Uncategorized – Page 25 – Plain and Fancy

How to: Create Keepsakes

May 25, 2013May 27, 2013 marianbeaman2 Comments

For years I have kept a ratty ole pin cushion from Grandma Longenecker in my sewing cabinet. It looks pitiful, but I’ll never throw it away because it came from my Grandma. Pierced through its dusty middle with some of her pins and holding one of my mother’s hairpins, I’d say it’s more of a keepsake than an heirloom.

Remember Art Linkletter’s show “Kids Say the Darndest Things”? Of course they do! I have kept quotes from each of our four grandchildren since their early years, as keepsakes. It’s easy to do the same for your children–both grand and great–nieces and nephews too:

1. Be alert to their part of any conversation. You never know when a wacky, wise, or witty saying will burst forth from their lips.

2. Write it down ASAP. Memory is tricky. If you don’t get it just right, what they have actually said may lose its zing in your faulty translation.

3. Use a notebook or reserve a folder on your computer desktop for the quotations. For example: SayingsPatrickCurtisJennaIan.doc

4. Always include a date. If you’re like me, you’ll never connect their age with the saying. What seems precocious at age 4 would sound ordinary at age 7 or 8.

Here are some examples from my files. (You can guess which one I would pull out at a rehearsal dinner celebration!)

Patrick & Jenna snacking after planting grass plugs

2.15.07 Patrick to Mommy Crista: “Mom, we can’t move to Florida.”“Why?”“Because we can’t get Daddy’s bean bag on the plane.” (age 4)

10.24.09 Patrick: “My favorite thing in school is writing in my purple journal. Every story I write has the word ‘the’ in it!” (age 6)

12.23.09 After Jenna breaks her snow globe Christmas ornament Cliff gave her from Washington State, Patrick says, “Grandpa, the next time you go on a trip, don’t give the little girl a glass present.” (age 6)

Jenna’s turn:

* 6.25.09 You and Patrick were with NaNa as Mommy was having some time to run errands. You were busy upstairs helping me pack for PA: on jewelry– “That’s too fancy . . . or too casual.” On outfits – “This matches . . . this doesn’t.” (age 4) Fashion design in her future? Who knows.

* 8.5.12 Mommy Crista: “So we are at the beach and Jenna and I are sifting through sand looking for neat sea shells. She says to me, ‘Mommy, you know, you are doing pretty good for your age. Flattered (and in my bikini), I said, ‘Well, thank you. Do you think I should cover up a little bit more?’ Jenna says, ‘No, Mom, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant that you have good eyes for looking for nice shells.’” (age 7)

Curtis and Snow Globe Gift

1.1.08: NaNa observes that Curtis is wearing his “Dash” suit to bed, and so she says, “Why are you wearing your Incredibles suit to bed?” Curtis: “Well, I need to be strong in bed!” (age 5)

11.7.10 When I came to dinner on Sunday evening, you had balled-up paper in a small laundry basket and mentioned you wanted to have a “dry” snowball fight. (age 7)

5.10.13 I describe how Great Grandma’s Chicago snow globe was taken on the sly and how sad she is as a result: After a bit, Curtis goes to his room, and gets his own larger version of the snow globe, a keepsake from his early days in Chicago, to give to her as a surprise. (age 9)

Ian and Teddy

With Grandpa at the mall, as Ian finished drinking his chocolate milk from a straw, he exclaimed, “Look, I’m a sucker!” (age 4)

After being given an assignment at pre-school, (All Saints’s Episcopal), Ian completes this prompt: If I were President, “I Would protect the children!” (age 5)

3.18.13 When Great Aunt Janice gives us kumquats, you say, “I’m glad I’m not a kumquat!” Now what brought that on, I wonder? (age 5 1/2)

Another Keepsake: Kid-size Gratitude Journal

Tables Turned: Kids do their own drawing, writing: “I’m thankful for . . . . ”

Add your clever keepsake idea to the mix. Tell us an activity or tradition that helps keep memory alive for the sake of the next generation in your family.

Like this post? Follow my blog and get many more free of charge! Just type in your email address at the top of the page and click “subscribe!” WordPress keeps your email address private.

Ruthie the Cheater, Part II

May 22, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeaman6 Comments

I’ve told my students if they ever see me in a bank behind the teller’s window—RUN! Math has never been my strong suit, but I can spell well.

In fourth grade, I always win the spelling bees on Friday. In fact, my winning is so predictable that my friend Wayne tells me he’s going to find a word in the dictionary that I can’t spell. “Somebody else deserves to win sometimes,” he whines.

Ruthie the Cheater Cheater-in-Training, 4th Grade

And so he searches for just the right word, finds it, and whispers it into Miss Longenecker’s right ear. I see him form the word with his lips, but I can’t decipher what he is saying. That evening, Grandma invites the five of us—Mom, Daddy, Janice, Jean and me—down over the hill to Grandma’s house for chicken pot pie.

As always, before Dad parks our blue Studebaker, three-legged Skippy rushes out on the porch to greet us. Soon I’m standing on a chair beside the stove watching Grandma cut out little pieces of dough for me to place one by one carefully in the boiling liquid to cook. I love to find a little space of bubbling broth in the kettle and seal it over with a dough-y square. Chicken pot pie with fresh cabbage slaw . . . wunderbar.

Aunt Ruthie comes in the back door from school with a yellow pencil over her ear. After she puts down her papers and books, she quizzes me, “How do you spell reconciliation?” Without hesitating, I enunciate: r-e-c-k-o-n-s-i-l-l-y-a-t-i-o-n!

“That’s close, but not quite right,” she encourages, as she pulls down the dictionary from the left bottom door of the red cherry cupboard over by the kitchen table.

“Here, take a look at this.” And I see how the dictionary says to spell it. Now I put the right letters in my memory bank for tomorrow’s spelling bee. When Teacher asks the class, “Does anyone have a word to stump Marian?” this might be the word, I surmise.

It’s Friday, and once again I’m the surviving speller. Wayne jumps to the mound to strike me out, but I deliver fourteen correct letters in rapid succession: reconciliation!” Wayne is dumbstruck for a few seconds and then mutters, “Holy Cow, Holy Cow,” as he reconciles himself to the fact that it’s useless to try to stump Marian.

Once again, Aunt Ruthie is a cheater, but so am I. We’re in cahoots!

Can you admit to a time when you got some unsolicited help? Some help that came with wobbly ethics? Tell us your story!

Like this post? Follow my blog and get many more free of charge! Just type in your email address at the top of the page and click “subscribe.” WordPress keeps your email address private.

Ruthie the Cheater, Part I

May 18, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeaman5 Comments

Yes, my Aunt Ruthie is a cheater. I’ll admit that she also has an honorable resume that includes a principalship of Rheems Elementary School, Tax Collector of West Donegal Township, mother to refugees and immigrants. But, you heard right, she also has a rap sheet. Let me explain.

Aunt Ruthie – Miss Longenecker

The scent of ply-board takes me back to the patterns that we cut out in her classroom on a jig-saw machine . . . a scent that has an oaky-piney fragrance that compares to the fragrance of a wine with some nutty notes: But what does a Mennonite know about wine, anyway!

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

–Vladimir Nabokov

Whatever the aroma, the scent bypasses the brain and takes me straight back to third grade at Rheems Elementary School. While Miss Longenecker reads us stories after lunch, we color pictures of fairy tales or fables outlined in purple (always purple) ink cranked out by the hectograph machine that imprints images from a jelly surface onto paper.

Hectograph machine – gelatin duplicator with hand crank, 1940s

Our teacher loves art and she has a very “hands on” teaching style. Sometimes we finger paint with thick, gooey pigments, or paste pieces of colored construction paper into loops with white paste from a gallon jar. Some kids even eat the paste when the teacher’s not looking.

Today Miss Longenecker has brought in a jigsaw and some fresh plywood. We inhale its pungent fragrance, just as we have smelled the paste or the paints or the glue. We’ll take turns each cutting out an animal as the tooth of the electric saw bites into plywood, following a pattern, guided by our teacher’s hands, hers on top of ours.

When it’s my turn, I trace the outline of a dog and a cat with the sawblade. Back then, we hadn’t heard about OSHA laws of course! Later I paint the dog blue and the cat pink with black dots for eyes, a few whiskers, and wobbly lines for ears and front paws. To me, they look wonderful, if I don’t say so myself. My Teacher/Aunt is taking me home after school today, so I can play outside until she’s ready to go home.

I come inside for a drink from the fountain after a while and find Aunt Ruthie, paintbrush in hand, adding some eyebrow lines here, a few more whiskers there, a touch of red for the mouth, and more defined forepaws to my jigsaw creations. “I think these are good enough to enter into the art contest in Elizabethtown this year. Maybe you’ll win first prize,” she remarks, wiping black paint from her brush. “But you’re helping me too much,” I think.

Actually, I don’t care much about winning a prize for my art. I just want to add hooks to the back and hang my new plywood pets on my bedroom wall. Nevertheless, Blue Dog and Pink Cat enter the contest in the third-grade category, and my aunt and I are awarded a Blue Ribbon for our pains.

Guided by her hand, though, I learn to sew and knit, play the piano, take trips to the zoo, the symphony, make fasnacht dough. . . .

A cheater? Let’s just say I’ve destroyed her rap sheet long ago.

Prayer Cap and Caped Dress: A Capsule

February 28, 2013September 8, 2014 marianbeaman15 Comments

Middle Schooler: Veiled and Caped

Good Mennonite girls of the 1950s and 60s like me wore a prayer cap and a dress with a cape. Yes, no fancy fad in the frock I’m wearing in the photo. As best I can tell, the belted cape was worn to add an extra layer of padding to de-emphasize female curves. The object was modesty and humility at all costs. Underneath my cap, also called covering or veiling, I planted a circlet of braids attached with hairpins. Why is it worn? “According to I Corinthians 11:1-16, . . . the long hair and veiled head gives evidence of the woman’s “unceasing prayer and constant witness,” accepting “submission designated by God.” *

* Statement of Christian Doctrine and Rules and Discipline of the Lancaster Conference of the Mennonite Church, Article II—Ordinances, Section 5, July 17, 1968.

More on the Prayer Cap:

Wenger, J. C., The Prayer Veil in Scripture and History, Herald Press, Scottdale, PA, 1964.

Three Common Misconceptions about Amish and Mennonites:

1. Amish came first. No, Menno Simons, a former Swiss priest, broke off from the Catholic Church during the Reformation in 1536, originating the Mennonite Church. Later in 1693, Jacob Ammon formed the Amish, who have worn even more conservative dress.

2. Most Mennonites are farmers; their children go to one-room schoolhouses. No, from the mid-1950s and earlier Mennonites have embraced the professions: many are doctors, lawyers, educators. Higher education is the norm for many.

3. Plain looks equate to lack of emotional expression. Just ask my husband!

1. What misconceptions can you add?

2. Any similar experiences? Tell your anecdote.

3. Questions?

Harvey Yoder, Mennonite pastor and counselor, has compiled a more complete list of 10 myths about Mennonites and Amish on his own website. I invite you to check out this link:

http://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2011/10/mennonites-and-amishten-myths-and.html

Coming soon! Grandma’s Kitchen: Recipes and More

Grah-ti-tood

February 25, 2013November 8, 2016 marianbeaman12 Comments

It so falls out / That what we have we prize not to the worth, / Whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, / Why, then we rack the value; then we find / The virtue, that possession would not show us / Whiles it was ours. Much Ado About Nothing, Act IV, Sc. 1, Shakespeare

Is it true we don’t appreciate what we have until we lose it? What do you think?

5 Entries from my grandsons’ gratitude books:

1. The color GREEN
2. My dog Teddy
3. The Geico gecko
4. That I’m not an orfan
5. Pokemon

Some Entries from my gratitude book:

1. Hyacinths in the supermarket
2. Fell on pavement – didn’t break any bones
3. I can close the zipper on my size ? dress, barely, but still can
4. Talk on phone to 94-year-old Mom
5. New friend, Vietnamese neighbor
6. Lunch with former student Ivy
7. Clouds *

* Love Alexander McCall Smith’s new book, The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds. He writes of Scotland and Botswana with equal enthusiasm. Check him out for mystery lite!

How do you express what you are thankful for? Do you share with friends? Grandchildren? Use a journal, scrapbook?

What have you enjoyed but taken for granted and then lost? Let’s chat!

Welcome!

February 20, 2013April 24, 2013 marianbeamanLeave a comment

Thank you for visiting my BLOG today.

Now that you’re here, let me explain the title: The plain part is my first 24 years as a Mennonite girl In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and the fancy part follows as I move south: first to Charlotte, North Carolina, and then to Jacksonville, Florida.

Watch for stories from my past and present knitted together by memory. You have memories too—or responses to what’s happening now. So, you are invited to post for any reason: something that resonates with you, a story clip from your past, whatever. We’ll call them “Stories: Then & Now, Yours & Mine. Just hit Subscribe and we’ll be chatting together.

Coming soon: How We Met

Nice Ice, Snow Aglow

January 4, 2013January 7, 2014 marianbeaman14 Comments

Prickly winter air . . . crunchy, crusty snow . . . Flexible Flyer sleds . . . wet mittens . . . white leather ice skates.

Vintage skates now in the recycling bin! — Vintage skates just before they were tossed into the recycling bin!

All my memories of winter time in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, are good ones. Cold, soggy socks warmed up and dried out on the heat register in Grandma Longenecker’s kitchen. Frozen lips thawed by hot chocolate with fat little marshmallows bobbing up and down.

Yes, there was snow and there was ice, sometimes both the same weekend. On snowy days and nights when traffic was at a stand-still, two Longenecker Flexible Flyer sleds zipped down the curve of the long hill between our house and Grandma’s. (There were more children than sleds, so we had to take turns.) Alongside the woods, there was another, shorter hill with a steeper grade for a faster thrill.

The ice was nice on Heisey’s pond. The Heiseys, Jap and Winnie, owned the limestone quarry on the edge of Rheems, and Winnie Heisey’s pond was filled with skaters, including me, especially on Sunday afternoons. Some skaters waltzed around the perimeter of the pond. Some played crack the whip with most landing on their behinds as the tail of skaters at the end of the line flew off in other directions. Some wobbly beginners skated slowly. The expert ones skated forward and backwards. Since it required wiggling the behind just so, I could never master this move.

Just now, can you hear the melody line of The Skater’s Waltz by Emil Waldteufel? His name would fit right in with the listings in a Lancaster County, PA phone book, but Waldteufel was not actually German, but an Alsatian Frenchman inspired by ice-skaters venturing onto the frozen Seine River in Paris. News to me!

In the orchestral piece, composer Waldteufel captures the mood of serene skaters with graceful rising and falling lines but then interjects exuberance with bouncy notes and even some sleigh bells.

The piano doesn’t do the waltz justice, but it should bring back a memory or two!