sharing few bathrooms
creates a suboptimal
situation … yup!

Adapted from the passage in the article in The Guardian, Are there billions more people on Earth than we thought? If so, it’s no bad thing by Jonathan Kennedy, where Mr. Kennedy writes:

“… as anyone who has crammed into one house with their extended family over Christmas knows, many people sharing few bathrooms creates a suboptimal situation.

You won’t be able to shower exactly when you want – and you’d better make it a short one. But this hardly amounts to the end of civilization.

In fact, compromise and sharing is probably closer to most people’s idea of a good life than having the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want.”

I will admit, right off the bat, I got nothing to complain about.

I grew up in a big family, 11 kids though 10 at time was the most who called home, home.

But I grew up in a big house.

There were seven kids when we moved into The Big House on Sligh Blvd. in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I grew up, then I showed up and then my three little brothers.

That house was BIG.

It was a split level and there were three floors plus a huge basement so big, we played floor hockey down there.

It had six bedrooms but two and half bathrooms (not counting the now-a-days so called en suite bathroom off my parents bedroom.

For some reason, the upstairs bathroom had a tub and a shower, but for most of my life, Mom refused to put a shower curtain over the tub as that’s where so would throw us four little boys for our Saturday Night baths all at once and Mom would sit on the side of the tub and scrub our hair with soapy smelling Breck Shampoo.

There was a shower stall in the laundry room but never once did I ever see anyone use it.

By the time I could remember things, Mom had put a closet rod in there and hung up clean laundry that was waiting to be distributed to the bedrooms.

With 4 places where you could take care of things, even when 12 people in the house, I can’t complain.

My wife’s family had 12 kids, nine of them girls and for a good chunk of their lives together, made due with one bathroom.

We all managed quite nicely and then would come the holiday season.

As my older brothers and sister got married and moved out, they all came back at Christmas time and as their families grew, the big house would get filled up.

Sometimes other relatives would show up at the same time and we would be spread out on sofas and floors with blankets or sleeping bags.

I will repeat and agree with Mr. Kennedy when he states: “… anyone who has crammed into one house with their extended family over Christmas knows, many people sharing few bathrooms creates a suboptimal situation.”

It seems like it was my brother Paul, who almost every year made the drive at Christmas time from his home on east coast with his wife and four kids, who said that “It wasn’t difficult to take a shower with hot water. It was just a matter of timing.”

Needing the bathroom for bathroom business and bathing was one thing.

Growing up, my family brought the suboptimal situation to a whole other level as we always managed to come down with what we called “The Stomach Flu.”

Norovirus, The 24 Hour Bug or my favorite from Great Britain, Winter Vomiting, it all came down to the fact that at some point, when the house full to bursting, between Christmas and New Years, some one would announce, I GOT TO THROW UP.

Your first thought was anger at the person who got sick first and who we blamed for bringing the bug into the house and your second thought was, who will be next and your last thought was, when will it be my turn.

Because, at some point, it would be your turn.

Was it better to be first, get it over with despite having everyone mad at you?

Or to be last and worry that every twinge, every stomach growl was the beginning of something worse.

We had buckets and bowls and pans.

The first person who came down with the bug would get into bed along with an old revere-wear stainless steel double boiler pot that was indestructible and also known as the barf bowl.

I came home from school once to find Mom making brownies and melting chocolate squres in that double boiler and I would not eat any of those brownies.

Mom made lots of brownies but if I didn’t SEE her make them in that bowl, I was fine.

It is hard for me to imagine the production line of buckets and bowls and soiled bedding that Mom had to deal with during these outbreaks.

Not only was she in charge of housekeeping but chief nurse as well as dietician.

She would monitor all the sick ones as well as encourage the ones who had yet to fall sick and she comforted those on the comeback.

At some point you would be offered a milkshake (with a raw egg in it to help get ‘some weight back on’ that Mom added without telling us) and you knew the worst was over.

I remember one year giving in to the inevitable when I came down with it late at night.

Knowing I wouldn’t be sleeping, I made a log of all the times I barfed and later graphed it out.

It was then that I noticed that the times between barfing decreased – you threw up more and more often – until it didn’t and once you had a period of time longer between barfing than the previous time, the barfing peaked and you were over the worst and maybe had just one or two more times to go.

After learning this I tried to ‘game’ the stomach flu by trying to throw up fast and furious to get to that magic peak but I learned it had to happen when it had to happen.

For some reason, I never got my family interested in my research but when I became a parent I always kept an eye on things and could tell when one the kids had made the turn.

I was older and I had my own family but I still knew that many people sharing few bathrooms creates a suboptimal situation.

I might not be able to shower exactly when I want – and I’d better make it a short one. But this hardly amounts to the end of civilization.

In fact, compromise and sharing is probably closer to most people’s idea of a good life than having the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want.”

It certainly can get worse.

to provide for
uniform observances
public holidays

On June 28, 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which moved four holidays, including Memorial Day, from their traditional dates to a specified Monday in order to create a three-day weekend. The change moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 30 date to the last Monday in May. The law took effect at the federal level in 1971 all according to Wikipedia.

It is the books as Public Law 90-363 based on House Resolution 15951, “To provide for uniform annual observances of certain legal public holidays on Mondays, and for other purposes.”

The first time this law went into effect would have been Monday, May 31st, 1971.

Had it not been for this law, Memorial Day that year would have been Sunday, May 30th … which means it most likely would have been celebrated on Monday anyway.

I can’t say I remember.

I do remember being bothered that some holidays were being moved just so, as I was told, Government workers could have a three day weekend.

And I think, in my goofy way, I continued to push for celebrating Memorial Day on the 30th and not the last Monday but that was me being me.

My family was big on celebrating Memorial Day or Decoration Day as we called it.

At some point in the week ahead, my Dad would come home with what we called ‘planters’ which were live flowers in a low cardboard box that would fit in the cement funeral urns next to headstones in cemeteries.

The first Memorial Day I remember was the spring of 1965 when I was four as flowers were put on my Grandma Hoffman’s grave for the first time as she had just died on May 18th of the that year.

Grandma Hoffman, for me, was a very special person though I don’t have too many memories of her.

The story that stands out is one told over and over again by many people by the time I was four, is that after I would do something, Grandma would say, “Don’t worry … don’t worry … about Mike … He will turn out okay.”

Not sure what this says, but it says a lot I am sure.

Again … that was being said when I was four.

It was in late May of 1965 that my Dad bought some flowers and took me and my three year old brother Pete and we picked up his sister, my Aunt Marion and we went to Fairplains Cemetery in Grand Rapids where Grandma and Grandpa Hoffman had been buried.

The funeral had been just a few weeks earlier and Aunt Marion pointed with her finger at the grass and said to Pete and I, “See the outline of the grave where the coffin was buried?”

Boy howdy could I see it !

Just after Grandma died, my Dad had brought me and Pete to his office to get us out of the house.

The funeral home, the original Creston Funeral Home, was across Plainfield Avenue from his office and Dad says, “Lets go see Grandma.“

I remember crossing the street in bright sunshine and going through the doors of the funeral home.

One of the undertakers came up and Dad said, “I’d like to see my Mother.”

The undertaker led us down a hall, though a double door into dark room.

The undertaker snapped on some lights, and there, surrounded by flowers was my first coffin.

We walked over and the undertaker fiddled with a latch and opened the lid and there was Grandma.

In my mind, I had stopped breathing when the lights came on and both Pete and I stood stock still.

Dad looked down and told us, “It’s like she is sleeping.”

Oh, okay. Why is she in the box if she is asleep I wanted to ask.

“Do you want a look?” he asked.

No, I am good I said to myself, I am good right here and can see just fine but I guess I nodded yes as Dad picked me with his hands under my arms and leaned me in for a close up.

“You can touch her hand,” he said.

How could I touch her hand when my hands were pulled back into my arms as tight as could be.

No … no … that’s okay, I was thinking but I didn’t want to disappoint Dad so I stuck out a finger for the shortest touch possible.

Then Dad set me down and it was Pete’s turn and while Pete was getting a good look, I started to move slowly for the door.

What I also remember, with absolute clarity, was how bright the world seemed when we got outside and I started breathing again.

Dad may have had second thoughts about taking us as we stopped at the drugstore to get comic books on the way home.

As an aside my brother Bobby had an experience like this as when Dad had to take my Grandpa Hoffman to the hospital for the last time, he brought 10 year old Bobby along and, well, Grandpa didn’t come home. A few years later when Mom had to be taken to the hospital for the next baby, which may have been me, Bobby freaked out. But I digress.

When Aunt Marion asked if I could see the outline of the grave where the coffin was buried I had no trouble seeing the outlines, the grave and the coffin down there under the dirt.

I said I could see, no problem.

No problem at all.

My Dad got out the flowers he had purchased and placed them in the urn.

I doubt my Grandma’s headstone had been prepared yet so that day it would have just been Grandpa Hoffman’s tombstone.

The stones hadn’t been ordered at the same time and the tombstone place couldn’t match the colors and forever after when Grandma’s headstone had been delivered, my Dad would mention the fact that the colors didn’t match.

After Fairplains, we got in the car and drove over to Fulton Street Cemetery where Great Grandma DeYoung and her family was buried.

I remember that there went any planters here so Dad had brought along a flat of petunias and Aunt Marion took a trowel and we helped her plant the flowers around the graves.

Years later, I would bring my kids to the Cemetary.

I don’t have many regrets in life but that my marriage and all our children happened after my Dad died is one of them.

But also I remember that one summer along Lake Michigan, a big black boulder showed up on the beach for awhile.

(That boulders would come and go from the beach was a mystery until one winter I was out on the shore when high winds were crashing waves with huge blocks of ice on the beach and everything and I mean everything got moved around.)

One night sitting out on the deck over looking the beach, Dad pointed and said, “When I die, you can use that boulder for a headstone.”

I said, wellll, okay and we both laughed.

I remembered that and while I couldn’t get that rock, for years on Memorial Day, I would place a bunch of smaller rocks from the lake around his tombstone.

The cemetery groundskeeper couldn’t figure out where those rocks came from but they kept removing them.

But on Memorial Day, I would take our kids, first just the one then two then three then all seven and we would get some cemetery planters at Kingma’s and we get Grandma we would go to Fairplains and decorate the graves.

Dad’s grave was about 50 yards in front of my Grand Parents in Fairplains.

You could watch the cemetery expand as the residents of the North End of Grand Rapids died.

My Dad liked to say that come judgment day, Fairplains Cemetery was going to be like a Sunday School picnic.

It was fascinating to watch the rows expand around my Dad’s grave and how on Memorial Day, there would be solid ranks of American flags that marked the generation that fought in World War 2.

My Mom would get out, I would grab a planter – always red geraniums – and the kids would grab buckets and some stiff brushes and we would clean off the graves and leave the flowers.

First my Dad’s grave and then Grandpa and Grandma Hoffman.

Then my Mom would walk around a little, remarking on folks she had known.

I never asked, but Mom had remember my Dad’s comments on his parents Grave stones so when my Dad died, she ordered a matching stone for herself and for years, saw her stone with a blank space for the final year.

But they match and that’s what Mom wanted.

Lots of good things to remember on remembrance day.

wind and the corn and
the rain and the sun talk things
over together

I heard yesterday that my cousin Denny had died.

Like a lot of cousins, we had been close growing up but as our families grew up and we transitioned from being the cousins to being the Aunts and Uncles, we lost touch.

That doesn’t change the feeling of loss though when news like this arrives.

Denny’s Mom was my Aunt Marion and she was my Dad’s older sister.

They grew up on Coit St. down where the street angled off from Plainfield Ave.

The grew up going to Berean Baptist Church and Creston High School.

After World War 2, they both started families and lived on the north end and their kids went to Berean Baptist Church and Creston High School.

We saw each at Church and at school and we lived just blocks apart.

The Hoffman’s and Glerum’s grew up together,

All of my Glerum cousins were older than I was and they were like a second set of older brothers and sisters.

As I drove my older brothers and sisters batty with my batty behavior I am not sure what my cousins thought of me but I always thought it was pretty cool that we had cousins so close.

Denny was the same age as my older brothers and fit right in.

He would show up at almost anytime and join in whatever was going on at our house.

If a ballgame was on tv, he would sit and watch and talk.

If a ballgame was going on in the front yard, he would join in and play.

Unlike the Hoffman’s though, Denny also embraced hunting and fishing and when he got older, bought both a truck AND a motorcycle.

All aspects of life that made my cousin Denny seem to be at a level of cool I could never hope to attain.

There was a time in our lives when Denny would stop off at our house to grab and take me off where ever he was going.

A couple of times Denny took me fishing but quickly figured that me and fishing wasn’t going to happen.

He had the presence of mind to never offer to talk me hunting.

He was brave and a nice guy to be sure, but the thought being around me with a gun in my hands … well, lets say that is something that hasn’t happened to this day.

But we would go visit his classroom at school and he would put me to work sorting papers or books or something.

One night (NIGHT MIND YOU) he stopped by as his neighbor who had an apple orchard had told him that he could help himself to all the ‘drops’ (ripe apples that had fallen off the trees) he wanted and Denny brought me along, in the dark, in the rain, to pick up apples.

A bit crazy but boy was I proud when I came home with a bushel of fresh apples for my Mom.

Another time he grabbed me and he drove out to the house he was having a built on his property out near Cedar Springs.

He was having hard wood floors installed and they had just been stained and he wanted to see how they looked.

The floors looked fine to me but Denny crawled over the floor on his knees, in stocking feet, saying no no no as he did not like how dark they looked.

Then there was the time when he showed up with his new motorcycle and handed me a helmet and I went off for my one and only motorcycle ride.

You just never knew what might happen.

I heard yesterday that my cousin Denny had died.

I have thought about Denny since then.

I thought about all the things he did with me and my family.

I thought about his hunting and fishing.

I thought about his farm, what we called ‘Dennys land’.

I thought about he lived his life.

He was a big part of my life.

This world will be a lesser place without him in it.

There was a high majestic fooling
Day before yesterday in the yellow corn.

And day after to-morrow in the yellow corn
There will be high majestic fooling.

The ears ripen in late summer
And come on with a conquering laughter,
Come on with a high and conquering laughter.

The long-tailed blackbirds are hoarse.
One of the smaller blackbirds chitters on a stalk
And a spot of red is on its shoulder
And I never heard its name in my life.

Some of the ears are bursting.
A white juice works inside.
Cornsilk creeps in the end and dangles in the wind.
Always — I never knew it any other way—
The wind and the corn talk things over together.
And the rain and the corn and the sun and the corn
Talk things over together.

Over the road is the farmhouse.
The siding is white and a green blind is slung loose.
It will not be fixed till the corn is husked.
The farmer and his wife talk things over together.

Laughing Corn from Cornhuskers by Carl Sandburg as published in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, by Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1950.

well, son, I’ll tell you
life ain’t been no crystal stair
it’s had tacks in it

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.

But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

“Mother to Son” from The Collected Works of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes (University of Missouri Press, 2002).

I think this photo is of a Labor Day walk from our families house on the North End of Grand Rapids to my Grandma Hoffman’s house over on Coit Street near the old Creston Branch Library.

On the left is my Grandma Hendrickson and on the right is my older sister, Mary.

That’s Mom in the middle.

Her life wasn’t what Mr. Hughes wrote about when describing his Mother’s life but there were tacks aplenty in Mom’s life and I was lot of them.

I was a goofy 8th-child in a family of 11.

I could have chosen to keep my mouth shut, fly under the radar and mostly likely would not have been noticed too much … but where’s the fun in that?

At least from my point of view.

So I worked to stand out.

Not that I had too.

Even with 11 kids, Mom could make you feel special.

At some point in my elementary school career I made a clay pot which I proudly presented to my Mom on Mother’s Day and she loved it and put it, for a while, in a place of pride on the kitchen counter.

Was I proud!

So I proud that I never noticed that over time, other pots and gifts replaced my pinch pot.

With 11 kids, these types of gifts accumulated and Mom had a special shelf in one of the kitchen cupboards where she safely stored them all.

But deep down I knew mine was her favorite.

I know that because year’s later, when one of my brother’s returned from college having picked up the habit of smoking, Mom put MY pot in his room to use for a ashtray.

I puzzled about that for a little bit.

But when I realized none of those other pots never ever made it out of her cupboard, I knew mine must have meant something special to her to want to share it with my brother.

So what if it became an ashtray.

She was just trying to spread the happiness.

That is a great way to describe Mom.