Angela

I'm missing Angela today. I made salmon patties and it made me think of her. She would have been proud of me, I think.

Some of you have heard my Angela stories before, but for those of you who haven't, I'll share a bit about this 90-something woman who had a great impact on me as a teenage girl and beyond. Liz, Karen and I were introduced to Angela by my mom who used to take her Meals-on-Wheels. Angela was in her 80's at the time, lived on her own and was able to see only with her periferal vision so she would ask Mom to thread some needles for her every so often when Mom would drop off her meals. She mentioned one day that she wished she knew of a girl that could come help her. Mom told her that she knew of three girls. Guess who?!

We started going to Angela's house once a week for an hour to thread needles, read her mail, and maybe make a bowl of Jell-O. We got paid .50 for that hour - but it was usually with a beautiful fifty-cent coin, so it was worth it! That was about all we could handle as 11-12-13 year olds. That one hour a week gradually turned into several hours and several days and even though we groaned about going, we didn't believe Mom anymore when she would keep telling us that Angela was going to die soon and then we wouldn't have to go anymore. Year after year passed, and Angela was as alive as ever! Our responsibilities changed, though. We would still thread needles and read mail, but we also cooked and cleaned and learned about all the saints in the Catholic church and how to make corn silk tea and (poisonous) poke berry jam and tuna patties. We made rum biscuits and honey cookies and tapioca pudding. We cleaned toilets, cut toenails and filed teeth (well, one of us did that!). We accidentally dumped holy water, unintentionally wiped Latin blessings off the front door and haphazardly fixed broken rosaries. We patched cotton stockings for the 87th time, rolled hair balls to put back on Angela's head and made our own envelopes to mail recycled Christmas cards. We painted black leather shoes outdoor-house-paint green, along with a matching black leather purse and a fabric belt from a cotton frock (one can't go to church without wearing something summery and bright, now, can they?). I drew the line at painting the bottoms of her cooking pots with that same flat, pukey-green house paint, though!

Ah yes. Angela was a character, that's for sure! She had a way of lying on her porch glider and belching so loudly that it would scare the daylights out of you! She memorized her grocery list alphabetically and then called it in to the Supermarket downtown Doylestown for delivery. The only problem with that was that she didn't always remember what she had tried to write on her list, so we'd be sitting next to her shouting the next item to her so that she could hear, and then repeat it to Dave, the Supermarket man. By the time Angela told him the item, I'm sure he had heard us shout it about 3 or 4 times already.

I continued to work for Angela through my high school years and on into college. Mom still promised me that Angela would die soon and I wouldn't have to go. I still didn't believe her. I continued past college graduation and several years more until at the age of 97, Angela's family finally convinced her (or not) to give up her independence and moved her into a nursing home. I continued to visit her until I moved to Phoenix, about 12 years after I met her. Angela did pass away at the age of 99 after I had moved away, and I would never have believed this ten years prior, but I missed her. I still do. I would love to sit down and talk with her again and listen to her stories and humor her by recycling the strings from potato bags, saving the plastic sleeves that soda crackers are packaged in and collecting dandelion leaves for her tea.

So many Angela Stories have impacted my life. There are way too many to tell here, and honestly, they are much more entertaining to hear in person. Sometime you can ask me in person about the time she wanted me to make her a brasier that she could adjust with her fingers that had no feeling from the knuckles down.

Some day I may be an old lady with stories to tell, odd ways of doing things and curious behaviors that make no sense to teenagers, but if I am an old lady some day, I want to be like Angela. I'll try not to belch when other people are around and I'll make sure that I get some dentures instead of relying on my three good teeth. I will wash my hair more than once every two months and I will refrigerate my leftovers instead of storing them on top of the fridge. I may call my "girl" Toots, just to be like Angela. And if I am still making my own tuna or salmon patties, by golly, you can be sure I'll be frying them in PURE LARD, because at that age, it really won't matter any more! Making those salmon patties the other day brought back special memories of my years with Angela, but patties fried in cooking spray just didn't taste like hers!