When Lou Met Gertie

They were as different as Harry and Sally. Her family was Litvak - from Lithuania and Latvia via England. His family was Galitzianer - from Ukraine and Minsk. Her father was a Union man in the garment industry; his parents owned and operated a small grocery store. Lou's cousin, Debbie, was Gertie best friend. He often was at Debbie's house when Gertie was visiting. They disagreed about everything, just like Harry and Sally. Until...

Lou and Gertie happened to visit Toronto on the same weekend. Gertie was there to attend a wedding. The bride asked whether she knew anyone in Toronto whom she would like to invite as a dancing partner. "Well," Gertie wrinkled her nose, "Lou Lutsky is in town. I suppose I could ask him."

Lou agreed willingly enough. "I guess so," he replied when she telephoned him. "There's nothing else to do in Toronto on a Sunday."

When they stepped out onto the dance floor, and Dad took Mom in his arms, a seed was planted that grew into a lifelong love. They dated frequently until Dad joined the Canadian army during World War II. He served in the Quartermaster Corps, driving trucks that supplied the fighting units in Italy and the Netherlands. Mom saved one of his letters - written during a lecture on correct use of gas masks. The words of love were unspoken, but filled the spaces between the pencilled lines that described the effects of mustard gas. She also saved a birthday card that he'd sent to her from England. The front cover was replete with flowery references to 'three little words' which, when the card was opened, were revealed to be, 'Phooey, phooey, phooey.' He was such a romantic!

Mom and Dad were married on March 10, 1946, seventy years ago today.

The Empty Chair

It was always his chair, the deep-cushioned recliner with the pop-up foot rest that dominated one corner of the room. He did everything in that chair. Well, not quite everything. But it was his reading chair, his talking chair, his TV-watching chair, his snacking chair, and his snoozing chair. The recliner followed Mom and Dad from house to house, from living room to living room. It shed its upholstery periodically and grew a new covering, like a reptile shedding its skin and emerging glistening and freshly clad. It wasn’t always pretty, but it was always a part of home. A part of him.

The chair didn’t empty suddenly. The process was a gradual one - a subtle stealing away. Nor did the chair empty in any physical sense. Dad still sat in it; he just didn’t inhabit it anymore. The conversations faded first as Alzheimer’s insinuated itself into and through his brain. Reading was next to go; although he kept up the habit of holding a newspaper or book, he never turned the pages. As the months and years marked the infiltration of the leading edge of his illness, he would stare blankly at the TV screen, his book or magazine held forgotten - often upside down - in his hands. Eventually, even the pretense of reading vanished along with his memories, his laughter, his love of life and his awareness of his wife and family.

The chair is gone now. It broke down soon after Dad died. He and it had grown old together, had grown tired together. The chair mourned the loss of the familiar contours of his body and refused to form a relationship with anyone else. Mom had the chair removed, and the corner where it once stood remained empty for a long time. 


When Mom moved to her new apartment, she purchased a new chair - one without Dad’s imprint. Mom’s chair was her throne. She sat in it to watch TV, to nap, to snack on her tea and muffin, and to bask in the joy of receiving visitors. Especially family. She would sit proudly, the center of attention, trading quips, puns and jokes with anyone who would listen. But not any more. Mom’s chair is empty now. We lost her last month, just six weeks after she celebrated her 93rd birthday surrounded by her children and grandchildren. She and Dad are back together again, sitting peacefully side-by-side as they used to do. Holding hands, trading stories, and basking in their mutual love.

Granny's Knitting Circle

Granny

I stood in the doorway to the living room, a few days after my sixth birthday, transfixed by the sight and sound of dancing needles. As I watched, three sets of steel knitting needles greedily swallowed up straight lengths of wool and spit out incipient booties and bonnets. Someone in the family was expecting a baby.

I waited, awestruck by the speed of Auntie Ethel’s knitting, her yarn and needles flying effortlessly through the air. Granny’s hands and needles were a blur; the booties she was knitting took shape magically, right before my eyes. Mom was the slowest knitter in the circle of three. Her motions were not as fluid as those of Granny or Auntie Ethel. But her methodical technique was still effective.

After what felt like a long while - although it was probably not more than a few minutes - Mom glanced up and caught my eye. I held up my knitting kit - one of my birthday presents - and pleaded wordlessly for permission to enter the room. My patience was rewarded with a silent nod that directed me towards the empty footstool.

Mom put down her own knitting and knelt beside me. She placed a loop of yarn on the needle in my left hand, and placed her own hands over mine as she showed me how to cast on stitches. Painstakingly, I added stitch after stitch, until the loops of yarn threatened to overflow the needle. Now what? I looked up inquiringly at Mom, who then showed me how to form the basic knit and purl stitches.

The afternoon wore on. Finally, Granny, Mom and Auntie Ethel put down their needles and assembled the results of their labors - three complete sets of booties, bonnets and baby jackets, one each in yellow, green and white. I held up my needles for their inspection, revealing a knitted yellow ribbon that was one foot long and half an inch wide. Mom took the knitted ribbon, attached it to the yellow bonnet, and held it up to approving nods.

I danced up and down with excitement, and ran to hug Mom, Auntie Ethel, and last of all, my grandmother. I was now a knitter - a member of Granny’s knitting circle.

©2013 Phyllis Entis. All rights reserved.

A Note of Explanation: We were challenged to write a scene that contained absolutely no dialogue whatsoever. No 'he said, she said.' I always was amazed by the speed and dexterity with which Granny and Auntie Ethel knitted, and by the beautiful items they produced. The knitting circle was unofficial. The story - especially the silence - is fictional. My love and admiration for all three of these women was, and remains, real.

Punintended Consequences

She’s ninety-one, has arthritic feet and a gimpy knee. “My short-term memory stinks,” she complains, as she cleans my clock in yet another game of Scrabble. She plays poker and Bingo three times a week, and is a charter member of the weekly cribbage crowd in her seniors’ building. Her friends call her Gert. I call her Mom.

Mom’s conversation is peppered with puns - a trait that runs in our family. Ask her how she feels, and Mom will reply “with my hands.” In our family, noses run and feet smell. A conversation can turn into a marathon punning competition - one that Mom usually wins.

A few years ago, Mom decided that it was time to move to a apartment building with more services and activities. The new living room was far too small for her 45-year-old sofa - a large custom piece constructed with care by my Uncle Marvin, and reupholstered several times. Mom advertised the sofa and found a buyer. But there was a minor problem. The owners of her current building had replaced the aging elevators a few years before, and the ceilings in the new elevators were only seven feet high. Her sofa would not fit! Nor was the buyer interested in carrying this monster down seven flights of stairs - even assuming that he and the sofa could negotiate the sharp turns in the stairwell. The sale fell through, leaving Mom with a dilemma. She had to get this Sherman tank of a sofa out of her apartment!

When my cousin Hilary (who is the proud inheritor of a double dose of the family pun gene) heard about the problem, she turned up at Mom’s apartment, accompanied by two hefty heroes - her older son, Jeffrey and her friend, Frank. They came well equipped for the task - Frank brandishing a circular saw and Hilary, as always, wielding her state-of-the-art digital Canon.

While Mom held court on her easy chair, serving up an endless supply of pun-gent verbal offerings - punctuated with belly laughs, giggles and snorts of amusement - Jeffrey and Frank sawed the sofa in half so that it could be carted downstairs to the trash. Hilary photographed the dismemberment in detail, and recorded the entire episode for the amusement of the many followers of The Smitten Image, her blog site.

With her out-going personality and ready wit, Mom quickly developed a circle of friends and card-playing buddies in her new building. Her only complaint was that Mondays were 'boring' - no organized card games or bingo. 

Just after the first of the year, life stopped being boring - Mom developed bacterial pneumonia. It was a close call, but she confounded the dire predictions of the medical staff and survived her illness with her punny bone intact. Yesterday, when I asked her how she was doing, Mom replied, “As I please.”

Here's to you, Mom - to many more years of doing as you please and feeling with your hands!

©2012 Phyllis Entis. All rights reserved.

A Note of Explanation: This story evolved from the prompt "My mother laughed hysterically when ..."