This lovely little piece by Dennis J. Pittoco brought some long-ago memories rushing back to me, and awoke me to realities I was largely unaware of at the time.

Dennis’s stories about contact with older people and spending some time listening to them made me think immediately of Mrs. Marie Walesewicz (wall-uh-shev-ich). She was an older widow who lived a couple blocks away from the house where I grew up in little Ironwood, Michigan. (I can’t bring myself to call her “elderly,” though she probably was. She was so bright and spry and lively, that word just can’t apply to her in my mind.)

At some point in my early teen years, my parents connected me with Mrs. Walesewicz because she needed help with lawn mowing and shoveling. If I had ever met the woman before that time, I don’t remember it. But when I started helping at her house, we quickly struck up a several-year friendship whose memory brings tears to my eyes now.

Whether it was snow or grass I was taking care of, that work itself was very straightforward, and I’d show up and knock it out on a regular basis. Usually I’d get right to work without really even talking to Mrs. W. The jobs never took all that long – hers was a small house on a small lot, so the mowing was easy. And she had someone plow out her driveway, so shoveling was just clearing the walk from the front street to her front door, around the house to the back door, and out to her separate garage. I was usually done in any case in an hour or less.

But whatever job I was doing, and whether I was hot and sweaty or cold and snow-covered when I was done, Mrs. W. always invited me indoors when she paid me, and had me sit and chat and have a can of pop (or two). Now, decades later, I have no idea what we talked about most of the time. What I do remember is that she was always happy to see me, and that she spoke to me not as though she was addressing a child, but more as if I were a fellow adult. That was pretty special, back in those high school years.

I realize now she was probably at least a little bit lonely. She had family in the area, but I don’t recall ever seeing them. Oh, I’m sure they were around; it’s just that any grandparent living alone like she did just simply has a lot more time alone than with others. So I’d like to think that my visits after I finished my work brought her as much pleasure as they brought me. I look back on them now as a very special time.

Eventually, I graduated high school and went a thousand miles away to college. Though I did some more mowing and visits with Mrs. W. during the first couple summers at home, soon after that I was off with my own increasingly adult life, and rarely made it back to Ironwood. Mrs. Walesewicz passed away many years ago, and with the deaths of both of my parents over the past several years, I no longer have any really solid connection to my old hometown. Time moves on.

That makes me especially happy to have had this reminder of one of those small but very moving bits of my growing up that mean so much to me now, so I thank you for that, Dennis! And I’ll reflect on your little essay, and think of ways to use this interesting time we’re going through now to create those same kinds of special friendships for my family and myself where we live now.

And tear up a bit again as I remember a very, very wonderful lady.

PS – as a total aside, I remember one Saturday night when we were struck with a blizzard the likes of which you simply can’t imagine if you’ve never lived in a place like Ironwood. I knew Mrs. W. would be wanting to get out for church the next morning, so I headed to her place well after dark without even being called, while the snow was still coming down pretty hard. Well over a foot had fallen already, and the wind was fierce. I found myself digging through drifts as tall as I was, and I was over there for hours. About halfway around the house, I heard someone behind me and turned around to see my Dad. He’d gotten worried because I’d been gone so long. He started taking turns on the shovel (and thank God for that, because I was awfully tired at that point). Together we cleared the rest of the walk, and this was one visit where I just grabbed my pay, exchanged a few words at the door with my friend, and headed home as the snow finally tapered off.

Dad wouldn’t take the part of the loot I offered him.