Muriel's Memories of Childhood

Hollyhocks

Hollyhocks

Outside of the house where Muriel grew up was a large hollyhock bush.  I don't think it was supposed to be a bush, but to me as a nine year old girl, it seemed tall and broad.  Hollyhock blossoms are made for little girls to dream about.  I am convinced.  I can remember picking blossoms from the plant and pretending that they were beautiful ballerinas.



Once in awhile I will see a hollyhock plant here where I live.  They always remind me of Grandpa and  Grandma Toole's home in Medicine Hat.  Happy memories of a brief moment of dreaming with a delicate dancer in my hand.

I often wonder if there are still hollyhocks growing in the garden.  The house is still there and a cousin's daughter lives there.  I hope she kept the hollyhocks.

DOLLS

When mother dear wore gingham frocks, 

Her dollies grew on hollyhocks.

Here was a lady clad in silk,

there was another, white as milk.

Dainty dolls in silken frocks

Blooming on the hollyhocks,

Bowing low at every breeze;

Nodding to the bumble-bees.

Darling dolls in dainty frocks

Blooming on the hollyhocks.  

Small quiet blessings:

A few days after my mother died, my husband left for a month of travel and lecturing.  I arrived home from my mom’s funeral in the evening. Earlier that morning my husband Earl left for Brazil.  From Brazil he traveled on to West Africa. 

My mother, Muriel Isabel Toole Fisher, was involved in an automobile accident on her way to work on Monday morning.  She was conscious and was able to sign the consent forms for surgery and give the people at the hospital the number to reach her husband/my father John Robert Fisher (Bob).  She never gained consciousness following the surgery. 

A few weeks after Mom’s death, my dad drove to Utah and stayed with us for a few days.  It was the summer of 1982 and I was alone with four small children.  It was hot in our house without air conditioning.  My two year old daughter, Kimberly, and I were sleeping on a mattress downstairs in the study.  At least we were trying to sleep.  She cried and cried and cried.  There did not seem to be anything that I could do to console her.

 I was not too surprised when my father knocked on the door and came in.  He had been unable to sleep because of the crying baby.  He quietly asked me if I would like him to give Kimberly a blessing.  When I said yes, he knelt beside the mattress and put his hands on her head and gave her a grandfather’s blessing.  I have no recollection of anything that he said, but she stopped crying and immediately fell into a quiet, untroubled sleep. 

Too often I forget about what Elder Bednar calls “Heavenly Father’s” tender mercies.  This was a quiet moment in our lives when a special blessing calmed not only a two year old but my troubled souls as well.  

Bees Sting

Last summer while walking barefoot on the beach in California, I stepped on a bee.  At first I had no idea what I had stepped on that had caused immediate pain.  I leaned on the professor for balance and lifted my foot.  There was the bee.  It was dead on the beach long before I had come across it.  I carefully removed the black stinger from the wound but it did not help ease the pain.

More than anything I was surprised by how much my foot hurt.  Such a tiny insect and apparently so full of venom.

I was reminded of a summer long ago.  It must have been 1958.  The year before my grandmother Fisher had died.  Probably it reminded my parents of how much older their parents were growing and of their mortality.  We set out for the drive from Ontario to Alberta driving south and through the United States, then back north into Canada again.  Four children and two adults.  We would stop for awhile at night and sleep in the car or in the open.  Muriel and Bob took turns driving.  We all noticed that when Dad fell asleep the car seemed to travel faster with Mom at the wheel.

At one point, Bob pulled the car over and prepared to have Muriel drive.  She has taken her shoes off to relax while not at the wheel.  When she put one of her shoes back on, she cried out.  She shook her shoe over the gravel edge of the road and out came a bee.

I don't remember what happened after that.  I don't know if she got medicine to put on the sting or whether she drove again.  I have no memory of those events, but I remember clearly the message that "outdoors," you always need to check your shoes before putting them back on.

Yellow Bananas

Most of the years when I was growing up, Muriel worked outside of the home.  When we lived in Lisle and Thornton, Ontario, she and Bob would go shopping once a week on Saturday.  When they got home from the grocery store, it was like Christmas every week.  It was so exciting to see what they had bought.

Both of them were depression era children; so, they were always frugal.  Among the groceries there would often be six bananas.  I had learned from past experience that if I did not eat my banana immediately someone else would.  There was no way to save such a treat.  Of course, counting every cent, the bananas were just slightly over ripe.  They had just a few brown spots.

I can remember the first time that I ate a banana that was a beautiful, pristine yellow fruit.  I was 12 years old and we had gone to visit some friends, the Finlaysons.  They lived in a little house in Virton, Belgium.  I would never have told Joyce Finlayson that this was the first spotless banana I had ever eaten, but I savored every bite.

Now bananas are one of the least expensive fruits at the market.
Bananas can be perfect firm yellow fruit when they come home in the grocery bag, but it doesn't take long for them to become overripe.  I still enjoy eating bananas.  Once upon a time, I would make banana bread with the overripe ones, but I don't bake very often now.  I still enjoy the bread too.  I suspect that there might not have been any leftover bananas in the Fisher household to use in making quick bread.

Ironing shirts

One day in the mid to late 1950s Muriel came home from work and told us about an article she had read in a magazine. The essay had been about how to iron a man's shirt.

The author said that he had always wondered how the Chinese laundry where he took his shirts got them so well cleaned and pressed. Particularly he was interested in how they managed to iron a shirt with no creases or wrinkles. When he tried it at home it felt as if it was always a disaster. He went out of his way to discover the art of pressing an ordinary man's shirt.

The laundry where he had his shirts washed and starched and pressed had an employee standing close to the front window where the author could see him at work. Immediately he noticed that the ironing board was set up "wrong." As the laundryman stood by the board, the wider end of the board was to his left while the pointed smaller end was on his right. The first part of the shirt that he ironed was the collar. Then he went on to iron the yoke at the back of the shirt. Following the yoke, the man pressed the sleeves. When all of the smaller areas had been ironed, the laundry employee went on to iron the larger body of the shirt. The back of the shirt spread out across the wide portion of the board fit almost perfectly. The two sections of the front were just the right size. There was none of the struggling to pull the body of the shirt across the small pointed end of the board as the author usually did.

I think that from then on Muriel changed how she pressed Bob's shirts. I know that her story affected me although I must have been under ten years old. I still remember the story of the man who owned the Chinese laundry and how he ironed men's shirts.

I iron all of my husband's shirts following those rules. Not that they necessarily look perfect later, but it is a habit I would not alter. When I was in high school, I wore a uniform every day. The girls had to wear a shapeless gray skirt, a white blouse and a navy blue blazer. There were a lot of mornings when I pulled the shirt out of the laundry and zipped through it ironing only the cuffs, the collar and the front of the shirt. I always wore an Oxford shirt with a button down collar. And I always set up the board with the wide end on my left which for a right handed person is the business end.

Thanks Muriel and an unknown author for teaching me how to iron a shirt.

My dad was a farmer at heart. Every house we lived in had a place for a vegetable garden. Most of the houses we lived in were fixer-uppers. Until I was 14 years old and living on the south shore of Montreal, I don’t think we lived in a house where the bedrooms were heated. In the winter time, the single paned windows would be brushed by Jack Frost’s artistic hand. I can remember taking my thumb nail and pushing it across the window pane. A long curl of ice that had formed on the interior of the window would peel away from the glass.
Some mornings were so cold that I would dash out of bed and grab my clothes then take them back under the covers to dress in the warmth created by my body overnight. We always had flannel sheets and rough wool blankets to keep us warm. The flannel sheets had been washed and dried on the line in the winter cold so they were never soft or fluffy against my cheek. It made no difference though. I would pull the blankets up around my face and cover my ears so that I would be as warm as possible on those cold nights.
After more than fifty years, I still sleep at the bottom of the bed with the sheets and blankets pulled up over my ears. When I glance over at my husband who was born and raised in California, I wonder how he can sleep with the blankets leaving his neck and shoulders bare.
When I was 5 years old, we moved into a house in need of enormous amounts of work. It had no bathroom and only had a pump at the sink. I remember my mother sitting on the floor reading my father the directions as he assembled the plumbing and built a bathroom at the end of the large kitchen. Now when I think about it, I assume that he must have dug a huge hole for a septic tank as well. In any case, Dad and Mum were the ones who turned the small cottage in the country into an inhabitable house.
I know there were not enough bedrooms for all of the family. That first year I slept on a bunk bed that was set up in the kitchen. I have a clear memory of lying on the top bed and looking down upon my mother. She was making cinnamon rolls. She rolled out the dough and sprinkle sugar and ground cinnamon on the flat surface. Next came scattered raisins. Then the magical dough was rolled into a tight tube and cut into individual rolls. I have no memory of eating those rolls. I cherish only the wonderful feeling of being alone with my mother and watching her making this delicious treat.
The small house that we lived in was about a mile from the local elementary school. Grades one through eight were taught there. Four grades to a room. The small village of Lisle, Ontario lay close to one of the gates to Camp Borden where both of my parents worked. Dad was in the Royal Canadian Air Force and Mom worked as a typist for the Army.
One Sunday after attending a conference meeting for the Church, we slowly drove towards home in a snow storm. When we reached Lisle, Mom and Dad decided that they would park the car in a parking lot for a business in Lisle. They knew that the road to our house would not be plowed in the morning and that they would be unable to drive to work unless they left the car close to a road that would be cleared of the heavy snowfall.
We always had blankets in our trunk in case of a winter emergency. The six of us got out of the car and wrapped blankets around us for the long walk home. As a small girl the snow seemed so deep. It came up above the top of my boots. I can remember the snow falling and my eyelashes sticking together as if by glue. My face was so cold, but my small right hand nestled in my father’s large one was warm. I asked him how come his hand was warm when mine was so cold even with my mittens on. It was so stormy and cold. I have no memory of his answer. I only remember the safety and security I felt with my cold hand resting in the warm hand of my father.