Mom's obsession with baptism

My mother, Mary Ellen O'Leary turns 84 on Jan. 1.

She lives in Minneapolis in an assisted living facility. When she was born in 1921, on a farm near Twin Lakes, Minn., she was taken to the priest and baptized on the same day. She said that her parents got her baptized as a precaution in case she might die.

Mom says, "Because they took me out when it was so cold, and from what they told me it was around 20 below zero, I have suffered from having cold feet all my life."

She is proud of this fact and getting her own babies and grandchildren baptized quickly has been a huge priority for her.

My daughter Theresa's birthday is on Dec. 26. I didn't get her baptized until May.

Mom had a fit about this. Every week until Theresa was baptized, mom telephoned me and without even saying hello would snap, "When are you going to get that baby baptized?"

I would tell her that I would get her baptized when I was rested up enough, and when I could make dinner for guests in my own home.

"I will make the dinner for you," Mom insisted.

I was getting tired of being bossed around by her and said, "No, I will do it my way."

One weekend in March of that year, I did make arrangements to get Theresa baptized. On the scheduled Sunday, we awoke to a huge winter snowstorm.

Mom called my house at 6 a.m.

"I will be up to your house as soon as I get Dad to shovel the snow away from the garage," Mom said.

I said, "Mom, there's a terrible snowstorm outside. You live 23 miles from me! The roads haven't been plowed and the snow is still coming down heavily."

Mom said, "Well even if I can't get up to your place, you get that baby to church and get her baptized. If anything should happen to her, she will end up in Limbo, and you will regret this the rest of your life."

I heard a click as she hung up the phone.

"My mother is crazy. She leaves me with such comforting thoughts," I said to Tom.

Her reasoning that my baby might die and end in Limbo was more likely to happen if I did go driving out in the snowstorm, I thought.

These days Mom is failing with age, and she speaks about things that happened in the past as if they happened yesterday.

She was at my daughter Mary's place with my family for Christmas.

My daughter Bridget and I picked her up where she lives. Mom was waiting outside of her room with her blue wool coat on. She uses a walker to get around. It is a chore to get her in and out of the car, as she has had a stroke and her left side is stiff.

We ask her to plop down on her butt on the car seat and we gingerly lift her legs into the car.

Mary lives in an upstairs apartment, and my son Danny and husband Tom diligently helped mom up the stairs one step at a time.

Mom kept saying, "Oh, I am such a bother. You should have left me at home."

We ignored these comments. Mom was quieter this Christmas than years past. She can no longer afford to give out Christmas checks, but she asks the grandkids if they all received a check from her. My kids all unanimously say, "Yes, and thank you Grandma."

Mom smiled and said, "Oh good, I couldn't remember if I had sent them out, and I don't have my checkbook on me."

My brother Steve took her to visit my sister Joann after she ate dinner with us. Then he took her back to the assisted living facility at the end of the day.

I don't know how much longer she will be able to stay at this place as she is starting to fall and is failing in other ways. But we will all be celebrating her 84 years this New Year's Day. We will make sure it is a happy birthday for her.

Christmas traditions change

I have been making homemade Christmas gifts.

I spent the summer gathering and drying flowers and herbs, and I am reaping my harvest. I made bath salts infused with comfrey, nettles and lavender and bottled this mixture in blue jars. I made a cream to rub for tired feet with bergamot flowers. I used dried calendula flowers and rose hips and used these to make a face cream.

All my products turned out well. I have been scraping the lotion I make from the bottom of the blender and rubbing it on myself. I don't want to waste any of the oils and beeswax that I put into my products.

We don't have our Christmas tree up yet. I want to put up the smallest one that we can find. My friend, Mary called me over the weekend and asked if I knew where she could get a tree that was around 15 feet tall. She has a room with a high ceiling that she puts her tree up in. She wants the tree to be spectacular looking.

Last year her husband cut the top off a tree on their farm. Mary said it took her all day to get it positioned correctly and to keep it from toppling over. Her 12-year-old daughter Laura was in tears because the tree was so misshapen. This year Mary is on the search for the perfect tree. With the determination of her daughter Laura and herself, she will come close to getting a nearly perfect 15-foot tree.

My daughter-in-law Mary was very clever in putting her tree up this year. She and my son have a 1 1/2 year old little boy named Tommy. Mary decorated her tree with paper snowflakes that she cut out of white paper. This way Tommy can't break any of the decorations. Their tree looks very simple and elegant.

I remember when I had little ones and decoration after decoration would get knocked off the tree by curious little hands. The more kids I had the less decorations I put up because they kept getting broken.

My daughter, Mary, and her husband put only silver and blue decorations on their tree, as these are the colors of Hanukkah. Her husband David is Jewish and last year on Christmas Eve I made him potato latkes served with pear sauce and sour cream. I also made traditional Jewish Challah bread. These were foods he grew up with and he was very happy to have them on his first Christmas with our family.

I have learned more about different ways to celebrate this time of year from my son-in-law and daughter-in-law. They have made my life richer with the different traditions that they bring.

My sister, Kate's husband, Adrian, is from England. A tradition that he brought to their family is on Christmas day after the presents are unwrapped they have a champagne brunch. They stay at home with their immediate family, and Christmas is very relaxing for them.

A tradition we did in the past was on Christmas Eve my children and my husband and I went to Christmas Eve service with my parents at St. Theodore's Catholic Church in Albert Lea. After mass, we went to my parents' house where my mom made oyster stew. My kids never liked the oyster stew. My dad would finish off all their bowls of soup. I think my mom could have put the whole pot of oyster stew in front of my dad as he ate so much of it.

I carried on the tradition of making oyster stew a couple years after my dad died, but he wasn't there to clean up everyone's bowls. I will probably make potato latkes this year and the Challah bread. New traditions are taking over and they are making the holidays more fun and delicious.

Darkness and a ripped-up kitchen

I am having a hard time this year with the darkness that comes on us so quickly each evening. It never used to bother me so much, but this year I miss the sunlight.

One reason I am having such a hard time is my kitchen is still torn up and I don't have much light in it.

I really don't enjoy work in that dark, cave-like kitchen. We do have the area dug up that we are adding on to our kitchen. We were going to have cement poured, but now I am waiting to have block laid down.

This project has taken so long because Tom and I couldn't agree on what to do. I bought four books on building or adding on an addition and Tom didn't want to look at them.

I like challenges and learning how to do something new, but Tom doesn't. This really bothered me until one day an old friend was visiting me and he told me he couldn't build anything.

"It scares the hell out of me to try and build something and use tools," he said. "I have almost lost fingers a couple of times when I tried to do a project. You won't catch me building anything."

So now I am waiting for the block to be laid. Our yard is all torn up, and we are slowly pulling the barn apart. It looks pretty rough around here.

The other day I had music on loud and was in another room of the house. I can't see people drive up like I used to because the windows are gone from my kitchen. I did hear my two dogs barking and looked out a side window and saw a man and woman all dressed up standing in the yard.

There were other people waiting in a car and I knew then that they were missionaries. I don't like to talk to these people. I was glad my dogs were barking so loudly at the two of them. I watched them look around our crazy yard and then get in their car and drive away.

Tom will usually talk to these missionaries that drive around door to door preaching their message. I used to, but I won't anymore after one of them told me I was going to go to hell if I didn't follow her beliefs.

I said to her, "Well, I'd rather be in hell with more open-minded people then in heaven with closed-minded people like you."

She left rather quickly after I said that. Another time when I was away on a trip, Tom told me that a group of missionaries had stopped by. One of the women was very nice looking and had on very pretty dress. Tom said she was very nice, and he enjoyed visiting with her.

A couple weeks later, a car of these missionaries drove up and a very pretty woman got out of the car with another woman. I knew that this pretty woman was the one that Tom had been speaking about. I went out of the house and said that I didn't want to hear their message.

"Your husband talked to me before," the pretty woman said. "He was very nice."

"I'm sure that my husband was very nice to you," I said. "You look very nice all dressed up in a dress; he was just chatting you up."

Tom was driving through the yard on the tractor just then and smiled and gave her a big wave. She looked at me and then the two of them quickly got in the car and drove away.

I have not been as rude to these missionaries lately when they stop by, but I don't like them coming around. I don't want to hear their message, but I am more polite when I tell them I won't listen to them. I understand that getting their message out to people is something that they are required to do in their religion. I just feel that their approach is very narrow-minded.

I don't like the arrogance of being told that I am going to hell because I don't have the same beliefs as someone else.

Don't pressure people to donate

I don't know about you, but I am getting tired of all the charities that are soliciting for one cause or another.

This time of year it seems to be worse than ever. I know that most of these charities are legitimate and they are good causes, but there are so many I am getting confused.

My son, Timmy attends private school and right now I have cookbooks and calendars to sell. There is a box at the school to donate toys for children and a tree to take a paper bulb off to get items needed for each classroom.

A note was sent home to send food to fill boxes for gift boxes for those that are over the age of 75, and when we go Christmas shopping we are asked to buy prizes for an upcoming school carnival. This has been going on for years as my older children attended this school, but this year it seems as if I am getting more notes send home that are soliciting for another worthy cause.

I am trying to help out as much as I can with all these causes, but this year any extra cash I have has been going to help my children pay off their student loans. I can't ignore these bills, as I co-signed for them. I am not complaining, this is the way it is when you have children and these bills will get paid up within the next twenty years or so.

My sister Kate lived in England for over 20 years and she is amazed at all the charities and volunteer groups that there are here in America. She said in England, people seldom volunteer for anything and no one would think about giving their hard earned cash to a cause. I think the reason for this is that in England the government is more socialized.

When she first moved back to the States with her family five years ago, Kate was upset about how high medical costs are here. In England the government takes care of medical costs. Kate still doesn't like the high costs of medical care here in the United States, but she when she was ill two years ago, people in her neighborhood brought her food, another neighbor came once a week to clean her house, and people gave her vouchers for gas, tickets for outings and did many other nice deeds.

Kate said, "Only in America, would this have happened. I would have been on my own in England. No one would have helped us out like they do here. The United States is a younger country than England and I think that because of this people help each other so much."

"When people settled in this vast land, or moved out West, they were isolated and on their own," she added. "People had to help one another. This unselfishness to help one another is still in people today."

All the thousands of charities and seeing the need to help others is one thing that makes America unique. I just don't like it when someone from a cause chastises another person for not giving to his or her cause. This happened to me a couple years ago when I got a letter from my church that had an angry tone in it because our family was not giving to an elevator fund. I would have given if I could, but I was paying for my college tuition along with helping my children.

All these charities are fine and there is always a new and very worthy one popping up, but taking care of your own family should come first. There are some causes I am very wary about, especially for older people on fixed incomes that give money to televangelists. These "messengers of God" prey on people's conscious.

When my dad was alive he sent a large check to his church once a month. In the last five years of his life when he was an invalid and ill, Dad complained that this was not the way his life was supposed to turn out.

Dad said, "I gave all that money to the church, and now look what God has done to me. I can't think clear or get around anymore. This was not the way my life was supposed to be. I made all you kids go to church and raised you all right, why did God do this to me?"

I said, "Giving money to the church and making your children go to church doesn't guarantee that you will stay healthy or go to heaven."

My dad had it in his mind that giving money to his church would guarantee that he would live a long and healthy life and pay his way to heaven. He felt cheated by the hard work he had done to make a living.

But we cannot buy our way to heaven or to have immortality. If we choose to not give to a certain cause, this does not make us a bad people. We have to pick and choose what charity to help out and it is not anyone's business when we choose to say no.