Tag Archives: Family

Christmas in Michigan–Christmas Day, Past and Present

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December 25, 2021

Christmas Day Past—

My sisters, my brother, and I enjoy a visit from St. Nick. (I’m holding the present.) The cat was not a present. He was a stray we adopted and named George, after our grandpa.

After the longest night of the year loosened its grip and gave way to Christmas morning, my siblings and I had to wait for my parents to get up before opening gifts. Sometimes we snuck downstairs to peek at the tree surrounded by wrapped boxes then snuck back upstairs. This made waiting more difficult, but we knew that to open even one present before they got up would rob them of the joy of seeing our rapturous faces as we opened our gifts. We also knew we’d be in BIG trouble. It was always a late night for them. “The bundle of toys” they brought home in sacks needed to be wrapped and ribboned and tagged times four.

We were fortunate that Christmas morning never disappointed—not even the year my mother told me before Christmas that she couldn’t find Charlie McCarthy, the ventriloquist’s dummy I’d asked Santa for. She and I had to suspend our willing suspension of disbelief regarding Santa for that conversation. Turns out lots of aspiring ventriloquists had asked Santa for a Charlie McCarthy doll. My mother told me she’d try to get me one after Christmas. But even before Christmas morning, my shiny dream of becoming a ventriloquist lost its luster. I told her to forget Charlie.

My mother was good at buying gifts on behalf of Santa. Every year a smorgasbord awaited under our tree. We each received an outfit and a pair of pajamas. I loved going back to school after the holidays dressed in new clothes. And climbing into bed on Christmas night in a new pair of soft pajamas that were still fuzzy because they hadn’t been washed dozens of times was divine. We each received a special toy or two that we’d asked Santa for. He also brought us board games, art projects, and books. Santa wanted us to stay busy during Christmas break.

We had to open our gifts slowly because my father didn’t want to miss a single Kodak moment. He liked to take photos. When he got a Polaroid camera, we had near instant photo results, but this slowed down the gift opening because we were thrilled by watching ourselves materialize before our eyes.

Each of us had a spot on the floor to pile our gifts as we opened them. After all the gifts were opened, I felt like a princess with a pile of riches. I also felt guilty. The gifts my parents received took up little room on the coffee table in front of them, such a small cache of swag. But worst of all they hadn’t received one toy or game or art project. I’d contemplate all they’d given me in the name of Santa, then look at the gift I’d given them—always something handmade at school. A Christmas tree constructed from a toilet paper roll and cotton balls. An imprint of my hand in plaster of paris. A silhouette of my profile. A Styrofoam ball decorated with ribbon and sequins to hang on the tree. I didn’t buy my parents gifts until I turned sixteen and had a job and a driver’s license. It wasn’t until I was a parent that I understood it was more fun to see my children opening gifts, and that I treasured the gifts they made for me more than anything that came from a store.

Christmas Day Present—

On this Christmas morning the youngest one among us is 23. No one snuck out of bed to look at wrapped presents under the tree. (Maybe because they were stacked on a desk.) I got up early because my dogs wanted to go outside. No one was in a hurry to see what Santa brought. We ate breakfast and visited. My sister and one of her sons went to Mass at ten o’clock. No one minded. Waiting wouldn’t short-circuit our wiring. We didn’t open gifts until eleven-thirty.

My mother is still good at buying gifts, but no one pretended they were from Santa. I loved the warm shirt she bought me. I’m of the age where any object meant to keep me warm in the frozen North makes my heart toasty. She gave me a humorous book that pokes fun of British mysteries. I love humor and British mysteries. (Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village by Maureen Johnson & Jay Cooper)

My nephew, distributing gifts off the desk. Bogey, before he gets his pink flamingo.

No one got toys—except Bogey, my mother’s seven-year-old poodle. My husband and I bought him a stuffed pink flamingo. He played with it and played with it, shaking it by the leg, tossing it in the air, and making it squeal. I think he looked at the gifts in front of us humans and felt sorry for us because not one of us had a stuffed toy with a squeaker. He’s too young to understand that not one of us wanted a squeaking flamingo. But we sure enjoyed watching him play with his new toy.

[Words in quotes are a nod to “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”]

Christmas in Michigan—The Yipping

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December 24, 2021, 9:00 p.m.

Cabela–not worried about roving bands of coyotes

All the light was behind me. A Christmas wreath strung with white lights and pinecones hung from the peak of the garage. Amber warmth from incandescent lights glowed through the living room windows.

In front of me darkness swallowed my poodles because their black and brown fur coats worked like camouflage against the snowless ground. I strained to keep an eye on each of them, and wished they were white poodles. Then I wondered if white poodles would disappear against snow-covered ground.

Loud yips came from over the distant hill. It sounded like dozens of puppies. But I knew it wasn’t. I thought about a kennel of huskies clamoring for food. But I knew there were no mushers in the neighborhood. I thought about the starving wolves in White Fang that stalk two mushers and their sled dogs, picking them off until only one man survives. But I knew that wolves need more territory than my mother’s neighborhood, even with its scattered woods and fields, could provide. Besides, wolves howl, bark, and growl. They don’t yip like a bunch of puppies.

The yips rose and fell in volume but didn’t stop. They didn’t come closer, but they didn’t retreat. I called my dogs and we went inside.

I told my mom about the yipping.

“Those are coyotes,” she said. “We have a lot of them this year.”

My mother lives on a golf course in a rural setting. I wondered if the coyotes used the cart path to move between the areas of woods and fields while hunting. Coyotes are exceedingly carnivorous. Besides wildlife they sometimes eat cats and dogs. My domesticated, spoiled, wimpy canines would be an easy meal for coyotes. But coyotes are wary of humans and avoid us. Which is good because I’m domesticated, spoiled, and wimpy.

Christmas in Michigan—And It Snows

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December 23, 2021, 8:00 p.m.

Ziva rests after our snowy walk.

I wanted a white Christmas, and a couple of hours after dinner, I got my wish. It snowed. I walked my dogs, partly to work out the kinks from our nine-and-a-half-hour drive to Petoskey but mostly because it was snowing. My poodles sniffed the brown grass along the road while falling snow, lit by an occasional streetlight, dusted the wooly curls on their heads, backs, and tails.

I always want a white Christmas. Fresh snow opens a gate in my memory, and I wander into the backyard of my childhood. I remember snowmen, snow forts, snowball fights, snow angels, and sledding. I remember catching snowflakes on my tongue and staring at six-pointed and six-sided flakes that landed on my clothes. Amazed by the intricate designs of something so tiny, I admired each flake because I knew its design would never be repeated. A snowflake might have a doppelgänger, but never a clone. On Smithsonian’s STEMvisions Blog, Alex Stempien writes, “. . . scientists estimate that there are up to 10158 snowflake possibilities. (That’s 1070 times more designs than there are atoms in the universe!).” I wonder how much paper it would take to write out those numbers.

After the first snowfall of winter, my siblings and I scampered into the closet under the stairs and resurrected snow pants, hats, mittens, and scarves from cardboard boxes. If the temperatures dropped and the wind nipped, we wore knitted ski masks with three holes, one for the mouth and two for the eyes, the kind bank robbers wore in the movies. We played for hours in the snow until we were soaked from the outside by snow and from the inside by perspiration. If wicking winter clothing was available in the 1960s, we didn’t own any.

My grandchildren enjoy the snow.

I felt sorry for adults because they didn’t get to play in the snow. I promised myself I would never be that old, but it happened anyway. When my children played in the snow, I remembered that promise. When my grandchildren play in the snow, I think about that promise, but I’m not melancholy or envious. Watching children in the snow rekindles happy memories of my childhood. These days my idea of fun in the snow involves shoveling, walking, and snowshoeing.

After my dogs and I finished our walk, I brushed snow off their heads, backs, and tails. I stomped my boots on the brick walkway and brushed snow off my hat and coat. Happy and invigorated, we entered the back hallway. I called to my mother and thanked her for arranging the snowfall. She answered, “You’re welcome.”

December 24, 2021, Christmas Eve Day

By morning three to four inches of snow blanketed the ground. In my head Bing Crosby sang “White Christmas” and stage doors slid open, revealing snow, snow, snow, snow. Crosby and Rosemary Clooney then Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen embraced and kissed.

Cabela on Christmas Eve Day before the snow melted.

My husband and I went into town to shop. The temperatures rose above forty degrees. By noon, about half the snow had melted. By late afternoon when I walked the dogs, most of the snow was gone. The brown landscape had reemerged. There would be no Hollywood magic—no white Christmas. The next snowfall would arrive two days after Christmas morning. But in my heart, I carried the snowfall from the day before Christmas Eve.

Christmas in Michigan—The Trip Over

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Bogey

December 23, 2021

My husband, our two dogs, and I missed Christmas in Michigan last year because of the pandemic. This year with our vaccines and boosters completed, we decided to make the nine-and-a-half-hour drive to spend Christmas in Petoskey with my mother and her dog, Bogey. As a bonus, my sister and two nephews came too. We were a gathering of six, well, nine with the dogs. And we count the dogs.

We have two dogs: Cabela, 13½, and Ziva, 11. A few years ago, my husband and I agreed not to board Cabela anymore because of her age and stiffening hindquarters. And if we weren’t boarding Cabela, we couldn’t board Ziva. She doesn’t like being without a family member unless she’s at home. And she’s never liked kennels. She a bit claustrophobic—a condition I understand. We had been fortunate to have a place to board Cabela and Ziva where there was a spacious double-run kennel they could share because the door between their two sides could be left open. Ziva tolerated this because she could be with Cabela. Once, after feeding the dogs, one of the staff forgot to reopen the door between the two kennels. Ziva remedied the problem by chewing the latch and opening the door herself. So, the dogs go to Michigan with us—Cabela because of her age and Ziva because she would be traumatized if we left her at the kennel without Cabela.

Nine and a half hours in a car with two dogs isn’t without its trials; although, it’s easier than when I made the trip with my two young sons. My dogs don’t argue with each other in the backseat or sass my husband or me. Well, maybe Ziva does because we’re not sure what she says when she’s talking. My dogs can’t ask, “How much longer?” or “How come we can’t fly?” even if they look like they’re thinking it.

Ziva gets car sick sometimes; my children didn’t. I prepped the van by layering the floor with towels and car blankets and stashing paper towel in the back. On the trip over, Ziva threw up three times, but only small amounts. Neither dog eats breakfast before we leave for Michigan. Cabela won’t eat that early in the morning, and Ziva, concerned we’ll leave without her, isn’t about to put her face in a dish of food. She keeps her eyes wide open and follows us while we pack and load the van.

Ziva needs at least four or five potty stops. Something about riding in a vehicle makes her want to piddle—me too, but if I’m honest almost anything makes me want to go. When Ziva has to go, she puts her front paws on the center counsel of van and noses my arm or my husband’s arm. We stop at gas stations with green space where we can walk the dogs. Cabela won’t always piddle because even at 13½, she has bladder stamina that most people of a certain age, like me, envy. I remember when I was young and could ride eight hours from Milwaukee to Gordon, Wisconsin, without going to the bathroom. One of my sons liked to stop a lot to go potty, but it wasn’t due to a weak bladder. He just wanted an excuse to get out of the car because he hated long rides. Once, on a trip to northern Illinois, I pulled into every rest stop along I-94, so he could “go to the bathroom.” It added at least a half hour to the trip, but after every stop his mood improved. He was the one who was miffed because we didn’t fly.

Ziva

After we arrived at my mother’s house, we put the dogs inside so we could unpack the van. Ziva cried and cried until my husband and I finished unloading the van and took our coats and boots off. Then she curled up on my mother’s couch and went to sleep, finally convinced we wouldn’t leave her. Cabela was already snuggled up in an upholstered chair. She wasn’t worried we would leave her. Bogey slept by the kitchen table. My sister and nephews would arrive the next day on Christmas Eve.

Cabala

My mother, my husband, and I sat around the kitchen table and ate lamb curry takeout, a scrumptious beginning to our Christmas visit. Still, I gazed out the kitchen windows at the brown fields and leafless trees and hoped for snow.

Dear Minnesota: The Story of Yost Yost

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[This article was originally published in May 2021 by Minnesota PBS on their website Moving Lives Minnesota: Stories of Origin and Immigration.]

Yost Yost, my great-great-grandfather, was born in Nottwil, Switzerland, on November 19, 1829. At the time his double name was a common practice by Swiss parents. Yost’s father, Jacob Yost, was a nail maker and taught his son the trade. Yost, too, made nails before emigrating in 1854. But after he arrived in America and settled in Rochester, New York, he became a blacksmith.

Seated: Agatha and Yost Yost; Standing left to right: Mary,
Aggie, Josephine, Anna, Joseph, Rose, and John

On July 16, 1855, Yost married Agatha Gassman in Rochester, New York. She’d arrived in New York City in January 1855. She was born in Switzerland, but her birth year is a mystery. It has been listed as 1820, 1823, 1825, and 1827. I can only guess why so many different birth years appear on documents clearly referring to the Agatha Gassman who married Yost Yost. Perhaps vanity tempted her to misrepresent her age. Perhaps others made mistakes and recorded her birth year incorrectly.

In the fall of 1856, the availability of land enticed Yost and Agatha to move to Columbus, Minnesota. Yost used his blacksmithing skills during the winter of 1856-57 to support himself and Agatha, pregnant with their first child, Maria, born in April 1857. They had six more children: Josephine, Joseph, John, Agatha, Anna, and Rose.

In the spring of 1857, Yost and Agatha attained land and built a log house. They were successful farmers, and their farm grew to 440 acres. They ground their own flour, sewed their own clothes, and made their own tallow candles. According to family lore, when they bought their first kerosene lamp, they proclaimed it was “real progress.” In spring and fall, Yost walked from Columbus to St. Paul, a distance of 50 miles, to buy supplies they couldn’t produce. After a road was built, he drove a wagon to make the trip.

In August 1864, Yost, 34, enlisted in the Minnesota Cavalry, Hatch’s Battalion, Company E, serving until his honorable discharge in May 1866. I wonder how Agatha coped on a farm with five children, ages 1 to 7, while he served in the military. But he was granted at least one furlough during his enlistment. He was stationed on the Dakota-Minnesota frontier about 50 miles northwest of Mankato. According to a family history written by his grandson Fred, Yost “stopped a cannonball with his leg.” However, Yost’s military records tell a different story. In 1886, Yost applied for an invalid pension because of an injury he received near Fort Ridgely in June 1865. While out on patrol, his horse threw him, and he injured his back. It never completely healed, and as he aged, he developed rheumatism in his spine. How did an injury from tumbling off a horse become a story about being hit by a cannonball? Perhaps Yost was trying to impress his grandchildren. Perhaps once, when asked why he limped, he joked about getting hit by a cannonball, and that became the story.

While living in Columbus, Yost served as a town clerk, a justice of the peace, and a supervisor. The Compendium of History and Biography of Central and Northern Minnesota by George Ogle and Company, published in 1904, states, “Yost has resided in Anoka county for nearly half a century, and he has formed a wide acquaintance and is held in the highest esteem as an agriculturist and worthy citizen.” Yost became a naturalized citizen of the United States on March 23, 1897.

As Yost aged, his back injury made farming difficult. He retired, and his sons, John and Joseph, ran the farm. Yost died on November 3, 1906, just short of his 77th birthday. Agatha died on September 20, 1913. They’re buried at St. Joseph’s Catholic Cemetery in Wyoming, Minnesota.

[More Moving Lives posts written by other writers can be read at Moving Lives Minnesota: Stories of Origin and Immigration.]

Bird Feeder Trilogy

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Wednesday, November 24—

Charlie, September 2021

Charlie, my three-year-old grandchild, was cranky, and I was becoming cranky. I crossed my arms, looked at him, and said, “How about you and Nana take a timeout together?”

“Okay.” He agreed because he knows it’s not a real timeout if I’m joining him. I picked him up and carried him to the family room to begin our detention. On the way he wrapped his arms around my neck and snuggled his head on my shoulder, aah Charlie-Bear hugs.

Charlie and I needed a quiet place to gather serenity (and avoid tears). We knelt on the couch, rested our elbows on the back cushions, and watched the chickadees zip back and forth from the trees to the bird feeder. Our crankiness dissolved. Before long I heard Charlie’s five-year-old brother, Evan, ask, “What are you looking at?”

“The chickadees,” I said. Evan joined us on the couch, and we watched the chickadees dart to and from the feeder. Evan asked lots of questions—he always does. But he asked with a soft, reverent voice.

Next, their ten- and eight-year-old siblings, Clara and Michael, found us and asked, “What are you doing?” Funny how each child became aware that Charlie and I were missing from the front room and in turn abandoned their toys to find us.

The five of us sat in the darkened family room, stared outside into the dimming afternoon, and watched the chickadees dash in and out to grab seeds. I pointed to a red-breasted nuthatch cavorting on the branch of a pine tree near the feeder. Sometimes it hung upside down, and sometimes it hung right-side up in its frenzied search for food lurking in the bark.

The five of us were still and spoke in muted tones, sated with the joy of watching small birds eat supper. Timeouts are good for everyone.

Saturday, November 27—

Chickadee and Goldfinches

It was cold outside, but there was no snow. I noticed small birds, including chickadees, goldfinches, and cardinals pecking at the ground and at tree branches and trunks, foraging for creepy crawlies, good sources of protein to nourish them through the winter.

A few chickadees swooped in and out to grab black oil sunflower seeds from the feeders outside my kitchen window, but only two or three chickadees at a time. In warmer months, I often see five or more doing touch-and-go landings at the feeder. Once the ground is covered in a thick, white batting of snow, the chickadees will dive bomb my feeders again. No matter how cold and snowy it gets, I keep their feeders clean and stocked.

A pair of goldfinches visited. Their yellow feathers, like the leaves and grass, have faded to brown. In the winter when a male goldfinch isn’t breeding, his brilliant yellow coloring turns a drab brown. A female goldfinch’s color fades too, but even in mating season, she’s never as flashy as her male partner. Mr. and Mrs. Goldfinch foraged on the ground and in the trees, but they also grabbed seeds from the feeders.

Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal dropped by. Mr. Cardinal was sporting his flashy red jacket. Unlike the male goldfinch whose colors fade in the winter, the male cardinal often turns a brighter red. Mrs. Cardinal was a shade of greyish-brown with a few red-feather highlights, a lipstick-orange beak, and a red-tinged mohawk. She’s always a combination of understated beauty and bold attitude.

Mr. Cardinal snuck up on the bird feeder. He started in the garden, poking his beak in the ground. He lifted his head, turned it left, then right. Looking, poking, looking, poking, in a nervous cha-cha-cha. After every couple of poke-and-look moves, he hopped a little closer to the feeders. Finally, a craving for sunflower seeds overtook him, and he flapped his wings. Lifting himself from the ground for a short flight, he landed on the tray of the red feeder. I snapped a picture of him eating and texted it to my family. My sister responded, “I like how the red bird goes to the red bird feeder.” I had the same thought when I took the picture.

Stopping by the kitchen window, I watched him fill up with seeds. Mrs. Cardinal, cloistered in a nearby cedar tree, watched him too. Cardinals usually mate for life, and she was looking out for her man. After all, he stands watch when she builds their nest.

Sunday, November 28—

Today a grey squirrel ate lunch and dinner from the bird feeder at the side of my house. The feeder, shaped like a craftsman style home, is designed to thwart squirrels. Wally “The Hack” didn’t get the memo.

I like to think Wally “The Hack” is “Flying” Wally, who, this summer, mastered leaping from one shepherd’s hook to another shepherd’s hook from which my bird feeders hang. After his leap, he would shimmy down the pole, sit on the feeder’s tray, and munch sunflower seeds. I put the plant hanger away for the winter, so if this is Wally, he has adapted.

Wally (it has to be him) figured out he needed to climb up the back of the wooden post then sit on top of the feeder. Next, he hung upside down, grabbed seeds from the tray, sat up, then ate his morsel before repeating his moves. He had learned that if he tried to eat from the front of the feeder, his weight dropped a bar and obstructed his access to the seeds. (Other squirrels still try to get seeds out of the front of the feeder.)

I sat on the couch and watched him, and he watched me watching him. He gave off a vibe of bravado and triumph—his pilfering of each seed, a boast. I left him alone and the chickadees left him alone. They flew to the ground to grab spilled seeds then darted back to the pine tree.

I wanted to open the window and yell, “Leave the seed for the birds,” but I admired Wally’s problem-solving skills, so I let him eat. I hope he doesn’t learn to hack my wi-fi and order his own sunflower seeds.

[Local birder Rich Hoeg has a wonderful website with beautiful pictures. He loves to photograph and write about owls, but also posts gorgeous pictures of other birds: 365 Days of Birds.]

[For pictures of beautiful birds from around the world, click here. To enjoy Michael Sammut’s blog about birds, click here.]

Day 29—Earrings without a Turtle

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Circa 2017

These earrings remind me of Bayfield, Wisconsin, because I bought them on a day trip to Bayfield with my mom. I liked the curve of the hoops and dainty pearls. After paying for them, I slipped them in my ears because I’d forgotten to wear earrings that morning.

Over the span of fifty years, I’ve been to Bayfield with family and friends and have fond memories of the small town on the hills overlooking Lake Superior. But one of my favorite memories of Bayfield doesn’t include me.

***

My mom took my first son to Bayfield when he was three years old and still an only child. I had to work, so they went by themselves. On the way to Bayfield, they found a turtle on the side of the road, and Mom stopped and put it in her car. When they arrived in Bayfield, Mom found a hardware store and bought a wash tub for the turtle. My son had a new pet, and the pet had a new galvanized home.

They ate lunch at a restaurant and Mom let my son order fries with his sandwich. If we ordered my son a meal with fries, he’d eat the fries and leave the meal untouched. Most of the time, we didn’t let him order fries. But he was with Grandma. He had fries for lunch—just fries. His sandwich went uneaten. But grandmas don’t scold about that sort of thing.

Mom went into a few clothing stores where my son entertained himself by crawling into the middle of circular clothing racks while she shopped. He invented his own world.

In one dress shop, he fell in love with a clerk named Sabrina. She was about twenty, petite, with big brown eyes and dark hair in a pixie cut. Mom said he followed Sabrina around the shop, talking to her, smiling at her, looking at her moon-eyed. He wasn’t happy when they left the store, and he was parted from his new love. But that’s the way it often is with a first love—it breaks your heart. My son’s May-December romance was doomed. But his three-year-old heart rebounded quickly. After all he had his turtle. And Mom took him to the shore so he could throw rocks in Lake Superior.

Before leaving Bayfield, Mom had second thoughts about bringing the turtle back to my house.

“Do you think the turtle will miss his family and friends?” she asked him.

My son thought so.

“Do you think we should take the turtle back to his family and friends?” she asked.

He did.

They set the turtle free, and returned with an empty wash tub. My son had parted with his first love and his pet turtle, but by the time they arrived home, he had moved on.

“How was your day?” I asked when he came in the house.

 “It was the best vacation I ever had!” he said.

Mom had a way of making an ordinary outing into a small adventure for her grandchildren.

***

On the trip to Bayfield when I bought these earrings, it was just Mom and me. My sons are grown with families of their own.

We didn’t see a turtle or toss rocks in the lake, but we had lunch and ate our fries and sandwiches. The dress shop where my son fell in love with Sabrina has been closed for years, but Mom and I still reminisced about her and my son’s first case of puppy love.

When Mom retells the story, I wonder about Sabrina, who’d be in her fifties now. Does she still live in Bayfield? Did she ever have children of her own, perhaps a little boy who fell in love for the first time when he was three?

Day 27—A Super Clean Earring

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About five years ago, my husband and I went to visit my mom in Michigan, and I forgot to wear earrings—I had left the house with naked earlobes! In my defense, we always leave ridiculously early. It’s a nine-hour drive plus time spent stopping for food, gas, and bathroom breaks. And we lose an hour driving east.

I didn’t like being earringless, but I didn’t want to shop for earrings. I decided to go without. I lasted for a day.

I turned to Mom for help. Did she have a pair of earrings I could borrow?

We mined through her jewelry box. I spotted a pair of gold and pearl earrings that I hadn’t seen her wear. She was happy to lend them to me because while beautiful, they weren’t her style. She likes silver earrings sized to pack a visual wallop.

As much as I loved wearing the earrings, I couldn’t ask her for them, so I was thrilled when she asked me if I wanted them.

A couple of years ago, I went to take them off at night and discovered one of them missing. I looked everywhere in the house because I felt certain I had both of them when I came home from work. I checked the floors, the sweater I had worn, the sinks, the dishwasher because I had been doing dishes. I checked the stairs, my car, the driveway, the garage, the deck.

I didn’t tell Mom. I didn’t want to admit I had been careless, or believe the earring was gone for good.

The next day at work, even though I still thought I had lost the earring at home, I emailed my coworkers a picture of the lone earring, asking if anyone had found its companion.

Coworkers were sympathetic: “Sorry you lost your earring.”

After a few days went by coworkers asked: “Have you found your earring?”

No, I hadn’t.

After a few weeks went by coworkers asked: “Did you ever find your earring?”

I hadn’t.

I kept looking in places I had already looked.

Two months passed.

One evening I opened the dishwasher to put away dishes. On the bottom of the dishwasher, in plain sight, was my earring.

It had spent two months—approximately sixty wash cycles—in the dishwasher, probably behind the bottom spray arm.

I told my coworkers who asked: “Was it okay?”

“Yep, it looks just the same.”

Another coworker asked: “Do you still have the other one?”

“Yeah, I couldn’t throw away a gold and pearl earring my mom gave me.”

But I had been thinking about having a jeweler make it into a pendant for a necklace.

I’m glad I procrastinated.

Day 26—Remembrance Earrings

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In 2014, the day before her 47th birthday, my cousin Cally died of a heart attack. No one expected her death. She was young, full of life, part of the world.

Her mother is a cherished aunt of mine.

In remembrance of Cally, I made a quilt from scraps to give my aunt on the first anniversary of her daughter’s death. I purposefully chose to use scraps leftover from other quilts that I’d made for family and friends.

That so many pieces of other people’s quilts should be part of Cally’s quilt seemed appropriate. She touched so many lives. It didn’t matter whether or not she knew all of the people I made quilts for because she wouldn’t have known all of the people her love, laughter, friendship, and charity inspired and touched. Acts of kindness ripple from those we know to those we don’t know. It’s the premise of paying it forward.

When I finish a quilt, I sew a label on the back of it. Cally’s label was special because it was large, eight by ten inches. Using a special technique, I transferred three photos of Cally onto the label. In the first picture, the winds of Wyoming blow her dark blond hair off the sides of her face. Behind her a dirt road heads to the foothills of a mountain range near her hometown. Scarves of white clouds flutter though a blue sky. Cally is both smiling into and squinting against the wind. She’s about fourteen. All things are possible.

In the second picture, Cally is standing with friends in a market in Morocco. Cally loved to combine travel and adventure. She rode camels on this trip.

The third picture is a candid portrait of Cally, probably in her 30s. Her head is turned almost to a profile. She’s watching something or someone we can’t see. She’s beautiful. Her brow, nose, cheekbone, and jawline proportioned like a statue of a Greek goddess. Her given name Calandra is of Greek origin, meaning singing bird or lark. In her left ear, she wears an earring. I can’t see the details of the earring because it’s out of focus, but I like what I can see. It’s dainty, but not too small. It hangs down from her ear, but not too far.

I was twelve when Cally was born. Most of my memories of her are when she was a baby and a toddler. After her parents moved from Wisconsin to Wyoming, I didn’t see Cally or her older brother for years. In the early 2000’s, sometime after Cally had children of her own, her uncle who lived in my town died. Her mother, brother, and she came for the funeral. Cally and her mom stayed with me. We became reacquainted; the twelve-year age difference no longer mattered. We visited, ate meals together, and laughed a lot. I never saw Cally again, and after she died in 2014, I treasured that time we spent together.

Today’s earrings belonged to Cally. One is a moose and the other a polar bear, both large, magnificent animals that are in peril as the earth warms. My aunt gave them to me when my husband and I drove to Wyoming in 2016 to visit. They don’t match. My aunt didn’t know why there was only one of each. These earrings weren’t sold as a set—each earring has a different rubber back. But I’ve seen earrings that are meant to be a mismatched set. Perhaps Cally and a friend each swapped an earring with one another as an act of friendship. It’s something Cally would’ve done.

Perhaps Cally lost the mate to each of these earrings. Like me, she wasn’t going to throw an earring away because then both would be lost. And because a lost earring is sometimes found.

I wonder if she ever wore them as a mismatched pair like I do. It’s something Cally would’ve done.

Day 25—Grand Marias Earrings

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Today’s earrings are silver with Thomsonite stones, which are found in Minnesota.

Over the years my mother and I have trekked to Grand Marias every June. We like to eat at the Angry Trout as soon as we get to town. If the weather is nice we eat outside, but last time we ate inside because it was cold. June is capricious in the Northland.

After lunch we visit small art galleries, walk along Lake Superior, and shop at the Lake Superior Trading Post. Mom bought these earrings for me at the Trading Post in June 2019, the last time she came to visit. June 2020’s visit didn’t happen because of COVID-19 lockdowns. And this year’s visit was on-again-off-again, as COVID cases rose and fell, and we all got vaccinated. Ultimately, this year’s visit was canceled too. Instead my husband and I went to see Mom in July.

One year Mom and I took my sons, about 13 and 8, to Grand Marais for a few days. We stayed in a small hotel on Lake Superior. The boys had their own room with a TV and a remote control. They thought that was big stuff.

We started each morning with a hearty breakfast at the Blue Water Café, a cozy diner that both locals and tourists enjoy.

The first day Mom and I dropped my sons off at a small lake to fish. Flies were the only thing that bit. The next day we booked them an afternoon outing on a charter fishing boat on Lake Superior. They came back with a lake trout, but I don’t remember who caught it—maybe the boat captain. While they fished, Mom and I walked around town. She and I weren’t baiting hooks or cleaning fish.

For lunch one day, we gave them some money and sent them to Sven & Ole’s Pizza while Mom and I ate at a charming old home that had been converted into a restaurant. Grand Marais has a little something for everyone.

Mom had wanted to take us to Disney World, but I’m glad we went to Grand Marias instead. I liked our quiet vacation in a small town surround by natural beauty. I liked letting the boys fish and eat pizza and have a hotel room to themselves.

I like my Grand Marais earrings. They look good with that gray, white, and pink hand-me-down sweater Mom gave me.

I miss Grand Marais.

[To learn about Thomsonite stones click here.]