Archives for March 2020

Letters to My Mother During CoVid19

March 31, 2020 by Margaret Philbrick 2 Comments

March 31, 2020

Dear Mom,

I’m wondering if you realize that all “non-essential” businesses are closed due to the Coronavirus? Even if I could pick you up and take you to Barone’s for dinner on Wednesday evening, it would be closed. Please pray for our favorite businesses which are really suffering right now because they have been forced to close, even The Little Traveler in Geneva. Try to imagine all of Oak Brook Mall closed, including Neiman Marcus, no popovers with strawberry butter, no steaming cups of hot chicken soup.

As I sit here in work-out clothing, my hair in a top-knot and no make-up, I’m thinking about your effortless style. You would never be sitting in these clothes, even in the midst of the Coronavirus. What are you wearing right now? As kids we were truly unaware of your awesome sense of fashion and how you always took great care of yourself. Just like we assumed every backyard bordered a Stations of the Cross walk though the woods, we also assumed that every mother looked as good as you did. One of the blessings of being a child is that you are too busy building forts to pay attention to how people look.

Let’s take a moment to pay tribute to one of our favorite fashion forward providers, The Little Traveler https://www.littletraveler.com which is also closed right now. This business has been incredibly kind to us in numerous ways so we have to brag on them in the midst of shut-down life with the hope that even more people will share our joy in sitting down for lunch in the Little Traveler cafe when the doors re-open.

We just ate lunch there right before the coronavirus BLEW UP! As usual, we had our “petite luncheon” because we can’t get enough of the cheese spread on those sandwiches. As a little girl we’d “get fancy,” i.e. dress up and I’d order three of those pimento and creamy cheddar cheese triangles with my cup of soup. I loved them so much that you asked for the secret recipe from the chef and he gave it to you! I enjoyed these Little Traveler sandwiches in my rainbow lunchbox all through grade school and middle school. I’ve turned your recipe files inside out looking for that recipe and can’t find it — painful! Nick and Victor still work in the cafe and whenever I’m there with out you they always ask me, “How’s your mother? When is she coming in again?” They turned backflips when you walked through the door last time and I tipped Victor ten dollars because he loves you so much.

2/27/’20 Lunch at The Little Traveler before CoVid19 takeover

I always wanted you to be one of the middle-aged models who visited our table telling us all about their chic suits and handbags. I thought they were middle-aged, but now that I’m middle-aged they don’t look nearly as old. You thought it would be more fun if we both modeled together. Instead of modeling we created a Christmas book, Back to the Manger, detailing the journey of their one-of-a-kind Neapolitan nativity scene. It took you a year to complete the oil paintings for this book. Remember, persevering through eye strain from painting using a magnifying glass? All those illustrations of the nativity figures are no bigger than a pinkie fingernail and so much detail, down to Mary’s blue and red robes. I hope you realize that Back to the Manger is still selling, ten years later and The Little Traveler and The Geneva History Museum are strong supporters. Most books don’t last even five years so kudos to you, artist mama. This picture features a darling little boy who stopped by our signing table last December, eager to “read” the book, even though he couldn’t read.

Unlike you, dad never devoted himself to shopping. This proved a boon to The Little Traveler on Christmas Eve as he raced through all 35 rooms of the store, hoping to fulfill his entire Christmas shopping list before they closed at 5:00 p.m. Stressful! Dad bought the precious Santa Claus music box sleigh that we set-up on your secretary desk every year. No one can keep all of the Christmas decks a person packrats in their basement when they move, but this sleigh is so unique and special that we haul it over from storage.

Please know, as an adult who finds it an extra chore to look nice in these days of casual Covid closet living, I respect and admire your commitment to taking care of yourself, taking vitamins, using night creams, and not sunburning your face. All of it resulted in you being the “hot little grandma” strolling the halls of memory care at 85. Just ask Vito, he’ll tell you it’s true!

All my love,

Margaret

photo credits:

boys building forts – Missouri Department of Conservation, med.mo.gov

boy looking at book: Margaret Philbrick

Letters to My Mother During CoVid19

March 30, 2020 by Margaret Philbrick 2 Comments

March 30th, 2020

Dear Mom,

If you look on the wall to the right of your front door you’ll see a picture describing your Irish heritage. Featured in this picture are some important details about who you are and who we are. If your caregiver takes it down and brings it over to where you’re sitting on the couch you’ll see that your McGreevy family came from County Roscommon (I think, or was it County Clare?), in the middle of Ireland. The picture describes your family crest and the tartan pattern of the McGreevy clan. Did you know that the name McGreevy means, son of the red- haired youth? Thank you for making me part-Irish! Dad recently sent in his saliva to be analyzed and he found out that his ancestry is from Ireland, England, Germany and Sweden so both of you contributed to my Irish, “Where there’s a will there’s a way” nature. Frankly, dad was disappointed when he learned this. He thought for sure he was Jewish because his mother, Grandma Lehwald was adopted and Aunt Marge once told him that Grandma Lehwald’s parents were German Jews. My dad thinks of all Jewish people as the smartest people in the world so he intentionally grafted himself into their line, only to be disappointed.

When we were growing up, you made being Irish fun! We always looked for four-leaf clovers and pressed them in books You served us rowdy St. Patrick’s Day breakfasts, complete with trad-Irish music, green pancakes or my favorite, Lucky Charms cereal even on a school day. The kitchen looked like a birthday party with giant green cut-out shamrocks hanging from the light fixtures. Our front door decked out in some gaudy, shiny, overly metallic green thing you could spot while driving by on Batavia Ave. You read us the story of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland and saving his people. Somehow you managed to make being Irish more than a badge of grit and steely character, you made it cool.

Every January when the two of us sit down together and make our goals for the year, one keeps recurring on your list— to go back to Ireland. Fortunately, in your later years we did make the trip, the two of us and our Irish lassie, Jessie went to Ireland in June of 2011. We arrived in Dublin and drove across to Galway that first morning. I was the appointed hauler of our giant suitcases and the driver on this trip which made for a harrowing arrival as we found ourselves cruising on the opposite side of the road before we barely had our eyes open. The tiny cottage in the town of Spiddal was our first stop, and legendary because there I drank my first pint of authentic Irish Guinness which caused me to actually cry in my beer—delicious to the point of tears. There is not a craft beer in America that holds a candle to Ireland’s Irish Guinness, but you don’t even like beer so let’s move on.

We picked up quartz speckled pink and green rocks in Galway Bay and shopped the alleyways of that lovely town. Brown Thomas was our favorite store and you bought one of my most beautiful dresses, the black linen dress with the vertical white ribbons—to die for! Stopping at the Cliffs of Mohr made us feel like we were stalking a gothic novel – so windy! By the time we arrived in Eenis the sun came out – for the rest of our trip. Blessed, so blessed to enjoy sun day after day in Ireland. When we came home you painted the painting hanging to the right of your TV which depicts the Irish landscape in its multi-layered green hues, but the addition of the purple tones and pinks is what gives that scene its true colors. I love that painting and I’m claiming it right now, when you die— oops, this letter is supposed to be about you, not me, sorry.

We drove on to Killarney and Kinsale, the pastel town by the sea with the seahorse door knockers, through Dungarvan – every man wearing a lavender dress shirt long before it was trendy and then, Waterford for the crystal and the cute dog we met at our BnB. I snapped one of my favorite photos of you in your golden years standing along the Wicklow Way. Leaning on Goggie’s cane, looking into the golden light. Gazing toward heaven, you look like you know the path ahead. We finished in Dublin by eating the best steak of our lives at https://shanahans.ie Shanahan’s on the Green thanks to Uncle Jay.

O Come Ye Back To Ireland, you gave me this book long ago and I hope we get back. Thanks for being a loving Irish mum from a clan in the western suburbs who passed on her love affair with Ireland to me and to your Irish lassie girl, Jessie. If we don’t get back we can always go to the Irish Shoppe in Fish Creek and live out our fantasies there.

Ta gra agum duit (I love you in Gaelic),

Here’s a picture of your Irish granddaughter Jessie dancing:) Remember when were there, everyone thought she was from Ireland:) xo.

Letters to My Mother During CoVid19

March 28, 2020 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

March 27th, 2020

Dear Mom,

A poem by Amy Carmichael seems fitting for today. So many of the wonderful nurses down in memory care and in assisted living are working longer shifts and filling in for people who are sick to help you stay healthy. Please be kind to them, always.

A Nurse’s Prayer

Let not routine make dull my quickened sense

Of Thee, Lord Jesus; give me reverence,

That in each wounded one I may see Thee,

My Lord, my Love, Savior of Calvary.

In dusty foot thorn-pierced, I would see Thine

Pierced by a nail for love of me and mine;

In each sore hand held out so piteously

I would see Thine, Redeemer, bruised for me.

For me be hallowed every common bed

Because Thou hadst not where to lay Thy head;

In common flesh, Lord Jesus, I would see

Thy sacred body laid upon the tree.

Should some I serve, unruly toss and fret,

And tire my patience, then, lest I forget

All that I owe to Thy agony,

Show me once more, my Lord, Thy Calvary.

You gave me the collection of her poems, Mountain Breezes back when our children were young. On the inside cover you wrote, “I hope you enjoy this amazing collection of poems by Amy Carmichael as I did her biography, A Chance to Die.” Love, Mother x Mother’s Day, 2001.

I just cracked open this collection last year, sorry it took me so long. I was leading a creative writing workshop around the theme of RELEASE and her poem, “To Higher Things” has a line, “Oh, lift our souls to higher things.” What is it that you would want to release to God today? (Caregivers, please write down her answer.)

Thank you forever for teaching me to love poetry! My bookshelves are filled with books by poets you taught us to memorize on our endless summer vacation car trips to the Olney, IL Holiday Inn and the ElDorado, AK Holiday Inn. Know that we didn’t care what motel we stayed in as long as it had a pool and if it had a pool with a slide we never wanted to leave.

Many of these poems you called out to us over the front seat while we played “car mountain” with our Hot Wheels. You’d say a line and we’d repeat it back and then you’d add on. I still know them. Once, I recited “Little Orphan Annie” by James Whitcomb Riley to my classes and terrified them to the point of almost tears so I had to apologize! I loved the scary mystery of his poem, “There were two big black things standing by her side.” What did those black things look like? Riley left it to our imagination, I’ve always pictured them as giant black hoods.

We’d sit with Goggie and Jessie and Grandma Lehwald at our fancy Mother’s Day table and you’d recite “Somebody’s Mother” by Mary Dow Brine. This poem still makes me cry. How many little old ladies have I walked by and not helped across the street? Your oldest grandson Caleb, does the sweet things this poem talks about. On his birthday this year (March 15th), he bought breakfast at Suzettes Creperie for a homeless person. Your youngest grandson Nathaniel goes into memory care facilities in Nashville and leads worship and he says some people sing with him from their beds. He can hear them because the piano is in the center and the beds are arranged around it in a circle. Your granddaughter Jessie is part of a program in St. Louis called “Senior Embrace” where her dance company goes into retirement homes and care facilities and dances with the residents. Without knowing it, the legacy of this poem, caring for the elderly, is alive in your grandchildren.

One of my favorites by Emily Dickinson, “There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away, nor any coursers like a page of prancing poetry—This traverse even may the poorest take without oppress of toll—How frugal is the chariot that bears the human soul.”

This little gem demonstrates what you know and value, what you taught us. No matter how poor, our souls are carried, even buoyed by books and lines of poetry. Thank you. Thank you for reading to us, even when you were sad and didn’t want to…

“Caps for sale, 50 cents a cap, who will buy my caps?”

“The woman was old and ragged and grey, bent with the chill of a winters day.”

“We hear of the Easter bunny who comes each Easter Day before sunrise to bring eggs for boys and girls, so we think there is only one.”

“Baby’s boat’s a silver moon, sailing in the sky.”

“There was a crooked man and he went a crooked mile, he found a crooked sixpence against a crooked style.”

“In Dublin’s fair city where the girls are so pretty…cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh.”

I know one line is enough to jog your memory and get you singing that last one. I miss Ireland. I miss you.

Much love to you today,

Letters to My Mother During CoVid19

March 27, 2020 by Margaret Philbrick 2 Comments

March 26th, 2020

Dear Mom,

As I mentioned in my first letter, I’m truly sorry that I can’t come and visit you. They’ve locked family members out of your retirement facility and are only allowing outside paid caregivers to come in and be with you. Since this change we’ve chosen to employ additional caregivers so that you have plenty of visitors.

I meant to tell your caregivers that you LOVE to sing songs from the musical “The Sound of Music” so if they want to try doing that —- go for it! A funny one would be, “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” Because your caregiver Maria isn’t a problem at all! They can pull these up on their iPhones and sing them with you in the apartment or while you two are walking the halls. “Edelweiss,” “The Hills are Alive,” “So Long Farewell,” “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria” are all great tunes that you could teach them, since you know all the words! When the weather warms up they can sing with you out in the courtyard under the blooming crabapple tree.

I’m not sure if you realize that blooming crabapple trees have followed us all our lives. A white blossoming baby tree grew tall off our flagstone patio at 935 Batavia Ave. and every spring morning for almost 30 years I’ve awakened to the sight of two mounded giants outside the dormer window of our bedroom, creating a jungle gym for our squirrel friends. You loved walking your neighborhood at 1945 Wexford Circle, wreathed in yellow locust petals in the fall and pear and crabapple snowy petals in the spring. Right around Mother’s Day, Caleb and Nathaniel could sit on the edge of their bed, look left and see their dormer window filled with fuchsia crabapple petals and look right, every pane filled with white crabapple petals which actually started out light pink and then turned to white. We learned over the years their official name, Snowdrift Crabapple. Even now, we drive down Shady Lane to take in the alternating quilt of pink and white petal patches.

Thank you for teaching me everything about plants, trees, shrubs and flowers which of course includes cultivated and wildflowers, both of equal value which is why you insisted I carry both in my wedding bouquet. What would a summer wedding be without Queen Annes Lace? You’ve taught me the value of dirty hands, aging fingers encrusted in dirt even after numerous before dinner hand washings. It’s a good gardening year when the dirt never completely escapes the crevices of my index finger. Your 1945 Wexford Circle home featured the perennial border on the west side with the most enormous English Munstead Lavender plants in front of your Rudebekia which we know better as Black Eyed Susans. When I transplanted a few of your Lavender plants to my own border they failed to return to their former size and vigor. My soil didn’t have the same type of drainage of your newer development clay— which you amended with the help of Mary LaBuddy, your gardening helper, each year. “My soil is terrible,” you would complain, but there are benefits to weaker soil and lavender is one of them. When we moved everything out of your garage I found shoe boxes FULL of dried lavender bundles. You trimmed them evenly across the bottom and tied each one with raffia and stacked them neatly in boxes. What were you saving those lavender bundles for? (Please write down her answer, I’d love to know.) Perhaps, Jessie’s wedding someday?

You taught me to stand in awe and reverence before the queen of perennials – delphinium, especially the delphinium of Door County. Remember the tallest and best inside the cedar hedge at the Blue Dolphin shop between Sister Bay and Ephraim? Sir Galahad, Black Knight, Guinevere, Blue Lace— I tried to grow all these delphinium varieties from seed and in some years succeeded, but they never wintered over. Far more delphiniums lost than gained in my garden which brings me to your appreciation of the seasons. Life indeed has it’s seasons and true, palette colors, “A time to reap and a time to sow.” Gardening is about gains and losses and seeing the beauty in fallow soil as well as a flora-abundant border.

Last fall when we walked through St. James Farm, you referred to the River Birch trees, “Look at that mustard yellow, just beautiful.” Mustard yellow, ochre, these colors from your paint palette still exist in the recesses of your cognition and trees inspire the release of those words. Can you guess what is the one word I hear you use more than any other, not counting the names of people, “beautiful.” Thank you for helping me see the beauty in soft landscapes, the weathered lines of aging faces, eyes locking over a handshake, snow laden pines “shagged with ice,” (stealing from Wallace Stevens there.) It’s visible in the seen and the unseen and we need to keep looking, even amidst the virus there is beauty everywhere.

I love you my forever beautiful mother,

Letters to My Mother During CoVid19

March 26, 2020 by Margaret Philbrick 13 Comments

Dear Mom,

I’m sorry I can’t visit you. Your facility has locked down because of the Coronavirus and only outside, paid caregivers are allowed. This is unfair, but Aunt Mary always said, “Life isn’t fair.” Have you noticed how you can’t recognize anyone because of the colorful bandanas over their nose and mouth? That’s not weird, but intended to protect you from outside germs. So far there are no cases of the virus in your retirement home! This is a gift from God and demonstrates how hard everyone there is working to keep you all healthy.

I woke up this morning from a dream where Miss Washington, the kids’ grade school gym teacher, approached me and said, “Your mother has no pulse.” Shocked and confused that this random person would be telling me such important news, I said, “What does that mean, is she dead?” She shook her head and responded, “I’m sorry.” Startled awake, I made coffee and walked the dog down our deserted street. Out by the lake, a mama robin flew by with bits of dried grass in her beak. I thought about this dream and how I might bridge the enforced gap of connection we are experiencing and I thought of the beautiful nest you’ve built for me over the course of my entire life. In an effort to bridge the gap, I’m writing you a letter every day.

One of the things I do in my haphazard writing life is curate a blog for a website called Patheos. I won’t try to explain what “curating a blog” means, just think of it as a piece of writing on the computer and I pick out what gets put on that website. I also won’t try to explain what a website is because in your 85th year, it doesn’t matter. A recent article I posted talked about a daughter’s estranged relationship with her mother and all the questions she wanted to ask her but didn’t get the chance to ask before she died. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/redbudwritersguild/2020/02/questionnaire-for-an-estranged-mother/

Sadly, the mother and daughter never reconciled their relationship. I’m thankful we are not in that situation! Instead, you’ve been the most wonderful and beautiful mother in the world. It’s important that you know before you die the legacy of love you will leave behind. If I think of questions that I need answers to, I’m asking your caregivers to read these letters and write down your answers. When I’m free to re-enter the front door of your facility, I’ll grab those precious answers from the drawer of your desk. In the meantime, enjoy these bits of memory. May these letters bless you and sparkle the remaining memories in your mind.

If you do die tomorrow, (hopefully, you will get my first letter and it will be after that) I need to thank you for the most important thing you’ve formed in me, faith. Although you are somewhat of an introverted artist, probably the most introverted person in our entire family and definitely a four on the enneagram, you’re a quiet evangelist. When we moved all the furniture out of your townhouse, some into your cozy apartment, some into storage and some to our kids’ apartments, we decided to keep the tall end-table with the middle drawer. You know the one that stood between your two checkered chairs facing the TV. I found one of your Bibles inside the tiny drawer, covered in pencil markings— underlined passages, questions, cross-references, quotations — a worked over King James. I knew you spent many hours sitting at the feet of Lilian Weaver as she conducted Bible studies, but I’ve never thought of you as a student of the Bible, until I opened this book. Thank you for forming my faith by teaching me the songs and stories when I was little — “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” The first vacation Bible school I remember attending was at the First Presbyterian Church in River Forest, the one you’ve always called “Dr. Ball’s church.” This is the same church where you led me by the hand into the sanctuary to see “Goggie’s window,” the stained-glass window on the your right as you enter from the back. Mounted beneath the glittering glass is a plaque with her name on it, Mary Jane McGreevy. How impressive to a five year old! She must be rich, I thought. But it was more than rich in money, both of my grandmothers overflowed with kingdom riches. I didn’t know what that meant back then.

Thank you for forcing us to sit through Handel’s “Messiah” sung at Rockefeller Chapel every holiday season. Just so you know, we were bored out of our minds by this ritual of torture which felt like it lasted three days, but now the melodies are inked upon my soul. Thank you for making us do things we didn’t want to do. Hanging from my charm bracelet is a tiny church and when you peer through the window you can see the Lord’s Prayer. Either this charm came from the V.B.S. at “Dr. Ball’s church” or you and dad gave it to me. I still love it and wonder about this miracle. How can the Lord’s Prayer be visible all these years later in microscopic print, through a window less than a quarter of an inch in diameter?

I know you hated renting our house on the river, but we loved it! Renting instead of buying a house means nothing to kids, but living in a house backed up to “real” woods on a river means everything! We sailed our bathtub boats in “the creek” and picked fistfuls of narcissus and “wild” tulips every spring. Thank you for making me go over to Mrs. Downs and apologize when I picked every “non-wild” tulip out of her garden to give to you on Mother’s Day. We met God in those woods amongst Lily of the Valley and the Stations of the Cross walk created by the brothers of the Sacred Heart. I thought everyone lived in a house with the Stations of the Cross in their backyard. Studying those bas relief plaques mounted at the center of each cross, my two hands stuffed full of periwinkle vinca, forced me to stop and think about suffering. I’m thankful that despite losing your memory, you are not suffering.

You sang to us and you still know the words to every hymn—may I be so fortunate. After setting up our nativity set on the front hall stand of our 935 Batavia Ave. house, we would sing “Away in the Manger” in our pajamas as you lit the candles. Now, we do this as we set up our own nativity scene. Also, I want to remind you how incredibly cool and artsy it was that you and dad created your first nativity set out of plaster during the early years of your marriage. You painted one of the angels, but all the other figures were left a pure, white plaster, an art project unfinished. If this bothers you that you didn’t paint the rest of the figures, no worries, they look better all white.

And I can’t forget Honey Rock Camp! You sent us to “sleep-away camp” when we were probably too young, but I get it. Two weeks away from your kids in the summer to do what you want to do sounds like a good idea. Well, it wasn’t just good for you and dad. I thrived in that rustic space with my friend Stephanie. We tried new things (like sailing) failed miserably and laughed. I sang the song, “How Great Thou Art” for the first time and never forgot it. We worshiped in Cathedral Pines and left with splinters in our bottoms from the rough pine benches. My counselor, “Q” showed me that you’re never too old to wear a bathing suit and make fun of yourself acting in ridiculous, campy skits. Thank you for trekking up to Family Day when our kids attended the same camp thirty years later. I know that sitting on a soggy log and eating cold fried chicken and watching your grandchildren fall down in the “ski show” isn’t the best way to spend a rainy summer day. You could have been getting your hair done.

Faith is the greatest gift you can pass on to a child. When something like a virus comes along and has the power to strip everything away, it will be the last thing standing. I love you and I thank you!