6. Sauntering into Retirement - 1974

Our first daughter, Devon, arrived in the Spring of 1974. By now our house was quite well along although far from finished. Still just the tiny bathroom in the new addition but a fabulous kitchen with a Garland restaurant stove and butcher block counters and a lovely dining room with wainscoting. Our bedroom was now in the main house but accessed through an unheated hall with an adjacent 2nd bedroom for the baby. I can’t remember exactly the order of things only that every spare moment and dollar went into that house.

By Christmas of 1975 the living room and 3 bedrooms were complete and the upstairs bathroom was roughed in and useable. We were looking forward to having the in-laws for a celebration of Christmas Eve and an overnight. We had no idea of the disaster that was looming.

Frits’ mother and stepfather owned a 165 acre farm in Randolph, Vermont, some 60 miles to our south. During his teenage years Frits spent his summers haying, milking, and tending other livestock alongside his parents. It was not an easy life with Mogens who had no children of his own and never developed any parenting skills. He and Grethe, both from Denmark had married when Frits was seven, fortunately after he had spent some of his most formative years with just his loving mother.

As Christmas approached Frits’s mother warned that Mogens early dementia was getting difficult to handle. We, I regret to say, had not been paying enough attention. Devon, at 18 months was just beginning to know about presents and as we decorated, trimmed the tree and prepared a traditional Danish meal, the excitement was building, only to be dashed soon after their arrival. Within minutes an argument ensued over the arrangement of our furniture. Mogens was confused about where he was and so nothing was in the ‘right’ place.

From that point on the Christmas Eve we had planned was lost, Devon and I were in tears, Frits was angry and fearful for our safety and poor Grethe had to drive home the next morning with a man she no longer knew.

After a brief period of hospitalization, Mogens died quietly the following Spring. 

After that disastrous beginning,Christmas Eve celebrations have become a wonderful tradition in our household. Sometimes quite small but as our family grows and more friends and their families join us, we have expanded to close to twenty. I wonder what it will be like in the year of COVID-19.