Dear Readers,

It’s snowy on the first day of March 2019.  Did I expect blazing sunshine, warm breezes, butterflies, tulips and daffodils?  Good thing I did not.  Did you?

My house is warm, though, and my dog is happy to spend all day with Mommy Mommy.  Yes, Finn really does call me Mommy Mommy. Dog owners, you do believe me. Two high points for the first day of March:  warm house, loving dog.

This morning I had a perfect avocado.  You fans of avocado know that doesn’t always happen.  I cut it open and the green was beautiful, not one brown speck.  It wasn’t hard, it wasn’t mushy, it was just the avocado experience you want–and enhanced with squeezes of lemon juice and squirts of Sriracha. I should have taken a photo of it.  Oh well, by the time I thought of it, I’d eaten it. Another high point for today: exquisite avocado.

When I was growing up in the 1950’s and the 1960’s, I had never seen an avocado.  Avocado wasn’t even a word in my family’s household.  I did know that it was a color, but I’d never seen an avocado. I surely didn’t know about Sriracha, but I don’t think it was invented/available for people in North Camden yet. Hmm.

Thank you, Google. I looked up this hot sauce and it was produced for mass consumption in the 1990’s. I’ve consumed many bottles of this red sauce. Look up the story about Huy Fong  Foods and Sriracha! You could learn this chili sauce probably originated in Thailand long ago and about the company who makes it.  Thank you, Thailand and Huy Fong Foods. Another high point for this morning: Sriracha.  By the way, I own no stock in this company.  What’s the matter with me?

My last high point for this morning? My cell phone.  I can lie on the bed and research Sriracha on my cell phone. It’s almost too easy. If you have lived a large part of your life pre-cell phone/pre-computers, you might acknowledge that research used to take a bit of doing.  Libraries!  You dinosaurs, you!

Happy March from Cramer Hill!

Sincerely,

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra

Retired ESL Teacher, Camden resident

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers,

I’m at the end of a long and terrible cold/virus and I’m feeling weepy.  I miss my dad.  I had him for eighty-three years, but it wasn’t enough.

What provoked this weepiness?  This morning I hung my coffee mug on the hooks under my kitchen cabinet here in Cramer Hill.  It was thirty-some years ago that my dad put up those hooks for me.  Seeing the hooks made me cry.

When my dad died in 2003, I cried, but somehow I bricked up how terrible I felt. It was too hard to bear. Life had to keep rolling on.

Sometimes, though, it hits me that he’s really, really gone and inside my heart, I feel all crumply and sad.    It’s irrevocable I’ll never talk to him again.

Dad had a cockatoo in the jungle of New Guinea when he was there as a lineman in WWII and he was crazy about the bird. He was a kind, young soldier in the U.S. Army from North Camden who befriended a beautiful white cockatoo.

He made some sort of application to try to send it back to the USA.  I don’t know if that was possible?  However, he said that another soldier had taught the bird rude words and then there was no chance for the application to be approved.  I don’t think he ever forgave that soldier.  My father didn’t talk like that and that soldier ruined my dad’s dream to send the bird home.

When I grew up, we kids only heard bits and pieces of family stories and I’m sorry for that.  I wish that I could ask him to tell me more.  What was the bird’s name?  Did he tame it?  (I have that idea.) How long did he have it?  Who turned down the request? What happened to the bird after he left New Guinea?

There are so many times that I want to tell or ask him something and I can’t.  Usually I just brush it away because what else can I do?

Today I cried and then I decided to write a blog.

Rest in peace, Dad.  William Edward Wunsch, Jr., 1920-2003.

 

Thanks for reading.

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra, Cramer Hill resident

 

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Dear Readers,

I hope that all of you are having a decent 2018.  You know how it is.  Some years are up and some are down.  Often in the middle! Hope your 2018 is good.  Mine has been pretty good.  Grateful.  You need those breather years.  Do you know what I mean?

The photo is from a really UP day in the restaurant of the Galmont Hotel in Galway, Ireland this October.  After a day of trains and vans and seeing the island of my ancestors, I was extremely tired, but happily so.  A pot of tea, a newspaper and a view–in Ireland! I still can’t believe that I had that time in Ireland…  Dreams do come true sometimes and they make good memories.

Today I’m home with a mug of tea, my laptop and a view of my kitchen in Cramer Hill.  Still very good.  I’m enjoying this free day and the company of pets.  My tiny cat, Reina, is standing on my chest meowing.  I think she likes me a lot. My dog, Finn, tries to push her off.  He’s jealous. Oh, to be so loved!  It’s a pretty much up day to be so desired.

A little down happened today–I got the news that I need a new washer.  What happened to those washers with metal, not plastic, parts like my mom had and that I also once had that lasted for decades?  I rejoice in a big up that I am able to get a new one.

Laundromat costs add up fast and I always manage to drop a pair of panties on the floor of the laundromat in front of a stranger. It never fails.

That’s my Cramer Hill day.  I’m not in Ireland and I’m not pinching myself that I’m in a dream come true, but I’m good.  I’m going to finish my tea and look at washers online.  UP.

Hope your days and years are UP.

Love to all my readers from Camden, New Jersey,

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra

Retired Camden City Public Schools ESL Teacher

Camden resident

 

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Dear Readers,

I got up super early and voted.  Maybe I should have voted by mail, but I followed the tradition of my parents who went to the former Washington Elementary School in Cramer Hill and entered into a booth and voted. If you know me, you know how I voted.

My parents never missed voting except in their very last years–Alzheimer’s for my dad and dementia for my mom.  They wouldn’t have missed for any less excuse.

Please vote–even if you have to miss a day of work, a wedding or picking up your lottery winnings.  Even if you haven’t had a coffee yet… Today might be your most important voting day so far.  Your priority today if you haven’t voted?  VOTE.

No excuses today.

Love,

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra

Cramer Hill resident

Dear Readers,

At last!  The long anticipated reunion happened last Saturday night.  Now I can go back to eating bread.  You know I just had to fit into the little black dress I bought for the occasion.

The reunion was great–and I mean it.  I could have eaten that bread. I could have eaten a chocolate birthday cake every day for weeks.  I could have bulged and popped out of my dress and no one would have noticed.  Everyone was so happy to see each other.  Many of us hadn’t seen each other for five decades.

No kidding–the friendliness and happiness in that room at Braddock’s Tavern just glowed, absolutely glowed.  I hadn’t expected an atmosphere that warm and lovely.  Frankly, I’d worried it might be awkward.

I wish the reunion could have lasted all weekend.  (Reunion committee members–don’t faint!)  I didn’t get to talk to as many people as I wished and somehow I missed some old friends who were there.  (Cathy Manning!  I didn’t see you until I saw you on the Facebook photos.) The four hours flew like four minutes.

My reunion with Ruth Ostermayer, the girl with the sweet smile next to me in the photo, filled my heart.  We’d been best friends from kindergarten to sixth grade in John S. Read School in North Camden and then my family moved to Cramer Hill.  Sixth grade was an unhappy year for me.  Everything was new–new neighborhood, new school, new church. So much familiar and loved seemed to disappear.

My mother had decided that a new townhouse in Cramer Hill was her dream come true.  She could choose the color of the kitchen tiles, wallpaper, the bathtub…   Everything new.  Good-bye to our tiny old rowhouse in North Camden!

Mom loved that we would be up the street from Von Neida Park and a relatively few blocks’ walk from grocery stores, a florist, a 5 and 10 (Binkley’s), church, school and a bus stop. We had no car.  Even two friends of hers from North Camden would buy across the street. She had instant good friends. Cramer Hill looked like heaven.  She would have to pinch pennies, but managing my dad’s factory worker pay was her expertise.

Somehow she got my dad to agree to leave North Camden and somehow with a two-week-old baby and two reluctant elementary school kids, she got us moved.  I was so, so sad.  I didn’t want to leave, but, in those days, kids didn’t have any input.  I also wasn’t able to understand that this brand-new house was important for my mother.  (She would never agree to move from this house and she stayed there in her dream home until she died in it last year at age ninety-three.)

I was especially sad to leave my very best friend, Ruth.  I was sad to leave other friends, too, but I’d spent years with Ruth and her family. I worried that our friendship would survive, but it wouldn’t be the same.

Ruth and I kept in touch, but those years of childhood best friendship became a wistful memory.  We went to high school together, but we ended up in different classes.  I worked in the Woolworth’s and I babysat.  Not much social life. However, we persisted with Christmas cards and occasional letters and e-mails, never forgetting our years of jumping rope, going to Brownies, roller skating, making cookies, reading Highlights, comic books, Bobbsey Twins and the World Book Encyclopedia, telling stories, drawing, singing at her piano and walking home from school together.

When we saw each other at the class reunion last week, we were delighted to be back together in person and we talked for as long as we could without ignoring the rest of the class.  Ruth told me that she had been devastated when I moved.  Even after all those years, that news almost made me cry.  I hadn’t known that she, too, had been upset. She seemed to be okay with other friends.  I never knew that she missed me, too.

We talked about her family’s three-story house on State Street.  We recalled every floor, every room.  What good memories we shared of that house.  I’ve even dreamed about that house.

Ahhh…  I forget where I put my keys, but I remember perfectly those years with Ruth and her family.

What a blessing to be able to sit next to Ruth at the high school reunion and to have a reunion of our childhood–in person.

Thanks, dear readers, for reading this account of a bit of my wonderful reunion.

Love,

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra, Class of 1968, Woodrow Wilson High School, Camden, NJ

 

PS I’m sure this is one little story of hundreds from the reunion.  Sincere thanks to the reunion committee for hunting up the class members and getting us to attend.  Great job. It was a night to remember.  Thanks, too, for letting us know what members of our class have passed away.  That list broke my heart, but it reminded me to be grateful for every day.  All in all, it was a super evening and I loved seeing so many friends.  Again, I wished it could have been a weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers,

Tonight is my reunion–the Woodrow Wilson High School class of 1968.  Camden, New Jersey.  Fifty years. I’m ready.

I bought a simple black dress and I have kept it free from grandchildren mess, dog and cat hair.  That’s about all that’s needed.  A little black dress.  I should feel perfectly confident.  Maybe I don’t.

Will I recognize my classmates and will they recognize me?  I told my daughter, an oh-so-youthful thirty-five, that I wish that I was young again and then that new dress would look even better on me at the reunion.

She laughed.  “Your classmates will be your age, too!”

I guess so.

But, I imagine them as I knew them as teen-agers in high school and now I know myself as, shall we say, a more mature person in retirement. Certainly no teen-ager. Maybe this morning they, too, are thinking of how age has changed them.  I’m going to say–for the better!

All of us who can make it to the party are blessed that we have the health, the money, the time and the opportunity to get together.  No one is going to care  if someone has grandchildren’s yogurt stains, dog or cat hair on their reunion duds.  It’s going to be fun just to see each other.

Thanks to all the people who made it happen.  Sincerely.  It was a lot of work for you.

I’ll get back to you, my readers, with how the event went.

Love from Cramer Hill, yes, I live here in Camden,

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra

PS  That’s me in the picture…last week at the Bunratty Castle in Ireland. I still have a bit of jet lag.  Hopefully, my head won’t fall in the dinner plate tonight.

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers,

I get up and breathe the air of Cramer Hill retirement.  Bliss.   Should I go to the KROC CENTER just blocks away and walk in the pool?  Should I tackle the declutterment of the basement? Or, should I have a cup of tea and an egg with my new book?

You got it. I ‘m halfway through MAEVE IN AMERICA, ESSAYS BY A GIRL FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE, by Maeve Higgins.  It’s funny with a bit of serious thrown in.

Remember when you were in school and things were funny? Everyone told jokes?  You couldn’t stop laughing at the dinner table and your dad would say, “What’s so funny?”  I miss those days. The world is grim now.  So–please.  I love funny.

Funny happens especially with my grandchildren–needless to say, they are the dearest, sweetest, cutest, yummiest and funniest children on God’s green earth!  You could take that with a grain of salt because it’s a grandmother’s perspective.  Oh, you already knew that.  Sorry.

The other day I was playing “dolls” with my three-year-old granddaughter while her almost eight-month-old brother watched us.  He clutched his soft rabbit and listened to us act out scenarios that we made up on the spot.

Nora twirled Barbie who was wearing a fancy purple dress and no shoes.  She held her up, “She is the mother and she is taking her daughters to soccer practice.”

The daughters were tiny LOL dolls.  “We can’t find our soccer shoes. I mean, cleats.”  (I was the voice for the daughters.)

Soccer Mom Barbie (AKA Nora) said, “Look in your closet.  Hurry up. Don’t be late.”

In the imaginary car they go with their imaginary soccer ball, cleats and shin guards.

Nora looks around the room and Baby Nate loses his beloved stuffed rabbit because the rabbit must be the soccer coach.  His sister pops a pacifier in his mouth and Nate is good with that. Perhaps he figures there must be a reason that his friend was snatched away from him.  He’s an optimistic little chap even at this tender age.

“All right, get in line.  Pay attention.  No looking at birds in the sky nor squirrels in trees.  Keep your eye on the ball.”  I’m Soccer Coach Rabbit’s voice.   I say it sternly in my former teacher voice.

The two LOL dolls and elegant Barbie mom laugh appropriately.  I feel gratified at my humor being appreciated.  Thank you, Nora.

Then!  Soccer Mom Barbie lunges at the Soccer Coach Rabbit.  Does she feel that he spoke too harshly to the team?  What is this all about?  I remember sports moms–they can get excited.

Soccer Coach Rabbit falls back as the elegant soccer mom kisses him again and again.  “I love you!  I love you!  I love you!”

What could a grandmother say?

“Uh, are they married?”

Nora states, “Yes.  They had a wedding.”

Aaah, she’s going to be a writer.

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Love from Camden resident,

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra

P.S.  I love to receive comments.  AND!!!!!!

I hope to see you at our 50th class reunion.  You can tell me about your kids, grandkids, neighbors, dogs, cats, birds or pet rocks.  OR— BRING A JOKE FOR ME!

 Here’s the info: October 20th, Saturday night at Braddock’s Tavern. 39 South Main Street, Medford, NJ 08055  6:45 p.m. to 11 p.m. $75 for buffet and dancing.  Cash bar.  Check payable to Woodrow Wilson 50th Reunion.  Send to Alberta Wolf, 25 Bear Head Rd., Medford, NJ  08055.  Please send by October 5th.

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Dear Readers,

That photo of me sits on a little shelf in my mom’s dining room.  Mom is gone now, but the photo is still there in the Cramer Hill home where my brothers live.  Its place hasn’t changed.  Have I?  Of course.  That photo is what they call “back in the day.”

I didn’t like that photo at the time because it wasn’t glamorous, but that was how I looked.  I was still a junior in high school, seventeen, and I went to a photo studio in downtown Camden for this senior class picture. Maybe some of my Woodrow Wilson High, Class of 1968, remember the name of the studio?

I was nervous. I’d heard stories of how that drape slipped down.  How terrible it would be if that happened to me.  (It did not.)

The photo was going to be a big deal.  It would appear in our yearbook and we would keep our yearbooks forever and ever–or so I imagined.  I still have mine and it’s fifty years now.

Everyone would have wallet-size photos made for family and friends.  It would be one of our most important photos. A photo would sit on a family shelf for years–no, for decades.

Now I appreciate that photo and I don’t mind that it wasn’t glamorous. Ah, to be young! Wow, so innocent! Oh, to be in high school and to know what I know now!

What I do know is that our class reunion is coming up.  Here’s the info: October 20th, Saturday night at Braddock’s Tavern. 39 South Main Street, Medford, NJ 08055  6:45 p.m. to 11 p.m. $75 for buffet and dancing.  Cash bar.  Check payable to Woodrow Wilson 50th Reunion.  Send to Alberta Wolf, 25 Bear Head Rd., Medford, NJ  08055.  Please send by October 5th.

I also know that I wish that I had known more classmates.  Most of the people I knew were from my elementary school years in North Camden, my junior high years at Vets, my college prep classes and my W-Z homeroom.  That sounds like a lot of people, but it was not.  We had over four hundred students in that senior class–so many great people–but it was hard for anyone to know everyone.

Yes, I did have friends in high school, but not enough time to be a social butterfly.  I worked at Woolworth’s lunch counter at 26th and Federal Streets and I babysat when neighbor ladies went to bingo. (Minimum wage at Woolworths?  $1.65/hourly.  Babysitting?  $1.00/hourly.)  I gave my mother twelve dollars a week and bought my own clothing and little luxuries–Seventeen magazine, cakes of Maybelline mascara, those dang Woolworth’s pantyhose that snagged on the school chairs.

It was a busy time of my life.  I regret that I didn’t meet more people.  I wish I had.

The October reunion will be my chance to meet some people who didn’t cross my path very much in high school.  Someone is making badges with our senior photos so we can recognize each other.  I told you that those pictures were going to be important.

I hope more people sign up to attend.  Don’t worry about anything.  Sign up!

I’ve put aside my concern that I’ll look too fat, too old, too tired, too unglamorous.  Not rich, not famous, not interesting.  Whatever.  I figure being alive is celebratory enough for me to go to the reunion.

I’ve even thought that I won’t get annoyed when people say, “You still live in Camden?”  Yes, I do.  If you want my  very long life story, wait until I write a memoir and you can buy the book in hardback.  We can smile and hug and say, “So good to see you!  You haven’t changed a bit!”  That’ll do.

Of course, if you want to see photos of my grandchildren, I WILL be prepared.

Enjoy your day.  Enjoy every day, week, month, year, decade.  They sure do go by fast, don’t they?

Love to my readers,

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra, Class of 1968 WWHS, Camden resident

PS  If you want, you can sign up for my blog.  It’s free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers,

The other day I bought rye bread, the special little rye bread used for appetizers for cocktail parties. I ate it this morning for breakfast with Irish butter and I thought of the nuns in the convent behind our childhood home in North Camden in the fifties.

We lived in a tiny row house and the back of the house faced the backs of the beautiful big three-storied houses on State Street.  Directly behind us was a convent, but I don’t remember the order of the nuns.

We weren’t Catholic, but we feared and respected the sisters.  I remember them in their tall black habits with starched white “bibs”.  Everyone knew they were way above the mortals in our neighborhood.

The nuns could see into our kitchen and when they stood at their kitchen window, they watched Billy and me wash and dry the dishes.  My brother and I didn’t know we were being watched until the nuns told my mother.  They said how nicely we behaved with each other and how they enjoyed seeing us do the dishes together. My mother basked in this unexpected compliment, but I worried if they’d seen us misbehaving.  We were elementary school kids after all.

They didn’t see the occasional smack we gave each other with the damp dish towel or sopping dish rag?  How we took breaks to fish out a maraschino cherry from the jar in the fridge?  How we acted when we squabbled about who was the better dishwasher?

If you want to know the answer to the dishwasher competition, my younger brother was better.  Much more thorough. I always ended up with one of two specks of pink Dreft on my dishes.  That bit of powdered detergent didn’t last there long.  Bill would see it and toss the dish back into the soapy water, chanting, “REJECT!  REJECT!  REJECT!”

Maybe the sisters saw our shenanigans and they remembered doing dishes as kids with siblings.

They occasionally called my mother to come to talk over their high wooden gray fence.  One summer day they reached over with a package of expensive cookies and a loaf of cocktail rye bread slices.  Someone had given them bakery goods and they decided to share with us. My mother was excited.

We looked at the tiny brown slices in awe and my mother told us that people used with cream cheese or cucumbers for cocktail parties.  Our family never had cocktail parties–only barbecues with lots of Schmidts of Philadelphia.  No cocktails.

We sat at our kitchen table and buttered the slices. They were good.  A rich person’s treat, I thought.

I’d forgotten about them until the other day when I purchased them from Wegman’s.   Why did I buy them? No, not for a cocktail party, but just for fun, in honor of those nice Catholic sisters on State Street.

 

 

Thanks for reading.

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra, Cramer Hill resident

Moved from North Camden to Cramer Hill

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers,

My dad’s birthday is today.  Happy Birthday, Daddy.  I miss you every day.

My father didn’t make it to ninety-eight to celebrate today in his Camden home, He lived only to eighty-three.  I have to squinch back the tears.

I’m sharing a happy photo of my dad, Bill Wunsch, Jr., with three of his favorite beautiful people…Cass Lewis, the wife of his best friend, Ed;  Marguerite Wunsch, my mom;  Marie Wunsch, his sister.  There they are–under the boardwalk at Wildwood, New Jersey–back in the fifties.

What sweet Wildwood vacations my dad and our family shared with the Ed and Cass Lewis and their two sons, Eddie and Bobby! Sometimes other Wunsch family members came with us, my Aunt Marie or my grandfather, Charles Wunsch.  My dad got up at six a.m. to cook breakfast for my grandfather while the rest of us slept.  My mom said she was on vacation–that was too early for her to cook! My aunt stayed up late with us kids and she taught us to sing, “Found a Peanut.”  How can I remember that?

My brother, Billy, and I played on the beach with the two Lewis boys.  The chatting adults kept an eye on us as we dug in the hot sand and sometimes under the boardwalk in the wet, cold sand.  In spite of our families’ caution, one summer Bobby Lewis and I got lost on the beach. When the fathers found us standing on a stranger’s towel to keep our feet from burning, our dad’s faces burned with anger and relief.  They had told us to stay near the red and white beach umbrella.  We did, but we had walked to the wrong red and white umbrella!

Sometimes those vacations coincided with Dad’s birthday.  I remember my mom gave him new swim trunks for his birthday one year and he opened the tissue paper wrapped gift. We all watched him open it in that living room of the tiny rented cottage across from the Wildwood train station.  Dad didn’t care much about clothing so I remember him not jumping up and down with joy.  Perhaps he would have enjoyed wearing his old trunks for the rest of his life.  He probably would have liked a six-pack instead.

Dad loved that annual week at the shore.  He worked all year in hard jobs so that week off with family and friends meant the world to him.  I’m sure that Mom and he were proud to give us kids a real vacation–a rented cottage, beach and boardwalk.  I’m grateful for those memories.

So many good memories.  I was blessed. Thanks, Dad and Mom.

So, Happy Birthday, Daddy!  I hope you are having a beer and a hot dog on the beach somewhere up in Heaven with Mom, your friends and all loved ones who have passed on.  Love you so much…

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Thanks to Ed/Bob Lewis for the photo.  Priceless.  Thank you.

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra

Cramer Hill resident

 

 

 

 

Dear Friends,

Sometimes I almost forget that I was an elementary ESL teacher in Camden City Public Schools for more than nineteen years. Three and a half years of retirement…  It’s very good.  To say, the least.  Ha ha.  Sorry for laughing, but it’s just so good.

When my husband brought home two pastelitos de pollo, fried turnovers with chicken, early this morning, my mind jumped to the little store across from my former school.  I bought these delicious and probably unhealthy snacks for lunch on days that I didn’t bring a sandwich from home.

I opened the newspaper at my dining room table and I bit into the first hot pastelito, the delicious grease ran down my chin and I remembered eating this treat at the classroom table that served as my desk.

However, the newspaper articles about the shootings of school children brought me back to a much less fond memory–those days of drills where another teacher or I would herd the third-graders into a corner during an emergency drill.  I “knew” it was a practice.  But, when I heard the principal’s voice calling out a code over the loudspeaker and saying, “There is a shooter in the building,” it was enough to make me wet my pants.  I didn’t, though.  Almost.

Some kids were cool and quiet–they figured it was a drill. Some let a tear roll from their eyes.   And, there was always one or two who kept whispering, “I’m not allowed to sit on the floor and get my uniform dirty.”

I’d put my finger to my lips and look grimly authoritarian, yet comforting.  Not easy. They had to be silent.  The heck with a dusty seat of the pants or uniform skirt…

In all seriousness, I’d thank God when the drill was over and I knew for super sure that it was a drill.

I had shoved most memories of teaching to the back of my mind after I retired.

The pastelito and newspaper yanked out those memories, one happy, one frightening.

 

Love to all my readers,

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra

Cramer Hill resident and former Camden City Public Schools ESL teacher

 

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Dear Readers,

Today is my birthday.  I woke up and realized I was no longer sixty-seven.  I’m sixty-eight.  Officially a grown-up.  Probably a senior citizen?  Happy Birthday to me.

A friend of mine recently said that a birthday should celebrate the mother.  How can you take credit for being born? Your mom carried you and gave birth to you.  Ouch.

One year I did give my mom a card on my birthday and she loved it.  She loved cards.  She loved to receive them and to send them.  I do, too.  A funny kind of legacy.

My mother died on November 2, 2017.  She was ninety-three.  She won’t be here to celebrate.  She loved birthdays.  Especially the ice cream and cake…  Even in her last months of life when she wasn’t doing so well, she loved cake.  Me, too.  Another legacy.

She was an intelligent and feisty woman.  She managed her family, the budget and her house with a no kidding around competence. She had a soft and sentimental side that she tried to keep hidden.  However tough she could be, she was a mush on birthdays.

No matter our financial circumstances, we always had a dinner of our choice, cake and ice cream, a carefully chosen and sentimental card and the best gift possible.  We didn’t do dishes on our birthday.

We always said thank you, too.

I wonder, Mom, maybe you’re celebrating my birthday on a big cloud with Dad?

I hope you’re having a big piece of chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream with Dad.  You couldn’t eat your beloved chocolate when you got older so I hope you’re having a lot of chocolate in heaven.

I know Dad is saying, “Just a little piece of cake.”

You’re saying, “Cut me a big piece.”

Thanks, Mom, today for giving me life.  It’s been a good one so far.

 

 

***Photo         Wildwood, New Jersey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 6, 2017

Dear Readers,

I started out worrying terribly about people in the wrath of Hurricane Irma.  I forced myself to do something productive.  Set two goals, I told myself.

I’d study German and then I’d sort through a bag of papers.

My German textbook didn’t look inviting so I decided to put on a German-language movie and, at least, listen to the German voices while I sorted.  Since I knew I’d only understand only a dozen words, I would put on the English subtitles.  Netflix offered plenty of movies, but not many looked cheerful enough for this rainy Cramer Hill day.

I spied the 2015 Swiss film version of Heidi, based on the children’s book by Johanna Spryi.  The title brought me back to an illustrated version of the book that I’d loved and read many times as a kid in North Camden.   I remembered Mrs. Helen Faust, John S. Read Elementary, Grade Four,  gave me the sequel, Heidi Grows Up, on the last day of school because I had been the best speller in the class.  I hugged it that hardback book and floated home with it. (Thanks, Mrs. Faust. God bless generous, loving, thoughtful teachers.)

Fifty-seven years later, here I was, still in Camden, although in Cramer Hill, watching feisty Heidi, her aunt, her grandfather, her friends Peter and Klara appear on my TV, so familiar, long lost friends found again.

Amazingly enough, I have visited Switzerland many times because I have good friends there and so I have been blessed enough to have been to the Alps and the beautiful Swiss countryside.  Today I was experiencing Switzerland again.

I had to put down the bag of papers, half-way sorted, and let myself be drawn into the story of an orphaned child who loves the mountains  and those around her.  Those old receipts, ads and catalogs could be sorted tomorrow.

This movie made my day.  And, I even did recognize a dozen words in German.

Much love to all readers,

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra, Cramer Hill resident

 

PS  If you like, please follow my blog. Comments are welcome.

September 6, 2017

Dear Readers,

I started out worrying terribly about people in the wrath of Hurricane Irma.  I forced myself to do something productive.  Set two goals, I told myself.

I’d study German and then I’d sort through a bag of papers.

My German textbook didn’t look inviting so I decided to put on a German-language movie and, at least, listen to the German voices while I sorted.  Since I knew I’d only understand only a dozen words, I would put on the English subtitles.  Netflix offered plenty of movies, but not many looked cheerful enough for this rainy Cramer Hill day.

I spied the 2015 Swiss film version of Heidi, based on the children’s book by Johanna Spryi.  The title brought me back to an illustrated version of the book that I’d loved and read many times as a kid in North Camden.   I remembered Mrs. Helen Faust, John S. Read Elementary, Grade Four,  gave me the sequel, Heidi Grows Up, on the last day of school because I had been the best speller in the class.  I hugged it that hardback book and floated home with it. (Thanks, Mrs. Faust. God bless generous, loving, thoughtful teachers.)

Fifty-seven years later, here I was, still in Camden, although in Cramer Hill, watching feisty Heidi, her aunt, her grandfather, her friends Peter and Klara appear on my TV, so familiar, long lost friends found again.

Amazingly enough, I have visited Switzerland many times because I have good friends there and so I have been blessed enough to have been to the Alps and the beautiful Swiss countryside.  Today I was experiencing Switzerland again.

I had to put down the bag of papers, half-way sorted, and let myself be drawn into the story of an orphaned child who loves the mountains  and those around her.  Those old receipts, ads and catalogs could be sorted tomorrow.

This movie made my day.  And, I even did recognize a dozen words in German.

Much love to all readers,

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra, Cramer Hill resident

 

PS  If you like, please follow my blog. Comments are welcome.

Dear Readers.

Today I’m at the kitchen table looking at the morning glories on my back fence here in Cramer Hill.  I’m feeling the contentment of a teacher who has been retired for three years.  Retirement is G-O-O-D.

Nothing much beats a cream donut, a jelly donut and a cup of coffee on a Labor Day Saturday morning when YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT GOING BACK TO SCHOOL ON TUESDAY.  You might have to consider your damage to your calorie count, but not much else.

Yesterday I decided to ignore all non-life-threatening chores and to wander around Ollie’s Discount in Cherry Hill.  I didn’t have to buy anything for the classroom…no more poring though pencils, fun erasers, cute notebooks, crayons or glue sticks, no more paging through little books to give as prizes, no more choosing the best stickers and no more piling the cart with boxes of tissue and cleaning wipes.

Although in the throes of retirement joy in the middle of the store, a bit of wistfulness crept in.  I smacked that wistfulness away.  However, I allowed myself think of those first days back to school.  They were filled with anticipation and optimism for the new year, but always tempered with dread that I’d have to go to another school or even another classroom.  English as a Second Language teachers moved around as needs changed.

Retail therapy to the rescue!  I thoroughly retail therapied myself by buying books for my granddaughter…and myself.  Then, I spied a huge Thomas the Train puzzle for my granddaughter. What a big floor puzzle and what a discount, too! Win-win.

I popped into my daughter’s house to give the gifts.  My granddaughter’s sleepy face, just up from a nap, livened when she saw the puzzle box.

“Thomas!” she screamed.

We put the puzzle today, my daughter, my granddaughter and me. All forty pieces!  No, I lie.  Only thirty-nine.  The center piece was missing.  Oh well.   I wasn’t being observed on the activity and I hadn’t had to write plans for it.  I wouldn’t get a low mark for not having put the puzzle together first to make sure all the pieces were there!  We had a good time, Piece #40 missing or not.

Back to my morning coffee.  I have eaten the donuts.  I asked my husband to bring me one, but he brought me two.  Who am I to turn down two?  Would you want me to hurt his feelings?

I’m going to take my coffee to the window, look at my morning glories and contemplate retirement.

Love to all my readers,

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra, Cramer Hill resident

P.S.  If you would like to follow my blog, please do!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Reader,

Plums!  Today I’m back to blogging because of freshly picked South Jersey plums.

The news has been so bad for so long that I couldn’t bear to blog for months.  I didn’t want to contribute to any reader’s distress with one more justified outcry about what is happening in the world.

I’m being a chicken.  I’m not going to comment on the news.  If you know me, you can guess what I’m thinking about what’s going on, so…

This morning in our Cramer Hill kitchen, I filled a bowl with cold plums.  I had to admire them.  These plums are beautiful and delicious. They made me think of a poem of William Carlos Williams.

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/just-say

How blessed I am this morning to have these plums, to have my husband, Carlos, who is holding the bowl, and to have my daughter, Kim, and granddaughter, Nora, and Kim’s in-laws, who picked the plums!  I give thanks to Kim’s mother-in-law who put dozens in a bag and pressed them on me to take home.

Today I’m happy to sit at my kitchen table with toast and tea and sweet, juicy plums.

I’m back to blogging and I’m going to write about loveliness in our often unlovely world.  I’m starting with plums.

Sincerely,

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra

Cramer Hill resident

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers,

No… No!  No!! No!!!  I looked at my calendar diary and realized I’ll be sixty-seven TOMORROW.

I thought I had a few more days of being sixty-six.  I mistakenly thought my birthday was this Wednesday and I’d have more time to think about it.  No, it’s tomorrow, Monday.  Sixty-seven?   It’s a bit of a shock.

Believe me, I’m not writing this blog to have dozens of long-stemmed red roses, cases of champagne or gifts of anything delivered to my door.  Please.  Cancel your orders.  I don’t have room for anything.  No kidding.  At my age, I have everything and MORE!

What I’d really like is for you to send me a large, self-addressed, postage prepaid box so I can send YOU some of the excess of my life.  Decorating magazines, anyone? Old clothing?  Pounds?  I have a lot of extra pounds to send you and I’m not talking about the British ones.

I’m grateful for these sixty-six years.  Look at me at this very moment. Right now, I’m lying on a comfy bed with my beloved laptop and my teeny-weeny queenie, torty cat, Reina, is lying on my shoulder purring in my ear.   What a life.  All I need is a box of bonbons.  No, I changed my mind.  No bonbons.  Didn’t I just mention the extra pounds?

Those years sure do fly by fast.  It was only yesterday that I was in John S. Read School in North Camden; Veterans Memorial Junior High in Cramer Hill; Woodrow Wilson High School in East Camden and back to North Camden in Rutgers University.

Decades after college hurtled by at the speed of light and now I’m a wife.  A mother.  A godmother. A mother-in-law.  A grandmother.  A writer. A reader. A dog and cat mommy. And, to my surprise still, a senior.

I’ll return to my diary and write down goals for my sixty-seventh year.  Finish my book–it’s getting there!  Take care of my health.  AND, have a lot of fun at age sixty-seven!  Maybe have a few of those bonbons?

How about you, my reader friend?  Is time flying by for you, too?

Love from

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra, Cramer Hill resident

Dear Readers,

I love when it snows here in the Anthony Park homes in Cramer Hill.  I admit I’m not the one who shovels.  Heh heh. Everything looks quiet, pristine, other worldly. I don’t hear the sparrows chirping or dogs barking.  Cars aren’t revving.  Neighbors aren’t calling out to each other as they leave for work.

No kids are sliding down the hilly back driveway.  The snow is too wet.  I admit I love the silence.

Aaaah!

Before I retired from teaching in Camden City Public Schools, I loved to have a snow day because it was a treat–a more or less unexpected vacation day.  It’s still a vacation day in retirement.  I’m not driving, I’m getting up later, I’m reading, I’m throwing in a load of laundry, I’m drinking my new tea (Bewley’s Irish Morning Tea), I’m feeling guilt-free to slouch around.

Slouch, slouch, slouch.  What fun. I remember one teacher said that a snow day was an occasion to walk around the house naked, play the Beatles and do nothing useful.  I’m not sure if she was kidding.  I’m sure she did play music though.

I thought I’d slouch a lot in retirement.  I haven’t.  Today I am sort of slouching which is still terrific.

How about you?  Are you slouching today?

Love to all my readers,

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra

Cramer Hill resident….back to blogging

P.S.  If you like, you can get my blogs by e-mail clicking on FOLLOW.

 

 

Dear Readers,

I have a quiet, cool Cramer Hill morning to write my blog and I’m looking through the photos in my cell phone.  Most pictures feature my cats, my dog and my granddaughter–not in that order!  However, I found a funny one that I took on impulse–my almost seventeen-month-old granddaughter’s doll.

Here’s the story behind it.  Nora was playing with a paper towel roll (again…) and I started to play with it and look through it at her and to talk through it.  I made funny noises through it.  Okay, I know I’m sixty-six, but I’m not too old to be goofy, am I?

Then, I tried to take a picture of my beautiful granddaughter through it, but she moved too quickly.  I loved the idea of doing it, though, and I took a picture of her favorite doll, Da, with it.

I had ordered Da online and felt lucky to find a quality baby doll that had Asian features.  Not so long ago, it was almost impossible to find dolls that didn’t have Caucasian features. Asian dolls were mostly those in traditional costumes and were so dressy that you’d want to put them in glass boxes to preserve them.

Back in the eighties when my daughter was little, I did find one Asian doll for her.  (My daughter is Asian-American.) She wasn’t much interested in dolls.  She combed its hair until it looked scary and put it in her toy box at the babysitter’s house.  She liked her stuffed animals and action figures.

When my granddaughter plays with Da, I remember how hard it was to find an Asian doll.  I remember that there were few people on TV or in movies who were Asian.  There weren’t even many storybooks with Asian faces.

“Minority” faces were scarce everywhere.  The crazy thing is that no one I know commented on it.  Maybe they didn’t notice it.  Why?

The first time that I taught English as a Second Language in Camden in an elementary school in a hallway before the State of New Jersey saw me teaching in a hallway, many of my morning students were from Haiti.  I wanted to teach words about people and I bought a bunch of popular news magazines and women’s magazines to cut out pictures of people so the kids could make collages.

I had to go back and buy magazines targeted for African-Americans because none of the others had pictures of people of color. All the people were white.  Believe me. My Haitian students had dark skin. What was I saying to them if I didn’t find some other photos?   I bought Jet and Ebony and cut out pictures from those magazines, too.  Later, I’d have to subscribe to the few magazines targeted for the Asian and Hispanic market just so I could have pictures to make collages.

My mentor walked by and watched the students make  collages with the pictures, naming them–a mother, a father, a grandmother, etc.  “Where did you get those photos of black people?” she said.  She was black.

“I bought Jet and Ebony,” I told her.

She was surprised and pleased.

However, I shouldn’t have had to remember that she was surprised and pleased.  Why were people of color not included in those other magazines, too?  No people of color were newsworthy, beautiful or  consumers?

Dolls, magazines, TV, movies, storybooks….you could go on and on… Huge numbers of people not represented…  Maybe a bit more now, but often stereotyped and token…

I don’t want to be sad on this fine day.  I meant to write something funny about being a grandmom and dolls.  But, hey.

Love to my readers,

Marguerite (Wunsch) Ferra