January can have a congealed cold beyond the weather
REFLECTIONS
As the world turns and change is a constancy, there is one thing that never evolves … time always whirls on like a manic gyroscope. Indeed, Father Time is ticking away over there in the corner, piling on the years like autumn leaves on the sidewalk, or more appropriately for January, snow on the driveway.
Ah, yes. January. Never my favorite month because my DNA apparently wasn’t programmed to handle cold, snow, ice and bone-chilling wind, it became less so when my parents both passed away in January.
It’s difficult for me to believe that my father Casey succumbed to a stroke 14 years ago at age 86. And now it’s been three years since my mother Gloria died of kidney failure at age 92.
Scene changes inherent in the passage of time bring a subtlety we seldom see except through the prism of reflection. When I look back at my parents’ lives, my awe for them ruptures into profound appreciation.
I will never be the man my father was or the saint my mother was. But I am more of a man than I would have been without the force of his heavy father’s hand and less of a sinner than I would have been without the spirituality of her loving mother’s hand.
They were a complementary couple — he was a heroic action figure who loved sports; she was a person of reflection who loved culture. If things got dicey and the detonator read 00:03, the guy I wanted to snip the bomb wires was my old man while my mom fervently prayed beside him.
My father was a rock. Aren’t
rocks supposed to last forever? He was what God had in mind when he created man. My old man always was a man’s man. He grew up hard and stayed hard his entire life. He had little choice but to be as hard as a rock.
The oldest son in a large family trying to stake its way through the Great Depression, my father in his early teens helped his father work in a foundry where flesh burned as routinely as a smoker’s pack of matches. It was hard, horrible work. Even when work was hard to come by.
After graduating from Reading High a year early, he joined FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps that was rebuilding the rubble of America’s infrastructure. My father’s hard task meant leveling tree after tree with double-bit axes. Not only did it put calluses on his hands, but it also infused steel into his spine.
That steel in his spine came in handy when the ruckus Adolf Hitler was building escalated in Europe. In World War II, Casey saw plenty of action in the North Atlantic while his kidneys bounced around on a Naval destroyer. Dad always was brave enough to stick his nose into the noise and thunder, whether he was playing semi-pro football or helping to defend his country.
His bravery served him well when he waded into the flaming foam of liquid steel and gushing blood that was D-Day at Normandy. Casey seldom spoke about the war. He was a stoic warrior. He walked the walk. He didn’t have to talk the talk.
A man of firm beliefs and steel scruples, Casey and his beautiful bride Gloria made a strong contribution to the Baby Boomers generation by spawning seven children.
Seven kids cost money, so my dad worked two jobs for years. He lived and breathed the Post Office in and out of work and skyrocketed through the ranks to become regional director of mail processing. His side jobs were doing accounting for a grocery store and a plumbing supply store.
When he wasn’t on the job, he was remodeling our home in Mount Penn. With a hammer or a saw in his hand, he had the arm strength of Atlas. Everything he built was built to last. He was hard as nails and loved nails. Trust me, when the end of the world comes, the last house standing will be his home.
Ever the constructionist, he measured things with benchmarks. Almost every time he saw us when we were adults, he asked us if we had gotten a raise. Next to family, work was the epicenter of his existence. Years after he left the Post Office, his mind and heart still resided there, sorting the mail, delivering the letters the sooner the better.
I’m sure one of the first things he did when he got to Heaven was talk to St. Peter about putting a few more nails into the Pearly Gates so that they’re still standing when the rest of us get there.
The three pillars of my mother’s life were family, faith and friends. She was fortunate enough to have all three in abundance. Of course, you can’t characterize someone just by their pillars. Mom was multi-dimensional.
She loved music. She was an accomplished vocalist and pianist. Mom also loved flowers (she was a member of the Rose Society) and gardening. She was very sociable, and she loved conversing and lunching with friends.
After raising her children, she worked in a medical lab and then a law office. Like our father, she instilled in all of us a strong work ethic. I remember when we didn’t have an automatic washer and dryer. Mom used a hand-wringer washer and hung clothes in the backyard or basement.
She also shoveled coal into our furnace before we upgraded to gas heat. Thank God for that. Mom wasn’t very good at keeping a good coal fire going.
There was a celestial connection between Mom and her faith. Her frequent companion was a rosary. I think there are monks and cloistered nuns who don’t pray as much as Gloria did. When toxic times like her steep physical decline, failing kidneys and COVID-induced isolation oozed into her life, she never lost her faith, never asked, “Why me, God?”
Mom was amazed that she lived so long. Especially since she had seven children. Having seven kids takes a toll on a mother and turns family life into a squirrel cage at times.
Feeding seven kids can be more daunting than feeding the Seventh Calvary, especially on a limited budget. Our mom would stretch out the chili by adding elbow macaroni to better fill hungry bellies.
When all seven kids were living at home, our meals were louder than a Vikings’ banquet hall. But instead of drinking ale, we were drinking Mom’s awesome iced tea steeped in lemons and oranges. She should have bottled and sold that iced tea but who had the time with all the laundry, cooking, cleaning and nurturing?
Casey and Gloria Zielinski had lives well lived — lives that glow as though bathed in candlelight as I look back upon them.
Mike Zielinski, a resident of Berks County, is a columnist, novelist, playwright and screenwriter.