BEING A MOM IS A GIFT: BECOMING A GRAND MOTHER IS A CHOICE

On her first time sleep-over at my house more than a year ago, I

Public domain photograph.

felt overwhelmed by the electronic gadgets her mom had sent along for the visit.  I didn’t feel I could completely trust the baby monitor that would supposedly allow me to have a worry free night in my room on the second floor while my precious granddaughter snoozed in her crib on the lower level.  So I slept folded into the loveseat in the room adjacent to hers.  This time, however - having practiced with each setting to make sure I could hear every sound from the nursery -  I was comfortable in my own bed upstairs.  Of course the fact that, at 2, she could call out my name if she needed me, helped considerably.

But, a little case of the sniffles (with the monitor turned up high – I could hear every one) and the sweet voice calling my name (what a brilliant child, to remember where she is in the middle of the night!), brought me to the side of her crib.  The Dr. Spockishness of the 70’s would have encouraged me to walk away and let her “tough it out.”  The joy of connecting with (and in) another generation, allowed me to scoop her up in my arms and plunk down in the closest thing I have to Nana’s rocker.  There in the wee hours of the morning, I compared my recollections of similar situations with my own daughters, where my frantic rocking in a fancy “Bentwood” had a goal – to get them back to sleep.  I knew that the extra hours devoted to a single runny nose would have taken their toll on the all of us the next day.  I distinctly remember my prayer: “God, if you really love me you’ll let me sleep through one night!”

This evening, happily, I indulged myself as I never had time to do with my own babies (four in six years is a lot).   I’m transported back two more generations, and, as Madi and I sit there snuggling and dozing and humming, I find myself sitting once more on my own grandmother’s lap.  I recall distinctly a night when I was about three, sitting, rocking, and somehow knowing that I would want to emblazon this moment on my thought - freeze it in time - forever.  And I did.

I don’t remember a lot.  There must be as many differences as there are similarities.  I know my little head must have rested gently in the same safe sport just inside her shoulder, nestled near her collar bone.  I know she was rounder and softer than I.  Her spare time was spent making cookies for me, rather than power-walking with an iPod.  She could sing the most beautifully strange German songs.  I still know the words to ……… although they’ve probably morphed into something unrecognizable to a real German as these five decades have disappeared into a dream.  Madi seems happier with her own rendition of “Twinkle, twinkle.”

Nana made me hot chocolate before I “scrubbed” my teeth with the funny tasting tooth powder she and Grandpa still liked to use. That sleepy-time beverage was made of whole milk – the kind you needed to shake up before you poured it out of its glass bottle – simmered on the stove in a pan where she magically added powdered cocoa and scoops of sugar.  And we got to make it into a tea party, eating her homemade sugar cookies off a pretty china plate that my mom used as a baby.  It had a picture of a baby animal in the middle, a special place for the spoon and the fork on each side, and a gold band painted around the outside edge.  I think maybe my great aunt Elsa painted it.  Madi and I had enjoyed some instant “no sugar added” hot chocolate straight from the microwave along with a banana on my new, black Pier I plates before reading our bedtime story.  (I can’t remember the last time there was a cookie in this house.)

Nana and I had sat together in a caned rocking chair with gently bowled indentations where her father had cracked walnuts as a boy.  Madi and I were sitting in my retro green naugahyde rocker.

Tonight we couldn’t look out into the sparkling Florida night sky through the big glass jalousies of “my” bedroom at Nana’s house.  But we can enjoy the stars thrown onto the ceiling of the nursery by the electric turtle shell Madi’s mom sent - along with a humidifier the size of a giant globe, a plug-in vaporizer night light, a jar of instant noodles and chicken, 7 pacifiers, and enough clothes to stay for a week.

Tonight we don’t hear the sound of crickets wafting into the room, celebrating a warm southern evening.  But we have our favorite “nature sounds” CD on the portable DVD player on this Chicago winter night.  (And, of course, the breeze of the humidifier.)

She’s back asleep soundly in her crib now.  Looking ahead to breakfast, I’m sad to say that I can’t produce fresh squeezed orange juice from the tree outside my childhood window.  And I am ashamed to admit I won’t attempt a breakfast of Nana’s cinnamon toast, made under the over broiler with great care (because it used to burn easily – what with using real sugar, rather than Splenda®).  Madi and I will enjoy our brand new, frozen mini pancakes right out of the microwave.  Our fruit course will be Smuckers spreadable preserves (no syrup here).  I’m sure we’ll love it just as much…because we have each other.

With all the differences, I am particularly struck by the great over-arching sameness of timeless love we can actually choose to share with our grandchildren – and it is a choice.  Unlike the flexibility in timing that my grandmother had, I have a full time job. Carving out precious moments with a precious little person isn’t always easy or as frequent as I would like.  But I can’t imagine anything being more worthy of the effort.  As I sat there last night enfolding this dear one in my arms, I felt, with absolute certainty that Nana was enveloping us both.

Christie Clarke

The Little Red Rocker

McFerren Heritage

Celebrating John McFerren’s  90^th Birthday, November, 2009

From what I can gather:

Love of God and country are a theme running through this family.  Of Carl and Harriet McFerren, it was said, “They were a beautiful couple who taught their children how to live in joy, faith and love through God.”

by Robert Clancy

John McFerren’s father is Carl McFerren [born 1893].

Carl’s father, Clarence McFerren, a farmer [born 1872], had a high fever which cause his feet to club and he was “never too well.”

Clarence’s father, Archibald [born 1838], was a teacher and farmer and helped build the St. John’ Church in Albion where most of the family eventually land. The story has it that, when Clarence was very young, Archibald took the team to town to get the rocker for his little boy.  There had been some concern about the sustainability of the child.  This father’s prayer was that his little boy’s excitement about having a rocker of his own would keep him alive until his daddy returned.  And that’s exactly what happened.

I’m still researching Little Red’s early history. I don’t know when the little red rocker came into my possession…perhaps in the 1970’s.

The hope was that I might repair it so that my children could enjoy
him.  His color has faded a little, and the patina has cracked.  More than a century of wear resulted in the horsehair stuffing protruding from the worn seat.  My mother, Emily McFerren, needle pointed a new seat cover in the 70’s but we never had enough money to get the broken arm repaired, so Little Red waited.

I may not know all of where he’s been, but I do know is where he’s been on my watch:

He came into our Berquist home in suburban St. Louis and lived quietly in our basement for many years, waiting for promised repair, waiting for my girls to get big enough to sit in him, waiting for them to be careful enough to appreciate him…always waiting.  Then the adventure began.

In 1993 Little Red was loaded carefully into a double cardboard box and began a vagabond life, not knowing that it would be 15 years before he emerged into the sunlight of a sweet little girl’s smile.

The first leg of his journey took him to the attic of a lovely Connecticut house on the shore of Long Island Sound.

From there, he went to live for a while in a storage loft over a barn-turned-garage on three bucolic acres outside of Cleveland…rather close to where he was probably “born.”

A brief stint in a public storage locker preceded his move into the basement of a townhouse in Cleveland Heights for a couple of years.

Then in 2000, it was on to Boston where he lived in the cramped basement of a beautiful old brick apartment house on Commonwealth Avenue across the street from Boston College.

On the next leg of his journey, he was transported by truck right past the smoldering ruins of New York’s twin towers on his way to Ft. Lauderdale where he spent six months in the boat warehouse of a family friend.

Still in his protective box house, back north he came - full circle to St. Louis, where he spent summer time in a spare dormitory room, then back into a basement.  This time an apartment house was his home.

Further north he went.  Elgin, IL beckoned, and this time he landed in an attic where he sat patiently for four years until finally it was time to meet his new owner.  Inspired by Uncle John’s 90^th birthday and the need for a picture to prove his beloved little rocker was still intact, Little Red was carefully brought down from his perch, unpacked, loaded into a little RAV4, and delivered to a house in Bolingbrook, just south of Chicago.

The delight on the face of little 3 year old Abigail was unfeigned.  Sister Madison, realizing she was too big to have a turn, yielded to her smaller sibling, then suddenly turned to me with the pointed [and eerily accurate] question: “Is this little rocking chair 150 years old?’ 

Seven generations later…how did she know?  Has the little rocker a voice of his own that only small children can hear?  Or are all those grandpas upon grandpas upon grandpas smiling now and whispering in her ear?

Soon Abigail will outgrow him, but next year a baby boy will join our family and soon a little boy bottom will find its rightful place – where so many have sat before him.