By: Marlene Oxender
Years ago, when I started sorting through my parents’ estate, I didn’t know I’d become a writer. I wasn’t looking for more things to do. But here I am. Writing. Editing. Sending stories to publishers.
The interesting items within my parents’ home gave me something to write about. I was finding old, intriguing memorabilia. Old scrapbooks. Old letters. Old papers. Old things my parents chose to save.
The writing of stories led to the publication of my first book, Picket Fences, which begins with a story about my Uncle Gordon Kimpel and his fiancé, Marcella Krill Koerner.
Gordon and Marcella had planned to be married after his return from the service, but Gordon perished in a plane crash.
My father, Vernon Kimpel, was 21 years old when he was drafted into the Army in 1941. My Uncle Gordon was just sixteen months younger than my dad. Gordon entered the service in 1942.
Grandma and Grandpa Kimpel were the parents of two girls and ten boys. Six of their ten sons – Vernon, Gordon, Russell, Clair, Bill, and Floyd – were drafted into the military back in the 1940s.
Dad and his brothers, Russell and Clair Kimpel, were honorably discharged at the end of the year in 1945.
Uncle Gordon’s scrapbook had been stored in a cardboard box in my parents’ home. In the same box was Marcella’s scrapbook – a beautiful book full of cards and letters she’d received from Gordon.
In Marcella’s later years, she gifted her scrapbook and Gordon’s silver wings to the Kimpel family. The photos, cards, and letters the two had left behind told their story – a story I was able to piece together and include in Picket Fences.
My second book, Stevie, is a collection of personal stories about my late younger brother, Stevie Kimpel, who had Down syndrome. It was a fun book to write.
Stevie was the youngest of eleven children who grew up in the house my parents purchased in 1947. He was born in 1969, and Mom took care of him for fifty years.
Mom passed away six years ago at the age of ninety-two. She used to tell me there weren’t many ninety-year-old women who got out of bed each morning to take care of a son. Mom was still packing lunches and making sure Stevie was on time for the van that took him to his work.
You could say Mom was his manager. She made phone calls to others who gladly picked him up for ball games; she helped him find things to do and places to go on weekends.
There were times when Stevie had biked to a ballgame when it became dark or rainy. Mom would look out the window and see someone had brought him home and was unloading his bicycle from the back of their truck. It was part of how Stevie’s community made life happen for him.
Not everyone feels they could write a book about their life, but everyone has a few tales to tell and stories to share.
In 1967, when my father had been home from the service for twenty years, he wrote his memoire. In his cursive handwriting, he left a snippet of what life was like. If he were still here, I’d be interviewing him, learning more, and adding to the eleven pages he’d left behind.
I recently read that only three percent of the books writers have started will be finished. Of the three percent of those books, only twenty percent are published. It made me think there are many good stories out there that ought to be shared – but never are.
Although many of us became grandparents at what may be considered a young age, we know there are little people on this earth who see us as the older person we’ve become.
As you can imagine, the words within the title of my book, “Grandma, You Already Am Old!,” are words that were spoken to me. Words I’ve never forgotten. Words I decided to put on the cover of my Grandma book.
Perhaps the best way to describe my “Grandma” book is to share the Introduction: “Blessed are those who don’t know they’re old, for it will be a child who will tell them so.
Grandparents everywhere know how young they are, and they mentally need to hang on to that idea. No cute little kid needs to tell us otherwise.
It was my four-year-old grandson, who gets around like a monkey most of the time, who reminded me of my oldness. There were even witnesses who heard his words after I asked him if he would continue to visit Grandma and Grandpa when we’re old.
There was a short moment of silence before he answered: ‘Grandma, you already am old!’ What happens when you’re a grandmother and a writer of stories? A book about oldness gets put together.
The sorry thing is – I’m a nonfiction writer. Everything I write is true. And I have enough words to fill a book about all the oldness going on around me.
The secret that we older people know about staying young – is in not recognizing that we’re old. We don’t need that kind of negativity.
But we do need to spend time with young people who innocently, yet gladly, remind us that we’ve celebrated more than a few birthdays.”
“Grandma, You Already Am Old!” is now available on Amazon. You may also check at your local library. And thank you to all who have, or will, leave a written review on Amazon. A written review is truly a gift to an author.
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Marlene Oxender is a writer, speaker, and author. She writes about growing up in the small town of Edgerton, her ten siblings, the memorabilia in her parents’ estate, and her lte younger brother, Stevie Kimpel, who was born with Down syndrome. Her three published books, Picket Fences, Stevie, and “Grandma, You Already Am Old!” are available on Amazon. Marlene can be reached at mpoxender@gmail.com
