Merry Christmas 2011

Originally published December 2011

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

PM, Alabaster, Lapis and Geranium, not to mention Peppermint Paunch, Clyde Elf and Santa himself, wish you all a very Merry, Merry Christmas and a love-filled New Year.

Chronicler's continued dereliction of duty does not mean that Purple Monster and the Christmas Crew have not been working all year to spread love and joy to all they encounter. It's just that there's no Saga this year, more's the pity.
 

MERRY CHRISTMAS, TO ONE AND ALL!

"Simple, declarative sentences,” said Purple Monster, glaring at me via her Web camera. "That's all that's required, my dear Chronicler, simple declarative sentences. There is no need to write the Great American Novel nor a Saga worthy of a Pulitzer Prize. What is required are simple declarative sentences, subject, verb, object. That's all you need to tell my story. The rest — adjectives, adverbs, clauses (other than Santa), and so on — they're just time-consuming distractions that weigh too heavily on your creative instincts."

I might be willing to take acting lessons from PM, given her extraordinary talent. Or singing lessons, since the lilting lavender North Pole Ambassador  is renowned for her vocal exquisiteness. But writing lessons? Did not PM try to write her own saga one year, and fail miserably? Yet here am I yet again, facing the wrath of the greatest sleigh-puller who ever led St. Nick's annual conveyance, because yet again, I have failed to write a Christmas Saga. I deserve the criticism. But is she right? Should I just have put one noun, one verb, and maybe one object together and churned out a chronicle of the amazingness of the Christmas Crew this year as they prepared to deliver joy, presents and good cheer around the world?

See PM.

See PM BOING!

BOING!, PM, BOING!

Hmmmm.

Doesn't work for me.

But I do understand PM's frustration. She could be a grandmother before her Chronicler gets her act together. Lapis Snowflake and Geranium Amethyst are pretty grown up now, and love and snerkling and all things Christmas Monsterland have been going on without your Chronicler's literary observations.

Ah, well, maybe next year. In the meantime, this year's tree in the hovel is named Elvira, after Elvira Fernhat, the lovesick elf who still holds Clyde Elf in her heart. A beautiful tree, with enough ornaments and glitter to light Manhattan. So your Chronicler, bereft of holiday inspiration, does have an abundance of the Christmas spirit.

Once again, the magical critters of the North Pole and Christmas Monsterland wish all of you the very merriest Christmas and a New Year full of creativity and love and joy.

Charity Isabel Wattles Kirby

First Published July 2009

CHARITY ISABEL WATTLES KIRBY
April 24, 1912-July 12, 2009

The most beautiful woman in the world, both inside and out. A wonderful wife to William R. Kirby and a mother without peer to Kathleen, Susan and Rebecca Kirby.

I will write about Mom in the days and weeks to come, but for now here are some photographs of her that I find especially appealing. If you have photos you'd like posted, send them to susan.kirby@gmail.com.

The photo on the left was at one of her birthday parties in Florissant. She loved the parties that celebrated her life, because she got to see all the ladies she loved. She had an unending reservoir of love and an unsurpassed capacity to hug.

The next photograph is of Mom with her older sister Hattie, in about 1976. The family resemblance is remarkable. Mom was the 12th of 13 children. There is a genealogy Web site about the descendants of John Jacob Kepp. It gives all the children of John Wesley Wattles and Maria Isabelle Harmon, Mom's father and mother. Aunt Hattie apparently provided some of the information.

Continue reading this post on the Charity Isabel Wattles Kirby page.

Memories From My Mother

Originally published 2012

My Mom, Charity Isabel Wattles Kirby, would have been 100 this year. She lived through some of the most stressful yet some of the most interesting times in our country’s history. In 1981, a young friend asked to interview her about the Great Depression. Mom, born in 1912, would have been 17 on Black Tuesday, when the stock market crashed. My mother, who had spent much of her life behind a typewriter typing court documents for my father in his law practice, decided to type up her memories, and made sure her daughters got copies. What follows is that history, which is the best inheritance I could ever have received from her. It provides such a window into the era, and on the joy that my Mom felt in everything she did.

The opening page pictured to the right shows the Executive IBM type she used so much of her time working for Dad. Although she deals mainly with the Great Depression years, seeing this type takes me through so many years after that, when I’d see her late at night typing away in the bedroom.

The picture to the below shows Mom and an older sister, Hattie, in the back yard of our house in Florissant, Missouri, in 1976. (I deleted the address Mom had added, because the house has been sold.)

Isabel Kirby and Hattie Wattles

My mother used to dream about “skimming,” being able to float above the ground and look down on the earth.  Sometimes she had a jetpack on her back, she used to tell me, and  sometimes  just “skimmed” around. I  love the part about the Fourth of July  when she had the thrill of flying for the first time.

I’ve done a little bit of editing, but for the most part this is Isabel Kirby, in her own voice. I’ve just added a few explanations in brackets and dropped in a few illustrations, although Mom's writing lets me see everything without them!

* * * 

Isabel Kirby
Florissant, Missouri
April 18, 1981

When my friend Cassandra contacted me with reference to an interview concerning the Great Depression and I agreed to the interview, how little I realized the “Pandora’s Box” of memories that would be flooding over me. I chose to write concerning these years rather than to record them since some sort of chronological order necessarily seems to need to be followed in answering some of these questions.

In order to analyze any “opinion” as to any given circumstance, a background of the person giving this opinion is of the utmost importance, and the opinion of the Wall Street broker hurling himself from the tallest building in New York on October 29, 1929, the bank president refusing to open the doors of his bank to a screaming and threatening mob, and a 16 year old girl growing up in rural Illinois would necessarily be far apart.

Continue reading Mom's memories on the Charity Isabel Wattles Kirby page.