Remembering my Amazing Mother

Grab your coat and get your hat,

Leave your worries on the doorstep. 

Life can be so sweet

On the sunny side of the street.

Elizabeth Deanne Ibold, born November 10, 1928, at about 3 years old.

My mom, Elizabeth Deanne Ibold Wolff van de Velde, died on May 16, 2018 and I couldn’t manage to write a thing for 6 months. Then I wrote the 1st draft of this post.

Then I stopped again until today. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, 2020 and in 8 days it will be the 2nd anniversary of her death.

Why did it take me so long to be able to write this?

Is this how grief works?

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Despite the fact that her family was not Catholic, Elizabeth Deanne Ibold (now known to her friends as “E-Dee”) went to school at The Sacred Heart Academy in Chicago for 13 years, k-12.

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E-Dee followed her older sister to Depauw University and joined the same sorority, Alpha Chi Omega. Luckily she had naturally wavy hair so that she could easily achieve the permed sorority sister look! She met my father Klaus on a blind date organized by Alpha Chi and his International House at Wabash University.

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In 1950 she married Klaus Heinrich Wolff, a man 13 years her senior, a veteran of the German WWII army. Needless to say her parents weren’t thrilled.

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Their honeymoon in March was spent at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois.

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In 1953 Deanne and Klaus spent a year in Europe, living with his mother and step-father. Germany was still very war-shocked and it didn’t sound like much fun.

My mom loved being a mom, but she was also smart, ambitious and restless in her 1950s role as ‘Mid-Century mommy’.

She opted to stop at 2 children in an era of large families.

She wanted to DO things but her degree in art history wasn’t proving useful. She volunteered far and wide through the 60s and eventually, in the 70s, she settled her passion on the Middlebury Volunteer Ambulance Association. She became an EMT, a crew chief and ultimately attended Dartmouth to become one of the 1st Physician’s Assistants in 1974. It was around this time that she dropped one of the Ns in Deanne and became Deane to my sister and me and almost all her friends.

Her career in medicine focused on women’s health and included dozens of baby deliveries, as well as family medicine, years working for Planned Parenthood and The Shorewell Health Center. She was even Physician’s Assistant to Ben and Jerry at the Charlotte Family Health Center in the mid-80s!

She retired at 60 and changed her specialty to being an extraordinary Granny and an artist in multiple mediums.

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She had a kiln and made many tile paintings like these.

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  with me 1956

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  with Peri 1958

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  with me 1959

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  with Peri and me Christmas 1960

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  with Klaus, Peri and me 1961

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  With Peri, me, and Klaus 1962

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  with Peri and me 1967

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  with me, Klaus and Peri’s doll Paddywhack in 1968

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  with Peri and me 1970

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  with Pumpkin 1977

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  with me Pumpkin, and Flora 1980

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  with me 1984

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  with Brennan 1987

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  with Brennan 1988

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  with Brennan 1989

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  with Rowan 1990

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  with Rowan 1991

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  with Brennan and Rowan 1995

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  with Peri and Brennan 1996

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  with Brennan 1996

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  With Peri 1998

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  with me, Lucy, Brennan, Sabin and Rowan 2008

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  with Brennan 2013

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  with Boo 2013

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  with Marna, Peri, Boo and me 2012

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  with Rowan and me 2012

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  with me 2014

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  with Rowan 2017

She was a fun-loving and affectionate Mommy and Granny to my sister and me and my two sons and she had many beloved dogs over the years.

Deane’s excellent Scottish Shortbread

1 C softened butter

3/4 C confectioners sugar

1.5 C flour

.25 C cornstarch

1/8 t salt

mix, press into a sheet pan, 1” thick

Bake at 325 for 45 mins.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom, and

Happy trails to you, until we meet again.
           ~Dale Evans Rogers

DIY Thanksgiving “Craft”

Consider the Blue Hubbard Squash.

Do you see a Thanksgiving tradition?

Perhaps a savory side dish?

How about a centerpiece for the table?

How about the Mayflower?

I scoured the web looking for another example of Blue Hubbard Squash turned Mayflower ship, but this was as close as I could come.

My dad had different ideas. He took a huge squash, hollowed it out and carved it into a ship. He made dowel masts and paper sails.

My mom filled it with tangerines and nuts and the Blue Hubbard Mayflower sailed out on Thanksgiving tables in the early 1960s.

Thanksgiving in Ripton, VT 1962

And the next year, same sails, different squash!

Thanksgiving 1963, Ripton, VT

You can see me, smiling, directly to the left of the Mayflower, on my dad’s lap.

Time passed, I grew up, and when I had children I wanted my own Blue Hubbard Mayflower centerpiece.

San Francisco, 1997

 

Tutorial not included. This is truly DIY!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

 

The Christmas Trees of Yore

Everything seems BIG when we are small.

But my childhood Christmas trees really were VERY tall. For scale, I am almost three years old in this photo and I am lost in the bottom branches.

Unlike other families, we didn’t put up our tree until Christmas eve.

Many years we drove up Breadloaf Mountain and cut our own trees on Middlebury College forest land.

We waded through the snow, Mommy carrying the loppers and Daddy carrying the same saw as this dad in my 4th picture book: A Year of Beasts.  Back then it seemed we always had snow at Christmastime.

Then it became the 70s. The trees were still tall and sparse, my mom was more beautiful than ever, my dad still put up the train set, I was always sulking and Peri was always sick in bed on Christmas eve!

Wild trees are not full and bushy. Dad figured out a way to ‘hang’ the tree from one of the beams in the 2nd floor gallery. The trunk dangled in a bucket of water. I used that idea many years later for this crazy tree.

One California Christmas I collected and sorted found wood into a tree shape and my elf drilled a hole in the “balance” center of each piece. We found a long piece of fresh kelp and used it as the “rope”. Once all the pieces were strung, we tied a knot at the bottom and hung the tree. It can hang flat like this or in the round. It was fine with lights, but hard to hang with ornaments.

Now that I’m back in Vermont I must break with tradition. The long, dark nights are too long and dark for an adult to endure without the cheerful glow of a lighted tree. So I’ve compromised. The tree is in a bucket of water and she has lights, but I will wait to add ornaments until Christmas eve.

Brightly shining, for a brief period, in the darkest days of the year.

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