Sometimes I look at the
totality, so far, of my life and it seems that I have lived several lives.
My childhood with my mother
and father and 4 siblings up until the day my father died of a stroke at age
54. We camped in Michigan’s upper
peninsula every summer for 3 to 4 weeks.
Sometimes we split that time between 2 campgrounds, and sometimes we
just stayed at one the whole time. Of
course, before we got to the campground every year, we had to stop at Mareth’s
farm in Coleman, WI to pick up the camper.
That’s where we had to store it
year ‘round, as we didn’t have a garage, or parking slab, or even a big enough
yard.
Mareth’s farm held infinite
adventures for us city kids. We got to
milk cows, feed chickens, dig potatoes, and pick blackberries. Mrs. Mareth would get the wood fired stove
started early, while Mr. Mareth milked the cows by hand, many times with help
from my older siblings. Mrs. Mareth cooked the most wonderful breakfasts for
us, with homemade bread and fresh eggs, but what I remember most of all, were
the blackberries she put up in canning jars.
She would bring them up from the root cellar, and dish them out into
small bowls. They were dark, and surrounded
by their sweetened juice. Then she would
pour fresh cream over them. It was probably the best thing I’ve ever eaten in
my life.
My father died when I was
13. We stopped going camping. We stopped taking vacations altogether. It seemed like life had become dreary, and
well, lifeless. My mother still worked
for the county, and when she took her vacation days, she stayed at home. My father had been the social parent; the
planner, the doer, the fun lover. A few
of us inherited some of his traits, but we were too young to realize it. My mother was practical, and together they
made a good team, but without him, there were no more Sunday picnics, and no more
vacations.
When I was 20, I married a
man from El Salvador, Central America.
We met at a college party, and it truly was love at first site. This began a chapter of my life, which in
comparison to my friends at the time, was quite adventurous. I married Jose and we moved from my home in
Milwaukee, to Monterrey, Mexico. My outlook at this move was that it would be a
great adventure, and I was not disappointed.
