Author: Phyllis Swartz

My sister sends me a photo—a beautiful, haunting photo of our childhood home. The day my parents sold this house with its forty acres, I muffled my sobs in a pillow, not wanting to make them feel worse for selling than they already did.

Just inside the lit window on the right, I learned to read. One morning, I sat on a low bench in front of a children’s bookcase. Words from books my parents had read to me began to pop out. And I saw them in a new way. I found them on other pages. And I was reading, really reading.  At that moment, I wanted to know every word in the whole world.

In this house I worked my way through childhood diseases: mumps, measles, chicken pox, and rubella. And living here, I learned about death—watching our dog kill and eat a pup, hearing that my best friend’s papa died, finding a cold, still ball of yellow down while unpacking newly arrived chicks in the hen house.

Under the willow tree, my brothers and I teased the buck sheep my father tied there, dancing out of reach as we poked him with a stick.

“You children stop that!” my dad said. “You’re making him meaner than he already is.”

In the creek that wound through the yard, we waded and caught tadpoles and raced paper boats made from the pattern in a Curious George book.

So I had reason to sob into my pillow the day my parents sold this small farm called Willowbrook. My childhood as I knew it was over.

But not my childhood.

In the three-room school I left behind when my parents moved us from our country home, I’d read about city kids. What would it be like, I’d wonder, to buy treats from ice cream carts and ride a bike on level streets and walk to the library any old day I wanted without having to beg my parents to take me?

In the city, milk in glass bottles came to the milk box by our side door, The Flint Journal with its children’s section to our front door, and travelogues of the Swiss alps and the Sahara Desert and kangaroos in Australia to the IMA auditorium.

In Flint, I learned to play and talk with kids who didn’t look like me or talk like me or eat like me or believe like me. I learned to drive at Safetyville, a miniature village with kid-size cars and streets and traffic lights and even a bridge called Little Mac.

In the city-school band, I learned to play the clarinet and the saxophone and the organ. And In Saturday morning classes sponsored by the Mott Foundation, I learned art and writing and German.

That photo my sister sent—I peer into it again. It’s ethereal, giving me the illusion I could walk up the steps and open the door and find myself sitting on a bench behind the lit window. A longing comes through me for this most innocent part of my life.

And the girl who sobbed into the pillow—if only she could look back with me now. Not at this scene only. But at both halves of her childhood. Each of them rich.

Photo Credit: Oluchi Ekwegh

I sleep on my parents’ dining room floor, between their sick rooms. And between trips to check on breathing and to empty vomit bowls, I find myself in that swirling state of half-sleep, with bits of memories fleeting into my mind and shifting together like a rotating kaleidoscope.

In one of these turnings, our recent four-generation Christmas tumbles into last summer’s walk in the woods. The Christmas people, in their sweaters and scarves, join me on that summer-day hike.

“There we are,” I say, with a wave to the woods.

We pass by seedlings, who poke their shoot leaves up through the soil. Already, they’ve anchored their first root underground and learned to take in sun and water. Bright with promise and tender in leaf and stem, they live at great risk, vulnerable to disease and grazing animals.

The saplings stand proudly tall, with barely a nod toward the seedlings who have so much to learn. Saplings feel their splendid vigor—the strengthening of their trunks, their quickly spreading branches and leaves and root systems. Their barks are smooth, without furrow, and their trunks still flexible enough to have some fun swaying in the wind. But they’re without flower, without fruit, without care.

Mature trees show the decades. They’re furrowed, shedding some bark, and bent by the wind. They’ve been gnawed on, climbed on, challenged by drought and flood and ice and burning sun. But above the younger trees, they form a sheltering canopy. And below ground their root systems hold soil in place. Most of all, they produce flowers and seed-holding fruit.

And then we stop, silent in front of a tree that’s been brought to its knees. It’s a snag, an ancient tree in its final stages, living beyond maturity, beyond its peers. Leafing still, though its canopy is shrunken and bowed, and its trunk hollowed out.

This ancient tree hosts life, so much life. Creatures live in its hollows. Plants grow from its composts. And saplings well-fed from the soil around it, stretch toward the sky where the canopy gaps.

The tree moans. And something shifts. It’s not the tree. It’s my dad in the next room on the couch. And I’m on the dining room floor, no longer peering through the eyehole of a kaleidoscope.

Last week, the driver behind me honked his horn one second after the light turned green. Not a gentle tap, a long, loud blast that dialed my day down a notch. Maybe two. But it also got me thinking about the Bender honk.

It all started when Grandpa and Grandma Bender sold their farm. Moving off the land brought them out of the backroad hills into a bungalow on State Route 669. In the community around them lived their children and more than 50 grandchildren, who sometimes passed by on the way to work or school or the grocery store.

Sitting at breakfast or tending the garden or baking cookies, my grandparents would hear three quick honks of a horn and know—a Bender had just passed by. These honks dialed their days up a notch. Likely two notches or three. Someone out there cared about them, remembered them.

And from the start of automotive history, this was what horns were meant to be—a kindness. Back when cars were new and unusual, and it was courteous to let people know you were coming up from behind. In fact, it was rude not to honk.

This mindset continued in the 1930s when electric horns were standardized. Engineers opted for a polite sound—the two-note combination of E-flat and C. This musical tone pleased the ear, but was also firm and hard for the brain to ignore.

Then cars got faster. And their interiors more soundproof. So manufacturers scaled it up, using  F-sharp and A-sharp, an interval that is piercing and urgent, especially since car horns are often out of tune with harsh, metallic vibrations. It sounds wrong, somehow, not inviting attention but grabbing it—the perfect notes for an emergency.

But not for a one-second gain through a traffic light.

There are lots of ways to put a hand to the horn—short beeps, long beeps, multiple short beeps. And lots of reasons—anger, warning, celebration, friendliness. But my favorite is the Bender honk.

Not many Benders live in my town. But one does—my mom. And when I drive by her house, I give three taps on my horn. And she knows—a Bender has passed by.

My elderly parents live on a regular street in a typical town, but with a difference. A host surrounds them. Angels but without wings and in the form of ordinary people.

Take the pack of kids who live in some nearby apartments. They’re a rough and tumble bunch—scraped up knees, smudged faces, wild hair, and colorful language. And they’ve got my folks covered.

“Mrs. Miller was in her garden this morning,” a kid on a scooter told me when I pulled into the driveway last summer. “But I watched. She didn’t fall.”

Another kid showed up all summer long, a dandelion digger in hand. “Time to check for dandelions again,” he’d say.

One morning, a girl stood at my parents’ door with a plate of Kroger cookies. She sold one to me, for a quarter. For my mom, the cookie was free.

And it’s not just the kids.

My friends and their neighbors send me texts. An upstairs light was on late last night when I ran by. Your dad is in the driveway picking up branches, looking wobbly. Your mom’s good—stopped by and talked a bit.

My parents live near the hospital. So some of their nurses and doctors take a look as they drive by on their way to work.

“Miss seeing you out in your yard,” my dad’s cardiologist said after a recent EKG. “But I’m glad you’re avoiding the cold.”

There’s a saying we’ve long bandied about, an ancient proverb that came to us from across the world: It takes a village. Usually, we apply this phrase to the care of the young. But the old are also vulnerable. And I’m glad my parents have a village. And one that includes the young.

A bevy of these neighborhood kids came to me one morning with a problem.

“How will we know when they die?” they asked. “We want to come to their funeral.”

And when that time comes, I hope I remember these scrappy little angels.

From our house to yours!

They’re coming! And soon the house will be full!

Don’t tell. But this year for Christmas, my dad is giving my mom the best Christmas present ever. He’s invested money in this gift because he’s giving one not only to my mom, but also to his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren—all 79 of us.

But his greatest investment has been time.

I’ve had a front seat to the writing of Erma’s Story. And what I’ve seen is a labor of love—a gift from my 92-year-old father to my 97-year-old mother, who has long looked for someone to write her story. My dad saw this yearning, so he laid aside what he loves to write—church history—and set to work.

On a spare bed, he laid out the scraps of my mom’s life—diaries, journals, school papers, childhood gifts, photos, scrapbooks, an egg grader, a Hillside Farm butter wrapper, an old feedbag, ledgers, a box of rocks, sermon notebooks, ration books, tattered children’s books, school papers and report cards. Meticulously, he searched through diaries for anecdotes and on newspapers.com for historical facts. He searched through recorded and transcribed tapes for conversations. He created timelines and curated what he found into a coherent and gripping account.

And all this with love.

The same love he’s been showing my mom throughout their daily, elderly lives. I’ve also had a front seat for this, going to their house nearly every day, sometimes multiple times, sometimes overnight. He tucks her in at night—pulling the covers over her shoulders, pushing the play button on her audio Bible, and dimming the lights. He counts her medicine into pill boxes and meets forgetfulness with kindness and generosity.

This is old love, an intimacy built on deliberate decisions to understand, appreciate, and celebrate each other.

As my dad and I sat together for this project, his tenderness for my mother kept bleeding through. When her childhood home burned down and she yearned over a struggling sister and a classmate stole her treasured pencil box, his voice would catch and his eyes glisten. When she and her siblings told stories, he’d throw back his head and laugh. “Such good story tellers,” he’d say. “They know just how to put it all together.” This from a man who is correct, precise, and concise with his diction, admiring the Benders, who bend grammar and syntax to flavor their stories.

Our family will gather as usual this Christmas. We’ll each receive our books, likely autographed with both of their names. And I’m guessing we’ll all learn to sing “Because It’s Christmas Time,” a song found in this book—new to us, but part of our mom’s childhood Christmases.

After the holidays, Dad will go back to writing church history. But only for a season. Health and energy holding, he hopes to get back to Erma’s story. Coming up will be the next season of Mom’s life, including the beginnings of my parent’s romance.

And once again, I look forward to taking a front seat as two distinct plotlines unfold—the budding of young love in the pages of a book and, in the here and gritty now, love that is old.

And flowering.

The Christmas lights at the hospital caught me unaware. My stomach clenched and my mouth went dry. And no wonder! It’s become an unfortunate trend that when the days grow dark and cold and Christmas lights blink on trees, someone in my family lands in the hospital.

So far, this holiday season, our family is hospital-free, though in different stages of recovery. And a few still grapple with a dilemma—exactly how to answer the question, “How are you?”

This can be an exhausting question, one that generates a plethora of internal predicaments. Is this person saying hello, or really asking? Is this a pain rating of 1 to 10? Is it a lie to give the scripted answer that I’m fine? Just because they ask, do I need to tell? If I answer honestly, will I burst into tears in front of everyone?

The how-are-you question brings pressure. To be good and brave and full of hope. To quickly synthesize a complicated, multi-faceted internal state into a one-word summary. To make an on-the-spot decision about how much to share. To summon the emotional energy to, once again, give a litany of health. 

This is the season of holiday gatherings. People come from afar, people who haven’t seen each other lately. Christmas cheer is in the air. And so is the often-dreaded question—how are you?

So what else can you say in that first moment of meeting?

Here are five ideas:

The how-are-you question isn’t always wrong. It can launch strong, empathetic, important interactions. But only when the time is right. And the place. And the relationship.

Perhaps the most important gift you can give to those struggling with health this holiday is the often-hard-won gift of thought. How can your first greeting show someone she’s more than a diagnosis? What topic of conversation could bring the two of you together?

And to make your gift richer, end your talk with a hug and by saying you care. This shows you think about their fight for health, that you are with them, and that you are willing to listen. But all without pressure.

“I can’t read this kind of writing,” my grandson says, handing the recipe card back to me.

He’s a smart kid, my grandson. But he can’t read the directions for the turkey stuffing we’re making. His aunt wrote them by hand. And in cursive.

“I need help reading cursive, too,” another grandson says. “After all, I see it only once a year—in  the birthday card I get from Great-grandpa.

That’s my dad. He systematically and faithfully writes a card for each of his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren and all the spouses they’ve grafted into the family. This is 79 cards per year. And all in cursive, except for preschoolers. He prints for them.

The reading would be easier if my mom wrote the cards. She learned cursive in Pennsylvania, where penmanship was taught the right way. Not in Maryland where my dad went to school. His scrawl stands as her evidence of that state’s inferior instruction.

But even my mom’s flowing script gives her great-grandkids trouble. And they are not alone. Only about half of Americans born after 1990 can read cursive.

This illiteracy, however, is changing. In 2016, Arizona led the way, requiring cursive writing instruction by the end of fifth grade. Since then, about half of US states have followed.

And no wonder! Research shows the benefits. Cursive writing improves fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. But it does more. It gets the entire brain working—neurological pathways activate, the right side of the brain lights up, and synapses connect.

Even in college, cursive helps. Researchers have found that notetaking in cursive helps students recall more information than when they take notes by printing or on a laptop. It’s as if cursive writing produces not only a flow of words on paper, but also a flow of thoughts in the brain.

A flow my grandkids miss when they can’t read an aunt’s recipe or their great-grandpa’s birthday message.

But there’s hope. At this year’s end, my dad will have written 79 cards. Next year the number will grow. The great-grands keep coming. And starting school. And the most recent batches are learning cursive.

Hopefully, they’ll learn fast enough to read my dad’s birthday cards before they stop coming.

It’s going to be a wild and woolly Thanksgiving. Thirty-some people. Shoes stacked  at the door. Coats piled on the study desk. Babies in highchairs. Nonagenarians with canes. Bleary-eyed college kids with papers due despite the holiday. And a general buzz of overlapping conversations.

And just at this moment, my mom gives me a book—The Complete Book of Etiquette by Amy Vanderbilt. It’s an old book. And well worn. When I was a kid. I read it as I ate my breakfast toast. And as I rocked a little brother to sleep. And when I went to bed at night.

Vanderbilt took me to a different world—away from balled-up socks on the living floor and everlasting racks of dishes to dry, and bathrooms where someone, once again, forgot to flush.

She took me to fine living—where people changed for dinner and ate in courses and the hostesses “turned the table” by ending a conversation with the guest on her right and beginning one with the guest on her left. I learned where to place the salad fork and the seafood fork and the meat fork. And the soup spoon and ice-tea spoon.

The book covered how to interview servants and introduce them to the household and manage their work. But I doubted, somehow, that I’d ever have servants to manage. So my favorite chapter was “Gracious Living Without Servants.”

Use all the new appliances, Vanderbilt advised such unfortunate readers in her 1951 book. And work ahead to avoid hurry and tension. She even offered menus for maid-less meals. In such a luckless life, there was still hope.

When did I stop dreaming of china and goblets and touching a bell for service?

I can’t say. But I can tell you that in a few days I’ll set a stack of 30-some plain white Corelle dinner plates at the beginning of a buffet where guests will serve themselves turkey from crockpots and dressing and vegetables from baking dishes.

This doesn’t mean I’ve stopped dreaming. My holiday visions now are of a ninety-seven-year-old great-grandma talking with my 17-year-old grandson, of a hug someone gives a sister in cancer treatment, of young treble voices and old tremulous voices and all the voices in between singing “I Thank the Lord my Maker for All his Gifts to Me.”