Irene Magdaline Hess

There was a toilet next to the stackable, apartment-sized washer and dryer.  There was just enough space to sit sideways, with a shower curtain for privacy, baby wipes for hygiene, and a little fan for comfort.  There was also a frog in the toilet.  I peed on it on accident, and I felt really bad about it.  I told my grandma and grandpa, and they laughed.  My grandma, with her crinkle-eyed "he he he’s," and my grandpa, with his twinkle-eyed, shoulder shaking "ha ha ha’s."  “How did he get in there?”  they asked.  “I don’t know,” they answered.  “Maybe he came up the pipe?  Maybe he’s your Prince?”  We put the frog back outside, and he came back.  We put the frog in a jar and took him to the swampy ditch off the side driveway at Kmart.

They took my sister and I to Michigan’s upper peninsula for a vacation.  We stayed in a motel.  We visited their friend, Mildred, in her assisted living apartment.  We went into a cave.  We missed the rest area.  “Can we stop at the rest area?”  I asked when I saw the sign.  “Are they fighting?” my grandpa asked.  “She needs to go to the bathroom” my grandma said.  “What?”  my grandpa asked.  “She needs you to stop at the rest area, so she can go to the bathroom.”  “Oh, well, it’s too late, now.  I passed it.”  Miscommunication was a major danger when trying to communicate from the back of the conversion van.  It was comfy, though.  I loved the sliding accordion blinds.  I loved that they made it theirs, with their old fashioned flashlight (the big silver one that used to be in the motor home), rolls of paper towels, milk jugs full of water, plastic totes full of games and blankets and snacks, maps, atlases, rag rugs, and seat covers made of extra large t-shirts.

Something that stuck with me on that trip that I will never forget is my grandmother’s reaction to a man in a park who was verbally and physically abusing his son.  It was a large man, an obvious bully.  His demeanor and eyes were cruel and dangerous.  His son was cowering in fear and embarrassment.  The son was only 5 or 6.  My 4 foot 3 inch grandmother swelled with a protective charm, and she got between that man and his son, and everything vicious he shot at her rebounded back at him tenfold.  I’d never seen her so angry, and I never saw her so angry, again.

I remember one line of Hungarian that could have applied to that situation: Baszd meg az anyád.  (It's not nice, so don't translate it.) 

My grandma taught me how to cook rivil (rivilchas), negklins (knedlík), paprikash, sour kraut and meatballs, and Cornish hens.  She taught my mother how to make potato soup, and my mother taught me.  She taught me how to make grandpa's sandwiches: She boiled the tomatoes for a minute and peeled them before putting them on buttered bread with salt and pepper.  She told me how to make the almond paste for kalach, but she never wrote it down, so I have forgotten.  I do have an instant coffee container full of the dried almond paste ingredients that she sent me, though. 

My grandparents would only drink instant coffee.  The empty containers are used for powdered creamer, sugar, milk, extra noodles from Mrs. Grass soup (Who needs the noodles when you can make your own rivil?), and as containers to store leftovers in the fridge or little bits and pieces of anything.  When I was there with them, those containers contained mostly rivil. 

 “Reduce” may have been lost on my grandma, but “resuse” and “recycle” were no problem; no problem at all.

My grandma knew shorthand, but she didn’t like being a secretary.  She preferred the factory.  She impressed her co-workers with her homemade kalach.  Well, all except for that one woman:  The woman had been trying to sell it at the factory, and my grandmother disagreed with both the cost and the recipe.  Everyone agreed, my grandma's kalach was better, and that other lady was ripping them off.

When I went to visit them, we mostly stayed at the house and visited with each other, but we did make a few trips.  My grandparents took us to Bishop Planetarium and to see the manatee, Snooty.  We went to Gamble Plantation and to Fort DeSoto.  We went to the beach.  We went to their favorite restaurants. 

They came with me to the Salvador Dali museum once.  Boy, did they hate him.  “This is pornographic,” one shouted across the crowded room, and the other agreed.

One of my favorite things to do at their house in Florida was to sit in the bathroom and read The Sun, The Star, and the National Enquirer.  She had a big selection.

My grandmother collected items made by or given to her by friends who had died.  The original Marlboro man, Slim, made decorative fans.  The generous and spiritual Angie had a hanging lamp made from a plastic planter.  Dave, Diane, Walt, Pete, Ethel, Bailey, Joe, Mildred, Helen Johnson.  The names of their friends and relatives grew and grew into a litany of memorials.  My grandpa often told me "Don't get old."  My grandma told me she couldn't bear to part with anything that reminded her of someone.

My grandma kept the pillows my cousin, my sister, and I made for Home Economics class: a pink pig, a monkey, and a blue shark.  My dad cut a piece of board into the shape of a girl.  I decorated it and called it "Rainbow Girl."  It's hanging on the sliding glass door with many other doodads and sun catchers.  We will take it down with all the others when we take care of things at the house.  I took hundreds of photos with my grandpa.  Some of them are hanging in frames.  There are some beautiful pieces of woodworking my father made.  There's some pottery I made.  For a while she tried to keep some Play-Doh things we made, but they fell apart.  We spent a lot of time at her kitchen table making things out of Play-Doh.  I have a great affinity for Play-Doh.

My grandma stored all of the family photos, empty DVD cases to use as picture frames, and free gifts from Harriet Carter.  She kept all sorts of things to reuse; even used plastic wrap.

My grandma bought a roll of aluminum foil once that was full of carpenter ants.  Hundreds of them.  No matter the slight inconvenience, it amused her.

When I was young I loved dressing up in grandma’s clothes and costume jewelry and going out into the living room to pose.  I loved going to the Ben Franklin store.  I loved going to the flea market and garage sales.  We would take walks to the end of the street, or to the nearest garage sales, and we would hold hands.  My grandma would squeeze my hand.  "Three squeezes for 'I. Love. You.' and two squeezes for 'How much?' aaaaaand one big sqeeze for 'This much!'"

There was a garage sale in grandma’s sister’s (“Liz” or “Lizzie” or ‘liz-bith”) trailer park.  There was a crocheted pig, grey and sad, with a droopy head.  It looked so much like it needed to be loved.  I didn’t ask for it because I’m not and never was the type to ask for things.  However, on the way home I started to cry “big crocodile tears.”  “What’s the matter?” she asked.  “I wanted that pig,” I said.  "I can make you a new one," she said.  I explained his sadness.  “Turn the car around, papa,” she said.  “We have to go back.”  It was a bright blue AMC Hornet with tan vinyl interior, a thin, dual pin stripe, and an old fashioned  “aah-ooogha” horn.  Grandpa turned it around, and we went back for the pig.

When I was young my grandmother knew I was a light sleeper, so she would check on me late at night, and I would be in bed, awake.  We’d have Mrs. Grass soup, some milk, watch The Twilight Zone, and I’d go back to bed and sleep. 

I loved the slippery, shiny comforters she kept on the beds in the front room with the royal blue shag carpet.  I’d jump and slide on the beds.  That shag carpet, at one time, housed an entire world of carpenter ants, just like that roll of aluminum foil.

My grandparents took care of my great grandfather Hess, and my great-great grandfather Hess, and my grandmother took care of my grandfather Hess. My grandma survived bladder cancer and breast cancer.  She and my grandpa nursed her brothers and sisters at the ends of their lives.  It stung her more than anything when her brother, Tommy, told her he didn’t want her help when he was dying because “when she showed up, people died.”

Whenever anyone in the family died, she would put a 20-dollar bill in my hand and tell me to go to church and light a candle.  We stopped at the church after Mass on Sunday and lit a candle for her.

When Aunt Lizzie was very sick I had an accident with some hot water, and I burned my foot so badly I needed hydrotherapy at the hospital.  I couldn’t wear a shoe, so I was not in school.  She took care of Aunt Lizzie on one couch and me on the other.  Apparently, when someone else had died, Aunt Lizzie had really wanted their new pots and pans.  Grandma gave them to her.  When Aunt Lizzie died, those brand new pots and pans were still in the box under her porch stairs.  That bothered  grandma, that they had never been used.

Grandpa loved grandma more than I've ever seen anyone love.  One of the ways he showed it was by buying her jewelry.  She loved jewelry.  She loved showing me her jewelry, and she lamented that so much of it was stolen when they had a break-in.  As time went on, however, more than showing it to me, she told me stories about its origins, and we bagged it up in sandwich bags and marked the bags with names on masking tape labels.  She carefully chose who she wanted to have which pieces of jewelry, and I think she relied on me to remember the stories to share with the recipients.  I think I do. 

Bed bugs came back with a vengeance in the past few years, so she told me about the time her mother picked up and threw a mattress right out of a second story window.  But that’s not how my grandma started the story.  She started the story with “because I was the girl, and I still lived there, I had to take care of all the boys.  They could be a s lazy as they wanted.”  Sometimes it started with “My daddy loved dancing, and he looked like Clark Gable.  Ma would never go, so I would go.  I think I was his fay-vor-ite. Sometimes I was late getting back to school after lunch because I had to wait for the boys.” 

"My fay-vor-ite was my grandma Sikentancz, Eva Mirayder.  She was the seventh daughter of a Hungarian gypsy."

I got the impression my great-grandmother, Emma Zauner, grandma's  mother, who had been a Sikentancz, wasn’t a very nice woman.  Well, more than that, my dad and aunt have told me as much.  She tried to slap my grandma across the face when my grandma was 40 years old.  My grandmother stopped her.  My great-grandmother lost her balance and fell and was badly bruised.  Great grandma told everyone my grandma had “beat her up.”  

“Fay-vor-ite.”  On their way to Michigan last year, they stopped for an hour and my grandmother made sure I was delivered her mother's dishes.  She sounded tired and worried, but still happy to see me.  She was cold, so that's when I gave her that big sweater.

I don't want to forget my grandma's voice.

"Well hell-o." “Bat-trees.” "Fisssssshhhh."  “Davenport.” “Poo'-stou-fee.”  “Click it or ticket.” “Is the flag up?”  “Horsey keep your tail up.  Horsey keep your tail up.  Horsey keep your tail up.  Keep the sun out of my eyes.” “Has it got a little thing hanging down about that far?  Yep.  It’s a boy horse.” “I’m not fat, I’m soft.  Grandmas are supposed to be soft.  The doctor told me it's fine, I'll need this extra weight to lose when I get old.” “Are you done venting, now?”  “My mouth always gets me in trouble.”  “Don’t tell papa.”  “It’s a keep-your-mouth-shut.”  "My hand is getting itchy.  I'm about to have a reaction."  "You're going to get a lickin'." (And she meant she was going to lick us all over our faces if we didn't behave.) “What are your intentions toward my granddaughter?”  “You know it?”  “There’s nothing good on the television, anymore.  It’s all sex sex sex killin’ killin’ killin’.”  “I was at a parade and my dad had me up on his shoulders, like that you know?  And I got to shake Mickey Rooney’s hand.” 

“I want to take a bath with grandma because she makes the water go higher.”  When we took baths she always made sure the space heater was on in the bathroom so “our little bodies” wouldn’t get cold.

"I stepped on a fart bug."

"I've got kidneys, man.  Kidneys."

She hated her sister Emma’s cat, but she loved the neighbor's dog, Cheeter, and her niece's dog, Chee.  The dogs could do no wrong, but that cat "thumbed its nose" at her by getting on the table when it knew it could get away with it.

When my friend, Kirsten, and I were planning a trip from their house to Crystal River to swim with Manatees, we had to get up at 6 a.m. to be ready to leave by 7 a.m.  They got up at 4 a.m. to wake us up in time.  Of course, we heard everything and were up at 4 a.m. with them.  When they snored, one would snore on the way in, and the other would snore on the way out, so it sounded like “Zzz zzzt.  Woo-woo-woo ptthhhht.  Zzz zzzt.  Woo-woo-woo ptthhhht.”  When they got a memory foam mattress grandma kept falling out of bed because she slept on the edge.  It would sink just so low, then she’d roll out.

She told me lots of bedtime stories.  She told me one about how the dragon got his name.  I wrote it down. 

My grandparents loved playing euchre with their friends at the kitchen table.  They loved playing chicken foot dominoes with their friends in the trailer park in Florida.  We also played a lot of "Crazy 8's."  Grandma liked going to Coquina Beach and digging in the sand with her toes to watch the Coquinas dig back down.  She liked riding her bike with grandpa.  Later, they liked riding around the trailer park in the golf cart.  My grandpa installed a CD player and Christmas lights.  Grandpa liked painting wooden things a real shiny brown.  They were best friends.  They were my best friends, and I want to be just like them, except for painting wooden things brown.

She didn’t swim, but she floated like she was sitting in a chair, and she paddled around "sitting" like that. She wore Uncle Toby’s hat to the pool, and a big blue and white terrycloth coverup.  When we were young, she always checked for alligators in the pond and in the bathroom before she got into the pool.  When we got older, she just checked the pond.  

My grandma was extremely charitable, loved babies (even the ones she saw in stores and didn't know), and loved crocheting.  She found the perfect hobby: She crocheted beautiful dolls, baby afghans, booties, and little hats to donate to charity.

She taught me to crochet when I was eight.  The first thing I made was a red ring of messy knots.  She kept it. When I got better at it, I crocheted her a mermaid.  The mermaid was left on top of a light, though, and the mermaid's butt got burned brown.  I also crocheted her a little frog.  That was even before the incident with the frog in the toilet.  The sweater I made and gave her just this winter was too big, so I was making her a smaller one.  Do I finish it?
 

One of my grandpa's sisters married a Dicer, and one of the sister-in-law Dicers was a teacher at grandma’s school.  They had fought about something while my grandma was a student, so Ms. Dicer was not a fan of my grandma.  My grandma was not a fan of her.  There’s something of a story about putting Limburger cheese on the back seat of a boyfriend’s car.  They were not friendly toward one another at family and friend functions.

When my mom didn’t have anywhere else to go, my grandma and grandpa took her in.  My mom’s handwriting is almost identical to my grandmother’s handwriting.  When I was born, my grandma had labor pains, or so her story goes.  I was special, she told me, even though I was the "middle kid."  When I called, I always made sure to ask to talk to papa.  We would talk about the weather, and school, and photography.  I think that made her happy, too.

My grandma didn’t drive, but she wanted her next car to be a Volkswagen Beetle.  She thought it might be a lot like driving the golf cart, so she wanted one.  She wanted to take my husband’s mom and dad out to dinner.  She was not able to be at my wedding last year.  She wanted a chance to live by herself because she never had lived by herself.  She wanted to get in touch with her stepdaughter’s children, but she hadn’t heard from them in a long time, and the numbers were changed.  She wanted to go home.

They took my husband and I out to dinner a few years ago.  It was a German restaurant, so she agreed that Matthew should definitely order a German beer.  Every time he wasn't looking, she would use her spoon and steal the foam from the top of his mug. When he noticed, she and grandpa laughed and laughed.  She liked ginger brandy when she was young.  She liked chocolate wine, too.  When grandpa died, just a month before she died, she said she wanted to drink a whole bottle of chocolate wine.

I was supposed to go to Michigan and take her home after my grandpa's funeral.  I was looking forward to that time more than words can express.  When I was young, I would hide when it was time for me to leave their house: under the couch, under the bed, in the toy box, in the motor home.  She initiated "cry bags," or little bags of goodies for us to take  with us when we had to go home. 

Two years ago I wrote my grandparents a letter.  I told them what they meant to me.  My grandma called me, and she was crying.  She didn't say "thank you" or "you too" or anything else that would have seemed impersonal.  She said, "You made us cry, girl."  I've been crying a lot, lately, too.  I've missed them my entire life, whenever we were not together, but I could always call.  Every Sunday, in fact.  This last Sunday came and went, though, and there was no call.   I've been crying a lot, lately, too.

Three squeezes for "I love you," and two squeezes for "How much?" aaaaaaand one big squeeze for "This much!"

From The Times Herald

April 21, 2013

Irene M. Hess

Kenockee 

Irene Magdaline Hess, 88, of Kenockee, went home Friday, April 19, 2013. She was born December 29, 1924 in Port Huron. She married Onley George Hess on April 12, 1947 in Port Huron. He died March 18, 2013. Irene was an Inspector for St. Clair Rubber Company for over 20 years retiring in 1976. She enjoyed crocheting, socializing and her grandchildren. She is survived by her son, Karl (Darlene) Hess; her daughter, Kathryn (Pat Carnahan) Schlinkert; nine grandchildren, Michelle "Shelly" Martin, Amy (Mathew Smith) Hess, Renee Hess, Jamal Hess, Patricia (Roger) Hartman, Dawn (Roger) Carrivau, Paula "Nicki" (Don) Fortune, and Scott and Pam Buchanan; several great grandchildren and great great grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews. She is preceded in death by a daughter, Olana Gayle Buchanan; a son Erik Hess; one grandson; and six brothers and sisters. A private family service will be held in May. Arrangements are by Smith Family Funeral Home-North, 1525 Hancock Street, Port Huron. Memorials may be made in Irene's name to Beacon Home Care.