Notes from the Lilypad

My sister called last Wednesday afternoon. She was in the Newark Airport trying to get home. There seemed to be a weather related, air traffic controller problem and her flight was not leaving until 9 PM. The Southwest agent had suggested a flight to St Louis or Chicago. She would sit up all night in either airport waiting for a flight to Kansas City Thursday 6 AM. She wanted to know if I was available for an impromptu 17.5 hour layover. The plan included a flight to Chicago that evening with a Thursday 4 PM flight to KC. Sam’s mom agreed to change Sam Day to Friday.  We were set for a sister holiday. My role was to do the pick-up and drop-off at Midway.

Thursday, we ate breakfast at Leslie’s favorite place, Colonial Café, server of her favorite, the Morning Glory Muffin. Our server shared the secret recipe with us, Karp’s frozen Glorious Muffin mix, distributed by Fox River Foods. After breakfast we loaded up the luggage and went on a reconnaissance mission to find Emerson Creek Pottery Tea Room near Oswego. The pottery store opens May 4. The Tea Room opens May 7. I am thinking a May visit with friends is on my horizon.

Our next stop was The Growing Place, my favorite plant and garden center, located in the southeast section of Aurora. We wondered through the paths, looking at the cold hardy plants and garden accessories on display. The farmhouse garden shop is filled with a wide array of garden décor.  Window shopping was very relaxing as we shared our summer garden dreams.

The Antique Mall on the parameter of the Fairfield Mall at Fox Valley has been on my list of places to visit for years. We stopped by to check them out. We wondered the aisles looking at treasures from yesteryears. We reminisced about this piece of pottery or that piece of furniture. There was a brand new dealer* putting her items on display. We exchanged pleasantries and I glanced at a doll standing at the back of her booth.  It was an Ideal Saucy Walker 32” doll. Other than the sandy blonde hair she looked exactly like the Christmas doll Santa Claus brought me Christmas 1959. My doll was a brunette.

My sister and I shared a moment with the dealer. The story of my wanting that doll more than anything. She was on the “doll wall” at the old Sears and Roebuck Co. department store located on Kansas Avenue in downtown Topeka, KS. On Christmas morning after all of the presents were opened, I watched my siblings playing with their toys. There was not a doll in sight. My dad asked me to look behind the window curtain beside the Christmas tree. There was my doll. I named her Pamela Ann, after my Aunt Mary’s little girl.

My grandparents were coming over so Mom sent us out to the kitchen with Dad to eat breakfast. She was straightening up the living room when we heard her call out, “I told you to go out to the kitchen and eat breakfast,” My dad looked at us and counted out six children. “Betty,” he called, “they are all here.” Mom showed up at the kitchen door laughing, “I thought the doll was one of the kids.”

Christmas 1961, is when Leslie received her doll. A Bride Doll, she was a little shorter than mine and had a more adult figure. She, too, was located on the Sears and Roebuck, Co, “doll wall”. Every time we went in to the store that fall, there she was. Sometime in December the doll disappeared from the wall. I put my arm around my sister as she suffered through the disappointment. I do not know why we were both surprised to see that Bride Doll under the Christmas tree that year. Santa always did a really good job at our house.

And my sister has found the Morning Glory muffin recipe, so there might be MG muffins next time I am in Kansas……..

*1010 Treasures, Suzi Highberg, Proprietress, 40548 Fox Valley Center Dr., Aurora, IL www.1010treasures.com

©2011 Susan Kendall.  All rights reserved

My sister Deb lived life with passion. She tackled most any task or desire with a single-minded determination second to none. This trait led her down some interesting rabbit trails. Her favorite drink was Sunkist Diet Lemonade*.  There was not a retail location for this beverage in the area surrounding the Kentucky town where they lived.

My brother-in-law would drive to a retail location south of St. Louis and pick up cases of the previously special ordered stuff.  We considered this to be above and beyond the call of husband duty and were suitably impressed with his willingness to grant Deb’s wish for this drink several times a year.

Remember the gas crisis? Not this one, the previous one, several years ago.  My brother-in-law decided the price of gas was too high and the SDL would be staying in Missouri. My intrepid sister decided to see if she could re-produce the beverage in her kitchen.  Deb could not get the ingredients exactly right. Not one to give into such mundane obstacles, Deb called Cadbury Scweppes and explained her inability to drive to Missouri at this time and how she could not seem to get the ingredients exactly right. The person on the phone responded by exclaiming, “we have heard about you!”

The Cadbury Schweppes representative on the phone expressed the sentiments of many persons who came and went in Deb’s life.  Whether singing for weddings, church events, taking care of children, planning family birthday parties, preparing holiday meals, shopping, mothering her sons and first and second generations of nieces and nephews, hosting servicemen’s wives, or whatever she chose to do, Deb was gung ho all the way.

Her sisters think of her whenever we are together.  We include her in our sister gatherings by joking about her place at our table. Sometimes, we often reflect upon “what Deb might have to say” about the situation or what we are doing at the time.

If you ever have the opportunity to drink a Sunkist Diet Lemonade, lift your glass to my sister Deb, a true original………

*Sunkist Diet Lemonade is a licensed product manufactured and marketed by Cadbury Schweppes. To find retailers that sell Sunkist soda products, contact Cadbury Schweppes at (800) 696-5891 or on the web at www.sunkistsoda.com.

 ©2011 Susan Kendall.  All rights reserved

Did anyone notice my hiatus from writing has coincided with the Oprah show hiatus? What can I say? We needed the time off. Having my phone stolen, turning 60 festivities, viruses running rampant in my office all signaled yellow for caution. The red light flashed really strong when I wanted to write about my sister Deb.

Debra Jean was born on March 30, 1955. I was four years old. The memory of picking Mom and her up from the hospital is one of my strongest. Jim, Leslie and I were so excited; we were bouncing in the back seat. Today, we would probably not even have been hanging out in front of Stormont-Vail Hospital, Topeka, Kansas, anxiously waiting for the nurse to wheel our mother out holding her precious bundle. The car seats would have taken up all of the room!

Deb lived her life large. She could sing and played the violin in elementary school. One time she told the music teacher I would play the piano accompaniment for a violin trio. To say I was filled with dismay is an understatement. We brushed through well enough.

My second sister had a mercurial temperament. She experienced a fair amount of life’s peaks and valleys during her walk. Deb was Daddy’s little girl for six years until Sister Sally was born. Max and Rick were born in between and barely registered a blip on her radar. Sally and Penny were her very own baby dolls.

Deb was the first of us to complete her college degree. She started out in music and spent a semester in Vienna, Austria studying voice.  She came back and switched to nursing. While working as a ward clerk at St. Francis Hospital, Topeka, Kansas, she commuted to Kansas State University for classes. She also volunteered me to sing, with my guitar, for patients. She failed to tell me I was being recorded for the hospital TV channel. We brushed through well enough.

Deb graduated from Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas with a degree in Politcial Science. Her education was definitely eclectic! She was more politically conservative than Leslie and me and would occaasionally mention she was the one with the formal political education.

Deb married in 1985 and went off to Montana where her US Air Force Captain husband was stationed. She looked forward to lots of travel as a military officer’s wife. Their tour of Italy was bittersweet because of the stillborn birth of her first child. She came back to the United States the next year, terrified and pregnant with her second child. Her valiant effort to recover her resiliency was successfull. She and her husband had three boys in a row.

She embraced motherhood and being a wife with all of the energy she had shown as a child. She was plagued with health problems and had several surgeries to try to alleviate some of her genetic back issues.

On December 28, 2008, Deb died in her sleep. She was on medication for bronchitis and was not doing very well. It was Saturday night and not realizing pneumonia had crept into her lungs she went to bed thinking she would go to the doctor the next day.

On Christmas Day 2008, I received a phone call from her. We had a really good chat. I found out later she had talked to all of her siblings at one time or other over that Christmas holiday. She would have appreciated the irony.

Thanks for the memories little sister. Love you, miss you………..

©2011 Susan Kendall.  All rights reserved