Whispers From the Past, Part III

In Part II of the series, Grandma's advice to us was...take advice! A registered nurse fresh out of college, her story continues in Part III.

I was offered a teaching position in Chicago, teaching Anatomy & Physiology to nurses. But I turned it down because I just didn’t feel called to be a teacher in a classroom. Instead, I did clinical teaching on the job. I felt more sure than ever that this was an area that I liked, even though I wasn’t paid to teach. At the hospital where I worked, many patients had polio, and received treatment in a machine called an iron lung. I mainly worked with these patients, but sometimes I was on the medical floor. Later, I was transferred to the obstetrical unit. In those days - this is not a Pennsylvania Dutch tradition - the fathers did not get to come into the labor room. They had to wait outside until the baby was announced.

My hospital experience was important, for it wasn’t long after I graduated from college that I was asked to help with Mennonite Relief. I went to a Mennonite mission in Mathis, Texas, one hour north of Corpus Christie. Since Mennonite young men are conscientious objectors, some were serving in the same area as the mission, building houses for poor people who needed homes. The government allowed them to do this instead of going into the military.

Most of the people in Mathis were migrant workers. A public health nurse found out that 99% of the migrant workers' babies that died, died of infected umbilical cords, because their mothers didn’t have a clean place to deliver their babies. So this church group decided to build a house that would be used as a clinic, and the public health nurse went in and set it all up. Once they were ready to have someone do the work, they asked me to come. Although there was a family doctor who was supposed to come, I ended up delivering most of the babies. I was there for one year. After that, I went back to Philadelphia. I was able to visit home on weekends, when I had time off from work. I would travel by train from Philadelphia to my home town. The train station was a little distance away, so my dad would pick me up. Soon, I started staying at the YWCA on the weekends. Then I got an apartment in Philadelphia with another nursing friend. And that’s the end of my single life.

What year did you meet Grandpa? 1955. And you were married… ’56. We lived in Philadelphia, where your mother was born. She was about one year old, and we moved to Levittown, a notorious community. After the Vietnam War, this housing project was built by a man named Levitt. We paid $10,000 for our house. It had a dishwasher, a washer, and a dryer. No one was allowed to have any fences - the yards were open. It was all one park. We had a peach tree in the backyard.

What’s your opinion on technology, phones, TV, etc? It has changed relationships. Everybody is into their phone, and nobody’s relating with other people. That’s my feeling about it. I don’t do email, but I do have a TV. I have a cell phone, but that’s for my convenience, for other people to reach me. My son says it’s obsolete, because it’s a flip phone. When I talked to a friend of mine, she asked me, “What kind of phone do you have?” And I said, “I’ve got a cell phone.” So I never realized that they had these…fat phones, you know.

She gestures to my mom's smart phone on table, eyeing it suspiciously. I didn’t have a phone growing up. We used the public phones, but not much. On Sundays, it was Mennonite and Pennsylvania Dutch tradition to visit relatives. We didn’t call and tell them we were coming, because they didn’t have a phone, and neither did we. We just dropped in. Instead of talking by telephone, you caught up with all that was going on in their family. Those who got to visit took turns, but often we went to the family farm. We would meet up with a big group of cousins and relatives, and that was our social life. So I think technology is great, but it’s overused. I miss the time when you had conversations with people - greeting each other in the stores, or on the street. Most of the women I see now in stores are walking with their phone, talking to somebody, and grabbing stuff off the shelves. They don’t spend as much time with people face to face.

What are those small computers called? Tablets? She laughed and rolled her eyes.

No, waaaaay back before that. Laptops? Yeah, laptops. My son had a laptop; we still have it in the garage somewhere.

I chuckled, getting an idea of how old this artifact probably was.

He said, “If you want to play around with this, that’s okay.” I had instructions: I wrote down how to turn it on and how to do this or that. The only good thing I noticed is that you can play cards on it. The problem was, I didn’t know how to play cards!

So there was no point in that. When we went on vacation, I decided that I would do my first…um…what’s it called…email. I used the computer in a café where I would go to get ice cream or coffee. There was a young man working there, and the café wasn't very busy, so I could got help from him. It got to the point where I just couldn’t remember things, and had to get too much help from him. But I did send several emails to my friend. That was it. I’m in a Bible study class, and only two of us (including me) get calls on the phone about changes or updates in our class. All the rest get an email. The thing that I found out, though, is that those who get the email usually haven’t checked it, so they don’t know what’s going on anyway!

How do you think the world has changed for better/worse since you were a kid? I think there is a big problem with families. As an older person, I’ve been very fortunate to have the support of my family. More importantly, though, there are many parents that aren't responsible for their children, or abuse them. There are so many children in foster homes that are not wanted.

Where are the Christians when this happens? You know a Christian by what they do. The church especially should have the responsibility of mending families, and being there for them.

Grandma leaves us with a touching conclusion in the final post of the series, which will be published soon!

Note: This post was inspired by a writing friend, who mentioned she was going to interview her grandma. Check out her blog here: gloriakuth.blogspot.com

#wisdom #time #advice #change