He's Just Joe

The term Grandpa Joe for my paternal grandfather came about as a compromise familiar. You can read about that here: Mom and Joe. Basically, Joe wanted his grandkids to call him Joe exactly as he taught his own children to call him by his name. When he confronted me Mom about it, seeing as me older brother and I are his oldest grandchildren, she'd have none of it. Grandpas were grandpa or pawpaw or poppop or grandpappy or something like that. The compromise became Grandpa Joe.

I get me Mom's point. I do believe that elder family members should be addressed by a traditional family moniker of some sort. Grandpa, Nana, Aunt, Uncle, as the case may be. Even people we just met ought to be called by some title, Mister, Missus, Ms, Sir, Ma'am, something, until we are familiar enough with them to call them by first names (or instructed to by the person in question). It's a respect we take too lightly in today's world.

However, I kind of understand Joe's wishes too. If he's okay with Joe, even from his progeny and their offspring, I don't see anything wrong with it. It's one of the reasons I consciously call him Joe many times in my blogs. It's what he wanted. As no real evil is involved, what's to debate?

So why did he want to be Joe rather than dad or pop or what have you? I really don't know. He simply preferred it that way, I guess, for whatever psychological reason. I never really questioned it. And the older I get, the less he's Grandpa Joe to me and more just Joe. That's simply who he was.

Mal and Mae

Clarence Malachi Hutchins was me Grandpaw Hutchins. He was called Mal by me Grandmaw Hutchins, whom he called Mae, her middle name. You need to know that. Don't worry, there won't be a test. You just need to know.

One day as Mom and I were, she asked what we were shopping for. I told her coffee, among a few other things.

She brightened up as she told a story from her childhood. "Oh, Daddy used to give us kids coffee all the time, and it bothered Mom," my mother was explaining. 

She continued, "Mom used to yell, Mal, you can't be givin' them young 'uns coffee!"

"It ain't gonna hurt 'em, Mae, he'd answer quietly every time, a little smile on his face," Mom finished. 

"I still hear her say that. I still see him smiling."

"I think he did it just to tease her, but I think Mom liked it just the same," Mom ended with a wistful grin.

Okay, not much of a story. But it was nice to hear Mom talk about her parents and her childhood.

Mom Knows All

Mothers know everything. The old eyes in the back of the head? Moms. They have them. They even have an uncommon foresight which isn't always appreciated.

Me Mom passed away, sadly, in 2022. To me brother Phil came the task of clearing our her things. Oh, we all helped to one degree or another, but the bulk of the job fell on his shoulders. Even Mom seemed to anticipate that.

One day as he was sorting out stuff he picked up something, I don't remember what, and was just about to let it fall into the trash can. Yet a slip of paper caught his eye. Taking it out from its center in the object, it turns out that it was a note from Mom: "Phil, don't throw this away without giving the other kids a chance to see if they want it. Mom" 

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at that. But Mom, she knew he would toss it and didn't want that without a chance to see if it might be valuable to one of his siblings. I'm going to have to ask him what it was, and if one of us took it. 

Urban Sightseeing

I have lived in the Woodbridge district of Detroit for well nigh on 65 years now.  It's a nice place to live. I enjoy my morning walks among the old houses.

I can't tell you how many nearby houses I would love to get a look inside. The styles of architecture (don't ask what the specific styles are called; I only know that different houses look different) are fascinating. There are squarish brick structures and clapboard homes, and thin ones and wide ones and ones with turrets. One wonders what imagination developed some of the sizes and variations on homes found in the old neighborhood. 

That thought this morning jogged my memory into the times, three I believe, where me Grandpa Joe and I went exploring old houses. He'd see an older and clearly abandoned home and half bark, "C'mon, boy" to me and we'd go check it out. I doubt me Mom would have approved.

It was keen though to see the insides and how they were laid out. Then, too, you could tell what rooms and shelves and whatnot had been cobbled in, that were not part of how the original interior had been set up. But I think the keenest thing was being in there with me Grandpa Joe, him just being a bit of a kid himself with a kid in tow.

I think he was a bit of a kid, honestly. And I mean that in a kind way. Yeah, he was ornery and demanding and gruff and arbitrary. But he was fascinated with the world around him. What was where, what was what, that sort of thing. Creation, if I may risk going way out on a limb, interested the man. That made for a few quiet and calm adventures between me and him as the days went on.

 

Bioengineered Granola

One day as I sat with me Mom at her kitchen table, me brother Ed came in with a box of granola bars. They kept granola bars on hand because Mom had taken a liking to them, and the doctor said to let her eat want she wants so long as she's eating. Granola bars aren't bad for you anyway, right?

Me brother said this new brand he found was very, very good. "Here: try one," Ed tells me, and I do. They were very good, excellent really, especially the apple spice for what that's worth. But as I was too lazy to get my cell phone out of my pocket to do something, uh, substantial while I ate, I began reading the wrapper which the granola bar came in.

That one granola bar, all one inch by three inches by 3/8 of an inch thick, had forty-four, count 'em, 44 ingredients. They ran the gamut from the unpronounceable super long, vaguely Latin word to the simple and almost expected 'salt'. But at the end of the line, set off to itself in its own paragraph, I was informed that the bar 'contains a bioengineered food ingredient'.

I don't really care about that as such. Bioengineering doesn't bother me per se; we've been modifying our foodstuffs in many ways, shapes, and forms for all of human history. What perplexed and upset me was that in all the rambling quasi-nonsense about the forty-four ingredients, they couldn't take a minute to tell me which one was in fact bioengineered.

I mean, come on, now. If it's important enough to put on a package that something has been altered in a presumably questionable manner, how is it not importan to tell me exactly which item was such an offense against God and man? There's a veritable litany of ingredients, foreign and domestic, all crammed onto the back of the wrapper like an eleventh grader trying to cheat on a history test, yet you won't say which one was genetically modified? I don't get that at all.

Coffee Tales

We Cosgriffs, at least us Detroit and Illinois Cosgriffs, love our coffee. I actually get the urge double, seeing as me Grandpa Hutchins, me Mom's Dad, loved his coffee too. Anyway, family lore, and by family lore I mean that both me Pops and me Grandpa Joe insist it is true, holds the following tale.

When me Pops was about 5, Joe took him along on a train ride to visit family in Illinois. In Chicago I believe, they had to switch trains. There was a layover of a couple hours, so Joe takes his eldest into a diner at the station to mark the time and grab a bite.

The waitress approached right after they had grabbed a table. Setting down menus, she followed with the typical, "Can I start you boys off with something?"

"Two coffees, one black, one half and half," Joe responds.

As Joe tells it, me very young Pops looks up at him and asks innocently, "Joe, you gonna drink that coffee with cream?"

"Two black coffees," me Grandpa corrected himself to the waitress.

That's knowing how you like your coffee, folks.

Dad's Birthday

Dad would have been 89 today. I sure didn't think we'd lose him at 77, especially as his dad, me Grandpa Joe, did every health thing completely wrong, indeed almost obstinately, spectacularly wrong, yet missed 86 by just two days. I almost believe Joe would still be alive today somehow if he'd have taken even modest care of himself. If anyone could have willed himself to 120, it was Joe.

The thing is, I have to feel as though me Pops was given twenty more years. He had stage 4 cancer at 57, and the treatment the doctors employed on him was so new he was told that an identical diagnosis five years earlier would have led to, 'Here's some morphine, Mr. Cosgriff, we'll make you as comfortable as we can these next few months'.  Dad fought the cancer too, fought it hard, had vowed on Day One that he'd beat it. By the grace of God, he did. If I ever face such odds, I hope I can find his courage.

We don't appreciate the world we live in as much as we should. Something like with Dad, Mom had a pacemaker installed in 2014 because her heart started stopping. Started stopping? What an odd turn of phrase. But to the point: she lived until 2022, just about 8 more years on the dot in fact, because of technology, of improvements in medicine. In 1914, one day later that year her heart would have simply stopped and never restarted. 

It's easy to be melancholy; I'm fighting it right now. But isn't sadness looking too hard at the wrong side of the ledger? Life itself is a gift, indeed the greatest gift. Twenty Eight more years with my parents? This isn't such a bad old world we live in.

Toddlers Being Heard

One fine summer day a few years ago a neighbor woman stopped by me Mom's house as she, me self, and me brother Phil sat on the porch. It was a nice, friendly visit. I'll call her Mrs. Cloyce just to give her a name; she had her toddler son in tow.

"We're just coming back from his first protest!" Mrs. Cloyce was explaining in great excitement. "I was so happy to have this experience with him. I hope he'll remember it the rest of his life." She went on to coo and ahh and gush over the event as if the child had just said Mama or Dada the first time or had taken his first steps. In her opinion apparently this was a great thing for the boy. She sure was making that big a deal out of it.

Okay, fine, I guess. We all expose our children to what we think important, even early on. Yet the best observation of the whole thing came after Mrs. Cloyce and her son had left to go home. "So that's the trouble with our world," me brother Phil remarked when they were out of earshot, "The lack of a social consciousness on the part of our nation's two-year-olds."

I personally believe it a rather apt interpretation.

Mom Playing Cards

I know this is a retread (the original post is dated 2017) but I like it and I'm running it again.

When we watch others playing games, it's kind of hard not to at least want to tell them what to do. Even when they're playing solitaire.

Klondike solitaire is the choice among my family. Grandpa Joe played it often; I remember fondly watching him run through a game as we sat in silence at his kitchen table. Pops played it a lot too, sitting at our kitchen table contentedly reshuffling actual decks of cards for each new game, unlike lazy players such as myself who play on the computer and reshuffle at the touch of a key. My 82 year old mother never played it that I know until Dad passed. Now she plays it all the time, I think because it connects her to him. But it's also good intellectual exercise, which is itself a good thing too.

I was visiting her the other day. We were at that same kitchen table where Pops played, and Mom was occupied playing Klondike even as we talked. And she had this four of diamonds which she could play on a five of clubs. Only she wasn't playing it. 'You could play that 4 onto that 5', I thought, but didn't say it out loud.

We went on talking about whatever. She kept on going through her draw cards yet doing nothing with that four of diamonds. Still I thought to myself, ever more insistently, you can play that red four onto that black five. Still also I remained silent.

The conversation went on. The four continued to sit untouched. The thought, 'Come on Ma, play the stupid four' repeated itself over and over in my head. Yet I still said nothing aloud, despite how increasingly anxious I was becoming.

Minutes passed by as we went on conversing. Finally she stopped, looked up at me over the top of her glasses and asked, "Do you want to me play that red four on that black five?"

"Yes, dear Lord, please. Play that four!" I responded emphatically.

"I knew it was there. We were just talking and I kept forgetting it."

I don't believe that for a minute. She sensed I was getting antsy and was driving that feeling along. Moms.

The Quiet Voice

Saturdays, when I'm in town, I take me Mom to Mass at 4 O'Clock. One of my uncles used to tease us that we weren't Catholics, we were Seventh Day Adventists as we went to Church on Saturday. I still get a good chuckle out of that. He was a good man; it was all in good fun. And imagine that: people who can joke and take a joke even about something as important as their religion. What a concept.

In the Catholic Mass, at one point the congregation says the Our Father. I first noticed several weeks ago Mom's voice when she recites it. It's a small, quiet voice, yet to me it's become the loudest voice in Church. You see, she forgets; she forgets easily. And she's slowing down, gradually becoming weaker so that she more often sits when we're normally standing during Mass. I just let her. God understands.

But at the Our Father she never fails to stand and say the prayer with the rest of us. Her little voice stands out, though. And God hears.

Two Years

Mom has been gone two years, almost to the minute as I type. As a matter of fact, almost to the minute that the paramedics apologized that there was nothing they could do. You want to know an image you can't forget? Watching from the next room as EMTs are doing chest compressions and working a large bladder to force air into your Mother's lungs, trying to get her breathing and restart her heart. It's indelible.

We should always pray, and I do for her. I trust in God for her happiness, but there's no real way of knowing her place right now. So pray. It can't hurt, and can help more than we imagine. She will in turn pray for us.

I love you, Mom. Godspeed. And, you know, it kinda gives me another Sunday with you this year.

Making the Grade, Maybe?

I remember a time, I think it was third grade but after yea many years I don't really know, that I got a bad grade on a school assignment. It was the first of many I assure you. But at the time when you received a grade so very bad as whatever that one was, the paper had to be taken home to be seen by a parent, who would sign that they had seen it and you would return it to teacher.

When back at home on the afternoon where I received The Grade, I showed the paper to Mom. She read it, and then slid it back to me across the kitchen table. "Show this to your father tonight," she instructed.

Those were not words young Marty cared to hear. I am ashamed to admit that by nine or ten years old I wasn't as afraid of me Mom's wrath as I ought to have been. Oh, she could still bring it. I had a healthy respect for her anger. But Dad's anger was simply on the next level. Hell, when I was 50 and the old man was upset, I was intimidated. See, Dad didn't get mad often so that when he did, you knew it was righteous.

I dreaded showing that paper to me Pops. But evening came and he was sitting at his desk, and I decided to get it over with. "Mom says I got to show you this," I said meekly, handing the damning evidence over to him. 

Pops sat down the invoice he had been studying and read over that rancid assignment. Then he signed it and handed it back. "Do better next time,"  he instructed, with the barest glance at me before returning to his work.

The clouds parted and the Angelic choirs sang. That wasn't bad at all. I'm sure it wasn't anywhere near the response me Mom expected or desired. But she wasn't nearby and I was more than willing to leave things be. I never told her, and I doubt Pops did either. It likely was out of his mind in 30 seconds.

I don't know why he wasn't angrier. Maybe he was too caught up in his paperwork. Maybe my childhood imagination had run too rampant. Maybe he just didn't feel one botched job was all that bad in the grand scheme of things. But I was thanking my lucky stars that night. And it was awhile before my next poor grade.

Mom's Turn

We know all about Dad jokes, right? As a dad, I've proudly and defiantly told my share. But what about Moms? Why don't Mom jokes get their day? Well, let's rectify that. Here's a Mom joke, from me very own Mom.

Mom suffered with diabetes the last twenty or so years of her life, but that didn't get her down. When declining a sugary treat of whatever kind she would explain, "No, thank you. I'm already so sweet I have to take pills for it."

Right on, Mom!

Stickler For Detail

I did have to chastise Mom once. Mildly.

A few years back someone gave her a bunch of small, magnetic voice balloons. They looked exactly like what you see in a comic strip when the characters spoke: a cloud of sorts floating above their heads containing what they were saying. These held short sayings along the lines of "I Love You" "That's cool" and such on each one. Mom used the stickers to hold things like birthday cards and what not up on her metal kitchen cabinet doors.

Absently mindedly checking them out as I visited one day, I saw that the one she used on a holy card with Joseph and Mary, Jesus' mother and earthly father, said, "Go away!"

"Mom!" I teased her when I saw it. "Look what you have Mary saying!"

She got up from her chair and walked over to the cabinet. Putting her hand over her mouth to cover an embarrassed smile (or was it a teenage smirk?) she said, "Oh my. I'll have to change that!" 

Wholly inadvertent, but funny just the same.

He'll Help Anybody

We Catholics know that when you can't find something you pray to St. Anthony for help. I did that just yesterday in fact and promptly found what I had misplaced. It truly works.

Several years ago one my aunts, a sister of me Mom's (that's typical of how someone becomes your aunt) lost something important. Mom's side of the family is overwhelmingly Protestant whereas Mom converted to Catholicism after she married me Pops. That's important to know only because you won't appreciate the story otherwise.

Mom suggested her sister pray to St. Anthony. In fact my aunt's exact prayer was, "St. Anthony, I don't know you but my sister does. Please help me find what I'm looking for." Lo and behold, she found it in the next few minutes.

Few things are more powerful than sincere prayer, eh? It knows no denomination.

Mom at 90

Mom would have been 90 today. I'm still not sure whether I've actually come to grips with it or not. It's been almost a year and a half, September 22, 2022, since she passed.

I'm heading out to the cemetery before work to say a few prayers. It reminds me of a cold winter Sunday a few years back where she wanted to stop and see Dad. After a few minutes of quiet contemplation she said out loud, "I love you, Bill, but I have to go. It's cold!"

I'm sure he understood. I'll come back by when its warmer myself Mom.

One Year

Mom has been gone a year today. It went a damned lot quicker than the first without Dad.

You figure you love each parent roughly equally, right? But the grief is different. I don't know why.

Maybe because she went so fast and so suddenly, I'm still shocked even after this much time. 

I haven't lost it over Mom yet. That bothers me. I remember a day in Hessel where I came completely unglued thinking about Dad being gone. Every 'first' without him I was on edge. With Mom, it was more like being in constant disbelief. I'm still stunned.

Life is nothing if not ironic, eh? I dreamed for several years of being on the road all the time with me Pops for work as he would grow into his eighties. I ended up spending more time on the road with Mom, on Sundays but other days, as it were. I actually smile at that thought. Perhaps I needed to appreciate her more. Mysterious ways.

Or not so mysterious. I love you, Mom. Be at peace.

Last Sale

Mom used to have regular yard sales. When I was a preteen and through high school, she would have two or three a year. With seven kids I imagine it was more necessary than I appreciated back then. But she seemed to enjoy them too.

I didn't. I didn't like helping to make the signs, nor going around hanging them on light poles through the neighborhood. I didn't care to put the stuff out or put it back afterwards. And I was certainly too much of a youngster to have any interest in dealing with the people who came by. Yard sales just weren't for me. But I did my part because, well, a son is supposed to help his Mom. Even if he's a tad surly about it.

This past Labor Day was our neighborhood wide yard sale, on a Sunday for whatever reason. My brothers decided to participate, and I helped them a little. At one point, standing to the side and seeing various knick knacks and furniture of Mom's sitting across the front yard of her house, it hit me that that would be the last yard sale there. And I thought, damn. Just, damn.

Phil and Mom

I wasn't the only one who took Mom for long drives. Me brother Phil did the most often, truth be told.

He recalls that Mom had her little sayings, catchphrases which would come up while they were tooling about.

There was one regular phrase whenever someone would speed past them on the freeway. Phil would be doing maybe five miles over the limit when a car would shoot by clearly way faster than the posted speeds. "Shoulda left earlier," Mom would always remark.

Indeed.

Mother's Day 2023

The other day I took the last coffee pod from a box of 80 and, for whatever reason, it popped into my head that Mom was with me when I bought those pods last August. I sighed heavily. Strange how something as mundane as wanting a cup of coffee can trigger such a reaction.

Now, don't feel too bad for me, as I don't really mean to create melancholy. Yes, there was a sadness when it happened just as there is now as I type. Yet it was and is followed by a kind of contentment. 

I was fortunate to have had the last several years of Sundays to ride her around, seeing the countryside, cruising through old neighborhoods, eating cheeseburgers, and even buying coffee. We owe our parents that respect. I was glad to have the chance, and there were many great rides and reminiscent talks along the way. Whatever else I do today, I think I'm having a cheeseburger for lunch, and maybe buy more coffee pods.

Happy Mother's Day Mom.