Louise Schwab

Louise came to live with us when I was about 7, after Mrs. Evanwood left us alone one night while my parents were at a party.  When the parents came home, Nancy, then about 12, was in charge.  Three hours later Mrs. Evanwood came home drunk, with a sailor friend, and said to my mother “I suppose this means I’m fired”  Mother said “It certainly does.”  Daddy took Mrs. Evanwood to a hotel and paid for that night.  She collected her belongings the next day; we never saw her again.  Louise’s first job was to help Mother clean Mrs. Evanwood’s room, which was to be Louise’s, they removed many empty bottles from under bed.  Louise must have known, from that point, that she would be treasured by the Surr family.

When my mother interviewed Louise at her younger sister’s house for the housekeeper-babysitter-cook job, Mother was ushered into the living room where Louise was sitting on the sofa.  This concealed Louise’s bad leg; she had suffered a leg injury as a child and arthritis attacked the spot.  She wore old-lady lace-up black shoes all the years I knew her.  Louise’s sister later told my mother that their father had been German and their mother Mexican-Indian.  Louise and her sister had grown up in Texas.  Her sister suggested that Louise had suffered rough punishment by her father that accounted for her bad leg.  The family had lived in a remote, and rural part of Texas.  Louise didn’t have much schooling.  Occasionally, when Louise was stressed she would mutter words in a Swabian dialect.

I had thought that Louise had always been old.  When I see pictures of her from when she first came to our family, I see that she was young then.  Louise was my second mother.  Our own beautiful Mother was kind but not energetic.  She conceived me unexpectedly when she was already tired with a feisty five-year-old, Nancy, and a two-year-old Jack.  The picture I have of me as a baby shows a colicky, screaming, red-faced newborn.  I made my mother even more tired.  Happy Polly was born 5 years after me when everyone had recovered from too many children. Louise had a vigorous need for family that made her a wonderful mother to us.

Louise was, first of all, Catholic.  She was my first religious influence.  She loved animals, and suffered when she thought they weren’t treated well.  She loved the Surr children with a love that was sometimes fierce.

I was the family dog-lover.  My parents had allowed me to choose my first dog, Bootsie, a gentle German shepherd mix, at the pound.  Bootsie was supposed to be fed at dinnertime.  I thought that this meant after my dinner.  Louise almost always fed Bootsie during dinner and then complained bitterly about my neglect of the poor dog.  When Bootsie was run over by a bus, Louise told me, and she cried too.  Louise told her rosary for Bootsie and me.

Louise had few things growing up.  She collected small figurines and salt and pepper shakers.  These came in all disguises, but mostly as small animals, fruit and other edibles.  We often found unique salt and peppers for her for birthdays and Christmases.  She crocheted skirts and attached them to plastic doll tops to make toilet paper roll covers.  She gave these to Mother on special occasions.  Mother, a classicist, would cringe but put them over toilet paper rolls anyway.  In her spare time, Louise crocheted many doilies and starched them, made many Afghans and created other handwork.

My relationship with Louise was not always smooth.  Louise loved to cook oatmeal cookies, her gift to the family.  I was the great cookie finder.  When my siblings discovered this talent I was often delegated to find the most recent batch.  We, sometimes I, quickly demolished Louise’s caches.  There are, after all, only so many places to hide a batch of cookies.  Louise squawked “You children don’t know how lucky you are!”  She was right.

My family usually ate in the dining-room.  Although Mother was a talented cook we mostly ate good food that Louise cooked.  Louise always cooked fish for us for Friday dinner.  Louise ate in the kitchen breakfast booth.  She listened to the Grand Old Oprey during dinner; as the children cleared the table we’d hear Louise chuckling at the antics of Cousin Minnie Pearl.  My dormant pleasure in country and western music comes from that time.   

When the parents went out to dinner we got to eat in the breakfast room with Louise.  This was a great treat, not only because of the radio, but also because Louise’s rules were more relaxed than the parents’ rules.  When we ate with Louise the fare was often hamburgers, vegetables and mashed potatoes, with cookies and ice-cream for dessert.  Nobody ever snapped stray elbows on the table at the breakfast booth.

Three years after Louise joined us, when I was 10, we moved to Redlands. Two years later, my best friend, Julie Ann, died of cancer in San Diego.  Our family attended the funeral.  I shared a bedroom with Louise at the hotel in San Diego.  Louise and I cried together, and again, Louise told her rosary.  I think that we cried all night long.  I saw that Louise’s rosary comforted her.  Louise always comforted me.

Her bedroom in the new house was on the ground floor, as was Nancy’s.  Fifteen-year-old Nancy complained that Louise would spy on her when Nancy and her date were parked in the driveway.  Our Father insisted that his dating daughters only park with their dates in our driveway.

Louise often took me to Mass with her.  This continued until, moved by friends’ books of the Saints, I decided to be a saint when I grew up.  I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it, but I thought that being a Catholic first would help, and that being a nun would help even more.  My parents insisted that they would not allow me to convert, nor to take the veil.

When we moved to Redlands our Sundays grew complicated.  One parent or another had to ferry Nancy to the Presbyterians (a social choice), Jack and Polly to the Episcopal Church (Jack had a beautiful soprano voice; he was in the choir), me to a variety of churches, and Louise to the Catholic Church.  Many Sundays after church Louise got a ride from Daddy to her sister's house in Coleton.

The combined churches of Redlands, perhaps trolling for converts, held an annual Church census.  My father didn’t approve of the intrusion.  He happily welcomed the census takers into the house and hit them with the full history of our church-going.  To Daddy’s delight they skipped our house the following years.

English friends of my parents gave them a Staffordshire bull terrier bitch, Russet.  This breed had been bred secretly as fighting dogs in England.  Father, not knowing that his friend intended to breed Russet with his own dogs, had Russet spayed.  The friendship survived with only a little strain.  Russet was ugly and sweet-natured.  My friends called her “Toad”.  Russet was officially my dog, as the family dog-lover, but she was really Louise’s baby.  The friend who gave us Russet often complained that the dog was getting fat.  Daddy once brought Louise some untouched butter on his plate.  Louise said that she’d give it to Russet.  Daddy expressed surprise, “You know that dog is too fat.”  Louise replied, “Oh I don’t give it to her straight; I always put it on a piece of bread first."  Russet was very well loved.

Before I left home, mother hired Isabel to clean the house once a week.  Louise continued to cook and be present for Polly.  Louise and Isabel became friends.

One by one we left home for college.  Louise had memories of us.  She didn’t have letters from me, who had received so much love from her.  I loved her, but wrote letters to no one.  My writing skills were non-existent.  The computer now remedies some of my writing deficits.  One of my abiding regrets is that I left this good and loving woman when I left home.  When we children made flying visits home Louise always expressed greatest joy at seeing us.  She was always there for us.

While I was living in New York, Louise became too fragile to live without nursing care.  Mother and her sister found a nursing home in Riverside, run by Seventh Day Adventists, who took loving care of Louise.  Seven other infirm people lived there.  I visited her there with Mother on a stop at home.  Louise was cheerful, wheel-chair bound, weak and still feisty.  That was the last time I  ever saw Louise.