I invite you to click on the tab “Little Girls Then and When” for interviews with generations of the little girls that I meet throughout the week. Oh, and I will be adding to my stories. You can still find the most recent story below this post.
For those of you waiting for my novel, I’m almost finished! I will attend my first writers conference this summer. The tough job of getting the right publisher will begin. The working title of my novel is A Land of Milk and Honey.
Kodak SIX_20 ‘BROWNIE’ E (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
My Best Friend-neighbor Betty, loved to take photographs. She’s the girl who lived ¼ of a mile away from my house, when I was in kindergarten. I got to walk to her house sometimes, with her mom watching from her porch, and my mom watching from mine. We played in her yard, under the clothesline at the end of the narrow sidewalk that led from her house. .That part matched my house, everything else about Betty’s house was different. Once I ran lickety-split from Betty’s house to the clothesline and landed on my foot half off and half on the sidewalk. It hurt like the dickens for over a month. Of course, I only got to go inside the house when Mom went with me and had coffee and chatted Extension Club stuff with Mrs. S.
Betty had an older sister, and an older brother, just like my Best Friend-ever, Connie; only Betty’s sister was oldest and Connie’s brother was oldest. All my brothers were Little Kids, and Loren, all by himself in the middle. I only had one big sister, Deanna and she was just a year older than me, which was next to nothing. Connie and I had lots of Little Kids in our families; Betty had nobody she could boss around and be in charge of. She was the baby.
Babies of the family are special our baby, Johnnie. Betty was nowhere near as special as Johnnie, ‘cause for one thing, she was the youngest of three, and Johnnie was the youngest of nine, which was way specialler. Plus, Johnnie almost died from getting a haircut, and from sucking on an oleo wrapper, and from breathing the smell of a hen turkey on Thanksgiving, and a bunch Continue reading
Nancy Sinatra (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Most mothers take good care of her children. Some mothers like to feed their children cookies and cakes and mashed potatoes and marshmallow sweet potatoes and all sorts of wonderful food to say “I love you.” My mom told me that she was a good cook before she had children, but she got tired of one kid or another turning up their nose and proclaiming, “I hate that,” before taking a bite, so she got sick of trying new recipes. Mom wasn’t a bad cook, she just lacked creativity. Besides, that’s not how she showed her love.
Mom showed her love by brushing my hair, and making me dresses and knitting me mittens. When I was a not so little girl, she bought me a big furry coat and some expensive boots.
I was nineteen: determined to be a new wife, ready to move to the Upper Peninsula where summer is three months of rough sledding. No matter who tried to talk me into waiting, I knew what I wanted. Continue reading
I wish my artwork was (is) this good.
When I was a little girl, I loved February: Valentine’s Day is in February. So was my birthday; that’s a story for another day.
My whole class got ready for Valentine’s Day for weeks. Everyone brought a shoebox to school, and we decorated it with crêpe paper flowers and hearts. I had lots of shoe-boxes to pick from on account of everyone getting new hard sole shoes at Baldy’s shoe store way back in September, special for school starting.
Art stuff was hard for me. I got paste all stuck in my hair and all over my clothes. I liked to taste paste, too. The smell got all up in my nose and begged my fingers to put some in my mouth. Yummy. Teacher said it was no good and would make me sick, but it never did. Not even a little bit.
Mom brought home little store-bought cards in big bags from the grocery store, and I printed MY name on the back. Then I got to choose which card went to each student in my class. I had two Bettys in my class and two Lindas. I’ve heard about kids being sore or sad that they didn’t receive a card on Valentine’s Day. I gave a card to everyone, and I got one from everyone, too. That’s just mean to leave someone out. Who got which card was the tricky part. I wanted to make sure I express my love for that certain someone in just the right way. Should Frankie’s say “Be Mine” or “Forever Yours”? And what if Frankie’s to me just said, “Friends”? What if he gave me the ‘teacher’ card that came in every box? That would be the worst ’cause that meant he never even thought about which card he gave me.
I almost flunked out of Kindergarten ’cause I went haywire on my writing. Valentine’s Day saved me. All year, up until I had to get my cards ready for the party, I wrote my name wrong. Mom talked about my printing to everyone who would listen: all my aunts, Grandma Z, and even Betty’s and Nancy’s moms.
Mom said, “Why do you write your name like you’re looking in a mirror?”
I looked at my name, clear as day, just the way it was supposed to be. What in the world was she talking about? I wrote just like everybody else.
Mom said I had to get my name right or I might not go to First Grade. She never said that to me; I just heard Continue reading
Yesterday’s Daily Prompt was to write about a place from your past or childhood, one that you’re fond of, that has been destroyed. I usually don’t respond to the Daily Prompts because I can’t think of what to write about. But this one was easy.
The only picture of my elementary school. From a newspaper clipping. I am the third from left.
My elementary school, Roger Sherman, is now a parking lot and has been for some time. It used to occupy the corner of Reef Road and the Post Road, smack dab in the center of our town, Fairfield, Connecticut. It was a red brick building with two floors above ground and one floor below. You moved up through the floors the older you got. I suppose today’s children, perhaps even my own, would think my elementary school was primitive. After all, we didn’t have an auditorium or a cafeteria. We brought lunch from home and ate in our classrooms. I remember the milkman coming to our classroom with a crate of little milk cartons and setting them on the radiator. We were given graham crackers for a snack to go along with the milk. The only problem was that by the time we were given the milk, it had sat on the radiator long enough to start melting the wax from the cartons, so we drank warm, waxy milk for snack time.
Since we had no auditorium, whenever we had assemblies, we all sat on the floor in the long, long hallway. Each floor had to take turns seeing or hearing the program. I remember the many times Officer Friendly came to talk about the dangers of blasting caps (I kept my nose to the ground for quite awhile after each talk in case a blasting cap should ever cross my path, but none ever did), and I looked forward every Christmas to seeing The Littlest Angel projected onto a screen from the reel to reel projector. Of course, if your class was at the end of the hallway, you couldn’t see very much.
Susan Okay is a writer, wife, mother, and grandmother who thinks you’re never too old until you’re dead. Her inspiration is Grandma Moses who became a successful artist in her late 70′s. If I don’t do something pretty soon, though, I’ll have to find someone older for inspiration. Find more of Susan at her blog “Coming East.”
We also didn’t have a nurse’s office or a nurse when I was going to elementary school. I remember the yearly process of standing in a line, class by class, outside the principal’s office and being marched in, one by one, to have her check our heads for lice.
October 1955. I was in second grade.
During recess the favorite pastime was to play “Crack the Whip,” a game where a long string of children holding hands, would swing the line around and around until the children at the end of the line began flying off. I should amend that to saying it was the favorite pastime for most of the children, but not for me. I was always the tail of the whip and was the first to be flung off into oblivion.
I have such fond memories of going to that school. I never remember one teacher who wasn’t kind. I loved dressing up in the pretty dresses my grandma made for me. Little girls did not go to school wearing pants in those days, though pants would have come in handy when I was playing “Crack the Whip” and landed on my butt. Though the red brick building is long gone, I still remember the echo of footsteps in its halls. No one can knock that memory down.
I was born in charge. That’s what Mom told me once after I was all grown up.
Maybe.
For sure, I can remember always being responsible for someone else. I always, always, took care of the Little Kids, and even when it was just Bonita and me, I was in charge, and I made sure she was safe and I took care of her. Even though she was only one and a half years younger than me, somehow she never seemed to catch up to me in responsibility. I rescued her from the 4-H Fair when Black-Eyes dragged her in the dirt.
I took care of other people’s kids from the time I was 10 years old. I got paid for it too, which was proof-positive I was responsible and in charge. Once I overheard Mrs. B say to Mom, “Look how she plays with the kids. She hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be a kid herself. “
I loved taking care of kids, and I vowed I would never, ever forget what it was like to be a child. How could I?
Of course, I made a lot of mistakes. I was really a kid myself. Still learning. Still sorta inside myself, and full of myself, and looking at the world from one perspective: mine.
My Pal, Frankie, the Little Kid I was most responsible for, remembers some of my mistakes. The biggest one: The Wet Pants and the Diaper. Continue reading
This Christmas season, I am rushing around to get everything done. What I couldn’t shop local or make, Amazon delivered. The Prime membership is well worth the price, for Christmas assurance alone. That said, my best-friend-down-under, Sharni at Sharnanigans and a late-in-the-season snowstorm brought back a Christmas that mortified Mom, and planted a wonderful memory for me.
For my loyal readers, yes, this is a repeat story. But wait, isn’t that true of all the best Christmas stories?
Just like any little girl, I could hardly wait for Christmas. I studied the Sears & Roebuck and Montgomery Wards catalogs daily and made up my list for Santa. The things I wanted could fill Santa’s sleigh up all by itself, so I knew only some of the gifts I asked for would arrive. I 
marked a star by the most important ones: A cowboy hat and a derringer just like Bat Masterson’s on Have Gun Will Travel.
I prayed for snow, ’cause how was Santa going to get to my house without snow? The grey clouds only spilled down raindrops and the heavy frost in the morning would never do. I knew, ’cause when I took my sled out on the frost, Mom yelled at me, “That’s going to dull the blades. Take your sled back in the garage.” I dragged my sled back over the grass and down the little sidewalk to the garage.
“Good Lord, that sets my teeth on edge,” Mom said covering up her ears. How could a sound hurt her teeth? I thought, Guess that’s what happens when you get old.
I was probably selfish praying for snow, ’cause I just wanted Santa to come. Anyways, it didn’t snow; it just got warmer, until not even frost was on the ground. Mud was everywhere.
“When I was a little girl, Grandpa told me Santa came to houses alphabetically, and our house was last because our last name was Zyber,” Mom told me. “That’s why some years there were just a couple of toys left in Santa’s bag.”
Holy Makerel! At least my last name started with C. There I was being selfish again. All that selfishness might land me on the naughty list.
In bed at night, I heard Mom’s sewing machine whirring away like mad. In the morning, everything was closed up tight, the sewing machine tucked down into the cabinet and not a thread in sight. Hmm… that was super-strange.
Christmas Eve, Deanna, Bonita, and I got the biggest knee-high stocking we could find out of the odd-sock bag and hung them over a chair. Santa came in the keyhole at our house, ’cause we didn’t have a fireplace and the chimney landed Santa in the furnace with no way out. Mom wanted a fireplace like nobody’s business, ’cause she said our house was the draftiest thing she ever lived in and when she died she was gonna be cremated ’cause then, at last, she would be warm.
Just like always, I got down on my knees and said my prayers out loud so Mom could check me. I was memorizing the Our Father ’cause I had to know that for First Confession along with all my sins; Our Fathers got assigned for penance after Confession scrubbed my soul clean. Catholics only said memorized prayers; we never made up prayers on our own, like they did over at my friend Betty’s house.
Up the stairs to bed, we went, ‘Slap the Bear’, just like always on the way up. That’s where somebody yells “slap the bear, everybody included,” and starts slapping the hind-end of the person in front of her. Only the first person in line had a slim chance of getting away, and of course, the last person who had nobody to slap at. Mom probably invented that game to get us up the stairs faster than blue-blazes.
We brushed our teeth, and climbed into bed. It was Bonita’s turn to sleep on the cot, so I cuddled up tight to Deanna to keep warm. “Get your hair out of my face,” she said. She hated my hair, so she drew a line down the middle of the bed with her hand, and told me to stay on my side.
“We forgot the cookies and milk,” Bonita sprung up like a jack-in-the-box, looked out the window, just in case Santa was out there on the lawn, like in that poem. Continue reading
