Anna Lois Sponheim

Partial life story written in 1984:

My name is Anna Lois Sponheim, nee Ramseyer. I am 59 years old, and can’t really believe that I am that old. I feel that I am entitled to say that I am twenty-five so far as accomplishment is concerned, but that’s just an attitude I have. We shall see if I still keep this after writing my life story. I am a twin. My earliest memory (actually a process I experienced about seven years ago) was that of my birth (a little frightening) and the ecstatic experience of my twin sister being born. I wanted to go back into the womb, I had no thought why. But I couldn’t and then my sister was born. I can remember my grandmother being there rocking in her rocking chair. My earliest (standard way) memory was of driving up with my family in a car to our new hone on Cedar Avenue. We had a vacuum cleaner in the car. I have a sense that something interesting was happening but what it was eludes me. Our house on cedar was a Spanish home with wrought iron around the windows and French doors out to a patio in the backyard. I remember the pansies we had by the front porch, the mulberry tree where Lee and I would run around and around until one time Lee cried and said I was going too fast. I stopped doing things as me from then one and started doing things for both of us. My mother was beautiful and I loved her very much. Lee was real excited about Daddy and I didn’t get that one. Felt I must be bad because I didn’t get excited about him coming home. Lee got into mischief by eating cakes when she shouldn’t, stealing cookies across the street, and cutting up the furniture. I was the good girl and felt that I needed to let Lee know what the rules were. Mother felt that I should take care of her some. I was jealous of Lee when I discovered that some people thought she was prettier than me, and that seemed to make her more fun than me. Mother thought she was so cute and had such a cute voice. Daddy liked to play with Lee and I got to be just someone who was ‘just around’. I liked to get stakes and string and stake out rooms for an imaginary house in the backyard. I would use bits of wood and barrels for furniture. I also remember having clothespins as dolls and wrapping bits of material around them for clothes. I recall being alone alot. Lee was sort of around but she didn’t like to play with me. I can recall the first time I felt rejected. We were walking to school holding hands and swinging them up and down between us. This time we didn’t and I told Lee I wanted to do that and she didn’t. I was crushed. I can remember looking at the mustard flowers and smelling them and seeing the licorice plant and crying. I can recall years later loving to hike and seeing all the trees, the plants, listening to the wind, and seeing the sky and feeling that these were mine.

We moved to Cedar when I was four. Lee liked to play with the kids in the neighborhood and I didn’t. I was angry and sad alot. I recall being by myself alot even though other people might be around. I was good at learning to skate. Could not imagine riding a bike. I can recall playing alone in the hallway with tinker toys and arranging some great acrobatic arrangements with them. While trying to duplicate this another time, I noticed as I had never noticed before that I was alone and became terrified. Even stronger than this was my wonder about this.

I can recall being lonely and depressed and waiting for mother to come home. Sitting on the curb with Lee and feeling very lonely. Lee got a brownie button for having no cavities and I didn’t get one. I was so envious. We used to run home from school and try to be the first one on the swing in our backyard. Daddy fixed up a patio with a stucco wall around it in the backyard and built a real fish pond with a fountain. He also made willow chairs for the patio. He was so talented. Mother was angry alot when it was time for us to eat. I thought she didn’t like to cook for us. She had long dark brown hair and was very pretty. Daddy would let us walk him to the train when he would go to work and would tell us stories. I felt like I was lucky that he wanted to tell Lee stories because I got to hear them too. My mother played tennis with Dove and I was proud of her and her tennis playing. I remember how red her face would get. Lee was the one who played with the kids in the neighborhood. I recall staying home most of the time, playing with my dolls, or catching horny toads, whatever, and taking them for a ride in my little red wagon (they usually died). Safari’s were great fun for me and I would arrange one with a reluctant twin. We would have water in mason jars, some with potatoes too, graham crackers and away we would go. I would relate some adventure to Lee as we went along through the vacant lots next door. It was hard going for her, especially when the ants stung her bare feet and she got ink on her blouse from the house I made that had paper and ink in it, plus palm branches.

I did quite well in school even though I was afraid to be with the kids. I was alone and knew that I was alone and would watch myself trying to be friendly and it not working.

We both skipped part of 2A. They needed more people in 2B and we did well in arithmetic. I thought I was better than Lee in school because she got a party for catching up to my group in first grade. I can remember being frightened to go in the backyard where the party was going on and wondering if perhaps I shouldn’t anyway because it wasn’t my party.

So we went to the second semester 2nd grade, and then moved. Naples school had no second semester 2nd grade so we joined the first semester third grade class. We skipped a whole year this way. When it was time for us to move from Cedar I can remember consoling myself with my Rastus doll by telling it that he was my friend even though no one else was. I can remember sitting in the truck with the furniture when we moved. Somehow I was good at drawing Santa Claus’s and even though I was only a third grader, I got to draw Santa Claus’ on the blackboard even in the big kids room — 6th grade. We got to listen to music in third grade and I loved the Firebird Suite? When we got close to our new house in Naples mother excitedly told us that there was a canal at the end of the block and sure enough there was. How grand this was. later on mother would swim in the canal and Lee and I would follow her above on the walkway and be really proud of her. The canals had crabs on the steps leading into the water and I didn’t like to swim in it. We found a new friend, an older girl (we were seven). Her name was Mary Jane and she would come to our house for dinner sometimes and I felt so privileged that Mother would let her and that she wanted to. About this time we took tap dancing lessons. We both enjoyed learning how very much. Lee was good at acrobatics too, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t bend the way I was supposed to. Around this time, also, I found myself going to school by myself. I would kick rocks ahead of me in the alley on the way to school to keep me company. I can remember the second time I ever cried, and my mother putting her arms around me. This felt so good and so threatening that I didn’t do that again until I was about 16. At school I was not popular. In fact, though I had no recollection even at that time why one boy said this, but in class I was described as a “slapping machine”. How well I forgot! I found spelling so easy that I never studied for it and felt guilty about this. About this time Lee and I learned to swim. We really knew how to dog paddle when we were four or five and had on one occasion dog paddled in very deep water (about 40 feet deep) when no one was looking. This time, however, Mother and Daddy were with us and escorted us across the bay and back.

Lee and I used to go to the bay all the time when we lived on Campo Walk. We would stay all day (we were about 8 years old). About this time I began to read alot. I read all the twins books I could get my hands on — The Belgium Twins, the Dutch Twins, The French Twins, etc. Then I started reading fairy tales — The Red Fairy Book, the Blue Fairy Book, etc. I spent alot of time by myself reading until I was about 13 after I had read all the Zane Grey books he ever wrote. I was just getting into sexy books at this time when I decided that I was avoiding people by reading too much and then didn’t read, except for textbooks, until I read Alice in Wonderland and Toni Sawyer to my boys in the 1950’s. I-low I loved doing that! Shirley was born when we lived on Campo Walk. I can really remember the first time I saw her. She was beautiful and red and crying very fiercely. About this time I started, on my own, to sew scraps of material together for skirts, etc. for myself. Daddy was so proud of me. I remember looking in trash barrels for pieces of material to hoard. I went through a phase when I experienced myself as a boy while I was going through the trash looking for materials. When I got the material home, I was then a girl. I loved the water glinting on the bay, coming hone and taking long showers because I would get so cold staying in the water for hours.

When we did move to 14th Street when I was 9, Shirley was still a baby. The backyard was thrilling. It had flowers, real tall flowers in it) and butter¬flies. What fun we had catching butterflies. And smelling the grapes. We had a concord grape bush. I remember planting daisies one year and they grew so freshly and bountifully. I tried to reproduce this in later years and never could. I used to take interest in having the grass as green as possible too. About this tine (when about 14) I became interested in decorating my bedroom. I would try to get Anna Lee interested in this, but she wasn’t. This goes for sewing, decorating, landscaping, dolls, book reports, safaris. Funny, I never thought about this, but the things I was interested in she wasn’t and I married a man who was interested in his things, and I got interested too, just like with Anna Lee, but neither one of them ever liked the things I was interested in. Interesting?

A little backtracking. Lee discovered picking flowers and then selling them to the neighbors. I can remember wondering why I wasn’t so excited, but I went along with it, making myself wrong all along for not being that interested. She lost interest in this, and I found this a convenient way to talk to people I wouldn’t ordinarily talk to, so I kept it up for quite awhile on my own. Interesting that I would feel guilty because I wasn’t interested in what she was interested in and go along anyway, and yet the things I was interested in, I failed to note no one else was interested in, and, they weren’t. I feel now that interest on someone else’s part would have been very beneficial for me. Let’s see, so far this is reading, drawing, sewing, landscaping, decorating, architecture, anything water.

How come I didn’t just be interested because I was interested. Did I really have to have someone else interested in it? Let’s see, I am now 9. About this time I stole something. It was paper (newsprint) from school. I like to start with a fresh batch of paper. That represented me starting my life fresh. I did very little with it, but I loved the idea. I got caught by the teacher. Imagine her coming all the way to my house to tell my mother that I stole 2” inches of 6” x 0” newsprint! I used a couple of pennies two or three times at the grocery store and the man cashier asked me if my mother knew I was using this money. Guess I thought I could not get away with it. This goes for anything I consider wrong. I always get someone to confront me with it. Even the things that others around me do! I started climbing trees even though I was afraid of this. Climbed most of the trees in the surrounding two blocks. I learned to love playing group games with the kids in the neighborhood. I would get so excited that I would almost burst out of my skin. I discovered I was good at playing jacks. Was the expert of the neighborhood. Also remember being the one who usually figured out games and puzzles at birthday parties, etc. I can remember my cousin Bobby, who was considered very smart, having some puzzles made out of wire which you had to figure taking apart. I couldn’t believe it but I did this and I told someone Lee and I were staying with and they got real excited about it for me. This was overwhelming and I lost interest in doing them. This reminds of the olympics the kids in the neighborhood had when I was at Cedar, about 6. I was told not to win in skating. This honor was to go to the little darling (boy, was she spoiled) in the neighborhood. Put that with Lee crying because I was running to fast. Make’s sense why I didn’t want to be good at puzzles.

Anna Lee Ramseyer writes: Anna Lois & I were buddies. We were in the womb together and she was born first. I used to tease her saying she was the oldest. It didn't go over too well throughout our years together. We did everything together, even wore the same clothes in elementary and were in the same classes together. On 5th grade school assignment, we both read the book, she prepared the book report and we both stood up in front of the class. Anna Lois did all the talking. (I was too scared). She gave me one line to say, and I usually flubbed it. We sang duets until our friend Margie McMorries in 8th grade joined us for a trio. I arranged 3-part harmony and we sang for the GI's during WWII on battleships, forts, submarines, etc. in So. California. for approx. 8 years She was an elegant, gracious, smooth and very intelligent person.