I finally got around to unpacking the last of the boxes we had brought from Minnesota when we moved to California three years ago. The box, which had been on a shelf in my garage, contained a variety of objects such as an old tie rack, some metal book ends and a worn catcher’s mitt, all of which could best be classified as miscellaneous junk. At the bottom of the box I found a bowl wrapped in a Friday edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The bowl was yellow, made of plastic and had the name “Ophelia” printed in large red letters on the outside. The inside had numerous scratches and black craze marks. I recognized it immediately as our old cat’s feeding dish, but how it ever got in that box I’ll never know. Looking at the bowl made me feel like Proust studying the tea leaves—it brought back a stream of memories.

I have to admit that I was not a great cat lover, and as even cat aficionados will admit, cats do not go out of their way to be lovable. Moreover, they can’t even bring you your slippers. It was true that Ophelia could show affection, but it was strictly on her terms. At night when I would lay on the floor doing my back exercises and watching “Cheers” reruns, Ophelia would nudge me, demanding to be petted. When I complied, Ophelia would purr loudly and salivate all over me until I finally pushed her away. All other times she ignored me unless I was feeding her.

Ophelia was really a pet for our daughter, Julie, and she came into her life, as a kitten, when Julie was five. Julie would fuss over the cat and Ophelia would sleep with her at night. (My wife, Fran, and I wouldn’t let her anywhere near our bed.) The only problem was that I was the cat’s caretaker, which means that I changed her litter box—a task, I believe, reserved for the most nefarious residents of Hell.

The memory that was the most vivid, however, went back to the year 1999, when Ophelia, a calico with orange, white and black markings, was twenty-one. Calicos live a long time and this made her about one hundred years old in human terms, if I extrapolated the chart in the vet’s office correctly. This was a very ripe age and by that time Ophelia had many of the ills of an old cat (and of an old person, too)—deafness, an overactive thyroid and arthritis.

It reached a point where she started urinating outside of her litter box, eating erratically and sleeping day and night in the family room. Julie, and I, fearing the worst, took her to the vet. I have to say that this was not something I was inclined to do. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, nobody even heard of a veterinarian. If a pet got sick, one left it up to the pet god to take care of the animal and, if there was no divine intervention, one simply got a new pet.

Dr. Thomas, who ran the cat clinic, gave Ophelia a cortisone shot and said that it might help her arthritis and appetite. He also said that we would know in a few days if the shot worked and that, if it did, it would give her about six months more of quality cat life. Her appetite did improve, but everything else deteriorated in about a week. It had become obvious that she was not getting better.

Julie and I began to talk about the next step which the vet had told us would mean having her “put to sleep”. (It’s interesting that we use the euphemism “sleep” for death. The more abstract we make the process; the easier it is for everyone involved to carry it out. Why do we put small animals like cats and dogs to sleep, but destroy horses? Is it easier to kill a horse?)

Julie was very upset about the prospect. She was not sure that she was ready to have Ophelia’s life end. “I’ve had several courses on grief and grief counseling,” Julie, who was now twenty-six and a social worker, said to me, “but I have never experienced it directly. This will be my first time.”

In order to make the prospect somewhat more palatable, I suggested to Julie that we bury Ophelia’s body in our backyard. Julie picked a spot under an evergreen and we tested the ground to see if we could dig a hole in the rocky soil. (I remember Fran observing our activities from the kitchen window and thinking them pretty strange.) Although it looked like the burial could be done with little trouble, Julie was still very conflicted.

Ophelia’s condition continued to deteriorate. Her meow became more of a wheeze and she seemed to have trouble swallowing. It became too much for Julie, and after much more internal conflict, she left me a note (our schedules were such that we did not see one another during the day) to make an appointment with the vet to get the deed done. I spoke to her that evening to make sure that she wanted to go through with it. She told me that she had spent the whole day agonizing over it and that she was going to a wedding in a week and wanted it resolved. She was not sure she wanted to bury the cat since she was afraid the Ophelia would be stiff and deformed after death. I told her that the cat would be put in a box and she would not have to see her.

I called the vet and made the appointment for a Thursday afternoon. Julie asked me to give Ophelia “human” tuna fish that Thursday morning, so she could have a last feast.

When I got up that Thursday and came downstairs, Ophelia was asleep in the family room. She eventually became aware of my presence. She came into the kitchen and greeted me with a few, weak, raspy meows. As I promised Julie, I opened a can of tuna fish and filled her bowl. (Fran was angry later when she found that I had given her the more expensive solid white variety rather than the dark tuna we usually ate.) Ophelia ate some of it and went back to sleep.

I came home around three PM and found a teary-eyed Julie. We didn’t say much. She held Ophelia and we got into the old Buick for the short ride to the vet. She decided not to put Ophelia in the carrier as we usually did, since she did not want to take it home empty.

PICCALILLI

As a bright, curious, four year old, one of my most favorite activities was to dress my dolly, put her (usually none too gently) in my doll carriage, and go visiting. Mother would sit on the front lawn tending to my baby brother, Petey; and I would trundle next door to the Goodales house. The Goodales were one of the founding families of West Boylston and lived in a large, rambling New England style home situated between our house and the cemetery. It was neatly sided with white clapboard and trimmed with forest green shutters. There was a broad screened-in porch along the front of the house where the Goodales would sit on warm summer evenings drinking lemonade or iced tea. Inside, the living room was cool and inviting. The dim light that filtered in gave the dark wood furniture a warm glow. There were stiff brocade chairs with flowered needle point pillows and crocheted doilies on the arms. When I was invited to sit in the living room, I felt very special indeed.
The Goodale family consisted of 2 sisters and a brother. They seemed ancient, but I’m sure they weren’t more than fifty or sixty. One sister was tall, slender, and had a perpetual frown. I don’t remember much about her. Neither do I remember much about Mr Goodale as he was seldom around. But their sister, MY Miss Goodale, was very different. She was pink, round, and warm all over; She wore her grey hair done neatly in a soft bun at the back of her neck; and always welcomed me with a broad smile.

On this particular day, after gaining Mother’s permission, I made my way over to the Goodale’s. My dolly was left lying forlornly in her carriage as I trooped up the back steps. And standing on tip-toes, I reached up and knocked on the heavy green door. Miss Goodale was wearing a bibbed apron over her print dress as she invited me into my favorite room, the kitchen. The kitchen was large and bright, with patterned green linoleum on the floor and shiny white oil-cloth covering the table. It always smelled of the good things that were yet to come. What would it be today?

Now one of the best things about visiting Miss Goodale was her home-made piccalilli. If you have never tasted piccalilli, you have missed one of life’s pleasures. (I have included a recipe for this tasty treat at the end of this narrative.) “Well good morning my dear. (I loved it when she called me “my dear”. It made me feel very grown up.) “Please come in and sit down.” Her voice bubbled with laughter. Obviously Miss Goodale enjoyed my company. “Would you care for a piccalilli sandwich today?” she questioned. “We’ll start with ‘a half’; we wouldn’t want to spoil your dinner.” “Oh, yes please!” I replied with gusto. (I always did have a good appetite.) So Miss Goodale busied herself preparing my tasty treat. First there was the fresh, crusty, white bread which she sliced from a whole loaf. Next she slathered the bread with butter, which was not rationed yet; and finally, heaping teaspoons of the tangy, sweet homemade piccalilli. The sandwich was then cut into quarters and two of them were placed on a blue willow china plate and set in front of me. This delightful treat was served with a Kraft jelly glass full of cool milk. Miss Goodale and I then proceeded to exchange pleasantries. Mostly she asked about my family and how my baby brother was getting along.

Finally, my sandwich consumed and the milk drained, I said in my most grown-up voice, “I think I must go now. Mother and Petey are waiting for me.” And with that, we said our “Goodbyes” and I returned to my family who were waiting for me in our front yard.

Mother’s Piccalilli by Mrs. Rose Lewis
From The First Church of Sterling, Mass. Cookbook, 1951

Chop coarsely:
2 qt. green tomatoes 3 onions
2 qt. ripe tomatoes 3 red sweet peppers
2 bunches celery 3 green sweet peppers
1 large cucumber
Sprinkle all the above ingredients with 2/3 cup of salt and leave and leave 12 hours or more. Drain well and add 3 pints (cider) vinegar, 2 lb. brown sugar, 1 tsp ground mustard, 1 tsp. pepper. Cook one hour. Seal in jars.

BON APPETIT

SUNDAYS by Diane Marcus

Beneath the glass top on my father's desk are pictures
Abbeysinean, Angora, Russian Blue
Domestic, Calico, White Persion and Manx
Siamese and Tabbies, grey stripped and orange.

Every Sunday, after his game of handball
He stopped to buy fresh bagels and hot blueberry muffins
The aroma rose like a genie just released
from its bottle waking me from a deep sleep.

After we ate he always would say
"Mother this breakfast was fit for a king."
Then just like all of his well fed cats
He streched his body on the lounge
and let the warm sun lick
at his pores.

WHAT I LEARNED BY CECILE BETTS



Probably my oldest sister, Anna, who raised me from when I was four years old, influenced me more than any other person. However, my mother-in-law, Ida Betts, also taught me a a lot.

I stopped at King Mountain Lodge every weekend the summer of 1957 because it was 77 miles from Anchorage and the children wanted Cokes and French fries to stave off starvation until we reached Index Lake, twenty miles further up the highway, rowed our boat over to our little cabin with our supplies for the three-day weekend and I could prepare supper.

We did not go to the lake during the winter months. I read in the newspaper that Mrs. Jack Betts of King Mountain Lodge died that winter. The next summer we again made our weekend trips to our cabin at Index Lake with the stop at King Mountain Lodge. The owner and I would talk while we waited for the cook to prepare the French Fries. I noticed a white haired woman usually sat at a table in the bar and Jack mentioned she was his mother.

By July, Jack asked me if he could call me when he came to Anchorage to do his shopping. A divorcee for over four years, I’d only recently dated a few times. We began dating and we married at the beginning of the next summer, May 29, 1959. Before we married, Jack made it clear his Mother would live with us part of each year. I raised no objection. Motherless since I was less than two, I thought it would be great to have a “mother” and my children would have a grandmother for the first time inasmuch as their father and I were both orphans.

Ida, 74 years old when I married Jack, had raised eight children, four girls and four boys. Before Jack’s birth, she experienced six miscarriages and still births, but after Jack, she had no problem with bearing the other seven children. She claimed that she did not ever enjoy the sexual side of marriage and that when she was pregnant her husband did not “bother” her. They were share croppers, planting and harvesting cotton and also kept chickens, pigs, and raised their fruits and vegetables, which Ida canned each season.

They lived in a two room cabin with a separate cabin for the kitchen, a well, which also served to keep milk cans cool and a root cellar. They cured their own hams, after butchering the hogs.

Ida’s husband drank, and he probably was abusive when drunk. Ida did something unusual for that time, she packed up her eight children when Jack was 15 and moved to town. Woman simply did not leave their husbands in that culture and environment no matter how unhappy the marriage. But she did it.

Jack and the two older girls lied about their ages and found work to support the family. They worked in the cotton mill in town for ten cents an hour. During the depression years after the stock market crash in 1927, Jack left home, so there would be one less mouth to feed. He joined the ranks of men who rode the rails and camped out. He traveled to most of the states in this fashion.

But, by the time I met Ida and when she became my mother-in-law, her children were grown, married with families, and she lived with Jack part time in Alaska and in Georgia with a daughter and son-in-law part time.

Slight of build, white haired, with a whim of iron, she usually had a wad of snuff in her mouth and am empty coke can nearby into which she spit the excess snuff juice. .She was illiterate, superstitious, and so bigoted she did not consider negroesos were humans. mShe created many problems for me and the children.. I finally told Jack, “I don’t mind that your mother spies on me and carries stories to you if she would only get them right. I never felt I could refuse to have her live with us because I’d agreed to it before we were married. (That attitude was probably part of what my sister Anna taught me, not to go back on a promise.)

Ida expected the worst of everyone and became so intrusive in our lives I finally said to Jack, “Your mother might just as well be in bed with us. She is everywhere else in our lives.”

It was a relief each year when she returned to spend some time in Georgia. But, one year she did not return to Georgia. She was ill and hospitalized several times. Since she had only a limited income, a pension paid by the Army after her youngest son died in Korea, we paid for her medicines and hospital stays. She liked to keep busy and made beautiful yo-yo bedspreads, one for each of her children. Jack and I purchased the yard goods from Sears Roebuck catalogs, light and dark solid colors, light and dark prints, which we cut for her in circles using a Number 2 can of fruit for the size. She would take a running stitch around the edge of each circle and gather it up and flatten the circle. Then she sewed them together in squares using five circles of one color and four of another color. The completed bedspread had 2,016 circles. As her eyesight failed, I would thread a half dozen needles for her at a time. I helped her lay out the squares so no two squares alike were next to each other.

When she finished all the bedspreads, she sat around moping and sighing. I thought maybe she could make a braided rag rug.

“Granny, do you know how to braid?” I asked.

“No,” she replied, “I don’t know how to do that.”

“Granny, you had four daughters, didn’t you ever braid their hair?”

“Oh, that was plaiting.”

She used the old English word for braiding. I bought the gadgets to fold strips of woolen material which Jack and I cut from garments we bought at rummage sales. I showed Granny how to braid the pieces, but she would call me to join pieces as she worked. Then I showed her how to sew the strips together to make a circular or oval rug. She made several small rugs and even made a runner to order for someone who saw her working on rugs in the Lodge.

Granny finally became too frail to travel back and forth from Georgia. Jack and I visited there in 1969 after we sold the Lodge. We saw all his sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews during the week we visited on our way to Mexico. That was the last time we saw Granny Betts

Looking back, I realize she taught me not to offer unasked for advice and to respect their privacy when I lived with my daughter and son-in-law in California during winter months after placing my husband in a nursing home.She taught me I should not expect to be included in all their plans and how important it was for me to make new friends and find my own activities. Yes, I learned a lot from Granny Betts about what a mother-in-law should not do