“A Memorial Day for Everyone”

By

Gerry Niskern

What does Memorial Day mean to you? Nearly everyone thinks of it as a fun filled break from the work or school; perhaps a family get-together or a trip out of town.

Memorial Day has always been a day to remember; a time to think of the loved ones in the family who have passed on. It is only in recent years that the total emphasis was placed on honoring the war dead.

When I was a kid May 30^th was called Decoration Day. Our family had fun on that special day too, but first we started the day by decorating the graves of loved ones, including the soldiers in the family.

We kids pulled weeds while our parents clipped overgrown grass around the family plots. Then we placed jars of spring wildflowers picked earlier that morning, by the headstones.

After our work was finished, we walked with Mom among the headstones in the cemetery. She gave us a running commentary about grandparents, aunts and uncles who had passed on.  We learned who had been honest, hardworking, law abiding and who hadn’t. Her stories conveyed clearly who was respected and why.

Today the majority of children are not taken to memorial services of family members. It’s a bit ironic that most kids are allowed to play video games that include violence and death routinely yet are sheltered from real deaths.

Here’s an idea. Why not consider a family session on this Memorial Day to remember and honor the dead. Is there someone’s grave you need to visit? Take the kids with you. If you haven’t been here in the valley long and don’t have a place to visit, get out the family photo albums. Tell your kids what kind of a man Grandpa was. Was he in the service? Where did he work?  How did Grandma dress when she was dating? Did she have a profession? When she married, was it hard raising a family back then?   Be ready for a flood of questions and a valuable interlude spent with your child.

As you use your time to connect with the past and include death as part of the reality of life, you’ll be observing Memorial Day as it was always intended.

The fallen soldiers should be honored, of course, but let’s put the emphasis back on making it a Memorial Day for everyone.

“Songs My Mother Sang to Me”

By

Gerry Niskern

Today’s young mothers sing to their baby while it is still in the womb as a way of bonding with the infant. I  have a feeling my mother was way ahead of her time. My mother sang to me, when I toddled after her down the rows of bean stalks as she picked a “mess” for dinner.

She sang while she peddled her treadle sewing machine mending our dresses. “Daisy, Daisy” and “Ka Ka Katy” were a couple that I remember. But the songs I remember best were the ones she sang in the car. When my dad’s flailing hand was trying to connect in the back seat with an unruly child, Mom would quickly say, “Let’s all sing.”

When we tired of harmonizing, we begged her to sing our favorite,. “Sing Redwing” I would plead. She always started… “There once was an Indian maid, a shy little village maid….as the song of unrequited love spilled from my mother’s lips, we were spellbound.

My grandson’s wife always sang lullabies to her first baby, a baby boy, when they were at a late baseball game of his brothers. He listened spellbound, brown eyes solemn and wide, as he went to sleep.

He had books that played tunes when you open them or touch a spot on the page.

His pushcart played melodies as he trudged behind it. The videos he watched were full of music. Nothing comforted him, hushed him or soothed like his mother’s voice when she started singing softly to him.

Mothers are remembered for many things; their cooking, wiping away tears and cuddling. But the one thing my great-grandson and I both can say is  “My mother sang to me”.

“Grandmothers are Mothers Too!”

By

Gerry Niskern

I was reminded by a grandchild one day that “Grandmothers are mothers too!”

We all knew, each cousin squeezed around my grandma’s big kitchen table back when I was a kid, that when we came to her house, she would give us coffee. The brew, the latte of our childhood, consisted of about one quarter cup coffee, a half cup of milk and heaping teaspoons of sugar. Our spoons clicked happily against our enamel mugs as we sloshed and stirred.

Raising her brown spotted hands, and putting her finger to her lips, she cautioned, “Shh…don’t tell Mommy I give you coffee.”

Our guilty giggles joined her chuckles as a grin deepened the wrinkles across her face. Her laughter revealed two teeth, one on the upper right and one on the lower left. We knew she had another one because many times she had tilted her head and let us peek at the gold molar in the back.

“What happened to all your teeth,” one of us would ask.

“You always lose tooth with every baby,” was her reply.

During the days of the coal mine’s  quack “company doctors” she was left crippled after the birth of her last baby. She stepped out with her right foot and dragged her left forward, creating a kind of bobbing gait as she shuffled between the kitchen table crowded with adoring grandchildren and the icebox. Grandma had iron gray hair pulled straight back into a tight bun.  A long straight apron covered her print dress and reached the edge of her high-topped black shoes.

She brought sour cream and apple butter to spread on our thick slices of home baked bread. We had already turned down her favorite, soda crackers. To our grandma, they represented a treat she didn’t have in the old country. She shook her head in disbelief at her ignorant grandchildren who didn’t recognize  something special when they saw it.

My grandmother was one of the many immigrants who, along with her young husband, braved harsh conditions and uncertainty on board ship to come to America in the late 1880’s.   As a young mother, she made an unbelievable sacrifice. Although it broke her heart, she agreed to leave her baby girl in the old country in the care of the grandmother until they were settled in America and could afford to send for her.

If she saw one of us grandkids accidentally drop our bread crusts, she admonished us “No, no. It’s a sin to drop the bread. “

In the small Austrian village where she grew up, the peasants worked very hard for their daily bread. They raised wheat and ground their own flour for baking.

By choosing to come to America my courageous grandmother gave our generation a future full of opportunity in America. She taught us to respect God’s gift of our daily bread.  She also gave us the thrill of a secret from our parents…she gave us coffee!