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

A Car is Born

This is a huge day at our house.

Today a car was born.

After working on her for nine years (as time and money and health permitted) Stan fired up the engine of the '57. It lit right up. It roared to life and stayed on fire! This is no ordinary "restoration." She's a hotrod. She has an LT1 fuel injection engine in her. Modifications had to made to get that baby into the engine compartment.

The '57 has to grow a bit more before she goes on the road. But today, May 1st, 2008, is her birthday.

I'm so proud of Stan I could burst. He's done almost all the work, from body and electronics (you should SEE all the wiring!) to mechanical, himself.

A Garden Moment

For the first time in several years we have garden. Granted, it’s small, but still, it’s a garden. We have harvested two batches of spinach and the snow peas are starting to really show up. The broccolis have heads and the tomatoes are starting to form tiny green fruit. The bush beans have a way to go yet, but no doubt they too will have their day.

Here I am in the garden with Ursa, picking snow peas. It's a wonderful thing. Ursa concurs. I caught her pulling a snow pea off the vine and eating it. I’m sure she has done this on more than one occasion!

We've had bumper crop of yellow irises this year. They came from California, brought to us by my mother. Over the years the original clump has been divided and divided again until now we have them all over the yard. Behind them is another row of snow peas.

This is a Columbine with a happy bee gathering pollen and nectar. I had to wait for her to appear as she completely disappeared into the flower.

And here are Rose Campions. In the back is another clump of yellow irises.

The Flowers

by Rober Louis Stevenson

All the names I know from nurse:

Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,

Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,

And the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy place, fairy things,

Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,

Tiny trees for tiny dames --

These must all be fairy names!

Tiny woods below whose boughs

Shady fairies weave a house;

Tiny tree-tops, rose and thyme,

Where the braver fairies climb!

Fair are grown-up people's trees,

But the fairest woods are these;

Where, if I were not so tall,

I should live for good and all.

Tagged!

I have been tagged! I've heard about being tagged, but this is my first try at this game. I hope I can follow the rules, which are:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people and post a comment to Vijaya's blog once you've posted your three sentences.

The nearest book happens to be Oscar Wild: Complete Short Fiction. On page 123 we have the story "The Devoted Friend." (Hmmm...coincidence or cosmic forces at work?)

Here are the three sentences:
It was a very wild night, and the wind was blowing and roaring round the house so terribly that at first he thought it was merely the storm. But a second rap came, and then a third, louder than either of the others.
"It is some poor traveller," said little Hans to himself, and he ran to the door.

I hope these next five people will forgive my impertinence for passing the tag on to them.
Susan at: Susan Sandmore
Donna at: wordwrangler
Angela at: Making Sense of Life
Janelle at: writermorphosis
Peta at: Peta's Journal


And, I have learned something: how to post a link to other blogs!

Stan

It’s my Sweetie’s birthday today. He’s as handsome as ever and doesn’t look a day over 50! (And I’m not telling how old he is.)

He’s a good man, Stan is. Honest, loyal, generous, thoughtful, smart (even if he doesn’t think so) and most importantly, loving. He showers all of these wonderful qualities on me, for which at times I do not feel deserving. I’m blessed to be so loved.

Here he is looking thoughtfully out into space. This was taken at least five or six years ago. There’s the hint of a long strand of hair escaping.

And he grew it out just for me. A few years ago he cut it off because it got in the way of his working on The Car. I completely understand. Nothing like getting a pony tail caught up in the wheels of a creeper! OUCH.

Here he is working on The Car, a ’57 Chevy. He’s getting close to starting the engine! He’s done most of the work himself, learning as he goes. He’s had to think outside the box on more than one occasion. He’s managed to solve every problem that has come up. When he wants to learn something he reads, he asks questions and he picks people’s brains, then he reads some more. He refuses to give up.

Here he is making cuttings from a plant. For 18 years he grew plants, mostly herbs, for wholesale. He taught himself how to do that too. Except for helping his dad out in the garden when he was a kid he didn't know anything about growing plants. By the time he "retired" from it last year, he had two greenhouses on the back half of our property. He grew beautiful plants that were as near to organic as he could get without being certified.

As might be expected, our yard is full of plants and trees. We keep adding more even though we

really don’t have the room, yet somehow we

always manage to find a spot.

Stan likes to read, car magazines and science fiction mostly. But he reads lots of other stuff. He likes to star gaze and will stand outside on a cold winter’s night with the binoculars looking for star clusters. He likes to keep food in the bird feeder so that we can sit on our porch and watch and listen to our feathered friends. He eats most anything I put in front of him. He helps A LOT around the house.

He’s my Sweetie and I love him.

Happy Birthday, Stan.

Tatting

One of the things I do besides writing is tatting.

Tatting is an old form of lace making, made on one's hands using a shuttle wound with thread. I don't know much about its history. But it's old. Some say it goes all the way back to ancient Egypt. Other's, that it's a more recent development, two or three hundred years old. The "golden age" of tatting was during the Victorian Era. Because it is time comsuming, it was mostly the well-to-do ladies who tatted. They would gather for tea and, like a sewing or quilting bee, sit around, drink tea, talk and tat. Women would even take their tatting to church with them during the long Sunday services. It is a hand-craft that, compared to crocheting or knitting, is small and easy to carry around.

Basically tatting is half-hitch knots, like macrame. Fishermen who knotted nets using large shuttles may have been the original tatters. Unlike crocheting and knitting when you make a mistake you can't simply rip it out. You either have to untie each knot or cut out the mistake and start again.



Tatting isn't really difficult, but it does take time to produce a small piece.



Wherever and however it started, tatting makes a lovely delicate lace with infinite variations. I had my one and only tatting lesson when I was in my early 20's. A woman (who I thought was old - she was probably as old as I am now) showed me the basics of holding a shuttle and tying the knots. I never did anything with it until about four years ago. I taught myself what I know from books. I consider myself still a novice; there are techniques I have yet to master, patterns that are still too complicated and difficult for me to follow. But, what I do make I enjoy making. And, once a month for about 7 months out of the year I take my "stuff" to a craft show and sell it. I make enough to "feed my habit," in other words, enough to buy more thread and books.



Me with all my STUFF! I have greeting cards, book marks, edged hankerchiefs, earrings, necklaces, hair barrettes and a christening gown, to name a few items.










A Bible marker - I make these in many different colors
















A peacock book mark



















A seahorse book mark - I also make book marks that look like a pig, butterfly, alligator, snake, swan, snail and lion