This week’s interviewee loves a top sheet! She says that if you don't have a top sheet, whatever you put on your face at night (cream or some type of lotion, for example) will go onto the comforter. If your sheets are touching your face instead, you can just wash them, and then they’re clean, and everything is much simpler.
The first question I asked her was about her favorite childhood memory. She told me about when she was twelve, and her dad bought her a horse, a horse they named Sassy. She would go out and go horseback riding with her friend Tom, and when they would leave the gate open to clean the stall, they would find her in the open field across the street, eating all the grass. She describes Sassy running away with her one time, and falling off mid-ride. She didn’t know at the time that she had broken her hip, and it took twenty more years to find out. It wasn’t until after some tests that doctors told her she had a fracture in her left hip, which has led to some problems walking as she has grown older, and sometimes, hemmed pants to accommodate her slightly shorter leg.
I then asked her what her favorite part of having five children was. She talked about how sweet her kids are. “There were just a bunch of them, and we had a good time. Everyone was an individual and they all did their own thing.” She does not go without reminding me that things were tough sometimes, and that some children (some of whom are reading- hello!) were slightly harder to raise than others. She reminisces on ice skating on the pond near their house, in the wintertime, and swimming in their clubhouse pool during the summer.
While she was growing up, she lived with her family in Arizona. She remembers the food fondly, the homemade sausages and Sicilian pizzas. Her mother was a great cook, she says, and they always had homemade sauce and pasta. Noodles were a common food group, with lentils, with broccoli, always fresh. She still has the stone her mother crushed garlic with. Her father was sweet, but had a temper when he was young, especially when she came home too late. Her mother saved her many times, as she would tell her to not make any noise when she came inside, to just go to sleep. At seventeen, she started smoking cigarettes, because her boyfriend, and the man she would go on to marry, smoked. She had a chair and desk facing a purple mirror, and she would smoke there. Her father grew very thoughtful in his older years, and gave all of his children funds worth thousands, which he had accumulated from his investments in the stock market. She described her parents as simple. Her mother was never interested in jewelry, and her father said he would never need a fancy meal in a restaurant. Homemade lasagna and meatballs for dinners was always enough. While her own children were growing up, they were all mostly vegetarian. When she ended up in Vegas around 21, she ordered a pastrami sandwich, and it was full of grease and completely unappealing to her. After this, she decided to not eat meat.
The first time she ate meat after this was in Mexico, where her and her family frequently went for vacation. They stayed in a casita with a kitchen and fireplace, and a big living area. Her three year old daughter ran around with pink ribbons in her hair, and she would always find ribbons scattered around the house. Goat feet reintroduced her to meat, at the baptism of the child of those who owned the casita they stayed in. While she was pregnant, they lived in a small hippie town, and they had a store on the main drag. She would sew clothes, and other girls would make clothes, too. The street had a meditation room, beautiful art and paintings, incense, tapestries, everything of that sort. Her family lived down the road, near some older homes, where the hippies had taken over the area. Before she gave birth, the family rented a place in a Ajijic right on Lake Chapala (which her second daughter was later named after), and the house they stayed in was owned by a Russian ballerina. The ballerina and her brother were both dancers, and they had come to Mexico to dance in plays and things. Her second daughter was born the fifth of July, and her oldest daughter’s birthday was a few days later, for which they made a clay piñata. They would go to the mercado in Guadalajara, which had everything a household could need. She would dress her oldest in dresses, and people would just grab her hand in the market and show her off to their families. The locals told her that they couldn’t believe she had just had a baby, and was already moving around with ease.
I made sure to ask her what she values in a romantic partner. She told me it is always important to have someone who listens, someone who you have things in common with but not everything in common, especially during this point of her life. When you have both lived long lives already, she says, you come into the relationship with such different things. She talks about her partner, who she has been with for fourteen years. He is calm, and doesn’t let much upset him, more even-keeled. They can be combative, as they are both strong in their opinions, she says. He has a history, and it is one she has loved learning about.
In high school, she met the man who she would marry and have children with. They met when he sat in front of her in the driver's ed. She describes him as a pretty boy, like Rob Lowe, handsome and sincere. She used to talk to him, and her driver’s ed teacher, who was also the football coach, would tell her he hoped she wasn’t liking him too much. He was always sweet when she met him, kind of shy in school. They had a pottery class together, and that’s how she got to know him. She would talk to him about wanting to go to Europe after graduating high school with her friend Nancy. “He told us we would never go, and I said yes, we’re going. He bet us $100 we wouldn’t go, and that was like our incentive,” she said. They went to Europe a few months later. To go to Europe for fifty days in 1963 was $1000. They took the Queen Mary over, the Queen Elizabeth back. She was eighteen, and the boat there was all college kids from all over the country. She and her friend went to wine cellars in Germany, they saw castles, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, everywhere you hear about. She loved Switzerland, and they ate loads of chocolate and apple strudel. They had dinner at the hotels every night, they threw coins in the Trevi fountain.
You never know what life has in store for you, or what it will bring you, she reminds me. You have to have faith, and listen to the little voice inside yourself.
“I used to get angry about things, I used to get angry and hold those things in me, carry them inside. I don’t get angry very much anymore, it really takes something to make me mad. It’s such a waste of energy, it drains you. All things pass. All problems you have, everything gets solved. It might be frightening at first, or horrid, but it always works out. You just have to have patience.”
And with those wise words, I leave you to your evening. I hope your week brings unexpected joys!
Love,
Thanks for including me in top sheet. Love your writing! ❤️you!
Aaah! Wonderful interview with a very special woman 💓