Curlers

Curlers 

At ninety, there is no shame: “the bones and joints” won’t let her set her own hair anyway, so more fun at the hairdresser is in order.   My sister sent Mother’s curlers to me.  No fair - the memories!   Just curlers- as with all "the little things" -  a curlers story:

Mother’s parents had property and beauty and love but died young and suddenly, leaving eleven orphans:   Frank, Leo, Mike, Tony, Louie; Agnes, Frances, Josie, Mary, Florence, and Albina, our mother, third from the youngest.  The Great Depression ruled - children's  law went lax; the older ones went out on their own,  younger ones ‘ bunked in’ with them, one in an orphanage, and Mother, the heiress, adopted, with baby brother in tow.  When she came of age, a good attorney fought for her powers and rights, and won.  She met our Father and soon,  T\the Southport, Connecticut paper called her “The Southport Belle” in the engagement announcement!  And he "Smitty the Flight Mechanic" with pioneer Army Air Corps in Texas, California, London and Morocco - and she making ammunition with Remington Arms served proudly, doing their part - they  won over WWII as well!

Mother and Father exulted - peace, love, beauty, and prosperity!  They did every single thing with delicious skill and correctness and quality - triumph!  Later, change forced a reworking of it all to recoup losses to the success and laughter we enjoyed, but they won through and their way quite an example to us. 

Throughout our childhood, heaven was in Mother's sunny kitchen - friends and neighbors often joining in -  party plans, holiday cooking and gifts, and hundreds of Christmas cards and to be pretty enough for it all - pounds of beauty accessories, creams, potions, helpers and options spread about - getting and giving the home beauty treatments that were backup to a lady’s visits to fashion and hairdressing!  Blessed!

Caring is what's it all about.   The curlers reminded me how it was no burden, in that home full of love, to wash, condition and roll the hair and then tuck it under the cap of the table console hair dryer.  Of course, with our Dad at the table head - the latest tech was always there, including the first pink push-button kitchen range, and plug-in telephones and more.   Caring is what's it all about.  Barbers and tailors for Dad and my Brother with the guy-version of the same. Some of my Dad's work left his hands so that it took and hour to get them right, but he loved it.    
We'd earned our beauty time. The repairs and enhancements, mixed with the news, and happy girl-talk about health, love, money and more!   Beauty experiments that failed completely come to mind, too!   Periodically, we’d boil those curlers - germs did not stand a chance in that kitchen.  Maybe it's the boiling, and the way I still do the same,  that makes me think they earned the story now.  Wanting to do her hair just one more time, or his manicure, but glad I did it then.

Thank you, Mother, today, for the privilege of living in your realm, sunlight streaming into the room!  The memory is a living prayer and those curlers did their beauty job one last time: they brought the memory, the warmth, then tears, then peace and a smile!   

The Southport Belle and Technology

It was no fluke that our Mother, Albina, the Southport Belle,  was an early CyberSenior !  

During WWiI she did her part of keeping the homefires burning , making ammunition for Remington Arms in Bridgeport Connecticut.     Then she married my Sci-tech wiz Father and one or the other of them was always "up to something" innovative.      The wonderful Christmas gold foil star - entirely their invention, was  promise re: the gold foil Dad later fashioned - the foil we see on the photos of NASA's Lunar Lander July 20, 1969.  Later she helped for a bit at Bullard's in Bridgeport doing up some fine tooling to thousandths of an inch.   She enjoyed the first plug in phones in the fifties - four-prong things.   She served up plain and fancy from the first push-button Frigidaire kitchen ranges and hers was PINK.     The latest in hearing aids empowered her in her twenties and later and TTY kept us on the phone and in touch when apart.     Since email won the ultmate victory, she was Simply THERE for it - you could hear her jubilant at the world it reopened, when her ears closed!     Now it was instant fun to all of her loved ones all over the world - photos, notes, greetings and news....music and prayer...YES!   No isolation anymore.

Of course, time passes:  After thirty years of "fine online" , the Southport Belle aged out of most computing,  some years ago.

But she had no issues with SKYPE and all the rest until true old age physically prevented her.

She was THE   Cyber Senior in her own right - she felt no lack of tech support.   We followed suit - I did my first data processing in 1969 for Wright investors - though in those days no one got anywhere near the actual machine - it filled a room and one mistake could cost a fortune to fix.  Still I was formatting the copy for the programmer. Exciting, till pregnancy took me home for a bit.

 I code, and my website has been onlline since 1999.   My sister runs the computers for folk in Pennsylvania, my Brother has published online and his book is in the libraries...for him the computer is an automatic tool.       My late husband helped the computer upgrades for Wellcome in North Carolina, and he would be proud of his son - international IT whiz for Hearst and others with a production company of his own.      My  daughter nearby worked online in graphics, for ACS and for her own things enough to be able to run to Gram's to unfreeze a thing.

With all of us there to support her easily in it, Tech for our Mother won thru for her and  triumph that gave her a few extra years of life I am sure.

But realize that this every fun and insight we enjjoy is a major Leap for Mankind and that , when I was a girl , not THAT long ago, Sci-Tech interests were still controversial and some days in the 40s and 50s all scientists and brainy-types were Baron Von Frankenstein and intrinsically mad and evil.

Fortunately, that way of things passed quickly and almost entirely ended -  thanks to television, the Salk Vaccine , Heart transplants and the Moon Landing.   Okay ... maybe science had something going for it.  "From now on.." Sci-tech types  were allowed.  They could get fairly stable community liking.  We all use technology to grand effect today.

 

There was only one technical difficulty:
Astronauts often find spacecraft easy to drive, but get tickets on the road with their cars - a few did not drive over this anomaly.

So maybe this???
It was the fifties - and time to learn to drive - Mother's lessons with the automobile would  bring her "up to speed" .  As a young woman, she'd been photographed with her famous bicycle WWII pinup-style among herrown - tall and long-legged,  she could look pretty on a bicycle, while the rest of us struggled thru Southpor's hilly terrain.    So she enjoyed her bike and let driving slide.   But  married with children who needed a Mother who could drive, it was time to get the license.  
When?   The window?   Seven months expectant, Mother said she preferred to go to  "diving school" -   Dad  WWII flyboy and All American car nut said, "Nonsense - cars-R-us ... I can train you.".     OKayyyyyyy......and it went fairly well, until......    One sunny afternoon, during on-the-road practice,  Mother  was doing so well, Dad praised her, then to demo his confidence, lit up a cigar and leaned back in the passenger seat expressing confidence in body language  - for about five seconds:

 then, as always happens, Mother took the cue to make her first navigational error,  almost turning for a left turn in front of another car.  

 Dad  had to grab the wheel from Mother FAST to prevent a collision - so fast, that he put that cigar in his mouth backward!    Lucy and Rick on the road?  YouBetcha!  The story stayed....

 "Okay, maybe driving school is a better idea."  

End of DIY driving instruction

Mother graduated with flying colors and drove proudly till age 85, when little imaginary Polish men began to accompany her for moral support: "Ohhh Albina! What a fine driver you are!" , they would say.   Terrified, she went home and turned herself in for medical care.     I am quoting her. She also turned in her license and got meds to end the imaginary visits and was soon fine. Yay!  Modern health options! 

Technology saved Mother's life..... hearing aid and phone amplifier were a start.  She was thrilled that her children were not impaired but I was six when she tearfully gave in to that firsthearing  aid.  I had a Scottish nanny at the time; "Auntie May" was brought in  to be there, earn her citizenship and help us thru the "little bad moment"  while Mother adjusted - and  it was a huge success.      May Cote was cheery, kind affectionate , quick and smart and the home was a happy one , even thru Mother's challenge.     She did win her citizenship with Mother's sponsoship and a wonderful husband.   And later she  was at my wedding , in fox furs and handsome prince Armand Cote for a spouse of many years.     So far from that first meeting long ago when   I wondered to her, fearfully, what could be wrong with my Mommy.   She explained very well and suggested I might enjoy helping her, too, when needed.    Wow!  A child can help?  This is like being a  super person !    I loved it and it enhanced my development and gave me power over the sorrow of her hearing loss and what that meant to me.  To get up and HELP - yes...that was the way.

As her issues worsened I was helped by "The Miracle Worker" and its story ..." I am a little like Annie Sullivan to Helen Keller", I thought.    Mother  was not even thirty when that first hearing aid was put to work, and disability is not easy to accept when young. There were lots of tears off and on, for some time till  Mother mastered lipreading and life was fine again for all involved.   She got so good, that , years later,  when she visited me,  off in my own married life, far from home roots,   I would not tell my neighbors and friends at social events of her deafness and they did not know!     Fun to see them drop their coffee cups later when I revealed her secret.   So proud.

Technology saved the day!

She'd won her breakthrough !  Lip-reading, she won jobs that anyone would envy - some of them very high-tech as well -  and  soon we cheered over TDD - the typing phone service for the deaf and then it was the logical progression -  online with emails and cyberspace!  FUN!  

Mother was Thrilled!  Her friends were thrilled!  Her Children were thrilled!  Her Grandchildren were thrilled!

 And soon her Great-grandchildren thrilled as well!    We teased her and called her cyber-babbling cyberpunk...and she was thrilled all over again!  

Caption phone was added and flashing light for phone bells and doorbells.

She lived very much on her own and proud to be so. We stayed in very good touch and ran to help as needed.

We liked her style.  Having been challenged, she got after it , time and again and she won thru, and would cheer us on with the words about how important it is to proceed with faith and hopw and love and never give up.    She gave us that - the joy of life and the duty to pay it forward - the joy of being able to pay it forward.

 And one more triumph for  the Year of the Tiger spirit of the amazing Southport Belle.  

Many years later, When an injury impacted my own powers,  I joined her in new kinds of friendship - working and traveling and loving and living online sometimes. 
And so we have done as a mainstay since - and as our Mother fades in her last days, I am already through the worst of my grieving  because my part of it happened when she could no longer SKYPE, over two years ago.  

But "they can't take that away from me - the grand times are there and will stay.

 I hope these strong and loving stories help and share a good thing with all -  there is enough of the other.

If you liked this story, share it and may it inspire - because there is more to come.

Back to Introduction Page
 

Imageclick for the next story: "Albina who Polkas".

southport belle ~ introduction

SOUTHPORT BELLE  ~  INTRODUCTION:

First of a series here of brief stories :   "The Southport Belle" is my Mother - Albina Pauline ( or, Appollonia ) Filanowski Backiel Smith Duffy.
 Born March 6th 1926 in the Year of the Tiger.
She was a “movie star” poet and film fan - tall, loving, passionately devoted to family, lovely and social and appreciated by adoring fans.  
I hold her high till this day, because she was grand in spite of some major tragedies - smiling through every time!

She was double-orphaned at the worst of the Great Depression - at age 6 from her mother and age 9 from her Father and both sudden deaths.    Difficult time with step parents ended and she self-educated to become the grandest in wifehood, motherhood and personhood.  Her devotion and creativity and and energies were there for us every day.   And fun in all of it - for all in her sphere.
So I feel the stories might be worth sharing - they should really not be lost now that she is leaving us.

Connecticut, we’d laugh, is “nickname heaven” - pet names abounded for fun and adorations.  Here is a  partial list: 

• "Albinka", from her parents

• "Little White Flower", from the nuns in girlhood one of the meanings of her name.

• "the little egg girl",  how she helped her large family keep food on the table, delivering eggs to the Wealthy on Southport Harbor.

• "Beans",  her youngest brother, and almost no one else, was allowed to use this one. When she was adopted, they let her bring the baby brother , "but he's YOUR responsibility"  She was fine with that...and remained so.

• "Southport Belle",   she came of age and her inhertance and the tune changed - oh yes.

• "Albina Smitski",  My Darling,  My Queen, "Smitty",    - from my Father, her Romantic twin Libra and Pisces - how did they get any work done?     I'd watch them at work and play and dream of my own handsome prince one day- it seemed  like a grand thing, grownup life!   War was done, they'd both won their medals and everyone home safe and sound - the party never ended - they kept the rules , supported the traditions and love was an sction word -  and sang and danced and were very popular - LIFE. 

• "Motherrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!",    we children, especially me...."mommy" was fine for my younger brother and sister...but, as soon as teens hit..."Mother" from me the eldest was the right thing it was decided, among the women and men on the block - doing it right meant no one would become ill or fail in our world outside the home.  

• "Grandma", -   They never failed us to their best powers and the home was pretty remarkable.   Fine weddings followed and soon fine babies to light up her life again!  And great grands -5 of them- to give her a glow before aging had its way.

• "My Angel", .....when health and money crashes later broke up my parents, they won thru again and remarried.  Mother's Harry Duffy called her his Angel day and night with good reason and she  loved him every bit as much and then some. They did well.

• "Albina who jogged the Golden Gate Bridge" at 70,    widowed this time, she made a new life and we children and grandchildren were some help as well....My son got mother in California pow-flowered hot-pants jogging that bridge - a happy day!

• "Albina Who Polkas" .  I was her signer till she mastered lipreading and hearing aids, so people thought she could not appreciate music, and especially my musical Father's song, but she loved it all and showed me how to FEEL music and , even when the tune itself was not what it was when she could hear, she shone on the dance floor FEELING sound.

• "Albina to the rescue" in two venues at 75.  Dozens of "Momgate" moments were in the past, but she worked with My sister and her husband in Saint Croix storm recoveries. And me again when my accident nearly got me  killed, widowed and the children off on their own and not knowing of my plight. She was there and we went dancing again.

• "Albina from Curves " at 79.  YES   and she made my fitness things at Silver Sneakers so easy that , when the insurance dropped it , I made the peititions and got it back. 

ROOTS:  Mother came to Connecticut as an infant, and was born in Saint Claire, Pennsylvania, to Poland-born American Citizens.    Since births were registered in the Spring if you lived in farm country , she was even unsure of her true birth date.  Because the date on the Birth Certificate was likely to be the day her Dad registered the birth, since his English was not grand.    Maybe the extra names were supposed to help.   A friend who Astrologically charted birth dates , backward, from other information, did his best, but could not pin down a reliable date.

Whatever nickname, she is surely called "most loved".   We are losing her now at 91, but till four years ago, she drove and lived independently and helped us, still, as much as we helped her.  This entry is background to make the stories about her more fun for the reader.

She  moved with her family, as an infant from Pennsylvania to Southport Connecticut.   Her Father lost his first wife in childbirth and married the second who also died in childbirth , leaving him with eleven children - Agnes, Josie, Frances, Mary, Florence, Albina - Frank, Louie, Leo, Mike, Tony.  Helen and Matt died in infancy.  The older ones struck out on their own, but that still left a big table to feed, widowered and at the worst of the Depression Days.  He did well working for a Grain and Feed company, and owned nice property  and custom-built house

He worked near home, so would he would take lunch break to  run home and cook hot lunch for his children who were then allowed the same break to take  hot lunch at home, if they could get back to class on time.   But, walking back to work afterward, in one plowed  lane,  on a snowy day three years after the death of the second wife, he was struck by a truck and died instantly.   

The other children coming back from lunch saw it and told my Mother in class.  Not easy for her - ever.   She prayed to her parents and for them, at bedtime,  all through her life.  She was nine.

Still her home ground, Southport Connecticut was lovely to grow up in  and  has, in fact, been used recently, and  one more time, as a picturesque  backdrop for the movies.   But when Mother was a girl , it was in earlier days for its later elegance.  A century before, it was simply one more harbor - the famous Southport Globe Onion was grown and shipped and the project supplied there.     The buildings on the harbor were pubs mostly till the many sailor fights  prompted town leaders to set up  a doctor's office across the street and a library and church upstairs.   Civilization in top form followed,  thanks to the generosity of the wealthy sea captains whose homes remain stunning beauties in the sun and breeze there. 

The famous Pequot Library also a gift to the community from the wealthy Marchand family, stands on the grounds of their early mansion, where the lovely large front lawn is now. The Library was constructed as a surprise behind fencing there and unveiled like a statue when complete - its rose quartz sparkling like a thing from heaven.   It is kept and well even today and restored not long ago.     
 

She was very good - serious and skilled in work - devoted and joyful in love -  Grateful for helps she enjoyed when orphaned, and able to give and take love in the community, and the world - not just at home.  My Dad met her on leave from his pioneer Army Air Corps duties and they dated in days when a "flyboy" was like an astronaut, awesome dating material. The war was over , they had skills, beauty, money and property, and enjoyed success in all things. He helped her redecorate their "Tara".  On the wooden beam in the basement, carved a sweetheart, with "Albina Smitski" carved inside...fun with the ethnic mix.    Like the song, "And there upon the tree I see, I love you till I die".   The definition got complicated between them, but they did.

She was interrupted in her schooling - but continued in adult classes and on her own and , since we were located in a nice place for it,  learned types would join our social circle and share their knowledge and wisdom and training:  she worked with success in accounting,  we all enjoyed very nice and latest beauty, fashion, decorating, marriage and child psychology training -  and more.   Mother kept her brainier library upstairs and the one for the general public  in the living-room bookcase!    Both libraries were worked hard with our endless curiosity.  I got my love of books and film trivia and music from my parents.   Dad's people were iconic and taught us all they knew as well:   History , religion, politics and the secret funstuff:  Like all the girls in our family, we could also do plumbing, blade-sharpening, steam-jennying, and upholstery.  

If a situation looked threatening, she'd rehearse what she felt she might need to say and how she'd need to say it, and followed through.  The daily mandate from her school days:  "Learn Perfect English - Be good Americans"  and she was all that!  At five- foot nine, not counting the pompadours they all wore, her height seemed to be one of her motives to cultivate her kind and charming way.  So her speech was soft and  more careful and I got to learn at her feet, winning neat moments and opportunities as a girl, just from her example. 

Her smile reflected her goodness, beauty , sense of self, the happiness and sorrows and compassion for all, without ever being oppressive about it.  She laughed and did fun things with us all and for us!        "I love Lucy" was on tv, so she'd even do a stunt!    There were most certainly days of teas but my point was , that on easy days or challenging ones, they bothered to make itA joyful home!  The stories will prove.     

But work was the backbone of it all.  We all took the cue from both our enterprising parents, and expected to be good - learn the skills and share them for good work and love.    She said  she had no confidence in her parenting having lost hers so young.  But  I like her better than many who took their aptitudes for granted.  Her motives were inspiring.

I am on the way up from grief - I caved in when she no longer could communicate or recognize me.   But I AM recovering  and feel compelled to share the stories -  good days and bad, rich or not,  in full health or coping - the love and goodness remain and gave her three children the good example - and oh, what fun we had doing it all!

First of the stories - Click here for "The Southport Belle and Technology"