April Showers Bring May Apples

What do May Apples and Scotchmen have in common?

They both have something under their skirts!

Rosalie

     
     This is my niece Rosalie. I was six years old when she was born, the first child of my older sister, Velma. So we are close like sisters. She loved my mother and came to stay at our house as often as she could. 

     As adults, we both followed our own paths and had families, but always, always kept up with each other. I  knew where there was a bedroom and a kitchen table when I went back "home" to visit family from one of the many states I lived in.

     When Rocky got sick a few years back, Rosalie and her husband, Leslie, who live in Ohio, came a couple times a year to help us out. She and her daughter, Annette, came to visit and help last April less than a month before Rocky died. Then she and Leslie came again for Rocky's memorial service in May.

     Last Friday they arrived again to visit and help me in my flower beds. They more than helped. They did most of the work, not only in the garden but some odd jobs in the house, and together we found time to cook. 

     It was delightful to be with one of my family in two of our favorite places, the garden and the kitchen.

     

     Here's the words that came to me when they left to go home this morning.  

Proust had it right when he remembered things past,

He must have had a rich family--rich in living, that is,

We are aging now, but rich in memory,

Rosalie has come to help me with my garden,

and we pat the coneflowers into the earth 

and recall our child labors from the past,

We pull out weeds and speak of losses we've had,

We prune out dead branches and toss them
into the woods to transform,

And on the knees of our Levi's

we kneel and hope and plan,

And wear out our garden loving genes.

Mimi Rockwell

April 20, 2011

Mimi and Rosalie taking a break from weeding.

A New, Yet Old, Friend

Photo taken by Taylor Bracher

     We here at Castle Yonder have a special love for Grouse ever since one became friends with Rocky several years ago. He preceded Rocky in death by nine months as the result of an auto accident.

     So we are all delighted that Grouse I evidently had a son who has now made himself known. (Well, my good friend, Jay, has spotted him a couple of times in the woods while on mushroom forays, but I, the Queen of Castle Yonder, had never seen him.) 

     But he allowed an audience as he posed for a picture this past Sunday.  I imagine he had been flushed up into the trees because my good neighbor, Rudy, was chain sawing a tree that the Sat. night storm had pushed over and across the road.

     Now our new, old, friend needs a name (as well as a mate!) Perhaps I'll call him Grousey II until someone comes up with something better.

     I guess we could call him "Ruffie" or "Ruffles" since his specimen is called the Ruffed Grouse. They are noted by their sometimes elaborate displays of mating behavior, "drumming" the air by beating their wings rapidly. They also strut, raise their breasts upward, and spread special feathers on the head, neck, and tail. They strut their stuff; how could any gal resist? 

     Grouse are land birds who forage on the ground for seeds and insects. They can fly but they are not fast and seldom fly more than a few hundred feet. They can burst into flight from a sitting position when they feel the need to remove themselves to another location. This is called flushing and causes the heart to beat a little faster in any human observer who might be out for a walk.

      Flushing is likely why Grousey II posed for the photo in a tree.

      

Mimi's 77th

Jessica wearing her Grandad Rocky's cap

A Big April Fool

  Seventy-seven years ago, April 1st fell on a Sunday which just happened to be Easter that year. At 9:00 that evening, I came into the world. A mid-wife and my mother's best friend, Ardella Rahrig, was with my mother at our home in a small town in NE Indiana. My two sisters, Velma, age 16 and Vi, age 13 went to Ardella's house to take care of the younger children. The mid-wife, Annie Wessell, pretty much had me delivered when the community physician, Dr. Klinger, finally arrived. He finished the job. I was cleaned up, wrapped up, and laid beside my mother in her big iron bed.


     When Vi and Velm heard they had a new little sister, they were very excited because they had been wanting a girl to play with. And play they did! They dressed me up, played with my hair, taught me nursery rhymes, and took me along with them to the ice cream shop, friends' homes, the drug store that had a soft drink counter, and more. They coaxed me into reciting poems and paraded me in front of visitors. In short, they taught me to love receiving attention and feel comfortable speaking in front of others.

     The only problem I had was I never liked the name they gave me. I was named "Irma" after a female organist my parents liked to listen to on the radio, Irma Glenn. They added "Rose" which was after my mother, Rosa. She had been called "Rosie" all her life. They wanted me to use both names, "Irma Rose" and proceeded to call me that. "Go sit down by Irma Rose," they would tell my Alaskan Spitz puppy, and she would.

     Then I went to school. I noticed that all my classmates had only one name like Carol, Carolyn, Shirley, Sally, Pat, Donna. So I told my teacher to call me "Irma" only and drop the "Rose." My parents were upset; they wanted me called both names. Now as a clinical therapist, I think I did it as a step towards independence, a way of keeping my "self" separate from my mother.  I didn't want the teachers to think that was my mother sitting in their first-grade classroom. Then someone called me "Wormy Irmie" and I realized I hated, hated, hated being called the single name"Irma" more than ever. 


     So for over 40 years I lived with a name I detested! Why couldn't l I have been called "Bunny" or "April"? "Irma" sounds as German as sauerkraut. And we, as Americans in the 1940's, were at war with Germany! Admittedly, due to my Dad having been born in Germany, he was a citizen now. So that made me a second generation German immigrant; but I felt as American as apple pie!


     In middle age, when I was expecting my first grandchild, I was leafing through a book, Choose the Right Name For Your Baby, with my daughter-in-law who was eight months pregnant. Just for the heck of it, I turned to the definition for "Irma." "Irma," I read "means strength, power, regal, Queen." Wow, I thought, and my imagination began galloping across the northern European landscape. Maybe I had had an ancestor named "Irma" who was powerful, royal, a Queen. I could picture her in my mind--a female Viking with brass breast plate, a helmet with horns over two blond braids, a sword in one hand, and a battle ax in the other! Queen Irma the Wagnerian Visigoth!!!


     Then my daughter-in-law asked me what I wanted to be called by this new little person who was coming into the world. In truth, I was to become a step-grandmother and I thought the two biological grandmothers should have first choice. They had chosen, my daughter-in-law said. I began remembering that I had wanted to change my name for a long time. Here was my chance. I would choose a name that could be used in non-grandmotherly situations, too. I had just started storytelling and wanted to develop a persona with a different name from "Irma." I remembered I had recently heard a grandchild call her grandmother "Mimi" and I knew that Puccini had found it a fine name for his Bohemian heroine. Daughter-in-law liked it, and the decision was made. 


     And that's how one of the biggest April fools made a wise decision, because "Mimi" fits me and has served me well both as a grandmother and a storyteller.

Irma Diederich performing a monolog (storytelling) in high school.

"Irma" performing a monolog (storytelling)in high school.