A most unexpected present

Being clairvoyant can sometimes be a mysterious nuisance. Sometime ago I wrote an article about Christmas Eve 1943 when my husband first husband Don was training for the Army Air Corp at a college in Athens, West Virginia. At about 11 p.m. that evening I was overcome with dread.

Something terrible, I felt, was happening at home in Philadelphia. At 1 a.m. I believed everything was finally all right and I went to bed. I was asleep in seconds. We found out a few days later that the apartment below my sister’s had caught fire. She and Walt, her husband, had to jump out of a second story window to save their lives. This all happened at exactly the time I was so upset.

Lots of other visions have happened since then with my clairvoyant ability, however nothing else so dramatic. It was this, I was thinking about, when something happened just yesterday. I’d been cleaning off a bookcase. On top are many recent pictures family, children, grandchildren and my 10 great-grandchildren. In 1964, when I left the East to move my sons to California the last thing I thought about bringing were a lot of pictures.

So many years later, too many of these precious visual memories — or so I thought — were gone forever. Why I thought about certain photos, I don’t know? I was particularly sad I’d lost pictures of my Confirmation when I was 13, and at about age five in a church photo. It was one of those silly “doings” the church had with a lot of young people dressed up like grown-ups and having a mock wedding.

It had a name I have long ago forgotten. Of course, there were many photos of the homes I’d lived in Pennsylvania, or vacationing at the Jersey Shore, or at relatives homes. One I really missed was a professional photo taken when I was about 35. Some of you will probably put tongue in cheek and not believe me, but the very next day a large package arrived from my granddaughter Leslie.

She’d received a couple of boxes of pictures left when my first husband Don, and then his second wife, had passed away. Leslie went through them and sorted them. One package came to my son Doug, the others to his four brothers. Doug’s package included my birthday and gift cards with many pictures. Included were the very photos I’d wanted to find along with others I had no idea had ever been taken.

The photo that really surprised me — and brought me to tears — was a picture of me as a little 4-year-old standing at the door to the home on Beechwood Street in Philadelphia where I’d been born in 1924. I thought this photo gone forever. Amazingly, here it was. In it I’m holding a piece of chalk and an eraser. You can see a small blackboard on the wall of the enclosed front porch.

My home is just as I’ve remembered for these many years. Next door was the home of Joseph Doaks — I don’t know how you spell his name — rumored to be the first American to set foot on Japanese soil at the end of WWII. Joe was a Navy Ensign from Philadelphia. On the other side was the home of my godmother, Mabel Kircher. She lived with her mother and father who owned a nearby bakery.

I clearly remember sitting at their dining room table with papa Kircher — dressed in the whitest shirt I’ve ever seen — as he cut through a loaf of freshly baked bread with a long knife. There’s also my memory of mama Kircher in her kitchen, rolling out dough on a marble topped table. Across the street was the back half of a Catholic Church. It was surrounded by a beautiful garden with flowers, lawn, trees and walkways.

The priests would walk there during the evening hours. I remember riding my “kitty car” along the front sidewalk of that very church and being teased by a bunch of older boys. We moved from that house when I was about to enter first grade. There have been a lot of moves since then, but my first real memory of “home” is of that little row house on Beechwood Street in South Philadelphia.

That house will always feel like home. Receiving these pictures just before my 92nd birthday is one of the most precious and unexpected gifts I have ever received.

Edna Van Leuven is a Churchill County writer and columnist. She may be reached at news@lahontanvalleynews.com