The house I grew up in had been remodeled with an apartment on the second floor, and another in the basement. My folks and I lived near a college, so that wasn’t unusual. College students often preferred off-campus housing, and I’m drifting off-topic.
My father kept his clothes in the basement apartment’s closet, on the north side of the bedroom/living room.
He’d made bookshelves on the west wall by stacking bricks and laying finished planks between them. A dresser with, eventually, a half-dozen or so pocket watches on top lay between the bookshelves and closet door. Their ticking filled the apartment with an intricately convoluted soft percussion ambiance, and that’s another topic for another day.
His desk sat across from the dresser, next to the closet door, facing the kitchen. At some point he set up a four-by-eight-foot model railroad layout down there. It must have been against the south wall. Funny. I know what the layout looked like, but don’t have a clear picture of how it fit in the room. It’s been a long time.
Wrenching myself back on-topic, Dad also had an old overstuffed leather-covered arm chair. I think it’d been his father’s. At any rate, it had seen better days. The leather was slightly cracked, and stiff. It was one of my two, maybe three, favorite chairs.
I could, and did, sit in that armchair, reading something — often as not, one of the Pogo books Dad kept on those shelves — while my father sat at his desk, also reading.
Those are good memories.
Maybe sitting in a basement, reading, isn’t high in the list of Hallmark moments of parent-child bonding. But it worked for me and my father, and having those memories is — very pleasant.
I asked our oldest daughter to check this post. Her response:
“That arm chair sounds wonderful.
“Every time I hear or read you describe Grandpa’s study from when you were growing up, I imagine it lit with warm orange lights casting deep, burgundy shadows.”
Running Late, Then the Elevator Went CLUNK
That’s about it for this week.
No, wait. There’s one more item of possible interest.
I got to Mass on Sunday mainly because I’ve set the alarm to give me an excessive safety margin.
Since I forgot to do the ‘spring forward’ Daylight Savings thing, that meant I was only slightly late. A few years back, the elevator was highly recommended to me as a means of getting up to the sanctuary. I think seeing me negotiate the stairs made folks nervous.
Anyway, I pushed the appropriate button, felt the elevator start upwards, heard a dull CLUNK, and felt it stop.
Good news, someone got at the controls and sent me on my way. Also good news, there’s a bench in the elevator, so I was comfortable while listening to the homily.
My mother’s baby grand piano1 sat in the southwest corner of the living room at 818, where I grew up.
She taught me the basics: where middle C is, how to hold my hands over the keyboard, that sort of thing. A lifetime later, I know that I could have paid more attention. But I’m glad to have learned what I did.
Somewhere along the line she had me learn to play “D’ye ken John Peel?” / “Do you know John Peel?” — a surprise for my father. It was supposed to be a secret. So, of course, as soon as he came home, I blurted out what I was learning.
Learning impulse control is a work in progress. But I am getting better.
The baby grand went with my parents and me when we moved to 1010. It traveled with them again when they moved to the farmstead my mother grew up on.
Then, around the time taking care of my mother became more difficult for my father, my folks donated it to the nearby town’s nursing home. That’s where both my parents eventually died, and that’s another topic.
Our second-oldest daughter — she and our son-in-law live on the farmstead now, running their sawmill — and that’s yet another topic.
Where was I?
Our second-oldest daughter called last Monday, talking first with my wife: which is par for the course. Those two generally have quite a bit to talk about.
After a while our third-oldest daughter brought me the phone, so that the second-oldest could talk with me.
This isn’t routine, but isn’t unheard of either. Although we’re not the model family of 1950s sitcoms, we do communicate.
Anyway, first thing she — second-oldest daughter this is — said was something like ‘all things end’. Her tone was upbeat, but the words had me wondering what had happened. And who it had happened to.
Within a minute, she’d filled me in on the situation. Nobody had died, been injured, or taken ill. Right there, that’s good news.
The topic of conversation was my mother’s piano. Seems it’s upwards of a hundred years old. That would probably make it my grandmother’s piano first, then my mother’s.
Pianos, our daughter told me, don’t last forever.2 The baby grand my folks donated to the nursing home had gotten to the point where maintenance won’t keep it going.
Having the parts that make it a piano replaced would be possible. But the job would cost more than a new piano, so that wasn’t a reasonable option.
All this was interesting, but I still didn’t know why our daughter was talking with me about the situation. It’d been something like two decades since the piano had passed from the family’s hands to the nursing home’s.
Decisions
Folks at the nursing home had given our daughter and son-in-law first refusal for taking the thing off their hands. I’m sure they didn’t put it that way.
This was back in December. Our daughter had meant to bring this up earlier, but — that household has a lot on their plate.
At any rate, they’d given the part of the family living in North Dakota an opportunity to reclaim the piano. Our daughter was talking with me to put me in the loop.
Building a new piano inside the shell of the old one didn’t make sense. Not to me. Even if we could afford it, I saw no point. What we’d end up with would be the shell of the piano I knew from childhood up, with a new piano inside.
We can, however, have pieces of the piano’s case, or whatever the outside’s called, after whoever’s doing the removal gets the inside mechanisms out.
Our daughter and son-in-law want the legs and top. They will try reassembling them as an end table. She said that ‘of course’, they’re keeping the piece above the keyboard that says “Steinway”.
I suggested that the outer shell, the part that’s straight on one side and curved on the other, might make the outside of a bookcase. I’ve been wanting one for the north room, where I spend most of my time these days. It’d be about five feet wide and five tall, which should let it fit against the wall near my desk.
Whether or not that works out, I’m glad she called and told us what the situation was.
Gratitude and Saying Goodby
I was and am glad that folks at the nursing home had appreciated the piano’s presence, and the music folks made with it.
I had ‘said goodby’ to the piano by playing a few lines of one of my favorite pieces — J. S. Bach’s Prelude in C Major — where it sat in a small room near the entrance on the west side. That’s still a good memory. A happy one.
Meanwhile: New Windows and the News
B.C. comic, February 25, 2026. It’s not entirely dumb, but B.C. has a point.
I’d intended to write more this week.
But we finally got new windows put in the north room and a couple other places. My desk is in the north room. Having minor construction work happening nearby is distracting.
It’s good news, though, since when the new windows are closed, they don’t let the wind through. Neither did the old ones, mostly, but wind got around them anyway.
We’d been making do by keeping plastic sheeting over the things. Although the window-plus-sheet-plastic arrangement was fairly effective, and the plastic transparent, the sheeting was thick and wrinkled.
I’ve been enjoying having an uncrumpled view.
The armed conflict that started last Sunday hasn’t helped me concentrate, either.
I may talk about that, if and when I have something useful to say. Basically, at this point, I see its importance as being much greater than a new set of windows somewhere in the Upper Midwest, and probably one of this year’s more significant developments.
A Piano, Music, Life, and a Sense of Scale
Psalms 98:4; and sunrise over the Pacific Ocean, seen from the ISS. (2003)
I’m a very emotional man. I liked my mother’s piano. There are a great many good memories involving it, and the music coming from it — more or less fine, depending on the player’s skill.
But I’m not particularly upset that it will no longer be a musical instrument: and am glad that folks could enjoy it during the last couple decades.
Having acquired a sense of scale helps.
Something from Sirach popped onto my mind’s front desk while I was writing this. I’ve quoted it before.
“When mortals finish, they are only beginning, and when they stop they are still bewildered. What are mortals? What are they worth? What is good in them, and what is evil? The number of their days seems great if it reaches a hundred years. Like a drop of water from the sea and a grain of sand, so are these few years among the days of eternity. That is why the Lord is patient with them and pours out his mercy on them.” (Sirach 18:7–11) [emphasis mine]
Boots & Star at 818. (ca. 1970)
As I see it, our new windows, the old piano, nations, history and humanity fall somewhere between a grain of sand and the universe in significance.
Each, to a greater or lesser extent, matters.
I’m glad that I have good memories associated with that piano, and profoundly grateful that God is patient; with me and with all of us. I’ve talked about that before:
Detail, “The Fight Between Carnival and Lent”, Pieter Brueghel the Elder. (1559) In this bit, Lent’s winning.
It’s Lent and I’m a Catholic.
So how come I’m not sitting in some dark corner, reflecting on doom, gloom, and how perfectly rotten I am?
Or at least moaning and wringing my hands over the world’s dreadfully dire state: as illustrated in my news feed.
Basically, it’s because neither will help me line myself up with Jesus: doing prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.1 Work on lining myself up, that is: it’s a job that lasts as long as life does.
Fasting and Focus
Now, fasting I could feel guilty about, since “abstaining from luxuries”, as one resource put it, assumes that luxuries are already part of my everyday life.
I can’t give up lobster thermidor and Caribbean cruises for Lent because they aren’t part of my life.
No virtue there: they’re simply not options for me. On the other hand, avoiding lesser luxuries is possible, and emphatically a work in progress.
Even so, giving up stuff isn’t the point.
Working on “a true inner conversion … to follow Christ’s will more faithfully” is.1
Gloominess, Health, and a Little History
Billy Sunday, telling them what for in Philadelphia. (March 1905)
Another reason I’m not working on my moaning and groaning, striving for every-deeper dives into despondency, is that it’d be a really bad idea.
18th century illustration of the four temperaments: phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine, melancholic.
That’s because ‘blessed are the miserable, for they shall spread misery’ is not one of the beatitudes, and melancholia isn’t healthy.
“Melancholia”, along with other Greco-Roman ideas about disease, humorism, and the mind, hasn’t been part of serious medicine for a century or so.
It’s associated with one of the four old-school personality types:
Choleric
Melancholic
Phlegmatic
Sanguine
“Melancholia”, as a diagnosis, wasn’t quite the same as persistent depressive disorder; but it wasn’t all that different, either. Both — bear in mind that this isn’t a technical definition — involve folks brooding on gloom, doom, and finding dark linings in every silver cloud.
In the Middle Ages, folks recognized it as one of the ways a person’s mind can go wonky.
Then, about five centuries back, something weird happened.2
Fashionable Melancholy and Me
Albrecht Dürer’s “Melancholia I”. (1514)
Turns out that seeing gloominess as a sign of sagacity and serious purpose didn’t start in the 2oth century.
“Ficino transformed what had hitherto been regarded as the most calamitous of all the humours into the mark of genius. Small wonder that eventually the attitudes of melancholy soon became an indispensable adjunct to all those with artistic or intellectual pretentions[!].” (“The Elizabethan Malady: Melancholy in Elizabeth and Jacobean Portraiture”, Roy Strong (1964). Apollo. LXXIX. Reprinted by The Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art/ Routledge and Kegan Paul Limited, London, as “The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture” (1969) via Wikipedia)
Maybe I don’t see the appeal of assuming a melancholic attitude because I experienced undiagnosed persistent depressive disorder for decades.
Heavy-duty antidepressants make using my brain easier these days: which is a good thing, since depression is just one of my psychiatric glitches.
“What is Lent?“ Wednesday, February 18, 2026 – Thursday, April 2, 2026 USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)
“Lent is a 40 day season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends at sundown on Holy Thursday. It’s a period of preparation to celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection at Easter. During Lent, we seek the Lord in prayer by reading Sacred Scripture; we serve by giving alms; and we practice self-control through fasting. We are called not only to abstain from luxuries during Lent, but to a true inner conversion of heart as we seek to follow Christ’s will more faithfully. We recall the waters of baptism in which we were also baptized into Christ’s death, died to sin and evil, and began new life in Christ….” [emphasis mine]
2 It’s complicated, and I haven’t backtracked all of what happened:
When my father told me he was taking me to see the power plant,1 I was very excited; and looked forward to seeing a plant that somehow produced significant amounts of electricity.
As it turned out, the “power plant” was a building near the river.
My main — and only — visual memory of the place is a large room dominated by a massive cylinder: rounded, with its axis parallel to and roughly even with the floor. I’m pretty sure it was painted a light green.
I also remember being disappointed. And trying to not show it. I don’t know what my age was at the time: probably around nine or ten, fourth or fifth grade.
I’d learned enough about plants to know that a plant producing significant amounts of electricity would be unusual. But I hadn’t yet learned that “plant” can mean something besides those green, growing things.
I sincerely hope I expressed adequate appreciation to my father, for showing me the place that helped keep the lights on in our town. I’ve never forgotten that visit.
Now that I’ve been, and still am, a husband, father, and now grandfather, I appreciate my father showing me important parts of our home even more. As I’ve told the kids, and my wife, my father’s a hard act to follow.
Not perfect. I’ve talked about that occasionally. But he set a pretty high bar.
Learning From the Past, Not Repeating It
From “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” trailer. (1953) The ‘good old days’ had their problems, too.
My father’s example, and what I learned from thinking about it, helped me when my wife and I were raising the kids.
So did having access to what the Catholic Church has been saying about being human.
Some of it parallels what my native culture says. Some — not so much.
I’ll touch on a few of the main points. Bear in mind that this isn’t even close to an exhaustive discussion
Human beings are people. Each human being is a person. Each of us matters. Not being just like each other is okay: we’re supposed to be different. Married couples and their kids matter. So do single adults. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1658, 1934-1938, 2201-2206, 2258-2317, for starters)
This is important: my wife and I didn’t have a “right to a child”. That’s because a child is a person, not property. (Catechism, 2378)
Again, married couples and their kids matter.
But sometimes couples can’t have children: what about them?
They’ve got options: including “adopting abandoned children or performing demanding services for others.” (Catechism, 2479)
Our children had a duty to obey us, while we were raising them. My wife and I had duties, too, which included remembering that each of our children was a person. Part of our job was educating them, showing them how to make good decisions. (Catechism, 2217, 2221-2230)
So far, that sounds old-fashioned.
But since we’re Catholic, our job as parents did not include telling them what sort of jobs they should have, who they should marry: or whether they should get married. (Catechism, 2230-2231)
Working With Real People in the Real World
First chapter of the Book of Sirach, in German,rendered by an anonymous artist. (1654)
Something I like about being Catholic is that our rules are simple. Take, for example, “love one another” and “honor your father and mother”.
Simple, right?
“I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” (John 13:34)
“Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD, your God, has commanded you, that you may have a long life and that you may prosper in the land the LORD your God is giving you.” (Deuteronomy 5:16)
“Honor your father and your mother, that you may have a long life in the land the LORD your God is giving you.” (Exodus 20:12)
But for the last two millennia, the Church has been working with people who aren’t perfect, living in a world that is far from ideal.
So we’ve got explanations and guidelines for how those simple rules should work in everyday life: and when life is less routine than usual.
Our current catechism discusses ‘love one another’ and ‘honor your parents’ in paragraphs 2196 through 2246, outlining how the ideas apply to social units from parents and children up to the societies we’re living in:
1 The power plant my father showed me was torn down a little over ten years ago. This brief article tells its story, and includes sources for more information:
“Old Moorhead Power Plant” Entry from North Dakota State University on PocketSights walking tours
There wasn’t anything special about the back yard at 818.
But 818 is the place where I spent the bulk of my childhood, so it’s a place I often go on trips down memory lane.
Let’s see, where to start. Directions are as good as any. Our house was on a north-south street, facing west, so the back of the lot was at the east end. The driveway ran along the lot’s north side. It was just wide enough for a car, leaving a foot-wide strip of dirt next to the house. I liked the lily of the valley patch that grew there.
The garage was in back, maybe 20 feet past the house. A white picket fence ran from the northeast corner of house to the garage, with a gate by the house. A concrete slab, about 10 by 10 feet, ran between the fence and the back porch.
As a child, it felt like a spacious area. And, for the sort of neighborhood we were in, it was.
At any rate, the back porch’s outside door faced north. Turning right, I’d soon be on the grass, with the garage on my left and a rhubarb patch next to the garage.
Firecrackers and Rhubarb Crisp
(Mostly) edible plants in a Shakopee, MN, park.
Rhubarb is one those things we can eat, except for the parts we shouldn’t.
Like pretty much everything else, rhubarb’s history is complicated.
Adding to the chaos fascination, not all “rhubarb” are the “hybrids … of Rheum in the family Polygonaceae”:1 plants that folks speaking today’s American English call “rhubarb”.
The leaves of our rhubarb look tasty, and have an abundance of toxins.
One of those toxins, oxalic acid, is good for cleaning metal, killing mites, and shutting down our kidneys.
Rhubarb is also part of the new “Edible Landscape” garden project in Shakopee, part of Minnesota’s Metro. I like the idea, but hope they got the heads-up about those edible plants in their garden.2
On the other hand, some folks have used rhubarb leaves as seasoning. I suppose it depends on how much someone eats, how they prepare the leaves, and individual risk tolerance where nifty tastes are involved.
My folks told me that rhubarb leaves were toxic and that I shouldn’t eat them. So I didn’t. But I did set off lady finger firecrackers on the leaves. My parents didn’t object. I’m not sure why.
This was in the late 1950s, when American culture wasn’t as remarkably and selectively risk-averse as it is now.3
Getting back to those rhubarb plants. The stems — good grief, turns out they contain emodin, which apparently can damage genetic information.4 I wonder if anyone’s thought of doing a study showing that water is bad for us?
Anyway, rhubarb stems may not be 100% absolutely idiot-proof safe. But they do make good eating. It’s been decades since I’ve enjoyed rhubarb crisp: something we’d have as a treat, after the rhubarb was ready.
That’s a pleasant memory.
Half-Remembered Flowers
“Clematis”, Arboretum Review, J. R. Gilbert, Agriculture Extension Service, University of Minnesota. (1973)
I don’t know who was responsible for maintaining the rhubarb patch. More accurately, I don’t remember.
It’s been upwards of six decades since that was current information.
I do remember that Grandma Hovde had a small flower garden along the east side of my room.
She was living with us by that time, which puts it in the mid and late 1950s. I don’t know or remember when she moved in. As far as my memory went, she had always lived upstairs at 818.
Her flower garden included a trellis, on the wall at the south end.
When I started writing this, my memory told me hollyhocks grew there. My wife told me this was — unlikely. She’s right. Hollyhocks don’t need or use trellises.
At the time, and into my teens, I’d have known what the trellis-flowers were. But decades have come and gone, and that memory is no longer accessible.
I do remember that my grandmother was not satisfied with how her trellis-flowers grew. I thought they looked fine, but didn’t have her knowledge.
Those trellis-flowers might have been clematis. That’d make sense, given the location, although photos I’ve seen of clematis don’t quite match what I remember.5 But again: it’s been decades since that was current experience.
Snapdragons and Making Sense
Best, and shortest, video I found that showed why they’re called snapdragons.
My grandmother’s snapdragons, on the other hand, grew quite well. During one year, at least.
I remember her showing me why they’re called snapdragons.
(Very) gently squeezing and releasing the flowers make them open and close like a mouth.
Again: a pleasant memory.
I’ve been thinking: maybe the flowers on that trellis were hollyhocks. But again, photos I looked at this week don’t match what I remember. At all.6
Finally, here’s part of why — one reason — I think enjoying pleasant memories and flowers is okay:
“For from the greatness and the beauty of created things their original author, by analogy, is seen.” (Wisdom 13:5)
Remembering how I should see pleasant memories and flowers — I’ve talked about God and priorities before. Flowers and a house, too:
Phytochemistry and potential toxicity (stems contain emodin, which “represents a genotoxic risk for humans” – thus sayeth an EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Nutrient Sources added to Food (ANS))
Something new each Saturday.
Life, the universe and my circumstances permitting. I'm focusing on 'family stories' at the moment. ("A Change of Pace: Family Stories" (11/23/2024))
Blog - David Torkington
Spiritual theologian, author and speaker, specializing in prayer, Christian spirituality and mystical theology [the kind that makes sense-BHG]
I was born in 1951. I'm a husband, father and grandfather. One of the kids graduated from college in December, 2008, and is helping her husband run businesses and raise my granddaughter; another is a cartoonist and artist; #3 daughter is a writer; my son is developing a digital game with #3 and #1 daughters. I'm also a writer and artist.
