"Randy"

During this (and his) birthday month I've been thinking of my brother Randy, and how next year he will (God willing) meet a milestone birthday--his fiftieth. This is something we once could hardly contemplate.......

Families were larger in the sixties, and ours fell in stride. In 1964 my parents had five daughters, with another baby on the way.

Part of it was a Catholic thing, but surely anyone could understand that a little boy's entry into our realm would "mix it up" a little, and be a very welcome newcomer to our very girly household.

I was eleven years old when my brother was born, and right off I knew how momentous his coming into our world was. He was given the majestic name of "Rudolph Anthony" (after our dad and grandfather) but "Randy" came to our lips more naturally and seemed a better fit.

I wondered about my dad's inner musings about my brother. As if to keep us all equal, Dad didn't overtly express his excitement about now having a son. He was not a man who shared feelings at all. We imagined, though, that Randy's future relationship with Dad would be exclusive. In our house, they were the lone members of their special society; by virtue of our gender we just could not take part.

I think we siblings were all fine with this. We were happy for Dad's sense of completion. Dad's Mexican heritage gifted him with the trait of machismo--some of which played out in in the natural drive to carry on the family's name, and simply for the meanwhile to enjoy the camaraderie of the father and son kinship.

Randy was an "easy " baby, quiet and not problematic. But almost before we could adjust to the idea that his presence would soon "change it all up" for us, he became seriously ill. Things worsened as a few days passed, and then panic set in. At four months of age he was transported by ambulance from our local facility
to the University of California at Los Angeles hospital. There each anxiety-ridden day surged heartbreakingly into the next.

We learned only then that aside from this sudden, blindsiding health emergency, our brother had been born with Down Syndrome. The term was new to us, but we gathered quickly that this was devastation. Randy would never be "normal," and at the time it was very often suggested to parents that institutionalization was  the best course of action. Suddenly we were not just fearing Randy's death, but if he lived, what decisions would we face about his care? Would he even be in our lives?

The day came when extended family members came to our home. They came to support us, because our parents had now been told to prepare for the worst--Randy was not expected to make it through the night.
Even my mother and father came home in the late afternoon; the emotional havoc had peaked to unbearable and they chose to take some time of respite with their girls.

With sustenance in mind, the women began the assemblage of a meal. Something was needed from the store and my mother sent me into her room for her purse.

Following her command, my parent's closed bedroom door did not register with me. Usually left open, its closure now just did not sink in, and I burst in to get the purse.

Jolted is the word I think of--the physical, mental sensation of being hit with a hard sight and a hard realization---when I recall the image of our dad, at his bedside, on his knees and in posture of prayer.
I had unwittingly crashed into this most private, solemn moment of appeal to his God, and nothing I could do would take back the moment.

As I was stunned, so was he. He vaulted to his feet, shaken by the invasion to his privacy, but not in the slightest angry. Even in solitude he wore dark sunglasses to hide the wear on him from the many days of angst, and from under their glare I saw that tears had worked their way down his face. His lips trembled, and he said simply, earnestly, "Pray for your brother, honey."

With his uttering of those few words, I knew that my dad wanted my brother to live. He hadn't been on his knees suggesting to God that he (my dad) could accept God's will, come what may. He wasn't leaning toward a "way out" of this. He wasn't secretly, ashamedly harboring thoughts that Randy's death would be "for the best," as some had insinuated might be the better answer.

No--he was praying for my brother to LIVE. Not to recover and then be turned over to an institution, but to recover and COME HOME. To get well, and be a part of this family, come what may.

Somehow I knew this. Even in the sixties, when children with Down Syndrome were still horrifically referred to by a term I can't to this day utter or write, and were most often shunted off to institutions, I knew this. My dad was a prideful man who would have loved nothing better than to mold a son in his own image--but that afternoon I knew he would take Randy as he was, come what may.

The knowledge of this about my dad was golden. Like all fathers, ours was not a perfect man. He had received little molding himself; his own dad had died when he was just five years old. No other man showed up to parent him; he was raised by his mother and sisters. We girls understood this was a big void for him, but it did not always help when we suffered his less than shining moments.

With Randy we saw our dad in a new light. I do not know what promises or conversations our parents made with God or with each other about Randy. I only know that when Randy came home, he was loved and nurtured and in turn was loving and nurturing to all of us. Never rambunctious, he was always gentle and kind, thoughtful and dear. He was funny too, his constancy in good cheer giving him his own style of charisma.

The changes Randy brought to our household were not the ones we expected. They were probably better. As the years went by my parents often heard from relatives and friends about the trials they were experiencing with their growing sons. Some of these trials had life-altering, tragic consequences--and so the strangely converse comfort of knowing Randy was home safe and sound was perhaps not so strange, after all.

There's much more to Randy's story and I hope to tell more on this blog, hopefully after his milestone birthday. And even though my dad has been gone now for many years, I know today as I knew "that day" that Randy's story is in great part a happy one, because of the molding my dad gave him, "come what may."

Grandma's Hoosier Cupboard

                                                                 

Mine, when in my shop

Looks just like mine but I don't have it anymore!

A showroom-new cupboard is flawless, but it could never make me swoon the way my Grandma's Hoosier did.

Now, lest your imagination fancies you with visions of golden-aged oak, roll-top breadbox and classic built-in flour sifter, I must enlighten you to the modesty of Grandma Rosa's Hoosier. Her cupboard, in her California home in the fifties, was made from humble pine, painted creamy white.  Its essential purpose in life was to store food and kitchen items, and this it did for many years, to my never-failing (?) enchanted memory.

It was the imprint of these recollections that induced me to eventually bring such a one home for myself, decades later to our Wisconsin farmhouse.

We came upon our find in a dank shed adjacent to a rural antique store several miles from home. The shed was used for overflow of bigger items the main building could not house, with "weathering" continually seeping in at all sides, underneath and from up above.

We didn't snatch it up right away. In fact, we passed on it several times. Despite its banishment to a near-dungeon, it was a slightly bigger-ticket item, and our pocketbook was more in line with the smaller dishware in the shop.

After about a year of frequenting this shop, we at last rescued the cupboard from icy winters and sweltering summers. A little worse the wear from the elements, we scrubbed up the warped wood and gave it a fresh coat of paint, then slid it into our farmhouse kitchen.

We backed up the Hoosier against a longish wall and set our aged oak table in front, and went industriously  to work stocking it, filling it generously with jars of flour, sugar, and other staples.

I used a fine, wide drawer for rolling pins and cookie cutters and all manner of old but perfectly useful kitchen utensils. The smaller drawers were prime for dishtowels and cloths, and a deep tin-lined bin was ideal for airy bags of potato chips. Behind its sizable bottom door my bigger stockpots and gangly bake-ware found perfect housing.

I loved the look of that Hoosier in my kitchen. It was homey and functional--and put me back in time to my grandma's kitchen.

My grandma's Hoosier was recessed under overhead built-in cupboards in her narrow but generous kitchen.

It too was painted white, with no fancy adornments. Early each morning Grandma would unwrap a fresh stick of butter from her refrigerator, and set it in a butter dish on the enamel work surface of the Hoosier. Whenever we grandchildren spent the night with her, we could count on sweet butter that cut and spread easily onto our toast, or sliced cleanly to sizzle in a frying pan for our breakfast eggs.

Grandma's cupboard too was full of purpose. It sheltered her everyday dishes up top and always had a loaf of fresh bread in its cubbyhole middle. The work surface was made for putting together sandwiches, or for slathering preserves onto warm tortillas. It was also a good place for holding dishes from the front eating room as they awaited their turn at the sink.

Whenever I used my Hoosier, it never failed to spur me into further musings tied to Grandma.

My own mother would tell you that Grandma was forever stern, fault-finding and hard to know. (Perhaps this was part and parcel of many a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship.) My own personal experience told me otherwise. At Grandma's house there was always a game of Chinese Checkers ready to go, and cousins to meander her small acreage with. For me, her steady presence was unobtrusive but yet warming all at once. 

It really was Grandma's kitchen and her humble Hoosier cupboard that bespoke best the connectedness she felt with you. Her little stocked pantry filled with nurturing foods told you this. Her invitation for you to generously help yourself made her welcoming to you ever so implicit.

In time Grandma would move into a newer house in a nearby town, replete with a good plenty of built-in cupboards. She didn't take the Hoosier with her, and not too long afterward I heard the old house was being razed, as they say, to put in a parking lot. I didn't nurture impractical thoughts of tracking down that cupboard; in fact I hardly remembered it at all then.

It was really only when I saw the neglected Hoosier in the dank shed in Wisconsin that Grandma's kitchen came so alive to me again. Seeing it stirred all the old images, such that I determined images like that should transpire in our farmhouse kitchen for our own children.

And so it did. For myself, I could never go near the thing without wanting to draw up a chair and pour out a cup of fresh coffee. Sometimes I would sit to heavily lace my cup with rich cream and sugar, and slurp just a little noisily, the way Grandmas always did. A new and perfect cupboard would never incite this urge in me!

One year, I decided to move my Hoosier to a soup and sandwich shop I had opened in the small town near our home. My "kids" then had flown the nest, and it was just the thing the place needed to beckon customers over to its side, where they naturally pulled up a chair to cozily sit for a light lunch.

Their explanation as to why this was the corner most often chosen always touched on the very simple and almost universal: it reminded them of their Grandma's kitchen.

After about thirteen years, I closed that shop and made the reluctant move to sell the Hoosier. My home kitchen had been changed up so much there didn't seem a place for it anymore.  I did not resign the piece to another stretch of loneliness, however. Another couple considered it a delightful nostalgic find and told me they would be enjoying it in a little private cabin they have created away from the main house on their rural property.  They go there for peace and seclusion they say, from all the commotion that occurs even in this "quieter" neck of the rush-rush world.

An object is just an object, but is it? If the use of it traverses the generations and its very presence is evocative of the most pleasant remembrances a person could ever hope to recreate, it IS something more, isn't it?