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“Prairie Roots” column for The Earlville Post
January 3, 2003

Barb and I attended 10:00 Christmas Eve Mass at St. Columba’s Church in Ottawa. Father David Kipfer, our pastor, gave one of the best talks that he has given which focused on the Christ child. The expression he used was “the Lord came to us in diapers.” He included examples from his own family of how special a newborn baby is and how everyone fights to hold the new family member. His words touched both my heart and my Barb’s with the true meaning of Christmas.

Two days later Barb and I took our youngest son Tim and our daughter Maribeth to our new son-in-law’s restaurant Casa-Mia for supper. After dining, we went in back to their home and visited. Maribeth, who was married this June in our backyard, is five months pregnant. She was showing us the sonograms of the baby and letting Tim and Barb feel the baby in her tummy. ( Old Grandpa Bill here passed on that ). But both of these evenings started me thinking of new life in the family and the new year coming up; so I thought I would tell you the story of Claude and Mabel and our Maribeth for the first two columns of the new year.

CLAUDE AND MABEL

Thirty-some years ago the Myers family gathered at my folks’ house on a Christmas afternoon. We all tended to crowd into the kitchen, probably to be close to Mom, who was busy preparing the Christmas meal, quietly working around and enjoying her family. Since there were three expectant mothers in the room–my wife Barb, my sister Mary Margaret and brother Goose’s wife Elaine–the conversation naturally came around to the topic of babies and the question of how
many children each of us wanted in our own families.

Mary Margaret said that she and Joe wanted four kids. Brother Goose stated that he and Elaine wanted three. I bragged that my Barb and I wanted eight kids–thus beating Mom and Dad by at least one.

Mom, who never dominated a conversation, but whose words always carried much wisdom and weight, spoke up. “When your father and I were getting married, we wanted three
kids and we ended up with seven.” Everyone laughed and the conversation, the meal, the gift exchange, the entire day went on with the usual Christmas cheer.

A few days later Mom and brother Don, the youngest of us who was born when Momma-mia was forty-two years old, were home alone. Mom was standing by the dining room door ironing while nine-year-old Donnie played on the floor. Suddenly he looked up and said, “Mom, remember on Christmas Day when everyone was talking about how many kids they wanted in their family and you said when you and Dad got married that you wanted three kids?”

Mom stopped ironing and answered, “Yes, I remember.”

“Was I one of the three that you wanted?” That question must have been eating at his young mind those past few days.

I don’t know exactly what Mom replied, but I’m sure that she put down her iron and went over to hug Donnie and reassured him that she and Dad wanted each one of their kids. Somehow Mom managed to convey to each one of us that we were the special child–her favorite in an unspoken way–and that we were all special gifts from God in their life.
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Thirty years ago my Barb and I moved our family of three sons (ages nine, seven and five) and our three-year-old daughter from Davenport, Iowa into a two-story, five bedroom house on the southside of Ottawa, where we still live today. Living next door was a white-haired couple in their seventies, Claude and Mabel Howard, both retired from the local glass factory several years back. They were childless.

As our three boys went off to school, our three-year-old Maribeth began to play outside in the back yard exploring a wider world. Claude and Mabel, sitting as they did for hours on their sun porch, enjoyed watching this little girl and began to chat with her. A friendship sparked. Before long our daughter was spending hours on that sun porch with the elderly couple. They taught her how to tie her shoes, count, print her name, read stories before she went to kindergarten. She would color pictures, act out plays, share the magic of her childhood with them. Claude taught “his little dolly” how to help him with the housework because Mabel, who suffered from congestive heart problems, could not do much work around the house. And after the housework was done, it was off to the saloons in Naplate for Claude and Maribeth so that he could visit all of his old buddies. Although he had quit drinking a few years before, Claude still liked to show off his little dolly to his old tavern buddies. By the time Maribeth was five years old, she had been in more saloons in LaSalle County than her father had–and that was no small achievement.

After she started school, Maribeth would race home to show Barb her papers and report on the school day, then hurry across the driveway to share the good news with Claude and Mabel. Although our boys saw how their sister was being spoiled, they–as well as Barb and I–knew that
what we were witnessing, this friendship between the young and the old, was good.

Now her brothers did have Maribeth tagged right as a con artist. For example, Claude and Mabel ate supper early while we ate quite late since my coaching duties kept me late at school. Maribeth would call Barb and ask what we were having for supper. Barb might answer hot dogs or hamburgers. Maribeth would say, “Well, Claude and Mabel are having roast beef and they want me to stay for supper. Okay?” Before long Maribeth was sleeping over with them; she even had her own tooth brush and bedroom at their home.

In a few years Mabel’s health grew worse and she was in and out of the hospital quite frequently. One Thanksgiving Day afternoon I stopped by the hospital by myself for a visit. That day Mabel spoke to me–more or less from her death bed. She told me how much joy Maribeth had brought into their lives and she thanked Barb and me for sharing our daughter. At a moment like that there is not much you can say or do–just hold her hand and receive her words from the heart.

A month or so later Mabel was home from the hospital for the weekend. They had sold their house and moved into a small apartment four or five blocks away. Barb had dressed Maribeth up special to spend Sunday afternoon with Claude and Mabel. A red velvet dress that Mabel had given her for Christmas. Her hair tied up in “buffies”–two little pony-tails sticking up on the back of her head, named after the little girl in the tv show “A Family Affair.”

When I returned home from a meeting, Barb asked me if I would run down to pick up Maribeth for supper since Mabel would probably be worn out by then.

Mabel was seated in a big stuffed chair in the middle of their living room. The floor was strewn with storybooks, colored pictures and crayons and all the props and stagings of the many productions Maribeth had acted out for Claude and Mabel that day. Mabel looked happy but tired, so we picked up the messes under Claude’s mock grumpiness and said quick good-byes.

(To be continued next week) Jan. 10,2003