I USED TO BE SMART

Recently, a friend sent me an Arizona Republic article on menopause. I easily identified with Mary Pace, a 54 year old teacher who lamented, "There are some cloudy, foggy times when I think, 'Hmm, I used to be smart.'"

I earned two degrees, the Bachelor of Science (Summa Cum Laude) and the Master of Education (with distinction) from Northern Arizona University. Go Lumberjacks!

Since starting my blog a few weeks ago, I'm even more aware of how my brain doesn't work as well as it used to. The most disconcerting thing about writing at this time in my life is that I can't organize my thoughts very easily. But equally scary is my inability to remember words that were once part of my vocabulary. The days of having words flow easily and effortlessly from my mind to my lips or fingers are gone forever.

So I found it amusing when my daughter Kelley complained last week that my blog was written on the level of a "school research paper." While she admitted looking forward to each post, she whined, "I have to concentrate SO hard when I read your stories." I was still trying to think of how to respond (I was having one of those cloudy, foggy times) when she suddenly said, "Sorry, but I need to get off the phone NOW. I have to watch Access Hollywood!"

When Kelley hung up, I tried to do a reality check. Am I really stretching my readers' fragile attention spans to the breaking point? Should I dumb-down my writing? After all, not only am I writing my life story for my children, but for my children's children. As an educator, I'm painfully aware of the dismal trend towards a steady decline in reading and reading ability. Will my grandchildren, raised on a literacy diet of e-mails, text messages, and compacted language like LOL (laugh out loud) be unable to comprehend my lofty, verbose narratives?

After giving this some thought, I've decided that the best indicator of my grandchildren's ability to appreciate my written legacy is to use the example of my own daughters. Perhaps by looking at their reading proclivities as children, I can get an idea of what literacy skills they will pass on to their own offspring. As we say in the world of teaching, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Cristin read early---before three years of age---and she read well. Her favorite book was The Golden Dictionary. She was so confident by the time she entered school that she proclaimed herself, "The World's Greatest Reader!"

Kaci preferred reading cookbooks and restaurant menus. With vocabulary like soup de jour, entree, pasta, saute, and French toast, she was considered bilingual at an early age.

Kelley showed no interest in reading before third grade. Until then, her book of choice was the Coloring Book. Her favorite genre was Barbie or Spice Girls.

They say the camera never lies, and this photo is proof. Although Caitlin was surrounded by books her entire childhood, I never actually saw her READ one.

SICNR this opportunity to practice IM. JIC I need to abbreviate my prose for posterity. YNK. I'll bet my kids are thinking: IOMH. LIC. This topic TBC...

copyright 2008 by Kathleen Stewart Goodrich

I NEEDED TO USE MY OWN WORDS

Bobby and I at Marineland, Palos Verdes, Calif. 1958

I've always felt close to my younger brother

Although my sister and I are only twenty months apart in age, I remember we spent more time fighting than getting along. During the years we lived in Los Angeles, I became best friends with Robin Freels, the girl who lived next door. When I wasn't playing with Robin I was playing with my little brother. In fact, I spent so much time with Bobby that my mother had to ask me on a regular basis to translate his very inarticulate speech. I was the only one in the family who could understand much of what he was saying during his preschool years.

In retrospect, I realize that at a very young age I was often used as a surrogate mother. Yet I don't remember it bothering me. In those days, cooking and cleaning was not work. It was fun pretending that the toy box was a rocket ship heading for the moon as a way to encourage my little brother to pick up his room. I loved teaching him how to read before he went to Kindergarten.

When I was around six years old, my parents discovered that if I were reading Bobby a book they could sneak out of the house for the evening without him having a screaming fit. Soon it became my almost nightly responsibility to implement this form of distraction. However, the reading and re-reading from my small collection of children's books eventually became monotonous for both of us. This is when I discovered the power of expressing myself in my own words. Many an evening I would delight my younger sibling by changing the benign Norman and the Nursery School into Norman and the Mean Lady. It was a harrowing tale rivaling any told by the Brothers' Grimm.

My second grade class at Cimarron Avenue School, 1959. I am sitting in the middle of the front row. Robin Freels is second row, third from left. My other good friend, Ursula Sack, is back row, directly behind Robin

I soon found another audience that appreciated my passion for storytelling. Beginning in second grade, a small group of kids would follow me around each morning at recess. I literally composed stories on the spot as we wandered the playground of Cimarron Avenue School. The black asphalt, with its noisy and enticing games, was a tough teacher. I quickly learned how to be more entertaining than hopscotch, four-square, or jump rope. And my secret weapon for ensuring a return of my entourage the next day: the cliff-hanger. I became skilled at dramatically inserting it into my narrative just as the bell was ringing.

This birthday card I made for my father is atypical because it doesn't have odds and ends glued on the paper to create collage-type pictures

My need for self-expression also manifested itself in another memorable event at that time. I vividly recall coming home from a Bluebird meeting in tears. The group leader would not allow me to insert my own original poem in a Father's Day card. In typical 1950's conformity, each girl in the troop was required to make identical assembly-line ashtrays and identical greeting cards. Each card had the same cutout blue and white polka dot tie on the cover and the same cliched prose on the inside. When I was younger, I always made my own cards for family members. My cards were often multi page with lots of artwork and rhyming prose. One card that survives is typical:

Happy Fathers Day

It would be different with a lunch with no sack

Or a train with no track

Yes it would be different with a lad with no shoes

But it sure would be different if we didn't have you!

Looking back on this memory, I find it noteworthy that I was so resistent to giving my father an impersonal written message as a Father's Day present. Ironically, I was not bothered at all by the fact that I was giving an ashtray as a gift to a man who didn't even smoke!

When I was eight years old, I used pictures I cut out of the Sunday "LA Times" to generate story ideas for homemade books. I wrote "Sing a Song of Lima Beans" to go along with this advertisement for Birds Eye vegetables.

copyright 2008 by Kathleen Stewart Goodrich

Party Like It's 1950-Something

CIRO'S Hollywood, July 1956

My mother in her element, flanked by adoring,

rich males. Also at table: Dad and his father

My mother celebrated her eightieth birthday on Saturday. Perhaps I use the word celebrate in error. She was adamant that she was not in a celebratory mood. "Phyllis has made me physically ill with her insistence that I do something special that day," she complained to me in a phone call last week.

Even I was amazed that my mother, the ultimate social butterfly, would balk at having lunch with a few well-meaning friends. Then I remembered that she has recently entered a new phase of her life: Grieving Widow. Now I wonder, are her days of enjoying a good party really over?

11718 S. Cimarron Avenue, Fall 1954

My earliest memory of my parents' party days begin when we lived on Cimarron Avenue. In July, 1954, they put a $100 deposit on Lot 139 in the Grandview Hollypark subdivision of Los Angeles. It was a typical post WWII dream house---three bedrooms, two baths and an attached two car garage. A few years after we moved in, Dad poured a large concrete patio in the backyard and built a lattice cover to accommodate Mom's love of entertaining Southern-California style. Shortly before the guests arrived, I would watch my father carefully sprinkle a white powder on the patio, creating the ultimate outdoor dance floor.

My grandfather Dave Goodrich with my brother during construction of the patio, 1957. I never saw my grandfather without a drink in his hand.

My dad also installed a whole-house state of the art high fidelity system, which was a big hit with the cocktail set. Not only were there speakers in our small living room, but also outside and in the garage. There were always table tennis tournaments going on in the garage at the Goodrich parties. I'm certain Dad built the sturdy green ping pong table to satisfy the competitive nature of my parents and their friends.

It was a miracle I got any shut-eye at all when my parents entertained. I could almost fall asleep by concentrating on the melodic music syncopating with the tap-tap-tap of bouncing ping pong balls as it echoed off the wall my bedroom shared with the garage. But then there was the laughter. I found the laughing insanely annoying. Not only was I tired, but I was too young to comprehend and make sense of the party-goers' jokes. Even the laughter could not drown out my mother's disingenuous voice as she and others tried in haphazard unison to sing along loudly to a Mitch Miller record. Of course as the party dragged on, all the sounds only got louder and crazier.

Our kitchen was so small, Mom needed to use the table to prepare larger meals. Her father, Al Gould, is standing in the doorway of the laundry room. June 1956

In the morning, as my sister and I dutifully emptied overflowing ash trays and washed an endless parade of glasses, we would nibble on stale chips and shriveled bits of food stabbed through the end of sharp toothpicks.

Just as we were beginning to feel sick from noshing on wilted hors d'oeuvres tainted with cigarette smoke, my mother would suddenly walk through the front door. Somehow, while the kitchen faucet was running and the garbage disposal grinding, she had managed to silently slip out of bed and leave the house. She would return, just as quietly, clutching a small brown paper sack. As she reached inside the bag with her manicured hand, there was no expectation on our part. We knew she would pull out a very cold, very thick, freshly-made chocolate milkshake. By very thick, I mean that a metal spoon placed straight up in the middle of the glass would not tilt one degree. This was the standard remedy for one of my dad's hangovers.

My dad, during the crazy party days on Cimarron

As Mom disappeared down the hall, Becky and I continued our task of putting the house back in order while entertaining our little brother as quietly as we could. On mornings like this, my sister and I knew it was our job to be the responsible ones in the house. After all, our parents needed time to sleep off the effects of all that fun from the night before.

copyright 2008 by Kathleen Stewart Goodrich

Gag Me with a Ritz Cracker

Last week I was offered a slice of apple pie that I refused to eat. Actually, it was not really apple pie, but pie made with Ritz crackers disguised to taste like apples. Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against crackers. My favorite comfort food of all time is fried matzos. But deliberately choosing to use my mouth for a chemistry experiment, instead of for the geshmak I feel when I bite into a warm morsel of tart apple? That's cockamammie!

My father, Christmas 1981

Mom turned goyem each Dec. 25, always making glazed ham with pineapple rings and Maraschino cherries

In sharing this experience with my grown daughters, and reflecting on other times that we have had similar reactions to recipes, I'm thinking that this is more than just a case of culinary snobbishness. Call me obsessed with family history and finding my ancestors, but I believe that food preference is part of our DNA.

All the years we lived in Portland I craved food prepared by Horst Mager of the Rhinelander restaurant. Years later, when I filled in the blanks on my pedigree chart with names like Ehrmanntraut and Weinmann, my enthusiasm for German style red cabbage all made sense.

The Modesto Goodriches, about 1999

Enjoying their Christmas tradition of Cioppini
right to left: Chuck Goodrich, his niece Dawn Pratt, her husband Rich Miller

There's currently a lot of interest in the genealogy world about tracing family roots using DNA testing. Simply swab the inside of your mouth to collect skin cells, submit to a reputable company, and you're that much closer to finding your ancestry. But I believe there's an easier way to cut to the chase: check out the family cookbook and traditions involving food.

Case in point: pastrami. Picture a cold pastrami sandwich made with mayonnaise---no, wait---a cold pastrami sandwich made with mayonnaise AND white bread. If this makes you cringe, then we're probably genetic cousins.

Here are some more of our family traditions: cream is whipped shortly before it is served, not scooped out of a plastic tub that has been left to defrost on the kitchen counter. Pancake batter is made with milk, eggs, oil, and preferably buckwheat flour. Macaroni and cheese is baked in the oven until the top is brown and the edges are bubbly.

Jell-O pudding is something you are forced to eat while confined to a hospital bed, not a dessert to serve guests. Chili does not come in a can, and neither does spaghetti. Years ago, as a tired, single mother, I picked up a box of dehydrated potato flakes at the grocery store to help simplify meal preparation. My children were convinced that I had finally lost my mind and would be forever farblondget.

If you are familiar with the oxymoron REAL BUTTER, and say it regularly when ordering at restaurants, then I have a feeling that you are not offended by this post. For the rest of my readers, blame my tastes on heredity, and please help yourself to another slice of pie.

copyright 2008 by Kathleen Stewart Goodrich

MOM LIKED YOU BEST

Me and my sister, 1955

Remember the Smothers Brothers? They started a shtick in the 1960s based on sibling rivalry. I could always relate to Tommy when he complained to his brother that "Mom always liked you best!" Throughout our childhood my older sister Rebecca would brag, "I am my parents' favorite child, I am my grandparents' favorite grandchild, and I am my aunt and uncles' favorite niece!" She would say it with such authority, that even though I told myself that she didn't know anything (after all, she was just a kid) I secretly feared that she was right. Now that we are adults, I know she was right.

My sister, the child, 1958

The plethora of gifts, money, family heirlooms, sympathy and attention directed towards my sister has never ceased. I rarely have a conversation with either of my parents without her name coming up. Yesterday I phoned my mother to ask about my stepfather's memorial service. The only time Mom cried was when she told me that Becky had borrowed money to send a dozen yellow roses.

No, I didn't send flowers. But I was there in person earlier this year---just one crazy week before my daughter's wedding---when my mother was suddenly locked up in the psychiatric unit of her local hospital. With her husband near death in another hospital, my daughter Cristin and I tried for days, unsuccessfully, to improve the situation.

My sister and my mother, 1991

While going through legal documents with Cristin, we came across this line in her Trust: ALBERTA PAXSON has intentionally omitted any gift to Kathleen Stewart Goodrich and [her] issue. Despite this slap in the face, I returned to California when she was released from the hospital and begging me to come help. Even my brother, who has been estranged from her for over twenty years, and likewise disinherited, flew out from Iowa. While she quickly returned to old resentments against me and my brother, she never ceased fretting about our sister. At this time Rebecca was virtually homeless and penniless. (So tell me something I don't know!) Bobby and I gently suggested to Mom that an extended visit from her little Bubelah could benefit everyone. "I love her too much to have her come and live with me," Mom insisted.

My sister, the adult, 1998

My sister has a heart of gold, a personality trait I will never have. She has endearing dimples, an infectious laugh, and an ironclad devil-may-care attitude. I once warned her in an e-mail not to move-in with a boyfriend. She wrote back, "Well, as for your advice, I hope not to follow it....and since when did I ever follow your advice???" She's right. My dad calls her the Gordian Knot. The meshugas in the family means zilch to Rebecca. She can listen to our mother rant and rave and it's like water down a duck's back. No wonder Mom always liked my sister best.

copyright 2008 by Kathleen Stewart Goodrich

Don't Monkey Around My Family Tree

Hey, hey you're a monkey! Apparently a participant at my last Family History lecture walked away believing that was my message. I was so stunned when I heard through informal feedback that I had offended some one's religious beliefs that my first reaction was to blurt out, "Well I'll be a monkey's uncle!"

Joe and Fannie Goblinger

(my great-grandparents) and children

St. Louis, Missouri 1903

After all, this is my motivational presentation---the one where I spend nearly an hour unabashedly and exuberantly extolling the virtues of finding and preserving one's family story. As for locating ancestors, I always point my students in the direction of an LDS Family History Center, not National Geographic! So I scratched my head and went back over my slides to try and figure out where things had gone bananas.

Then I found the culprit: this drawing of Rodney Micklethwaite's pedigree chart. I show this at the beginning of the presentation when I pose the question, "Why all the fuss about genealogy?" I think that evening I made a comment to the effect that some may say, why bother tracing your roots; everyone knows we are descended from apes! I guess I have to face the reality that not all my students find me as funny as a barrel of monkeys.

Humor is reason gone mad---Groucho Marx

So now I'm asking your advice, Gentle Reader. Should I keep the monkey business out of the genealogy business?

Star-Studded Jamboree in Burbank

Last week I returned home from a fun trip to Southern California. My main motivation for making the trek was to attend, for the first time, the Southern California Genealogical Society's Annual Jamboree in Burbank. SCGS has been putting on this conference for nearly 40 years, and that experience showed in every aspect of the program. Their reputation as one of the largest and best genealogy conferences in the country remains intact. It was a fabulous event! Of course, because I am my Jewish Mother, I need to kvetch a little about the daily parking fees. The Marriott offered conference attendees a reduced rate of $10, which I begrudingly paid the first day. During the opening session, the woman sitting next to me bragged that she got a deal by parking across the street at the Burbank Airport---"only" $9 per day! (Obviously a Goyeh.)
Did I miss seeing Brad and Angelina walking across the tarmac, because I didn't take advantage of paying "only" $9 for parking at the Burbank Airport? Probably. But at the end of the day I was my very happy Jewish Mother, because I was able to find FREE parking just down the street from the Marriott in a shady, residential neighborhood. By-the-way, do you notice the red bus in the background? I did see several of those driving around, and they all had "Bob Hope Airport" written on the side. It was the only clue I had that Burbank Airport has somehow morphed into the Bob Hope Airport. (Even freeway signs and the conference literature referred to it as the Burbank Airport.)
Of course the REAL celebrities were all at the conference. People like Steve Morse (pictured), Bill Dollarhide, Leland Meitzler, and Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak. (Everytime I see Megan I ponder the benefit to my career as a genealogist of changing my professional name to Kathleen Goodrich Goodrich. Or, do I dare to be shamelessly accurate: Kathleen Goodrich Goodrich Goodrich?) I was totally star-struck by Dr. Stephen Morse. He gave an excellent and entertaining presentation on using his One-Step Website. I've used this website for years ---his tools for finding living people is almost Ouija-board-like, it's so amazing---but I learned even more during this lecture about the census and passenger lists.
Thank you, SCGS for the incredible door prize (one year World Deluxe Membership to Ancestry.com) and for an amazing conference. See you next June! (This is of course assuming that Southern California gas prices will drop drastically---OY VEY!)