Life in the Cheese Drawer

one of the best things about going to grandma’s house is that there is always baked goods and better food than at your own house. 
growing up, my parents bought boring breakfast cereal, grape nuts flakes. maybe rice krispies if it was a real exciting week. so when we visited grandma and breakfast time rolled around, oh boy! she kept her cupboard stocked with coco krispies, coco puffs, froot loops, and other fun cereals; there was also always a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread. breakfast at grandma’s house was always a treat.
in later years, when i was living in st cloud and grandma was still living at home, every time i’d stop over, without fail there was a square tupperware full of caramel swirl brownies. pour yourself a glass of crystal lite iced tea from the pitcher in the fridge, and you were good to go. granted, the brownies came from a box, but big deal! it was more than what was at my house.
grandma and i drove up to a few family reunions together, and every time we’d pack her bag and boxes of prizes for games, and three ice cream pails of donuts. she’d fry donuts in batches and freeze them so when it was time to get together with family, there’d be donuts.
the past few years, grandma hasn’t been at reunions, and ergo no donuts. it’s also been a little weird visiting her in assisted living and not having brownies or other goodies. but the good news is that she has many descendants who are baking inclined, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we see some donuts this summer at the derry reunion; it would be a fitting tribute.
the quiet oaks hospice grandma is at right now is stacked to the gills with baked goodies and sugary cereals for breakfast. there is a candy dish on every flat surface, which is something that grandma always had at her house. stars aligned, and we have come full circle on baked goods. 

it was pretty common for my mom and me to take grandma derry on cemetery excursions over memorial day. we would go visit grandpa derry in the st cloud cemetery, then head up to albany to visit relatives of the german persuasion from days of yore. the albany cemetery is a great location, and the huge, drooping pines and older headstones really make the albany cemetery one of those you’d see in a movie. (by the time my grandparents moved to st cloud and were looking at cemetery plots up there, the albany plots were very expensive.)
our first stop was a garden center to pick up geraniums and other flowers, then we’d head to the cemeteries with grass clippers and boxes. one year, jane came with us, and we headed out to the st cloud cemetery. 
we pulled in by grandpa’s headstone and got out, grabbing our gear. grandma was taking a look at the grounds, and she motioned with her hand to the other side of the cemetery,
“well look – it’s all filled in over there.”
and i, being miss inappropriate that i am these days (and all days, every day, apparently), said,
“well, people die every day.”
that set off my mom giving me a look, and jane just guffawed. (grandma didn’t think anything of it.)
now it’s a running joke. we go to a cemetery – “people die every day!” i say something inappropriate – “people die every day!” memorial day rolls around – “people die every day!”
this may have been the time we cracked up about the untimely demise of grandma’s grandfather by horse-cart crash. was it the lumber? the new team? the cart? drinking and driving? WE WILL NEVER KNOW.

when you walked into our house in austin, a pretty small farmhouse now that i think about it, and hooked a right after entering, you found yourself in the living room. along the south wall were built-in shelving units for books, the TV, VHS, and a sliding door with holes on either end that housed the records. 
my dad is a huge proponent of the LP. among the beatles, carly simon, the last little unicorn, and other psychedelic covered records, the stars of the show were the neil diamond albums. 
even when we got our cassette player and the huge stack of time-life 50s tapes, my siblings and i still broke out the neil diamond albums, especially tap root, which included cracklin’ rosie, i am the lion, and the best song ever, soolaimon. i couldn’t tell you how many times we listened to that album, dancing around the living room. the only song that may have topped it might have been “wild goose,” and that’s only because we decided to run around in circles 500 times while the song played.
when we moved to new london, i’m not sure what happened, but our excellent record player bit the dust. it was a great player; you could stack 5 LPS on it and it would drop them as each record finished. it was a great player around christmas time, when we would play our time-life albums nonstop. for a short while, there was no record player in the house, and i think after enough cajoling and complaining about the CD version of time-life christmas music not being quite the same, my dad picked up another player. it only plays one album at a time, but the christmas albums are worth that.
anyway, back to neil.
i liked mr. diamond so much, i made sure to buy his greatest hits on CD when i moved out of the house for college. while i may have been embarrassed to admit to liking singers from that era back in gradeschool (seriously, nothing embarrassed me more than saying the beatles was my favorite band in 3rd grade – in 1987…), now i’m happy to say that yes, i listen to neil diamond. 

i went to fargo this past weekend to visit melissa. the drive is a long one, but it’s pretty much a straight shot, pushing up through the cities, through central mn, then up to fargo. my way up had no space for extra stops, but my drive home did. so when i knew st. john’s exit was coming up, i decided to stop and say hi to lake sag. 
it was drizzling, but i still drove through campus, around the edge by lower stumpf lake, then parked in back by the potters’ studio. got out and just stood by the lake for 5 minutes, taking in the trees, the smells, the chapel across the water, the campus. it made me so incredibly sad. 
then i drove the back roads to st. joe, then through town. there was construction on the csb campus, otherwise i would’ve taken a little zip through there. 
stopped at grandma’s, then headed on my way as there was still 2-1/2 hours of driving.
what was i doing, though? i was already home. 
i need to get back there.

my second year of college, i lived in waite park with my college friend melissa and high school friend angie. since waite park is about six miles from CSB, i needed a way to get to and from college. fall semester, melissa said she would be able to drive me to and from, which worked about 80% of the time (there were a couple evenings where she said she didn’t want to come pick me up, so stay on the couch of a friend of ours).
after the semester was up, melissa decided enough was enough and college was not for her. she was moving back to fargo.
great.
i presented my problem to my parents, who had the “you got yourself into this mess now get yourself out we told you not to live in waite park” attitude. (well, my mom’s attitude.) (and these were the same parents who bought my brother two cars in high school.) (nice.)
i went so far as to test drive a little dodge i found in the classifieds. i figured i could get a cash advance from my credit card and slip on by the insurance requirement. i would’ve had to do it on the sly since my parents for some reason were very anti-me-having-a-car. (also, the summer AFTER my second year of college, when i got a job working overnights at kmart, my dad bought me a $400 car. WAT. i still can’t wrap my head around this scenario.)
well, i was able to get around the whole transportation issue by sending an email to all the off-campus bennies and johnnies begging for a daily ride to school. eureka! someone responded. the only problem was that she was a biology major, and her days started at 8 a.m. and lasted 8 hours.
i was just happy to have a ride. (sort of.) 
i had two classes day that semester, and they were both of the easy hour variety – probably an 11:20 a.m. and 2:40 p.m., or 9:40 a.m. and 1 p.m. either way, i got there way early and stayed way late. 
on the one hand, this was handy for studying – i did great in my econ and theology classes that semester and managed to squeak by in my theory of math class (which was HORRIBLE). on the other hand, i was a very tired person. i worked evenings at kmart, so there were days i didn’t get to sleep until midnight at least and had to be up a 6 a.m. since my carpool buddy wanted to get in early to go over notes. (she was very ambitious.)
so i took to sleeping in the library. 
the st. ben’s library had a loft which was little used, and i would spend my mornings up there before classes. beanbags littered the floor among the desks, and i could turn off the light. one time someone came up the stairs while i was asleep, turned on the light, woke me up, then stared at me as i gathered my things and left.
it was also kind of nervewracking because i didn’t have an alarm, so i was always worried i’d sleep too long and miss my classes, but i never did. (i should have gotten a digital watch or something that could’ve woken me up. cell phones were not the norm yet at this time, unfortunately.)
but i made my classes, and i managed to get a B or BC or C in my math theory class, and i still haven’t learned my lesson about going to bed early. maybe someday.

in spring 1998, i was finishing up my first year at st. ben’s. i had three pretty good friends (all of whom dropped out), and i felt like i was edging out a little bit into the world. the same way that my family’s move from austin to new london helped me edge out a little bit, my transition to college also helped (maybe a little bit moreso…). it also seemed to be a time at a cultural precipice; i was now a huge fan of the internet and chat rooms, even though much of the world didn’t know 3 things about the internet at the time. we had moved from the mid-90s and were moving into the late 90s. my eyeglasses had gone from metal gold-rimmed gross looking things to a plastic frame with a slimmer look. instead of a pair of carpenter jeans, i had a wide-leg pair of levis. and it was the summer of the skinny-strapped tank top*.
oooh, i was really skeptical and scared when i went to target and tried on my first black skinny strapped tank. there seemed to be entirely too much skin showing on top with very little holding up the shirt. but everyone was wearing them (along with capris, but there was no way on earth i was donning a pair of those ugly things), so i sucked it up and plunked down the $8 for the tank.
the three first-year dorms at st. ben’s create a sort of U around a large piece of lawn, and when the weather was nice, we ladies migrated from our rooms to the lawn. this was a time when a few people had a desktop computer in their dorm rooms, and NO ONE had a laptop. laptops were entirely too expensive. we had to wait in line for the computer lab on each floor – 6 god-awful slow dinosaurs with 13″ screens.
so when students migrated outdoors, it was with books, notebooks, friends, frisbees, maybe a portable CD player, and card games. we’re talking even pre-mp3 players (soon to come!).
maybe a week or two before the end of spring semester, it climbed into the 70s, and the great migration happened. the time had come for me to try out the tank top. i don’t know why i was so nervous; everyone was wearing them, and it was a good time for a test run. i put it on and tried not to look down at my expanse of pasty white exposed chest. 
i grabbed my three pretty good friends, a blanket, and a textbook or two (may was well feign studying, right?). we spread our blanket on an empty space on the lawn, stretched out, and did was college kids do. someone had opened up their first floor window and pointed their boombox outside, which was playing madonna’s immaculate collection. 
so we listened to “vogue” (which was only 8 years old at the time but seemed ancient) and put our hands alongside our faces in our best madonna poses, maybe glanced at a textbook in prep for finals, talked about how two of my friends weren’t coming back, and soaked up the first 70-degree weather we’d seen in 8 months. pretty soon my self-consciousness about the tank slipped away a little bit. i ended up wearing that thing til it wore out. 
when spring finally arrives every year and i pull on a tank top to wear outside for the first time (the straps are even SKINNIER now!), i am transported back to 70-degree weather at st. ben’s, surrounded by friends, and listening to “papa don’t preach.” 
*i KNOW i have a picture somewhere. just gotta find it.

i went to gradeschool in a large stone building on the east side of austin, which was connected to a church of the same tan stone. the halls were dark and tall, wooden beams crisscrossing the ceiling and meeting in the center at the principal’s office. 
while we may have gotten away with it at a public school due to my schooldays being in the 80s, in catholic school we were able to celebrate christmas. except, if you know anything about catholicism, we generally didn’t start with anything christmassy until at least the third week of advent. 
during advent, a round table was placed in the atrium outside the principal’s office, upon which a wreath and four candles stood – three purple and one pink. the advent wreath. 
once a week, the entire school would gather in the center of the building for the lighting of the advent candles – week one, purple; week two – two purples; week three – two purples and a pink!; week four – three purples and a pink. (pink represents joy – christmas is getting closer!)
then the entire school would sing the advent candle song:
Light the Advent candle one 
Now the waiting has begun 
We have started on our way 
Time to think of Christmas day. 

Candle, candle burning bright 
Shining in the cold winter night 
Candle, candle burning bright 
Fill our hearts with Christmas light.