Nap Rugs and Sugar Plum Fairies

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Whenever I hear “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies,” I am six years old again, lying on a nap rug in my first grade classroom—warm and safe.

Kindergarten wasn’t required back then, so first grade was my first real taste of school—and I loved it.

After lunch, my teacher — Mrs. Quanstrom — told us to get out our nap rugs and lie down. She turned off the lights, but the room never got completely dark. The tall classroom windows still let in the afternoon light, filtered through the oak trees that lined that side of the school.

After turning off the lights, she put a record on the classroom player. I don’t remember all of the songs she played, but “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” was my favorite.

The room was very quiet except for the music. We could take a nap if we wanted to, but I was always too interested in listening.

The rug beneath me was soft. Mom knew why the teacher asked us to bring one, so she chose a rug she knew would be comfortable to lie on.

I don’t remember ever falling asleep. I was too busy listening—to the music, to the quiet, to the feeling of being exactly where I belonged.

I didn’t always keep my eyes closed, but I did most of the time. And when “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” played, I could see them in my imagination.

The fairies were small and light, and they danced and twirled in the air above me.

Even now, when I hear that music, I am six years old again, lying on that soft rug in a classroom washed in afternoon light.

I am still lying on that rug.

And I can still see the fairies.

No, I never did fall asleep during nap time.

I was already dreaming.

First Grade

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Around the time I first started school, I went shopping with Mom, Dad, and Monty for school supplies. I was so excited! I remembered the years when my brother went to school and I had to stay behind. Now I would never be left behind again.

When we got to the store, it was decided that Dad would help me pick out my supplies while Mom helped Monty. When everything had been chosen, Dad paid for the supplies. He was still carrying my tablet under his arm.

We left the store and had only gone a few feet when I heard him say, “Oh, no! I forgot to pay for the tablet.”

Without another word, he turned around and went back into the store — still clutching it to his chest — and apologized to the clerk for the mistake.

The only real experience I had with school before starting myself was the day I went with my brother — a memory I’ve written about before.

I can’t remember the exact first day of school. What I do remember is the school and the classroom itself.

The school was a tall, square building made of dark brick. It stood exactly one block from home. I couldn’t guess what school would be like, but I was anxious to find out.

I remember the inside of my classroom — from the wall of windows where the light filtered through the oak trees outside, to the crayon color chart on the wall with the names of each color printed in bold lettering. I remember my cubby, too. We each had one with our name printed on it to keep our nap rugs in.

We would move again before the end of the school year, but this is where I met Dick and Jane, Baby Sally and their pets, Spot and Puff. It is also where I learned that colors had names that I could write and someone else could read — and that classical music could make a child sit still and listen… and imagine.

Never Far From Home

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From the summer before I started school, until the spring of my third grade year, I attended five different schools.

One place we stayed a couple of years. Three others we stayed a very short time, hardly more than a few months. In the third grade alone, I attended four different schools. I never questioned why until much later in life, when it was too late to ask anyone.

We moved from the farm, near Viola, Illinois, to Galva, Illinois, 30 miles to the east. There I started school in 1958. 

By the spring of the next year, we moved back to the Viola area, near Aledo, Illinois. I finished first grade here, attended all of second grade, but before Christmas of the third grade, we moved again, this time 44 miles west to Burlington, Iowa. I was disappointed because I had a part in the upcoming Christmas play.

I remember we spent Christmas in Burlington, but we moved again shortly after, this time 72 miles northeast to Rock Island, Illinois.

We didn’t stay long in Rock Island, either, and by spring we moved again. Our move this time took us back to my mother‘s childhood home in the small village of Millersburg, Illinois, 7 miles northwest of Aledo. 

There I would live for more than 40 years.

If you wonder why I mention the distances between towns, it is to show that we were never far from Aledo, where I was born in Mercer County Hospital in 1952 — the same hospital where my own children would be born years later. We never strayed far from our roots or our families.

My parents are gone now, so I can’t ask them why we moved so often during those three years. With the moves came job changes for Dad.

Looking back, I understand more than I did then. Those were hard years in the Midwest. Jobs weren’t always steady, and people took work wherever they could find it.

But as a child, I didn’t see any of that.

Both Mom and Dad were very hard workers — and my dad always had a job. If one ended, another one soon followed. We never went without anything. If things were tough for them, they never let us feel it.

All I knew was that we kept moving…

and somehow, we were never very far from home.

Mom, Meet Butch!

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One afternoon when I was five, my mother put me down for an afternoon nap and decided to join me.

We were both sleeping soundly when we heard those words:

“Mom, meet Butch!”

We didn’t know anyone named Butch.

Mom opened her eyes.

She was face to face with an owl.

Butch the screech owl. And my brother was holding him.

Mom wasn’t amused.

It was well-known in our family that she didn’t like birds — at least not in her face. Or in her house. Or anywhere near her. Or near us kids.

She didn’t mind them from a distance, but she said they were dirty and carried mites. I wasn’t sure what mites were, but I got the idea they were some kind of crawly bug. Turns out I was right.

I don’t remember actually seeing the bird myself. I always took my glasses off when I was sleeping so I wouldn’t break them.

My brother wasn’t in the room much longer than it took to say those few words before Mom sent him scrambling back to the barn to put the owl back where he found it — cautioning him never to do that again.

Loudly.

Butch must have been a juvenile or Monty likely couldn’t have caught him. It never occurred to me to ask.

I do know Monty never brought a bird in the house again — or any other stray animal.

Sometimes I wonder if his ears were still ringing when he got back to the barn.

A Little Dab Will Do

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In the 1950s, Brylcreem was as common in Midwestern households as toothpaste.

One morning while Mom was getting Monty ready for school, she was combing his hair and absent-mindedly reached for the Brylcreem. She started distributing it through his hair and realized something was different — it was thick and white and did not blend into his hair. 

Glancing at the tube she held in her hand, she discovered she had rubbed toothpaste through his hair.

What to do? The bus would be there any minute. 

I was watching them from across the kitchen. She looked at me, shrugged, and quickly washed his hair. 

In those days, we didn’t have running water. We also didn’t have hot water. What we did have was an old hand pump at the kitchen sink that only brought in cold water. Cold well water. 

Monty went to school with wet hair that morning. I expect that was the only time in his life he had his hair washed with shampoo and cold water. Brrr. 

Brylcreem, a little dab’ll do ya — that is what the television commercials said. That morning, a little dab definitely did not do. 

Two Longs and a Short

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Two Longs and a Short

Party lines were a fact in the 1950s, and many rural areas didn’t convert to private lines until much later — around 1990. 

We didn’t have phone numbers in those days. We had rings. Ours was two longs and a short. 

Whenever the phone rang, everyone in the household listened carefully to see if the call was for us. When the phone rang at our house, it also rang in every other house on the party line. 

Sometimes it was hard to tell who the call was for. If you were just coming in from outdoors or another part of the house, you might not hear the entire ring.

Mom taught me the difference between our ring and those of our neighbors. I appointed myself the household sentinel to announce to the house in general — and Mom in particular — if it was indeed two longs and a short. 

The polite thing to do when answering the phone was to pick the receiver up and listen carefully for a moment to see if anyone else was already talking, then hang up if the call wasn’t for you. 

Not everyone was polite enough to follow this protocol. Some people would stay on the line and listen, a practice often referred to as rubbering. The people the call was for could usually tell someone was listening in, but only had suspicions as to who it might be. 

I wasn’t allowed to use the phone in those days — yet somehow, that old black box still found its way into my childhood.

It was a heavy, black desk telephone — the kind that seemed as solid as a small piece of furniture. A sturdy black base anchored it in place, and the handset rested across the top in a simple, unpretentious cradle. In the center sat the familiar rotary dial, its round finger holes lined with numbers that circled back toward you as you released them.

There was nothing delicate about it. The phone felt permanent, rooted to its spot on the phone table, as if it had always been there and would always remain. The cord, still straight then, stretched toward the wall in a quiet promise that this was not a toy, but a tool of connection — dependable, familiar, and woven into the ordinary rhythms of home life.

And when it rang, it carried its own unmistakable voice: two longs and a short, a sound that announced itself clearly and left no doubt that someone was calling.

Depression, Grief, and Healing

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This piece discusses personal experiences with depression and grief.

Depression didn’t arrive all at once for me.

By the time I recognized it, it was already there.

It’s something I have struggled with at certain times in my life, which always surprised me. I have always thought of myself as a happy, easygoing person.

The hardest times came during periods when my role in life was changing.

The first time happened in my early forties. My children were growing up and no longer needed me in the same way they once had. I had been a mother for over twenty years, and that had become a large part of my identity.

This wasn’t about anything they did—it was simply a change I wasn’t prepared for. I didn’t yet know how to redefine who I was beyond that role.

It came on quietly. So quietly that I didn’t even realize what was happening until I was already deep in it.

I hurt—not physically, but somewhere deeper. I withdrew from people and from things I had once enjoyed. And when it became too much, I slept. When I was sleeping, I didn’t hurt.

Eventually, I realized something was deeply wrong. I went to my doctor and got the help I needed.

It didn’t get better overnight, but with time—and with the patience and support of my family—I found my way through it.

I learned a great deal about myself during that time. I thought I had learned enough to keep it from happening again.

For nearly thirty years, life moved along well.

Until it didn’t.

My husband, Carl, whom I had been married to for more than fifty years, became ill and passed away.

My world changed in an instant.

I believed I was grieving in a normal way, whatever that means. But over time, something else settled in.

This time, it wasn’t the same as before.

It wasn’t the kind of depression I had known. It felt different—quieter, heavier, and harder to recognize.

I didn’t recognize it. I thought I was simply moving through loss.

But looking back, I can see that I was just marking time.

I lost interest in so many things. I didn’t want to go out or see people. I let hobbies go. I withdrew into my home.

My children brought me joy—as they always have—but beyond that, I wasn’t really living.

I even stopped taking care of my health. As someone with diabetes, that is a dangerous path.

It took something unexpected to shake me out of it. A situation that forced me to stop and take a hard look at my life.

Recognizing the apathy for what it truly was became the turning point.

That’s when I began to heal.

I took a serious look at my health and realized I needed to make changes if I wanted the rest of my life to be different.

I got my diabetes under control, and in the process, I lost forty pounds.

But healing didn’t stop there.

I have always been a writer at heart. As a student, I wrote stories, essays, and poetry. Later, writing became part of my work—as a crochet designer and as an editor.

In 2025, I began to explore writing in a different way. I had so many stories in my mind—from my parents, from my life—and I wanted to preserve them for my children and grandchildren.

As I began to write those stories down, something shifted.

I found healing.

I found purpose.

I was no longer just marking time.

My life began to feel meaningful again.

And in ways I didn’t expect, that sense of purpose continues to grow.

Halt! Who Goes There?

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As a Private First Class during World War II, my Dad wore many hats — machine gunner, chauffeur, guard — pretty much whatever his commanding officer told him to do. 

After the Allies secured many of the artifacts that had been spirited away by The Third Reich, this one particular day found Dad and a fellow soldier in a salt mine guarding a large number of priceless paintings. 

They heard people entering the mine. It became obvious to them at once who it was, but Dad whispered to the other guard, “Watch this!”

On alert and without another word, he shouldered his rifle and pointed it at the person leading the procession. 

“Halt! Who goes there?” Dad called out as was their protocol. “Identify yourself.”

The leader of the procession stopped — and so did the people following him. 

He saluted the two soldiers and said, “Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower. At ease.” 

They immediately complied. General Eisenhower walked up to Dad and shook his hand. “Well done, soldier,” he said.

Dad told that story many times over the years, always laughing and adding a shake of his head at the end — remembering the time he pulled his rifle and pointed it at General Dwight D. Eisenhower — later the 34th President of the United States.  

That Has to be Enough

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There have been many times in my life when I’ve wondered if I was doing things the right way.

That question has come up for me in more ways than I can count.

As a mother, I have wondered if I wasI being too strict… or too permissive. 

What I learned goes back to something my mother told me many years ago—something that has stayed with me ever since:

“If you do the best you can with the information you have at the time, that is all anyone can do.”

I’ve always tried to do the right thing, even when I wasn’t sure what the right thing was.

All I could do was look at the situation, consider what I knew at the time, and make the best decision I could.

Did I make mistakes along the way? Of course I did. That’s part of being human.

There were times I wished things had turned out differently. I spent years going back over those moments, thinking about what I could have done better—even though the outcome never changed.

Somewhere along the way, I equated doing my best with doing things perfectly.

And when things didn’t turn out the way I hoped, I held onto that as regret.

It took me a long time to understand something I hadn’t seen before.

“I can’t judge what I did forty years ago by who I am today.”

I am not perfect. I never was, and I never will be.

But I did the best I knew how to do at the time—and that has to be enough.

Where’s Brenda?

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Every family has that one child who tends to do a disappearing act sometimes. In our family, that was me. It wasn’t intentional, but that’s how it turned out, anyway.

I was playing outside by myself one summer day. When Mom went to check on me, I was nowhere to be found — or so she thought.

I was dragging a small doll blanket around with me. I had been playing with my doll — and probably the cats and dog, too.

The bridal wreath bushes around our front porch were in bloom. As a little girl, I loved flowers, and I had been admiring the bridal wreath. I loved them so much. 

I laid down on the porch with my doll and doll blanket. I was looking up through the branches — and fell asleep. Mom had apparently been calling me, but I didn’t hear her. Because of the bushes, she couldn’t see me until she came outside and stood in front of the porch — and there I was. 

The Asian flu pandemic of 1957 swept through our little town that winter. Mom and I were both sick at the same time, which is why she was in bed the day I disappeared the second time.

We were taking a nap together in her big bed. I woke up before she did. I wasn’t used to her being in bed in the daytime, and I wandered around the house a little. Then I got sleepy, and decided to go back to bed, but I didn’t want to wake her. 

The bed was high off the floor, and the pretty pink nubbly carpet under it felt soft and safe, so I crawled under it and went to sleep. 

When I woke up, Mom was leaning over looking under the bed at me. She said I scared her. I never meant to. I just liked quiet places.