Letters From Home

My mother had the hots for Paul Newman from the get-go.  People used to tease her about it, we four kids included, but that bothered her not a whit.

I find it somewhat melancholy to reflect that Paul Newman died of lung cancer, just like my mother, and within a few months of each other.

I do hope Mom is getting to meet him in the afterlife and, um, express her appreciation for his talent.

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My mother would have been 79 today.  She always told us she wouldn’t make it to 80 and we always told her she was being silly.  I guess she got the last laugh.

This poem always reminded me of her.  Don’t take it literally; Millay was referring to the Greek version of “hell,” not the Christian one.

Prayer to Persephone

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Be to her, Persephone,
All the things I might not be:
Take her head upon your knee.
She that was so proud and wild,
Flippant, arrogant and free,
She that had no need of me,
Is a little lonely child
Lost in Hell,—Persephone,
Take her head upon your knee:
Say to her, “My dear, my dear,
It is not so dreadful here.”

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My brothers and I are all baby boomers. So are all our spouses. Thus, we are a group of people whose parents grew up during the Depression.

That’s an era that produced lasting scars, in ways not always apparent. As most people realize, the deprivations of the Depression led to the excesses of the Fifties, because kids who grew up with nothing were now prosperous adults, the war was over and it was time, by golly, to enjoy not being deprived.

Why did I get to thinking about this today? Well, because one of the lasting effects of the Depression concerns food. Our parents were taught by their parents that Wasting Food was something akin to a capital crime. Why, those starving children in [name some exotic country halfway round the world] would be happy to finish what you ungrateful kids are refusing to finish! I/you put that food on your plate so you darn well better eat it! Clean your plate!

The result was that several generations of kids were trained from the get-go to keep eating till the plate was empty, regardless of whether their stomachs were full. And to Not Waste Food. Which might well be the reason why so many of us turned out to be fat adults.

Fortunately, my brothers and I weren’t treated to the extremes of Not Wasting Food Mania that some of our friends were, because my dad was an Olympic gold medal picky eater and we were a bunch of sharp, wiseass kids who weren’t shy about asking why we had to clean our plates when Dad didn’t. But my husband’s father would brook no such backtalk and by golly if you put it on your plate you had to eat it, period.

Thus, my husband, from long conditioning, believes at a visceral level (no pun intended) in Not Wasting Food. It pains him to toss out an unopened jar or can that’s past its expiration date. Even though he studied organic chemistry all the way through grad school, he refuses to believe that organic substances in sealed containers deteriorate in any way. And any cooked food that is placed in a storage container in the fridge is Still Good until it starts growing green and purple alien life.

Even though I do my best to put dates on the various zip-lock bags and containers in the fridge, if the stuff still “looks good” he is going to eat it, period. He likes taking leftovers to work for his lunches and for the most part that works out fine. Not always, though. Apparently he deemed something “still good” a couple days ago that wasn’t… and came home sick from work today.

Putting dates on stuff is not enough. I’m going to have to be the Fridge Police and throw things away myself. While he’s not looking, of course, lest he suffer gastric distress of a different kind.

photo credit: Jill - Glossy Veneer

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My father would have been 86 today.  He always made sure that people knew that when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, it was August 6 in Japan but only August 5 in the USA, and therefore the bomb was NOT dropped on his birthday.  He was pretty adamant about that. 

He went his own way in life, from the very beginning (although I don’t think his parents appreciated the fact that he was a world class picky eater–certainly my mom didn’t).  He chose his own profession, teaching, and was a genuine star.  There are still people who took his classes decades ago who tell me and my brothers how good he was.

He handled the inevitable slings and arrows of life and even though he faded out through the last decade of his life with Alzheimers he never stopped being Dad.  For that, my brothers and I are forever grateful.

Happy birthday, Dad.  You’re still the greatest.

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My parents were devoted coffee drinkers. When I was little, Mom would brew coffee on the stove in one of those percolator pots (if you’ve never seen one, I bet you could find one of the old Maxwell House commercials somewhere online and see coffee perking in action with catchy music). Both parents liked plenty of cream and sugar, and it was a constant battle between kids who were grossed out by little clumps of coffee-fused sugar in the sugar bowl and parents who didn’t think before they spooned.

When instant coffee came on the market, my dad was all for it. And not just because it meant he didn’t actually have to perk the coffee (we are talking about typical 50s kitchen-helpless male here). My mom was prone to zoning out somewhere else in the house and forgetting she had the percolator on the stove, and she had already melted two pots into the electric stove burners. You can imagine how long you have to leave an aluminum coffee pot on an electric burner for that to happen.

So from that day forward, my parents drank instant coffee. And the freeze-dried stuff when that became available. Always with plenty of sugar and cream. That was what “coffee” was in our household.

Any wonder I hated the stuff?

In fact, I was a dedicated non-coffee-drinker till I was diagnosed with diabetes and had to give up sugary beverages. On a business trip, I decided to try a cup of coffee with just a little cream in it. Whoa! I still didn’t brew it for myself at home, but at least I had something to drink at restaurants.

Then my daughter started working at Starbucks to help pay her way through college. Needless to say, I had never set foot in a Starbucks at that point. She very carefuly wrote down the name of a drink she though I would like (tall sugar-free-vanilla caramel macchiato) and I dutifully went in and ordered it. And I liked it.

One of the perks of Starbucks employment is one free pound of coffee per week. So my daughter got some for me and I acquired a coffee grinder, and from then on I happily ground and brewed my own. This continued in later years when my son worked at Starbucks in turn.

But after he left Starbucks, I realized there would be no more free (otherwise expensive) Starbucks coffee, and my favorite online source Cup of Heaven was really just for the occasional special treat, so for the first time I had to really think about what was available at the supermarket. I decided my best chance of good coffee at reasonable prices was at Trader Joe’s.

After sampling several different varieties, I have found a winner: Costa Rican Tarrazu.

Now let’s just hope Trader Joes’ doesn’t discontinue it.

photo credit: slimninja

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My dad died in 2002, a few months before his 80th birthday. He’d been in declining health for several years and had Alzheimers, so it wasn’t unexpected. In fact, my brothers and I were amazed he hung on as long as he did.

In the years since then I’ve found that events like his birthday and what would have been my parents’ anniversary if they hadn’t gotten divorced don’t really impinge on my consciousness the way Father’s Day does.

My son put it best, the first Father’s Day I had without my dad. He said “You still have a father. It’s just that he’s not interested in material things any more.”

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I miss you.

photo credit: RobW_

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My daughter remarked the other day that this year her birthday falls on a Thursday, the same day as the day she was born.

That led me to thinking about something I discovered about my… what do you call the family you were born into? They’re not your immediate family any more, are they? … anyway, one of many interesting things about my parents, my brothers and me is that my birthday, my mom’s birthday, and my two younger brothers’ birthdays always fell on the same day of the week, and my dad’s birthday and my oldest brother’s birthdays always fell on the same day of the week (a different day from the rest of us). I don’t suppose the odds against that are as phenomenal as having everyone’s birthday always be on the same day of the week, but I suspect it’s pretty unusual. The more so because ten years separates me from my youngest brother.

Both my kids were born on Thursday, but three years apart, so they will never have same-day birthdays.
However, my son’s birthday and my husband’s birthday fall on the same day of the week. No such luck for the female half of the family.

It was hard enough on me when my son went off to kindergarten for the first time. What will I feel like in two years when my daughter hits 30?

Regardless of what day or year I was born on… I feel old.

photo credit: Richard Parmiter

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I just got home from traveling to my mom’s memorial service.

My brothers and I spent quite a bit of time figuring out what we would do, and despite the long-distance arrangements (two of us are in California and two are in Indiana) we managed to pull it together perfectly.

I always used to joke that my mom would show up late for her own funeral. This wasn’t a funeral, per se, because she donated her body for medical research, but the real joke is that my daughter, her girlfriend and I got caught up in the Great American Airlines Flight Cancellation Debacle and it was we who were almost late to the funeral. Mom would have gotten a huge laugh out of that.

People from all over showed up to say goodbye, including my brother’s first wife and my dad’s second wife’s sister. Some people who knew Mom from the Springbank Retreat Center drove many miles to sing at the service. The four of us all picked “Try to Remember” from the soundtrack of “The Fantasticks” as the song that would best represent Mom, but I knew that she also wanted Leon Bibb’s “Lost in the Stars” played, so I transferred that from an old record to digital format and my younger brother cleaned up the few odd crackles in it. And we all sang along with Judy Collins’ “Amazing Grace” at the end (fortunately, I could sing it an octave lower than she did).

All in all, I think it was the kind of send-off Mom would have approved of.

She died a month ago today and I still don’t really have it in my head that she’s gone.

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Charm bracelets were really hot when I was a kid.  My cousin even sent me an official American Bandstand charm bracelet, which I wish I still had because they seem to be going for pretty good money on eBay these days.  My aunt and uncle gave me one from Switzerland that had lovely little bells on it.  I can still remember how it sounded.

Alas, those have both disappeared somewhere over the years and through my family’s many moves.  My high school friends gave me another one when we moved away from Iowa, and oddly enough I still have the actual bracelet but the charms are gone.  How that happened, I have no clue.

The bracelets seem to be undergoing a fashion renaissance of sorts these days.  And vintage ones are all over eBay (and I have been sorely tempted by several, but they went for prices higher than I could justify).  So about a year ago, I got another charm bracelet of my own, using a discount with the Exposures catalog.  It’s a nice double-linked silver bracelet that came with one small photo charm, and I bought another photo charm at the same time so I could have small photos of both my kids when they were each in the first grade.

I have slowly added charms to represent other important memories.  A silver sixpence for luck and for my time living in London.  A mother cat carrying a kitten, in remembrance of Caliban and her children.  A pewter cathedral rose window for my grandmother, who loved Notre Dame (the Paris original).  A bookworm for my son’s childhood nickname, and a Welsh dragon for my daughter (and for my memories of Wales).  An old-fashioned radio microphone for my husband, whom I met when I hired him for a radio station job.  And so forth.

I have been thinking long and hard about what charms I should buy to represent my parents.  I thought originally of a charm representing the “I love you” hand sign for my father, who was hard of hearing, but he never used sign language other than putting a hand behind his ear to indicate he had no idea what you just said.  Maybe a small record, for his love of jazz.  Or skis, to represent his time in the 10th Mountain Division during WWII.  Or a car to represent his love of travel.  If I could find a charm representing Nags Head, North Carolina, I’d buy that in a flash, because that was his favorite vacation spot.

My mother died last Sunday and I was wondering what I should get to represent her.  It didn’t take long to figure it out.  Years ago, the summer before I got married, I went with my family to Nova Scotia where my mom grew up.  We were exploring the beach area one day and I came across a big stack of lobster traps and took time to investigate.  My mother got the idea that I would like to have my very own lobster trap (heaven knows why) and she made arrangements to buy one.

Alas, we lived in a very small apartment and had absolutely no place to put a full-sized lobster trap.  It remained at my parents’ house for years until, after my parents divorced, my dad’s second wife disposed of it.  That wasn’t the only mean spirited thing she did, but that was representative of the way she thought.  Oh well, water under the bridge.

At any rate, yesterday I realized that a small lobster trap charm would be perfect, and I managed to find one.

Now, what on earth to get for my dad.

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My mother started smoking when she was 14 or so, because “the movies made it look so glamorous.” Or so she told us in later years.

While she tried to quit, and did quit, several times over the years, she always started smoking again. It wasn’t till she had a stroke at age 69 that she finally gave it up forever.

I always thought that if she were going to get lung cancer it would have happened long ago, but I was wrong. She was just diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, and it seems that her remaining time with us will be measured in months.

Mom never knew her father. My grandmother bravely had her and raised her as a single parent in times when such things were Not Done. Her father was much older than her mother and married to someone else. He saw her only a few times when she was a baby and she has no memories of him whatsoever. He was never involved in her life.

A few years ago she said that she’d like to at least know what he looked like. So I started browsing the internet, looking for photos. He had a title, and he was a big muckety-muck at a respected British institution, so I thought surely there would be a picture of him floating around somewhere, but there wasn’t, at least not one that I could find.

Yesterday, through a happy set of circumstances and through the kindness of someone I only just “met” via email, I managed to obtain a photo, print it out and send it to my mother.

So at least there is that, to brighten up some otherwise gloomy times.

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