Taking Down a Tree

Last fall, I noticed that the ash tree in my south yard was dying out at the crown on down.  I should have seen it coming.  Ash trees all over the state are dying due to the Emerald Ash Borer (insect) infestation.  The tree was alive last season before it showed signs of death by bug.  I decided to see how it would be in the spring.

Well, now it is spring...and the tree is gone.  There are a precious few tiny sprigs of green on it, but it is way past any hope of saving.  It is a mature tree...a big tree...and I will miss it.  But now I am challenged to have a funeral.

I have calls in to several places in order to get estimates to take that big boy down.  The Town of Plainfield tells me that I do not need a permit to have it removed...so now I am just looking for the cheapest estimate.  I want the tree down, wood removed, and stump ground...all in one day.  Would be nice if I could get it done for $600 or less.  Care to guess how that will go??  

Wish me luck!

Heaven called

I sent this to Reader's Digest for their 100-word personal stories.  Do you have a clue how hard it is to tell a simple story in only 100 words??  I have no hope that it will be published but thought it was worth a try:

After an ugly divorce, I was feeling lost and alone.  I lived in Indiana; my father was sick in Illinois. I had a solo in an Easter cantata but suffered because there could be no family in the audience to hear my song.
After the first performance, I got the dreaded phone call from my sister: our father had died. Could I still sing with this grief on my heart?
The next evening, I told one performer that my father died. She said, "Oh, how nice!"  (Whaaat??) Then she continued, "Last night, your father couldn't hear you sing. Tonight, he can!"
It was my best performance ever.

Indiana Politics

It's no secret that I love Indiana but hate the politics in this state that has been my home since 1988. Why am I still here?  I'm not sure.  I have always been too trusting, believing in the underdog, in second chances, and in redemption.  I believe in the truth as the only way for people to make their life's decisions, yet I have been surrounded by folks who either cannot or will not speak the truth due to their personal or political perceptions.  And it causes me to lose faith in mankind.

I was in Indiana when Governor Pence signed a new bill into law...the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.  It was a private signing, with only a few religious zealots in attendance.  Then I drove to Illinois to be with my daughter and family for a bunch of family events...and the Indiana "stuff" hit the fan.  In very short order, Indiana was in the national news.

By way of background, let me explain that there are a growing number of Christians in this country who believe that their "rights" are being attacked by society.  (Nothing could be further from the truth.)  Still, when the Indiana legislature was thwarted by the courts to pass an amendment to the Indiana Constitution for the express purpose of forbidding same-sex marriages, this bill suddenly emerged and was pushed through quickly and without much fanfare.  The law essentially provided a legal excuse for people to deny services to those of whose lifestyles they disapprove for religious reasons.  (This is already covered in the Federal Constitution and is not needed on a state level.) Were it not for the closeness of the defeat of the old attempts to discriminate at the court level and the appearance of this new law, people might not have noticed.  As it was, the whole world was watching, and the whole world came down on Indiana!

I have read and believe that Governor Pence was advised--if not begged--by people whose jobs include promoting the state as a welcoming place to be NOT to sign that bill into law.  He ignored them in favor of his Christian contributors...then seemed totally blindsided by the backlash that hit. Indiana was suddenly deemed a redneck state that had legalized discrimination against gays (and any other minorities) for religious reasons.  It got ugly.  I will admit that I was somewhat jubilant that the man and the politics were getting the negative attention that they deserved, but it also reflected against me as a resident of the state for these many years.  Pence immediately set up a nationally televised interview about the new law, and failed miserably in his attempt to explain the unexplainable.  He made a laughing stock of us all...saying that the law was not intended to do the very thing it was designed to do!!

In short order, Pence and his cronies passed an amendment to the law, including words that made it sound like folks could not discriminate against gays or other same-sex relationships...which is against the very reason that the law came into being in the first place.  But I think the damage was already done.  In one stroke of the pen, Governor Pence did more to hurt the State of Indiana than any other governor could have done.  I won't live long enough to see this repaired.  The "brain drain" will continue.  We have some wonderful colleges in Indiana, and the graduates will move elsewhere. That's just the way it is.

Pence's defenders point to the fact that other states have the same kind of law on their books...at least now that Indiana's law has been amended...but my question is:  Why was it needed in the first place? If you don't like same-sex marriage, don't marry someone of your sex.  If you believe that homosexuality rubs off from contact with gays, stay away from them (although I don't think that anyone fears the same in reverse).  I am a Christian.  I follow Christ.  The Master tells me that I must love my neighbor...not judge anyone...pray in secret...repent of my sins for forgiveness...and love God with my heart, soul, and mind.  I try.

So...what's in it for you?  Do you choose to judge and hate and rant against society for robbing you of freedoms you've always had?  Indiana--where do you stand??    

A-Mazing

This weekend, fueled by the ugly notion that I can do almost nothing by myself, I fell into a blue funk that seemed to seal my fate.  Why bother to try?  I can't get enough done on a daily basis to actually feel good about how I live.  Why try?  Screw it!  This is not a good thing.

I've always been an independent person disguised as someone who wished she'd find someone who'd take care of her.  I never did.  By design or accident, I always ended up being the caregiver.  I prided myself on being able to get things done...able to work circles around folks much younger...throwing myself bodily into projects that gave me heroic feelings and pride.  And then old age hit.  I no longer can do things that used to be so easy.  And it hurts.

At issue was the fact that my lawn was growing at an alarming rate.  My helper has moved on to other endeavors to earn money, and I don't blame him, but it left me wondering what to do.  Do I try to find someone else to take care of my yard?  What about the inside chores that he always helped me with?  Always the selfish "what's in this for me" thing.  Worse yet, my Christmas tree was still up, with all of the boxes to stash things in the minibarn, and no hope of getting it all put away.  And then, seemingly out of nowhere, my helper showed up.  It took his entire afternoon, but he got the lawn mowed and trimmed, then helped take down the Christmas crap...vacuumed the living room floor and hallway, hauled out some other things, installed an under-counter light that I purchased to replace one that just wasn't cutting it anymore, and left me feeling a whole lot better about life!

Amazing!  Such small things make such big differences!

Aunt Rosie, Part Two

Having learned that my favorite aunt died last October without anyone in the family being notified, and knowing that she was interred with no ritual or ceremony whatsoever, I've decided to write her eulogy from my perspective.  I understand not wanting a big deal for her funeral, so I have asked myself a dozen times what I did think would have been the right thing to do.  She deserved to have the family gather in her honor, to eat a meal together and share our stories of Aunt Ro. Unfortunately, her son (her only child) decided that getting even with the family for his perceived slights was worth more than what his mother deserved at her passing.  Aunt Rosie was a veteran.  At the very least, she was entitled to the respect of a grateful nation at her passing.  And a eulogy.

You can't tell the players without a scorecard, yes?
My grandparents, George and Ethel Armstrong, farmers in rural Streator, IL, raised three children on the farm:
*Margaret Mary (my mother), who married Floyd Covill, and had four children: Sharon Rae (known as Shari), Barbara Lynn, Margaret Jo (me, known as Peggy), and Floyd Douglas (known as Doug).
*George Edward (called "Bud" by the family), who married Ines Salicrup out of Puerto Rico, and had two daughters:  Sally Ann, and Isabel Marie (known as Betsy).
*Rose Anne, who married Robert McPherson, and had one child: Robert Arlie (known as Sandy).

The Armstrong siblings were close.  They had their petty jealousies as all children do, but they loved each other.  The grew up during the Depression, and when they became young adults, World War II hit, and they ALL became veterans or veteran dependents.  The family sense of humor was something that I cherished as a kid.  When the aunt and/or uncle were around, there were happy times.  Laughter and love abounded.  I loved it!

Aunt Rosie joined the Coast Guard.  I'm not sure of the timeline, but she was also engaged to marry a soldier who was killed in action during the war.  I'm sure that fractured her.  Then the family homestead burned to the ground...and that affected everyone.  Later, she married Uncle Bob...and had Sandy.  Sandy was born a scant two weeks after I was...and there were a number of times that they all lived with us.

Aunt Rosie and my mother were preggers at the same time, when the McPhersons were living at the homestead.  Aunt Rosie went into false labor, but my father took her to the hospital.  Later that same day, my mother went into real labor with me, so Dad took her, too.  As he passed the nun who sat at the reception desk after delivering two pregnant women to the hospital, Dad quipped, "How am I doing, Sister?"  Mom delivered me that day.  Aunt Rosie was sent home and delivered Sandy two weeks later...

Over many years, Aunt Rosie, Uncle Bob, and Sandy settled in San Diego, CA.  In the 70s, she was the director of the Selective Service System (the military draft) out of there.  She got put in the position of having to tell her own son that, if he didn't enlist, he would be drafted.  He enlisted in the Army...and there are many stories to be told about that, but that's not part of this story.

My dearest Aunt Rosie was a family revisionist historian.  There were many tales about Sandy and I as young'uns...most of which I don't remember.  One story entailed our having taken a case of eggs and broken them all over the family car.  It could have happened, but if it did, I was way too young to remember it.  Other stories always showed me to be the brains to Sandy's brawn...that I was always directing him to do bad things.  Okay.  If you say so.  Bottom line is that I came to accept Aunt Rosie's stories with a grain of salt because they never quite matched what I remembered, or what anyone else remembered, for that matter.

Aunt Rosie was the one who claimed that Mattoon, IL, was north of Chicago.  When a map was produced to show her that it wasn't, she said the map was wrong!

Aunt Rosie was the one who challenged the use of the word "whom" in a game of Scrabble.  She said, "What's this word 'whahm'?  I've never heard of it!"

That was my Aunt Rosie!  Stubborn?  You'd better believe it!  Cross her once and you were done for life with her, her husband, and her son!  And that's how she left this life.  Her husband and her son both had to have their villains...and so did Aunt Rosie.  I decided in my old age that I didn't want to be on the "outs" due to misunderstandings that happened over 25 years go...so I started calling her. At one point, I said that I wanted to stay in touch.  She said she was okay with that but that she wasn't sure Sandy ever would be.

So what happened 25 years ago?  First, some background:
Back in the early 1980s, when my parents retired to the family farm, Aunt Rosie and Uncle Bob retired from their jobs in San Diego.  Uncle Bob had had a stroke that affected his emotions.  He was already a handful, so she needed to be near family as much as they needed her in order to help care for their father (my grandfather).  They sold their long-time home in SD and bought a fixer-upper farmhouse on some acreage near Rutland, IL, a scant 25 miles away from the homestead.  The night my grandfather died, Aunt Rosie and my mother were together and arrived at the hospital together. Then, when my mother died unexpectedly, she was at the hospital to be with Dad even before I could get there.  When my father fell and shattered his hip just five months later, he crawled to the phone and called Aunt Rosie who then called the ambulance for him and went with him to the hospital.  In Mom's absence, Aunt Rosie and I talked endlessly by phone at least once a week.  When I had to move to Indiana for my then-husband's job in 1988, Aunt Rosie was there to help.  The following spring, Aunt Rosie, my daughter, and I took a trip to D.C. to visit one of the Armstrong cousins and see the sights...and then, when my husband left our marriage and I was forced to move again, all of the McPhersons came to help with the move.  (Uncle Bob was still living then.  Ever the vindictive prankster, he wanted to put marbles in the gas tank of Joe's lawn mower and a pin-hole in his water bed.  I had to tell him that we weren't going to do that...even though Joe himself had booby-trapped a number of my belongings!)  In short, we were close.  I accepted Aunt Rosie for the way she was. And what she was, was family.

My father, living on the family homestead farm, always left the house open.  His logic was that thieves could easily get into the house, and he would rather deal with things that were stolen than have to fix a locked door that was broken in a theft attempt.  What he hadn't counted on was that everyone else in the family still considered it the homestead rather than his residence.  There were a few times that he would come home from town to discover that things that had been promised to other family members after his demise started to disappear.  Aunt Rosie had come in and removed them, without his knowledge or permission.  (I know my dad.  If she had asked, he would have had no problem with giving up the possessions...but he wasn't asked or told.)  That started a bit of a rift between Dad and Aunt Rosie.  Dad pushed back...and rightly so.

And then the letters started.  Over a period of a few months, Dad received probably five anonymous hand-written letters, postmarked from Rutland, IL.  They were hateful, rambling missives, poorly written, and not in Aunt Rosie's hand or grammar.  The letters called my father a joke, the town drunk, a betrayer of family who did not deserve whatever the writer perceived was the motivation for the letters.  Over time, those of us who read them and thought about it determined that Aunt Rosie probably wasn't the writer...but that they were not out of character for the demented Uncle Bob...or son, Sandy.  And, because there was no proof nor anything to be done, nothing was said to Aunt Rosie or the rest of the McPhersons about it.  The letters had stopped.  I knew that any mention of it would have merely ignited a McPherson firestorm that no one in the family needed.  We let it go.

It's all a little more complicated than what I am telling...involving the other Armstrong sibling (who was not well and was upset about the family rift).  In any case, silly me, in one long-winded phone conversation with Aunt Ro, the subject of the letters came up.  She had not known about them.  I mentioned, off-handedly, that we had just figured Uncle Bob had written them.  Aunt Ro blew up!  She denied any responsibility, then ended with, "Why didn't you tell me??  I could have gotten it stopped!!"  (That spoke volumes to me.)  I said, "I've never said anything because of just this sort of reaction.  I knew you would get angry, and it wasn't that important."  Then, suddenly, Uncle Bob was by her side, feeling unjustly accused (that he couldn't know about because he wasn't part of the conversation, unless he was the culprit), but was having a "spell".  He was dramatically going to faint or something...so Aunt Rosie said, "I have to go take care of Bob."  Click.  And that was the end of it. The end of the phone calls, Christmas cards, birthday cards, and anything else that spelled f-a-m-i-l-y. I became the villain, never to be cared for again.

My sister and I took the bull by the horns a few years ago and went to visit Aunt Rosie and Sandy.  (Uncle Bob had long since died.)  They also showed up, unexpectedly, at my sister and bro-in-law's 50th anniversary party.  Thereafter, I decided to start calling to talk about family things.  (Aunt Rosie was the only one left to tap into on that stuff.)  At the end of my first brave call, I told her that I would like to stay in touch.  She said she was okay with that but didn't think that her son would ever be.  Huh?  I never did anything to Sandy!  This is just part of the culture of having villains.  In any case, I called Aunt Ro probably five times in the last two years...my mother's last remaining relative, and my beloved aunt.  The last time I talked to her was probably six months ago.  She sounded good and didn't complain.  She was 90 then.

And the rest is history.  So here is my eulogy:
Rose Anne Armstrong McPherson was born into a well-respected farm family near Streator, IL, who answered the call of her country during war time with the Coast Guard, and never left the hearts of those who loved her.  Stubborn?  Yes, she was.  Giving?  Yes, she was.  Caring?  Yes, she was as long as you were doing things her way.  She was part of the key to my happy childhood.  Rosie, please accept the thanks of a grateful nation for your service, and the love of your blood relatives whose connection to you nothing can take away.  Rest in peace in the bosom of the family that has gone before you.  I love you, dearest aunt.  You were special to me.

The Russkis

On March 19th--a Thursday--my son-in-law's parents were scheduled to arrive from Russia for good. I drove up on the previous Tuesday to help with things--mostly to pack my granddaughter for a Virginia/Pennsylvania/DC trip that would start in the wee hours of the morning just after the Russian grandparents arrived, and help prepare a meal and minor celebration for Luda and Sergei.  Busy, busy, busy!

Russia is nine hours away in time zones, but about 32 hours away in travel time.  Luda and Sergei left everything except very precious possessions behind to come and live with their son and family.  When they hit the States, we were ready for them!  I had fixed a stroganoff, if they were hungry.  Meg had prepared a VERY nice banner that said, "Welcome Home Luda and Sergei" on it, with crossed Russian and US flags in the middle.  Denis hung that over the garage door.  We had little American flags to give them, along with flowers for Mama Luda at the airport...and, of course, everyone greeted them with open arms when they arrived in the drive!

After "the Russians" got a tour of their new digs, we had a celebratory slush drink (bourbon and tea with orange juice and lemonade), and generally babbled about things.  I think L and S were particularly impressed with the size of their room...and the rest of the house.  For a couple of days, everyone was catching up on sleep and expectations, etc.  It went well.

Then things went south a bit.  They want a garden and have been promised a garden, but they don't seem to understand that there are some standards in those environs (no one else has a vegetable garden), and the shorter growing season up there (two miles south of the Wisconsin border) does not allow for planting so soon.  They want to make a garden NOW.  Megan got her back up.  Luda and Sergei felt rejected....and all because of expectations.  Denis, God bless him, really just wants things to happen slower.  He is such a champion of patience but tries to be all things to all people, to his own denigration.

Truth be known, Megan and Denis are blessed to have Luda and Sergei there, no matter what.  Luda is a working whirlwind.  She took control of the dishes and cooking early on...and Sergei is a working fool, as well.  Relax, I tell them!  I would kill to have someone take over like that!  I don't think anyone's ox has been gored.  Everything should settle down, in time.

I love Luda and Sergei.  They aren't my relatives but I do connect with them.  In the end, I hope they are happy there.  Some ugly words were spoken earlier.  It is my dream that it will all even out!

Aunt Rosie

I've just returned from an almost-month long trip visiting with my daughter and her now-extended family.  Lots of tales to tell, but this is the most pressing one.

My daughter Megan is in possession of a smart phone that does everything but brush her teeth for her...and she is skilled at using it.  In mere seconds, she can find information that would take me much longer.  If she and the phone are present, I don't even try for myself because I know she can do it faster.

One day, Meg and I were sitting at the dining room table talking about some topic or other, and the subject of Aunt Rosie came up.  Aunt Rosie is the only remaining relative of my parents' generation--my mother's sister.  I made the offhand comment that my sister had suggested that Aunt Rosie's only child, a son called "Sandy" in the family because of the color of his hair at birth, likely wouldn't even tell us if she died, due to his perception of mistreatment by family members.  (Me, mostly.)  We went on to talk about other things while Meg fiddled with her phone, and suddenly, she chucked it onto the table and shrieked, "Damn!  He didn't!  What a jerk!  She died!"  Unbeknownst to me, Meg had Googled Rose Anne McPherson and came up with her obituary from the Streator, IL, newspaper. Thus it was that I learned that Aunt Rosie is no longer with us, and hadn't been since October 28th!

I wasn't the only one out of the loop.  It appears that none of her remaining relatives (nieces, in this case) were informed that she had been admitted to a nursing home and had died with only her errant son in attendance.  She was cremated and buried in a "private family burial" in our family plots. Although Aunt Rosie was a veteran, it appears that she was given no rites at all.  I would be shocked if anyone in the family on either side knew of her demise unless they read it in the local paper of Streator, IL, but no one lives where they could see that.

I have shed a tear or two.  There were problems to deal with, but I felt that I was doing my share to mend fences.  I was calling her every few months.  I thought I was doing well...with her.  Guess I hadn't reckoned with her son.  Had I known that A. Rosie was in a nursing home, I would have driven the four hours to see her at least once.  The last time I talked to her on the phone was maybe six months ago.  When I asked how she was, she said "As well as any almost-91-year-old person can be." She sounded just like my normal Aunt Rosie.  My sister sent her a birthday card early in March.  She had already passed by then, but Sandy didn't bother to inform Shari of that.

It's all so sad.  Sandy...if not the rest of that branch of the family...pretty much cut themselves off from everyone with their unsubstantiated perceptions of how things are/were.  Aunt Rosie deserved better.  We loved her dearly, in spite of her stubborn ways.

Rest well in the bosom of your family, Aunt Rosie.  They were waiting for you.  We here on earth weren't quite so ready...