Human Nature and the Price of Applesauce

When my son was a baby, I was an impoverished young widow. I could not afford to buy traditional jars of baby food for him.
There was a little open air store about a block away from where we lived that sold primarily, bread, milk,sodas, beer and snacks. Occasionally a desperate customer would pop in for dog or cat food or eggs or sugar or another ingredient needed to complete a meal. For just such emergencies they kept a small supply of groceries on a few shelves which were hardly ever touched. In fact the dust was so thick on the tops of these items it obscured the paper price tags stuck on each one.
The lady who ran the place never moved from her folding chair in the back of the store. She was heavy set, sixty-ish, gray hair pulled back into an untidy bun. She wore a flowered house dress and a dingy white sweater over her shoulders. Her expression was sullen and she never smiled or spoke. She had a sparce black mustache gracing her upper lip.
I used to go in that store almost daily carrying my new little boy. I discovered they had a few jars of applesauce on the shelves, I wiped the dust away from the price tag and saw it was marked nineteen cents. I thought I would buy it for my son as an inexpensive alternative to baby food. I came in and bought another jar the next day. The third day when I came to buy more, the tops of all the jars of applesauce were dusted and sporting a new price tag of twenty cents each. All the other groceries around them were still dust covered as before.
Instead of being glad she had a customer for her old applesauce, she saw she had a sucker on the line and decided to make a bigger profit by raising the jars of applesauce one cent a jar. That applesauce probably would still be sitting there till this day if it weren't for a poor young mother and a hungry baby that just happened to stumble across it.
I hope that old woman enjoyed her few extra pennies...I wonder if they made her smile?
VXA©

The Birthday That Almost Didn’t Happen

Today is my Birthday. I know my Mother would not mind me writing this. If she were still alive, I know she would have encouraged it.
Many years ago when birth control was even more unreliable than today…Some women who wanted to limit the size of their families used occasional abortion as a means to that end…Those who could afford to were able to obtain a relatively safe termination to their pregnancies…Some less costly ones were not so safe and downright dangerous.
When I was a nineteen year old widowed mother of a small baby, I thought I had become pregnant again…I was really not in a position to have another child…
I wasn’t much of a deep thinker in those days and really hadn’t given much thought to life in general or questioned why we are here or anything else philosophical…My life had pretty much been a series of struggles and trying to have some fun in between them.
When I was in the panic mode of thinking I was pregnant, I momentarily considered an abortion. I mentioned it to my mother, who confided to me that she had had a couple of abortions before I was born and that if she could have afforded it, I would have not been born either…I had always wondered why my sister and brother were many years older than I am. It turns out that there were a couple of other brothers and or sisters of mine who never made it here because they were aborted.
Mom cried and begged me to forgive her and said she had always regretted her actions and they had caused a black cloud of depression over her ever since…She said she didn’t know what she would do without me and she was so sorry she had done what she did… The abortions were supposed to make her life easier but they made it much worse for the guilt that she lived with on a daily basis.
I was angry with her at first for killing my unborn siblings… I missed having them in my life even though I never knew them…I was even angrier at her for considering killing me and then telling me about it…
After a while of thinking it all over and letting it process through my brain and heart, I forgave her. I realized that at the time,she thought was doing the right thing for herself and her family…I also forgave her for telling me about it, as I realized she was trying to stop me from making the same mistake that she made, a mistake that might possibly haunt me for a lifetime.
As it turned out, it was a false alarm for me, I wasn’t really pregnant after all, but I had learned an entirely knew way of looking at life from the experience.
Every birthday, when my mother was alive, she would wish me a happy birthday on March 16th, and I would respond with a happy birthday to her too even though it wasn't her real birthday, she was the one who did all the work when I was born.
My mom has been gone many years,now, but I still keep her picture in my bedroom. When I awoke this morning, the first thing I did was to look at her picture and say “Happy, Birthday, Mom”. Then I got a flash of thought…What if I had been one of the kids my mother could have afforded to abort?
I wouldn’t have gotten to wake up to the sunlight streaming into my lovely room or smell the blossoms blooming outside my bedroom window…or been able to pet the cat and dog sleeping at the foot of my bed…I would have missed out on all the wonderful memories I am so thankful for having lived with my children and grand children, who wouldn’t be here either. The guy whose life I saved with the Heimlich maneuver, at my ex husband’s company bar-b-que , also would no longer be here and his kids would be without a dad. I started thinking about the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” and felt very much like the main character…I might not have done as many dramatic things as in the movie, but I know my life has touched many others and I would like to think that my being here has been a good thing for those whose lives have touched mine.
To think I almost missed out on birthday cake and ice cream and kite flying and the beach and the laughter of babies and the blue sky with puffy white clouds and Christmas and chocolate and a warm fire and books and music and flowers and giraffes and feeling my breath entering my body and stretching and dancing and my art work and my friends and my cozy home. The feelings of elation and sorrow of loving someone and losing that love…all these things that are part of who I am…
I am so grateful mom and dad were broke when she found out I was on the way and I was able to experience life…
I still think about my lost siblings who weren't so fortunate and hope that someday, somewhere, we will meet… That’s my birthday wish.

My Mother

VIRGINIA BLANCHARD
On February 19, Virginia Blanchard was born Mary Florence Blanchard in Olean, New York, to Clair Blanchard and the former Ethel May Cuffe. Six years later she had a little brother named Donn who came to call her Sissy which became her nickname.
She was a little tomboy and loved to ride her bicycle with out holding the handlebars. She would stand up on the pedals with her arms outstretched above her head trying to touch the leaves on the trees. She had a little Boston Bull dog named Rex. One Christmas when she was little she crept out of the house while her parents were sleeping and made her way to the hardware store down the street and took a shiny red wheelbarrow on display in front of the store home with her as a gift for her mother. As she was only three years old the wheelbarrow was returned to the store and everyone got a chuckle.
She was a sensitive , artistic person, with a little streak of daring. She once tamed a wild ring tail monkey, named Sonny, who rode on her shoulders and was her protector.
She loved the roaring twenties and dressed in that style when it was all the rage. She was very fashion conscious and always wore chic attire even if she made it herself . Her bright red hair and her make up were always perfect. She eventually became a model. She was very well read and loved classical music. She had a great command of the English language and was a stickler about it's proper usage.
She was married twice, once to a man named Frank Gallery, and then to John Wesley Kuntz. She and John had three children, Jack, Virginia(Ginny) and Valerie. She had five grandchildren and many great grandchildren.
She had many hardships in her life and never really got to fulfill her potential as an artist, even though she went to art school and was quite accomplished. She was a wonderful mother and made life exciting. She had impeccable taste and knew quality. She loved nature and often quoted a poem about "October's bright blue weather"
She was sort of a small scale "Auntie Mame". Even though funds were scarce, she could and did make any mundane occasion fun and memorable.
She would spend hours playing with her children and reading to them. They were everything to her. She made Holidays wonderful. She has instilled a sense of holiday tradition that will be carried on for generations.
She was famous for her wonderful homemade spaghetti and meatballs that took.hours to prepare. Her Christmas picture cookies are legendary.
She Made many sacrifices for her family. She worked in real estate in Coral Gables , Florida, and was a friend to all who came in contact with her. One of her clients, an author, described her as saying "Virginia is a gentle soul".
When she was told she had a fatal illness, she was very brave and never complained. She came home from the doctors office and put on a recording of classical music and sat quietly listening to every note as though it were the last time she would ever hear it and was trying to make it last forever.
She always said, if there was any way to make contact with her family after she passed away, she would. She was a great sport, with a heart of gold.
There is so much more to say about my mom, but time is short and I want to publish this on her birthday. ©

VXA