IWSG, Mom, News

Posting the First Wednesday of every month, the Insecure Writer's Support Group, is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh. YOU can sign up HERE to participate.

Every month a question will be posed that may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Remember, the question is optional. You can write about anything that relates to your writing journey.

Let's give a warm welcome to our co-hosts:  Joylene Nowell Butler, Jacqui Murray, Sandra Cox, and Lee Lowery!

This month's question is: Is there someone who supported or influenced you that perhaps isn't around anymore? Anyone you miss?

                                                   2/2/22 

                                    Is this an auspicious day or what?

My sister, Erva, Mom and me,
about the time I wrote my "essay."

Me and Mom.
I was about five.

Wow. This couldn't be a better question for me right now. Yes, the one person who encouraged, supported, and influenced me and who isn't around anymore, is my mother. Not only did she teach me to read, she homeschooled me for several years and during that time (without knowing the name for the "problem") figured out I wasn't learning things the way my sister did. I'm dyslexic. Because of her patience she figured out that I am an audio/tactile learner. I have never done well with numbers and math. I can fairly easily learn the steps for doing problems but can flip numbers in the middle of the solution and thus get a wrong answer. And, even though I have never been a great speller, my mother saw/recognized that I loved to read (even though I read slowly) and that I could comprehend things beyond my years. (I read Call of the Wild when I was around ten or eleven.) She was also the one who saw that I might have a talent for writing when, at the age of eight, I wrote a three page essay about our family. It is from that essay that my sister, Erva, and I were forever referred to as the grils.

As an adult Mom was once astute and aware enough to notice that I seemed to be "stuck." She gave me the book, The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. On the flyleaf she wrote, "For Bish, Follow the way, Love Mom." In most everything I have had published, there is a secret three word phrase I use to honor her. Can you guess what that phrase might be?

She lived a long and wonderful 93 years and though she's been gone from this plane of existence for ten years, I still miss her and long to hear her voice, her laughter, and long to feel her hugs. She didn't get to see any of my published books and stories, but she's there, lurking in the pages, peeking out from behind the words and I know she is smiling.

***

And now some news. You know how things change, right? I'm not at liberty just yet to fully explain, but it has to do with health (not my own, I'm fine) and I'm going to be pre-occupied. Because of that, I'm not sure when I'll be posting again. Who knows I might show up next month, but then again it might be several months before you read my glittering words again.

And so, on that note, I bid you adieu for now. 

Take care, everyone. Be safe. Be thankful.

Today I'm thankful for this day. What are you thankful for?

Ethlyn Hall

Last Monday I wrote about Agnes Sewer who introduced my mother to Ethlyn Hall because she was concerned about Mom running wild and not having enough feminine influences. To correct the situation, Miss Agnes introduced Mom to Miss Ethlyn, who lived at Peter Bay, just over the hill from Trunk Bay. That introduction which happened when Mom was around twelve, lead to life-long friendship.

Ethlyn was born on St. John in 1916 while the Virgin Islands were still under Danish rule. At the age of 23 she went to New York where she learned haberdashery, met and married her husband and had three of four children. Eventually she and her family returned to St. John where she proved to be a successful business woman, running a guest house and serving as President of the Business and Professional Women of St. John. She was also active in the Historical Society and the Elaine Sprauve Library Association.

This is my mother and Ethlyn, taken in 1999. 

I call this picture The Age of Wisdom.

Ethlyn was the mother of my friend Victor Hall, who died last year and whom I wrote about here. 












Here comes the synchronistic part, the part that lets us know the Universe is involved. And I hope, dear gentle readers you won't think this morbid. Ethlyn Hall died while I was in the islands in May. She was just shy of 96 years old. She died the week before my sister Erva and I put our mother's ashes out to sea. The following week Erva and I had the pleasure of being able to attend Ethlyn's funeral.

It was really quite special because after the lovely service at the Lutheran Church in Cruz Bay, she was interred at Cinnamon Bay on National Park land at an old family plot. The tombs are above ground because the ground in mostly solid rock and nearly impossible to dig through. There are now, with Ethlyn, three generations of her family buried there. Her tomb is obviously the white one to the left. It is a shaded, cool, and peaceful place to be laid to rest. Those smooth-barked trees at the upper right are bay tree, from which the body splash, bay rum is made. The leaves of the trees litter the ground and as you walk, their delightful aroma fills the air. Erva and I laid small branches of bay leaves on her casket.

My cousin, Rafe Boulon, who is Chief of Resource for the St. John National Park, was a pall barer. He's in the middle on the right. You can see how shaded the area is.

And this is Rafe, carrying a wreathe.

Ethlyn was well loved and will be long remembered. And I'm glad I was there with Erva, to represent my mother, her childhood friend.

Miss Agnes

When my grandparents, Erva and Paul Boulon, began building a summer home at Trunk Bay on St. John in 1929-30 they required help.

This first building constructed at Trunk Bay, was on the beach. It's where the family lived while the main house was  being built just up the hill.

This picture shows the almost completed main house. The "roof" of the front building, with the two windows and door, had a roof added and it became the Upper Porch. I have no idea who the people are on the beach, a woman and a little girl. The woman could well be Agnes....

One of the people they hired was Agnes Sewer. It was probably Miss Agnes who taught Grammy about acquiring local food and cooking what was available. She became a member of the family, an invaluable person who not only helped Grammy take care of four rowdy children, but who also cooked delicious meals. For if there is one thing Miss Agnes knew how to do, it was cook.

My mother, having three younger brothers, was quite a tomboy. Miss Agnes was concerned about Mom running wild and felt there was need for some feminine influences.

As luck, or the Universe would have it, just over hill at Peter Bay was the perfect candidate. A year older than Mom, Ethlyn Hall had grace and intelligence. Miss Agnes made sure the two girls met and the friendship they form lasted a life time. I'll share a bit about Ethlyn next Monday.

By the time my sister Erva and I came along, Miss Agnes was an elderly lady living in a small house right on the road just outside Cruz Bay near The Pond. She had high check bones, as if there might have been a trace of Native American blood. She seemed ancient to me. More astonishing was that her mother, Miss Missy, lived across the street!

This picture, taken in 1999, is of my mother and Miss Agnes's younger brother , Roy Sewer.  You can see the same cheek bones in him.

Miss Agnes spent her days sitting in a chair in the doorway watching for people as they passed by. If she was there, you had to stop and pay your respects. Greetings and the latest news were exchanged, then, no matter how much you might insist it wasn't necessary, Miss Agnes would shuffle into her kitchen and return with a small brown paper bag containing something to eat. It might be a hard boiled egg, a johnny cake, some cheese and crackers, or a piece of coconut candy. It might be a sandwich. You never knew what you had until you opened the bag. With a hug and kiss, she sent you on your way.

If you were lucky, her mother Miss Missy would NOT be sitting on her porch because if she was you had to go see her too, which wasn't bad, except that she always insisted on "kissing you up," which wasn't bad except that she was quite toothless and her kisses were quite wet.

Some years back as Mom and I sat together reminiscing she said, "I miss Agnes as much as I miss my mother."

Well, if the Universe will have it, I'd like to think that Grammy, Mom, Ethlyn and Miss Agnes are all together in some fabulous kitchen cooking up a feast for the angels.

She's Baaack!

Well at least I hope so.

I did a lot while I was in the islands. But the most important thing was putting Mom's ashes out to sea. A dear friend of ours took these pictures.

Her urn along with various personal items that we placed into a basket.

Family and friends gathered at Morgan's Mango on St. John to remember her life

 More family and friends.

My sister Erva and I, accompanied by the brother we never had, John Shaffer. He's a fabulous guitarist as well as being a minister. We sang my parents song, "And the Angels Sing," as well as my mother's favorite song, "Amazing Grace."

My classmate, Sidney Comissiong who is head of surgery at the hospital in St. Thomas, took us out on his boat. Here is Erva and her boyfriend David preparing Mom's basket. We placed her urn in the basket along with many items that represented aspects of her life.

Erva and I preparing the orchids we tossed on the water. Orchids were Mom's favorite flowers.

Drinking a toast with Schaefer Beer, the beer she drank in the old days when she and her gal pals sat under the Gossip Tree and gossiped.

John saying a few words. The family monument, Carvel Rock, is in the background. Here is where my grandmother is buried and my father along with many friends. When Erva and I dropped her basket into the water it seemed to swim away as if searching for her loved ones.

Here's a little haiku I wrote.

Orchids grace the waves

She swims away, a turtle,

Seeking her beloved.

All in all it was a lovely day. A joyous conclusion to a long and joyous life.

And the Angels Sing

Good Morning Starshine

My mother was always the first to rise in the morning. Once out of bed she was moving and ready to go. She got up early, 5 AM to 6 AM most of the time. She'd make the first pot of coffee and spent that hour or so getting ready for the day. I think the early morning was her time, a moment in space to herself when she could read, meditate, think about things. There were no distractions. Her girls and husband weren't awake yet. In looking back, I see now, it was the only time of day where she was beholden only to herself.

My father, on the other hand, was slow in waking up. He got his first cup coffee delivered to him in bed. One of his girls (or Mom) would quietly bring it to him, a stealth move, slip in and slip out as quickly as possible.

"Coffee, Dad." And the cup was set on the night stand. It wasn't that he was grumpy, he just didn't like getting up all of sudden, didn't like noise.

My sister, Erva was a bit more like Mom, just not so alert first thing. She liked her coffee but was relatively cheery. I was like Dad. Mumble, groan, pull the sheets back up, roll over, go back to sleep.

Erva and I didn't have alarm clocks. We had Mom. She believed in waking us up gently. She didn't think being abruptly awakened was a good way to start the day. She felt it would make all that followed seem edgy and anxious. She believed in calmness, subtly. Every morning she came into my bedroom, took hold of my big toe and gently shook it saying, "Time to get up, Sweetie." Or, "Wake up, Sweetie." Or "Rise and shine, Sweetie."

In 1970 Mom, Erva and I were in San Francisco saw Promises, Promises and Hair. On the Apollo Moon Mission, "Good Morning Starshine," was used to wake up the astronauts. The version they used is by Oliver, which is (IMHO) better than the original by the Broadway cast. It's a lovely little song.

Are you a hit-the-floor-running kind of person? Or a roll-over-go-back-to-sleep type? What does it say about your personality and how you approach your life, your work, your writing?

In Most Loving Memory

Erva Claire Boulon Denham

May 12, 1917 - April 15, 2010

Our beautiful mother passed peacefully in her sleep, in her own bed, at home. She was an amazing woman who touched the lives of many, many people.

If I'm not around for a while I know will you understand.

A Pictoral Tribute to Mom

She was born on this day in 1917.

Here she is at about 6 months.

At two, she was already fearless.

At about five. Pictures of Erva and me at this age look so much like her it's spooky.

At about 13. Already an avid reader.

At about 14. Barefoot and riding a donkey.

At 15 or 16. Strong like bull...she could row for miles.

As a high school senior, beautiful, and...

heading off to Pratt Institute.

On her wedding day. Age 26.

Here she is a young married woman.

With her daughters.

In the prime of her life, enjoying every minute.

Today she is 92.

Happy Birthday Mom. We love you.

A Writer's Journey: Or How Writing Found Me

Writer buddy Joan over at Vicissitudes recently recounted the story of how she came to writing. She challenged her readers to tell their stories. I told her I’d take a stab at it.

Here it is.

There was a period of time when I was home schooled. My mother used the Calvert Course, which has now been in the business of home schooling for over a hundred years. I began the Calvert Course when I was around seven, so I probably started with 2nd grade. Mom and I had a daily routine of reading, writing and ‘rithmetic. I remember I had to memorize a lot of poems. I still know quite a few.

Mom was pleased with the course so we continued with it into the 3rd (and 4th) grade. A 3rd grade assignment was to write a little essay about my family. Up to that point I don’t think I’d written more than the occasional required paragraph. Mom later said she didn’t expect to get more than a page out of me. Writing was pretty much torture, both the physical act (my handwriting was HORRIBLE) and because I had such a hard time with spelling because I was (am) mildly dyslexic.

What a surprise when I pumped out three pages describing “My Family.” Despite the fact that the pages are long gone, one word from my essay has become part of the family vocabulary. In describing my sister and me I called us “the grils.” At least I was consistent; I called us grils throughout the whole piece. Erva and I have been known as “the grils” ever since.

The very first thing of mine to be published was a poem in my 1969 yearbook. Right after the title page is this two page spread picture of all us high schoolers standing around the parking lot. (Look at all those VW Bugs! And yes, that’s all of us, 9th through 12th grade, I went to a small school.)

In the bottom right corner is my poem. Ahem….

The Tangled Vines of Confusion

The tangled vines of confusion
Suddenly begin to separate
And grow straight up.
Suddenly there is a path before you
Where there was nothing –
Suddenly there is something from inside you
Encouraging you on – telling you
To take that hesitating step forward.

In my senior year I was the copy-editor for the yearbook and had two pieces published, which I won’t bore you with. In the late 70’s I wrote at least half a dozen articles for the local newspaper on St. John about growing up on St. John in the 1950’s.

In 1980 I started working at a home for abused and neglected kids. Three years later I was the assistant editor of the newsletter which went out six times a years to about 10,000 people across the U. S. and even to places like Australia and England. Over the next 18 or so years I wrote A LOT of articles for that newsletter. I also did all the layouts and took most of the pictures.

Inbetween all that I wrote for myself. I wrote journals, poems, short stories, and made many attempts to write novels. I have most of these horrible pieces, going all the way back to high school, in a four-door file cabnet. I'm running out of room.

Throughout it all, lying semi-dormant in my heart was the desire to write for children. So, when I finally “retired” from working at the home I decided to take the Institute of Children’s Literature writing course. It’s been about five years. I have had a little success; just enough to keep me plugging away at it.

Ultimately I give credit to Mom. From that first 3rd grade essay she sensed I might have a talent for writing. Through out my life she has gently and consistently encouraged me to keep at it. Mom was my first fan. My first book, whenever I finally get one accepted and it gets published will be dedicated to her. There was even a period in my life about 10 years ago when she somehow sensed that I wasn’t writing so she sent me the book, (which I highly recommend for anyone who feels "stuck") The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. She inscribed it, “For Bish, Follow the Way. Love, Mom.”

I took her advise. And I Follow the Way not because of the destination but because it's the journey that's important.

Mom's Dolls

She always did like playing with dolls.

When Erva and I got our first Barbie dolls, back around 1959, she made complete trousseaus for them. We woke up Christmas morning not just to the Barbies that we had coveted after seeing them in the Sear Wish Book, but all these wonderful clothes that Mom and meticulously made on her treadle sewing machine. She had made the clothes at night while we slept or during the day while we were at school. How I wish I still had those clothes, not to mention the dolls….

Years later Mom got into ceramics. That eventually led to her making dolls. She started out making ceramic dolls.

This is a picture of one of her first dolls. It’s called a Jenny doll and was popular back in the late 1800’s. She won a first place ribbon at a fair for this doll and the dress she is wearing.

But Mom wasn’t satisfied with the look of ceramic dolls so she moved into porcelain. She got so into it that she bought molds and had her own kiln for firing.

This is a picture of the largest doll she ever made. Stan calls her “scary,” because she has such an intense look about her.

This is a Gibson girl doll Mom made for me as a wedding present. She is dressed in a replica of my wedding dress.


In 1996 hurricane Marilyn, which wasn’t forecast to be a dangerous storm, ripped through St. Thomas with winds gusting to over 200 miles an hour. A terrible amount of damage was caused. Four out of five homes were damaged or destroyed. Our house on St. Thomas was not spared. Half of the roof pealed off and was folded back, coming to rest on the other half of the roof. Half of the 40 foot porch, the kitchen and living room were exposed to wind and rain.

On one wall of the living room there were shelves.
These dolls were sitting on the top shelf. Miraculously the dolls were not touched and survived the violence of that horrible night.

Mom’s dolls are a precious reminder of her creative talent. A force not even a hurricane could destroy.

On Thankfulness

Mom is 91 years old. No one in her family has lived so long. Her mother died at 76, her father in his mid-fifties. Only her grandfather, Frank Hartwell, lived into his 80’s. Only the youngest of her three brothers is still alive. She has beaten all the odds, and surpassed them.

She is nearly blind and deaf. She has diabetes. She is weak and spends most of her day in bed, but she can still get herself up and use a walker to take herself to the potty. Her short term memory is shot. But memories of the past, of raising my sister and me, of Dad, of growing up in Puerto Rico (she often reverts to speaking Spanish, her first language) and St. John, these things are clear. She knows who people are when they come to visit once you put in her hearing aid and yell into her ear. Yet minutes after they have gone she has forgotten that they came.

But this is not about feeling sorry for her. This is about the constant daily lesson she teaches me.

This is about her thankfulness. She says “Thank you,” for every little thing Erva or I do for her. Because of her diabetes her back itches most all of the time. She is always wanting it scratched. “Scratch my back. Oh boy, does that feels good, thank you,” she says.

“Thank you for sitting with me.”

“Thank you for keeping me here,” she says in reference to keeping her at home. “I’m very grateful. I want you know that. I hope I’m not too much of a burden. I don’t know why I’ve lived so long.”

“I want to let you know that I had fun raising you girls,” she says. “I hope you had fun too.”

“Thank you,” she says as we wheel her up to the table for a meal. She has a wonderful appetite and eats most anything we put in front of her.

“Thank you for taking care of me.”

She thanks us for turning off the light when she asks. She thanks us for giving her a sponge bath. She thanks us for keeping her glass full of water. She thanks us for plucking her chin whiskers.

“I’m cold,” she says. “Thank you,” she says when we help her into a little jacket.

“What’s new and different in the outside world?” she asks. And though she won’t remember I tell here we have a black man running for president. “Well I’ll be darned,” she says. “Is he popular?” Then she answers her own question, “I guess he must be if he’s running for president. Thank you for keeping me informed.”

The lesson she teaches me is clear. I only hope I can be as gracious and thankful should I live as long as she has. I hope from day to day not to take anything for granted, but to remember to be thankful for every little thing that I have, that’s done for me, that’s given to me.

My hope is that everyone have an Aged P as easy to care for as my mother. But I know this is not the case. I know there are Aged Ps out there who are difficult. So this lesson isn’t about them, it’s about us, the care-givers, the children. The lesson is about our remembering to be thankful.

May each of us remember to be thankful.

If we were all thankful for every little thing the world would at be at peace. We’d be so busy saying “Thank you,” to everyone we wouldn’t have time to be jealous or angry. Our differences of opinion, our need to be right, our selfishness would disappear.

Thank you, Mom, for continuing to teach me on a daily basis. Thank you for being my mother. Thank you for all the wonderful memories. Thank you for being who you are. Thank you for being thankful.

I am humbled and honored to be your daughter.

Guess Who?

Yup, that’s me, just hours after I was born. I look confused and disoriented. “What the hay is going on?”

It’s my birthday today.

Actually it’s Mom’s birth day, after all she did most of the work. She always told Erva and me she remembered the days we were born as clearly as if the events happened yesterday.

My birthday story is this. Mom was prepared to have me. She’d already had one baby so she knew what to expect. When Erva was born all the people attending Mom in the delivery room were women. It was a very calm experience. When I was born all the people attending Mom in the delivery room were…men! Mom said there was a completely different attitude about how to get things done. Erva was born pretty much drug free. When it was my time to arrive, first thing Mom knew they’d given her a spinal. She said she felt like a fish flopping around on a table. Those men would tell her to push, but she couldn’t feel anything. “How could I push when I was basically paralyzed from the waist down?” she said. So, because she couldn’t push they had to use…yup…forceps. I am a forceps baby. So out I come and the doctor hands me over to the male nurse and he says, “Here’s a cute one.” And before Mom gets to see or hold me I’m handed around to all the men and goo-gooed over. If all of that wasn’t bad enough, Mom was given shots to stop the flow of milk so she couldn’t breast-feed me, something she wanted and intended to do, something that she was able to do for Erva.

Apparently I didn’t like baby bottles. By the time I was old enough to hold them I would drink what I wanted and then throw the offending object out of the crib. Now remember all baby bottles were glass back then. It seems I managed to break quite a few. Mom decided to teach me drink out of a glass to see if I liked that any better. I did. So I learned to drink out of a glass when I was pretty young.

And that’s it, the story of my birth.

Tomorrow I’m going home to the islands. I’ll be gone for two months. I don’t know when or if I’ll get the opportunity to blog anything. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read my meanderings. If I don’t “see” you off and on in the next two months, I’ll definitely, “see you in September.”

My First Lesson in Social Etiquette

I’m not saying I didn’t get taught things at home, I did. But this is the first lesson I can really remember. It happened when I was about six.

At that time, on St. John, there were less than a thousand people living on the island. Everybody knew most everybody. And everybody knew whose kids belonged to whom. We kids couldn’t get away with much. It was accepted that any adult had not only the right but the duty to reprimand, teach, or instruct an errant child.

It happened this way. We were up at the Julius E. Sprauve School. Something was happening as there were parents mingling and kids running around. I was one of those kids who was running around.

Roy Sewer was a teacher. He was a tall, handsome man and there was something about the way he carried himself that spoke of royalty. It wasn’t that he was prideful, but that he was confident.

It just so happened that my mother and Mr. Roy were talking together and I had the audacity to run between them. In an instant Mr. Roy grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. There, in front of my mother and anyone else who happened to be within ear-shot, he gave me a very stern lecture on proper social etiquette.

In essence these were his words. “Never pass between two people who are speaking to each other. Always go around them. If you can not go around them wait for a pause in the conversation, say ‘excuse me,’ and then slip between as quickly as possible.”

My mother stood there and never said a word. She was perfectly content to have Mr. Roy rebuke me. In a way, it was like having an uncle correct my behavior, for hadn’t my mother and he grown up together and been life-long friends?

To this day I am careful about going between two people when they are speaking to each other. If I can’t go around them I wait for a pause in the conversation, say “excuse me,” duck my head, and slip quickly between them.

Mr. Roy died in 2006. In 1999 my sister, mother and I took Mr. Roy to breakfast. I am glad to say I was able to tell him about the life lesson he taught me. Of course he didn’t remember it, but we had a good laugh.

Here’s a picture of Mom and Mr. Roy taken the day we had breakfast together. One can still see in the way he is sitting and in his shoulders the remnants of his regal carriage.

More Than Just Mother's Day

It may be Mother’s Day today, but more import to me is that fact that tomorrow is my mother’s birthday. She will be 91 years old.

This is the earliest picture I have of her, sitting on the lap of her French grandmother. She looks to be about six or seven months old. So this picture was possibly taken in November or December of 1917.

Mom was not one to have or talk about “super-natural” experiences. But she did tell me that sometime after her grandmother died she went into a room where there was a rocking chair in which her grandmother had often sat. The rocking chair was rocking. “It was like she was in the room with me,” said Mom.

Here’s a picture of Mom taken at the time she graduated from high school, about 1935. To me she has classic movie star beauty. If I remember correctly she was wearing a yellow dress and the roses were white, you can see her diploma resting on top of the roses.

Not long afterwards, Mom sailed from Puerto Rico bound for New York and Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Except for a trip up to the states when she was a very little girl (her name is recorded among those who passed through Ellis Island) she had never gone further than the Virgin Islands. She made the trip to Pratt by herself.

Here’s a picture of her on the day she left. I sense a bit of apprehension in her face.

Mom wanted to study business, but her traditional old-fashioned French father wouldn’t allow it. He recognized that she had artistic talent, which she did in abundance, so he sent her to Pratt to study costume design.

There are three stories Mom told from her days at Pratt.

#1: There was a teacher/professor who had communist leanings, a popular political stance back in those days. Here was Mom, a naive young Puerto Rican girl from a fairly well to do family, with an obvious thick Spanish accent, though she spoke fluent and perfect English. The professor apparently gave Mom a hard time, accusing her and her family of being colonialists, of being bourgeoisie, of repressing, abusing, and mal-treating the “native” population. Mom looked too white for this professor to believe she was a native too. This attitude was new to Mom. Yes she had grown up with servants, but she had never seen anyone of any class or social status mistreated or abused. Her father, at the time, had the only refrigeration business on the island. He had worked hard to provide his family with a comfortable life. How was that a bad thing? Particularly when he provided jobs! Apparently this professor actually brought her tears. It must have been hard for Mom to be so accused and not be able to defend herself without getting into trouble.

#2: Among her many interests was psychology. She once wrote a paper that combined art and psychology. It was about the affect color has on one’s psychological mood. Heady stuff for the day, new and innovative. She got a B. Her roommate asked to borrow the paper, copied it and turned it in to another professor. She got an A.

#3: This is my favorite story. Mom and her roommate lived several stories up in a girl’s dorm. Often they would, in the winter, keep milk and pies and such like things outside on the window ledge of their room. Directly across from them was a boy’s dorm. The space between the two buildings was apparently quite narrow. Narrow enough that the boys who lived directly opposite them would sometimes steal their food. Mom decided to get even. She made up a batch of brownies with a hefty dose of chocolate exlax and set it outside on the ledge. Needless to say the boys stole the brownies. People wondered why they weren’t in class. Needless to say the boys never stole anything off their window ledge again.

Mom later used what she learned at Pratt to design and make fabulous costumes for my sister and me and to make dresses which she sold to a store on St. Thomas. But it was her innate business sense that served her best. She managed and did the bookkeeping for the gas station and guest house we later owned and opperated. She was a partener in another business, a giftshop/restaurant. And she knew what property to buy when and how to manage it. This last is her legacy to my sister and me.

Happy Mother’s Day and Happy Birthday Mom. You are the best.
All my love from,
Your “growth”, The Rotten Kid, (you're the one who taught me)
Bish

The Swing and the Mampoo Tree

Birthdays in my family were usually quietly celebrated at home. It was a day the celebrant didn’t have to do any of the usual household chores expected of them. Gifts were opened in the morning. At the end of the day a favorite dinner was prepared, there was a cake and, if we were lucky, there was ice cream too.

I’m sure all of that happened on my 10th birthday, but I don’t remember any of it. I don’t remember any of the gifts I got either, except for one.

We were living up at Gift Hill on St. John. Probably after breakfast my father took us all outside. He had a surprise for me. We followed him out to the mampoo tree where he had things all set up, waiting for this moment. Then for the first and last time in my life, I saw him climb a tree. My mother was probably nervous watching him up there…would that branch hold his weight? Mampoos are softwood trees. There was a real danger the branch could break under him.

He shimmied out onto a limb and, with all of us directing him, carefully positioned two chains which were attached to a nice wide wooden board. My father’s present to me was a swing.

It wasn’t just a swing in a tree. One must close ones eyes and try to visualize where the swing was. The mampoo tree grew on a slight rise of ground with the hillside sloping away at its feet. The hill drops steeply down into the long, wide, deep valley of the Fish Bay ghutt. (Pronounced gut, it is a rocky wash, a gulley, where water flows when it rains.) The hills rise on the other side of the ghutt and continue east. The view is of the south side of the island. From the swing I could see the white cliffs of Reef Bay all the way to Ram’s Head Point. On clear days the conical hills of Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands some 40 miles away, are visible. All of that is to the left. To the right, as far as the eye can see, unobstructed by islands, is the wide open expanse of the Caribbean Sea. I could watch the ocean change moods.

It was and still remains, a glorious and magnificent view.

Tree and swing were positioned in such a way that when I would swing it was like flying. I’d soar out into a great space, out over the valley, out over the hills swooping toward Reef Bay, and fly out over the vastness of the sea. Then, swinging back, I was embraced by the waiting, protective arms of the tree and brought safely back to earth. Out into space, back into arms – Out in space, back into arms.

I loved that swing and tree.

I thought of myself as a kind and benevolent queen who ruled over a fairy world inhabited by lizards, birds, insects and flowers. It was my job to keep everyone safe. It was my job to love that view, that tree, and all those creatures living within it. I knew no one would ever be able to love it as much as me. In my little girl mind, I thought without me to love that space, it would become lonely.

Two years later, when I was twelve, one of the greatest upheavals of my life took place. We had to move from Gift Hill. We had to move from St. John. We had to move to St. Thomas.

Oh, it was horrible! I didn’t want to move. Everything and everyone I loved was on St. John. And my kingdom…what would become of my kingdom? Who would love it? Who could love the tree, the view, the animals? Whose arms and legs would climb the tree and hug it? Whose ears would hear the rustle of lizards, the songs of birds, and understand their music? Who would protect it all and keep it safe? Who would keep it from being lonely? No one.

I agonized over it. I felt guilty for having to leave my kingdom. And I knew, deep in my heart, my kingdom would be just as lost and lonely without me and I would be without it.

What was I going to do? And then a solution came to me.

One day, not long before we left Gift Hill, never to return, I preformed a little ceremony and made a vow.

At the base of the mampoo tree there was a hollow space beneath the roots, a niche where I put special things like rocks and shells. It was also a place where I laid to rest dead lizards and birds I found. It was both a safe and a tomb, a shrine and an altar.

From somewhere I got a small round tin box with a lid, like a cookie or cracker tin. I went out to my tree and kingdom and this is what I did. I placed my hands on my chest, I cradled my heart in my hands and I carefully placed my heart in the tin. As I did that I told my tree and kingdom that I was leaving my heart with them. I told them they would never be lonely because I would always be with them. I vowed I would never take my heart away.

Then I put the lid on and took the tin and put it into the hollow place beneath the tree.

The consequences of making that vow, of leaving my heart at Gift Hill, made mysterious waves that washed up on the shores of my life, leaving behind odd bits of debris. I will only say that I was a kind of cripple because I was never able to be truly happy or content. There was always something wrong, I never quite fit anywhere I went later in life.

It was a long time before I realized how displaced and uprooted I was and why.

There came a day many years later that I stood in the place where once a tree had stood. It was gone by then, cut down, blown over in a storm….I stood there and knew I had to take back my heart else I would never be content no matter where I went or what I did.

I found my heart where I had left it, overlooking the view. I called it to me. I cradled it in my hands, I placed my hands on my chest and I put my heart back.

I told my kingdom I had to break my vow, because I could not live without my heart. With tears in my eyes I asked to be forgiven. Then I assured them a piece of me would always be with them, that I would never forget them, that I held the memory of my kingdom sacred and precious.

I felt a peace descend. The view, my kingdom, seemed to smile at me. I thought it would be sad, but it understood. We shared something between us that was ours and no one else’s. It is something that no one will ever be able to take away from us.

Today, right now, this instant, there is a little girl in her swing who is a benevolent queen of a mystical realm. She reigns eternally.

I am never far away from my kingdom nor is my kingdom ever alone. And somewhere in the soil are the chemical remains of tin box.

This picture was taken when I was about seven. To the right, in the back, is the mampoo tree. The brush around the tree had yet to be cleared, but the branch from which my swing was hung is visible. It arches away from the trunk, right to left, and seems to be bending down towards me. Note that I am wearing flip-flops. My mother is doing some weeding among the rocks. The two 55 gallon drums contain gasoline for the generator that gave us light at night and kerosene which was for our kerosene refrigerator. The dog is Happy, who deserves and will one day have, a book written about him.

A New Year Memory

Here we go again. Another “New Year” is about to descend.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it in your heart that every day is the best day of your life.” That quote is suspiciously similar to this one; “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

New Year’s resolutions are fine, but I/we should be looking at each day as a new beginning. Each day is the beginning of a “New Week,” or a “New Month.” Time, anyway, is…illusory. It doesn’t really exist. It’s all in our minds. But I am, like everyone else, a victim of it.

Can you tell? I’ve never been a big New Years person. I think it all goes back to a New Years party my family went to when I was nine, in 1960. This picture shows my mother on the left and our good friend Nora. My sister is smiling big in the back-ground wearing the lei. She was 13 soon to be 14, as tall as any adult. The picture was taken right at mid-night. Everyone is happy and smiling and toasting and kissing and…where am I?

I remember being excited, wanting to help ring in the New Year. It was a big deal. 1960, turn of a decade. Everything, I thought, would be new and different once January 1st showed its face. I think it was the first time I became aware of the change of the year and what that “meant.”

I hung on as long as I could. Probably sometime between 9 and 10 pm I got sleepy. Certainly I was not used to staying up much past 8:30 or 9 o’clock. I was taken to a bed-room. I remember specifically telling my sister and my mother, “Wake me up at mid-night.”

Of course it didn’t happen. By the time mid-night rolled around the party was in full swing. The adults had been drinking and dancing, laughing and talking and Bish was forgotten. Her request was forgotten. I don’t remember getting home. But I do remember the next day I was terribly disappointed that I’d missed The Big Event.

It was supposed to be a new day, a new year. But the business of being a family and doing chores, of eating and washing dishes, making the beds, sweeping the floor, all the mundane things of life, were going on just like they had the day before and the day before that. Nothing had changed.

So what, I wondered, was “new” about it? I came to this resounding conclusion. Nothing. It’s just another day.

Because of that observation I’ve never gotten excited about New Years. Except for 2000. Just how often does a person get to ring in not only a new century but a new millennia? Well, not often. And I had a good time with my husband and friends. We fired off fire-works and scared the donkeys, but that’s a whole nuther story.

I didn’t stay upset with Mom or my sister for not waking me up. And I remember that dress Mom wore. It was white with gold-thread accents. It was probably silk, looked kind of like a sari. I thought she was beautiful. She was. She still is.

Happy New Year.

Charlotte...and Gus Too

Charlotte Dean Stark. She was my first best friend (after my sister that is.)

Charlotte was older than my grandmother by 5 or 6 years. She had been a Suffragette. She was a book reviewer for the New York Times. Between December 4th, 1932 and August 6th, 1944, Charlotte wrote a total of 192 columns.

She was married to Gus, a thin man who had no teeth. But that didn't stop him from eating whatever he wanted. He ate everything from popcorn to steak, gumming things to death. On New Years Eve he'd put in his teeth and look completely different. But he didn't like to wear them because they hurt.

I don't know how Gus and Charlotte first learned about St. John or when they first arrived. I do know they were already family friends when my mother was going to Pratt Institute between 1934-36 because Mom spent the holidays with them up in Connecticut.

They came to Trunk Bay on St. John early on, before 1934, before Grammy opened it as guest house. In fact, the only building left at Trunk Bay, the Lower House, was built by Charlotte and Gus between 1948-49.

Charlotte had short curly graying red-brown hair. In her youth it had been a deep auburn. Her eyes, if I remember rightly, were a watery blue-green. She wore long skirts and dresses, which she made, to cover her right knee which had been severely mangled when she was a girl.

The story she told is that while riding a bike the front wheel hit a trolley or train track. She was thrown, landing on her right knee. The knee cap was shattered and a large cut on the top of her thigh caused a piece of her stocking to go up inside her her leg. Doctors had to enlarge the cut and with a long pair of tweezers they pulled the piece of fabric out. Her knee remained gnarly and lumpy and it didn't bend very well.

Over the fireplace (the only one on St. John at the time) there was an oil painting of her that was done when she was about 18. She had been a pretty young woman; a small heart-shaped face was surrounded by an abundance of auburn hair. She was wearing a long yellow dress. She looked very much the Gibson Girl.

She still had the dress when I entered her life. She'd let me play dress-up in it. It was made of satin and had a drapery-like front, like a narrow shawl that acted as both yoke and straps. It had a small train. When I wore it I loved pretending I was in a grand ballroom strolling and dancing about. Made me feel very elegant.

Charlotte was slender and had long fingered hands that were bony. She filed her nails into small points. She played the piano and sang in a thin watery voice. My sister, Erva, Charlotte and I liked to sing Christmas carols all year long.

She liked to do acrostics. She also had a knitting project, making herself an outfit of fine off-white wool. But like Penelope, she never finished it.

She took a battery of pills, mostly vitamins. She had these little pill boxes, each one different. Every morning she'd sort out which pills went into which box; morning, noon, evening, bedtime. She hated taking pills. She'd chew up the ones she could, all together (YUK!) Then all the gel-cap types she'd pop in her mouth, take a big sip of water, throw her head back, shake and wiggle her head and stroke her throat to get the pills down.

She made her own yogurt.

If I was around when she made bread she always gave me a small lump to knead. Even if it fell on the floor she'd bake it in its own little pan and I would eat it. She taught me how to use their special pop-corn popper. It was a large electric machine. Just this much oil, this much corn. I got so good I became the official popper when ever I visited, which was often.

Charlotte wrote two books about St. John. I wish I had them.

She slept in the nude and walked from the bedroom to the bathroom butt naked. She was not the least bit modest about her aging, saggy body. She slept with dozens of very small pillows which she made special pillow cases for. She also wore a black satin mask over her eyes as she couldn't sleep when there was any kind of light. She made the masks too.

She wore Joy perfume. Gus kept her supplied with an extremely large bottle of it. One bottle would last a couple of years.

Charlotte introduced my sister, Erva and me, to the "Sea Sick Record," (as our cousin Frances called it.) It's real name is "The Pinafore" by Gilbert and Sullivan. We loved that album and would sing along with it. I particularly liked trying to imitate the contralto who sang the part of Buttercup.

"I'm called little Buttercup,

Poor little Buttercup,

Though I could never tell why...

...So buy off your Buttercup, buy." It must have been a hoot to hear an 8 or 10 year old singing that song.

Charlotte and I got along like two peas in a pod. I spent many week-ends with her.

Gus would take us down to Hawksnest in the afternoons around 3 p.m. to take a sea bath. He had an old tractor and he'd rigged up a seat on the back of it. I would sit in Charlotte's lap as we made our slow way down the steep rocky road to the beach. We always had stale bread on hand to feed the pompanos.

After the beach Charlotte and I took a shower together, something that by today's standards would be frowned upon and/or questioned. One time I asked her why one breast was smaller than the other. She told me she had had a tumor removed and lifted up her breast so I could see the thin white scar that went from one side to the other. Another time I asked her why she and Gus didn't have kids. She told me she had lost three. I can only assume, now as an adult, that she had had three miscarriages. I told her I was sorry. She told me it didn't bother her anymore, particularly since she had me to play with.

Sunday mornings were always fun. Charlotte and I would get all dressed up. I would wear one her long dresses, all pinned and gathered up to fit me. We'd dab on some Joy, then we'd climb onto the tractor and Gus would motor the three of us down to Caneel Bay to pick up the Sunday New York Times. We must have been quite a sight, an old owman and little girl walking through the lobby of the hotel as if we owned the placed; Charlotte looking elegant - she carried herself as one who had once been among the elite, which she had been - and me, trailing skirts that were too long acting like a princess.

Then there was Gus, who wore the same basic outfit every day, jeans and a white short-sleeved shirt, leading this odd female pair.

Every morning Charlotte took her flower basket and shears and went out into the yard to gather hibiscus blossoms. She had a multitude of different kinds. Inside the house Gus had mounted on the walls lovely pieces of drift wood into which he had drilled holes. Charlotte would take out yesterdays wilted blossoms and replace them with today's. And so, there were these wonderful splashes of color in the foyer and on the white walls of the living room. A praticularly beautiful piece of free-standing drift wood sat on the top of her white up-right piano.

Once Charlotte taped/attached all these differnt types of hibiscus to one of her large potted plants. She called her "Ho-ax Charlotta."

Sometimes we had screaming contests to see who could scream the loudest. She and my mother called me "one of God's screachers" because I could scream so loud.

She liked to eat pomegranates and had several trees in the yard, both the white and ruby red kind.

In the late 1960's after Gus's death, Charlotte moved back to the states. I was very sad about the move. I begged her to sell the house to my Mom and Dad, but it was not to be. In 1989, Hurricane Hugo took the roof and destroyed part of the house. What was left was eventually torn down...all of the beautiful stonework Gus had done, their large open porch overlooking Hawksnest. It's all gone now.

But I have some pictures. This one shows me on her lap. My sister stands tall in the back. Our friends, Melaine, Ed (left) and John (right) gluster around her like bees on a flower. I am, as I always was, barefoot.

I loved Charlotte dearly. She always answered my questions, even if it was to say, "I don't know." I have a pretty little three-shelved cherry wood piece that was hers. I also have her Harebell china. Between us, Erva and I have several pieces of her jewerly. I also have two of her painted fans and several books from her extensive library. I read the The Secret Garden at her house.

In 1968 I visited family in Connectcut for Christmas. I spent the night with Charlotte in New York City. She was living in a hotel-apartment. We had dinner together. The next morning, before light, she gave me instructions on how to get to Grand Central Station. We hugged and said good-bye.

It was the last time I saw her. Charlotte died in 1977.

I still miss her from time to time, which is why I'm writing about her today. It's one of those moments.