Beautiful Brown Eyes (Jeanne)

Larry often (daily?) said lovely things to my mom. One of his favorites was commenting on her "beautiful brown eyes." I thought of this recently when I told my dog he has such beautiful brown eyes . . . and realized that the phrase sounded really familiar!

It sounded familiar because I heard my dad say that to my mom throughout my childhood. He also said "Have I told you lately that I love you?" or "Have I told you lately how much I love you?" So sweet to have this language poured out on a regular basis!

I'm glad that there were as many "I love you" statements as there were in the household I grew up in. Thanks, Dad.

I told my dog he had beautiful brown eyes and thought of my dad telling my mom that. He would also joke that her eyes were brown because she was "full of sh*t." My parents were very verbal - in good ways and in critical ways. There was love, laughter, and a bit of meanness.

I need to add photos.

I'm not adding one of my mom right now because I'm at the lake and most of my photos are on our home cloud . . . This isn't the best shot of his eyes, but I like including photos. My mom's obituary photo is okay, but I'd rather add a nicer one another time.

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A Dad Story: Memories Lost (Jeanne)

It has been two years since my dad died. (Today is 1.22.2018. He died on 1.21.2016.) In getting rid of scraps of paper in my life (de-cluttering; I'm not yet ready for Swedish Death Cleaning!), I found an old receipt with some notes on it. "broken hand" "Dr. Dumont" "St. Joseph nuns" "Campbellton" Google brought me here: St. Joseph Hospital - http://www.rhsj.org/en/former-apostolic-sites_382_-21.php Religieuses Hospitalieres de Saint-Joseph I can't find information on Dr. Dumont (not that I tried that hard . . . ) but here's what I remember of that conversation with my dad over two years ago (I don't have the best memory!). He was talking about bequests after my mom died. He wanted to send money to places that were meaningful to him - the convent where his sister, Sister Beatrice, served, for example. He also mentioned Dr. Dumont, who had fixed his "broken hand" when he was a kid. He said they couldn'...

Gum and Thriftiness and Pronunciation and Honesty (Jeanne)

Eileen was a very thrifty gal. She bought CareFree sugarless gum and would willingly share it. A half piece at a time. Seriously! Since gum loses its flavor relatively quickly, she thought it was wasteful to take an entire piece, no matter how long you would chew it. So she would tear the piece in half and hand it out as though it were a special treat. Even Jenifer remembers this about her! When her grandson Morgan was preschool age, he pronounced the word "Num." Grandma Eileen said, "Gum. G - g - g - g - gum. With a hard G. You say it." And Morgan said, "G - g - g - g - num!" It was hilarious! He wasn't doing it to be a stinker; he just had trouble with the word. But she kept trying! When Jeanne was five-ish years old, Eileen said "No" at the grocery store to buying her a pack of gum for herself. Jeanne took one and put all five sticks in her mouth while on the car ride home. Since she was dumb, the wrappers were all there in the bac...

Fifteen Minutes of Fame (Louise)

From Louise: In Corpus Crispy (aka Corpus Christi), I was with Eileen and Larry. It was a cloudy day and we had taken chairs down to the pier in their swimsuits with reading material looking for sun anyway. When I saw a TV news van pulling up, I said, "Oh no! This can't be good." It was the afternoon weather report. They wanted to get a shot of the curve of the coastline, showing the weather. They featured us! Frozen Minnesotans."Where are you from?" and all that. When they were done with the spot, we asked about a good place to eat cheap seafood. A local place. So we ate at the place they recommended. When we were checking out, the waitress asked how we heard about them. And we said, "Well the news guy on channel whatever it was . . . " And she said, "Oh! That was you! I saw that!" So we were famous.

Eileen and Larry Somers

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