Family Reminders

by Julie Danneberg

  “All right then,” Mr. Brown said, slapping his knee. “You’ve got yourself a deal, young lady. I can probably charge my customers six dollars for each figurine. So I think three dollars each is a fair price to offer you. Is that amount okay with you, Mary?”

  “Y-y-y-y-yes,” I stammered, trying to sound calm while inside my stomach was doing somersaults and flips. “Three dollars sounds just right.”

  Mr. Brown unlocked the safe behind his desk and pulled out a gray, metal cash box. “Let’s see,” he said, reaching in for the dollar bills. “That means I owe you nine dollars.”

  He counted out nine one-dollar bills into my open palm. When he was done and I had rolled up the money and stuck it in my pocket, he gave me a piece of paper. “Show this receipt to your daddy, Mary. Make sure to tell him that if he has any questions to come and talk to me.” Mr. Brown pushed himself away from his desk and stood up. He gave a little bow. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, young lady,” he said as he reached over to shake my hand.

  Together we walked out of the office into the cluttered, sweet-smelling store. I looked around, wondering where Mr. Brown would display Daddy’s Reminders. Three dollars apiece! I could hardly believe it.

  Right before he opened the door, Mr. Brown stopped me and said, “Mary, tell your daddy that if his carvings sell as well as I think they will, I’d love to work out a permanent business arrangement.”

  I nodded and smiled as I walked out the door, my empty book bag bumping against my side. Once past Mr. Brown’s windows, I danced a little dance, full of excitement, full of hope, and—I stopped short—full of fear. What would Daddy say when he found out what I’d done?

  Fifteen

  When I got home that afternoon, I walked straight into the parlor, ignoring Daddy’s sad hello. I looked over all the Reminders on the shelf. They were lined up across the mantel like a time line of Daddy’s life. It surprised me to see that they were dusted, since we never used this room anymore. It stayed dark and stuffy all the time, and there was an empty space where Mama’s rocker used to be.

  At first, when Daddy started moving around after the accident, we tried to use the parlor in the evenings, more out of habit than anything else. But the silent piano reminded us too loudly of how everything had changed. So Mama moved her rocker and her sewing basket into a corner of the kitchen. “It’s warmer by the stove,” she said when I asked her why.

  After that, evenings were spent in the kitchen, with both Mama and Daddy willingly adjusting to the change in our routine. For me, the change wasn’t so easy to bear. You hardly even gave it a chance, I wanted to yell at them. But I didn’t. I had already learned that for Mama and Daddy, avoiding a problem was easier than trying to fix it.

  As I stood in the darkened parlor, looking over the Reminders, Daddy came limping in. “What are you doing in here?” he asked.

  ”I’m looking at your Reminders,” I said, turning to look him straight in the eye. “I’m trying to figure out which ones to sell next.”

  Daddy looked puzzled.

  I pulled the roll of money out of my book bag. “Here,” I said. “This is for you.”

  “Mary McHugh,” he said sternly, taking the money and looking it over. “Where on earth did you get this?”

  “Mr. Brown gave it to me. I sold him some of your Reminders. Actually, I sold him three of your Reminders, and he paid me three dollars apiece.”

  “Oh, Mary …,” Mama whispered as she came into the room.

  “I only sold him the ones that Daddy had already given me. I figured since they were mine, it was okay.” I talked fast, hoping to outtalk Mama and Daddy’s questions.

  They didn’t say a word, just stared at me as if that would somehow make things clear. To fill up the silence, I told them how it all started, how Mr. Brown had asked to buy the Raspberry Reminder.

  “At first I said no, but then today I went right in and sold it to him. Along with a couple others that Daddy gave to me. And, Daddy, Mr. Brown said that he wanted to set up a permanent arrangement. He said that your carvings fit in perfectly with the other beautiful things in his store.”

  Mama took the pile of money from Daddy’s hand. “Nine dollars, my goodness,” she said, fanning the money in front of her. And then she started to smile. “Daniel, I hope you’re ready to work. Seems to me that you just got a job!” I waited nervously, staring at Daddy’s face, wishing he would say something.

  Daddy took the money back from Mama, slowly counted it, and looking me right in the eye, started to laugh. A great big before-the-accident laugh. He laughed and shook his head and swept me up in a great big bear hug. I didn’t say a word, just smiled and held on as tight as I could.

  Sixteen

  That night after dinner I didn’t even bother asking Mama or Daddy if it was okay. I took matters into my own hands and moved Mama’s rocking chair back into the parlor and lit a fire in the fireplace.

  Mama sat and sewed while Daddy paced restlessly around the room. Finally she said, “For heaven’s sake, Daniel, you’re making me nervous. Mary, go get your daddy’s carving from the kitchen.” I got up to leave but stopped at the piano.

  “Why don’t you play something, Daddy?”

  Daddy looked at me. “Hush, Mary,” he said quietly. His words held no smile.

  “Just try,” I insisted.

  “I told you, Mary,” he said, “I’m not sure I can anymore.”

  “You won’t know ‘til you try,” I said as I pulled out the piano stool for him to sit on.

  Daddy hesitated for a moment and then leaned his crutches against the wall and sat down heavily, staring at the keys and keeping his hands clasped tightly in his lap.

  Unable to remain quiet, I urged him again. “Play, Daddy. Please.”

  He laid his hands lightly on the keys for a moment and then played a few chords. The sound of the piano vibrated loudly through the house, strange and unfamiliar.

  Don’t stop, I begged him silently. Please don’t give up. Just give it a chance.

  Daddy looked at Mama, then at me. He shook out his fingers, took a deep breath, and began again. At first he played some scales. He played gently, gingerly, as if he were awakening the piano from a long sleep. Then he stopped.

  “Go on, Daniel,” Mama said softly. “Play ‘Danny Boy.’ I’d surely love to hear that again.”

  “If I can remember it,” Daddy said, almost shyly. Slowly, hesitantly at first, with his eyes open, he played. Then gradually, warming to the lilting beauty of the piece, his eyes closed and his body swayed in time to the music.

  Mama came and stood behind me to listen, her arms around my shoulders, tears streaming down her face.

  The room was filled once again with Daddy’s music. I think his heart was filled, too.

  Daddy stopped after one song. “Don’t want to wear myself out,” he said, nudging me playfully and winking at Mama. “That piano playing is a lot of work.” When I watched him hobble out, I swear his step was lighter then it had been since the accident.

  “It’s just like it used to be,” I whispered happily to Mama. Inside I knew it wasn’t exactly the same. Daddy didn’t piano dance and Mama had worry lines crisscrossing her forehead when she watched Daddy play. Still, it was close enough for me.

  Seventeen

  Daddy went in to talk to Mr. Brown the next day, and they did set up a permanent business arrangement. Daddy’s carvings sold well right from the start, mostly to visitors who wanted to take a piece of the West home with them. He started making furniture, too, like the bed he had carved for me and the bookshelf he had made for Mama. Soon he had more work than he had time. He spent much of the day busy in the kitchen or, if the weather was nice, on the front porch, lost in carving. One afternoon as I sat beside him, I remembered another afternoon, from before the accident.

  Daddy hadn’t been to work for two days, his cough so bad that Mama finally insisted that he go to the doctor. “He’ll be fine,” the doctor reassured them both, “
but I think it’s a good idea to take a few days away from the damp and the dirt of the mountain. Just to be safe.” That was all Mama needed to hear.

  “I’m fine, Liddie,” Daddy argued, but he was no match for Mama’s stubbornness. That afternoon when I came home from school, Daddy was carving at the kitchen table. I expected him to be anxious about missing work, but he smiled up at me and showed me the Reminder he had been working on that day. It was of a man sitting on a bench, hunched over his carving. I nodded my approval as I pulled my homework out of my book bag. It was nice to have Daddy home in the afternoon. We worked together until, in the middle of our silence, Daddy laughed out loud and said, “Mary, my girl, this is the life. Look at me, playing in the middle of the day. You’d think I was one of the rich mine owners.”

  “Don’t go getting any of your crazy ideas,” Mama said, interrupting his daydreams with common sense. And we all laughed together.

  I smiled at the memory, and I smiled even more when I looked over at Daddy “playing” in the middle of the day. He was surely happy. No doubt about it. True, maybe it was a different kind of happy. Maybe it was a deeper kind of happy. Whatever it was, I was glad to see him smiling again.

  One day at the end of summer, when the wildflowers had wilted and the mountain meadows were baked brown under the midday sun, Daddy came home from the doctor’s with good news. “My leg is healed enough to be fitted with an artificial leg,” he announced.

  “A what?” I asked.

  “A fake leg,” Daddy answered, pulling at my hair. “That means I can finally get rid of these blasted crutches. I have to go to a special doctor in Denver, but at least now we can afford the train ticket.”

  Aunt Hattie came to stay with me while Mama and Daddy went to get Daddy’s new leg. While they were in Denver, Mama took some of his carvings around to the fancy downtown stores. “I never would have had the courage if you hadn’t done it first,” she whispered to me after she got home. Although no one was as nice as Mr. Brown, the store owners recognized the quality of Daddy’s work and bought everything Mama had. There were even requests for more.

  The night that Mama and Daddy came home, I set the table and tried to keep busy so as not to think about the last time I waited for Daddy’s return. When I heard the wagon come to a halt in front of our house, for a moment I hesitated, too nervous to hurry into a greeting that might leave me feeling empty once again. But when I passed by the new Raspberry Reminder sitting on the shelf in the parlor, I remembered all that we had already been through. I found my courage, and I pulled open the door just as Daddy let out his five-note whistled hello. I saw him standing right there in front of me, a tall man on two legs.

  “Aren’t you going to welcome me home?” Daddy asked.

  I threw myself into his arms, hugging him tighter than tight, and whispered in his ear, “Welcome home, Daddy. Welcome home.”

  Author’s Note

  Family Reminders takes place in the late 1890s in Cripple Creek, Colorado, one of the most famous mining towns in the West. In 1900, more than eighteen million dollars worth of gold was mined from the nearly five hundred mines in the area.

  The story of Mary McHugh is loosely based on the life of my grandmother, who spent part of her childhood in Cripple Creek. Her father—my great-grandfather—was a hard-rock miner who, like Daniel in the story, lost his leg in a mining accident. Although the mine where Daniel worked is fictional, my grandmother recalled the many mines that constantly belched smoke and emitted noisy blasts. Residents grew accustomed to the noise and ever-present view of mines dotting the mountainside.

  Much of my description of the town is based on old photographs and research as well as on my own memories of visiting Cripple Creek as a little girl with my grandmother. Bennett Avenue was and still is the town’s main street, and my grandmother’s school was located up a very steep hill a few blocks off of it. At the time of this story, a trolley had been built to carry workers up and down the valley to their jobs in the mines. Mr. Brown and his store are fictional; however, in a bustling boomtown, stores like his did exist, providing access to higher-end home items that wouldn’t be found in a regular department store.

  You can visit Cripple Creek’s official website at www.cripple-creek.co.us to read more about the town’s mining history and see pictures of the town as it looks today.