DECORATION DAY/MEMORIAL DAY

Yesterday, on a blue-skied sunny Oregon Day, I re-enacted a ritual that was an accepted tradition in my family during my growing up days on the farm. We would gather buckets full of flowers, stash them between our legs in the back of the family Chrysler or when there were just the three of us--Mom, Dad, and me, maybe in the back of the pick-up.

It was Decoration Day! To the Pioneer Cemetary at the top the hill in Oregon City we'd go. Through the gate, winding down a narrow road through tilting gravestones of community founders, to the site of the Baker family plot. In those days there was a wrought iron fence surrounding the plot, and in the middle there stood a pink marble monument, tall and stately with the Baker name chisled at the base.

After we placed the flowers--large bunches of snowballs, lillacs, irises if they were in bloom, my Dad would wander the cemetary, with me in tow. We'd stop and read the inscriptions on the grave markers. From these brief statements, I learned the history of these hardy people who came across the Oregon Trail, settled this wild country, and then found their final resting place here in this peaceful spot.

Instead of snowballs--although there were snowballs on some of the graves when I arrived at the family plot--I bought several potted geraniums, watered them well, and installed them at the graves of my brother Kenneth, my Dad, and at the foot of the still standing monument which marks the Baker plot.

Then I sit on one of the gravestones and think. About these people. Three died before I was born. My grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Baker has been resting in this plot since 1901. Over a hundred years. I think about him, and who he was, and what he would think of his heirs and our times. He fought in the Civil War, and to tell the truth, I can't remember which side he fought on.

Then there is my Aunt Gladys Baker Olsen. The first woman Justice of the Peace in Oregon. She was known as the "hangin' judge" in Molalla where she ruled with an iron fist. Aunt Gladys was a fashionable women in those days, and while my other Aunts wore housedresses and aprons, she would come to dinner in a "Sunday dress", hose and high heeled shoes. She lived to be 101. I'd forgotten that.

I always feel better after I visit the Cemetary. It is not sad. The grieving for those I knew is past. Of course I miss them, but in many ways they are still with me. Several times when I've had a big decision to make at the Restaurant, I would go and sit there, between the graves of my brother and my Dad, and try to draw some wisdom from them. "What would they do?"

I like this Holiday, now recognized as Memorial Day, remembering those who have served in the Wars. So, following my few minutes of reverie, I did go back to the Maintenance Office and paid 50 cents for a small well-used American flag which I put on my brother's grave. He's buried in his Naval Uniform. Some 60 years after he'd served in WWII's Pacific Theater,

History lies here.

MOTHER'S DAY 2009

Mother's Day, 2009, and I've just opened the door to find a gigantic vase filled with a magnificent array of flowers, from several gigantic pink roses, plumped and half opened, to intriguing fragile chartruese spider mums, and purple delphiniums, and tightly budded yellow irises. There is even a most unusual long-stalked cabbagey-looking flower or greenery. A tiny card is tucked in amongst the blooms, and I'm pretty sure I know the sender--or senders--as in the last few days I've had e-mails from my Corvallis kids asking me for my address.

My Mail comes to a PO Box, and hardly anyone is concerned with actual addresses on this Island. It's more like, "the first house behind the mailboxes", or "the house next to the McCleans". At any rate, this is a glorious array, and I have placed it on a now-cleared-off-dining table, having removed the assorted books and papers accumulated there in the past few days, covering most of the old pine board table, leaving me to eat at the counter, or god forbid, at the coffee table in front of the TV.

The flower arrangement is deliciously fragrant as well as beautiful, and I'm smilling as I clear off the table to prepare a proper setting for such a display. Thinking, as I proceed about these two "kids" who have dictated the tiny note which I'd retrieved and opened earlier. Here it is:

"Dearest Mom,
Happy Mother's Day!! You are truly the greatest...
"The Poetry of our Lives". Thanks so much!!!
Love, Suzanne and Scott

"Poetry of our Lives". The phrase is magnificent, like the bouquet. Poetry! Full of Color, Emotion,
Love, Angst, Fullfillment and Disappointment, Wonder and Excitment, Pain and Enchantment". (I'm thinking Disney Cruise here) But...I digress and I think back on our lives together. It was at Kapiolani Maternity Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Dec. 9, 1958, 5:30 PM-- when my first-born, Scott changed my life forever. The delivery, as I was to learn, was just the Beginning. My script changed forever. After years of being just a girl, then a woman with a husband, parents in the background, in one fell swoop I was changed into a "Mother".

I think I was not unlike our cat, Filbert who--when she was not much more than a kitten--we called her a "teen-age" mother--birthed 4 or 5 kittens under our porch. We watched her, as she observed the event, almost like it was happening to someone else, and it was obvious that she was totally perplexed with her proper role--if any--in the event.

Assuming the role of Mother means you're not done until the final curtain comes down. I don't know, maybe you're not done then, and you hover around as some kind of protective angel, making sure everyone has clean underwear on when they leave the house in the morning, and offering appropriate protection and advice when dictated by the occasion. This is pure speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't some degree of truth in it.

Being a parent is the hardest job I ever had. It is also the most rewarding job I've ever had. The reward part increases as you distance yourself from the day-to-day responsibilities of the child care, runny noses, school and friends and finances and discipline. It is written in the job description: MOTHER: requires 24/7, round-the clock shifts, from birth of the child til he/she reaches age 21.

However, there were those unparralleled precious times with the three of them--all under 7--in the bathtub together, or the picture I have of us--in the Fiat convertible, the two boys carefree in the backseat, while the little 2 year old pink-dressed girl sits unbelted, totally unsafe beside me in the front seat, with my bee-hived hair flying out behind me. Money can't buy that. Nor can legislation ever take the memory away.

So I sit here in the middle--with my Mother--who I appreciate more every single day--on one side of me, and my kids--who are now parents--on the other side of me. Surely there's a word for this.....like "The Poetry of Our Lives"....I think that will do.

THANX, KIDS!