2024, Family, Food, home, Kids, Music, Theatre, Uncategorized

Oma Sees All

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I have been thoroughly enjoying myself here this week in Brookings. Son’s surgery went well. He is home recuperating. Yesterday I roasted a chicken and made slow cooker Bolognese sauce and chicken enchiladas. I also got to drive six year old Grandson to school, which is terribly fun. One morning we listened to a number from Cats on the Sirius XM Broadway station, and he was rather astounded when I told him that the performers were singing and dancing in cat suits. He also liked the number from Hamilton that we heard.

Son and Daughter In Law are good parents with quite appropriate limits and expectations. I tend to call Grandson out more often for minor infractions, though. It was pretty funny when, one evening at supper, Grandson announced, with a huge sigh, that Oma’s eyes saw everything, and there wasn’t anything he could get away with that I didn’t see. This was after I reminded him to eat his penne with his fork and not his fingers. He made a point of showing us his fork skills after that.

What is the first Broadway musical you remember hearing or seeing? What is your favorite musical now? How was your relationship with your grandparents?

35 thoughts on “Oma Sees All”

  1. Hi Sister, My most earnest hopes for your son’s continuing progress. I had a benign but severe brain tumor removed in 1978 whyI was 10 years old. My dad had died in 1970–I then was 2 YO. My beloved mom faithfully hung in & made my time a treasure extending even today, beyond her dearly missed span. Please received these thoughts and prayers in peace & again with the highest regards.

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  2. Number One and always terrific, Oklahoma!
    My Mom frequently played the LP soundtrack.
    I improved my relationship with the grandparents this week while in Massachusetts. Grandfather x8, Jonas Fairbanks, was killed by Indians during the opening attacks of King Phillips War. His only surviving son became grandfather x7.
    In 1637, Grandfather x9, Johnathan Fairbanks, built what is now the oldest remaining timber frame house in North America. It was an interesting feeling to stand on ground and floors trod by ancestors so far removed in time.

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    1. Wes, you mentioned Fairbanks yesterday. Kelly had an uncle whose mother was a Fairbanks. There’s a house out in Massachusetts called the Fairbanks house that she said was built by her ancestors, but I don’t remember if there was significance to it.

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        1. Only through Marrige. :-).
          It’s her aunt that’s the blood relative.

          But her uncles mother, was Francis Fuller Fairbanks and it always tickled her that she was 3 F’s until she married Otto Crawford.

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  3. When I was maybe 14, The Sound of Music came to Des Moines (an hour’s drive), and my mom got tickets for our family. This was a big deal, and I’ll never forget it. The lead was played by Jeannie Carson, who starred in a sitcom I loved, Hey Jeannie! – here’s the theme song:

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  4. Hard to say what musical I first heard because Mom & Dad had lots of LPs of broadway show cast recordings when I was little. I don’t recall what musical I saw first. All time fave is West Side Story–surprisingly the newer movie version is far superior to the Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, George Chakiris, Chita Rivera classic.

    Best live performances we’ve seen were when we lived in Chicago. West Side Story for my wife. My fave by a nose was Guys and Dolls (although WSS was spectacular too).

    GP relationships were “polite.” Not a lot of bighearted love from either side. We all got along, and I had a good relationship with all 4 GPs. but we weren’t what I’d call close.

    Chris in Owatonna (actually sitting in a gorgeous lake cabin between Tofte and Lutsen admiring the sun glistening off the sparkling blue waters of Lake Superior.)

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  5. I think my favorite Broadway play, though, was Cabaret – of course, I only saw the movie version of that. I just looked it up, and it was written by John Kander – I was thinking it was Fosse…

    I did get to see two Bob Fosse plays when I was living in NYC – Pippin, and Chicago. Both were fabulous to see in person… the DANCING!

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  9. This is a hard question- it might have been Fiorello done by an excellent group in Syracuse called the Pompeian Players- they got to use original costumes and sets and did a series of great musicals led by Father Charles Borgioni. My favorite musical is Cabaret that toured to Minneapolis and with Tyler Michaels King as the emcee– better than the original. I had a loving relationship with my maternal grandparents and with my more elderly paternal grandmother. All remained pretty sharp in their elder years- the poker face then Mona Lisa smile (when she won) of my 90 something year old paternal grandmother when she played cards was priceless.

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  10. Well, not Broadway… I don’t even know if you can technically call it a musical because it’s really a ballet, but the Nutcracker was my first. I loved it as a child and I’d like to see it again sometime. I also saw The Sound of Music, and my mom got me the album, which I played and sang along with over and over and over.

    OT: I just got an email that there is a recall on my 2023 Honda Civic. Hmmmm…..

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  11. My father lived on the same farmstead as his paternal grandmother when he was a small boy. She had raised 12 children and had any number of grandchildren, but really loved my dad and let him get away with a lot. She thought it terribly funny when she found him in a kitchen cupboard eating syrup from a can. I imagine she was less happy when he wandered into a cornfield and they had to get the neighbors to help find him.

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  12. One of the things that my parents splurged on most of the years I was growing up, even when money was very tight, were season tickets to the Muni Opera in St. Louis. This is an outdoor venue that hosts touring productions and is very popular. So I’m not sure what musical was my first. I do remember being fascinated by Porgy and Bess. My favorite is probably Finian‘s Rainbow. I first saw it when I was in eight or ninth grade, and although the storyline is kind of silly, the music is very beguiling to me. I’ve always loved it. I am, however, very fond of Chicago.

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  13. I was lucky that I grew up fairly close to all of my grandparents And looking say I had a very different relationship with each of them. Pappy was an unhappy man and would probably be diagnosed with OCD if he were alive today. But he had hobbies that were fascinating to me as a small child: miniature trains, rebuilding a Carmen Ghia, building a camper, theater. Nana, my mom‘s mom, worked full-time, but kept the house and koch the famous seven meals that my mother grew up with. We ate at their house on Saturdays because that was hamburgers and french fries.

    My dad’s mom was Grandma. She was a successful real estate agent and a big bridge player. She encouraged me all the time I was growing up to play bridge but I just could never get into it. She lived with Ray, and eventually married him when I was in high school. This kind of shocked me because it had never occurred to me all of those years that she and Ray were a couple (DOH!). I adored Ray. He may have actually been my favorite of all of my grandparents. If I had to pick a favorite….

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  14. I used to have lots of energy and would bounce up and down on the couch to burn it off. My mom had a collection of LPs that I would plug into the photograph and bounce to them get off and turn them over and continue bouncing for hours and hours, my favorites were my fair lady Klahoma the flower drum song and then I had my other albums that were more kids albums. She had others that I enjoyed lake South Pacific, but that was really all I needed. I remember her coming down on a beautiful summer day and asking me if I didn’t wanna go out and play instead of being down in the dark damp basement bouncing on the couch, but that was really what I wanted to do at the time. I also had a rocking horse, but it was not the one on Spring. It was a big heavy cast horse that had legs that went around with an arm fashioned after the wheels on a railroad locomotive I had to push and maneuver the thing just right in order to get it to go Hours to the music also, but I had to do it in time because the thing made quite a bit noise as it went around and you had to get that to go in time to the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain

    I’m laughing as you talking about telling your
    grandson to use his fork manners when my son Spencer went to school. He was probably three or four in that class and the teacher was concerned and asked Debbie how come Spencer wasn’t very good at using his utensils and Debbie just laughed and said we’ve never given him utensils to eat with each everything with his fingers.

    I had grandfather in fargo whose wife was killed in a car accident a year before I was born and he was very stoic a good guy and we love to go to his house and get the candy off the top of the refrigerator and we had our special bedroom upstairs with the slanted roof but he was not a guy. My dad was the youngest kid and I believe my grandfather was probably 80 when we started visiting. It’s amazing how much older 80 was than then it is now my mom‘s folks were younger and we visited them often, but there was no , affection or warmth I went up to their lake cottage with them once and my grandfather was such a difficult person to get along with that. I cried the whole weekend and was never invited back. We would go there for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter and while it was nice to see the cousins, there was no relationship to speak of between my grandparents on my mom’s side and our family .

    my grandkids have us on Wednesdays and we get to see them all the time and then they have their dad family in Kosovo former Yugoslavia, where his mom and two sisters might have mental illness issues and his father committed suicide 6 years ago just before Ari was born
    Tara went there this summer and spent the whole summer there with the boys and her husband came over for the last two or three weeks which is all the time he could get off of work was frustrated because she thought she would be getting some help watching the boys when in fact, it turned out that with the boys there she had to not only watch them, but watch the grandmother and the two nieces who were problematic, not helpful
    i’ve got two more grandkids going to be here October 22 if not before they will be induced and that will be an interesting one. The mom is kind of high maintenance and my son is completely wrapped around her fingers and we are told that the grandchildren will not be seeing anyone for the first six months I think is what they said. She’s kind of odd that she doesn’t want germs from the family, but she’s gonna be going to work at HCMC every day, oh well we all have family issues don’t we?

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  15. Since I was the youngest by quite a ways, I only remember my paternal grandfather, who died when I was 14, and my maternal grandmother.
    Grandpa did a lot of gardening and we had to pick his strawberries and ground cherries which is why I will not pick a strawberry to this day.

    I do remember walking to grandma‘s house after school. but what I remember most is her telling me I was going to get fat if I ate any more candy, questioning why I was trying to wear a “necklace” (it was a shark tooth on a silver chain ((Avon I bet)) and the ‘70’s and I wanted to be cool!), and calling the house every night at 7 o’clock.

    So my impression was always that grandparents were old fogies.

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    1. Whenever we were doing something that she viewed as dangerous or were too rambunctious, my Grandma would say “be careful you’re giving your grandma heartstrings.” And she would tap her chest lightly. I can’t remember a time when any of us grandkids took that seriously although I don’t think any of us ever actually asked her what heartstrings were.

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  17. My favorite musical is Fiddler on the Roof. There are plenty of others I have appreciation for, But picking a favorite, it has to be Tevye and Golda singing to their daughters.

    I didn’t really know any of my grandparents well. My father’s father died before I was born, and his mother died before I was old enough to remember much of her. I recall visiting her once in a hospital when I was about three or so.

    We visited my maternal granparents several times on their farm. I have some rather fuzzy recollections of them. The classic American farmer couple with a horse and a dog. They had four daughters and a son, most of whom moved to the city. Their oldest daughter remained in South Dakota near them. She died about a year ago.

    I don’t think I’ve seen any musicals, except Five Guys Named Moe, ad Black Nativity. Musicals, to me, are recordings, for the most part.

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  18. I never knew either of my grandfathers. My mom’s dad deserted his family when my mom, the second oldest of nine kids, was in her early teens. My dad’s adoptive father died before we arrived in Stubbekøbing following WWII.

    My Irish granny was a tall, slender woman who used snuff which caused me sneezing fits whenever I got near her. She liked introducing me to friends and relatives because she got a kick out of that I would curtsy whenever I said hello to an adult. She lived to be 88.

    My dad’s stepmother (his adoptive mother died when he was a little boy) was short and plump. She was also a very devout and kind woman. She always had cold crepes in her icebox for me when I’d visit her. Petra died of cancer when she was 49. I remember attending her funeral and worrying that people would think I didn’t love her because I wasn’t crying. But I had seen how she suffered in the hospital before she died, so I was relieved.

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  19. I don’t think of musicals in terms of Broadway, though a good many of them probably were featured there at one time or another. The first musical I saw on stage was My Fair Lady in Danish. I absolutely loved it.

    Among my favorites are Cabaret, The Three Penny Opera, and Fiddler on the Roof. Into the Woods, Hamilton, Oklahoma, West Side Story, and Hair are among works I’ve enjoyed seeing on stage.

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