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As adults, some of the girls I grew up with moved away from this community where I’ve remained. In our middle years, a few of these women returned to the area and we reconnected. We’d weathered marriages, divorces, births, deaths and health problems. It’s interesting to note how we’ve changed and how we’ve maintained a unique, core identity through traits and characteristics.

Joyce and I reconnected by attending a 5-day writers’ seminar in northern Wisconsin. When we registered at our Rhinelander motel on a Sunday evening in July, we each qualified for our first AARP discount. Our fiftieth birthdays were only a few weeks away.

The last time we’d been together, we were teenage tomboys who loved riding horses, playing sports and dancing with boyfriends. Our farm families attended various social events together. After graduating from similar, small high schools, we went our separate ways and lost touch.

Joyce earned a college degree, married a career serviceman and lived in various places. After a divorce, she brought her daughter and son back to southern Wisconsin. She began a job with the Madison school system and became friends with coworker, Pat, who is my cousin. Learning I was still in Durand, she wrote to me to get reacquainted. We continued exchanging letters, which evolved into emails.

Kelly Quinn, PhD, clinical assistant professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has studied reconnecting with friends. She finds that shared interests, history and common values allow relationships to redevelop quickly. The two people may not share the same politics or religious views, but they don’t try to convert one another.

Friends increase health and play an important role in well-being. At midlife, we become more selective about our cronies seeking quality rather than quantity. Time with an old chum is like relaxing in a favorite easy chair at the end of a hard day, no artifice–just comfort.

Have you reconnected with an old pal?

Linda, our oldest child, would have been sixty years old yesterday. She died from breast cancer eleven years ago. I remember the day she was born. Mild labor pains disturbed my sleep during the previous night, but there was no urgency. On a sunny, wintery, Thursday morning, Ken drove me to St.Clare Hospital in Monroe, Wisconsin. Plows had cleared the twenty-five miles of county and state roads we travelled. Snow from last week’s storm was piled along the shoulders. That evening at 9:55, Linda Louise, weighing 7 lbs. 2 oz. and 19 in. long, entered the world. While I was in the delivery room, Ken cooled his heels in the waiting room. Three days later, he drove us back to Irish Acres. Our house went with his job as his brother-in-law’s hired man. We lived about half-way between his parents’ home in Durand and my folks’ farm. Mom came daily to guide me through caring for that perfect infant.

A week before Linda’ birth, we had a blizzard. I wasn’t concerned. My due date was two weeks away and all of my friends had gone later than they expected. Older, wiser folks knew foul weather often brought babies. About seven that evening, our phone rang. When I answered, a woman said, “This is Esther Panoske. Stan wanted me to call and tell you he can’t get you to Monroe, but he can take you to Durand if you need to go someplace.” Her husband was our Laona Township Highway Commissioner with a large snowplow parked in his driveway. The local clinic was staffed by young, Dr. Harvey, who lived in the village.

The call surprised me. The couple were neighbors, but not close friends. In rural communities, everybody knew everyone else’s business.

Later, I learned my father-in-law also was worrying about us that treacherous night. He had it figured out that Ken could drive the 2 1/2 miles to their house. Alice, a nurse who lived across the street, would serve as midwife to deliver the baby on their kitchen table.

When I was young and naive, it was a good feeling to have experienced elders looking out for me.

Do you consider having others know your business as concern or nosiness?

Friday, Valentine’s Day, we’ll celebrate love. Finding someone to love that loves you back has to be one of life’s major miracles.

I’ve been watching our glowing, granddaughter, Katelyn, try on wedding gowns. September nuptials will unite her with Sean, the fellow she met while they were students at Elmhurst College. It’s fun to note the similarities and differences between their courtship in the 2000s and ours in the 1950s.

Kenny and I were teenage schoolmates when he asked me to ride the Ferris wheel at a village summer festival. He became my “steady.” We’ve been sitting across the breakfast table from one another for more than sixty years.

Cupid’s arrow may strike anywhere at any time. During a trip to Kauai, Hawaii, to visit a mutual friend, my companion, Gloria, and I stayed at Michael and Sondra’s bed and breakfast. He was a Native Hawaiian and she was a blonde from Boston, Massachusetts. During a vacation from her job, she’d flown more than five thousand miles to visit The Islands. After returning home, she couldn’t forget the young man she’d met there.

Some of us find love more than once. My friend, Joyce, a widow, recently celebrated her eightieth birthday. Two days later, she married, Sid, a widower. They’d met across a card table playing euchre at a senior citizens’ center.

Not every couple who falls in love marries. When people have lived more than fifty years, complications from their pasts may intervene. My sister-in-law, Lola Mae, a widow who resided here in Durand and Butch, who was divorced and made his home in Farmington, sustained their engagement ’til death do us part. To spend weekends together, they took turns driving the 125 miles that separated them.

Do we experience love in different ways at various ages? Probably, but a smile from the person we adore gives each of us a warm, fuzzy feeling.

How did you fall in love?

Friday would be my parents’ 85th anniversary. On a Thursday afternoon in the middle of the Great Depression, Alex and Edith said their vows at the Trinity Lutheran Church parsonage in Durand. His sister, Marion, and her cousin, “Spud,” stood up with them in front of Rev.Swenson, a typical preacher with white hair and goatee. The following Saturday night, his shirttail relations, the Larison family, played for their wedding dance at the Avon Town Hall located just across the Wisconsin state line. Her sister, Frannie, made a wedding cake and his family provided the rest of the celebratory lunch. Relatives and friends from as far away as Rockford and Monroe came and brought gifts. I asked Mom why they were married in February when the weather is so unpredictable. She said they wanted to be ready to move to the farm they’d rented when landlords changed tenants March first.

For a long time, I thought the professional photograph of the three of us taken when I was six weeks old was their wedding picture. Her black dress with a white collar and his blue suit were the same clothes they’d worn two years earlier. I couldn’t imagine them without me.

Mom and Dad taught me about equality in marriage at work and at play. They farmed side by side beginning and ending each day milking cows. On shopping trips to Rockford, our last stop was always Hot Smacks on West State Street for ice cream. My parents each ordered a banana split, a boat-shaped dish with scoops of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry nestled between the two halves of a banana. Chocolate sauce, marshmallow cream and pineapple topping were dribbled on the balls of ice cream. Whipped cream, nuts and a cherry topped off the concoction. I ate a small, butterscotch sundae.

As a teenager, I heard that some girls demurely said, “I’ll just have a coke,” when a dating couple stopped at a drive-in. Ken never got by that cheap. He’d say, “I’m going to have a cheeseburger, fries and a coke. What do you want?”

My reply was always, “Sounds good. I’ll have the same.”

When we were first married. I thought I’d be Mom’s opposite, a rural June Cleaver. But I wasn’t satisfied being a housewife and mother while my husband was the breadwinner. As soon as our three children were enrolled in school, I looked for a part-time job. I ended up with two–Durand Township Clerk and freelance journalist.

Do you believe women and men are equal in a marriage?

The world today reminds me of the magic slate that was a fascinating Christmas gift from Santa years ago. The tablet had a black base covered by a gray plastic sheet with a second clear plastic sheet over top. I could write or draw a picture with a wooden stylus, lift the two layers and it disappeared.

Like that magic slate, an unseen hand is making my past disappear. While I was growing up, we lived in five different farm houses–only two remain standing. The Dobson and Putnam country grade schools that I attended have been hauled away making the farm fields where they stood on Moate Road and at the corner of Best and Laube Roads a little larger. I rode a yellow bus from our farm northwest of Durand into town to attend junior high and high school. That combined building has been knocked down. The area is now a paved, parking lot for the education complex on the other side of South Street.

Last fall, the big, old elm next door was sawed down. The tree was leaning and the owner didn’t want it to fall on her neighbor’s roof. Kim, who lives across the street, will keep warm burning the wood piece by piece in his stove.

I thought of Sherrill, the mother of the family who formerly lived in that threatened house. She and I spent many summer afternoons sitting in the shade while our six kids played around us. My three cops howled like sirens and pedaled their bicycle squad cars chasing her three who were robbers. When the group wanted to play Wiffle Ball, our neighbor, Cliffie, allowed them to use his vacant lot at the end of the block. Sherrill has passed away and so have her Junior and my Linda.

What do you miss that has disappeared like lifting a magic slate?

Tomorrow my cousin Flo will be 95 years old. She lives alone in the farm home she and her husband, Joe, shared for sixty years and drives her small, blue Chevy to run her errands.

Flo is my closest relative. Mom’s parents died before she was married, but her oldest sister and her husband, Aunt Frannie and Uncle Hookie, loved me like a grandchild. Their daughters, Florence and Doris, who died in 1998, were 12 and 14 years older than I was. The girls treated me as a contemporary, but also indulged my childish whims. When I was eight, Sis, the family nickname that sticks in my mind, and her folks came to visit on a January evening. While our parents visited, I asked my cousin to play Fox and Goose. The two of us bundled up, turned on the yard light and went outside to a quiet, moonlight night. We drug our feet through the snow to make a large, spoke pattern to play the game. After the fox caught the goose, we changed places and continued until our noses were red with cold.

When I was growing up, babysitters hadn’t been invented. On the rare occasions that my parents didn’t take me along when they went someplace, I stayed overnight at Rowley’s. Their rickety, old house was a palace to me. The sisters were my heroines. They taught me things a young lady needed to know such as how to apply make-up and nail polish. Later, they instructed me on handling alcohol in social situations.

As married women, it was a surprise when Flo and I were each expecting our third child at the same time. She worried that she and Joe would be doddering, old folks by the time their baby graduated from high school. Today, Janet has become a grandmother and her daughter, Leann, is the mother of Brody and Wes, Flo’s great-grandsons.

Do you have cousins to reminisce with?

No electricity from Saturday until noon Monday. The ice storm brought down pine tree limbs in our yard that caught electric wires and disturbed the meter attached to the house. We had to wait for ComEd and an electrician to get us back in operation. In the meantime, a generator kept necessary things going such as the furnace, frig, 2 TVs, and a couple lamps. The rest of the community had power. A good thing. Ken disconnected the electric garage door opener and lifted the door manually to drive the car to fill a gasoline can at the service station and feed the generator.

I don’t stop to think how much our household depends on electricity. We still sleep in a waterbed with an electric heater. I bunked on the davenport and Ken extended his time in his recliner. Sunday, I did the crossword puzzle in the newspaper with a dull pencil. My sharpener is electric. Some things Ken plugged in and then unplugged when finished. We buy whole bean coffee–the grinder and the coffee maker depend on electricity.

The generator couldn’t handle our electric stove so no cooking. We couldn’t eat out because Ken wanted to keep an eye on the generator that had never run so long continuously before. Our son made an extra-large batch of chili and shared a hot meal with us.

Our water heater is electric so we had only cold water. Ken heated small amounts of water in the microwave to wash dirty dishes and us. A long time since I’ve taken a sponge bath–showers are so much better.

When I was growing up, we visited relatives who didn’t have electricity. They used an ice box, kerosene lamps and a battery radio.

How do you prepare for a power outage?

I’m in the kitchen cooking Sunday dinner while wearing my church clothes. I dress up a bit for services. When I returned home, I decided I wasn’t changing into my old jeans and sweatshirt. I keep reminding myself not to do my farmer habit of wiping my messy hands on my pants. At five o’clock, I sit down in front of the TV to catch up on the news. I handle my glass of red wine carefully because I’m still wearing my beige trousers. I’ve made it through the day.

When watching family shows on TV, I marvel at the clothes people wear around home, but then they don’t go to the barn to milk the cows like my kin did. My parents married, started farming and greeted their only child in the 1930s during the Great Depression. World War II followed. I grew up with everyday clothes, a few school clothes and one Sunday best. Save was ingrained in my thinking.

Now my closet is packed. When the seasons change, I remove a few old things to make room for new. Clothes that no longer fit or that I just don’t like as well as some others go into a plastic bag to be donated to the Salvation Army Store.

The thrift store gained a complete wardrobe when Linda, our 48-year-old daughter, died from breast cancer. That’s my reminder to wear the garments I like. The day will come when someone will be cleaning out my closet. Another person will enjoy those things that I kept for good.

Do you wear your favorite clothes often or save them so they last longer?

Happy New Year! 2020 brings opportunities, which we all have free will to accept or ignore.

Earlier this winter, I drove to suburban Glenview to attend a morning meeting of the Midwest Writers Association. I’d never heard of the group but through Facebook, the Chicago Writers Association members were invited to attend their program about blogs. Last spring, I’d started lolita-s-bigtoe.com with the idea of improving as I went along. The presentation was worth spending two hours on toll roads.

By taking advantage of opportunities, I’ve slipped into writing through the side door of learn by doing. When Kurt joined Linda and Lisa attending school, I checked the Rockford Morning Star help wanted section for an office job like I’d had before I was married. The area daily’s ad seeking community correspondents to report news from surrounding small towns intrigued me. When I contacted an editor, I learned all I needed to be a part-time stringer was a typewriter and a 35mm camera–no training, no experience. My parents had given me a Royal portable when I was a sophomore in high school learning to type. The camera had been our first Christmas gift to each other.

Using the newspaper as a guide for submitting articles, I wrote features about local people doing interesting things, chased firetrucks and attended civic meetings. I enjoyed sticking my nose in where it wasn’t alway wanted and seeing my byline. I’d found my calling. To do a better job, I joined writers’ organizations and attended workshops. Presenters told how to freelance for magazines. I took notes although I was satisfied with the newspaper work I was doing. After thirteen years, the Star dropped all part-timers. I was devastated. After I dried my tears, I could see two options–quit writing or find other markets. I sent query letters to national publications for women, farmers and police officers. Some of them accepted my articles. Setbacks can become opportunities.

What opportunities have you taken advantage of?

Merry Christmas!

To spend the holidays at home in 1954, Ken flew from Norman, Oklahoma, where he was training to go aboard an aircraft carrier. Last July, he’d begun a four-year hitch in the navy.

I was a senior in high school. To signify we were going steady, I wore my boyfriend’s class ring wrapped with adhesive tape.

Christmas Eve afternoon, we exchanged presents. I gave him a Ronson cigarette lighter. Like most adults, he’d started smoking a year ago when he graduated and immediately became a working man operating a machine at Barber Colman, a Rockford factory.

Ken gave me a black, short-sleeved, cashmere cardigan. My first thought when I opened the box and saw the sweater was it’s beautiful. Then I wondered, was it too intimate a gift for me to accept when we weren’t engaged? One glance at the pride in his face convinced me I couldn’t refuse it. Besides, I’d never worn an expensive, cashmere sweater. I said a heartfelt, “Thank you.” I silently hoped I wouldn’t be allergic to the fiber made from goat’s hair like I was wool sheared from sheep.

The following week, I bought a beige, calf-length, straight skirt to wear with my new garment. New Year’s Eve, I dressed in my fancy outfit for our date to celebrate. At seven p.m., Ken walked into the living room and greeted my parents who were sitting in easy chairs. After eyeing me, he said, “It looks like the sweater fits fine.” I blushed and wondered what my parents thought of his remark.

Our friends, Wayne and Gloria, joined us to see the movie, “White Christmas,” at the Coronado in Rockford followed by dancing in the new year at the grange hall in Durand. We finished the night with cheeseburgers at the Hilltop, a mile south of town. At four a.m. New Year’s Day, Ken walked me along the sidewalk from the Nash to the house steps. His final goodbye kiss would have to last for months until I saw him again.

In my bedroom, I removed my sweater to get ready for bed. I smiled in the mirror–no rash. I wasn’t allergic to the expensive cashmere. My gift proved I was made for finer things.

Have you ever received a gift that made you feel rich although you weren’t?