5/2/03

Last weekend was spent up north for a belated Easter dinner with my in-laws.

My sister-in-law, Pam, went to a lot of trouble to prepare a wonderful dinner. A wonderful, huge dinner. I'm certain that Pam has worked for some relief organization in the past. The only way all the food could have been eaten in a timely manner is if there were throngs of starving people begging for deviled eggs and German potato salad, distributed in 50 pound sacks, from the back of a truck.

I'm not belittling the plight of starving people, I'm just trying to tell you there was a lot of food.

It's always good to see my family despite the fact that these days Deb's and my presence is really not required beyond providing safe transport for Allie. It's frightening to see the transformation of our daughter from a normal three-year-old to a member of the British Aristocracy.

Not long after she arrives she begins to throw her nose in the air and strut around her Grandparent's living room as if it were coronation day. The look on her face as she greets each person in the room says, "Yes, you may gaze upon me for a short while but please take care not to damage your eyes. The glare of my bright shining aura can be harmful to one's retinas."

The deprogramming process after Allie returns home from a trip up north takes a solid week and a team of former cult members trained by the CIA working in conjunction with several exorcists. Even then the prima donna within our daughter refuses to relinquish complete control.

I spent part of the weekend reading the journals of my father-in-law's mother, Martha.

Martha's journals started in the late 30's and continued until around 1985. She recorded the weather and her daily activities in everything from address books to small leather bound diaries and later spiral bound notebooks.

Martha was most faithful in her maintaining her journals in the fall and winter. I'm guessing spring and summer days were filled with the extra work living on a farm demands. However, Glenn told me that, while his mother may have occasionally let one or two daily tasks fall through the cracks, writing in her journal was almost never one of them.

It was amazing to hold some of the earlier journals. For some reason I almost believed they were forgeries perpetrated by my in-laws. I kept looking for the passage that read, "Greg looks and smells like a baboon's ass."

I never found it.

What I did find was entry after entry describing the day's weather and events. I wish I had them here to provide you with some quotes but I didn't want to take them home with us. I didn't want to be responsible for something so valuable. But I do remember Martha writing about Glenn hurrying so he could pick up Judy to go to a basketball game. In one of her earlier journals Martha wrote about traveling to Luxembourg to buy a 300 pound sack of flour. The next day she baked eleven loaves of bread.

Martha often wrote about food. Debbie told me about the meals her grandmother would prepare. According to Deb, no one could cook like her grandmother and there was always a huge amount of food leftover from each meal. "When's the next family coming?" was always the joke around the table. Pie, chicken, coon, Jell-O (without fruit just for Debbie) filled the Leege dinner table.

Yes, there was often raccoon. Glenn told me that if you got all of the fat off the animal before you prepared it the meat was excellent. I'll take his word for it.

Martha Leege died in 1989. Her husband, Elmer ("Elm" as she referred to him in her journals) died the following year.

Martha's journals are an extraordinary gift. I'm certainly not doing the depth and breadth of her handwritten legacy justice here. But I had to let you know just how compelling I found these documents to be. I don't do a lot of deep thinking (I'm moved more by my stomach than my brain) but Martha's journals did make me think about what I'll leave behind for my kids.

I'm thinking bad memories revolving around meatloaf night and a bed time story entitled, "Allie and the Broken Bottle Patch".