The Easter Basket and the Melting Pot

BEFORE WE GET TO THE POST BELOW I want to thank everyone in the blog community who posted comments regarding my brother's passing and who contacted me by other means. Your condolences, prayers and shared experiences means a lot to me. I apologize for not replying individually as I normally do with blog comments. (There's been a lot going on.) This community is so supportive and let's admit it, we often know each other better than the people we see off line on a daily basis. I know I share far more here than anywhere else. This past week I've felt the warmth and well wishes you've all sent my way and it's appreciated more than I can express. Jean

Why do all my best ideas for what I want to write about come when I’m doing something without a pen and paper or keyboard near by? This morning in the shower I heard a noise from my upstairs neighbor that triggered a memory about my mom which in turn brought a flood gate’s worth of connected thoughts flowing like the proverbial river. So I used my finger to write on the steam-covered shower door the words, “Labelle Street, old country and genealogy” knowing the words wouldn’t last. I did, however, think they’d last long enough for me to use my squeegee on the glass to wipe them away. Words written on steamy bathroom mirrors in scary movies seems to have a life span longer than it took for them to disappear into unreadable streaks in my bathroom. With the luck of someone who plans ahead for times when I want jot myself a note I had a pad of Post-It Notes and a pen on a small desk near enough into my bedroom that I barely had to step out of the bathroom to grab them. What were those words again? Apartment house, family history and what else? 

On the floor next to the desk where I fetched the pen and paper is basket that was my Easter basket for my entire childhood. I stubbed my toe on it fetching the Post-it Notes. Ouch! My parents practiced recycling before the word was even coined. Year after year that basket was brought out of its hiding place by the notorious Easter Bunny. He filled it with a cellophane covered chocolate bunny and assorted candy and on Easter morning I’d remove the rabbit, bite off his ear and take my basket around the yard or house (depending on the weather) to gather dyed, hard boiled eggs. Then one year no basket was brought down from its hiding place in the attic. There were no eggs to find. No chocolate bunny to eat. Instead, on Easter morning I found a small box made out of cherry wood waiting for me on the kitchen table. Inside was a note that read something like this, “You will be ten in a couple of days and you’re getting too old to still believe in the Easter Bunny. This is his last gift to you.” Also in the box was a necklace nested in a bed of jelly beans. I still have the box but the necklace is gone now. I'm pretty sure my mom heard my brother and me arguing about the Easter Bunnies existence a few days earlier and he was responsible for the dreadful note and the disappointment that followed.

The basket, now, holds a life-sized sleeping cat. Its an aqua, pink and gold gilded porcelain cat adopted from an auction house over a half century ago. Back then I was newly in love with the man I’d later marry. I thought he was crazy to keep bidding that cat up to a whopping twenty bucks just because I admired it when I walked by it before the auction started, but a quick google search of its value today had my eyes bugging out and the word, “Wow! escaping my lips. The cat has never had a name but she’s rests on a pink blanket that kept me warm in my baby’s crib eighty-some years ago.

I’ve walked past the cat-in-the-basket ever since I placed her in it after the auction. Sometimes I ignore it and others times it makes me smile but one thing remains the same: I’m too sentimental for my own good. I worry about what will happen to “my treasures” when I have to move to assisted living or I die. I wonder sometimes if I’m not related to Egyptian Royalty who also felt strongly about taking their treasures with them and they found a way to do it. At least they thought they’d accomplished that goal. Not having a thousand slaves to build me a pyramid I’ll have to be satisfied with the idea that my nieces will arrange to get my stuff into an auction where people who bid on it will treasure what they win. I have a niece who collects white ceramic cats and I briefly thought about giving it to her but like me with my collectibles, it's the thrill of the hunt that she likes about finding her cats plus mine is too old to get along with hers. Look at me personifying hunks of china.

My Easter basket and the porcelain cat have nothing to do with the words I wrote on my shower door. Hearing a loud noise from my upstairs neighbor reminded me that my mom and dad once owned a house that they converted into a two family. It was just after WWII when housing was in short supply for returning soldiers and their new brides and that gave my mom the idea to do some renovations and rent out their upstairs. My mom then saved the rent money for a down payment on a house in the suburbs that would get them out of a declining neighborhood. For their entire married life my mom had my dad building and remodeling one project after another. He always credited her for how far they’d come…both living in poverty as kids, both losing their mothers in grade school, neither one getting much of an education but in their twilight years they were able to enjoy living on a lake in a cottage they converted to a year-around home plus they had lake property up north where they camped. 

Our parent gave my brother and me the conic childhoods that were romanticized on TV shows like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best with their wise fathers and hard working moms and the carefree fun of being a teenager during the ‘50s that were portrayed in the Happy Days sitcom. We weren't exactly spoiled---we did chores and a lot of them---but we were rich in after school activities and opportunities. I've always thought my mom was creating the kind of childhood she wished she'd had or she was she living vicariously though us.

As for the words written in steam. My parents once rented their upstairs apartment (on LaBelle Street) to a deaf couple and they said were the noisiest people who ever lived above them because they couldn’t hear themselves making loud noises. My upstairs neighbor (who had all her brand new carpeting removed) is hard of hearing and I’m about ready to shoot her. I swear she's giving bowling lessons up there.

How does genealogy enter into all this---one of the words written on my shower door? My upstairs neighbor is of German descent and speaks with an accent not often heard in my part of the world. It hit me in the shower that younger people don’t care about family history like many people in my generation do because they are homogenized into society in a way like we never were. People all over my campus are working on genealogy (me and Miss Upstairs included) thinking we are going to connect to the youngest members in our families someday when they are old enough to read what we so carefully created. Giving us a false sense of immortality, a way to be remembered after we're gone.

Many of us born before or because of WWII grew up hearing stories of the Old Country, we knew our families came from some place else. Young people, if they think about their family lines at all, don't care about the Great Melting Pot of immigration or the Salad Bowl of immigration that followed and that lack of homage to our history seems to be leading us to isolationism in our politics. Our American Mosaic which has always been our strength is being judged as a bad thing, a scary thing. But that's a topic for another day, another blog post. In the meantime I'll just say I'm thoroughly disgusted with the MAGA Republicans for tanking the latest, fairest and toughest bipartisan border deal to come along in decades just because it will help Trump's campaign not to implement real solutions to real problems so he can keep on campaigning on the crisis at the border.

Until Next Wednesday! 

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