jiggity jog

My Great-Aunt Freda used to sing a song to me when I was little when she was cooking lunch (usually peas, ham and some sort of something in a pot) on the stove after we had gone to the morning market:

"To market, to market, to buy a fat pig;
Home again, home again, jiggity-jig.
To market, to market, to buy a fat hog;
Home again, home again, jiggety-jog."

She was a plump woman, who always looked no more than 70 years old to me, even when she was 80, 90, etc. She would babysit me when my mom was at work. She would stand on the orange and white linoleum floor and stir the pot singing or humming to me. Her house was 1930s South Seattle in all senses of the term, post-World War boom frozen in time. On top of the buffet in the small dining room held her favorite 1920s costume jewelry and her brother's harmonicas from one of the great Wars, I'm not sure if it is I or II, she had so many siblings in which she was the youngest. I loved slobbering and blowing in and out of the harmonicas, probably not realizing how obnoxious I was for hours on end, but I never remember her asking me to stop or be quiet. She would stay in the kitchen putting peas in everything (yuck! I would think to myself) including if we were having Top Ramen, which was my favorite thing (minus peas!). She also made hearty bean soups that I thought were quite strange, made of whatever was on hand I am quite sure. Everything had ham in it. Her split pea soup had both things she seemed to like, ham and peas, two things I hated. But I wanted her to want me to stay there, so I grimaced through each sip.

Mostly we had Top Ramen since she figured out quickly I was going to starve myself if she kept making pea soup. We ate off the wobbly card table that was positioned on the thick shag carpet, her folding chair positioned in view of the television, my back to the TV. As we were finishing the noodles she would lean over with a twinkle in her eye and say, "Now don't tell anyone, you have to do this when no one is looking!" and drew the bowl up to her lips and SLURRP! the remaining broth and swallow it down quickly. I would follow in suit, swinging my short legs under the card table and giggling for minutes afterwards.

Then Aunt Freda would put the bowls away and clean up the kitchen, and I would pet the kitty and chase kitty around the green shag carpet living room. Kitty was a nearly deaf siamese cat, which are loud and vocal as it is, but this cat was pitifully deaf and would almost howl. I remember the cat never, ever shut up, would always meow, even while sleeping it seemed. I like the kitty because it reminded me of a cat from a Disney movie ("We are Siamese if you please! Meow! ba-doom-boom-boom. We are Siamese if you don't please! Meow! boom boom."), and also I loved it's pretty blue eyes.

Then Aunt Freda would turn up the volume on the television (The Andy Griffith Show or Matlock), sit on the davenport (couch), and promptly fell asleep within minutes. I wonder how much of her life she really missed out on. She was never able to drive, she had narcolepsy (excessive sleepiness). She was never tired, but if she stayed still long enough she would be asleep straight away. I would watch from the back of the church Sunday morning, waiting for her head to drop a few minutes into the minister's sermon. Like clockwork, her red 1930s style hat drooped forward, chin dropping to her chest, making her almost completely out of view from behind the pew.

That's another thing that fascinated me about Aunt Freda's house, all the hats. She had a hundred hat boxes, most of them stacked on a large shelf in the bathroom that overhung the cast-iron white clawfoot tub. If I was spending the night, I would take a bath before bedtime, I would sit in the clawfoot tub, which never seemed to be warm no matter how warm the water was, and stare up at all the beautiful hat boxes. They were out of reach for my height, but close enough to see all the beautiful victorian women painted on them, or the beautiful flowers. I would take long baths.

She had beautiful hats she made and decorated herself, she was a proficient seamstress. My favorite thing she made, and I think hers too, were the Raggedy Ann (and Andy) dolls. I don't recall ever reading the books, but she knew the stories for Raggedy Ann. Other than sewing and church, I never saw her anywhere else except her garden, even into the last years of her life. She had a grand garden, looking quite well for the weather we have in the Seattle area, and could grow any flower or vegetable. My nickname for her was Freedy Weedy - I thought I was pretty clever. I explained to my dad many times on the car ride, "It's 'cause she's always WEEEDINNNG. WEEEDINNG. Get ittt??? Daaad?" I must've been an exhausting child.

My aunt was one of those old school frontier women, who was raised on a large ranch started after her parents, german/irish immigrants, had settled in Oregon after reaching the end of the long Oregon trail. I've seen black and white pictures of her as a young, thin little 20-something, riding a motorcycle to and from work "while the men were away at war." Auntie Freda lived to her nineties and died not too long ago. Her older sister, who died more than a decade ago and was much older, was named Eunice. Gotta love those immigrant names. Eunice raised my mom during the early years of my mom's life while my grandma was at school and my mom's sisters were at Catholic boarding school. Later, Freda was a part of my life raising me. I would watch Freda and Eunice play pinochle or bridge for hours at a time, bickering with each other about the rules or whatever sisters bicker over, while they snacked on sugar cookies.



It's funny how I remember sub-conciously little childhood things like this when I feel like I'm truly at home. I found I was singing to myself this morning, as I was cleaning up the house, "home again, home again, jiggity jog..."