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Showing posts with label Girl Scouts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Girl Scouts. Show all posts

Monday, July 2, 2018

A Brownie pin and a Brownie dress does not a Brownie make.

Aunt Helen Lang was married to a man named Skinny and they had money.  Now this only affected me in a round about way, but 70 years later, I still think about her.  The clearest memory of her is, of course in later life, but still my childhood memories are the fondest.  She and Uncle Skinny would pop into our life on very rare occasions and there was never a heads up, just look up and there was their big shiny car and the trunk was always loaded with wonderful things for us.  I remember when I was in 7th grade and mother had her hysterectomy, Aunt Helen brought me a store bought dress.  I can close my eyes and see it now.  It was ever glaze cotton and the color was exactly the same hazel as my eyes, whatever that color is called.  It had a white collar and strings of the hazel fabric held white daisies.  Two.  One on each string.  It buttoned up the back.  I wore it until it hung in shreds.  Even then it had a use after it was worn out.  Mother cut the good parts off and tore them into strips that were put with other strips, rolled into a ball, and when enough balls were ready, she took them to the rug weaver.  Nothing went to waste at our house.

Back to Aunt Helen.  One afternoon while I was off doing something somewhere else, Aunt Helen and Uncle Skinny came to visit.  I must have been in the third grade at the time.  I missed them completely, but Aunt Helen did not forget me just because I was not there.  She brought me a Brownie dress with a Brownie beanie.  If you do not know, the Brownie group was for the younger kids that preceded going into girl scouts, which was my fondest dream.  She also provided the brown shoes and the money for registration where I received my golden Brownie pin!  I could see vista's opening onto a wonderful life as a Brownie and later as a girl scout.  The world was my oyster!  But alas, a nine year old girls dreams die very easily in the dust of Strong Street in 1950.

Oh, I went to the first meeting and paid my nickle dues.  I got my gold brownie pin, which was worn upside down until I fulfilled a list of things to do.  That list was never finished.  As a matter of fact, it was never started.  Everything on that list required an adult to help and guide me through the process.  Mother was off cleaning houses to put food on the table and Dad was very busy shuffling dominoes at the local pub.  My oldest sister who was 12 or 13 at the time was busy being a slut and "getting herself pregnant" by a 27 year old man.  (In this day and age he would have been thrown so far into prison he would never have seen the light of day, but that was then and what was acceptable then was that he worked and would take care of her.)  And there my resources ended.  So that went by the wayside.  The brown dress stayed in a drawer with the beanie and the gold pin.  I assume at some point it ended up in one of the rugs.

My oldest sister married the man and in due time,  a baby girl arrived.  After a few years she became pregnant again and I was called upon to stay with her while her husband worked since she was in a lot of pain and had a 4 year old daughter that needed care.  So, as the day progressed and she was in more pain I really began to get nervous.  When she came out of the bathroom clutching the door jam to announce, "The baby is coming!"  I learned where babies came from and it was not the stork, like I had been told.  I was ripped into the birds and the bees business very rudely.  I grabbed Mary and ran next door to the preachers house.  His wife (luckily) was a nurse, but (unluckily ) she was not home.  He called somebody to come and I ran home to my little house on Strong Street with Mary in my arms.  Sadly, the baby was born dead and I would carry the guilt of not knowing what to do all my life.  Common sense tells me this is wrong, but we are all humans and we all fail and learn to live with those failures.

I was in an antique store in the Junction a couple years ago and found a Brownie pin.  I looked at the little dancing elf, or whatever it is and bought the pin.  It is up in the cupboard along with other worthless treasures that some how seem to form my life.  They all seem to connect together to pull me back into myself.  I know my life is made up of the good times and the bad times and it sometimes makes me very sad.  The things I have done and the places I have gone are all in my mind some where and last night I lay in my bed and thinking about things I came to the realization, that one day, I will just die. When that happens, all my memories will have been for naught.  When that happens and people learn of my demise, they will say "Oh, I knew her!"  

Which brings me to the point I want to make.  No, you do not know me.  You know OF me.  You know who I let you see.  We are all that way.  I look at you and I see the face you present, but I do not know what you are thinking.  I do not know what you are feeling.  People say I am blunt.  Frank.  I tell it like it is.   Am I?  But do I?  Mother always said, as we get older we begin to face our own mortality and I am sure Mother was right.

But I want to put Aunt Helen to rest here before I leave.  Mother and Aunt Helen remained friends all of their lives.  When I went home to visit, Aunt Helen always came to see me or I went to see her, but mostly she came to mom's house.  When mother lived in the apartment on 15th Circle, Aunt Helen would get confused as to which one to go to and she had a big problem with curbs, in that she had a hard time staying between them!  She would see me standing in the parking lot she was supposed to be in and here she would come in that big Lincoln!  She would park taking up several spots and leap out of the car with her wig askew waving a bag of Werther's Originals that she had brought for mother.  She was 90+ the last time I saw her.

Aunt Helen has been gone for many years, but I still pick up a bag of Werther's every now and then just to take that walk down memory lane.  It works every time.  I can see her in my mind right now as clear as day.  I do not remember Uncle Skinny, but I do remember my precious Aunt Helen and her heart of gold and her hopes for a skinny little girl on Strong Street.  I just want to say, "Hang on Aunt Helen!  I will make it up there yet!"



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