The journey across the United States, filled with adventure for children ages seven, six, and four. My father enjoyed stopping at travel markers helping us learn about the history of our wonderful unexplored country.
My mother tells me that we stopped at Mount Rushmore and the birthplace of the prophet, Joseph Smith in Sharon, Vermont, among other places. I have photographs of our visit to the White Mountains once we arrive.
Recently, my mother has been reading with me letters that she wrote to my father’s parents detailing their move. Apparently, our family arrived close to midnight in Dover, New Hampshire at the home of a branch president in the Portsmouth Branch. President and Sister Ernie and Jean Ellsworth welcomed us with open arms. Within days, my parents found a gumdrop green “clapboard cracker box” house, as the newspapers would later term it, with upstairs gabled bedrooms. It had been vacant for a few years. Somewhere, my mom still has the MLS real estate listing of the home. I want to say that they paid $10,000 for it. I heard that my father’s paternal grandparents, as a graduation present, had given them $1,000, which they used to purchase a house full of furniture from a service man departing for an oversea assignment. The morning that they made the decision to purchase the house, my mother had complications with her pregnancy. She entered the hospital and was advised by the doctor that she would likely lose the baby. She would later tell us that he gave her a 50/50 chance. She possibly would be able to protect the healthy birth of this baby with a month of bed rest. (This pregnancy both followed and preceded a series of miscarriages).
Amidst moving into a new home, transferring from a fairly established branch to a very small one, and putting three children into new schools, my mother let her husband, three children, and new neighbors, sisters from two branches help her move in. I love the story about our moving to the Sanford Branch. I have it in a document that she wrote as a history for the branch several years later:
“After nearly 10 years of pursuit, my husband, Glendon Gee, finished graduate school and accepted a contract in Durham, N.H.,
necessitated us packing our three small children, Carma, [7], David, [6] and Laurene [4], and all or our earthly possessions in a 4 x 6 trailer and moving to the opposite side of the country, from Washington State to New Hampshire.
“We planned a sight-seeing, fun-filled, relaxing rest from
the tedium of academics and responsibility, as we had a month from our departure
date after graduation, until Glendon was to begin his contract at UNH (University
of New Hampshire.)
“We wrote ahead to a name secured from our bishop in
Pullman, to the address of the Branch President, Ernest Ellsworth, in
Dover. He had written to assure us that
we would be welcome in the Branch, and described it to us, and also invited us
to come to their home in Dover, when we arrived. A small and unexpected complication added
zest to the journey, when 2 weeks before our departure from Pullman, it was
confirmed that we would be preparing for me to give birth to a child just nine
months hence.
“So, while papa and youngsters larked and skipped and saw
the sights from Mount Rushmore to the birthplace of the Prophet in Sharon, Vermont,
I lived with the unspeakable joy of Morning sickness and its accompanying
sidekick ailment of needing to sleep constantly, and especially between
heaving, as we covered the miles in our Rambler [car], pulling our trailer of
possessions.
“We arrived in Dover in spent fashion at about 11:30 p.m.,
and because we knew no one and had no extra cash from our academic push and our
moving vacation, we called the phone number to the Branch President’s
home. He asked for our location and
drove to direct us through the circles and angles to his home where his wife,
Jean had bedded down the sofas, and welcomed us, total strangers with three appendages,
unconditionally, as guests into their home.
The next morning, in spite of a still erupting stomach on my part, they fed
us a wonderful, warm breakfast and we began to become acquainted with two of
the most generous and loving friends that we have encountered in our, since, thirty
years of marriage together.
“After breakfast, Jean offered to babysit the children while
Ernie took us house hunting. For two
days or three I wandered in a daze, in and out of houses, feeling nauseated and
unbearably tired and pregnant until we miraculously locate d a beautiful cape cod
home in the country meadows of Somersworth, New Hampshire. It was a gumdrop green, so had been vacant
for a couple of years, but was truly the dream of a bride who had been moved
from rental to rental in the pursuit of an academic degree.
“Complications to my pregnancy began the morning that we made the decision to purchase the home and by the next morning, I was hospitalized and told that we would probably lose the baby.
“I lay very still in the cold, lonely hospital, thousands of
miles from family and friends, frightened and very concerned about the threat
that this occurrence had placed on our need to be settled.
“Jean had taken over the care of our 3 small children, and when it was determined that I could go home from the hospital and go to bed for a month in an attempt to secure the pregnancy, the Relief Society Sisters from the Portsmouth Branch, only one of whom I had met, came to our newly acquired home with vacuums and mops and brooms to remove the years of vacancy that the home had known.
“Then the Elders of Israel from the land of Portsmouth, came
to help us move in the contents of our 4x6 trailer and the house full of
furniture we had miraculously acquired from a departing marine sergeant headed
for Korea.
“We found that Zion was indeed in the new land. We loved the people in the Branch. They were
so dedicated and attentive to us, and when the crisis subsided, we learned of
some of the magnitude of service required from their busy lives as they
attended to the infant needs of the Branch of Portsmouth. They cushioned our homesickness and helped us
bridle our fears of the new environment.
Yes, we could survive with the Saints in Portsmouth. We settled in to the routine of driving 15
miles to church, and I learned to brave the traffic circles and busy Boston
bedroom traffic, to get my children to Primary on Tuesday, and myself to R.S.
(Relief Society) on Wednesday, with the help and encouragement of Jean and
other sisters. My baby was poking and
rumbling and reasonably secure and committed to the remaining months in the
womb.
“After 3 settling months, and a fairly predictable, though
hectic routine as member of the Portsmouth Branch, our family was called one
Sunday morning, to a meeting with President Harford to be told of a brand-new
plan that our Heavenly Father had for us.
The mission had drawn some new boundaries that gerrymandered around our
beautiful Somersworth Cape Cod home, and were desiring to add our family to a
tiny branch twenty miles the opposite direction in Sanford, Maine. When we visited there the following Sunday,
my heart despaired, as I realized there was no Primary, no familiarity, and no
friends, and I sat in the car with my three and a half children as Glendon
attended Priesthood meeting, and I wept.
“I wept through the songs that were sung from Sunday School
and fast meeting and my heart said, I could not meet this request from my God
and my Husband and my Church leaders in the Branch I had just learned to love
in Portsmouth.
“But as we were leaving the meeting, a sister I had not
known, put a Relief Society lesson manual in my hand and asked me to contribute
by teaching the Mother Education Lesson at R.S. (Relief Society) the next
week. Only the Lord knew how I loved to
teach, and how that particular lesson, was, of course, my favorite.
“I never got rid of that manual or the responsibility of
that teaching opportunity, during our seven remaining years in N.H. It was just
added upon. A month before the birth of
our child, my Portsmouth Sisters gave me a baby shower and I was called to be Relief
Society President in the little Sanford Branch
“Our contact with the Portsmouth Saints fueled strength and
courage to us as we weathered the struggles of the infant branch in
Sanford. We made many dear friends there
also. In a few years, Glendon was a
called as Branch President in Sanford, and I was Primary President and Cub
Master and Den Leader, and Blazer teacher, and still Mother Education teacher,
and one of the few women who could drive, so also chauffer for Primary and R.S.
for the little Branch.
“We left New England the day before the first meeting was
held in the little chapel we helped the Saints to build in Somersworth. We gained two fine sons and firmer
testimonies of God’s purposes for us, and a love for the dedicated Saints of
New England that will be with us forever.”
 |
He reminds me, even today about my reciting by heart the Christmas story in Luke 2 that I learned in my Christian Day School that I began in the fall of 1966, at age four and a half. I remember the school being outside of town. My teacher was Mrs. Farrington.
I loved Mrs. Farrington. She was truly beautiful to me. I
kept and still have the Nativity book and puzzle she gave us. I
remember the mats on our floor for naps. I remember a fellow kindergartner
named Joel who cried continually. This was hard for me to understand—how I
loved being at school!
(The above are photographs taken during this kindergarten year)
I remember a day when Mrs. Farrington stood in the hallway in front of the restroom, posing herself as a barrier: “You may not pass. What will you say to get past me?”
What did I say?
I said, “Open Sesame!!”
I later learned that Mrs. Farrington was working to teach us
to say “Excuse me.”
I loved kindergarten and I loved my friend, Cynthia Day, who came with me from The Christian Day School to Chandler Elementary to begin first grade with Mrs. Whitehead. My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Whitehead had RED hair. (How did that happen?) Interestingly, another, different, Mrs. Whitehead, in second grade donned white hair, just as her name decried!
When we first moved into the house, I had a room across the hall upstairs from the room of my imaginative older sister. I remember listening outside her door, to hear the stories that she would make up. I particularly remember a special "look at" doll of Maria Von Trapp that she used to entertain herself before sleep. After some time, I remember my parents taking the west room upstairs and Carma and I sharing the east gabled room, which was painted lavender. I think I remember our twin bedspreads matching. My bed was near the north wall, near the painted wall paper, which had a seam right next to a very tempting spot for me to pick and pull the paper. Just to "see" what would happen.
Years later, as a homeowner and grandmother, it was my turn to offer a blind eye and cover over wall paper that modeled a similar curiosity from toddler and grade school grandsons.
In first grade, I remember being invited to go with Mrs. McIntire, or “Mrs. Mac,” a young teacher in charge of an enrichment program where we made plays, among other things. I remember helping to prepare a program to share with our families, and I remember really enjoying in my regular classroom a reading program called SRA, where we could progress at our own rate. I still like the motivation and satisfaction that comes in working at paced, visible progress.
I remember hearing about my sister Carma in second
grade at Chandler Elementary, getting in trouble with a strict
elderly teacher, Miss Farley after Carma and a friend or two threw snowballs
over the elementary school chain link fence. The
consequence: Carma had to write (one hundred times?) “I will not
throw snowballs over the fence.”
I don’t remember if I ever had to “write lines” (what they called this “consequence” …it seems the most frequent was “I will obey.” I remember feeling peace as a child. I remember liking school. I remember red haired George, chasing and kissing me on the playground. (Eeuoooo!) I vaguely remember the impact of getting accidentally kicked by someone on a swing on the Chandler blacktopped playground.
Here is a story about meeting Joann (and our ensuing friendship.)
Finding the Blonde Girl with Red Shoes (Grown Up.)
When I was four years old, my dad accepted a teaching/research position in New England. +-+Copy.jpg)
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When Daddy was called to serve as branch president in a "twig" of a branch with eight children in the Primary (including her three) she bargained in her prayers one summer when we followed Daddy to Connecticut for his summer research position, that if God would send her a friend, she could face going back to New Hampshire.
After a fast and furious drive "out west" to connect with cousins,
,
The first day of school, however, my sister and I came home with something to share. For two years, we had been the only children in our grade school who belonged to our church. That first day of second grade, in Mrs. Whitehead's class, I looked up to find a blonde-haired girl who liked my red shoes and who somehow transmitted a message that we both belonged to the same church. This was breaking news. And my sister had a similar story, only the new friend was a boy named Mike, and he did not notice her shoes.
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| Joann's mom, Tippy, is in the middle (with Mom and Sister Marden on the right--Sister Lemke and Sister Dorothy on the left) After Tippy came, friends rooted and blossomed like flowers. Only somehow they seemed to last much, much longer. |
More from Chandler Elementary school:
Memories about Barbara Brady:
Barbara Brady was extra tall. I am not sure if she had
been held back a year. Other children in the school said unkind things
about Barbara and her siblings. Rather than tap each other and say, you
have “Cooties” (bugs or germs, a not-so nice game) they would say, you have
“Bradies.”
I remember at Christmas time one year (either 1967 or 1968, December of first or second grade for me) my mother invited us to choose a family that might be in need of some things that we could bring to them--extra clothing, toys, or other items. I am unsure about who were the other siblings of Barbara in my brother and sister’s classes. But I do remember that Barbara’s family was chosen. I remember helping to place a very large cardboard (it seems to me that it was the size of an appliance box) on a cold winter night outside a door in front some apartments not far from Main Street (where Joann and her family lived.) I remember being a little disappointed that we did not get to see anyone find or open the box or even know for sure whether or how our chosen family received it. What I do remember is what happened inside my little girl heart. I began to truly care about Barbara. I began to learn that when we make investments in others, something happens that helps us love them.
I have a letter from Shirley to Pearl and Ivin Gee on Halloween, October 31, 1966, which speaks of a meeting and invitation for the family, after
beginning to settle in to the Portsmouth ward, to move their membership records
to the Sanford Branch. This was a difficult prospect for my mother. She
had grown up in the heart of the Church—all her neighbors belonged. Then
she had moved to Ricks College, Rexburg, Idaho and Logan, Utah (Utah State
University.) After this, Pullman, Washington was a well-equipped ward
with amazing support. When our family moved to a place very sparse in
members of the Church, having an invitation to scale further down was a
challenge.
What I remember is our first visit to the Sanford telephone office. Dad went in to attend priesthood and Mom stayed with us in the car and read with us Little Women. I don’t know if seeing Mom cry is an actual memory, or a memory of the story. I do remember being in the car. I remember the comfort of the story. I remember mom being sad. I was turning five.
Mom speaks of going with us inside the telephone office. There was no Primary. Someone handed her a manual to teach Primary and Relief Society to teach the next lesson. Mom was invited to teach the literature lesson, which she loved. I believe it was taught out of some books prepared by Brigham Young University professors in several volumes called Out of the Best Books, which I believe I still have.
“So, I had two jobs and eventually I got to be the Relief
society president. That was the first time we went to church in
Sanford. I didn’t want to go in. I sat in the car crying. I
did not want to go into a strange place and tell them I was pregnant.”
Laurene: I believe it was there that we met for Primary in
the hallway next to the coats.
Shirley: They asked me, “Would you teach Relief Society next
Sunday?” And I began to teach. And they needed someone to take care
of the children in the nursery. So, we had the nursery in the bathroom
and the hallway.
Shirley: I got to teach the literature lesson, and you
know what a joy that would be, because I had been trained to teach
literature. It was delightful. Then they had a special class once a month
that you taught favorite stories or literature. So, I went home and was
happy that I could go to Sanford for church. Then of course, they had the
Portsmouth ward twenty minutes the other way. For instance, the people
that we stayed with the Ellsworths, he died early and his wife was left a
widow, Jean Ellsworth. After her husband died, Jean met a person who was
a member of the church and was not as active, but then he began to come to
church with her.
Laurene: I remember bearing my testimony for the first time there. I remember saying I was thankful for the food, and afterward was SO embarrassed. But someone reached out and helped me feel better afterwards.
Shirley: When we first went to church in Sanford and
went to Connecticut in the summer. We dropped Tippy off somewhere, where
she met someone who she dated for a while. Then she came back with us
when we came back. And they moved into our branch, and we would go to
church with all of Tippy’s four children and my four children and we would go
in the van. And we went and helped the Mardens with their chickens, so we
had projects for the branch to earn money to build a chapel. They would
go to the chicken farm and work and we would put the money into the church for
the chapel we were going to build.
[The Sanford people had to go further. So,] then
we went to a gray building, the Knights of Pythias Hall. That is what
they told me when I got the letter from Steve Shaw. We went to the Manti
temple when they came out to get married. They stopped in Lander on their way
out to meet Dad’s parents and then we went on together and we went with them to
do that. We were moving, but we were in transit. We did it
all. There was no challenge that your father would not accept. He
loved being of service to people. He was a good branch president.
Laurene: My memories from being age four turning five,
about that time. I remember learning the Christmas story. I remember getting
a doll at Christmas time named Susie Smart. (I wrote about Susie Smart
in a family blog about remembering Christmases.) I remember learning to read and watching from
the stairway as my mother coached my brother to learn to read. Green Eggs
and Ham. How I wanted to be part of this!
After first and second grade in Chandler Elementary, Joann and I moved to a school at the top of the hill in the north of town called Hilltop Elementary. We loved that elementary school. I believe there was some asphalt, and my little diary talks about the bouncy ball games we would play against the red brick walls, but I also remember fondly all the thick trees, maple and pine that were fodder for our imaginations, to sweep leaves and create make believe "homes" and adventures.
Our third grade teacher was called Mrs. Swain. I remember Mrs. Swain introduced me to Anne of Green Gables and wrote to me during the summer with stationary that had a large letter S on it.
Of the books that I read, I remember loving Anne of Green Gables--precocious, courageous, honest, unafraid, fresh, headstrong.
Joann reminded me that we would wake very early in the morning (her memory says 4 a.m. Mom's letter says 5 and 6 a.m. But, as one of Kristen's high school literature novels quips--sometimes exaggeration carries more truth than reality--you be the judge!)
We would sit beside the wall heater in the basement, next to the piano and read and keep company with Carma. While she would practice, I would read. While I would practice, Carma would read. Still, when I hear songs by Burgmüller, I think of stories from Little Women.
In our unfinished, then later refinished basement, I remember playing ping pong and roller skating on the cement. I remember having my parents purchase a beautiful dark solid wood table that I thought was mine and later learned was the family’s. I remember practicing early in the mornings. It was cold. But this is a fond memory. While my older sister, Carma, would play Burgmuller, “La Candeur, (Honesty), La Chevaleresque (The Chivalrous,) L'Arabesque. I remember the warmth of the wall heater and my soul basking in quality literature, being enveloped in music. I still feel this in the morning hours as I study scriptures and hymns. I remember in the shadows of that basement when I was 11 or younger, learning my first hymn, “God Speed the Right” upon becoming a member of our branch choir. I remember learning “teach me some melodious sonnet sung by flaming tongues above.”
More about Little Women: as we grew older, Carma made a speech for an oral interpretation, where Josephine March learns to forgive her younger sister. I loved Jo--resistant to be tethered and refined, strong willed, somewhat unwieldy, softened by trial as she learns to wrestle the tigers of death, disappointment, disillusionment, sadness.
I also loved the movie, "The Sound of Music" and autobiography read at my Hillman grandparents' home, the true story of Maria Von Trapp. "A captain with seven children, what about that!!?"
I remember traveling maybe age 10 or 11,with Sister Laurel Ulrich, my mom, and Sister Ulrich’s children in the back of a hatchback possibly Toyota car from New Hampshire to Education Week in Boston, Massachusetts. I remember playing cards in the way back and not being seat-belted. (This was less regulated at that time than it is today.) My mom explains a conversation between herself and Laurel. Laurel was driving. We had been following a yellow school bus, which was required to stop at railroad tracks. The two women in the front seat debated whether we needed to stop as well. Ultimately, Laurel chose to press on her brakes and stop behind the bus. A car behind us, not having sufficient time to respond correctly, smacked us from behind. The sedan hatchback door opened where I was laying, playing cards. It all happened in an instant. I remember finding myself on the pavement of a four-lane highway. The car we were driving in propelled forward to a place that I could not see. I was not hurt. My biggest concern was that the car I was driving in had gone on to Boston without me! I remember being taken to a hospital to be checked. We waited and waited. We never did make the destination of Boston or Education Week in that journey.
What I carry with me now is an experience of a car accident with a future Pulitzer Prize winning author—Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, years later, as part of her doctoral thesis researched and published a book called Martha Ballard—A Midwife’s Tale, outlining the life of an 18th century mother and midwife who helped her neighbors with birthing during the years of and around the time of the Revolutionary War. (Laurel’s research began with looking at tick marks on a simple daily log of births, amid other seemingly irrelevant and mundane tasks in a diary many male scholars had overlooked for its simplicity and lack of grand events. The message I received in the success of Laurel’s writing, is that little things matter. Even the simplest recording of a day may prove to offer value to others.)
Another car accident: I do not remember this at all, but I have a small scar under my right eye. My mother tells me that Daddy was driving and fell asleep. All were safe, but I received a tiny scar. Daddy did not forgive himself for this. I forgive him. ( I love a reference in our Relief Society lesson this week from Elder Dale G. Renlund’s 2020 October talk Do Justly, Love Mercy and Walk Humbly with God pointing us to a talk by President Boyd K. Packer—his final conference address: See Boyd K. Packer, “The Plan of Happiness,” Ensign or Liahona, May 2015, 28. President Packer said: “When the repentance process is complete, no scars remain because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. … The Atonement … can wash clean every stain no matter how difficult or how long or how many times repeated. The Atonement can put you free again to move forward, cleanly and worthily, to pursue that path that you have chosen in life.” [Italics, mine.])
More scars, accidents:
I remember running in the parking lot of the Main Street
apartments where Joann and Mike, Amy, Adam and their mom, Sister Tippy lived
(their last name was originally Gross, later changed to Pouliot.) I
remember enjoying our visits to their home and growing to appreciate nuances and
differences of their daily routines. Sister Tippy would “wash our heads”
rather than our hair. I remember collecting soda or “pop” bottles at the
side of the road that had a deposit on them. We could return them to the
convenience store along Main Street and receive money for our collection and
buy red hot fire balls (a big hard red candy) and other delectable items.
I remember running in the parking lot there one time when my older brother David had a bag of marbles and was not happy with me for some reason and how I incurred a head injury upon a collision with this bag. I also have been reminded that the instigation of such rivalry was not always from my siblings. (Namely, it takes two to tangle.) And that relationships matter much more than carrying grudges!
I remember playing marbles by working to push them with the forefinger and have them reach a designated hole. I remember the pretty ones and the crystals (especially clear) that were worth more. I remember liking the smaller “crystals” and appreciating my brother who taught me to play and to be respectful of his cache.
Other games: I remember playing Monopoly for days at the bottom of the stairs in our cement, unfinished basement. I remember Saturday chores, and getting to watch cartoons upon completion. My brother David explains that he was in charge of taking the garbage out. I remember washing dishes together. “Wash the dishes, dry the dishes, turn the dishes OVER!” was the name of a little dance we learned as we joined both hands, swung them back and forth and eventually at the “OVER!” swung up and all the way around. I remember conversations over dishes, one such where my older brother asking my parents to help him understand how the gospel and evolution played together. I loved a feeling that it was all right to discuss things. I remember it being okay to discuss mostly everything. I remember teenagers visiting and sitting on our living room floor talking to my father, their ecclesiastical leader, their branch president of our little Sanford Branch explaining the difficulties of being in schools where youth freely partook of illegal drugs. I remember feeling very frightened after hearing these stories. I remember waking in a lavender wall-papered gabled upstairs bedroom I shared with my older sister from nightmares where I had witnessed grotesque and horrific consequences of watching people follow such paths. For me, it was fortuitous that when it came time for my emergence into junior high school, our family moved to a place where such stories were for the most part only second and third hand.
Bedrooms:
I believe my first bedroom was the eastern second floor bedroom. I would stay with my sister. For a time, I was moved alone to the western bedroom upstairs. I remember hoping fervently that I could hear the bedtime stories that my sister would tell with her “look at” doll, Maria Von Trapp. I loved the creativity of my older sister. Later, I remember living with her in twin beds in the easternmost upper gabled room. It had a connection to an upstairs attic with insulation and wasps. The wasps gained my respect when I worked to don pajamas one day from a dresser drawer in the southern part of the bedroom and discovered first hand what happens upon disturbing a content, later angry, insect. I remember being stung at least one other time outside and having my mother care for my injury with ice. I remember the itchy feeling as the sting wound began to heal.
Another memory of the upstairs bedroom was the gingham
bedspread that covered both my twin bed and my sister’s. My bed hugged
the north wall and hers was closer to a small closet that in our tween years we
entered with Julie Byrd and made-up code words and an initiation ceremony,
which included candles. (Warning--Do not do this at home, especially at younger
than 12!) I remember being in trouble for peeling the purple wall paper
at its seam next to my bed before I was 11. This is something, in the
eternal circle of things, I get to forgive grandchildren of, in my upstairs
family history room. Leafed wall paper carefully hung with my father upon our move
to our Kaysville house, covers up walls painted black by a creative teenager
in the Ashby family who lived here before we did. Little fingers, like mine, curious about what happens when it is lifted, have left their character marks!
Pets: I remember having two dogs: Ringo and
Tinkerbell. Tinkerbell was a combination of Saint Bernard and German
Shepherd. I don’t remember what happened to Ringo. I think our beloved
Tinkerbell was in a little sandbox area, with a five-year-old named Marci Borne. When she she was teased him (with a toad or frog,) Tinkerbell nipped Marci’s hand.
We came home to our dog being gone. Mom says they found a home for her in
a farming area. My remembrance was that our dog did not survive.
Either way, it was a personal (and family) tragedy. As was the death of our
only kitten, who was shaken by our neighbor’s poodle Peppy, owned by our
next-door neighbor to the east, the Brown family.
Other pets, smaller and greater in number were toads and frogs that we kept in the window wells.
We enjoyed looking for pollywogs in the pond at the end of
Clement Road, which bisected Paul Street-- our home was located at 5 Paul Street. Paul Street met Green Street (the more frequented road to the west) and the two streets (Green Street and Clement Road) merged about a half
mile to the north.
I remember looking for pollywogs one day with my older brother David and our neighbor Kenny LePanne in the cattail ponds, inviting him to pass me a peanut butter bucket, which he did. I did not catch it. The light metal tin hit the back of my head. It did not hurt, but I remember when I touched it and brought my hand down to see blood, it frightened me. I made my way home, climbed into the bathtub to find comfort with my mom, who brought me to an emergency room, where I had a piece of my head shaved and received stitches.
I remember ice skating on the ponds of the golf course off Green Street, which continued and became Goodwin Road as it proceeded south into a neighboring city of Dover, where both younger brothers were born in Wentworth-Douglass Hospital. It was Dover where we went to piano lessons at a man’s home. His name was Professor Roland Hemon. Somewhere, in my papers, I recently found a pedigree delineating who taught him, and who taught his teachers, leading to famous pianists. I need to find this paper!
When we went to visit in 2003, we stopped at Professor Hemon’s home. My sister found the names of his children. She contacted them, and with prayer, we invited these next of kin to give permission for Professor Hemon to have his temple work completed. Carma loved Professor Hemon. He was a perfectionist. He was creative. Our first scale was the E scale, purportedly because it was the most difficult scale to learn. I remember playing scales and “The Little Canon,” a piece composed by one of Professor Hemon’s students. I remember an abacus line of marbles, that Professor Hemon would use to count how many times we played something correctly. If a mistake happened, the abacus would go back to the beginning. I remember feeling frustrated and defeated enough to beg my parents to allow us to change teachers to Sister Alice at the parochial school that I attended in 6th grade. A letter from my mother to our Gee grandparents indicates that my first year of piano was first grade.
Professor Hemon held recitals. I remember dressing up and
practicing curtseying and bowing at a rehearsal before the real recital in
a large auditorium.
In sixth grade, I remember learning with Sister Alice in an upper room at
the Catholic school that I attended in the morning next to the middle school
annex. I remember preparing the Military March, a duet, I think by
Schumann, and I loved the floral folder that housed my music. I remember
Sister Alice being gentle and kind. The next teachers I had were a
college student in Lander, Wyoming, who taught us about composers. Then, learning hymns with the wife of our bishop, Bishop Reed, in Bismarck, North Dakota.
More about the Pouliot family:
In the house they moved to after their Main Street apartment, I remember eating cucumber salad, Sister Pouliot's recipe of cucumbers cut in circles, mixed with sour cream. I remember Sister Pouliot and Sister Marden teaching my Primary class and helping me learn to love to crochet. One of them created a vest, which I still have. Both crocheted me vests. Both were examples in my life, women of faith.
The poor wayfaring family of grief: I remember on the way home from a snowy night in Sanford, Maine, (if I remember right, it was just our family attending the sacrament meeting that night) we stopped to pick up a family from an accident stranded in the snow.
I remember driving home from church with snow surrounding us
and seeing a family that had just had a car accident and needed a ride home. The little girl sat in the back seat with us as we delivered her to their destination. Much much later, it seems like years if not months, from the parking lot of my best friend, the same little girl, approached and described how she remembered that we had helped her. It surprised me. I could hardly remember her, or the incident. But when I sing or hear a hymn about the poor wayfaring man or read Matthew 25 I realize that sometimes if we can give something really small, and it is only natural that we do, it might be really big to someone else, and they might remember it far longer than we do!
They will remember. He will remember. Every kindness!
I remember snapping green beans with Mike Pouliot in the porch of their apartment on the way out to the back door. “Neaky, neaky” were his words, as we ate as well as snapped.
I remember walking to the grocery store across the street from their first apartment and hearing their joke about its name, the "A and P."
Joann remembers, and a letter from my mom to the Gee grandparents tell us, about the time that Joann and her mom visited with us in Connecticut. Joann remembers watching with us man walking on the moon. This would have dated her visit to be 20 July 1969.
I asked Joann if she remembered. She said, "Yes, I swear, I do. Because we watched the moon landing and [my mom] was out on a date!"
It was this summer, according to my sister's journal, that I nearly drowned in a little stream near one of my father's experiment stations. This is part of our family lore. My brother and one of his friends had a boat upon which they offered us a ride. It seemed innocuous. The water was shallow. My sister knew how to swim. My brother (and I think his friend Roger) knew how to swim. I was learning. As I remember, the boys were pulling us and the boat, equipped with holes, began to sink. It sank directly over a four foot drop off. I remember the water closing in over my head. I remember deciding, "This is the end!" Before long, a pair strong arms appeared, pulling me to safety. It was my 9 year old brother. I was rescued. I was grateful.
(Below are blurry pictures of the stream.
The pictures are blurry,
but the memory is clear.
I was saved! I am alive!)
It was in Connecticut where we learned a song about "The Birds and the Bees" and a thing called love.
In New Hampshire, likely years later, I remember finding some ripped up pages of a magazine article that my mother must have deemed inappropriate for consumption of innocent eyes. I appreciate that my mother made time and effort to teach me very young, when my younger brother Steven was born (I was turning five) to understand where babies come from.
I appreciated learning of the beauty of the nature of man and women and the intimacy of marriage and the creation of families. I learned in a car trip with my mother and father, after their finding part of something I had written and was not proud of, the essence and blessing of reverence and respect for God's gift of procreation to men and women joined together with His law. Temples were not something we could see often or regularly, but as I watched our family encourage brothers and sisters in the East to travel more than a thousand miles to make covenants in these sacred edifices, small inklings of their significance took root.
More about the Pouliots: I asked Joann, when they changed apartments. Here is part of the story:
Joann's mother met her father's television repairman. He came to fix their television and had a charming blonde little girl sitting on his tool chest. The story is, as he put it, "If the little girl on my tools was so cute, I decided to take a second look at the mother!"
The two were married in 27 November 1969, Thanksgiving Day. "Somehow my mother conjured up a wedding dress for me to wear with all sorts of ribbons. Less than a month after the wedding, she pulled the ribbons off, so I could use it to get baptized."
Joann remembers April Fools' Day at our house. My mom would color the milk green or change the sugar to salt or vice versa in the sugar shaker. She remembers my mom sewing all the coat sleeves together. She remembers, as I do, marching and dancing to the music from "The Jungle Book."
Joann recently has texted me about watching my parents dance in the kitchen. Somehow, I don't think people understand the impact of the little things that we do to invite companionship, that help propagate the ripples of giving and good will and family love--little things that seem normal and natural, that can change what people think about marriage and loving one another.
I asked Joann what she remembered about Primary. In third and fourth grade we went to school at an elementary school on top of a very steep hill, appropriately called Hilltop Elementary. After school, on Wednesdays, we would walk from the school over a river that separated our little town of Somersworth, New Hampshire to Berwick, Maine. On the way, often we would stop to visit Julie Byrd's sister, I want to say Brenda (or Linda) who worked at a doughnut shop. Sometimes she would share with us the day-old doughnuts. On the river was a shoe tannery, which smelled strongly of shoe tanning chemicals. We would cross the river and turn right to find a gray Knights of Pythias Hall: 
This is decades later, a visit of my parents and elder brother.
I remember another building that we met for Primary had a pump organ.
(This is the building we met for Primary,
and also our house, a picture captured years later)
I want to say that Sister Roberta Marden would play the pump organ. I remember participating in the Penny Parade for the Primary Children's Hospital. I remember Sister Marden being our teacher, maybe for Targeteer or Merrie Miss. Joann and I both remember visiting the Marden chicken farm, collecting eggs. I remember that the older boys had "mini-bikes," or small motorcycles. I remember nursing third degree burns on our legs when they were unprotected.
I remember that their twins, Suzanne (above) and Christopher (just younger than Joann and I) had an older sister named Elaine, who liked the Osmond Brothers. We would listen to pop music in one of their rooms. I remember tasting real butter, and being amazed at the number of insects that their fly paper hanging from their kitchen ceiling could catch.
We both remember a time I was invited to spend the night at Joann's house, and Joann and I decided--most likely without checking beforehand--to walk. We kept waiting for someone to pick us up. How disappointing it was when (after a worrisome search of our families) we found ourselves not being able to complete the sleep over. What I learned? If I have creative ideas, it is often a good idea to clear them with "powers that be," before expecting them to be lauded, accepted, or applauded. It IS risky, as sometimes the answer is NO. We risked it. We were declared missing. The gig was up. The party was off. However, I am also learning that at other "left hand, right hand times" it can be great just to decide "green light GO" with a good idea, "come what may and LOVE it."
Birthdays:
Mom helped us do something creative and homespun to help us feel important on our birthdays.
Above, was my Cinderella cake, turning nine.
I remember our trips out west. Connecting with extended family was a given, in the Gee family. I remember traveling on a several day car journey and as we neared our destination seeing black clouds cast shadows on the Wyoming, listening carefully to the radio so that we could hear Grandpa Ivin Gee, resident meteorologist, announce the weather over the local station. I remember taking a host of scenery photos of geysers at Yellowstone National Park. This one has people in it! Note the matching tee shirts, and James in arms.
I don't remember the details of every family trip; but I remember going to New York City and meeting Beverly and William Lu, who drove with us in a heavy rain storm, when the water was washing down the windshield in torrents. I remember watching them teach us a song about Two Tigers: which I have since found, published as a popular Mandarin nursery rhyme called "Liang Zhi Lao Hu" in Mandarin to the melody of the French song, Frere Jacques.
(Lyrics in pinyin)
- Liǎng zhī lǎohǔ,
- Liǎng zhī lǎohǔ,
- Pǎo de kuài,
- Pǎo de kuài,
- Yī zhǐ méiyǒu yǎnjīng,
- Yī zhī méiyǒu ěrduo)
- Zhēn qí guài,
- Zhēn qí guài.
English translation
- There are two tigers,
- There are two tigers,
- Running very fast,
- Running very fast,
- One has no eyes
- One has no ears
- They are very strange.
- They are very strange.
- These photos are dated September 1969, I would have been turning 8 that December (going into, or in third grade)
Other best friends from elementary school:
As my father’s position at the University of New Hampshire ended,
and we prepared to make our pathways elsewhere, Grandpa and Grandma Gee visited,
inviting Carma to go with them on a riverboat experience and to take an organ
class at Ricks College. I am thinking it
was after Carma and our grandparents had departed, our neighbor, Cindy Brown
asked to have lessons with the missionaries.
It was before and after her discussions that I heard of the frightening
things that she and her friends, unbeknownst to parents or guardians chose to
do, which opened my heart and eyes to the blessings of having parents interested
in what their children did. Accountability was a principle taught within our home. For this, I am extremely grateful.
