Remembering Marie

No pictures today.  I just want to remember a special person.  I only met Marie a few years ago.  Her life had been reduced to a few possessions and a shared room in an adult care home.  I was there because I had been assigned.  I will admit that my first response at receiving my assignment was reluctance.  It seems that I have often had an elderly sister on my visiting teaching route.  Often it has been an elderly sister to whom I become a attached and then they pass away.  I find my self missing them.  I miss Rachel, Roma, Elise, and now Marie 

Her few possesions represented love.  The flowers, the pictures, the cards - she loved to see them.  It meant someone loved her and she loved them. She would often write down the names of people who came to see her.  She wanted to remember their kindness to her.    She would tell me with a joyful heart about her visitors.  When she couldn't remember who it was she could look it up and then we had mutual friends.

She knew how to be so positive.   I met her shortly after her husband passed away and she often talked about how wonderful it was that she had been able to see him again.  They had been separated by the needs of aging bodies. His kids brought him and her kids brought her to a meeting place, some town in the mountains, and she was so happy to have seen him again.  She remembered the good times and didn't dwell on the separation.


She did sometimes feel useless and frustrated in her situation.  Her mind was still sharp but her hands were crippled by arthritis so she was in this care home.  But she was not useless.  One of her roommates was a little disoriented to be in a care facilty and would wander around.  Marie gave her a small shawl that had been given to her.  She wanted her to feel loved and more comfortable. She watched for ways to make life easier for others in the facilty.  I occasionally found myself there at lunch time and she was always helping someone open their napkin or peel a lid off of something or ask for something they needed.  She soothed the spirits of a rather agitated resident more than once. 

I took her to the dentist a couple of times and she acted like it was a miracle that someone could do that.  We went for a drive one autumn to get her out.  She remembered that day with gratitude, not just once, but many times.  She was good at being grateful for the smallest thing.  I was very touched at Christmas time.  I had been at home putting up the Christmas tree for our household with it's trimmings filled with memories and then stopped to see her.  She was delighted that the home was putting up a tree with a few ornaments.  None of those ornaments were memory filled for her, but she could rejoice in the season without regretting the past.

She gave when she had so little to give.  She gave appreciation, kindness, encouragement, love and chocolates.  She had her children keep her supplied with chocolates so that she had something to offer in thanks to the caregivers that helped her in and out of bed and pushed her wheelchair and checked her pulse.  I would visit and she would offer a chocolate.  I would decline and say, "I'm really fine and don't need anything"  She would reply, "well, I want one.  So you have to have one with me."  We would eat a chocolate together and tell stories.  She could always tell when I was worried about something.  She gave me a listening heart.

She would tell me stories about her family.  Stories about rattlesnakes and moving across the country and lush plants by the doorstep that turned out to be illegal.  

Marie was excited to give something she had painted in the ceramics room to her daughter-in-law.  She knew that it was not to the standard she would have had for herself when she was younger and painting lovely watercolors.  She accepted that her hands couldn't do what they had once done.  But she was excited to give something that represented not her hands, but her heart.

She didn't have a home of her own anymore, but she welcomed me into her  beautiful heart furnished with a focus on the positive, loving kindness, thoughtfulness and gratitude.  It was a privilege to know Marie. 

The Newly Weds

We have had two pairs of newlyweds in this family this year.  We love it!  Our sons have been blessed with good women to be their companions in life and eternity.
In April we had Mike and Monica marry in Manti.  Their photographer took much better pictures of them than we took.  It was a cold day especially for the end of April.  There was snow!

Our second set of newlyweds got married on a windy 60 degree day in Dallas in December.  Go figure.

It was great to have the whole family together.  I appreciate everyone's travel and energy.  I know a couple people didn't feel to great and would have most liked to be in their own beds. 

There we all are, but we should have found a better place for DER to stand.  It is sort of like where's Waldo.
It was a good day also to celebrate the 4th anniversary of our other married couple.

The swamp drive

 Our swamp tour got rained out so we took a swamp drive where one snowy egret braved the rain so we could see it.

the weather outside was....

.... not what we hoped for, but the kids were so delightful!  And the food was pretty good too.  We ate out, missed the live music that was supposed to be at the restaurant, oh well... But Katie made yummmy blackbean and sweet potato burritos.  Monica made quiche and I got the easy ham for Christmas day.

We went to a living history museum nearby called Vermillionville.  Vermillionville is situated on the Vermillion Bayou and features plants and natural history as well as the craftsman and building styles of Louisiana settlement.

 These are the "knees" of the cypress trees that grow along the waterways.


A certain little boy thought the tornado model was worth chasing.

                                                         

A certain little girl loved the natural history hands on table with her uncle Seth.

 This is the Spanish moss that hangs from the trees.  It is soaked for a few weeks to dissolve the outer layer.  What is left is called bousillage.  It is mixed with clay and hung over rough lathe to build the homes.  It then has thermal mass and is cool in the hot weather and warmer in the cold weather.  The next photo is of a bale of bousillage (boo see auge)

The sticks poking out of the chimney are so the chimney can be pulled off the wall in case of a chimney fire.  The chimney is bousillage and so is the house.  The house has siding.  I wonder if the siding is Oak or sweet gum or cypress?  All of those are large timber trees that seem native to the area.

I enjoyed the textile area.  The warping frame was about as big as one of the walls of a bedroom in this house.  They were able to warp about 100 yards on that frame.  They had cotton of various colors

 The loom was impressive.  It was roughly made overall, but smooth where it needed to be smooth.  The reed was most impressive to me.  The reed is the part of the loom that space the warp yards and keeps them lined up.  It was made with small strips of cane threaded on the support structure and spaced by winding the same thread around the support.  It was amazingly accurate.

 T tasted the cotton.

His sister liked spinning the wheel.











It was fun to be somewhere new while everything was decorated for Christmas.  This little vignette was in the school house.

 French was outlawed in public schools until 1968.  Yet is survives in families and ...

 This fiddle player (in his nineties) had a nice soft French voice.

 Some building details are shown in the above picture and the next several pictures.  Homes are built up about 18 inches above the ground. 

 Doors were almost all double doors like this.

 The front porches were broad and roofed

 a water tank

 a shutter holder

 Don't know why they built the roof like this.  I loved the soft blue, green and red paints

Many homes had exterior stairs from the porch on the back to the upper sleeping rooms.  A way of providing for travelers and still having privacy I think.

 This is a close up of the door hardware.
 
The last pictures of Vermillionville illustrate ways of living not common today.

 Mosquito netting and trundle beds

 hand dipped  candles

An inspiring era

We traveled to and from Dallas the long way.  So the "space men" in our family could gawk at a Saturn Rocket in Houston.  Worth the trip perhaps for those of us who grew up in the space era.  For whom the "space race" might have inspired career choices.



It was also a good chance to play with the capabilities of the new zoom lens.
I won't be able to tell you much about the pictures but the zoom gets close pictures of things that were really too far away for my eyes to see this well.  Enhanced eyesight!