An Alphabet of Home

by Greacian Goeke

A

Apple Box

Mom and Dad brought me home from the hospital in an A&P apple box. I was snugged in like Moses in the bulrush basket.  

Dad took me out to show me his garden before they brought me into the house. My first breaths of home: the larch tree, dill, asparagus, red raspberry bushes. I wish I knew what my father was thinking as he held me there in the box.

Ashes

Dad’s ashes are buried in a row where he grew corn, opposite the cluster of blue spruce that he loved.

Mom’s are scattered in her flower beds among the forget-me-nots, columbine and bleeding heart.

B

Brother

I couldn’t protect him. His wound grew over. Not mine.

C

Cats

Dave was allergic. Beloved Marmelade had to go. We all drove out to the farm in Blawenburg where they said we could visit him any time. Cows were his new family. We returned once but Marmelade wasn’t there.

Later we had cats again. Strawberry Shortcake (Bubble), Chimney Sweep, Missy, Ziti, Daphne. None of us could be without a cat.

Cucumbers

Dad grew bushels of them in his half-acre plot. “Cukes,” Mom learned to call them. She was a city girl from farther north in New Jersey. She called her region “the mountains.” 

D 

Diving

I learned not to be afraid. We took swimming lessons from the Baldridge sisters across the road. We had to walk down our long gravel lane and then through the tree nursery to a hole in the hedgerow where we could see both ways to cross. There were giant quarry trucks barreling on our country road, no sidewalks. Then we walked down an even longer lane, a cool green tunnel of old trees. We got gold stars for each day we came.

David

My brother. Named for David in the Bible. Mom loved Biblical names.

Dad 

Everyone said, and still says, I am so much like him. Our birthdays are in June a week apart.

Dark 

I felt something in the dark chill of November evenings that made me feel apart. I sat outdoors looking back at the house and its glowing yellow windows. They didn’t know I was out there.

E

Evangeline

Mom’s stern Norwegian aunt came to live with us for a while. She had looked after her brother, my grandfather, and never married. We secretly made fun of her old world ways but Mom put a stop to that. In pictures you can see the helpless love she had for us.

Evenings

On the porch in summer, Mom and Dad sat reading and smoking, each under their own gold cone of light, June bugs pummeling the screens.

Exile

The new owners of our house were friends of Mom’s. Their open invitation to visit our old home was unexpectedly revoked—a hostile exchange that cut me to the quick. I can never walk on that lawn in bare feet again. Or visit the weeping cherry tree Mom planted after Dad died. So I sometimes fly over via Google Earth.

F

Francy

My best friend. We giggled over “foundational garments” in the Sears catalogue from the back seat of her mother’s car, all the way to Stewart’s Root Beer.

We were left-handed troublemakers, demanding better reading curriculum and right-handed catcher’s mitts. Our seventh grade English teacher had it in for us, mostly me.

Forsythia, Forcing

Dad brought in the bare branches when it still was freezing outdoors, put them in buckets of water down near the furnace. We watched the tiny seed buds lengthen and turn green, pull away from the gold bark. Finally there were flowers, starry yellow, snow-defying. I filled a bud vase with forsythia for next to my bed. I don’t think I could have survived the winter without it. 

We always kept the branches in water until they leafed out and rooted. Then Dad planted them around the hilltop. 

Fear of Fourth Grade

Stomach pains. Mom let me stay home from school. She wondered if I was just trying to have more time alone with her. I couldn’t say. The teacher’s crash-fisted piano playing was surely part of it.

Fireflies

We called them lightning bugs. I let them crawl on my arm, tried to touch the illuminated tail. Why wasn’t it hot?

Mom came at night to liberate the ones we caught in a jar and set by our beds like a lamp.

I miss them more than anything else about summer back home. Pinpoints of silent excitement. 

Flower Girl

I was the flower girl for Nancy’s winter wedding held next door at their house. She convinced her mother to allow real candles on the Christmas tree, but only if there were buckets of water everywhere. I was five years old and took my job very seriously. Mom let me choose my dress from Bellows, the fancy children’s store in Princeton. 

During the rehearsal the minister pointed at a stain on the carpet and told me to stand there so I would know how far to come down into the big room. I could tell by the way he talked he thought I didn’t understand. I didn’t like that. I understood perfectly. This was the house where I had learned to walk and I knew every part of it with my eyes closed. 

On the day of the wedding I led the procession carefully down the curving front staircase beside the racy smooth dark bannister. I liked to slide on it when no one was looking. No sliding today.  

G

Greacian

I am one of four Greacians: Greacian Everall, Greacian Wildey Ospenson, Greacian Adele Ospenson. Each of us wrote our cursive G differently. I practiced over and over with a blue crayon on my pink bedroom wall, copying the General Mills G from the Cheerios box. I got in a lot of trouble but it didn’t register at all that I had done something wrong. I should have had a studio from that moment on.

Garden

We had all the vegetables we could eat thanks to Dad’s constant labors in his garden. He was happiest when working in the soil. He grew enough to freeze so we could have corn and peas all winter. We didn’t know how spoiled we were.

I started my own garden in the woods under a dogwood tree and filled it with violets and other small wildflowers. Next to it was the graveyard where we buried our pets, a dog, several cats, wild birds, a rooster and various aquarium fish. The last time I walked in the woods I could not find it.

Grape Jelly

The heavy drugged scent of the grapes cooking down on the biggest burner was part of the general humidity of New Jersey in the summer. Mom filled a big cheesecloth sack with the cooked fruit and hung it under the ironing board where it bled all night into a pan. The purest, thickest juice for jelly.

Golden Chain

I chose this tree for our lawn the year Dad asked us what we’d like to plant. My sister chose a willow. Did Dave choose a tree?

Giveaway Box

This big cardboard box was at the back of the coat closet that held the picnic basket and Dad’s old drafting tools. All our outgrown clothes went in there. When it was full Mom gave it to our housekeeper, Cha Cha.

My sister called her Cha Cha because she couldn’t say Charlotte. Cha Cha lived not far from us in a mostly black neighborhood of small houses called The Hollow down near the railroad tracks by a stream where we played sometimes. It was understood that this was a separate territory. It had a small wooden church in the center called The Friendly Chapel. Sometimes at night waves of singing and tambourine tapping drifted up the hill and made me curious. But I knew I could never think of going there.

H

Hiding 

with my nursery school friend Bill under the long tablecloth over his mother’s lion foot dining table. It was our private world. I laid my cheek on one of the giant smooth claws. They were like tree roots.

Hitchcock

I got a four-poster bed in high school, from the Hitchcock Furniture factory, creamy white with gold stencils. I was going to get a canopy like some girls I knew but then it seemed too fussy. I loved the tall posts and the scrolled back board.

I didn’t know that Mom thought of this bed as something I would take into my marriage. I grew out of liking it after college when I was living in a yurt. She was disappointed and gave it to a friend’s daughter who still has it. 

Hills

My grandfather’s favorite line from a psalm was: “I lift up mine eyes unto the hills. Whence cometh my help?” I knew the help would come from the hills themselves, nothing more complicated than that.

I 

Insects 

were massing at the base of one of the oak trees on the lawn. They were flying away and back, always clinging to the rough bark and what looked like thick sap oozing out. They had very long stingers and black antennae but they were not interested in humans. We children crowded around and stared. Mom ran for the encyclopedia and her field guides. In one of them she found the name of this insect: Ichneumon fly. She was so pleased to identify it and even more importantly, to teach us how to spell and pronounce it. I have never forgotten. The Ichneumon flies came only one summer but every year until Mom left the house we watched at the base of the tree to see if they would return.

Innocent, Ignorant Times

I could wander alone in the fields and swamp until dark every day. No one imagined any dangers befalling me.

J 

Judith 

I chose her name. 

Mom asked me which name I wanted for my new baby sister, Eileen or Judith. I didn’t even have to think about it.

She grew up judicious as her name: a judge magistrate. From a very early age she would correct adults who thoughtlessly called her “Judy:” “I am not a Judy.” Woe to those who try to call her “Judge Judy.”

Jumping in Leaf Piles

Dad was not entertained by our flying attacks on his leaf piles so he gave us our own pile to jump into. “You can rake it back up when you’re done.”

Jealous

My friend Rita Schultz in first grade wore a beautiful blue voile dress for our class party. I thought I would have the prettiest dress but even with starch mine wilted. Hers had a puffy petticoat and kept its shape. Even worse, there was a cute gold poodle charm on a gold cord hanging from the sash at the waist. I wanted that poodle in a bad way. When I told Mom about Rita’s party dress triumph she said, “Those stiff nylon petticoats are scratchy. I’ll bet she didn’t really like wearing that dress.” I was not consoled.

In the spring Rita and I stood on a grassy slope next to the playground and bent over away from the wind so it could blow our full skirts up over our heads. We would do this all recess long, giggling and feeling the strong wind up our backs. The playground teacher told us to stop and that it was dirty what we were doing but we laughed and only pretended to stop. A note went home to our parents. Mom and Dad laughed too and said something like, “Those teachers don’t know how to have fun.” No one bothered us again.

June 

My birthday month. The peak of the red rambler rose on the garden fence. I felt born of humidity and rose petals barely hanging on. Mom baked an angel food cake with strawberries for my fourth grade birthday party with friends on the porch.

K

Killing Butterflies

I am still stricken that I did this. Nauseous to write about it. 

We were all fired up about having butterfly collections one summer. Mom made us butterfly nets from old curtains and hangers. Dad had planted several butterfly bushes next to the garden and we staked them out with our nets and Raid. We pinned the victims in cigar boxes with hinged lids from our neighbor. I will never forget the soft wings pounding against my palm, struggling to live. How did I not feel anything but satisfaction from catching a variety I had been waiting for? I didn’t register that what I was doing was killing. Why didn’t anyone stop us? What can I possibly do now to atone for these murders?

Killing Frost 

This is the last entry in Dad’s garden journal, November 30, 1986: “First killing frost. Killing dahlias.” He died the next day.

L

Longing for Home

Even when I lived there I was homesick.

Even after 38 years in the Bay Area my bare feet are still homesick for the hard red dirt of the path to our playhouse. Dad built it after he built a shed for his tools and tractor. He put a ladder on the back so we could climb up and look out through the woods. We gave performances up there. Judith wore her cowgirl costume with boots and hat and sang “Home on the Range,” sitting on the edge and swinging her tiny legs.

Lahiere’s

was the authentic French restaurant where everyone’s parents went for special celebrations. When I came back from my year of studying in Paris, Mom took me there for the first time. We had moules marinieres and white wine, which I had never had for lunch, even in Paris. 

M

Missing Mom

But not her judgements. She made home a beautiful place, always flowers on the tables, next to our beds, in the bathroom, on the porch. She bought vases from yard sales so she could give them away with her bouquets. “Don’t ever spend more than 25 cents for a vase,” she pronounced. However, her own favorite was a Steuben rosebud vase from Dad with a teardrop bubble in the base. She kept it on the kitchen counter even though it often tipped over and soaked everything. All summer it held a single blossom to admire while cooking. 

Mulberry Tree

The tree we learned to climb in. It had yellow-green smooth bark and thick horizontal branches. I knew every hand- and foothold up the trunk and into the highest perches. I taught myself how to turn inside out when coming down from the lowest branch. The mulberries would fall ripe on the ground and bees and wasps were thick. The fermented smell was overpowering. Our sandbox was under the tree and Dad built a cover for it so the mulberries wouldn’t rot in the sand. Later the tree grew so wide it had to be taken down to allow a Dawn Redwood to expand on the lawn. That day Mom left the house until the destruction was over and all the severed parts were carried away.

Mirror

I discovered infinity in the bathroom mirror. The medicine cabinet had a mirror on it and if I opened the door and angled it just so toward the mirror on the adjacent wall a huge tunnel opened up. Reflections of reflections of reflections, down to where I couldn’t see anymore but I knew there was no end to how the reflections bounced off each other. I stared down that beckoning corridor for long periods.

This was the same mirror Mom used to decode my earliest handwriting since I wrote backwards. I was left-handed and my brain was still figuring things out. 

N

Neighbor

Helen Shope Flemer was our life-long neighbor. So much more than a neighbor: guardian angel to my parents, adopted grandmother, teacher, mentor. Her back door was always open. I loved watching her in her kitchen, making strawberry jam, shelling peas for crab salad Sunday dinner, carving the rinds for watermelon pickle. In jam season I could count on dropping over to have Pepperidge Farm bread with thick butter and jam sitting at the small banquette in the corner of the kitchen. When I grew older I graduated to having afternoon tea with Mom and Helen, which alternated between the houses.

Helen sewed everything—her clothes, covers for furniture, curtains, bedspreads, quilts, napkins. When Martha Stewart came on the scene claiming to be the ultimate home-maker artist I wanted to tell her that she had nothing on Helen. 

Mom and Dad had rented part of Helen’s house when they were first were married. They grew very close to Helen and her husband and decided to build their own home next door. Helen’s house was my first home as a baby and she was the first adult after my parents to show me around my new world. My crib was next to the window by the grape arbor and my first view was the giant green leaves and ripening grapes from a 100-year-old vine.

Helen lived to 99, though she had been planning to reach 100. She died not long before 9/11 and I was glad that she did not live to see that.

Nakashima

My parents bought some furniture from the atelier of George Nakashima in New Hope, Pennsylvania, when they were first married. I grew up knowing about Nakashima since the furniture was always referred to with his name—the Nakashima footstool, Dad’s Nakashima couch, the Nakashima sideboard. Dad pointed out the visible butterfly joints that were a hallmark of Nakashima’s work. They inspired him when he was making his own slab tables with stick legs.

We always talked about going back to the studio where this modern and mysterious furniture was made but we never did. Finally I made the pilgrimage on a visit back home three years ago. I was in tears picturing my young parents coming here and planning how to furnish their new house, running hands over the satiny wood tables and benches, sitting in the rush-seated chairs. They had much more modern taste than I gave them credit for.

O

Oak Trees

Our house was surrounded by oak trees that had grown up from matured nursery plantings left as a windbreak. They shaded the house so it was a bit mildewy and damp in my bedroom at the back of the house. Whenever I came home to visit I felt welcomed and reassured by that familiar smell, but Mom complained how she could never get ahead of it. 

In the winter I listened for the hiss of wind in the papery pin oak leaves. These were some of the last to drop off.

Onions

Dad let me plant onion sets with him one year when I was small. He had grown them the year before and dried them over the winter in the basement. I was carefully peeling off the dried skins before handing them to him. He got irritated and told me to stop doing that. I said I was just taking the paper off. Didn’t you have to unwrap onions before planting them? In spite of himself he laughed and explained that onions grow their own wrappings to protect them when planted. This was my first gardening lesson with Dad.

P 

Peas

Under frosted blue-green leaves my hands felt for the hidden pods dangling down like green fingers. We picked them young while the peas were still tender. I had to stop often to split open the chubby pods, pressing with both thumbs on the seam and ripping the halves apart. I loved seeing those green baby teeth in a grin. I scooped them down into my palm and tossed them in my mouth. Sweetness bursting on my tongue. After the corn, peas were Dad’s pride and joy.

Picnics

Mom was an expert at picnics. She had a suitcase-sized wicker hamper that closed with a long stick into two loops. She made tuna salad with celery and onions and lots of mayonnaise. She buttered the bread all the way out to the edges on both sides before adding the tuna and iceberg lettuce and more mayonnaise. She cut the sandwiches diagonally, never straight up and down, how boring! Then she wrapped them in wax paper with accordion-folded seams and hospital corners, inserting sticks of carrot and celery into the top seam. To unwrap one of these sandwiches along the stream in the swamp or under pines in the nursery was the ultimate in plein air dining.=

Piano

Mom and I both took piano lessons. My grandmother, her mother, Greacian Ospenson, could play the piano by ear, all the standards of her time—“Take Me Out to the Ball Game”, “Bicycle Built for Two,” “Billy Boy,” always in a key with more sharps and flats than you could believe. When I asked her how she learned to do this she said, “My hands just know where to go." For Mom and me it was nothing like that. We worked at it, me on “Spinning Song” and she on “To a Wild Rose.” We were sad that Grandma would not play the piano once she moved into a nursing home. Mom and I also had given up on the piano by then. But the piano stayed in our house and often reproached me with its shiny black grimace.=

Pool

Before Dad built a half-in-ground pool for us we went to the Rocky Hill community pool. All the kids from seventh grade were there. I had sewn my own bikini from scratch, a Simplicity pattern, yellow check with flowers. I lined it and topstitched the seams so it fit really well, accenting my small breasts. But when I got to the pool I was suddenly shy and walked toward the squirming over-full water with my towel over my front. Then quickly I dropped it and dove into the deep end. I was proud of my diving. 

Disaster! Before I could realize what was happening I felt my bikini bottom pulled off my hips and down my thighs. I stayed underwater grappling with the wet fabric, trying to look nonchalant. Finally I got it back up where it was supposed to be. I was sure the lifeguards were all whispering and snickering.

I was furious. Right then and there I decided I was done with bikinis. Any bathing suit that didn’t let me dive and swim freely was useless. I saw the total tyranny of fashion. It was a kind of prison. I sat the rest of the afternoon sulking on my towel on the hot blacktop, exiled from the water by a bikini.

Peaches

Outside the summer window, white sky, voices, Puerto Rican Spanish pouring staccato into my bedroom from the field across our lane. I can’t make out the words. Men are swarming over the raw dirt trenches, tying up the root balls of trees in burlap with baling twine. A tractor ticks through the rows far away, the highway hums out of sight. Irrigation sprayers lilt through their cycles of fast-fast-fast slow, loud and hushed.

In the kitchen Mom is in a filmy knee-length nightgown cutting up white peaches from our tree, sprinkling them with sugar. How prettily they glitter in the glass bowl, pink stitching on the inside curves, the basket on the floor filled with more, ants crawling on the split-open seeping scars. How can we possibly eat all these peaches? The kitchen is empty, Dad gone to work, not even the classical radio. Mom is so quiet, she is smoking and slicing, juggling the knife and her cigarette. She’s not singing “Oh what a beautiful morning” like she sometimes does.  

She peels more fruit and I come to the counter, there is my bowl, glistening, the peaches weeping from the rain of sugar. This is the first day of summer vacation and summer will never feel so open and beckoning as today and I can never go back to a morning where my mother has actually prepared something for my breakfast ahead of time. Usually she’s still asleep. I’ve made my own breakfast for so many school mornings, fruit from a can, cinnamon toast.

But she’s up early—could she not sleep? She likes to tell us (god knows why), “Your father says there’s one thing I am really good at—and that’s sleeping.” 

There’s no air conditioning just the thick invisible moisture crouching like a presence indoors and out and the long chain rattles of cicadas starting. Nothing like the din it will be in August but right now there are one or two with their long arching drones like tiny mortars shot from a rocket, dark fireworks with one or two sailing sparks. Even with the static white sky coating everything, in those sounds something is burning.

Mom is in a pale nightgown and my cotton shorts stick to my legs. She is white and hidden in her whirl of cigarette smoke. She doesn’t say anything while she keeps cutting the fruit at the counter. Like a mute calf I approach the trough and eat the slick juice-slathered peach slices one by one, with a spoon. They are slippery and jump off the curved edge like minnows but it feels so elegant, then I pin them with the spoon and they slice like pudding, the spoon sinks to the bottom of the bowl and slips on grains of unmelted sugar, the only sound in the room. I slurp up the cloudy sweet juice at the bottom and still Mom hasn’t said a word, neither have I.

 Q 

Dairy Queen 

Luscious soft ice cream. Otherwise I’d have to write about Q-Tips.

The Dairy Queen was an excursion from our house, miles down Route 518 into Blawenburg in Dad’s aqua convertible Chevy. I got the chocolate dip knowing my tongue could not keep up with the cracking and melting disaster in my hand. It tasted great. Dad preferred going to Stewart’s Root Beer up on Route 27. It was a drive-in and we sat waiting in the car under orange rotisserie lights. Then came the tray laden with five brimming mugs that was artfully hung on the half-rolled window with rubber bumper wedges to keep it horizontal. Still I worried about the tray falling off or tilting and our mugs of root beer sliding to the ground. The A&W Root Beer stand was closer to our house but for some reason Dad never wanted to go there.

R

Rock Polisher

It was in the basement churning away for hours, like a clock rewinding time. Dad loved to take the stones we collected, carnelians from Minnesota especially, and turn them into gems through this magic tumbler. The carnelians came out a deeper and more liquid red, showing a living center that you would not have guessed was there. We held them like they might burn through our palms. 

Red 

was Mom’s favorite color.

Radio

When I was 12 I got a transistor radio all my own, with an ear piece for listening when I was lying in bed. In the dark the voice of Cousin Brucie from WABC in New York poured into my ear. Each week I faithfully tuned into his Top 20 Countdown so I could list the songs in a notebook I kept next to my pillow. The show started with Hit # 20, which meant that #1 wasn’t played until very late at night. I had to keep forcing myself to stay awake so I wouldn’t miss hearing the top #1 hit. I remember rooting for the Herman’s Hermits’ song, “Henry the 8th,” which was at the top for many weeks. My favorite songs of that era were Chad and Jeremy’s “Before and After” and Gerry and the Pacemakers’ “Ferry Cross the Mersey.”

S

The Swamp

This was actually a large dairy farm with low-lying fields and Heathcote Brook running through it. When I was old enough to cross dangerous Ridge Road by myself I went down to the swamp almost every day after school. I walked the trails by the stream and sat on the old stone bridge imagining that I lived in the mansion on the hill like an English lady. 

We called it the Cow Bridge since it was in the middle of the fields and didn’t have any roads leading to and from it. We imagined it helped cows cross the stream. It also had a steep arch in the center that reminded me of a cow’s humped back. A chipped quartz block set in the mortar had been carved with a date that was nearly worn off. We guessed 1865 from what was left. 

The swamp is where we would look for the first signs of spring—skunk cabbage, jack in the pulpit, dogtooth violet, spring beauty, trillium, star of Bethlehem. I transplanted many of these to my garden in the woods but only the trillium has survived.  

Swing

“How Do I Love to Go Up in a Swing” was one of my mother’s favorite poems. I loved when she read it aloud. It was in a poetry anthology she gave me as a 6th birthday present.

Dad made sure we had plenty of swings to play on. He built several horse swings like the one that Helen had next door. In the back of the house there was a hammock for him and a seat swing from a bar between two trees for Mom. He also hung a trapeze for me from one of the oak trees near my garden.

I never considered the work involved, how much he took care to make sure the ropes were safe, not harming the tree, set up with back-up chains, checked every year. I just flew free or hung upside down without a care.

Sheltered

I did not have much social life beyond school. My main companion was the natural world. Mom and Dad let us roam freely so long as we did our assignments on time. I cocooned myself in books and stories and managed to arrive as a freshman in college still a virgin, never having touched a joint or drunk a beer. I had no idea how much of the world I was unaware of. But I am glad that my childhood was sheltered and I found safety in nature and books. In college I wasn’t in a hurry to disturb that sanctuary.

Sewing Room

Mom’s sewing room was behind folding doors right off the kitchen. It had been specially built like a closet with cabinets and a counter. She had an old black Singer that I learned on and later the new ugly plastic machine that could zigzag but was never as sturdy. The sewing stool was a tall metal can that held birdseed for the feeders. It was hard on the backside but Mom never put a pillow on it.

Sewing was my passion for many years. I sewed my clothes in high school, folksy calico dresses with sashes, paisley minidresses, party dresses I copied from magazines and my favorite, a gray wool Heidi dirndl decorated with embroidered ribbon made in Europe. 

In the summer Mom and I would stay up late sewing with the TV on. Sometimes I would make fudge on the stove while she was at the machine. One time I looked over and was surprised to see her crying while watching the movie “God is My Copilot.”

T

Tree Nursery

Our three acres were surrounded by a vast tree nursery, Princeton Nurseries, one of the largest in the country at that time. The Flemers who owned it were close friends of our family and we had permission to ride bikes anywhere on the land so long as we did not go among the rows or disturb the plants. I loved rattling down the yellow sandy roads and passing the orderly procession of trees, seedlings to young saplings. Our family would take walks together using walking sticks that Dad had whittled from the dense brush at the end of our property.

Like the swamp, this open territory was home to my imagination. The freedom I felt there shaped me at the core. I pictured that many of my favorite books took place in this landscape--along the stream, by the pond, in the woods, especially among the rows of white pine that had been left to grow up as a windbreak. We often picnicked there and built dams in the stream. Everyone on the edges of the nursery called this grove the Hundred Acre Wood. It looked and felt just like the wood at the end of “Winnie the Pooh.” Mom said she could hardly read that last chapter to us without crying. We knew we would always return to our Hundred Acre Wood.

Thunderstorms

are sudden and strong in the sweltering New Jersey summer. We knew to count from the flash of lightning until the thunderclap to gauge how many miles away the storm was. Often there was barely time to count. We jumped inside our skins at the blasts of ripping, scorching and booming sounds. My mother’s Elkhound, Ursa, ran into the bathroom and stood in the shower stall with her nose pressed into the corner. We were piled on the bed with the covers clamped over our heads.

Trumpet Vine

This vine grew thick over both ends of the drying yard that was between our house and Helen’s. The clotheslines were strung from upright posts that had crosspieces where the vines wrapped and sent out their bright green leaves and long nosy orange flowers. They really did look like trumpets. I liked them better than snapdragons. Their waxy sturdiness felt like confidence. They added a bright atmosphere to the utilitarian clotheslines.

It was fun to walk through the maze of hanging sheets, letting them tickle my face and arms. I watched for the blooming of the trumpet vine every year and would stand underneath the vines, looking up into the long necks of the trumpets.

Mom and Helen met out here often and had long talks while hanging the wash. Mom taught me how to use the spring-clip clothespins and keep the sheets straight and neatly folded in half, never touching the ground. Helen was from another generation of homemakers and used the straight peg kind of clothespin. (She even gave us some to make dolls with.) Sometimes they would have to borrow each other’s clothespins and that always brought up the discussion of which was better. There were two canvas bags hung on opposite sides of the trellis holding each family’s clothespins. 

Trolls

I created a whole lineage and saga for my family of Danish trolls—a toy fad of the day. They had large grinning heads, open arms, cute potbellies and soft flyaway sheep’s wool hair. I sewed elaborate wardrobes for them and made them a four-room house out of cardboard boxes that I kept in my closet. 

I took my favorite trolls to school in eighth grade, keeping them in the two pockets of my green corduroy jumper. The day we got yelled at by the music teacher for being rowdy and had to sit for an hour in total silence I pulled them out and balanced one on each knee. I stared down at them for the full hour, unaware of anything else in the room. I had no idea then that probably my sophisticated classmates were embarrassed at the idea of playing with trolls in middle school.

Typing

My Aunt Terrie, a self-made business woman in the man’s world of the 50’s, told me never to let on in a job interview that I knew how to type or I would get stuck doing only that. When she was asked this question in an interview she always replied, “Do you ask men this question?” Usually the interview ended right there.

U

Under

My sister and I made fairy houses under the Arbor Vitae hedge that bordered Helen’s keyhole garden. We found acorn caps for dishes, made tiny tables and chairs with moss and twigs, outlined paths with pebbles. Helen said she walked past and saw just our legs poking out. We could disappear into that miniature world for hours. 

Urchin

I was walking a remote beach at sunset long after I had left New Jersey, panicked and fearing the end of a relationship. I did not feel at home in California though this was where I was trying to live and work. Something terrible was bearing down on me. I could barely breathe. I was alone and now the light was falling. In the urban west I didn’t have a place like the swamp or the cow bridge where I could retreat from the world easily. I was resigned to this as the price of city living. 

Then I saw the large sea urchin at the edge of the surf. I ran over and lifted it up from the sand, slowly, slowly. Cold sand and water streamed out. It still had spines attached in places and was nearly whole. Only a few chips were lost around the opening underneath. Its inhabitant was gone. 

I had never found anything this fragile and whole at the beach, ever. Along this rocky stretch of coast it would be nearly unthinkable. 

It was a sign. I knew it. I would be restored to wholeness. Maybe not now, but this was the sign of that possibility. The sea urchin had appeared to me alone, against all odds, and strangely I felt I had earned it. This was something my departing lover could never take away from me.

V

Viedt’s

Mom said we have a date with Dad for lunch. I asked why are we eating dates for lunch? I was little and only knew of one kind of date. Mom explained about the other kind and that we were meeting Dad at Veidt’s, the soda fountain in Princeton. It was a real ice cream parlor with glass cases of pastel-colored candies and chocolates in the front near the cash register, marble countertops and dark wood booths in the back. When we went there without Dad we would bring home a box of his favorite multi-colored thin mints that melted on your tongue. Mom loved to order a hot butterscotch sundae with butter pecan ice cream for dessert. It was real butterscotch sauce that came warm and gooey and stuck to your teeth next to the cold ice cream. She mourned after Viedt’s was gone that no other ice cream place knew how to make real butterscotch sauce let alone serve it warm. That was the mark of a genuine sundae, warm sauce, and butterscotch made with real butter.

Valentines

We were not allowed to buy valentines at Woolworth’s for our class mailbox where we had to give a valentine to everyone. Mom taught us to make large red construction paper hearts decorated with paper lace from doilies. Sometimes we cut out heart-shaped windows and pasted a surprise inside. We signed them with a question mark or “Guess who!” but it was never a secret who they were from. 

Vines

We swung on vines in the swamp while Mom and Dad napped on the picnic blanket. They had brought martinis in a peanut butter jar. We used knots as footholds, held the scruffy peeling bark, then launched out over the pool in a curve in the stream, let go and splashed. It was shallow but lined with soft mud that we sank into heavily. We worked hard to pull ourselves back to shore and up the bank to do it again. None of this noise disturbed the napping.

Velveteen

I made dress of turquoise velveteen for a dance in high school. It went to the floor and had a green sash and lace at the neck and sleeves like a costume from Zefferelli’s movie, “Romeo and Juliette.” Mom took me to the garment district in New York to buy the fabric. The store owner wore a black hat and ringlets and I understood that I was in the foreign country of Orthodox Jewish New York. I could have stayed there all day wandering the shops of fancy fabrics on bolts stacked to the ceiling, walls of ribbon, reels of lace, buttons, silk flowers and blank hats ready to decorate. At that point I already knew the difference between velvet and velveteen, brocade, moire, satin, silk and charmeuse. The smell of a fabric store still makes my blood race.

W

Willow

My dad ordered it from a catalogue for my sister. We were all excited to have a weeping willow like the one in stories and songs. We pictured dreamy spring days lying under its swaying shade. But that would be years from the day it arrived in a banged-up cardboard box. Inside was a bare stick with a crooked root end, vaguely sexual, but not at all promising. We couldn’t believe it was alive. Dad said, “Just you wait. Willows can grow from any old stick.” 

It became my barometer for the arrival of spring. I watched closely to see the skinny branches turn yellow and then spike out with new leaves. The restless wind made them sashay and whip this way and that. Who could call this “weeping”?  It was a tantrum of spring fever.

Wristwatch

I was 10 when I got my first wristwatch as a birthday present. This was one of the most exciting days of my life! Finally I was old enough to be trusted with something of value. It was a Timex with domed glass over its silver-green face, each of the twelve numbers accented by a dash. It had a tiny silver wheel on the side to wind it each night. Everything on the face glowed a supernatural green in the dark. I would wear it to bed and go under the covers to gaze into its cooly radiating face, another kind of moon shining back light collected from the sun. 

Mom bought it at the pharmacy in Princeton where in those days there was also a jewelry counter. It had a dark red leather band that I replaced many times since I wore it for decades, rarely taking it off.

Wallpaper

In high school my mother allowed me to redecorate my room to go along with the new four-poster bed. We went to a paint store to pick out wallpaper. Mom was opposed to wallpaper on principle because she felt that once you had it you were stuck with it. You couldn’t just paint over it like a wall whose color you wanted to change. It involved a complicated removal process with heating and peeling. And you couldn’t be sure it would stay stuck to the wall in the first place. It was suspect. So I had to be SURE of the wallpaper I chose. There would be no going back.

I chose a dark blue and gold paisley pattern that reminded me of fabric that was fashionable then. It was detailed and royal-looking and swirled like the ocean. My mother felt it was too dark but she could not convince me to change my mind. She reminded me that I would not be able to undo this choice once the paper was installed. I would have to live with my decision. I was certain I loved it and we went home with a sample that I taped to my wall to try it out until the rolls arrived. We also ordered a length of fabric in the same pattern for a bedspread. 

Once it was laid out on my bed I could see right away what Mom was trying to tell me. It was really somber in a large expanse and would make my room into something like a Victorian funeral parlor. We had to call the paint store right away to cancel the paper order. Mom probably had to pay for the late cancellation but she was probably relieved to be spared the distress of seeing me learn too late that the paper was wrong for a bedroom. Reluctantly I went along with her suggestion of a small rose and vine pattern that I grew to love, feminine and traditional as it was.

As I write this I am aware that such a teenage memory of choosing wallpaper with my mother marks me as growing up in a particular time and place with advantages taken for granted. I enjoy recalling it because it is a time the rebellious me came to appreciate my mother’s wisdom. And she was gracious enough not to say, “I told you so.”

X 

Cross, across 

Across the road lived Mary Ann Marcus with her tall mountaineer husband. Her son was my brother’s best friend. She didn’t yet have a daughter so I had the great fortune to become her “daughter in waiting.” She gave me a beautiful small spiral notebook that she had decorated with glittery paper and said I might want to keep track of the books I was reading, so I did. I still have this treasure.

We kids loved to hear Mary Ann tell stories, especially how she and her sister Marcia got into trouble growing up. She never ran out of stories. I was so enthralled by them that I started writing them down. I was a natural documentarian. Decades later Mary Ann and I embarked on the project of recording her oral history. I got to listen to even more stories.

Mary Ann was my first muse of writing. She has remained my madre del corazon and inspiration for 60 years. 

XOX

Cards from Grandma came signed XOX. Mom explained how this was shorthand for love and kisses. My grandmother was overflowing with these.

Y

Yoo hoo 

“Yoo hoo!“ Helen called at the back door when she came over for tea. Mom yoo-hoo’d when we came to Helen’s kitchen door for Sunday night dinner. Nowadays no one yoo-hoos in my city neighborhood—we have to make appointments to get together.

YWCA

The Y in Princeton is where I learned to swim and where I had my first dance class as a little girl.

I remember falling on the warm, smooth wood floor wearing my black leotard and tights when the pretty dance teacher beat her drum. That floor is in my body forever.

Afterward Mom and I went to the Y coffee shop where we sat on twirling stools watching the cook make us grilled cheese sandwiches. This was one of my favorite times with my mother.

Z

Zucchini

We had so much zucchini that Dad took baskets to his office and left them in the lobby. People were really excited about the fresh vegetables. Zucchini and tomatoes were the main ingredients of a summer vegetable stew Dad called Muskoojelum. I have never seen this word written out because I think he made it up.

Zoo

One summer I got the idea of making a toy zoo and charging admission. My brother, sister and I brought out all our stuffed animals and put them in boxes on tables around the lawn. I cut strips of paper that we taped across the openings to make bars. The neighbor kids actually paid five cents to wander the lawn and see our toys locked up. Pretty soon we realized it was not fun for anyone and the animals were released. I can’t remember why I thought this was a good idea.

Zion  (Hollow Road)

Farther out on Route 518 there was a tilting sign we passed: “Hollow Road to Zion.” We were always speeding right by but as soon as I got my license I started driving around those hilly country roads to the north. I kept following Hollow Road, many times over the years, I loved its name. I never found Zion. 

I’m glad of a mystery that remains for me in New Jersey.

*Please contact Greacian Goeke for permission to reprint or post.