It was all woman's work!

 I have been over the hill and on the downward slide for many years now and I have learned many things.  The first lesson as a bride at the tender age of 19 was that a woman's job was cooking, cleaning, and figuring out how to budget with no money, because the paycheck never made it past the bar where it was cashed. My first husband was a tree trimmer and as such there were no fringe benefits and of course no insurance of any kind.  No job security because it was also his job to knock on doors and convince the homeowner that their trees needed his expert care and their car payment could wait.  He was good at his job!

It was also known that as "man of the house" he was the only one who knew what the finances were and he would take me to the grocery store and pay for what he thought we needed to survive. This same thought process carried over into the bedroom where birth control was unheard of because after all, his mom had 12 babies.  OK.  Enough said about that!

We were married for 10 years and the first two years were spent with him pointing out to me that I was barren and he wanted a baby.  That was all he wanted, a baby.  Well, actually a son.  He wanted a son.  I was sent to every doctor who had room for another patient and came home with the same verdict, "No reason why you can not get pregnant."  One doctor even hinted that perhaps my husband was sterile and he would like to test his sperm.  That went over like a proverbial "turd in a punch bowl.   So, I gave up.  Bad mistake!  I immediately got pregnant!

 Nine months later I had a daughter.  He had clearly told me he wanted a son and I had ignored him!  Ticked him off royally.  Now, you should know that back in those days, men were not allowed in the delivery room so the best thing to do was drop the old gal off at the front door of the hospital and then call later to see if the wife was still alive and had she had that kid yet.  And most importantly, when could I come home as there were chores needing my attention!  So much for love.

A year and a half later I had a daughter.  

A year  and one month later I had a daughter.

11 months later he finally got a son.  HE.  Not me.  HIM.  Finally I had gotten it through my thick head that he wanted a son.  Silly me!

If I had thought that having a son gave me any status in his eyes, you are sadly mistaken.  Having a son was not all it was cracked up to be because the little boy needed diapers changed and he needed fed with a tiny spoon and a bath and all that was in addition to the needs of the first 3 girls.  So the care of 4 children the oldest of which was 5 years old fell squarely on my shoulders.  He was an "old school" father and his dad never touched him, so he never touched his kids.  I have one picture of him holding Debbie and talk about a man looking out of place!

The marriage survived for ten years total.  There was one more baby, another girl.  Upon divorcing, I got the kids.  He did not pay child support because his reasoning mind said "You have the kids.  I have nothing.  Why should I pay you?  You should pay me!"  And in my co-dependent mind, that all made sense.

Sadly, death called him early.  He was only 50 years old.  I left Kansas in 1973 and have been in Colorado now for over 50 years.  This is my home.  I think sometimes about moving back.  Where is "back"?  Would it be Nickerson where I grew up?  Hutchinson where most of my kids were born?  Or Garden City where they were toddlers and we lived in furnished apartments and drove a car we bought for $35 off a car lot on a side street? 

I look out every morning through my east facing window and think about Kansas.  I see the sun shining brightly and think of "home."  And then in the evening I see the same sun setting across the Rocky Mountains and I smile.  This is home.  This has been home for 50 years and I am sure when God reaches down and pulls the curtain closed on my life he will lift me up, up, up and I will look down at the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and I will know where my home was, is and will forever be!

Always know that when God closes a door, he opens a window!

Peace....

OMG! The great Ski King is here!

I recently came across a site on facebook called Kansas Old and Interesting Places.  Being from Kansas I find the history fascinating.  So I joined the group.  While perusing last night on the site, I came across a picture of a big white house located in Toronto.  I started thinking about when Duane and I were first married, before we had any kids and I remembered that we had lived in Toronto for a few weeks.  History lesson coming up here.

I was 19 and Duane was 21 when we married.  He and 2 of his brothers were in the business of trimming trees.  Now in this day and age they would be respectable and probably have an office some where, but back in those days, the car and the pickup were the office, warehouse, job site, and bookkeeping.  The first year we were married we lived in 14 different cities around the state.  We would locate to a town, sell our service, and when all the trees were trimmed we would move on to greener pastures.  It was honest work and Duane was a very good tree trimmer.  It kind of sucked not to have any real roots, but we were in love.  What more can I say?

Back to Toronto.  We pulled into Toronto and immediately went fishing.  First we rented a room at the local hotel.  It had a big room with a couch and bed and a stove to cook on in the other room.  Arrangements were made with the owners that I would clean the halls and the bathroom in lieu of the $5 a week rent.  I would go to the local grocery and purchase food for the day, cook it and have supper ready when Duane and the brothers came home.  Now, suffice it to say, that one of the prerequisites of being a tree trimmer was you must be a good beer drinker.  The day always ended up in the bar.  I did not drink at the time, nor do I now, but he and his brothers drank enough for me.

I remember this song, (click on the blue letters to open the link. Ski King ) Seems this happened either at Toronto Lake or the Fall River Reservoir.

Toronto Lake was some good fishing, for sure.  On one day I was instructed to cook up a pot of beans and the boys would bring home some corn.  Sounded good to me, so I cooked the beans and later that evening they came in with a peck or so of corn.  Well, unbeknownst to this ignorant little girl from the big city, it was field corn.  So I shucked a few ears and threw them in the bean pot.  After due time Duane pronounced it ready.  Hmmm.  That stuff was very hard.  So we cooked it longer.  It got harder.  We cut it off the cob and boiled it some more.  Now let this be a lesson to all of you, field corn is a whole different ball game then the sweet corn I was used to.  For our supper we ate beans and corn, but the corn was picked out and tossed in the trash.

To end this tale of woe, Yates Center was nearby and I had not been feeling well.  Duane took me to the doctor, dropped me off and went to the pool hall.  The doctor examined me and pronounced that I was pregnant.  OMG!  Where is the hospital where I will have the baby?  He looked at me like I may have just fell off the turnip truck and said "Around these parts folks has their babies to home."

And that ended our life in Toronto.  I am a city girl at heart and there was no way in hell I was going to have my baby "to home."  Hutchinson would become my home for the duration of my pregnancy.  I had a mother there and she had running water and all that stuff!

But I do have my memories of Ski King and I have yet to figure out how all this connects.  If you do, please share with me!

Dental hygiene and a trip back in time!

So Monday I went to get my teeth cleaned.  It is a torture I endure with amazing regularity.  I have a new teeth cleaning lady so we visited a minute.  Now you should know she is a sweet young thing and has no idea what the good old days were really like.  I told her how I had been wearing tri-focal glasses for most of my adult life, but since I quit smoking I no longer need glasses for anything except to read fine print.  She was amazed as most people are.  She asked when I started smoking and I told her that I had started at the tender age of 16, so it was a habit I had for most of my life and I had been devoted to the art of blowing smoke rings and all kinds of stuff.   I told her that I had probably been smoking in the delivery room when I had my first baby.  She of course laughed because everybody knows you can not smoke in the hospital.

Ah!  but there had been a time when you  could.   I recall that in the hospital in the top drawer of the little dresser by your bed was an ashtray and a book of matches.  We had to furnish our own smokes and after delivering a baby one really wanted a cigarette.  The nurse would bring the tiny little baby in all wrapped up and she would hand the baby to me, the new mother who lay there with a cigarette in my fingers and the head of the bed raised for comfort.  Nurses were very concerned about the newborn and always cautioned the mother to "Try not to drop hot ashes on the baby."

I know there are you people out there who are aghast at this and think it is something I made up, but as God is my witness, this is true.  We smoked every where back in the day.  Doctors endorsed cigarettes and said "Throat hot?  Smoke Kools".  If we were in a room all fogged up with cigarette smoke and someone complained, it was there job to relocate, not ours.  We were smokers and we ruled the world.  Cars came with a cigarette lighter and an ashtray.  I noticed that is not happening any more either.  When I started smoking a pack cost 14 cents.  When I quit a pack cost $3.00 if you bought them by the carton.  Today they are $5.00.

I also told her that diapers have not always been disposable.  Everyone of my kids had thier tender little fanny diapered with a cloth diaper that was washed in Ivory Snow because it was " 99.44% pure.  It Floats!"  Course many years later I discovered that this was all a myth.  It floated because the man in charge of stirring it until it "traced" had left the mixer on and left the soap and gone to lunch and the soap had started the "trace" and air was incorporated into the soap and that was why it floated.!"

Diapers came in two styles.  The first was about 30" long and 12" wide.  These were folded in half and then in half again so you ended up with a diaper 7 1/2" wide and 12" long.  The other style was square and you folded it so it ended up triangular.   Men always liked cloth diapers because when the last baby was through with the diapers he had a barrel full of the "best damn grease rags" in the world.  Men never ever under any conditions ever touched a diaper before it became a grease rag.  Men just did not do that sort of thing.  That was women's work.

So now we are living in a world, where children must never ever under any conditions ever be exposed to smoke and the days of smoking any where near any place a hospital might be located is banned.  It is banned almost every where except in your home and then it is forbidden if you have a child.  Oh, and no smoking in your car if there is a baby in it and if no baby and you smoke you have to keep your windows rolled up so the only one you are choking to death is you.

Men change diapers now.  They cook and clean and do all kinds of womany things.  Hell, I think they even use deodorant!  I could be wrong, but I think so.

So, kiddies, our world is changing and we better go with the flow.  I am thinking that if it keeps changing as fast as it did the last 50 years, I may just let loose of my tentitive grip on reality and spin off into space.
But for now, I am off to bed to dream of another time and place where there were unicorns and sugar plum fairies!

Five words no mother wants to hear, ever.

Always in my mind, the 5 words I never wanted to hear were, "There has been an accident."  I heard them years ago when I lost my brother.  And then I heard them yesterday.  They held the same paralyzing fear yesterday as they did back in 1965.  Only this time I heard them through my mother's ears and there were other words, motorcycle, son, ambulance.  Each word was tearing me apart and I had to pull into a parking lot to make sense of them.

Lou, this is Carolyn and I was on my way to town and there has been an accident.  Bret, Amanda, motorcycle, Cruiser, ......."I need to know which hospital you want him transported to.  They will want to know."  A million questions rushed through my mind, but I asked none.  She had no answers, so it was not fair to ask.  My first instinct was to race to Santa Fe Drive to the scene, but a cooler head prevailed.  I would go to the hospital and wait.  So I did.  I left my car with the valet and went immediately to the ER.  No ambulance yet.

I would call my minister.  Phone book was in the car.  So I called the church.  Answering machine.  In case of emergency call.....my pen was in the car.  Why is it that we delude ourselves into believing we are organized right up until the moment when we need to lay our hands on information and we find we are like Babes in the woods.  I knew I should call some one, but I did not know who.  Oh, wait.  He has sisters, I have kids!  But what would I tell them?  What did I know?  Motorcycle, son, ambulance.

So, Lou Mercer, the woman with so many friends stood in an empty emergency room staring out a window all by herself, the loneliest woman in the world.  And like so many mothers before me I turned to the one person who could and would listen.  I had never faced anything like this with any of my children before, but yesterday I did and yesterday I remembered why I had spent my whole life clinging to this man.  So I called on him,  "Oh, God!  I know I am always wanting something, but this time I really, really need you to do this for me.  Make it right.  Make this go away and if you choose not to do that then give me the strength to deal with what I must."  I am sure there was a lot more said and I bet I made promises, but God knows me pretty good.  We have been there before and while some of his greatest gifts were unanswered prayers, I knew in the depths of my being that he would answer this one.

It was orchestrated from the beginning when a friend came upon the accident and she chose to call me instead of letting the sheriff call, and she was allowed to call.  Things always come easier when delivered by a friend.  I want to thank her for doing me that favor.  I will not use her last name, but she know who she is and she also knows that I loved her when she was my daughter in law and I love her today, because she is a beautiful person.

So, as you have guessed by now, little Bret is alright.  He is alright because all the things that usually happened did not.  The speed limit there where this happened is 50MPH but it was moving slow.  Amanda saw a wreck ahead so she slowed down and changed lanes.  Bret passed her and then he saw the accident so he cut in front of her and slowed.  Some one ahead hit the brakes, Bret hit his brakes and Amanda hit hers.  She hit the back of the bike which shot out from under Bret.  All speeds were reduced or the boy on the bike would not be here today.

Later Bret was recounting the accident and he said " I seen Amanda coming behind me and I knew she was going to hit me, but I had to brake."  I asked him, "Did you at that point in time wish you might have been a little nicer to her?"  His answer was, "Oh, yeah!"

So today we are getting through the "what if " phase of this.  Will he ride his bike again?  Sure!  Will he wear a helmet next time?  No!  I never wore one.  It restricted my vision and my hearing.  On long trips I guess they are all right.  Will Amanda drive again.  Sure!  I hauled her to work today, but that is not going to happen again.  Things happen.  Life goes on.  What will I do different?  Keep a phone list in my purse or make sure all the important numbers are in my phone.  But the most important number is burned in my brain and that is the hot line to Heaven.  And the best part is that no matter where I am, it is still a local call!