Oh, the Places I have Lived! - Part 7

From Connecticut, we ventured north about an hour just over the Massachusetts line and found a place to rent in the little town of East Brookfield: population 2,100. (We joked it was 2,010 plus a beagle while we lived there.) Off just about any beaten track, the little town had some appeal with its border weaving around Lake Lashaway. Highlighted on its welcome sign is the declaration that it is the birthplace of Connie Mack (born 1862). But unless you are a baseball fanatic you probably have no clue who that is.  Neither did I, but now the fact that he played for and managed the Pittsburgh Pirates (1891 to 1896) means something to me. (Ironically, he was falsely accused of raising up good players and then selling them off to other teams in order to line his own pockets. It was a lie, but if you want to accuse the current manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates for doing the same today…well, it probably isn’t a lie.) Other than that, there’s nothing about East Brookfield that would bring it to anyone’s mind.

 

We lived right over the town line on the corner of Route 9 and a dead end street called Cove Street, right across from what was then Harry’s Pizza. Not a terrible location (with pizza across the street), especially for my brother who could walk right down the dead end street to fish off the bridge in a stocked river. He lived half his life down there the 21 months we lived there, and personally knew just about every neighbor between there and the bridge, plus at least one neighbor beyond.

 

The house itself was interesting. Portions of it, we were told, had been built in the 1700s and you could see the old wood rafters with wood nails in my dad’s office and the school room. Those two rooms were probably the most solid in the house. After that was a mish-mash of small rooms, all with short ceilings and uneven floors, in no particular order. The owner had tried to make a go of it as a B&B, so she had decorated the walls nicely, but the place as a whole left much to be desired. Unable to put up any bunk beds on account of the short ceilings, it would have been a bit more spacious if the bedrooms upstairs hadn’t been filled with beds. Katey and I had hoped for the one downstairs back bedroom (probably the latest addition of the many additions the house had likely seen), but since my parents’ mattress couldn’t go up the very narrow circular staircase…well, maybe it was for the best. My parents’ bedroom had the back/side door which was most frequently used – and which Grace broke through with her hands and cut one of them when trying to get outside after Daniel and Sally. That was an adventure.

 

The house had a back screened in porch that we treaded carefully when letting out our beagle onto his run or feeding the cats, lest we fall through its floor. The basement was not closed up well and only used to park our bikes. According to Jenny (then 3 or 4…I should say 2 or 4 as Jenny never knew she was 3), a “Stupie Clown” (interpretation: Stupid Clown) lived down there. She had to shout at it quite a bit. And it had the oddest patio area that was sunk into the ground as a walk out of the basement and mostly surrounded by cement walls. I think we all feared one of our parents would go a little too far with one of the cars and end up down in it. It was great when it snowed, though, because our neighbor who kindly plowed the small pad dumped all the snow into that area where we could then dig series of tunnels and forts. In 1996 the area set records with snowfall. It was great.

 

And while I spent most of my time in the small room I shared with Katey, it had a decent backyard for my younger siblings and an attic Katey more-or-less lived in. Terribly hot in the summer and frigidly cold in the winter, she sweated it out with a fan or bundled up in warm clothes and a blanket to create every craft imaginable from wreaths, to flower arrangements, to drawings, and more candles than the Yankee Candle Factory. Really. 

 

So while the house itself left much to be desired in almost every way (like no mailbox so we had to trek to the post office which was a whole .7 miles away…and which I complained about endlessly), we made a lot of memories in our short time there. Grace even has the scars to prove it.

 

Winter at our home in East Brookfield!

Off with his foot!

I’m not sure which I wish more: that Ethan had been born without feet or that his feet will last as long as his lifespan. The latter, I suppose. For if God had not blessed him with feet, my little rascal would find some way to damage his legs. Meanwhile, I think I do need to start praying his feet will last as long as his life.

 

Ethan was two years old when he first hurt his feet badly. I was pouring boiling hot water over ant hills outside our house, quite sure that both of my children were at a safe distance from getting even splashed. But, quick as a whip, Ethan stuck one of his feet out and hot water washed over his toes. Praise God he had his crocs on, so parts of his foot were protected and he only suffered a few blisters. Also praise God we were just about to go to the pool, so he splashed around for over an hour in cold water. Still, it took several weeks of bandages, aloe, and other ointments for the feet to heal.

 

A year later, he’d jump off the swingset at my parents without bothering to “look before he leaped” and land badly. After icing it and keeping it elevated for the afternoon, he still refused to put any weight on it. Just to assure myself, we took him to the “doc-in-a-box” to make sure it wasn’t broken. Thankfully it was only a bad sprain. Within a couple of days, he was fine.

 

Yesterday, he got a splinter in his foot. He’s not partial to shoes anyhow, and when he’s running around in his swimsuit getting in and out of our little pool, he’s not about to stop and put on shoes every time he gets out of the pool. Well, he chased after Emry and our neighbor girl up onto the neighbor’s wooden porch, and…got a rather good sized splinter in the bottom of his foot. I tried to get it out, but it was deeper than I could do alone. Since Ed was at work, all I could do was bandage it with a baking soda paste and pray that would bring it further to the top over night. While it did, it still took Ed and I two twenty-minutes sessions today and lots of screaming and crying on his part to get it out.

 

So you can see why I may have concerns that his feet will last his lifespan. Or maybe I need to go back to school and become a podiatrist… 

Yeah, I don’t see that happening. 

Don't Forget!

When Ellyson was born a year ago on our 6^thwedding anniversary, Allyson (who also has a daughter born on their anniversary) warned me not to forget to celebrate our anniversary on top of birthday festivities. I don’t think I could forget if I wanted to.

 

It’s a joke that men always forget their anniversaries. In our home, Ed will have to have Alzheimer’s before he forgets that. Nearly a month before he was asking me what we should do. Since the Saturday before our anniversary was already penciled in as a possible work Saturday, he said we had to go out the weekend before that. He made the reservations for a really nice place someone had given us a gift card to, and I asked my parents if they could babysit for the weekend. Then he asked how much money he was allowed to spend on a gift. I kept it simple: just don’t make me angry when I see the debit in the checking account.

 

All of this made me realize something: our anniversary is vitally important to him. I’m not saying I don’t consider it important, but I’m also not thinking four weeks in advance about it when I have things coming up in two weeks I need to plan for first. When that dawned on me, I had to stop and consider why. It didn’t take me long to land on the answer: his parents divorced when he was eight years old. And he knew before that that neither of them considered their marriage very important: his dad was too self-centered and his mom gave up after she quickly realized she had not married Prince Charming. Add to that quite a few girlfriends, failed relationships, and hard feelings of his own…he had a great desire for a successful marriage but no strong examples. 

 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, my maternal grandparents were married for twenty-plus years before my grandfather died of lung cancer. My paternal grandparents were married for just short of fifty-five years before my grandmother passed away. And my parents have been married for forty-four years this month. I’m not saying that any of them found marriage easy, always happy, or endless days of smooth-sailing. Marriage is hard. It’s easy to consider giving up. But they didn’t. And those are the examples I have.

Thinking about all this reminded me that marriage is worth celebrating, and I need to join him take time to do so. So, even though we will celebrate Ellyson each year and the life God has given her, we will also take time to rejoice in the marriage God has sustained for us. Two very good reasons to throw a party!

ONE YEAR OLD!!!

In so many ways, it is hard to believe our littlest girl is one whole year old, but she is. To be honest, I’m not sure who was more excited about it: Ellyson or Emry and Ethan. Emry and Ethan LOVE birthdays. It doesn’t really matter whose it is, but cake and presents are always fun. How much more so when the birthday girl needs help opening the presents and gets to destroy her cake.

 

Only Grandpa and Grandma came for the little party, but she didn’t mind or know the difference. She got a few presents. Buying for her isn’t easy. Not only can she not tell you what she wants, she already has so many hand-me-down toys she’s not “in need” of anything else. I think her favorite gifts were here new Jim Brickman CD of hymns she can fall asleep to and her camp chair because she loves to climb up into it and feel like she’s a big girl. 

 

We decided to grill food instead of having her favorite: peanut butter on a spoon. (Although Grandma said she would have been perfectly happy with that meal.) And she had a simple cake: white cake with blue icing, “bubbles” and a rubber ducky on top. I think her siblings were a little disappointed that she didn’t totally destroy the cake. Except to poke her fingers into it, she mostly licked off all the icing. That was messy enough: she went right into the bathtub with her new rubber ducks after that.

 

All in all, a good first birthday and not too stressful. We were happy to celebrate with her!

 

                                                    Ellyson and her balloons Papa bought for her.

 

Opening presents.

 

Oooh!!! I get the whole cake?

 

Just the top…but that was enough!

12 Months!!!

Well, like her siblings before her, getting 12 month pictures was not the easiest thing I’ve ever done…making me quite happy the whole picture thing is over! Although it did start okay:

The one good picture!

 

Then we had to get up.

 

Forget the bed, I moved her to the chair…

 

My lightning reflexes are not good enough – at least not good enough to keep her from pushing Sock Monkey over, pulling off the sticker, and trying to get her to look at the camera. So, this is as good as it gets:

 

So, at a whole year old, she is way ahead of Emry as far as she is crawling, she is pulling up, and she is even letting go and standing before squatting down and crawling off. I think she’s a little behind Ethan, though, for I don’t foresee her walking until mid-July. But she is a climber: up the chairs at Emry’s table and right on top of the table. She really loves to climb up on the chair, get a piece of chalk off the desk, and color on the chalkboard wall. 

 

Her fine motor skills continue to come together: putting lids on markers, placing the rings on her octopus’s arms in the bathtub, trying to work buckles, putting pieces in the easier puzzles. She is a chatterer, maybe even more so than Ethan who talks from the moment he wakes up until he falls asleep at night, but she narrates nearly everything she does and then claps for herself when she has done it well. And her vocabulary is rather impressive: Mama, Papa, Emry, please, fan, fish, duck, bird, and various animal sounds. And here I was hoping for a quiet child…

 

She is also my troublemaker. When I put her to bed at night, she immediately pops back up and calls for Emry, giggling and ready to play instead of going to bed. Of course Emry never refuses and I have even found her fast asleep with Ellyson in the crib when I check them before I head to bed. She knows how to get her own way, cuddling when she doesn’t want to be put down or smiling sweetly to melt your heart. It’s not going to surprise me a bit in a few years when the three of them get into something they shouldn’t to discover that Ellyson is the ring-leader.

 

And so as much as she has changed our world, taken away hours of my sleep and so contributed to my grey hairs, and keeps me busier than ever…we can’t imagine life without our little Elly.