Being there in spirit

It is only natural, I suppose, this time of year that talk around the dinner table at my mother’s home has turned to holiday traditions.  It is a simple question; intended to inspire fond memories and the warm glow of nostalgia.  Unfortunately, many in the crowd no longer possess the ability to resurrect those memories.  Some invent their own; still others live for now… and yesteryear and tomorrow are irrelevant.

Miss M, when asked, says she is going to her parents’ house, because she has to help them out.  I admit to struggling when it comes to sorting out truth from fiction from Miss M, but as she is 89 herself, I am fairly certain that I will bump into her when I come up on Christmas.  And that’s OK.  She “sees” her folks frequently, by evening I suspect she will have new “memories” of her Christmas celebration this week.

Unlike Miss M’s quick, although fictional, response, Miss V responded that she didn’t know, and she couldn’t think about it because she needed her tan sweater.  When I asked if she was cold, she looked annoyed that I had changed the subject; silly me for thinking that needing a sweater and being chilled were the same subject.  I’ll give her one thing – she possesses a certain purity of focus.  In this way perhaps Christmas will pass unnoticed and unmissed.

My mother, on the other hand was vague but interested.  Since I can fill in the blanks for her on these memories, I took over answering that question. 

Our Christmas eve tradition has not changed much in the 47 years I have been around to observe it.  My father’s side of the family has always gotten together for oyster stew.  Originally, my grandparents hosted it.  As they became older, their sons took over the job of hosting; sharing it between the three of them.  Now, that responsibility has passed to the next generation.  This year I will have 25 for dinner.

As I described this tradition, my mother looked on; smiling at me.  Maybe for a brief moment those memories were hers, too.  Maybe…

I hope so. 

For now those memories will have to do.  My mother cannot walk, and I don’t have ramps for access to my house, presenting a physical barrier to her attendance.  More significant is that she copes poorly with new situations; cannot follow a conversation and no longer recognizes once familiar faces.

Memories will have to do…

Bright Futures

It’s an easy thing to predict for all of you, especially on December 21st, the shortest day of the year…as long as you are reading this in the Northern Hemisphere.  Those of you suffering from the gloominess of the short days should take heart, for it will get brighter from this point forward.

For those of you suffering from the crush of the holidays, you should take heart also.  This too shall pass.  Soon the big event will be behind us.  It will be too late to shop, to wrap, to bake; or at least if you are shopping, wrapping or baking, it will be without the looming deadline of December 25th.

For those of us reveling in the extended viewing hours of Christmas lights brought on by dark days and those of us enjoying the season, blessed with the time (or the organizational skills, this does not apply to me)  to shop, wrap and bake without too much panic, take heart as well. 

So much of what is to be loved about this time of year continues past the holiday itself.  Christmas lights will stilll grace the eaves and doorways of our neighbors.  There will, perhaps, still be time for gathering with friends for a quiet celebration.  There will be snow falls for the weeks to come.

As we get ready for the holiday I wish you all many blessings, and the time to enjoy them.

Christmas Fun and Games

Part of the joy of not working this quarter and not having a 10-week old puppy in the house, like last year, is that I actually have time to enjoy the holidays.  I have had the time to put together a party for friends and neighbors.  I am nearly done with my shopping.  Today is the day, I swear, I will finish my Christmas cards (okay so I am little behind on these, but my usual deadline is Groundhog Day, so I am ahead of my usual timeline).

I am blessed with the time to truly rejoice in the season, instead of just getting through it.  In my leisurely schedule, there has been time for evening walks, ostensibly to get the dog some exercise, but, in truth, I am really out there to look at the Christmas lights.  I attended the village Christmas tree lighting ceremony, and, Friday evening, I took myself out to hear Handel’s Messiah.  Hallelujah!!!!

Among the guilty pleasures I have discovered are my new favorite Christmas special and a truly addictive online puzzle.  Since you may not have time in your busy schedule to discover them for yourself, I thought I might bring them to you. 

The first is Disney’s Prep and Landing (my apologies for the ads.  I tried and failed to upload just the video), aired on ABC.  It provides the inside story of a team of elves that prepare each house for Santa’s arrival.  Watch it and you will see exactly why it appeals to me.

The second is a game provided on NORAD’s Santa tracker website.  In the game the object is to light all the bulbs on a Christmas tree.  I’ve wasted hours already…  Click here for access to the game, and then you will need to click on the clock tower to launch it.  Click here for the Santa tracker, a must-have for anyone in need of updated delivery info on the big night.

Be Happy in Your Work

I had the occasion, yesterday to call the admissions office at University of Rochester.  I was double-checking the completeness of my application package.  In the process of doing that I talked to, quite possibly, three of the nicest and most helpful folks I’ve had the occasion to correspond with in a very long time.

How does that happen???

It’s late December, holiday crunch time, the weather has been bitterly cold lately, the days are short, the to-do lists are long.  To compound their stress level, amid the holiday bustle, they are coming up on their admissions deadline and must deal with a deluge of bits and pieces of application documentation and hundreds of needy, uncertain applicants every day.

One of the very first women I spoke with was reviewing the materials they had recently received.  I groaned quietly when she assured me they had just gotten my GRE’s.  I didn’t mean for her to hear that little disappointment (I just received my scores in the mail this week and the writing section, that I thought had gone so well, was not so well received by the graders…).  She couldn’t have been nicer, assuring me that they were fine.

In the course of my phone call, I talked with several different offices to get all the pieces of info I needed to follow-up on.  Each person was patient and kind and cheerful, at a time when they should be most frazzled.

I want to work there.

Maybe it will rub off.

To DIY or not to DIY

For a large part of my life I had a 70-hour a week job and few hobbies on which to spend my salary.  During that phase of my life, the decision to do-it-myself was usually moot.  I had money; I didn’t have time, I would tell myself.  For the most part that was true.  With a job that required long days, frequent evenings and weekends, and periodic stretches of weeks or months away from home, it was not only reasonable but necessary to have someone else do some of the work associated with maintaining a residence.

Now that I am not working so hard, it is harder to justify paying someone to do work around the house.  I have time.  I don’t have money.  I find myself doing more and more myself.  I have learned a lot more about plumbing in the last 4 years than I ever did in the 43 that preceded them.  I have laid a new tile floor.  I have stripped sanded, bleached, stained and varnished the mantlepiece in my condo to restore it to its old glory.  I do my own yard work and paint like a pro.  For that matter, I kill my own spiders and catch my own mice.

That said, there is still work that I can’t or choose not to do; either because I lack the necessary strength or the requisite skills, or occasionally because the balance between buying the required tools instead of paying someone else does not make economic sense.  I did not tear-off and replace my own roof last year.  I hired someone else to do it, just as I hired someone to install new electrical outlets, as electricity scares me.

I am, in many ways, my father’s daughter.  Growing up on a dairy farmer, he learned early to fix things himself.  I grew up in a house where we did, in fact, do it ourselves.  I watched my father repair electronics, frame new walls, take down trees and repair the lawn mower.  As a family, we washed and re-hung the wooden storm windows each Fall, balancing the 4 by 6 foot windows on the ladder as we walked up.  We called it “Storm Window Sunday”.  As a family we tore out old walls and put in the kid’s bathroom.  I remember swinging a sledge-hammer in my pajamas…bedtime during renovations in the house I grew up in and I remember being paid a nickel for each bucket of plaster I hauled downstairs.

Just a few years ago, while hanging the Christmas lights at mom’s house, my father long since gone at this point, I chuckled as I looked at the floodlight base I was installing over the front door.  For as long as I could remember the floodlight was used only one-time a year; 14 feet above the front steps as a spotlight for the Christmas wreath.  I was chuckling because the base was boldly marked with our name.

My mother, supervising from the bottom of the step-ladder asked what was so funny.  I retorted with a query as to just how worried could you be about the light getting misplaced when the only time it ever was used, it was unreachable by anyone.  Her reply spoke volumes about my father I think.  She said that all of his tools were marked, since he did so much work for everyone in the neighborhood.  In going through his tools I discovered she was right.  Many were etched.  Some had tape nametags.  Still others had our name in marker.

Knowing this now you might guess that some of my fondest memories of my father involve working around the house.  During the years we painted the house (and there were many of them), I remember standing next to him painting windows.  He was tall, compared to 10-year old me, and left-handed.  I was short and right-handed.  Together we could lay a fresh coat of paint on the 16-pane windows in no time.  Many of my other memories of him are set in his workshop.  This is my favorite photo ever of the two of us, although I have no recollection of it being taken:

So even though my DIY’ing took a multi-year sabbatical, I have come back to my roots.  I get it from both of my parents, but today I am thinking most about my father.

He would have been 81 today.

Turning Over a New Leaf

I turned 47 last week.  In my blog for that day I bemoaned, not getting older, but the sad, slow pace at which I seemed to be getting wiser.  Rather than just get depressed about that disappointing state of affairs, I decided to do something about it.  I decided to cheat.

In just one week’s time I have made marvelous headway.

After being chastised for the fact that my fireplace is hung with two stockings, mine and my sister’s, instead of the three that should be there, I took myself to the needlecraft store to get the makings of the beast’s stocking.  I stood there looking at books with designs and several counted cross-stitch kits, contemplating the number of years it would take me to finish that.  I was about to abandon the search when the shopkeeper popped up beside me.  Seeing my dazed look, she said she had two words for me.

“Long stitch.  You’ll be done in no time.” she assured me.

I was sold.

The staff at my mother’s home had a Christmas party for the residents today.  When asked what I would like to bring, I said, “leftovers”.  While shopping for my own party I bought a little extra.  This morning I made up a new batch of hors d’oeuvre from the stuff I still had; no thumbing through cookbooks, no last-minute run to the grocery store.  I felt a little guilty.

This evening with the dog romping in the snow, feeling disinclined to come in out of the cold (we’re in single digits right now), and me in my stocking-feet, feeling really disinclined to go out after her, I lured the beast in with a laser pointer.  While that may not count as, precisely, wise, I still think it was pretty crafty.

Now as I am preparing to start on the beast’s stocking once again, I have pulled out canvas and yarn and the ultimate cheaters; reading glasses. 

It is a first for me.

This getting old  wise thing is great, isn’t it?

Number of Days Until Christmas: 9

Number of un-nice thoughts I have had today: too many to count.

I am getting coal in my stocking this year, and I would just like to take of few moments to thank the people responsible.

• To the friendly folks in charge at my local Walmart for forcing me to the politically incorrect conclusion that unemployment numbers cannot possibly be high enough if these people still have jobs.  My one-hour photos that I ordered last night took more than one hour to find once I got to the store 12 hours later.  Thanks for that little kink in my schedule.
• To the woman behind me who hit me with her shopping cart; not once, not twice.  Three times she hit me in a line that was not moving, thus requiring absolutely no movement of the cart.  I am indebted to you for the patch of missing skin up the back of my ankle.
• To the woman in front of me who refused to turn right on red, despite the 19-foot gap between the person ahead of her going straight and the curb; thank you ever so much for the sore throat I now have from screaming in my vehicle.  It’s folks like you who make me appreciate winter and the fact that I have my windows rolled up.
• To the online seller who has ignored 4 emails over the last week who chose to ship my item today after I just bought the replacement (in my spare time kicking around Walmart).  Thanks – now I will have two…
• To the guy in the SUV stopped in the middle of the parking lot, waiting for some imaginary space to open up, who glared at me after I went around him and headed for the farthest possible spot.  I am thankful for the warm feelings on a cold and blustery day.
• To my mother who eats precisely half of what is on each spoonful and lets the rest dribble off the spoon no matter how much or how little is on the spoon.  I am sure you intend to teach me patience if it kills us both, so I suppose I am grateful for that too.
• To the smarmy little elf who is gonna tell Santa.  Thanks a lot, pal.

I know that I should be more concerned with eternal damnation, but I’ve pretty much made my peace with that.  Now I’m just pissed about the coal.

White Christmas?

Believe it or not, a white Christmas in my hometown is not a guarantee.  It may be cold enough but dry, or it may be precipitating but too warm (a balmy 34 anyone?) for the white stuff. 

If you know me at all, you know that I do, in fact, dream of a white Christmas.  I know that at least one of you has noticed that it started snowing on the website about a week ago.  I am working on sending out wintry vibes.

Although, I try not to get my hopes up, I must admit that things are looking good. The grass has, once again, disappeared under a blanket of snow and the big white fluffy flakes continue to fall.  Even better, today is 11 days out from the big day and the forecast looks good.  Weather.com shows a 10-day forecast up to the 24th of December with a ten-day high temperature of 33 degrees and snow showers possible of every single day but one.

I am giddy… like a schoolgirl again (well, maybe not “again”.  I was a pretty serious child). 

Today, I have stood in the backyard catching snowflakes on my tongue.  I have, while pretending to be writing my Christmas cards, sat in the dark in my dining room; the better to watch the snow falling outside my windows.  I have danced out in the snow in my stocking feet to try to capture for you the magic of this evening in a photo.

This is home…

And then there were none???

This afternoon I remarked that I needed to get younger friends.  It had nothing to do with being physically active or going out on the town.  I made the remark after finding out that yet another one of the residents in my mother’s household at the nursing home had passed away last night. 

I have over the last several years found myself surprisingly fond of these old souls with whom I have little in common.  I am certain, in most cases, that I am not even seeing a fraction of who they are, or who they were in the primes of their lives.  I have not shared long and lively conversations getting to know them, some have never even said a word to me.  Nevertheless, they are dear to me.

I suffer no delusions about their age.  I know that they would not be residents of a long-term, skilled nursing facility if they were hale, hearty fellows with a long life ahead of them.  I am aware that these are members of a most vulnerable population.  Still it is a shock to lose one of my dinner companions, and quite simply, it hurts.

I routinely take the stairs up to  my mother’s third floor household.  I seldom meet anyone else there either coming and going.  It is the perfect place to have a good little cry before wiping away my tears and putting on my cheerful, visiting face; six flights worth of grief and then it is time to move on…  easier said than done, of course, because I am in tears once again.

B lived a long and, from outward appearances at least, happy life.  He was outgoing and generous, stopping at each of the tables to offer a greeting before taking his own place; quick to offer comfort to the anxious among the group.  Although confined to a wheelchair, he motored around much of the building and grounds amiably, frequently greeting me in the lobby. 

Over the next few days I will see ashen-faced, adult children sorting belongings and reclaiming cherished possessions; an uncelebrated inheritance.  I am a stranger to them and they have other things to do than chat with strangers.  My sympathy will go unexpressed, but they will have it nonetheless. 

I have seen this routine often enough to know it by now.  Death is to be expected among this population. 

I need to get younger friends…

Party Animal

With more than 30 people in my house last  night, many of them strangers to the beast, I was expecting to have to kennel the dog at some point in the evening just to minimize damages. 

I could not have been more wrong.  Aside from some generous slobber offered to the youngest attendee, whose nose was exactly at the beast’s eye level, she was a very good girl.  I watched in stunned amazement as she made her way gently through the crowd, stopping graciously to allow herself to be petted occasionally, before moving on to catch a wayward crumb or two…or possibly more.

I’m guessing that picking up crumbs is exhausting, or maybe it is just that having a roommate who was a cooking, cleaning and decorating dervish before the party started and then being visited by all those people interfered with some of the 18 hours a day the beast needs for her beauty sleep.  She has been recovering all day.  While I felt fine this morning, it seems the beast was a little hung-over, not from any drinking mind you, but either from eating too much exotic food or from the activity.  This morning, the beast lay in her chair and cried and quivered.

Whatever it was it seems to have gotten out of her system, and she seems right as rain now.  Oh to be young and recover quickly from the party the night before…