The pin on the floor

My mother loved to sew, and made me several things. I can't remember any, except that when she was making a coat, I had a conversation with her about interlinings and interfacings because I didn't know the difference, and that means that I knew about some of those things before.

I remember her making that coat, cutting parts of it out. She used the dining room floor in front of the door to the kitchen. The carpet she was cutting on had a very short nap. It was dark blue with a boxy pattern. And the trouble was that she had trouble finding all the pins that were on it.

I never saw my father be angry about pins on the floor, but it was obviously a pet peeve of his: my mother mentioned it several times: "Your father does not like pins on the floor." I liked to pin things together, and she was always warning me not to leave pins on the floor when I was done. I was about 3 at the time, and I understood, though I probably needed reminders.

Mostly at that stage, though, my father wasn't home - he was helping tie up World War 2. So all of this was somewhat of a hypothetical concern.

But then he did come home. By then my sister had been born. Life got down to us all adapting to each other in our new configurations, when I found myself contemplating a very naughty act with a pin.

I might have been unhappy with my father at this stage, because when I saw a pin, perhaps on a bedside table, in my parents' bedroom, I remembered how he didn't like pins on the floor. That thought coupled with a fairly good sized rubber band at hand got my evil little mind working overtime. I remember contemplating the pros and cons for a bit. No one else was in the bedroom...

So I took the pin and stuck it into the rubber band from the inside out, so the point came out through the outside a bit. Then I put it on the carpet on the floor on my father's side of the bed, not too close, maybe a couple of feet away. And then I left.

That evening my father called my name. He and my mother were standing in their room looking at something on the floor. He pointed then to the pin-infested rubber band (just where I had left it) and asked how it got there. I said I didn't know. He pressed me on the point. I said that Debby might have done it. (This was my sister, now about 9 months old or so.) He pointed out that she was a bit too young. He kept pressing and I kept denying.

In the end I think he warned me not to put pins on the floor. Nothing came of it. Except a very long-term memory.

Hehe.

Home for lunch

One of my favorite memories of my mother was having lunch with her at home on school days. I would ride my bike the half-mile or so from the school, down through the playground, through the woods, along the road and the other road, then up the big hill and around the corner into our yard.

My mother would have chicken noodle soup or cream of chicken waiting for me, and maybe a sandwich. We would sit at our small kitchen table and talk. Then I'd hop on my bike and sail down the hill, making it almost over tiny wooden bridge in the woods before having to pedal.

It was a special time for me, no brother and sister interrupting. The only times I couldn't go home for lunch were if the weather were seriously bad or if my mother had to sub at the high school. But she wasn't subbing much yet and so it was pretty much my spring and fall routine to go home for lunch.

I expected my kids would be able to come home, too, but the rules had changed and they had to stay at school. And later, we lived too far away for them to come home.

All my friends ate at school. I was one of few who went home at lunchtime in any grade. It is a happy memory that my mother not only wanted me to come home but took time out to make my lunchtime companionable. I'm sure it required adjusting her volunteer schedule or interrupting her work, but I never heard a complaint, or a request that I stay at school, unless she had an outright conflict that she couldn't resolve.

I got back to school early enough to play marbles on the playground for a few minutes, but going home meant not playing baseball during recess. It was still worth every minute.

Nana and computers

Nana loved the potential of computers! Even before we had an internet connection, back in 1981, she loved to write letters on it. She was always asking questions about its capability. Her blindness that took over her life to some degree, in 1988, put an end to her interest in it, or her thoughts that she might still be able to use it. But her curious mind and a computer were a perfect match.

She had 2 sisters...

Ruth had two sisters, Gertrude and Dorothy. Gert was 2 yrs 3 mos, Dot nearly 5 years younger. Gertrude went to nursing school and worked the night shift as a nurse while raising a large family, while Dot went to St Joseph's college in West Hartford, had 2 children, and ended up doing testing for the Hartford Public Schools.

There were two other babies, a boy and a girl, but they didn't survive being newborns. William Edward Horan died at 2 days, while Teresa Horan died at 5 minutes of age. She was born 14 months after William, and 2 months early. Her mother had suffered a stroke 5 or 6 weeks before her birth, and spent the next year unable to get out of bed.

So the three little girls had to fend for themselves, with the help of their Aunt Mar. But that's a different story.

Sneakers

My mother was not allowed to wear sneakers when she was a child. Poor kids did that, and her mother wouldn't let her. It was hard for her to adapt to our wearing them, and for the first many years of my life I wore high brown shoes with a good arch support. Even when money was tight she bought us 'good' shoes.

My mom

My first emergent memories of earthly life were of being with my mother in our sunny home, in the living room, looking at a photo of my father, a lieutenant in the Army. It was wartime and he was gone, and she was keeping his memory alive. She had designed the house, and they had built it and then gone about having a child. By the time I was born, America was in the war. They hadn't changed their plans, even after Pearl Harbor, so I was born on schedule. But by the time I was 5 months old, my father was gone and I knew him best by looking at that photo.

I knew the shiny stripe on his hat meant he was a lieutenant. My mother told me things in regular language, not baby talk, and I she meant she was proud of him. Later she changed the photo so that he could be seen with the new decoration on his cap, two bars. He was now a captain. I remember her telling me about that. I was not quite 2 1/2.

When my father was called to active duty, he was a teacher of English at Wethersfield High School. My mother took over his job, and I went to Mrs MacBeth across the street.

So the war made big changes in our family. It changed everything, my mother admitted years later. For me, it meant happy days with just the two of us. And they weren't quite that happy ever again.