Bright reds, bold blacks and bright whites. She used to rent some pieces, as I recall, from the Des Moines Art Center. Also she and another woman used to do interior design work and for a while she also ran a used high-end clothing shop.
Sandra bequeathed me and all the younger generations her Mad Magazines. Ginger shared with us ShoeBox Greeting cards that had zany characters or humorous expression in them. I remember her telling me Shut-Up jokes too. Two of my favorites were:
“Mommy, is Daddy really dead?”
Mommy: “Shut-up and keep digging.”
And,
“But Mommy, I keep going around in circles.”
Mommy: “Shut-up or I’ll nail your other foot to the floor.”
After Ginger and Jim had moved to their house on Lawnview Drive, they found an Italian restaurant in Highland Park named, “Chuck’s Pizza.” Every weekend I spent, we’d have Chuck’s Pizza and salad, Pepsi Cola from a glass bottle with ice cubes in a glass, then later popcorn and watch Perry Mason on a black and white TV. It was cool to stay at Ginger’s house. None of my friends had a ‘den’ in their house--who did? And nobody had a real drinking fountain by the back door either. The only drawback to staying at Ginger’s house was that they stayed in bed until 9:30 on weekends. I learned how to stay quiet and occupied myself until they got up by looking at engineering texts and art magazines. Not real entertaining, mind you. However, staying at Ginger’s elevated my reading skills level as well as gave me an edge in Scrabble against my peers.
Ginger played golf in the summertime and bowled in the wintertime for many years. I know she was sad not to be able to play golf as she once had. It was a big part of her life.
Ginger always called me ‘Steven,’ I was never just ‘Steve’ to her. She held me dear (as though I was her only brother) and though we spent most of our lives faraway from each other, we were often on one another’s minds. We thought we should call, but seldom followed-through, because, as we once laughed and admitted to the other, neither of us liked initiating telephone conversations.
These last years since Jim died, although I wasn’t here in the flesh, my daughter Bonny was. Just as my mother thought I was an extension of her in her beloved Minnesota, living near her brother Raymond and sister Irene, I felt Bonny was an extension of me among my Iowa family. I could not be prouder of her close relationship with Ginger. I always enjoyed learning about their activities, what they did, where they went to eat, what they ate, and ‘who went with’ as Bonny loved introducing her friends to Ginger, and they in turn, came to enjoy Ginger as well.
Ginger thoroughly enjoyed watching men’s basketball, although I don’t think she had a favorite team, that I recall the last time we talked in person. When I was in Grimes to visit her after the first of this year, she warned me she’d be watching basketball when I came to visit her. No matter. We just spent the afternoon and evening watching basketball together on the TV in her room. In this way I was able to say my goodbyes.
I’ll certainly miss her in my life.
WannaskaWriter
Well there’s so much importance made about ‘knowing it all’. On the other hand, i.e., oppositely, people who act like they ‘know it all’ are very often despised. So what’s a person to do?
I don’t like to be ignorant of things, in most cases; but equally don’t care to know it all because it involves so much of your life; I’m just not ambitious that way. Never have been. I like what I like and that’s it. Interests come to me from experiences with other people, through books, and through stories on the radio.
I have an ear and eye for details and subconsciously remember excerpts of conversation in which either I or others are participating. It seems a natural ability. Maybe I was a prey animal in a previous life and listening, remembering--and skepticism--of what I hear was part of my daily regimen of survival.
On the other hand, I enjoy humor and appreciate natural beauty as humor and beauty are somewhat subjective. Not all people will agree on both.
Like I’ve written, I’ve never been this old before that I know. Another may think me young, if they’re older; and still another, younger, will think me old. I remember those days. It seems like only yesterday. Funny how time flies.
I recall reading something somewhere about time and how time is just a construct of humankind, that nothing changes except as the world turns from day to night, season to season--that everyday is the same and time is only marked by man. Just another one of those ponderable things. But who really cares?
At any rate, here I am, this age, for now.
I was in a nursing home recently--as a visitor. I’ve visited many nursing homes over my lifetime, as my parents and grandparents were pretty old by the time I was conscious of age differences, so if that would be, say nine years old, my dad would’ve been 55 and my mom 51. Only Mom’s mom was still alive up here in Roseau County; she died at almost 90 in April of 1969, so I suppose that was among my first visits to ‘old folks homes’ where old people sat forlornly in wheelchairs, many seemingly ‘out of it’, so to speak, waiting out their final days.
My aunt, Irene (Palm) Davidson Reese, worked as an LPN at the Roseau Area Hospital and earlier, as an aid at a nursing home there that was called, ‘Sheltering Oaks’, and is now called Life Care Roseau Manor. It had a homey feel to it although two people not related to each other sometimes shared a room, which was unnatural for them, and sometimes other residents who weren’t mentally stable would loudly call out to no one in particular, and still others would create havoc simply because they didn’t know any better.
I felt uneasy there.
It wasn’t because I felt I was better than them or that they were strange beings or weird, but that I just didn’t know what to say.
Sometimes I didn’t know if they were listening to me--or even talking to me and not someone who they imagined me to be or someone who they ‘saw’ behind me.
Often, they asked if I was there to take them home, and that saddened me, for when I left the building I had to carefully close the door behind me so not to allow them to leave. Sometimes it tore my heart out, so to avoid that, I wouldn’t come back often.
My Uncle Raymond Palm lived at Sheltering Oaks the last years of his life. He died in 2002 at age 91. He had sat in a wheelchair for 71 years as a result of a fall from a tree when he was 20 years old, on July 3, 1932; back when breaking your neck, was a death sentence. He wasn’t one to complain about his situation having accepted it long ago. He lived with his mother, after his father suddenly died in 1937 after getting kicked in the head by a horse.
Being a paraplegic, Raymond adapted his intelligence to what he could with his available abilities, and with a little help from Roseau area businessmen became a highly successful gunsmith and a watchmaker/jeweler. He in turn supported his mother until she died, and his sister Irene, a primary caretaker for many of his years, upon the death of her first husband, Martin Davidson. He paid for a great deal of his later nursing home care from his own savings. He also gifted my daughter Bonny several hundred dollars toward her college expenses.
Now I am 68. I'm older than I was even yesterday.
Raymond has died. So has Irene. And Martin. And Grandma Palm. And Dean. And Jack. And Karen. And my middle sister Ginger, gone these five years now, this year.
Since it’s my birthday and as good a reason as any to resurrect my memoir of her, I submit:
Memories of a Great Sister
Virginia Mae (Ginger) Reynolds Wilson
1932-2014
by WannaskaWriter
Ginger was almost 19 years old when I was born. The story was that my mother’s pregnancy didn’t show until very late and rumors had begun that I was actually Ginger’s child.
Ginger’s fondness for me fostered her sense of humor, for just as certain individuals take peculiar glee in tying strings onto a cat’s tail, putting scotch tape on their feet or annoying them with laser lights, Ginger began propping me up on sofas and in chairs, and dressing me in girl’s clothes, Puerto Rican straw hats and big sunglasses then photographing me for family photo albums and to show her friends. Thank goodness there was no YouTube or FaceBook at that time.
I just have to seriously doubt that neither my mother or father, nor Ann Marie or Sandra, took all those pictures of me naked or sitting on the potty chair, so the person I long suspected was, of course, Ginger. It was always Ginger.
Ginger appears to sport the ever so slightly shorter hemlines than her sisters in the old photos of them that I have. Her lower squared necklines, earrings and necklaces, even with a two-year old me perched on her right hip, creates a statement of the innate confidence she possessed. Whether I was dressed for bed, bath or beach, whether barefoot, slippered or sporting sensible shoes, I’ve grown to suspect Ginger had a hand in the activity or selection--though it was noted on the back of one photo Ann Marie had bought me the western boots that went with my cowboy outfit, all of which I still have by the way. Thanks Mom.
In a sibling group shot when we were all dressed for church, Ginger holds my hand in front of the garage on Des Moines Street. She cradles my neck in a photo taken on Ann Marie and Clair’s farm. She and Sandra sit at the end of a playground slide somewhere and I stand at Ginger’s feet.
I was ring-bearer at Ann Marie and Ginger’s weddings.
After the older girls got married and Sandra went to nurses training, the folks got me a dog, but it was small consolation for all the attention I had received when the girls were home.
When Ginger and Jim moved into an apartment after they were married, she used to take me for rides in their ‘53 Ford--a vague memory and perhaps inaccurate. Clair would know. In those days before child restraints in automobiles, I’d ride in the front seat. We would be traveling along and she’d smile and say, “Let’s SPEED!” then accelerate fast, pushing my back against the seat. We’d laugh, oh we’d laugh.
When I was in the sixth grade I won an art scholarship to the Des Moines Art Center that included art classes every Saturday morning. When Dad couldn’t drive me there, Ginger would. We’d spend the day together and often I would spend the weekend with her and Jim. On the days at the arts center, we’d tour the gallery’s collection, looking in the classrooms, smelling the odors of clay and oil paint. We’d talk about the modern art pieces and exhibits, thus I learned art appreciation from Ginger. Being exposed to the art world expanded my mind and imagination and Ginger helped promote my enjoyment of it. She treated me as an adult though we could often share a joke and laugh like children. She was so fun.
Ginger appreciated abstract art, although she said she wasn’t an artist herself. Her home on Brinkwood Road is a unique art piece in and of itself. She and Jim, but I think it was mostly Ginger, decorated it tastefully with large and small paintings, originals and prints, modern furniture, small sculptures, large-leafed green plants and cacti. Bright reds, bold blacks and bright whites. She used to rent some pieces, as I recall, from the Des Moines Art Center. Also she and another woman used to do interior design work and for a while she also ran a used high-end clothing shop.
Sandra bequeathed me and all the younger generations her Mad Magazines. Ginger shared with us ShoeBox Greeting cards that had zany characters or humorous expression in them. I remember her telling me Shut-Up jokes too. Two of my favorites were:
“Mommy, is Daddy really dead?”
Mommy: “Shut-up and keep digging.”
And,
“But Mommy, I keep going around in circles.”
Mommy: “Shut-up or I’ll nail your other foot to the floor.”
After Ginger and Jim had moved to their house on Lawnview Drive, they found an Italian restaurant in Highland Park named, “Chuck’s Pizza.” Every weekend I spent, we’d have Chuck’s Pizza and salad, Pepsi Cola from a glass bottle with ice cubes in a glass, then later popcorn and watch Perry Mason on a black and white TV. It was cool to stay at Ginger’s house. None of my friends had a ‘den’ in their house--who did? And nobody had a real drinking fountain by the back door either. The only drawback to staying at Ginger’s house was that they stayed in bed until 9:30 on weekends. I learned how to stay quiet and occupied myself until they got up by looking at engineering texts and art magazines. Not real entertaining, mind you. However, staying at Ginger’s elevated my reading skills level as well as gave me an edge in Scrabble against my peers.
Ginger played golf in the summertime and bowled in the wintertime for many years. I know she was sad not to be able to play golf as she once had. It was a big part of her life.
Ginger always called me ‘Steven,’ I was never just ‘Steve’ to her. She held me dear (as though I was her only brother) and though we spent most of our lives faraway from each other, we were often on one another’s minds. We thought we should call, but seldom followed-through, because, as we once laughed and admitted to the other, neither of us liked initiating telephone conversations.
These last years since Jim died, although I wasn’t here in the flesh, my daughter Bonny was. Just as my mother thought I was an extension of her in her beloved Minnesota, living near her brother Raymond and sister Irene, I felt Bonny was an extension of me among my Iowa family. I could not be prouder of her close relationship with Ginger. I always enjoyed learning about their activities, what they did, where they went to eat, what they ate, and ‘who went with’ as Bonny loved introducing her friends to Ginger, and they in turn, came to enjoy Ginger as well.
Ginger thoroughly enjoyed watching men’s basketball, although I don’t think she had a favorite team, that I recall the last time we talked in person. When I was in Grimes to visit her after the first of this year, she warned me she’d be watching basketball when I came to visit her. No matter. We just spent the afternoon and evening watching basketball together on the TV in her room. In this way I was able to say my goodbyes.
I’ll certainly miss her in my life.
WannaskaWriter
Comments
You may not be ambitious, but neither are you ambiguous. People know where they stand with you, which is one of the several elements of your character that I most admire.
Ignorant? Get the hayride out of here! Informationally selective? Definitely. Keen observer? Perpetually.
Thank you for the story about Raymond. I don't think that I will have any complaints about my lot for a few days - at least.
And then there's Ginger. I'm wondering if you have your picture in the cowboy outfit that you could post. Your unique flair for humor no doubt owes much to Ginger's sense of loving play - probably also your capacity for empathy comes in some part from her - and of course, your artistic proclivities.
Shut-up jokes just may become a new feature of Word-Wednesday.
Happy birthday +1 day!