Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
JUNE 26, 2023 – (Cont.) Gaga was quite a reader, but she kept to the genre of old-fashioned mysteries. She’d send UB on regular expeditions to the public library, and he’d go to the mystery section and pull two or three books off the shelf on each visit. Gaga’s system for avoiding repeats was to …
JUNE 25, 2023 – I never heard anyone call Gaga anything but “Gaga,” except for Mother, who called her “Mother.” The name came from my oldest sister, Kristina, or “Nina,” as we called her, because Nina called herself “Nina,” since she herself couldn’t pronounce “Kristina.” She couldn’t pronounce “grandmother” either, or any derivative thereof, so …
JUNE 24, 2023 – (Cont.) Over the years, I tried to establish the origins of Mother’s religiosity—apart from her association from early childhood with old Grace Episcopal Church in Rutherford, New Jersey. Her mother was an avowed atheist, who said of Mother and her devout faith, “She certainly never got it from me.” If Mother’s …
JUNE 23, 2023 – If church is what had connected Mother to Cyril Hanney, it was not he who connected Mother to church. As the years passed and rectors came and went, Mother became about as active at Trinity Episcopal Church as anyone could be. Once the new church—an architectural monstrosity inside and out (the …
JUNE 22, 2023 – (Cont.) Later in the summer, there was another unusual encounter with Cyril. Jenny and I had been staying up at the lake for the week with our Nilsson grandparents. Dad and one of our other sisters were scheduled to join us for the weekend. The hour grew late Friday evening, however, …
JUNE 21, 2023 – (Cont.) The next day, I remember, Cyril waxed eloquent and humorous about the notion of reading tea leaves. He claimed that he had even “gone to school” to learn the secret art of reading tea leaves, and with a hearty laugh as he drew on his pipe, he said that if …
JUNE 20, 2023 – (Cont.) For reasons I wasn’t told or didn’t understand, the Hanney’s up and moved to California when I was about seven years old. They owned an old, dark green car, small-finned car manufactured by a company that no longer existed. When moving day came, soon after the end of the school …
JUNE 19, 2023 – (Cont.) My earliest memories of the [church]—before Mother volunteered as choir director and thus, before I myself was in the choir—emerged from the first pew back from the junior choir box, my sisters on one side of me, Mother on the other. Straight ahead of us on the other side of …
JUNE 18, 2023 – I remember a day in fourth grade when our teacher went down each row of students, asking what denomination—of Christianity—each of us belonged. Hard to believe in this day in age, I know, but it happened. About two-thirds of the kids said “Lutheran” and the rest said “Catholic.” When my turn …
JUNE 17, 2023 – (Cont.) If I could laugh at Mother wearing a crash helmet at the cabin, I was wholly annoyed when trying to read in the living room up there with Mother. I don’t think I ever cleared a page without her making a random comment or asking a question about one thing …
JUNE 16, 2023 – (Cont.) While Mother asked what I’d been up to lately, I rose and approached the bench, ignoring her question, and inspected the crash helmet. “What on earth is this for?” I asked. “Have you heard about Skylab?” Mother answered. “That it’s slipping out of orbit?” “Yes,” said Mother. “They don’t know …
JUNE 15, 2023 – (Cont.) Spanning Mother’s many projects and even preceding and outlasting her piano study was her love for painting. For a time, she took oil painting lessons, and if she didn’t produce great art, she wasn’t the least bit self-conscious about letting us see it. A good number of pieces went on …
JUNE 14, 2023 – (Cont.) If for many years it played a central role in Mother’s life, the piano was rivaled—even exceeded at times—by other pursuits. One was the Junior Great Books program, of which Mother became a principal proponent and leader in the local public schools. As with everything else she tackled, Mother threw …
JUNE 13, 2023 – Mother was on the phone a lot when I was a kid. If she had a question about something—anything—or developed an urge to talk to someone outside our household, she never hesitated to pick up the phone and call away. However, she knew lots of people, and she did lots of …
JUNE 12, 2023 – (Cont.) Mother had many friends besides Crystal Ball Chase and Kay Jacobson. Friends who were kind and friendly and just as smart as Crystal Ball and Kay. Friends such as Marian Fletcher, who politically was as stridently liberal as Dad was steadfastly conservative. Even as a young kid, I was struck …
JUNE 11, 2023 – (Cont.) One day when I was in second grade, flyers were distributed as we kids stampeded out the doorway. The leaflets promoted “David Rubinoff and his Violin” in matinee and evening “concerts” the following day at the Anoka High School Auditorium. The next day happened to be a day off from …
JUNE 10, 2023 – Some of the people who visited Mother were as oddly brilliant as she was but with a severity altogether absent from Mother’s personality. Christabelle Chase, for example. Christabelle lived on the other side of town and was the wealthy widow of a newspaperman who’d once been in the running for governor. …
JUNE 9, 2023 – (Cont.) Two weekends later, Mother informed me that she had sold the canoe. I was astounded. Mother never got rid of anything. She didn’t buy that much, and she never, ever got rid of anything except newspapers, organic garbage, and some of the junk mail. Why on earth had she wanted …
JUNE 8, 2023 – (Cont.) Down by the permanent steps that led to where the dock was supposed to be installed, I turned over Mother’s light, 13-foot aluminum canoe. It had been lying upside down there for over a year. It was tied to a tree, and the rope was doubled up so many times, …
JUNE 7, 2023 – (Cont.) Mother’s virtuosity with the slide rule also made me think that I should cut her some slack. For a second, it occurred to me that her wackiness, which could embarrass me so much in public, might be related to her brilliance. A person acquainted with that brilliance but oblivious to …
JUNE 6, 2023 – (Cont.) On rainy, boring, summer days when I was a kid and after exhausting other entertainment options, I’d rummage through the drawers of the tall secretary in the living room to see if there was anything I’d missed on previous expeditions. There were the rubber stamps, the magnifying glass, the cute …
JUNE 5, 2023 – One of my earliest memories of Mother was the day when Mrs. Donaldson and another woman stopped in. I was too young to assemble all the pieces of the puzzle that arose from the commotion and very lively conversation, as they sat in our living room, bathed in sunlight, and sipped …
JUNE 4, 2023 – When you’re a kid, it’s the random, passing experience of little apparent consequence that can leave a lasting impression about a person. One such experience with Mother occurred for me on a warm, sunny, summer afternoon before I was school age. With her small-boned arms, Mother turned hard on the wheel …
JUNE 3, 2023 – When I was young, Dad called Mother “Rabbit,” a term of endearment expressed often in the kitchen while she was cooking supper and he was checking on her progress and wrapping his long arms around her in a warm embrace. But most of the time, he called her “Boots.” I was …
JUNE 2, 2023 – If I weren’t the storyteller, I wouldn’t believe this story. So far, no one who has heard it believes it, except Cliff, who has survived the most critical parts of it, and my sisters, because I’ve told them everything and they themselves have lived enough of the story to know I’m …