Everyone Has A Story

There was a big crowd at the West Michigan Symphony as only one concert was being played in February.  We were there on Friday night sitting in different seats than we usually do when we attend on Saturday night.

I watched as three older women worked themselves slowly up the aisle.  
The last one was using a cane.  They stopped at our row and my husband and I moved into the aisle to let them in.

As they settled into their seats I realized how hard it must be for elderly people to even get out on a frigid snowy night and then get comfortable when they sit down.  I asked the woman with the cane sitting next to me, who was also balancing a program and purse, if I could help her get her coat off.  As I held her cane and helped her with her coat she asked me my name. She told me hers was Alice.  She thanked me profusely for helping her.  She said, "I hope I don't fall asleep."

I told her, "Just don't snore."

It wasn't until intermission when I learned a small part of Alice's story.  I asked her if she lived in Muskegon and she told me she had lived there all her life and had graduated from Muskegon Heights High School.  The two women she was with were her classmates.

I asked, "What year did you graduate?"

The look on her face was one of amusement.  "You don't want to know.  It was a long time ago."

I pushed her to tell me and she said, "1947."

"Oh, I was born in 1946 so I was just a baby when you graduated," I said. 

She told me that she and her friends had been going out for breakfast and lunch once a month.  She laughed and said, "But we decided that wasn't often enough so now we're going out once a week."

"Who is the driver?"  I asked.

"I am, but my kids don't like me driving," she said with a twinkle in her eyes.  Alice seemed the most frail of the three women so learning she was the driver surprised me.  I wondered if her children might not have cause to worry.

Her life story deepened when Alice told me she had a child, who at two years old, was diagnosed with cancer.  She and her husband were told he wouldn't live very long, but she said he is now 57.  However she had a son who died of cancer at the age of 35.  Unfortunately her 57 year old son is not in good health and she was worried about his chances of living too much longer.

When Muskegon was more an industrial city, Alice worked at several of the major factories in Muskegon, including Continental.  I uncovered all these details about Alice's life in a ten minute conversation. She struck me as a sweet woman who had tasted the bad and good of life and was now enjoying her women friends who had been her classmates.

When we said goodbye after the concert she seemed genuinely glad to have talked to me as I was to listen to her story.  She reinforced what I have known and that is that old friends can take us into our final years with memories of shared experiences and a lifetime of love.  Those friendships can be our joy as we near the close of our lives.  An Irish Proverb seems to sum up Alice's story of her companionship with her high school friends.  


 May love and laughter light your days, and warm your heart and home.  May good and faithful friends be yours wherever you may roam....

Delta Blues

When you called

I was listening to
The sounds of 

The Delta

Those backwater places

Where notes

Signify the hurt

Of that soulful place

Leaning back in wooden chairs

Guitars twanging with voices

And harmonicas 

Playing counterpoint

Time stood still

And nothing could

Ease the world

Except the music

Doing a slow toe tapping
I was listening to 

Sleepy John Estes

Wail Floating Bridge

But you called and

I slipped out

Of muddy waters

Into now

                  - Joan Ramseyer

Last Night's Concert

When the pianist played
Brahms,
My blond headed
Granddaughter
Sat next to me
Tapping her fingers
On mine

Her silky peach dress
Matching her skin
Flowed over her
Nine year old frame
Reminding me of the
Pale pink frock with ruffles
I wiped my sweaty hands on
At my piano recital
So many years ago

When Rachmaninoff's notes
Filled the air
I thought the
Russian darkness
Might permeate her soul
But she yawned
Leaned her head
Against her grandfather's shoulder
And fell asleep


                             -Joan Ramseyer

The Power of Flowers

Painting by James Brandess 

In the wintertime, my grandmother's house was filled with the pungent aroma of geraniums that filled her windowsills and the ever present smell of bread baking in her wood range. In the summertime hollyhocks grew at the edge of her garden. We picked the blossoms and fashioned them into little dolls.

The pleasure that flowers bring to me goes back to my early childhood. In kindergarten our class walked to a local woods near Piper Creek, which was a little hike from the school. We picked wild flowers and learned their names. When we returned to our classroom we put our bouquets into paper May baskets we had made. When I got home I put the basket on the door knob, rang the doorbell and ran to the side of the house to hide until my mother opened the door.

I wrote my first poem when I was around ten about the violets that grew under a bay window at our house. My mother entered it in a writing contest which I did not win.

When I was dating my husband to be in college, his gift of yellow roses on a winter day and daffodils in the springtime won my heart. A man who gives a woman flowers is most likely a keeper.

Flowers are nature's way of coloring our lives. They bring us the three senses of touch, sight and smell. My photos reflect my love of blooms wherever I find them. Naomi's garden on 72nd Avenue between Hart and Pentwater - the zinnias grown in a field by Cargill's Farm Market east of Hart - the beautiful small open space behind the Secret Garden, a shop in Pentwater, to countless flower scenes in many countries of Europe.

Naomi's Garden

Cargill's Farm Market

The Secret Garden

In the winter I try to have fresh flowers in our house. Last week the Fed-Ex man delivered a box full of flowers that were a gift from a sweet niece. When I opened the box I saw a bouquet of one of my favorite flowers, chrysanthemums. These beautiful little gems bring back so many memories of autumn days. To have a bouquet in January of various shades made an ordinary winter day turn into something special.

Thank you Peggy.

The power that flowers have over me can not be easily explained. Maybe it is that now flowers are memory triggers. But still the discovery of a single beautiful rose in Norway or bright pink flowers against a white stucco wall and in front of a green window frame always gives me a rush. I hope it always will.

Just living is not enough....one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.

- Hans Christian Anderson

The Walaker Hotell

Solvorn, Norway

Winter Poetry

Approaching Storm

The weatherman on TV
(You know the one)
Said he was ninety percent
Sure the blizzard
Would arrive
Before midnight

At the witching hour
I strained to
Hear what
I could not hear

To be sure there was
No wind, I opened
The window
To have true north
Hit me between the eyes

Immediately I knew
The icy sting of death,
The opposite of fire,
Was waiting in the dark
To prove that the weatherman
Was right

                           -Joan Ramseyer


Stronger Breed

In the North we
Are a stronger breed
Since we face the threat
Of being crushed between
Two semi's on any
Icy road

Long winters and
Gray days take a
Constitution of hope
For the next season

Our ancestors brought
In the harvest
And sealed the cellar
Doors against the
Cold to come

But we know the
Snow will melt
And the first above
Forty degree day
Will have our coats
Tossed in a corner

We duck our heads
Against the wind
And shovel the white stuff
One more time
Then we feed the birds
And glory in two
Sunny days out of ten

Our reward is
A beautiful afternoon
In July when we
Watch our children
Frolic by the lake shore
And see the sparkling droplets
Run off their
Innocent skin

                       -Joan Ramseyer

January Blues

 

Find me a flower

In January

That blooms

In the snow

 

Swoop blood red cardinals

To my window

Hovering

Like hummingbirds 

 

Tell me a tale

With a happy ending

To keep me warm

Inside and out

 

Send me a note

With an actual stamp

So I can know

You're real

 

Then throw another log

On the fire

To break the ice

Of a long long winter

 

 

                                  - Joan Ramseyer

                          

 

The lost art of letter writing

Over the years I have been drawn to stationery, postcards and note cards.  There was a time when I wrote many letters and I waited in anticipation for return mail.  I must have started writing letters at a young age as I recently came across a note written to me from my Aunt Marie.

                                                                                    Wednesday

Dear Joan,
     I hope you are over the mumps.  I guess I never had them.  Uncle Mack and I will be home the first week of April.  You write a nice letter.  We enjoy them very much.
                                                                  Love,
                                                                  Aunt Marie

The marvelous thing about words on paper sent over the miles was that the letters could be read and reread and then saved in a box.  In my attic I have such a box of letters saved by my father from my mother.  They are a glimpse back to the late 30's and early 40's when my mother was teaching in a one room school house and their young love was starting to blossom.

Saving letters must run in the family. I received a special letter from a former teacher when I was a senior in high school.  During my junior year I had worked with other students on the 1963 Tigerite, our high school yearbook.  We had a young teacher, Pat Austin, who for the first time decided the yearbook needed to be jazzed up and we added many new style elements.

She and her husband Alan, who was our band director, decided to move to Ann Arbor after my junior year so my senior year we were left to fend for ourselves with a new advisor who knew little about how to put a yearbook together.  Mrs. Austin had named me the editor for the 1964 Tigerite, but I couldn't have managed it all without my good friend Judi Campagna who was a go getter.

When the year was over we sent a copy of the book to Mrs. Austin and her letter to me was one I treasured and kept. 

May 12, 1964

Dear Joanie -

You have now something in common with Hercules!  Triumph over overwhelming odds!  Your Tigerite is superb - and I could do cartwheels. (If I could.)  It has grace and balance - and so many "sharp" features I just don't know where to begin telling you of my reactions.

Mrs. Austin's letter was six pages long and at the end of it she wrote that she and her husband were headed to Anchorage, Alaska where Mr. Austin had gotten a job.  I never heard from her again nor knew what happened to them in Alaska.  But I kept her letter in a scrapbook and it is a reminder of my high school years.

In college there were letters home to my parents.  My mailbox in the dorm often had a return letter from my mom or from high school friends.  It was always a good day when there was a special message from someone.

Letters like my parents wrote to each other were exchanged between my husband and me before we were married.  When he traveled to Europe for a few months or when we were separated by summer jobs, we each wrote at least once a week.

When we married, my husband's mother and father lived several hours away.  I got in the habit of writing a weekly letter, usually on Sunday to recap what we had been doing during the week and later to share the activities of our two children.  My mother-in-law also sent a weekly letter.  When my father-in-law retired, he joined into the letter writing business and his were always humorous, often at my mother-in-law's expense.

Tues. 3-10-81

"Hi" you all!  This is Grandpa starting to run off at the mouth.  I have been lazy for a week now.  I did write a letter to Dootz yesterday.  When I wrote the date on this letter it remind me of Lil Kemp's birthday her birthday was on the 10th  I wonder how old she would be, my Dad would have been 102 yrs old yesterday the 9th. 

So many nosy people wonder what I am doing.  I think that is my business if I want to chase mother around the house, we hit it off real good.  Mom is a pretty nice girl even if she is going to be seventy her next birthday.  I am bugging her eating so much........

.......Sometimes I wonder how my foreman is making out with tungsten grinders, he talked to me a couple months ago he dread the thought of me retiring the last day I was there he tried three men on it and nobody liked it.  Yesterday he was going to try a 18 yr old with a broken leg.  You got to be a little polish to like it, that is where I fit in O.K. but eyes let me down.  So will close with lots of love.

Mom & Dad

In one letter my father-in-law referred to hearing that our son, who was in kindergarten at the time, was being picked on by another little boy.  Grandpa told our son not to start anything, but if he got hit he should "hit the boy in the snot locker." 

After my mother-in-law died I was told that she had kept all my letters over the years, but in some one's zeal to clean out the house, they had been thrown out.  I thought it was endearing that Mom Ramseyer had kept them all those years, but I was a bit heartsick that the history of our little family was gone in the blink of an eye.

Letters did not always bring joy  Some have been hurtful and others expressed the pain in one's life.  Recently a friend gave me a letter she found that was written by my mother to her mother Myrtle during a particularly painful time for my mom.  In the late 60's my mother became depressed.  She was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Plainwell where she tried to get well.  Despite where mom was, her letter sounded hopeful. 

                                                                                     Thursday 7:30 a.m.

Dear Myrtle,

     We have to get up at six o'clock in the morning and have breakfast at seven.   
     When I think about what put me here I think God meant me to quit that job and it helps a lot.  I must continue thinking the same thing.
     I worry about Jerry and how he is getting along.  I think he's coming to see me today.
     There are so many people here that it is overcrowded.  Some of them go home today so it will help a little.
     It was cold yesterday and is cold again today. 
     There are so many people with such terrible problems that I'm lucky compared to them.  I've met some wonderful people too.  The nurses are all wonderful.
     Thanks for all the help you gave me while I was at home.  I hope to be back soon for good!  How's everything in Shelby?

                                                                     Love,
                                                                     Ellen

The letter my mother wrote to Myrtle was written in October of 1967.  In March of 1970 my mother's dear friend Myrtle found my mother after mom had decided she could not live anymore the way she felt.  I was glad to read this letter after so many years have passed because it shows that my mother wanted to get well.  However the hope did not last for her or our family.

Despite the content of a letter, there is something about the feel of the paper, the texture, and the written word.  Those who treasure letters are those who treasure the human spirit and the ability to communicate feelings.

Instant messaging has taken away the special feeling of going to the mailbox and finding a letter.  In desk drawers and wooden boxes I have more stationery than I can ever use, but when I travel I still look for unique writing paper to add to my collection.

I write notes and letters to my two granddaughters, Adrianna and Bella, who do not live near and sometimes to my three grandchildren, Jay, Avery and Carter who live just down the road.  My  granddaughter Adrianna has a pretty box where she keeps special things including the postcards and letters I have sent her over her eleven years.  It touches my heart to see her colorful box. However I feel that less and less personal writing will be done by hand and those special boxes filled with human emotion will be lost to future generations.  But meanwhile, sweet Adrianna is saving my words to her and that brings me great joy.