WordSisters

Category: Perspective

  • Easing into Fall with the Minnesota State Fair

    Buzzing cicadas signal summer’s last gasp. Cooler days and school are ahead and soon summer will officially be over. The sun is still warm but a hint of melancholy drifts in with fall’s cool breezes. Yet another summer is gone and I haven’t done everything I meant to do. But the exuberant excess of the Minnesota State Fair next week is the remedy.

    I didn’t grow up going to state fairs. Ohio’s is in Columbus, three hours south of Toledo, my hometown. Years ago, when a friend urged my husband and I to go to the Minnesota State Fair, I was skeptical. To do what—see cows? Play midway games you never win? 

    She persuaded us to try it, even when our sons were toddlers. The plan was to go at 8 a.m. when it’s cooler and less crowded. Leave after lunch. Our friend initiated us into state fair lore: Do the park and ride buses which are crowded, entertaining, and efficient. Get mini donuts for breakfast. Cinnamon sugar over greasy fried dough—what’s not to like? Try at least one crazy new food for lunch (the state fair has hundreds—it’s a yearly competition). Birria crunch bombs? A pretzel shaped like a mustache? Peri-peri hot chicken bowl?

    We had more fun than expected. The Princess Kay of the Milky Way butterhead sculpture. Fancy chickens with colorful plumage. A glimpse of rural life with 4H-ers parading the cows, sheep, or horses they raised. The Creative Crafts building with spectacular quilts, fanciful crocheted animals, and clothing ranging from professionally tailored to endearing first efforts. Jeweled jellies. Wilting cookies and breads. The Fine Arts building showcasing paintings, photos, and sculptures—a rare equal opportunity for unknown as well as established artists. Impressive crop art and giant pumpkins in the Ag building.

    Later we accompanied our grade school sons, who embraced junk food and water rides, but quickly learned midway games were a ripoff. For several years they collected Academic All-Star certificates at a casual ceremony. I’m not sure how rigorous the standards were, but we were happy to celebrate academic effort.

    High school marching bands are invited to perform at the state fair, and for several years our youngest participated. His bandmates poured out of several buses, wearing band T-shirts (August is way too hot for wool uniforms and tall white hats with black plumes). Free admission was the main perk for the teenagers. They marched and played a few songs and then were free to shuck their instruments and go have fun. Band moms like me handed out water in the mid-afternoon heat then adjourned for a beer at the Leinenkugel Lodge. 

    Two State Fair Grandstand performances are especially memorable. Bonnie Raitt playing blues hits from her “The Nick of Time” album in 1990. The weather was threatening but she had us rocking and cheering until the news interrupted—blues legend Stevie Ray Vaughan had died in a helicopter crash. We were all shocked and sad, but she did her best to perform, offering the concert as a tribute. In 2022, I returned for of Diana Ross. The nostalgia trip was fun, but when we were leaving, a shooting in the parking lot had us has all scrambling to get out of there. 

    Although our sons are grown, my husband and I still go. At 8 a.m., the air is cool and I’m tempted to bring a light jacket but know better. Once there, our shared cup of Sweet Martha’s chocolate chip cookies makes it easier to say goodbye to summer.

  • Lost and Found

    My Aunt Corinne, who died nearly 12 years ago, nudged me recently. It took the form of a question from my cousin, who wondered why the plaque on Aunt Corinne’s crypt had never been completed. The cemetery staff told her they’d never received her ashes, so they couldn’t update the plaque.

    The ashes weren’t there? Where were they?

    My mother’s younger sister Corinne was a widow without children, so her ties to her nieces and nephews—to my cousin and her siblings and to me and my siblings—were important to her. As she grew older and her health deteriorated, my two brothers and I helped with practical matters and some financial paperwork, and my sister managed her health care. When Aunt Corinne died, I flew from Minnesota to Ohio, and one of my brothers and I set her prepaid funeral arrangements in motion. 

    Aunt Corinne was sweet, fun-loving, and thoughtful, so her death was certainly a loss. Even as we mourned her, we were besides ourselves with worry about my mother. The day after Aunt Corinne died, Mom fell and ruptured her spleen. She needed emergency surgery and was in ICU so she couldn’t attend the funeral. She went to rehab where she fell again. That began the downhill slide which ended with her death two months after Aunt Corinne died. 

    During those months, I’d flown back to Ohio several times to see Mom. Distraught and preoccupied, I overlooked the email from the funeral home telling me Aunt Corinne’s ashes were ready to be interred. I don’t recall the funeral home following up to remind me about them.

    When my cousin asked me about the ashes, I had no idea where they could be. I began trying to piece together the trail. None of us had them. Had Aunt Corinne donated her body to science and her ashes never came back to us? My sister said no. Aunt Corinne nudged me again. I recalled saving an old email from the funeral home. I thought it was related to my mother’s funeral at the same funeral home Aunt Corinne had used. When I opened it, I saw it was the original email about Aunt Corinne’s ashes. I can’t explain why I still had it, except Aunt Corinne needed me to find it.

    OMG, could the funeral home still have the ashes almost 12 years later? 

    They do! I was so relieved. We had all done our best during that difficult time, but had missed the last step. After several calls to the funeral home and cemetery, I was able to arrange for Aunt Corinne’s ashes to be sent to the cemetery. I appreciate the chance to fix what we didn’t even know was broken.

    Soon Aunt Corinne will join her husband Uncle Bob in their crypt. She’ll have lots of company. Her brother and sister-in-law (my cousin’s parents) are in a nearby crypt. I’m glad she’ll finally be where she belongs! 

  • Naked Soffits

    I have a collection of teapots, accumulated over more than 40 years, that I love and that have always given me joy. The earliest in the collection is a Japanese tea set I bought while I was in college. I loved the way I could cradle the thick handless cups in my palms, “too hot to touch, too hot to drink.” The set travelled with me from Grand Rapids to New Orleans, to Minnesota, back to Michigan. The super-glued lid, cracked during one of its many moves, is now part of its charm, a repaired flaw that doesn’t detract from its beauty.

    My most prized possession in the collection is a Japanese “Brown Betty” that belonged to my mother. Well-loved and often used, it sat on our kitchen counter for years. Before sitting down to dinner every night, my mother would put two Lipton tea bags in the pot and fill it with boiling water from the kettle she had on the stove as she cooked. The tea would steep as the seven of us ate our baked chicken and biscuits, or fresh-caught salmon fried to perfection, or meatless Friday meals of macaroni and cheese or potato soup. As she cleared our plates, mom would pour a cup for her and my dad and we’d sit and talk as they sipped their tea, often long after the meal was finished.

    I don’t remember when I acquired this treasure. Probably after dad died and mom sold our family home, auctioning off all the memories that wouldn’t fit into her one-bedroom apartment at the Senior Estates.

    As often happens when you have a collection, mine grew over the years, added to by pieces I bought myself and by gifts from family and friends. I displayed these treasures on my kitchen soffits, the empty space between the top of the cabinets and the ceiling. I changed the displays by season, swapping out Brown Betty with a bright red Waechtersbach teapot and snowmen sets at Christmas time, adding pops of yellow in the spring. The three or four times I changed the décor every year were always satisfying, even as it got more difficult for me to climb on top of the kitchen counters to reach the void below the ceiling.

    When we sold our four-bedroom house in Minnesota and moved to a townhome in Michigan, some of my collection went to Goodwill or were gifted to family or friends. My new compact kitchen has fewer cabinets, but the vaulted ceiling in our great room provides a spacious backdrop for the most treasured of my collection that remains. My teapots once again held a place of honor in my home.

    This fall, I took a day to climb the heights and change out the decorations, adding pumpkins and sunflowers and other tchotchkes to complement the featured teapots. For the first time in years, however, I didn’t decorate for Christmas because we spent our first winter in the desert Southwest, a much-needed respite from the ice and snow. When I came back for a visit in February, I took down all the fall décor, leaving a few random pieces that looked lonely and sad, but that I planned to add to when we returned in the spring.

    As is often the case at this phase of our lives, our return wasn’t quite as planned. My mother was dying, so I rushed home to be with my siblings for her final days. The next month was a flurry of activity: hospice workers, many laughs and tears with my four siblings, a funeral, cleaning out my mom’s assisted living apartment, poring through hundreds of pictures and memorabilia, finding my footing as a 67-year-old motherless child.

    A month later, when the day came to finally fill the empty spaces above my kitchen cabinets, I found I no longer had it in me. I’m relatively healthy, but, like my mother, I have some balance issues that make it seem imprudent to climb a ladder and teeter on a kitchen counter to reach over my head and place porcelain vessels in an arrangement that is pleasing to me but likely not meaningful to anyone else.

    So instead, I dragged the step ladder into the kitchen for perhaps the last time and took everything down. The Brown Betty is now on a shelf next to old pictures of my mom and dad. The rest are carefully wrapped and in a Sterlite tub in my storage room. In each teapot, I placed a note with the details of when I got it and its significance to me.

    My soffits are naked for the first time in my adult life. The look matches the modern architecture of our new home, clean and uncluttered. I know the teapots are there if I should ever change my mind. I also know that my daughter would gladly help me decorate if I asked. For now, however, I’m trying to enjoy the new look and save my physical and mental effort for something else like walking with my husband, creating photo albums, writing. Still, it feels like a loss in a season full of loss.

    While a practical decision, was it premature? Am I unnecessarily adding to my emotional burden while removing a physical one?

    I don’t know. I think I need to let it steep.