Trick or Treat!

Although we live in a busy neighborhood, we’ve never gotten into the Trick-or-Treating thing on Halloween. We haven’t actually had that back-and-forth discussion on Halloween, what it celebrates, what is it’s origin and how does that reflect in the lives of our children. It hasn’t really been pertinent…yet.

This year I was asked often if we were taking Emry trick-or-treating. The answer is pretty simple: not this year, she’s still a bit young, she doesn’t need the candy and Ed and I certainly don’t need it either. I think most people think we’re just practical parents versus the ones who think it’s cute to dress their infant up in a pumpkin costume. And maybe we are. More likely, we’re just lazy.

Ed did the whole trick-or-treating thing growing up. He has some good memories of it and some bad ones (like the many years he had to dress up like a bunny because his mom made him a nice costume – you can imagine what that might do to a little boy who dressed like an Army man as soon as he was allowed to choose). I did the whole trick-or-treating thing for a few years as a little girl in Tennessee. To strictly call in “Trick-or-treating” might be a bit misleading. We lived on a busy road, so the furthest we went was next door to Mrs. Mayberry’s. After that, we drove over to Grandma’s neighborhood and knocked on the doors of houses whose residents we knew (Mrs. Little, Mrs. Cochran and probably people related to us somehow). You didn’t get very far because trick-or-treating equaled socializing. Many of the houses we stopped at, we were invited inside and stayed for ten or fifteen minutes.  I’m supposing the adults were catching up on all the local gossip.

Our night ended at Kenneth’s. Kenneth is my mom’s “baby” cousin. At the time, he wasn’t married and somewhere in his mid-20s. If he held a job or not then, that’s a history I don’t know. Kenneth, I would learn, is somewhat allergic to work, adulthood and all thing like that. As a kid, though, I just thought it was the best ending to Halloween. (Disclaimer: what my memory tells me and what is actually true may not be the same. I was but 5, 6, 7 and 8 years of age – memories at that age always have a tint of imagination.) Kenneth lived in a little upstairs apartment just off the square. It appeared very spooky to me – up some old steps in a darkened well. His apartment also seemed dark, tiny and sparse but he was a bachelor, after all. I’m pretty sure no kids lived in those few upstairs rooms. And even fewer knocked on narrow doors and climbed dark steps to trick-or-treat at Kenneth’s. And yet…Kenneth always had a box full of neatly packaged goodie-bags full of great treats. (I even remember popcorn balls one year!) And we’d sit down, enjoying our nice treats while mom and Kenneth visited and caught up on the local gossip. Then we also got to take treats home because, really, what was Kenneth going to do with them all? (Except eat them for dinner over the next week…) That’s what you call successful trick-or-treating.

So, will Emry trick-or-treat? I guess we’ll discuss that next year. Or maybe just wait until she’s old enough to ask what the other kids are up to. One thing’s for certain: it won’t be the trick-or-treating I knew!

Walking

It seems like, with most kids, the skill of walking is fairly quick in progression of stages: pull yourself up, walk with help and while holding onto things, a few steps by yourself, more steps…and they’re off! Not so Emry.

Emry has been pulling herself up and walking with help since the beginning of July. It was another five or six weeks before she’d let go and stand by herself, then take a tentative step or two. Now it is the end of October and she’s finally letting go and walking by herself. Over the past few days, walking has outdistanced crawling in her modes of transportation.

It’s actually quite fun to watch. She’s not one of those kids who is at all effected by peer pressure. I watched her sit on top of a very wide bridge shaped slide in the small children’s play area at the mall for 15 minutes while kids of every shape, size and age climbed around her to slide. She didn’t care. She was has happy as can be watching them, exchanging a few words now and then if she felt like it. I couldn’t coax her down the slide for all the fruit snacks in the world (her favorite). Eventually, it took Ed and I to push and pull her gently down the slide (which did not impress her at all).

A few months ago, before the older kids moved to the next class, every kid in her Sunday School class was walking all around her. It didn’t bother her. I don’t think she would have cared if the babies now in her class started walking before she did. Her cousin Jay ran circles around her last week in Tennessee, the little girl a couple of doors down runs about and we’ve been to more than one playground where kids younger (but larger) dash around happily. She wouldn’t budge. Crawling has been more than sufficient for 6 months now – who needs to walk?

But now she is walking. As soon as we got home from Tennessee, she took off. It was as if she was extremely tired of being in a car seat for hours on end and she was now home in her safe little world. She could walk about as she pleased. Which is what she does most of the day now. Back and forth. Back and forth. From the living room to the kitchen and back again – sometimes with a stop for something in her room or the dining area. We’ve said we ought to find a baby pedometer and strap it to her to see how many steps she takes for she’s surely wearing a path in our carpet. And she’s as happy as can be.

The Frog

It was a spur of the moment decision. I’m not even sure when it hit me to ask. But, I brought it home. A frog. And cried every time I looked at it for the next three days.

That frog has been a part of my entire life. And I do mean entire. Very likely I first came in contact with it when I was 7 months old and I took my first plane ride to Tennessee. That same trip is the first time I got my picture in the newspaper. After all, the only grandchild of Betty Ann Ogilvie visiting for the first time was big news in Lewisburg. My first picture with the frog, though, was when I was 10 months old and it was my first Christmas. Funny enough, I have several pictures from that Christmas with the frog (and Uncle George – maybe that’s why I’ve always connected Uncle George with the frog). As you can see, the frog is kind of central to my life.

Who knows how long the frog has lived in the coat closet in Grandma’s living room. If you look it up online, “Frisky Frog” has been around since 1971. So, it probably came to live at Grandma’s when she had her Kindergarten there. When that closed in 1977, it somehow made it’s way upstairs to the closet where it has lived for at least the nearly 37 years of my life. I played with it. All my brothers and sisters played with it. All my cousins played with it. And now Emry and her cousins have played with it. Although it now has a new home…Pittsburgh.

As I was leaving last Thursday night, Mom asked me if there was anything I wanted. It just came to me: “The frog?” “Of course!” Mom exclaimed, laughing. And out it came, first the frog and then the cord that goes with it. This past week I’ve fixed it up so it jumps yet again – even if the cord doesn’t stay in, if it ever did. (Apparently, according to the web, it’s also supposed to croak but I don’t ever remember it doing that.) And just as it’s simple air-forced pump that makes it jump once delighted me it now makes Emry laugh and giggle as the frog jumps to get her.

That frog is a piece of me – my childhood, my time at Grandma’s, my home in Lewisburg. There will doubtless be many times tears will come to my eyes when I see it. It holds lots of memories. And now it will be a part of Emry’s life….and the new baby’s life…and probably their cousins when they visit. And who knows? Maybe one day my grandkids will visit, pulling the frog out of Grandma’s closet and making it a part of their lives.

Little Me, Uncle George and the Frog (1980)

Emry and the Frog (2016)

Back in Tennessee

We all get asked: “Where are you from?” It’s a good conversation starter. And you get asked that question a lot when you live somewhere that doesn’t match your accent (which has been the case much of my life). I learned over the years to give different answers – all of which are true. It just depends on who is asking and why. Since the question is typically spawned because some word came out of my mouth with a Southern twang, Tennessee is a common answer. And a very true one.

Until last week, it had been 13 years since I had been “home” to Tennessee. I know why I hadn’t visited, although some of the reason is time just slips by and you don’t know where it goes. Now I wish I had been back much sooner. I had forgotten how much going to Lewisburg is like going home.

Maybe it’s because Lewisburg never changes. I don’t mean that really. There are way more fast food places there now than when I was a kid. (Good grief, I remember when McDonalds was built and what a big deal that was.) And there is more shopping, although you still have to go to Columbia if you want more than Walmart or groceries. And there are new buildings – parts of churches, houses, schools. Other buildings have been torn down, including the stone house we lived in. But the square is the same. (Well, I remember it being a bit larger…) The church we attended hasn’t changed. And even some of the old playground equipment I played on is still at the park at the Rec Center. Lewisburg is Lewisburg. It always will be.

And in so many ways, it will always be home. Mrs. Little (Grandma’s only surviving neighbor) remarked that I wouldn’t have any reason to visit again, especially once Grandma’s house is sold. But that’s simply not so. No, none of my aunts, or uncles, or cousins live in Lewisburg. A couple of mom’s cousins do, as well as her uncle and aunt although both of them are quite old now. I even have a few elementary school chums that still live there. Not to mention Mrs. Little. But it’s not entirely the people that make Lewisburg home. It’s also the memories…and those that have passed through before.

Emry lives where her papa is from. She will grow up hearing stories of what he did as a kid in Pittsburgh, how things have changed, where her family is buried and even knowing the houses he and other family members lived in. Her knowing that part of her life makes me want to share who I am and were I’m from all the more. I want her to see the places I loved, the homes that were my homes and the place her ancestors settled. (My family settled Marshall County, Tennessee just after the Revolution when they moved west from North Carolina.) Besides, my grandparents are buried there. And my great-grandparents. And my great-great grandparents. And everyone in-between, around and before. Not to mention my sister Christine.

We will go back to Tennessee. I don’t know when, but we will. Because it calls. As home always does. 

Betty Ann Ogilvie

“Grandma”

June 6, 1932 – October 17, 2016

My Grandma

I can’t recall my first memory of my Grandma Ogilvie. She was just always there. She visited when I was born…and again when Katey was born…and again a year or two later. I have pictures to prove it – not memories. My memories kick in when I was 5 and we moved to Tennessee. Then Grandma really was there.

Grandma lives in the house built into a hill. I’ve always thought it was a neat house, the kind with lots of ways in and a wonderfully long drive around it to ride bikes on and plenty of yard to play in. I have TONS of memories of that house – lots of family gatherings, Easter egg hunts, riding bikes, Christmases, fun with my cousins. A lot of its furnishings are familiar, its smell brings back all sorts of fun and even the old toys I played with are still about somewhere. It’s Grandma’s house – the kind every kid should have a memory of.

Grandma herself…well, a think “formidable” might be a good word to describe Grandma Ogilvie. That word literally means, “inspiring fear or respect through being impressively large, powerful, intense or capable.” In terms of Grandma it means, “inspiring respect through being impressively capable”. At least, to me.

My grandma, Betty Ann, was born June 6, 1932 to Felix Bert George (known as “Bert”) and his wife Annie Maple Lucille Hayes (known by any of those names or “Sally” by her grandkids). They had three children: Lucille, Macklin (known as “Mack”) and my grandma. Lucille died as an infant, leaving my grandma with her big brother Mack, who was nearly five years her senior. Her father was a sharecropper and they were a poor, farming family. I would learn later that my grandma begrudged her “poverty” all her life, but she had many things to be grateful for.

I can imagine my grandmother was a dreamer, in her own no-nonsense way. I think she hoped for a good education, and opportunities, and a good life. How she met my grandfather, I actually don’t know. Except that Lewisburg is a small town, it’s hard to imagine them in the same “circles”. For when they married in 1951, Grandma was 18 years of age. My grandfather, William Harris Ogilvie, Jr. was 33.

Over the next four years, they would have three children: Will, Pat (my mom) and George. Aunt Lynn arrived nine years later. My grandfather built Grandma the house in the hill. In 1958, she started her first Kindergarten in the basement. (My parents would meet in that same Kindergarten the following year.) And for the next 50+ years, my grandmother would be a part of nearly every child’s life in the town of Lewisburg, Tennessee.

For after closing her Kindergarten, Grandma went on to run the daycare in her local Methodist church. In 1987, she would open her own daycare. Over the next couple of decades, she would retire from that daycare…and then return to it. When she finally made her retirement “official” she still worked: as a teacher’s aide at the local elementary school. There are very few children – or adults – in Lewisburg who do not know Mrs. Betty Ann Ogilvie. And those probably live under a rock…

It seems that nothing has ever knocked my grandmother down. My grandfather died in 1974, leaving her with three children in college and a ten-year-old to raise on her own. I know it was hard. Later she would remarry, but it was a very, well…unique marriage that would end when I was about eleven or twelve. That was probably hard, too, in it’s own way. Still, Grandma marched on.

Which, I think, is what inspires fear and respect in my soul. Nothing ever seems to knock my grandma down. She is a woman you might not always agree with, but she is a woman you will admire and respect. In all honesty, I haven’t always agreed with her. And I’m not sure I’ve ever truly pleased her. Our relationship has been difficult to non-existent. For even though I might be the first grandchild, I am not one of the favored ones. Simply put, I am not “formidable”.

But, then, neither is Grandma. The past six months of her life have been up and down. We all thought the cancer in her body had been removed, but it seems it was not. Last week she was released from the hospital and put on hospice care. Any day now, I expect to get that final call…

It’s funny. I haven’t seen my grandmother for years. I haven’t talked to my grandmother for years. But I can’t tell you how many times I have simply broken down and cried this past week. Cried that Emry will not meet her. That I will have to teach Emry all those funny little songs Grandma would plop down at the piano and play. (She can’t read music; she plays by ear.) That I won’t have the opportunity to spend time (however awkward) with her again. For I know that in her own way, she loved me. And I love her.

Grandma and me - 1987

Talking Away

If chattering is a sign that we're a girl, then Emry is definitely a little girl. Our vocabulary grows every day...and even if we can't yet speak it complete sentences, it doesn't stop us from chattering away in our own language.

Emry first became a chatterer as she read books aloud to herself. Any given morning you can find her in her room, books scattered about her that she has pulled from her shelves, jabbering away as she turns pages. Some of the words she speaks will give you an idea of what she is reading: There's a Monster at the End of this Book, Dr. Suess's ABCs, Hop on Pop, Amelia Bedelia's First Field Trip or Biscuit. Those are some her favorites and we read them so often, she knows the words by the pictures. But she'll read just about anything, including the books by my bed that have no pictures in them at all, jabbering away and making up her own stories.

She also likes to give running commentary on whatever it is she's doing, particularly when she's walking back and forth between Ed and I. We do this nearly every night, me on one side of the room and Ed on the other. She gets her nightly laps in, toddling like a drunkard back and forth between us. And talking. As soon as she gets to one of us, she starts chattering away as if telling us all about her last lap - and how proud she is of herself.

It is true that we still play the guessing game a lot. She points and sounds like a little dog trying to get something. But we're getting clearer. She can say "please" and sort of say "thank you". Ironically, she says "yes" but she doesn't say "no" (she shakes her head). Her favorite books she can pronounce - sort of. Hop on Pop with very clear "P" sounds. An odd jabber that is Amelia Bedelia. A real quick "ABCs" as if it's all one word. (She can actually sing the song until she gets to the letter "E". She then either points to herself or her elephant...because she knows they start with "E".) She also likes the letter "R", sounding like a little pirate on the seven seas. She can say "banana", "peas" (which is what she calls broccoli and green beans for she actually doesn't like peas), "crack" for crackers, "Cheerios", "juice" and "Chex".

She can also say "baby" and "girl". She is well aware of babies - pointing them out everywhere we go, and she knows that the picture of our baby's sonogram on my phone is the "baby". Whenever she's sitting in my lap and my stomach growls, she reaches back and pats my growing stomach saying happily, "Baby!" And when we ask her if the baby is a boy or a girl, she happily proclaims "Girl!" Of course, when we ask if Papa is a boy or a girl, she also proudly proclaims "Girl!" I think, perhaps, she might need a little brother - just to understand the concept of a boy.

Our First Cold

I guess it’s that time of year again – the warmer weather is going away, the colder weather is coming. It has been lovely, opening all the windows and letting in the fresh, cool autumn air. After a weekend with lots of fall rain, it is sunny again and the days do warm so being outside is a pleasure. Long sleeves come out, sweatshirts in the morning and evening and boots – yea for boots!

And, we learned last night, colds. Emry has yet in her nearly 18 months of life to have a cold. Not so much as a sniffle. But last night she woke up a couple of times crying, coughing and sniffling. Since she’s been teething I couldn’t tell until this morning if the sniffles were on account of the crying or on top of it. A runny nose is a good indicator that this is her very first cold. I’m running about with tissues to wipe said runny nose. She’s frustrated because she can’t breathe as well. And blowing her nose, which she thought was great fun when unnecessary, is now a drag.

The humidifier has come out. I am dressing her warmly (thankfully she likes socks, but I always have trouble dressing this little girl because she is always so warm to the touch while I am always so cold). I even made her some tea with honey and lemon for her sippy cup. When we walk to the library later, we will tuck a blanket around us. I know colds must run their coarse, but I hope this one is short rather than long. And then we can go back to being our very healthy self. Praise God for exceptional good health!

Take me out to the Ballgame

I have to say one thing about Pittsburghers: they are very hopeful people. In fact, they hold out hope to the very last minute…hoping against hope while those of us who are not Pittsburghers gave up hope in August. Because it doesn’t take a baseball pro, coach or commentator to know that when you’re scrambling for pitchers and some of your major players on the DL that you’re simply not going to get that wildcard spot. And yet, Pittsburgh hoped with bated breath that somehow the Pirates would pull it off.

The truth is I don’t know a lot about major league baseball, although it’s history is fascinating. And the truth is I don’t know a lot about the Pirates line-up, coaches or roster. The truth is also that I don’t understand wildcards, play offs or the stats that get one team there above another. Finally, the truth is the Pirates did have a chance at a wildcard spot until last Tuesday…and, in typical Pirate fashion, they blew it.

Yet their Pittsburgh fans NEVER loose hope. In just a few short months, as soon as winter training begins, everyone around here will hang their Jolly Rogers and talk of the 2017 World Series as if it’s a given that the Pirates will be there and sweep the pennant in the first four games. But here’s the truth in black and gold, Pittsburgh: THE PIRATES HAVEN’T BEEN TO A WORLD SERIES IN MY ENTIRE LIFETIME. I simply wouldn’t hold my breath.

The sad reality is that the Pirates aren’t a bad team. Last Wednesday Ed and I went to a game at the beautiful PNC park where I ate French fries to my heart’s content (a pregnancy craving I don’t allow myself) and watched them beat the Cubs hands down. It was a brilliant night – good pitching, good hitting, good team playing. It was the kind of baseball game even a non-Pittsburgher like myself could enjoy: really good ball playing. But as the guy behind me so honestly shouted at the field, “Why didn’t you play like this when it mattered?” The exact question I had been pondering.

But the truth is, it is the just a game. And maybe the Pirates should always play as if it didn’t matter. For it really shouldn’t. That is why major league baseball was started: to give people a chance to put their lives on hold for a few hours and watch something that really didn’t matter. The players played because they loved to play. (Did you know that it was actually illegal to pay baseball players when the league started? Makes you wonder how many million-dollar-paid players would stick around if we went back to that. Likely none.) And the fans watched because they loved to watch. Just the way a game should be.