HILDA JANE ~ IN MEMORIUM

IN MEMORY OF HILDA
March 25, 1923 - June 4, 2011

In the winter of what I think must have been 1954 or 55, I found myself one day, standing in the shade of a forest of eucalyptus trees on the muddy banks of a river that rushed right through middle of the San Fernando Valley.


After days of rain, the water was turbulent and the banks were slick, and damp. Pale sunlight blinked through the tree branches and wet leaves glistened all around me as my parents, griping me tightly by both hands while holding my squirming younger brother Alan, warned me of the dangers of getting too close to the edge.

Moments later, a little freckled, red-headed girl came up behind us, curious as to what we were doing there so close to the edge… she warned us that this was a dangerous place to be, and we should be careful, as her parents had warned her of the same thing. She was worried, and went home and told her parents that there were some people next door standing too close to the edge, and shortly there-after, they too joined our little band on the banks of the L.A. River, which ran along-side the property which would now be our new home.

Names were exchanged and on that wintry day, we met our new neighbors, Joanie, Bill and Hilda Jane, who had come out to welcome us to the neighbor hood. They may have had a toddling Patty in tow as well.

While most of the valley was busy being divided into newer subdivisions, our two properties were throw-backs to an earlier time when space and privacy were prized and people built their own houses and did most of the work and repair on them with their own hands. Our parents were of like minds in the type of home they chose for us.

Community Street was a dirt road that coated your car in dust in the warmer months and in the wet ones, transformed into a virtual mud-hole requiring some expertise in vehicular navigation when the rainy season hit. To escape the confines of the street, drivers soon learned the necessity of hitting the gas hard right out of the driveway and not letting up until they hit the pavement at DeSoto, lest they be wading home. Our mothers learned right off, how to make it to the boulevard without getting mired, and later, we kids, one by one with learner‘s permits in hand, learned to do the same. This was just one indication of the wild rides to be experienced within our little patch of real estate.

Our street was three side by side acres of property on it’s south side. These were magical acres with trees and flowers and chirping birds, dogs, cats, chickens, squirrels, fish, turtles, goats, raccoons, opossoms, even horses on occassion, and only God knew what else that wandered up out of the “ditch” as the riverbed that ran the length of the property came to be called. Those glistening eucalyptus trees I’d first stood beneath soon became known as “The Davey Crockett Woods” and we had many fine adventures there. Community Street was about as good a place to grow up as any kids could want.

The third and last acre on the street was owned by a mean old man named “Mr. Greenfield“ who hated kids and just about everything else in the world as far as anybody could tell from a distance, and that‘s as close as we kids ever got since Hilda and Bill warned us vehemently to stay away from him. Their warning turned out to be a good one… he hated kids and didn’t hesitate to show it, and so as far as “the community” of Community St. was concerned, the Jane and the Belardes family were it.

From our first day, the Janes made us feel welcome, and separated as we were by the river from most of the rest of the families with kids our age, leaving us fairly isolated, the families became fast friends. As our two families grew --the Janes, with Joanie and then Patty, and ours, for most of the time there with three… Myself, my brother Alan, and my sister, Diane, all of us exactly three years apart, then adding a fourth when “the accident” happened nine years later, (my little brother John). The lives or our two families were entwined.

The two mothers Hilda, and my mom, Betty, took turns wrangling each other’s kids, day after day for about the next 15 yrs.


Hilda and Bills house and wonderful yard were always open to us, as ours was to her kids. We entered and exited, usually by a small gate located about halfway down the acre under another shock of eucalyptus. It had been built by Bill, for easy childish access, and we called it…. “The little gate”. “I’ll meet you at the little gate” must have been uttered by all of us hundreds of thousands of times over the years. It was a place for many a private conversation, gossip and even a song or two over the little fence nestled in that cozy alcove beneath the towering trees. Hild taught Joanie and Joanie taught me the first song we ever sang together over that little gate; It was "Que Sera Sera" and many others followed. Our moms got some time for mom talk over it also. Later, Joanie learned to play the piano, and we spent hours on her piano bench singing together all the songs in Hilda’s piano books.

Often, after a hard day of school, or hula hoops, or practicing dancing steps, or building forts or other construction.. We’d make our way through that little gate where Hilda always made us feel welcome and at home. She made us lunch, washed our faces, or sent us to the hose to wash ourselves when our particular mess seemed too daunting. She helped us with homework, quizzed us in spelling, hosted sleepovers, kept us from drowning in the swimming pool and drove us to and from wherever we kids were headed on any given day, driving us to Square dancing classes, Blue Birds, Camp Fire Girls.. (Girl Scouts for Patty), the mall, to church. She put bandaids on us, and even scolded us when we got into mischief. You could do that then.

She was the first leader of our first Blue Bird group in which right off the bat, the biggest challenge for me was trying to figure out if I should call her “Mrs. Jane” like the rest of the new girls were doing, or “Hilda” as I’d called her all of my life so far. She and my mom with their heads together, thought up craft projects and collected all the materials to carry them out, taught us games and helped us earn our honor beads.

In an emergency, we knew we could run to her if we needed to, and we trusted her to help us. And there were some emergencies. Between the six of us, we were a real handful. We kids were almost always together but especially in the summertime, and someone was almost always getting hurt.

On any given day, any one of us had fallen down, skinned a knee, twisted an ankle, broken a tooth, gotten stuck on cactus, fallen out of a tree - gotten stuck in a tree, gotten a cat stuck in a tree, or in the case of our dog Frisky, who love to chase squirrels up them… a dog. Our trees were often littered with kites also.

We fell off bikes, scooters, pogo sticks, roller skates , the rope swing, the teeter totter on the old pepper tree.

We got dog bit, bee stung, cat scratched and chicken pecked--- Hit with rocks, oranges, lemons, apples, plums, persimmons, tangerines, grapefruits and mud pies… baseballs, footballs, basketballs, handballs, tetherballs… frisbees, shuttlecocks, croquet mallets, jump ropes, or blown up in one of Alan’s science experiments. Someone tumbled down the side of the ditch chased by Pirates at least once a week for a good 10 years. It’s a wonder we all lived.

Hilda never panicked. Neither mother did, and we learned to dust ourselves off and go at it again…. Between the two families, we single-handedly kept the band-aid company in business for eons.

Hilda’s good sense kept us all in check, (at least most of the time), often to Joanie and Pat’s frustration--- especially as teenagers when we are all more prone to spending our money a little more frivolously.

I remember clearly the time when Joanie longed for a pair of the imitation “ruby slippers” she had seen at Leed’s Shoe Store in Topanga Plaza where we all shopped and scouted for boys. After saving her allowance she was ready to purchase a pair when Hilda talked her into buying a pair of “sensible shoes” instead. Joanie groused about it for about a week until she she finally figured that mom knew best when it came to certain things, realizing that those ruby slippers were just never going to go well with her Sunday best.

Hilda laughed at our jokes, encouraged our dramatic performances and applauded each one of us equally. She also lent an empathetic ear when we needed one. She didn’t have six kids herself, but she shared six kids, as did our mother did also, and between the two of them, they kept each other sane amidst all the insanity of keeping us alive until we were old enough to do it ourselves.

These were not rich years monetarily for any of us, but they were rich with experience, Lucky us. We got a second mother we loved and trusted, who loved us too and who shared and encouraged so many experiences for all those years.

Hilda wasn’t above giving us a stern talking to either, and she could freeze you in mid- step if she disapproved. I remember one day just after she had finally gotten a brand new carpet installed in her living room.

That day, I was in charge of baby John still in diapers. I’d changed his diaper, but had neglected to put on the old rubber pants that accompanied them, in the days before Huggies and Pampers were invented. Heck, we were just going to play outside, who needed them? It was summer, and that’s what hoses were for. Somewhere along the line, we wandered through “the little gate” and over traipsed the Belardes kids to play with the Janes.

Joanie and Patty asked if we wanted to come see their new carpet, and of course we did. We got right to the middle of the living room when baby John let go, and there, in the middle of that brand new carpet spread a pee-stain that reached about a foot wide. Hilda opened her mouth once… as if she was going to shriek, but no sound came out. Then she did it again. Still no sound…. We all stood there with eyes about as big as dinner plates waiting for her to yell.
I think she could probably feel the fear just radiating from them. Finally, she turned around without saying a word, and just marched into the kitchen, and came back with a dishrag and a bowl of soapy water and handed them to me. She understood the difference between an accident and an intentional miss-deed.

***

After all they’d shared, Hilda and Betty kept in touch even after the Janes moved away. They didn’t talk often, but when they did, they caught each other up on all the things that had happened in each other’s families, and we in turn were kept up on the marriages, and all the kids… even after all those years they remained great old friends. It didn’t matter how long between phone calls. Once on the line, it was just as if they still lived next door.

We lost Betty a few years back, but when she was ailing, Hilda and Joanie made it a point to get to her for a visit. At eighty-something, HIlda looked beautiful and happy and fulfilled, and talked with pride about her kids, her grandkids, her great grandkids, and all the wives, and husbands who were now part of her great big beautiful family.

When I think of Hilda, this is what I see in my mind:

It’s Saturday afternoon and she and Bill are going shopping. We kids are sitting on the front yard lawn facing the driveway. We watch, as Bill in his jacket and that hat he always wore when he “went out”, walks across the yard and gets into their old Dodge..?? (or whatever it was)--- and then sits, warming up the engine.

Hilda comes out of the house a minute or two later. She’s dressed in a nicely pressed dress and sandals. Her hair is loose and lifts in the breeze. She opens the passenger door and gets in. Bill puts the car in gear and they start slowly up the driveway… Just about mid-way to the gate, past the beginning of the bushes where she thinks she’s out of sight of the kids, Hilda scoots over until she’s sitting snug up against him. He stretches his arm around her shoulders and off they drive.

They were the only two parents I ever saw, after all their years of marriage, who behaved as if they were still on their first date. They were in love.

****

I believe the minute Hilda closed her eyes here for the last time, she paused, just for an instant, as Bill pulled up next to her tipping his hat, and gunning that engine of his while patting the seat beside him.

In the next instant, she leaps un-hesitantly towards that passenger door, closing it gently behind her. Then, scooting right over next to him once again, she smiles as he wraps his arm snugly around her shoulders and shepherds her forward into their bold new adventure. I know they are together again because true love never dies.

*Our condolences to the magnificent family left behind, and all of you who mourn her, but I’m sure Bill has a station wagon or an SUV by now, and there’ll be room for all when the time comes.

We will always remember them both and cherish all the years the Belardes and the Jane families had together, and all the years since, that we have remained grand old friends.

We love you and all of your extended family, dearly.

-taree
6/2011