This is the third Birthday Season without the guest of honor. Wife Lila sent me an email today that said, “Read your Mom’s obit post from 06-2015 this morning. Felt like I needed to. It was good then, and is even better now.”
I confessed that I had let Mother’s October 17 birthday sneak up on me, and I hadn’t done an update. Her reply rocked me: “Someday there will be a point when you won’t remember to update. Not sure if it is something to look forward to or not.”
I’m pretty sure I won’t let that happen. I still remember what happened when I moved away from home to go to school in Ohio and forgot Mother’s Day.
This photo was taken when Brothers Mark and David came down to help “declutter” the house preparing it for sale. Little did we know that I’d end up buying the house myself in June two years later. (More about that later.)
When I pulled into 1618 Kingsway Drive late April 18 after a marathon month on the road that took me from Missouri to Ohio to Florida to Ohio, then back to Missouri, the first thing I noticed was a single red rose on the bush around the yard on the front yard.
The next morning, the bush was covered in blooms. Even though we had several days of torrential rain over the past few weeks, there were quite a few blooms ready for me to make the Mother’s Day rounds.
I don’t like plastic flowers
I’d rather leave some ratty real blossoms cut from the front yard instead of plastic plants made out of dead dinosaurs. The latter might last longer, but they are impersonal. The first stop was Wife Lila’s mother’s grave in St. Mary’s Cemetery off Perry Avenue.
Unusual tributes
My brothers and I usually mark Mother and Dad’s graves with things we pick up on the road, or things from the house. I’ve left tiles from the ruins of a building in Cairo, a railroad spike from Wittenberg and a coin smashed flat by a train car. David and Mark have buried tiny shoes from Mother’s shoe collection and Christmas ornaments.
Mother was an unusual lady, so we think she’d appreciate our quirky leavings.
“Who will decorate the graves?”
I spent many hours with Mother driving all over Cape and Stoddard counties visiting tiny cemeteries that contained the final resting places of her friends and family. This is my grandparents’ grave in Advance. You can click on the photos to make them larger.
I don’t know how many times I heard her ask, “Who will put flowers on the graves after I’m gone?”
We Steinhoff boys were raised on cinnamon sugar peanut butter toast made with raisin bread bought at the “used bread store.” Mother would go to the Bunny Bread outlet and buy loaves of the stuff, and turn out a dozen or so slices every morning.
Sounds as much as taste
What I remember more than the taste of the gooey stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth concoction was the sounds of its making.
It would start out with the squeak of the springs in the oven door being pulled down. Then there was a clatter and crashing when Mother removed all the heavy pots and pans stored in the oven. That would be followed by a tinny sliding sound when she took out the warped and bent cookie sheet.
She’d butter up as many slices of bread as the sheet would hold, then sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on them, and stick them in the oven. Just as the sugar was beginning to bubble and, hopefully, before the toast would start to burn, she’d snatch it out of the stove and put a dollop of Peter Pan crunchy peanut butter on it. (I always liked a thin coating of the butter on mine. I didn’t like big globs of the stuff.)
Peach milk shakes
When peaches were in season, she throw some fresh peaches in the blender, along with ice cream and a little milk. Because I was scrawny in grade and high school, she might pitch a couple raw eggs in my shake. Little did we know the delayed effect of that. It took about 35 years for them to add more than the desired bulk.
I don’t do peach milk shakes in the morning, but I DO like a smoothie in the evening. Since I had some fresh strawberries and blueberries for my smoothie, I thought I’d try them on my morning toast. They added an interesting taste change, and looked pretty darned colorful. (The picture was taken with my Samsung Galaxy 7 Edge smart phone. I’m always amazed at the quality it produces. Click on the photo to make it larger.)
For what it’s worth, I’ve found the raisin bread sold at Sam’s Clubs is some of the best around: it’s very dense and has a gazillion raisins. Wife Lila said she likes it with some cream cheese spread on top.
(That’s Son Matt and Grandson Malcolm. Malcolm is sneaking up on his teen years now, but he’s still not crazy about being stuffed into funny shirts.)
Missouri is thinking about becoming winter. Every day when I look out the kitchen window, a few more maple leaves are turning yellow. I had to take a rake to the driveway a couple afternoons ago. I’m a rake kind of guy. I never liked the noise and hubbub of power leaf blowers.
Maybe it’s because I never got good at using one. Mother, on the other hand, could keep a wave of leaves rolling down the hill like she just dared them to slow down.
Furnace one day; AC the next
Mary Steinhoff and LV Steinhoff w Roy E Welch in background – Rolla MO 1942
It got down into the 50s the other night. Cool enough that the hall thermostat read 61 degrees. I threw three rice bags that Wife Lila had made for me into the microwave, then put one at my feet, one at my knees and one at my chest to make the bed toasty. The next morning, though, I gave in and set the furnace at 66 to take the chill out of the air.
Being Missouri, though, the temperature cracked 80 two days later, and I had to switch from furnace to AC to keep the house below 77 degrees.
I had gotten used to the silence
Mary Welch Steinhoff around age 3
All of these seasonal changes mean it is what used to be Mother’s Birthday season. This is the second one without her. I had just gotten used to the silent house.
Mostly silent
There are some odd creaks and groans: some of it comes from me when I crawl out of bed in the morning. Some of are familiar sounds like the board in the hallway floor I used to try to step around when I was sneaking in late. It still squeals on me, even though it’s been years since I had a curfew, and there’s nobody around to scold me.
Who is in the house?
I was in the basement the other night, though, when I heard what sounded like the scraping sound the kitchen chair would make when Mother would push it back. That was followed by a couple of sharp raps like the door opening, and footsteps on the stairs.
Mother? I thought?
Wife Lila? One is 1,100 miles away, and the other is much further away than that.
Then it dawned on me
Walnuts. The wind was throwing walnuts against the roof like they were golf balls.
That, or Mother wasn’t happy that I hadn’t mowed the lawn recently or chased the leaves down the hill.
