Story about Sharing Cups of Tea in Two Parts, Part One

This article appeared on Facebook and led me down a path of reminiscences. First, the tea story.

“In Ireland, you go to someone's house, and she asks you if you want a cup of tea. You say no, thank you, you're really just fine. She asks if you're sure. You say of course you're sure, really, you don't need a thing. Except they pronounce it ting. You don't need a ting.

Well, she says then, I was going to get myself some anyway, so it would be no trouble. Ah, you say, well, if you were going to get yourself some, I wouldn't mind a spot of tea, at that, so long as it's no trouble and I can give you a hand in the kitchen. 

Then you go through the whole thing all over again until you both end up in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting.

In America, someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, you say no, and then you don't get any damned tea.

I liked the Irish way better.”

― C.E. Murphy, Urban Shaman

The Gifts of Christmas Past

 

Note the green rocking chair.   I still have it.

 

 

Here I sit on Christmas Eve reminiscing about gifts.   Not gifts I’m giving and not gifts I’m receiving.    I am looking at gifts that my mother gave me over the years.

Mom and Dad in Detroit

 

I was sitting in my parents living room in Anchorage in the late 1970s as I opened a gift from Mom.   After the wrapping was off, I lifted one end of the colorful gift box and saw three pieces of folded cloth.   Completely white, no design, nice and soft.

 

“Diapers,” said Mom.   “Yours when you were a baby.   They make good cleaning clothes.”

My baby diapers.

 

Sure enough, they were cotton WWII era diapers.   Did she really save them for 40 years so she could surprise me one Christmas Eve?    

 

Did she not use them on my six-year-younger brother?   I remember his diapers.   I remember holding onto a tiny hemmed corner and dipping the diaper in the toilet again and again until its contents finally washed off.   Then, they were stored under the bathroom sink in a white enamel pot with lid.

 

Whatever, I still have them—more than 40 years later.

 

 

Then, there are some things from my childhood that were simply returned to me, not as gifts for any special holiday, I think.     My stuffed black sheep that I remember so well, and a threadbare teddy bear that I don’t recall at all.

The doll has a sticker on the bottom of one foot that says Poland.   I assume it's dressed in the  tradition folk costume of that country.

 

I also have a round plaque on some kind of wood (beaverboard?) with a drawing of a kitten and two rabbits on it.   There is something up in the air above the kitten where some paint is flaked off but I can’t tell if it’s a butterfly or a bird.

Reverse side

 

This is a keepsake that I question because I have never had the kind of artistic ability of  whomever drew it.

 

There is a stretched and framed embroidered with the Lord’s Prayer on it that must have hung in my nursery room.    The earliest discovered version of  “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep,” is said to be from George Wheler in his 1698 book The Protestant Monastery.

 

A newer version, identical to what’s on my souvenir, was found in the New England Primer.

Crazy angle to keep the light from shining on the glass cover.

 

Another gift from Mom that I saved is a ceramic plate in a triangular shape.   The design on it is a childish drawing depicting two comically malformed children with “Bobbie and Bonnie, “ the names of my cousins, though why Bobbie appears to be wearing a skirt is beyond me.  

 

Also, “Jeannie 5 years.”

 

Yes, I knew my numbers and letters and colors at age five, despite no nursery school.   I guess Mom wrote the names and I copied them onto the drawing.

 

I recognized the drawing immediately     I am sure it was something I copied from one of the Childcraft books we had as kids.    But, her note that I did the drawing at five years of age puzzles me because we moved to Alaska when I was six .   Did those Childcraft books come up with us on the four-engine airplane?

 

The set of Childcraft books are on the cabinet behind my head.

  

Or were they shipped from Detroit to Anchorage?  It’s all a mystery now but I remember the drawing in those long-ago books.   A plagiarist at age five.

Detente with little brother.

 

I must have taken better care of my Polish doll than my sister.

My youngest sister.   Those green chairs?   I still have them.

Me and the green rocking chair that I still have.   I sure wish my hair looked like that today.

The Third Date Important for My Generation

 

Nov. 22, 1963, Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

 

 

This date came to represent far more than the shocking death of an exciting, popular president. As in all the dates I’ve mentioned, the single event that occurred eventually came to be a reference point to the era that followed.

 

Kennedy had just prevented WWIII by making the Soviet Union back down during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

In that era are many events I could have included like the Civil Rights movement with the assassinations of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers, plus the deaths of the young victims of that movement, and the heroism of Rosa Parks. It was also a time of George Wallace and all that he represented. 

 

But, one must also consider the sexual revolution (I facetiously credit Elvis with that), the Hippies, the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, the suspension of the Selection Service draft, the Kent State killings, and so on. It also marked a time when The Silent Generation founds its voice.

 

Larry Flynt and the US Supreme Court decision regarding pornography ushered in an inundation of soft porn in the entertainment industry and in society. Morals and ethics degraded from those we grew up with, and not always for the better.

 

Parents in TV programs began sleeping together. I mean, Ozzie and Harriet?   Can you imagine?

 

Also included in this era was the government fight against the Mafia and its eventual reduction in influence. Other entities joined in the corruption of drug-pushing, murder, bribing politicians, and all sorts of crime, not that any of them were new. We just became more aware.

 

I also include in JFK’s assassination era the Nixon time of presidential deceit and disgrace, and resignation, and the realization on the part of the public that their leaders can be corrupted.

The Second Important Date for My Generation

 Continuing with dates that are important to my generation, we arrive at:

June 6, 1944—Allied Invasion of Normandy, France, Europe.

 

This was the beginning of the end for the Axis armies. It took until May of 1945, VE Day, to reach victory in Europe and August 1945 , VJ Day, for Japan to surrender.

 

Again, it impacted the entire world. We were still too young to appreciate the meanings of the dates, but eventually could look back and understand why they should be important to us.

 

Many of my generation had parents or other relatives who fought and/or died for the Allies.  That meant for many of us kids, dads and uncles and brothers returned home from war and a process of re-acquainting began.

 Some of us were affected by post-war economic factors and the lack of employment.

 

Those economic factors became the main reason why my parents decided to move to the territory of Alaska in June of 1948.   And, for me, that began a  life-long love affair with this wild land.

My brother Jim in front of the Quonset hut  (Jamesway) that was our first home.   

 

My mother and Jim peeling logs for our log home.

And Where were You Last Saturday?

 I am one of those people who has trouble remembering dates, and, more specifically, what I was doing on a certain date.

If I were ever to be interrogated by law enforcement, I would be in deep doodoo.

Take last Saturday, for instance.  That date I remember.   Can't tell you what I was doing on that date but I know why the date is significant to me.  It was Dec. 7, and its significance is Dec. 7, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

That date led to a lot of introspection and the making of a list of four dates important to my generation.   I posted that list on Facebook, and then followed up with my reasons why.

Here on Blogspot, I will post each of the four dates and my reasons.  

Here's the first:

Response One:

 

First, I should establish the parameters of “my generation” and, since it’s mine, I choose those of us born in the 1940s who are included in The Silent Generation and whose parents were in The Greatest Generation, plus the Early Baby Boomers.

 

Those born after—1950s and 1960s and so on, will have names for their generations and might have dates that are significant to them that may differ from mine.

 

Dec. 7, 1941—The Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor

 

Most of Europe, eastern Asia, and North Africa was consumed by war. FDR was fighting to keep the US out of the war.

 

The attack, a horrendous intelligence failure, destroyed much of the US naval fleet and planes based in Hawaii, and propelled the US into declaring war against Japan and, subsequently, into the European fray. 

 

This conflict became known as World War II, as it involved most major countries as well as smaller, remote countries such as Greenland and Iceland, a truly world-wide effect. 

 

While we might not remember the day these events occurred at the time, we eventually grew old enough to understand the importance of the date.   Many of us had relatives who went off to war.

I was two weeks old on Dec. 7, 1941.