Family Adjustments

 I stayed Texas for about a week and flew back to Cedar Rapids.  Mama came home within a few days, but she didn’t improve.  To make matters worse her mental problems resurfaced, and it was exacerbated by conversation about dying, but things pretty well rocked on all summer without much change.

 We realized there was no way that it was going to work for Elliott to stay with Mama and Daddy for his sophomore year.   As the time for the fall semester approached we made a trip to Texas to see how we might help stabilize the situation.  Mama got the idea that I was trying to put her in a nursing home, and she ran me out of the house.  I was greatly concerned about her mental condition, but I knew Daddy was not going to put her in a nursing home against her will.  Both of them had seen loved ones in a nursing home and they had a great fear of it.

We managed to find temporary quarters for Elliott.  Later on, he and some of his friends rented an old house on ACU Hill.   During that year Ann was trying to finish up at Mount Mercy, and we were trying to send Elliott to college.   He had some pretty lean times.   He consumed lots of Ramen Noodles, and visited my father weekly, where he was reward with eggs from Daddy’s laying hens.  He prepared eggs just about any way there was to fix them.

He and his buddies were all hunters and fishermen, and they largely lived on game.  Elliott became quite adept at preparing wild game in tasty ways.   At Christmas time, he came home and served us duck l’ orange.  Somehow he learned to how to prepare a wild duck that way.  It was incredibly good.   To this day, cooking is Elliott’s hobby.  No, that’s not right. It’s his passion.  Once Elliott came home, and got a great surprise when he walked into the bathroom.  One of his housemates had killed and deer and hung it up in the bathroom to dress it.  College students have unusual ways of handling life’s challenges, but he got through the year.   Fortunately he was offered an ROTC scholarship at the beginning of his junior year, and life got easier.