Over 200 Served, Not Counting the Cops

Last night began with my brother cursing (one of his favorite pastimes) and vowing never to honor this holiday again (totally not to be taken seriously) because the wind kept threatening to blow over the balloons and even the zombies, and the blower motors inflating the balloons were worn out and there were no viable batteries to power the zombies' eyes and moans, pretty much all of which was true but irrelevant since the real problem was that, as usual, he left everything to the last minute, didn't do any pre-installation checking (re: batteries and motors) and, even on the morning of the day, wasted an hour or two (I wasn't home at the time) chopping down a bougainvillea that was encroaching on the lanai--and had been for several years so why it had to come down right then who knows.

There's no point engaging him when he gets like this so I just let him run his course and assumed the wind would die down once the sun set (it did) and the motors would be more effective when the air cooled (they were). The battery problem was solved when he ran off to the store as the first kids were arriving and bought a jumbo pack of AAs. 

Meanwhile the pillaging hordes started to trickle in about 4:30. Our first visitor, a teenage female pirate, was followed by a five-year-old female doctor. I was kind of disappointed that a lot of kids really didn't seem to put much effort into their "costumes" although the first pirate was very good and there were a number of passable ghouls, super heroes (both male and female) and even a couple of classic Ghostbusters. A couple of kids had corrugated cartons on their heads and I assumed they were Box Trolls but, when I said that to one she sounded very disappointed and sighed, "No, I'm a robot," and turned on the flashing rotating lights in her eye and mouth spaces. I think I might have gotten that correct if they'd been on to start with. The most original was a five- or six-year-old orange Crayola crayon. Second place went to a perfect little Beetlejuice being wheeled around in his stroller.

There were three distinct waves of foragers, the first starting just after sunset, the last coming through just as the police arrive around 9:10.

Did I mention that the police shut us down?

One patrol car went by very slowly on the main street early on in the evening but didn't stop. A second one came onto our street and parked just up from the main activity about 8:30 or so but that's way too early to enforce any sort of noise ordinance and we weren't that loud anyway so he left.

We can't be sure a complaint was filed since people were parking in the main road's median strip as well as on the shoulders in order to get into our street and the police may have been responding to the congestion. Comparing the ethnic diversity of our visitors with the homogeneity Neighbor Dan (who, it must be admitted had partaken of a number of shots) was not taking any chances and attempted preemptive revenge on the mean old man down the street who always complains about everything to the point of calling the police and filing reports about car horns, lawn mowing and unregistered vehicles, by taking a visiting German shepherd named Diesel for a walk and encouraging him to poop on said neighbor's lawn. Diesel was uncooperative.

Finally, three patrol cars came back around 9:20 and stayed until everything completely wound down about forty minutes later which it totally would have done anyway since we were running out of candy and the third wave was thinning out. They didn't say anything to anyone as far as I could tell but their presence was a big hint. Plus, the night was crystal clear and the temperature had dropped into the mid-60s which is a little cool for short-sleeves around here. We put the zombies safely away in the garage, my brother deflated the balloons and I went in to make a cup of hot tea.

My brother's mood had been steadily improving throughout the evening (as I knew it would) and now, operating on the theory that any party shut down by the police is by definition a success, he was delighted. By my calculations we served just north of 220 trick-or-treaters. I managed to salvage three 100 Grand bars for myself and my brother gave me two Almond Joys he acquired somewhere.

This morning is bright and sunny but the wind is howling again.

The Night In Question

(The Wedding Party)

So, it turns out twenty (20!) bags of candy weren't enough, after all, and we needed to borrow one from Neighbor Dan who only bought 9 bags but his were three times the size of ours so it balanced out pretty evenly in the end.

Despite the last-minute nature of our decorating due to my brother's bout of the plague followed by his trip to the Bahamas and delayed return from spending an extra day with his girlfriend, we looked pretty good. A little sparse compared to previous years, but the trick-or-treaters didn't seem to notice.

(A Wedding Crasher)

The wedding party went over nicely. Several people even crashed it to have their pictures taken with the bride. Later in the evening, my brother joined them and sat very quietly until unsuspecting visitors came up close enough to collect their treats.

(Spot the Living Guest)

Reactions ranged from glorious screams to comments of, "Really?" (but only following a sideways jump of at least three feet), to one woman who got into a snit and just stomped off. Generally, though the responses were great, especially from the kids and foreigners. The kids, in particular, showed no fear. They posed with zombies and in front of the hearse and danced with the skeletons.

(Spiderman Does a Turn With the Singing Skeleton)

One German gentleman came up and, explaining that it was his first time here, asked me when the holiday normally occurred and how long it lasted. I told him it was always the evening before All Saints' Day and, although the decorations went up a few days earlier, the kids came by only on this one night. He seemed intrigued, yet bemused, by the whole concept. He especially didn't seem to understand the gorilla chasing the six-foot banana down the street.

Another German family came by later in the evening. They were relative veterans, it seems, as they were all dressed as pumpkins. I informed them they made a very sincere pumpkin patch but I don't think they got the reference. And the only beagle that showed up was dressed as a lobster. 

The giant banana came back later in the evening all out of breath. He took a couple of candy bars and said, "Thanks. That monkey's been after me all night long."

(Giant Lawn Cat Is Watching You Trick-or-Treat)

Final tally: 200+ kids of various ages and sizes plus almost as many parents/guardians (many themselves in costume), three dogs (one disguised as a crustacean) and the equivalent of 23 bags of candy. And lots of appreciative compliments. Guess we'll do it again.

(Y'all come Back Next Year, Y'hear?)

Show Time

My brother took an extra day getting home from his trip. Actually, he stopped by his girlfriend's house and spent the day with her before coming home.

As a result, he is now (yesterday and today) scrambling around the front yard staking and inflating his scary Hallowe'en decorations. Despite not being able to find all of the extension cords, they seem to be coming together much better than Neighbor Dan's balloons a good half of which he replaced with all new items because they would not inflate properly. That was a big hit to his budget this year.

Ours still have a few problems. The headless horseman is slumped over by the mailbox although the hearse behind him is doing fine. And there's a ghost out by the main road that keeps falling over. Either a guy line or a spike keeps coming loose in the wind. And the giant black cat looks a little wobbly in the knees. Nevertheless, my brother seems confident all will be up and running come sunset.

On the non-inflatable side, over by where the trick-or-treaters will be coming up the drive, the zombies have established a wedding party by the recently established graveyard and are merely waiting for the groom to finish extricating himself from the ground. The bride looks positively ethereal.

And on the more mundane, but no less important, sugar front: We have twenty (20!) bags of assorted candy bars sitting on the dining room table being inspected by the cats. Our contribution to the continuing childhood diabetes epidemic is well established.

Let the pint-sized hordes descend. Let the pillaging and plundering commence.

It's Not Going to Get Any Easier

Well, that turned out to be just about as traumatic as we feared it would.

One of the kitten adopters came by this morning and took Dinarzade away.

She was a very nice woman my brother knows with a boyfriend and sweet young daughter who was turning herself inside out at the prospect of a kitten. They had expressed interest when the kids were born and came by this morning after calling my brother who got up early (for him) to play with them all one last time. He had them bouncing of the walls and furniture and each other for the better part of an hour before the adopters showed up.

The kittens were more curious than scared since they are used to Neighbor Dan and his girls coming over to play with them. Dinarzade proved to be the least shy of the bunch and even purred when the boyfriend held her to his chest and the little girl leaned in to listen. That clinched it.

Jasmine, obviously, had no idea what was happening until they took Dinarzade out the front door. She tried following but my brother blocked her way. After they were gone, she and the (remaining) kids all became very quiet for a while.

My brother went back to bed. Mittens and Scheherazade eventually went to sleep but Paribanour stuck, literally, by her mom's side as Jasmine investigated every possible hiding place for a kitten. When she finally gave up, Paribanour sympathy-nursed for a while. When I went out, Jasmine got up and tried to follow me out the door. We're all feeling pretty bummed out. Especially the humans, who know there are still two more to go.

It doesn't help our mood that it's dark and been raining continuously for the past two days.

Before She Teaches the Kids to Kill

Came home yesterday to find Neighbor Dan and the younger Neighbor Dan Daughter out in the lanai playing with the kittens. I like that it's that kind of neighborhood.

Neighbor Dan has examined the kittens a number of times and concluded we have three girls and a boy. Or maybe four girls. Or maybe not. I say take 'em all to the vet as soon as possible so it won't make any difference.

And take Little Gray Mama, too. She killed a bird a couple of days ago (and has probably killed more but that's the only one I caught her with). I heard several avian complaints from the mango tree and recognized them as anti-cat comments from back when I lived in Connecticut and the neighbor cat would come into my back field whereupon several species of birds including crows, robins, cardinals and a Baltimore oriole would all cooperate, forming a circle around the intruder, just out of reach, moving across the field from bush to branch, always with the cat in the center until she got too frustrated and went home. It wasn't an accident; they did it several times.

Anyway, I went to investigate and found LGM under the mango with a small crow she had just killed and was now trying to eat despite being fed between two and four times a day at our house and who-knows-how-many times again over at Neighbor Dan's where she disappears for hours on end. I took it away from her and gave it a quick burial and she let me know she was not pleased that I would waste a perfectly good bird like that.

Neighbor Dan's Daughters also discovered the partial remains of a couple of lizards in the lanai the day before so the sooner we can get the kids weaned the sooner we can get her fixed as well and maybe then her reign of terror will end.

Meanwhile, Bartleby watches a palmetto bug walk between her paws with total disinterest.

Bartleby, the Maladjusted

I'm not sure if Bartleby is coping well with having other cats around quite yet. She's taken to living out of a suitcase. Literally.

Whenever I slide open the lanai door to feed the little mama, she charges inside as is her wont, and  . . . usually . . . charges right back out again (since that is where I and the food now are) but, now and then, she'll just continue on in to Bartleby's plate and try to eat off of that. It's to the point where I'll move Bartleby's dish  up onto the roll top desk if there's any food in it before I even open the lanai door. Bartleby, needless to say is not pleased by this rudeness but her response is to run and hide.

Specifically, she runs into my brother's room, into his walk-in closet and into a sort of stiff-sided red duffel bag thing she found in there. The past two weeks she has spent almost all her time in the bag, as it were, coming out only to eat and use her litter box. The rest of the time she spends curled up in her suitcase in the dark.  I've only been able to trick her into going outdoors once (same results my brother got) and then she wanted to come right back in again, standing up, pounding on the door and whining until I told her she had to stay out for at least an hour. (It was a short hour. It started to rain after 45 minutes, and I relented.) She'll sit before her water dish, facing the wall, head down and just stare at the wall for uncomfortable lengths of time.

When she does go outside, she'll stop to lick one of the small gray stone urns by the front door or sit in it pretending to be a flower.

Can cats get depressed?

On another note, depressing to the human inhabitants of our house: I spotted another cat skulking about the yard, brownish with subtle tiger striping. Could be the father. Could just be another mooch got the word.

On still another note: The kittens' eyes are open and they're bumbling their way around their box climbing all over each other and up the walls. Neighbor Dan brought over a larger box. He thinks they're three girls and a boy. Neighbor Dan's daughters are counting the days until they can take the kittens home. So am I.

Fickle Felines

So, Neighbor Dan came over yesterday evening and asked if we had seen a little gray cat around recently since it had been coming around to his house and his daughters had been feeding it (in the garage since Mrs. Neighbor Dan is allergic) but it seemed to have disappeared.

I told him, yes, indeed, we were well aware of said cat, that she was apparently a double-dipping mooch for dining at his place since she had been living in and out of our lanai for a month already where she was fed at least twice a day but if he was interested he could come in and see the kittens whereupon he immediately called his daughters to come over. Which they did.

Little Gray Mama was very tolerant of everyone handling and picking up her babies (but, then, she is already quite familiar with everyone present, having already put the touch on both households) and the girls began the process of wearing dad down to allow them to have the kittens as soon as they are available. Neighbor Dan didn't put up much resistance but Mrs. Neighbor Dan will be the wild card in this negotiation and is still, to my knowledge, unaware of the proceedings.

Neighbor Dan also said he knew someone associated in some way with county animal control who might be willing and able to perform the necessary sexing/desexing of all involved (including Bartleby. Guilt-by-association.) for a nominal fee which would be a good thing since six operations is beyond the scope of our budget.

Speaking of Bartleby, she and Little Gray Mama have been around each other a little more recently. I was petting her in the driveway after coming home one day (and trying to park around her because why should she move?) when LGM popped up from around the car and they came nose-to-nose for a moment. And then, yesterday morning, they were both in the back yard at the same time. They seem to be tolerating each other although Bartleby will still go sulk in my brother's room if LGM comes into the house while she's eating.

Progress, I suppose.

All Things Considered, That Went Well

We survived the looting and pillaging mini-hordes. It took ten bags of candy to do it, but we didn't run out and actually have a few pieces left over for ourselves, like we need them.

Earlier in the day I came home to find my brother upset because he'd decided to frost the skeleton cakes with a glaze, apparently not realizing just how runny that would be (why not I don't know, it's not like he's never seen a glazed cake before), and ended up with two skulls that looked as if they'd been used for candle holders with wax dripping all down the sides. I liked the effect, but he didn't.

Later, he tried making a "fire" pit using colored streamers blown upward by a fan but, after a couple of hours constructing the thing, the fan he had wasn't strong enough to move anything so he went out but couldn't find a single window fan at WalMart (!) and finally purchased one at Lowe's which didn't have enough power, either, so the whole project went south. He took it surprisingly well, which is not his normal M.O.

The actual bribing of the monsters started a little late and slow this year but picked up after 8 p.m. and eventually ran long. I especially enjoyed the tiny three-year-old Batman and also the slightly older Batman who, being a little unclear on the concept, upon hearing us yell, "Hey, there's Batman!" lifted his mask and insisted, "No! It's me!" Never seen him before. We had a pair of moving sound-activated ghosts suspended from wires that crisscrossed the driveway moaning and cackling. Some kids were freaked out but the ones I liked were the kids who were so fascinated that they forget all about asking for treats and just stared transfixed as the ghosts floated by overhead.

The police stopped by at the height of the festivities and we were worried either the cars parked up and down the median strip of the main road were causing a hazard or the neighborhood curmudgeon had complained. (He's filed formal complaints at one time or another against every single property owner adjacent to him and a couple of others that aren't.) It turned out to be just a routine patrol and we all carried on.

The weirdest thing I saw all night though were pick-up trucks with flatbed trailers (the kind lawn care companies use to transport mowers) kitted out with chairs and even a porch swing all filled with kids cruising  through looking for likely neighborhoods to loot. Apparently, those trailers are a thing down here.

A Trip to Boston

My 12-year-old niece goes in for surgery tomorrow morning, 6 a.m., at Boston Children's Hospital. This will be her third open heart operation, although the first two were done when she was a baby so this is the one she'll remember. I just got off the phone with her and her Dad (my Other Brother). They and the rest of the family, except my younger nephew who is stuck on base in Virginia, are all going off for a Duck (DUKW: ex-military amphibious vehicle) Tour of Boston Harbor.

Caitlin with her Dad and two older brothers.

Fortunately, insurance will cover the operation itself, but there are other expenses including travel costs, living arrangements in Boston, lost income and additional doctors' bills that are not covered so the family has been conducting a number of fundraisers to help defray them.

Caitlin, in the middle, because of the stress on her heart,
has always been  . . .extra petite. For comparison, her friend,
Elizabeth, in pink, is a classmate and the same age. Credit Kevin Kane

I have been very impressed by the support her friends and the community have shown her. Her classmate, Elizabeth McCann organized a bake sale and lemonade stand. The local grocery has been selling fundraising cookies and the church hosted a fundraising dinner. In addition, a number of individuals and charities have donated to her cause.

On the one hand, I wish none of this, the operation or the begging, was necessary. On the other hand, I am proud of how, when the need arises, we do all pull together, just because it's the right thing to do.

The Cupcakes of Desperation

My Brother came home from the bar last night with a couple of treats: two homemade cupcakes, each topped with frosting and a half Twinkie decorated to look like minions from "Despicable Me." He gave me the single-eye-goggled one and kept the double-eyed one for himself.


A quick Google Image Search reveals that Minion Cupcakes
are a thing out there in the world. Who knew?

Apparently, someone's child had been diagnosed with cancer and this was one of the ways they are trying to raise the funds for her treatment.
I am quite confident that, if you were to ask anyone in that bar (this being southern Florida), they would all profess to be adamantly opposed to Obamacare, opposed to government mandated health insurance, opposed to "socialized medicine," and, in addition, are all oblivious not just to the irony but the pure obscenity of having to hold a bake sale to raise funds for life saving treatment for a child (or anyone else, for that matter). My Brother lost his own health insurance last year when his employer unilaterally decided to drop it. Still, he would rather die (and doesn't recognize the increased odds of that happening) than vote for a Democrat. Instead, they all buy cupcakes at $2 a piece and hope things work out because that's the way it is.

On a not entirely unrelated note, my niece (12 years old) is facing her third open heart surgery this fall. Although her parents do have health insurance, and most of the direct bills will be covered, the incidental expenses, ranging from food and parking during hospital stays in Boston to lost income during parental custodial time off and additional doctor bills, means they have had to set up a (slightly more organized) fundraiser for her.

It's wonderful to live in a first-world country in the Twenty-first Century. I'd like to try it some day.

Happy Birthday to All

It's taken some time to really sink in that, now that Mom has died, I am no longer anchored to the house. Yes, I went to Tampa for the Android developers' Meetup and we're no longer careful about making sure one or the other of us is always home, but it still feels a little . . . weird . . . to be able to just get up and go somewhere.

We had our barbecue early in the afternoon because my brother had to work yesterday evening. Ribs, sweet corn, potato and macaroni salads and cole slaw with apple pie for dessert. The fourth is one of those one-meal days. As the sun dropped behind the palm trees to the west, it occurred to me I could, for the first time, go watch the fireworks in person, up close, as opposed to the TV broadcasts of national celebrations and glimpses of the local shots half-hidden on the horizon in previous years when Mom couldn't travel.

I drove downtown in the dusk through a thin intermittent haze of barbecued meats and parked as close as I could to where the fireworks were to be launched which was about a mile away. Half that distance was due to the sheer number of vehicles taking up every conceivable parking space in the center of town and half because the authorities had blocked off the bridge to Ft. Myers (from which the fireworks were to be launched) and all the approaches and intersections.

People were massing, drawn on foot and bicycle, skateboard and stroller, to the foot of the bride, past tents offering ice cream and pizza, fries and gyros and falafel, shaved ice and bottles of water and mango peach tea. I walked past a bouncy castle and inflatable obstacle course for kids. Aisles of booths offered handyman repairs by veterans, enrollment in GED classes for Spanish speakers, sign-ups for cable TV and pool services, club-store memberships, vacation plans, and more politicians on the make than is probably safe for one's sanity (mostly Republicans since they have a primary coming up soon and are all running against each other right now but I did see one lone Democrat who will face the winner in November) all handing out fans with their names and pictures on them which, considering the heat and humidity, meant people were willing tolerate, if not approve, their presence.

And, oh, the people. Tall and short, skinny and fat, old and young. All the hues from pale pink to dark chocolate and every shade of brown in between, mostly natural but an awful lot thanks to some serious sun time. The woman in the hijab. The guy in the confederate T-shirt. All the folks in variations of flag shirts and shorts and bikinis. The black kid with the impressive dreads. The white kid in what I thought was a blue spiky mohawk threaded with flashing green LEDs but turned out to be a wig. The Germans standing next to me struggling to identify the "Star Spangled Banner" as the band up on the inflatable stage slid from a patriotic medley through military anthems to Johnny Cash. The group of children behind me who, when the show started, exclaimed "Wow!" at every starburst until it became a chant that eventually became a rhythm of its own and slid out of sync with the explosions taking on an unintentionally ironic tone. These are folks who might not run into each other on a day-to-day basis, who might not otherwise associate. all down at the foot of the bridge, together, having fun, sharing the one thing we all have in common: the freedom to be us.

If a country is the people (and that is the premise behind our whole experiment, after all), we are in great shape.

Mom, A Life: Part Nine

Mom, A Life: Part Eight

The Final Years

Dad was in a serious car accident just as they were building the new house. That, and the fact their contractor absconded with several thousand dollars necessary for the finishing work, meant the move was delayed, drawn-out and a little traumatic. They stayed with first one son and then the other (both of whom were living in town at the time) and eventually the place was completed.

In late 1997 Dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent cryogenic surgery. During follow-up another tumor was discovered and he began chemotherapy. As Mom described it from the x-rays, "It looked like a loaf of French bread wrapped around the back of his stomach." At first he responded well and they could see the tumor shrinking almost daily but suddenly something the doctors called a "wildfire" took over. In less than a month, on March 22, 1998, Dad died.

Mom continued to teach ceramics at the Senior Center and occasionally took on jobs either when she wanted extra money or just because she was bored. (She did a short stint as a dispatcher for a rental car company out at the airport one time.) She gave up driving and my brother, who had sold his house and moved in after his girlfriend died, chauffeured her around. In 2000, my brother managed to pull off a surprise 80th birthday party at the country club that included her children, grandchildren, most of her nephews and nieces, surviving sister and brother-in-law and a host of friends.

The remaining dozen years passed quietly. Mom's back had been giving her problems for decades. What with slipped and disintegrating discs and severe scoliosis she became hunched over at the waist and barely four feet tall. (She was 5' 6" most of her adult life.) As her mobility decreased she stopped going anywhere except ceramics class and doctors' appointments. We had always planned for Mom to live to at least 100, both because she thought that was a nice round number and also in hope she'd passed on longevity genes to the rest of us, but in 2008 I received a letter from her hinting at imminent problems. I moved in with Mom and my brother to help him look after her. The letter turned out to be a touch melodramatic.

Mom talked about moving to an assisted living facility but, although we got brochures and made some visits, her heart wasn't really in it and she stayed home. Her mobility became worse and she was plagued by occasional incontinence and so stopped going to ceramics out of what might best be called anticipatory embarrassment. She most definitely did not want her friends to see her deteriorating.

Mom was diagnosed with moderate Alzheimer's in 2010. She never discussed the diagnosis and I often wondered if one of the effects of the disease was that the implications never really sank in with her. She was put on a drug that noticeably slowed its progress, and for the six months immediately after the diagnosis she showed real improvement both physically and mentally. We even made one last visit to the ceramics class at the Senior Center.

Eventually, though she spent her days mostly on the couch reading and watching TV, although she no longer enjoyed watching sports as she found she didn't understand the rules or the point of the games any more and had no patience for anything lasting longer than a half hour or so. She read continuously, both magazines and large print books from the library.


She still dressed herself (with an increasingly eccentric creativity), made her own bed and did her own laundry (or tried to. We took that last chore away from her after she washed some disposables and filled the dryer with cubic feet of fluff). She had a great appetite and ate everything we made for her enjoying the occasional glass of wine with dinner. Although she had more and more trouble finding the right word, she never lost verbal capability and always recognized people. Her biggest problem was insomnia which could keep her bouncing up and down all night long and exhaustedly napping all the following day.

In February 2012, I noticed a decline in Mom's cognitive abilities. Despite the doctor's warnings about the inevitability of Alzheimer's, Mom had been so stable for so long that it came as something of a shock. During an appointment in early March, her GP noted a spike in her blood pressure and asked if she had a living will and DNR order on file. He recommended we post it on the refrigerator. Mom's insomnia was worse and she was a little more agitated than usual over the following weekend and then, sometime over night or, more likely, early Monday morning, her heart just gave out.

Mom died at home, in her room, Monday March 12, 2012, fourteen years after Dad. She was three months shy of 92.


Post Script

This sketch of Mom's life turned out to be a lot longer than I'd originally planned, yet it is still far, far too short to do her any kind of justice. I haven't mentioned her sense of adventure and willingness to try anything at least once. She'd go out in the woods with us kids to explore the "cave" we found. She had us all grilling Japanese food on hibachis and eating with chopsticks back in the '60s. She taught tolerance (no excuses) and encouraged intellectual curiosity. She's why I was listening to Stravinsky and Berlioz at age eleven and owned the complete Yale edition Shakespeare at thirteen (best junior high school graduation present ever!) and why I can cook for myself well enough to entertain in several different styles. ("You're either going to get married or stay single. If single, you're not rich enough to eat out every night so you'll starve if you don't know how to cook. And if you get married I'm not going to have some other woman complain I gave her a helpless son.")

Thanks, Mom. I love you, too.

Mom, A Life: Part Five

Mom A Life: Part Four

Career and Early Suburbia

When Mom was pregnant (with me) she quit the hospital and went to work in the private practice of Dr. Elisabeth Adams, a GP who had just moved her office from New York City to the quiet, classically New England village of Guilford, Connecticut. Mom took the bus from New Haven where she and Dad had an apartment. Both mothers-in-law lived in the same building.

(Dr. Adams' residence and office on the NW corner of the Guilford Green.)

Dr. Adams was a bit of a character in her own right and fit in quite well with the New England tolerance and encouragement of eccentricity. She was a Christian Scientist and did not believe in doctors--for herself--but became a doctor to serve others less enlightened. She also didn't believe in pain. Mom became the office head nurse and desired administrator of all shots.

My delivery was complicated but that didn't stop Mom from having two other children, both boys. The second child, Jon, was also born in the apartment in New Haven but, when they were expecting the third child, Robert, Mom and Dad decided to buy a house of their own in a newly opened suburban development in East Haven, adjacent to New Haven and one town closer to Guilford. The development, High Ridge, was huge by the standards of the day, paving over and landscaping acres upon acres of river bottom farm land and building hundreds of houses, all variations on the theme of single story ranch.

All the families on our little cul-de-sac moved in within months of each other. All the parents were roughly the same age (Mom and Dad were the outliers, having started later) as were all the (many) children. The one notable area of diversity was in religion. Our family was Congregational Protestant (the old Puritan church of New England). Our neighbors on one side were Catholic, on the other Jewish. The kids of all three families grew up calling all the other parents aunts and uncles. We envied Larry and Debbie because they received a present every day of Hanukkah. They envied our Christmas tree. 

Parenting was different then. The dog was frequently our babysitter. Fortunately, he was a smart dog. One day he came running home to get Mom and bring her and Aunt Barbara through some back yards and into the woods down to the Farm River that formed the western boundary of the development where Barbara's daughter Debbie was crying because my brother Robert was trapped in the middle of the stream with his snowsuit snagged on a branch. They were around three years old at the time. I would often ride my bike twenty miles or so round trip two towns over, mostly on back roads but occasionally on the state highway, just exploring. I never told anyone. I was eight or nine.

As the '50s came to an end, the state completed a new highway (the Connecticut Turnpike, I-95) east along the shore, opening up formerly isolated beach towns for expansion. We moved further out, leapfrogging Guilford, to Madison.

Mom, A Life: Part Four

Mom, A Life: Part Three

The Later War Years

The School of Nursing, in 1944, was housed in Hartford Hospital, a very large Victorian house, complete with free-flying bat, on Jefferson Street in Hartford. Students and faculty frequently chased the bat without success over the years. Standards of hygiene were . . . different . . . back then.

When patients checked out (men on one floor, women on another and surgery on still another) the beds were stripped down to the springs which the nursing students scrubbed with toothbrushes. When the beds were remade, sheets had to be cornered just so and the open ends of pillow cases were never to face the door. Nursing students poured and counted prescribed meds (with supervision).

Nursing school was not all work. It was here Mom learned to swim underwater and dive in the residence pool, two things she could never do as a child due to the mastoid infections. Because there was a war on, the local movie theaters held morning showings to accommodate shift workers, including student nurses. Mom was also selected to be editor-in-chief of the yearbook sophomore year. Her only really negative experience was coming down, along with twenty or so fellow students, with a serious case of food poisoning. They were all treated to a course of the new wonder drug penicillin, 500,000 units every four hours injected in the buttocks. Fortunately, all the girls had a crush on the male doctor who treated them.

Thanks to the atom bomb, the war ended before Mom graduated and she never had to tend casualties from an invasion of Japan.

Graduation, Career and Marriage

Mom graduated as a Registered Nurse in 1947. Shortly thereafter, she moved back to New Haven and started in the neo-natology ward at St. Raphael Hospital but left when procedural disputes between the woman running the unit and the sister in charge of the department created stress and dysfunction for all the nurses. Mom became a PRN (where needed) nurse at Yale-New Haven Hospital which at least had the advantage of never being routine.

Marshall Rosinus, who Mom had known since childhood from school and church functions, was discharged from the Army Air Force after the war and returned to West Haven. He worked for the New Haven Water Company for a while and, with a friend, would hitchhike to Hartford to visit Mom and the friend's girlfriend (also a nursing student and also a friend of Mom. The world was a smaller place back then).

(At some point, Marshall ran off on a very short lived and ill-advised marriage to someone named Rita. Mom never spoke or wrote one word about it but Dad mentioned it to me once, and I have found a Florida divorce record for them. Who she was, how they met and when (or why) they married I have not been able to determine. The divorce was recorded in Dade County in 1949. The same year Mom and Dad married.)

In 1949 Mom and Dad married in the First Congregational Church, West Haven, Connecticut. Mom was 29 and Dad 31. Mom's dress was home made and everyone was relieved when they caught her two-year-old nephew, Gerald Parsons, before he could take a pair of large shears to it while it hung on the door before the service. Gerald's older brother Douglas (four+) was ring bearer.
Since they were both older, they decided to try for children right away but had no luck. Dad went first for a check-up and then Mom but there were no physical reasons holding them back and finally the doctor just told them to forget about it and relax. That advice worked. That, and Mom managed to change shifts at the hospital.

One of their favorite pastimes was horseback riding, once Mom got used to the beasts, and they rode together on weekends right up until Dad discovered the Connecticut Governor's Horse Guard, Company B, and Mom discovered she was pregnant.

Useless Beast

How hopeless is the cat?

Neighbor Dan's daughters came over because they were worried the cat had died because all it does all day long is lie there under the oak tree, unmoving, surrounded by a family of life-size gray ceramic bunny rabbits (one buck, one doe, three kits) made by Mom.

The blue jays are stealing food from the cat's dish while the cat lies there within ten feet, watching. Yet, when her dish is empty, she'll come to the front door and attempt to climb the screen to let us know she needs a refill.

The good news is, because the cat is useless, none of the other wildlife is afraid to come onto our property. There are now two dozen ibis under the mango tree obliterating the local insect population, half a dozen crows and an equal number of doves of at least two different species hanging around the bird bath, where they have reached a modus vivendi allowing both doves and crows access at the same time although the doves are not happy about it. The blue jays, being busy stealing from the cat, show up only for the occasional drink and the mockingbirds ignore everyone preferring to sing all day and most of the night.

The lizards claim the front walkway and the lanai except when this one crow, who has figured out a way to get into the lanai and is pretty pleased with himself about it, wanders in and inspects the various plants at which time they hide in the couch cushions. Every now and then we'll find a frog attached to a window or screen.

None of this would happen if our cat behaved like a cat and was not what it is, for which I am glad, which is:

Useless beast.

Aftermath

We survived the night intact.

My brother had not put up all the decorations because of the forecast storm which never showed but did sideswipe us with moderate rain for two days before, and minor gusting wind right up until noon of, Hallowe'en. At that point, the clouds broke up, the sun came out, the temperature rose and it was too late to add more balloons. Fortunately, he had not, as he had planned, taken any down. We had one casualty: a ghost set up too far into the drainage swale and subsequently drowned. All the others came through fine although the morning winds pushed over the headless horseman and caused the giant black cat to crouch down as if digging a giant vole from the lawn. They all recovered by mid-afternoon and we were respectably spooky by trick-or-treat time.

(There was indeed an additional new decoration this year. An 8-9 foot tall inflatable gray dragonish gargoyle--or gargoylish dragon--sat comfortably beneath the coconut palm.)

Neighbor Dan across the street went overboard again. Easily three times as many decorations as we had, smoke machines belching from the cauldron and castle, strobe lights--the usual. Also half a dozen cheap pizzas and six cases of Yuengling. Which resulted, after a while, in Neighbor Dan riding his motorcycle around the neighborhood, masked. (His twelve-year-old daughter didn't dress up this year. "I'm going as myself. That's scary enough." Surprisingly self-aware, that girl.)

We set up our candy table in the driveway again (our front door is not visible from the street access) and Mom came out for a while and sat with us while the first, and therefor youngest, kids came looting. Batman seemed to be the most popular this year. They came in both blue and black caped versions and all shapes and sizes including one little guy who was as round as he was tall. Like the wannabe from "Dark Knight" only more so.

Mom, although wearing a sweater, got cold when the sun went down and the temperature dropped to the mid-70s so she and I went in where I had dinner ready. My brother came in a little more than an hour later after running out of candy. We had our usual 100+ kids this year again. (Where do they all come from? You can wander the neighborhood all day and not see one or any indication of their existence. Do they all stay indoors every day?)

We have three Three Musketeers bars and four pieces of Laffy Taffy left. My brother's girlfriend had her usual three trick-or-treaters at her apartment yesterday so he'll go over there and retrieve the rest of the Reese's Cups from her. She doesn't like them. We, however, will inhale them.

Why It Is A Good Thing I Do Not Have Children

Because I giggle myself silly every time I see this:

Especially the last two kids scenes. I would so send kids of mine there. I'm a bad person. I know.