Knock Knock Knockin On Heaven's Door

Death has been hard at work this week. My Aunt Sue passed away on Sunday, June 26, my friend Carole’s mother passed away on Sunday, June 19, and my friend Debbie’s father-in-law passed away on Saturday, June 25.

Susannah McConnell Zimmerman Eccles, my mother’s sister, was one of NINE children. She was the last of the nine to pass away. Although there are still children and grandchildren and cousins spread around, those days of the McConnell martini drinking, Chesterfield smoking get-togethers are over.  

The McConnells were quite a bunch of characters. My childhood was filled with endless Irish wakes, somber Catholic weddings, and uproarious drunken receptions. I just thought that’s how EVERYBODY did things. At wakes, Uncle John would inevitably reflect on “Why does somebody have to DIE for us all to get together??”  And cousin Jackie would always ask someone to sing “Danny Boy” at the funeral home. D Reilly, of Reilly’s funeral home in Belmar NJ, was an honorary McConnell because we saw him so often.

Charles, Ruth (Mom), Sue, James,Mary (front), Agnes, cousin Margaret Mary Green, Grammom, Ann, Willie, John.

William: Oddly, my Uncle Willie was the only one of the brothers who wasn’t addressed by his FULL name – Charles was never called Charlie, and James was not known as Jimmy. Whenever Uncle Willie came over our house, and I began to introduce him to whomever of my friends was visiting, he would thrust out his hand (the one that didn’t have a beer in it) and say, “Hi, I’m Uncle Willie”. Instant family. Just add beer. Uncle Willie and his wife Gloria had three children, Billy and the twins, Liz and Sean.

Agnes: Aunt Aggie LOVED dogs. Her back yard was full of German Shepherds and rabbit hutches and cats. There was always a huge Shepherd with giant feet named Teddy. And for a time there also was a monkey in the house. Aggie had five kids, Bruce, Jackie, Brian (who passed away from leukemia at a young age), and twins Charles and Richard (Richard passed away at an older age from……let’s just call it embracing his Irishness). I do have one other set of twin cousins, but they’re on my father’s side so we won’t talk about them here. When Aggie sold her house and moved into an apartment, it was right over Don’s Pizza King in Belmar, overlooking Main Street and the grandstand where the St Patrick’s Day Parade Grand Marshall, dignitaries and local celebrities sat and all the marching bands stopped to perform. Oh, the St Patrick’s Day parties! Everyone came to those parties. We would hang out the windows and enjoy the parade up close and personal. There was so much food, so many people, and it got larger every year. Families grew, friends brought friends….it was an epic event. In fact, when my own children were baptized, the day (selected by my church, not me) fell on the same day as the St. Patrick’s Day parade/party. The only family that skipped Aggie’s party in favor of the baptism was my sister, who is my son’s godmother.And it was at a New Year’s Eve party at Aggie’s that I had my first underage cocktail, a yummy Sloe Gin Fizz, served up my cousin Bruce’s first wife, Paulette.

Charles: Uncle Charles served in the war in Germany, where he met and married Aunt Hilde. After he left the service, he was an editor for the NY Times. He worked nights and slept days and we rarely saw him. After he got older, he became very reclusive and rarely ventured out of the house. His wife Hilde came to all our family events. She was more of a family member than Charles was. Hilde was a fabulous baker who would get up an hour early in the morning to make a cake to bring to work. I still have a copy of her “Sunday Go To Meeting Cake” recipe, typed up on an old fashioned typewriter. Hilde & Charles had three children, Gerald, Christopher and Gregory.

John: Uncle John always liked to tell the story of how he was going to a dance as a young man and claimed he was going to dance with the prettiest girl there, and he did, and he married her, and that was my Aunt Ceil. And she is still beautiful. Their children were Mary, Tim, Mark, Theresa and Kevin.

My cousin Theresa with her mom, my Aunt Ceil.

Ann: Aunt Ann was my mother’s best friend and maid of honor at her wedding. She was the baby of the family and never learned to drive. She often babysat me in my kindergarten days and she would take me on walks through the woods behind her house to a nearby convenience store to buy milk or whatever else she needed that day. She loved cats. She had an orange cat named Willis and later she had a Siamese named Booby, and finally, she adopted some black and white strays. She was often at our house for martinis and dinner or to go shopping with my mother. I remember one time hanging on my front porch with my friend Carole, talking to Tony and Denis, two guys from France that we had met and had crushes on, who had somehow found their way to my house and just appeared unannounced (much to my horror – I was always one of those “meet me around the corner” kind of girls when it came to boys, and I never invited them home, but that’s another story). I introduced the boys to my mother and Aunt Ann when they came into the house carrying groceries, and Tony said in his broken English, “How many mothers you got?”  Aunt Ann & Uncle George had one son, George.

Sue: Aunt Sue lived in the apartment across the hall from Aunt Aggie so she was part of the ever present evening martini get-together. The office that I worked at for nearly 20 years was just a few buildings away from Aggie’s and Aunt Sue’s apartments, and both of them gave me keys to their apartments so I could hang out at lunchtime if I wanted.  I don’t really remember Sue's first husband, Walter Zimmerman, but her second husband, John Eccles, just embraced the whole McConnell clan and became one of us. John drove a great big motorhome. It was his only vehicle, used for traveling, grocery shopping, or driving around town. It also came in handy one late night when, after leaving some bar at 2am, my friend Patty and I decided we needed to see Cousin Charles. We parked in Belmar Plaza and I hopped from the hood of Patty’s camaro to the roof of John’s motorhome, then onto the metal canopy that surrounded Belmar Plaza at that time. I stumbled across the canopy to Charles’ bedroom window and knocked. Surprisingly, Charles was not overjoyed to wake up and find me at his window. He dragged me in through the window and escorted me down the stairwell between Aunt Aggie’s and Aunt Sue’s apartments. I must have been loud and giggly, because Aunt Sue couldn’t wait to tell Aggie the next day all about how Charles had had a GIRL in the apartment during the night!  Aunt Sue had one daughter, Maggie.

James: In my mother’s photo scrapbooks, James was often referred to as “Specks”, in recognition of his Irish freckles. James married Eleanor and moved to the Philadelphia area, but he used to bring the family back to the Jersey Shore to go to the beach on weekends. Uncle James and Aunt Eleanor had three children: Eleanor, Ruth Ann, and Marian. When the family came to visit our house, the girls would play the piano and sing to entertain us. Although I didn’t hear him say it myself, Aunt Ann used to say that James would get so mad at Aunt Eleanor because she never wanted to put her teeth in.

Mary:  Aunt Mary was the oldest of the bunch and I didn’t know her very well as she was on the periphery of the family. According to my mother, my grandmother’s sister always wanted children but was unable to have any, so when my grandmother’s second child was born, her sister convinced her to let her first child, Mary, go live with her. So Mary was raised as an only child by her aunt, and was fortunate to have “nice things” given to her, whereas the remaining eight children stayed with their parents and dealt with the usual money issues and hand-me-downs that a large family has to go through. Aunt Mary married Ev and moved to Santa Barbara, so she wasn’t around at family events. She did come to visit NJ one time, and bunked in my room with me. She was very observant and noticed that I had an obsession with horses. After she went back to California she occasionally sent me cards (with horse designs) with newspaper clippings from local horse shows in her area. Mary did not have children.

Ruth: Ruth was my mother. She was the eternal nonconfrontational softspoken people pleaser. Ruth and Alex had three children, Margaret Ann, Christine, and Theresa (me). To the casual observer, it appeared that my father wore the pants in the family, but after my mother passed away, my father was lost without her and he had to learn how to do everyday household things like balance a checkbook and buy groceries. I was only 20 when my mother died. And my mother was only 54.

Grammom and Ruth (Mom) on Mom's wedding day

My mother passed away on July 2, 1980, and her viewings and funeral were held at Reilly's Funeral Home over the Holiday weekend. Imagine a huge Irish entourage trying to park near Belmar Beach on a holiday weekend at the shore. It was crazy. As I get older, this time of year makes me pensive as I get closer and closer to the same age my mother was when she died. I worried so much about my sister Maggie as she approached and passed that milestone.  I know I shouldn't worry because there is also longevity in the family. My grandmother lived to just a few months short of her 100th birthday.

Now that generation of McConnells is gone. But they have left us with many memories and many stories to tell. Oh, yes, there are stories.

Godspeed, Aunt Sue, and may you all raise a martini in heaven to toast being together again.

Father's Day 2011

Father’s Day weekend gave us beautiful, hot sunny Florida weather. A few thunderstorms rumbled in the distance but didn’t come close to us.  Alyssa and I spent the afternoon in the pool. Alyssa thought our gray cat Rocky might like to go in the pool also, so she plucked him from his cement sunbath & walked him about in the water. He wasn’t thrilled, but at least he didn’t leave claw gouges in her neck trying to get away.

Ron had to work early but he was home at 3pm. He joined us in the pool for a while and then we ordered takeout from Rib City. It was a relief just to have a definite menu and place, as Ron had been giving us a lot of “I don’t know, I can’t decide, but I’m not cooking”.  There was so much food left over that we had the same thing for dinner again on Monday!

Alyssa gave Ron this card from one of my Stampin’ Up classes, designed by my dear friend Debbie.

I gave him this card. The paper is Stampin’ Up True Thyme (retired), Kiwi Kiss (retired), and Very Vanilla. The tree is from SU “Lovely as a Tree”, stamped in True Thyme, then re-stamped with Versamark  and embossed with clear powder. The sentiment, from SU “Word Play”, and the distressing were done with Stazon Timber Brown. The ribbon is from Imaginisce “Ribbon & Blooms”, and the finishing touch is a leaf from the Tattered Angels Glimmer Glass Nature collection.

Oh yes, and Josh actually did call Ron 5 or 6 times on Father's Day....of course, it was to ask for money. He never mentioned Father's Day. Guess some things never change!

Quilting Quandary

I've been crafty since I was young. I remember playing with my Barbies as a child, long before I had any true skills, and wrapping those dolls with tissues tied with yarn to make beautiful (in my mind) dresses. I made Barbie houses with cardboard boxes and stacks of books.  It was also as a child that I learned to crochet. I made endless yarn chains as I didn't learn any other stitches or turns until I was older. As a teenager, I painted, and wrote ....poetry, stories, journals.....writing was both creative and cathartic for me. That teenage angst had to go somewhere, right?

Sewing, on the other hand, has never come easily to me. Sometimes I would sit with my Aunt Ann while she was mending, and she would give me a threaded (but not knotted) (hey, is that a double negative?) needle so I could sew along next to her. My older sisters could knock out jumpers and matching headbands without breaking a sweat, but not me. Even my father could sew. When he reupholstered furniture, he would take the fabric off the chair/couch/footstool and use that as a pattern for the new material, and he would take over the family sewing machine. A family friend once tried to explain the mechanics of a sewing pattern, including how to expand the pattern for her generous bosom, much to my horror. When I had to actually sew something in my eighth grade Home Economics class, I searched and searched for what I thought would be the easiest pattern for me. Looks can be deceiving, that's for sure. While my classmates raced on to their second and third outfits, I struggled with my "simple" dress, yearning for seventh grade Home Economics and cooking. When I needed costumes for Halloween or school plays, my mother made them. When I wanted something stylish and alluring (again, in my own mind), I would take a slinky dress, cut it to waist length, cut it again straight up the front, and weave shoelaces into just the right spot to tie the sides together under my chest. I took that method one step further when I played Helen of Troy in one of my high school plays, "Persephone". I cut a simple white bedsheet to make a plunging neckline, added those ever reliable shoelaces to pull snugly across the front, and stitched up the sides to made a drapey toga-ish robe. I actually did receive compliments on the Helen of Troy costume. Maybe because I was one of the few characters in Hades wearing white and I stood out amongst a sea of black shrouds.

As a young mother, I once did a passable job creating a tiger costume for my son one Halloween. The rest of the time, I stocked up on iron-on patches. I limited my mending to those items that required only straight seam stitching. Mending was a chore I put off and put off and put off until I could say "Hey, if this has been sitting here for a year and I didn't need it, then maybe I just don't need it at all."  I never met a sewing machine that liked me. I would read the manuals, follow the directions, pop the bobbin in, thread the machine using all the correct guides, adjust the tension, and somehow wind up with a nice smooth stitch on top of the fabric, but a snarl of knots on the underside. I convinced myself that I had some negative magnetic effect on sewing machines that would forever prevent me from creating anything from fabric. Then, in a craft class, I discovered Wonder Under fusible webbing and glue guns. I lent my sewing machine to my sister-in-law (an able seamtress) and never saw it again. Nor did I miss it.

Quilts were not appealing to me. I categorized them as too “country”, too “rustic”, too “log cabin”, too “Little House on the Prairie”.  Then, for a few years around the holidays, I began noticing “Wedding Ring” and Christmas themed quilts that would fit right in with my need to decorate too much at this time of year. My interest was piqued. And no, I didn’t buy a quilt, because I also have this stubborn streak that prevents me from buying anything that I think I can make. How hard could it be to make a quilt? They’re just square pieces of fabric with straight seams, right?

Maybe out of curiosity, maybe for some inspiration, maybe to make some quilting connections to get started, I went to “Journey 2011 ~ A Contemporary Quilt and Fiber Art Show” this past January.

I was so, so wrong. And so out of my element. These were not the quilts your grandmother tossed on the bed. These were truly works of art, created with paint and metal and fibers that I would never imagine could be part of a quilt. They were multi-dimensional, begging to be touched. There was even a full-sized mermaid (well, technically, I’ve never seen a mermaid, so I can’t say if it was truly full-sized, but it was definitely human-sized), leaning out of her quilt like a ship’s prow, but she was purchased and stolen away before I could take a picture of her.

Here are some beautiful quilts:

I believe this is "Water Lilies" by Deborah Ann Morgan:

"Lighthouse Beach" by Carol DeCesare (this is a local beach in Sanibel, Florida):


"Coming Home" by Carol Marshall


"Mangroves" by Lisa Gorski ~ "In a 2008 AQU challenge based on a picture of Red Mangroves, I decided to take the picture and turn it to under the water's edge, looking up into the canopy. Roots were made from carboard tubes from pant hangers, covered with silk, yarns and fibers. Barnacles made from cardboard tubes covered with painted, heat shrunk tyvek wrapped with fibers/yarns. Canopy is machine thread. Fish stuffed with metallic fabric and machine appliqued, fins are sheer."


"Rusting Cans" by Carol Marshall ~ Rust dyed cotton, recycled blue jeans, can tops, machine quilted. Inspiration came from a Quilting Art book article using denim jeans and rusting of fabric. Fabric was from a demonstration at SWFQG show 2010.


"Art Festival" by Deborah Ann Morgan ~ "Art Festival is pieced with over 200 different fabrics. Each piece is arranged to have light travel through the quilt and bring the eye to the fringe. The beads and fringe are handmade. The piecing and quilting are machine done. My inspration comes from my friend's design and my love of weavings. This quilt will always be my favorite."

"Serendipity" by Carol Marshall ~ "This design uses different sizes of lace that I have collected over time. Some of the beading is from leftover odds and ends of trims. The colorful pieces are from a tapestry catalog that seemed unique. The buttons were from my mother's stash that got handed down to me to add a theme to the piece."


"DARkly FURgotten" by Patricia Anderson Turner ~ "A doctor described treating this Darfur woman for wounds to her wrists: she had been hung from a tree and molested by the Janjaweed [ I may have spelled that wrong; I can't read my own notes] Militia for three days. I have sewn her amidst a sea of trees representing Darfur's countless victims. She holds a replica of Earth based on a satellite image of our planet's sand storms and asks "Will our story remain darkly forgotten?"


This piece is by Dr. Joan Frantz, a Fort Myers eye doctor and quilter who lost her life to Ovarian Cancer at age 51. Her work is very whimsical. Notice the stockings and purses on these birds!


"Earth-Air-Fire-Water" by Betty Ann Seeman. This was hands-down my favorite quilt in this show. I loved the size (57x57) and theme. Very new age and earthy. Then I read the artist's description and loved it more: "Original quilt design created using ambigram graphics designed by John Langdon for the book "Angels and Demons" and used with his permission. Ambigrams read the same right side up and upside down. This quilt was quilted in seven sections bound separately them connected with  a decorative stitch. "

Overall, I've completely changed my previous notions about quilts and now recognize this as a unique art form. I'm not sure if it would be too ambitious of me to take on learning something new that's going to take up a lot of room in the house. I've already converted the guest room to a scrap room. I don't have any more rooms to dedicate to quilting. I think this will have to stay a "someday" dream for now....but I will still enjoy going to local quilt shows. I'm sure they will give me some inspiration for card making and scrapbooking.

License to Spell

I admit it, I can't help it, I mentally spell check and correct grammar in my head when I read. Books, newspapers, billboards, emails, letters...anything. I blame my sixth grade English teacher, Miss Skokos, who, while teaching us the Greek and Latin roots of our every day English language, instilled a love of writing in me. She also told us stories about misspellings on billboards and signs in local public places, and about how she'd call the owners/advertisers to helpfully point out the errors and expect them to fix their signs.

Unless someone specifically asks me to proofread something I bite my tongue and try to read for content.  Besides, in these times of computer-speak and Facebook, sometimes it's hard to tell if something is misspelled or just shorthand. LOL.

Several times a week, while walking Excalibur, we pass a neighbor's car with one of those magnetic signs advertising their business. "License Massage Therapist" just leaps out at me. I don't think my neighbor  massages licenses. I think it's more likely he is a "Licensed Massage Therapist". Would I call the phone number on this sign and recommend a correction? No. Would I smuggle a black Sharpie along on one of our walks and correct the sign myself? No.

I saw this neighbor the other day and he's kind of a big scary looking guy. No one I'd want massaging me, that's for sure. I'm just going to keep walking past that sign and not say anything. When I saw my neighbor, he was angrily rummaging through his garbage cans.

Maybe he was looking for a "D".