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Chopping, Stirring, Remembering

It happened again the other day, at it has so many times in the last few months.  And it will happen again, I have grown to accept, until, well, until it finally doesn’t.

I reached for my phone, an instinct rooted in countless repetitions across my life, to call my mother.  She’ll know the answer, I was certain, to whatever small question I was considering about a recipe, or a plant, or the identity of some distant connection in our family.  In the age of over-abundant digital information, where some have never touched a cookbook or handwritten family recipe and turn instead to the words of distant strangers, I still trusted my mother’s knowledge, experience, and judgment on certain topics above all options.  Besides, it was a reason for a chat.  It was a chance to hear her voice, to hear “love you, too, sweetie,” one more time.

In the more than nine months since my mother died, I’ve thought about calling her dozens of times.  At first, my hand might even reach toward the phone on the kitchen counter before I caught myself.  Nine months into the grief journey, memory at last overcomes instinct before I look for the device, but the inclination still keeps coming.  I asked a beloved friend who lost someone the year before Mom died how long this pattern would go on.  “Until it doesn’t anymore,” she replied, with a sad, knowing shrug.

The phone call instinct hit me again when I contemplated a summer tradition during our first summer without Mom.  As far back as I could remember, she undertook the project every summer until she no longer had her own kitchen. A second or two later, still stinging from that urge to call, I reached instead for a small binder on my cookbook shelf, a little loose-leaf number she made for us with copies of recipes from family and friends she wanted to be sure she preserved.

I’d never checked the binder for applesauce hints.  After all, we’ve made it every summer for years, first under her direct supervision, then from memory of her guidance when working in the kitchen was no longer easy for her.  In truth, I didn’t really have any lingering questions about the relatively simple process, but I wondered if seeing her notes might help me make my way into the kitchen and get started.  How funny to realize that this perennial favorite was not included in her compilation.  Maybe she thought it was too obvious and simple to write it down; who knows?

So, with nothing to guide me but memories and a daughter’s fear that I would let Mom down if our family moved through a holiday season with no applesauce on the table, it was time to get busy.  Making applesauce is a fun and pretty labor-intensive afternoon in the kitchen with a team of like-minded helpers.  Over the decades, my mother made it with her mother, one of her aunts, her children, then her grandchildren.  But company in the kitchen this time was not for me.  Uncertain how it would feel with the grief still so fresh, I undertook it alone.  I wondered what memories it would invoke, and how it would feel to revisit them.  Deep down, I hoped it maybe it would help.  And there was also the opportunity to honor Mom’s habit of giving away her bounty to the sick or the sad, those in need of comfort food, or as a simple gesture of thanks.

Alone in the kitchen with the gorgeous green apples, knives and cutting boards, the saucepan and the mill, I got to work.  Sure enough, as the tart aroma of the cut fruit filled the house, the memories turned my kitchen into a movie theater of the heart, with images and voices moving around as though they were standing at the counter next to me.  In memory of those gone ahead who re-appeared to help out that afternoon, here is a faithful description of the process she taught us.

The Very Best Homemade Applesauce

Ingredients and equipment:

½ bushel of Lodi (pronounced Loe-die) apples

Good paring knives and cutting boards

5-quart stove pot

8-10 freezer containers, depending on size you prefer

Foley mill

Step 1:  Wash apples thoroughly.  Quarter and remove core.  Chop quarters into smaller sections about 1-1 ½ inches across; do not peel.  Using smaller pieces enables the apples to soften faster on the stove and helps prevent any burning on the bottom of the pan.

Add about an inch of water to the pot.  Don’t add too much water, or the sauce becomes too thin.  Heat water to near simmering, then begin adding apple pieces.  Increase heat to a gentle, ongoing simmer, stirring frequently, on low-medium heat until apples soften and break down. Continue adding additional apples and simmering until mixture reaches desired thickness.  Extra water can always be added if needed.

Mom always said that as long as you didn’t burn the apples in the pot, you couldn’t really mess this up.  The secret to the whole thing, she said, was choosing the right apples.  We always use Lodi, an early summer apple with a distinctive, lip-smacking tart flavor.  We don’t add sugar, believing the natural flavor is the secret ingredient.  Over years of offering our delicacy to guests, it’s become clear the tart flavoring is not everyone’s thing.  Recently I’ve made a second batch using a sweeter apple variety called Paula Red, recommended by the women at Jackson’s Orchard in Bowling Green, Ky, the only folks whose opinions on applesauce I value as much as Mom’s. (Jackson’s is a family enterprise that produces the best apples you’ve ever laid eyes on.)  I serve that second variety to friends and save the Lodi batch for family occasions.

Step 2:  Pour the simmered apple “stew” into a Foley mill positioned above a large mixing bowl.  The mill uses an angled blade and the circular motion of the crank to strain the stew into sauce consistency and retains the skins to be discarded.  Crank until all stew has been compressed into sauce; let cool before storing.  A half-bushel of apples makes about nine quarts.  Use or freeze in 2-3 weeks; freezes well for up to a year.

As I chopped, stirred and milled, I let the memories flow around the kitchen as they would.  There was Mom’s Aunt Dadie, who cooked with a sensible print cotton apron over her dress, which was always paired with nylon stockings and low-heeled pumps, even in the kitchen.  She was Mom’s favorite family cooking companion, competent, fast and focused in the kitchen.  There was Mom in my sister Kate’s kitchen the last year she was able to join in the process. She perched on a stool by the stove, also sporting an apron, stirring one pot patiently while I tended another, calmly reassuring her always over-anxious daughter that I was doing just fine, just fine.  There was my beautiful niece, sharing memories of her childhood time in her grandmother’s kitchen, mimicking the circular motion of the mill with her right arm and emphasizing, “That’s work!”  Finally, there was my own granddaughter, probably about four years old, caught at the Christmas table using both hands to up-end the delicate porcelain bowl (also Mom’s) so she could lick the final smears of applesauce off the bottom.

At the end of a long, hot afternoon in the kitchen with my memories and the visitors they brought along, I filled a freezer shelf and felt some relief that I had done Mom proud.  Thanksgiving will be here soon, and we’ll have plenty of applesauce for the family table.  Bowl-licking will be encouraged.

A couple of weeks after I finished, a kind neighbor with great handy skills loaned me a tool and expert guidance on how to fix my locked-up sink disposal.  When I knocked on the door to return his loan, I offered a container from the freezer.  “Homemade applesauce,” I explained.  “Thanks so much for helping me out.”

“Oh, great, thanks!”  he smiled.  “I love applesauce.  My mom used to make it.”

“Really?” I answered, surprised that I could keep a catch out of my voice.  “Mine, too.”

 

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Grump Days

The morning sunlight of early spring beams through the window blinds and onto the table next to where I’m sitting, spraying dapples onto my coffee cup and the oddly shaped little potted plant next to it.  I’m uncertain how long I’ve been sitting there, staring at the plant, my book ignored in my lap.  One unenthusiastic sip reveals the coffee has grown cold, too long untouched.  There are a lot of things I’m not finishing these days, and just as many I’m unable to even start.

The strange little plant, about 18 inches tall and bowed over in a curve like an inverted fishhook, first came into the household in early Dec.  His narrow young evergreen limbs were pinned close to his baby trunk by a wide red ribbon wrapped candy-cane style from base to tip, and a single red ball hung from the ribbon’s highest point.   The combined weight of the ribbon and ball was enough to bend him forward like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.  In a mad pre-holiday dash through Trader Joe’s, I raced past the shelf where he stood (or rather, leaned) , laughed at the shelf tag that labeled it “The Grump Tree” and tossed one into my basket.

Anything for a laugh was the order of the day for Christmas 2021, a heartbreaker in my family.  My 90-year-old mother’s declining health took a sharp turn for the worse around Thanksgiving, and as Christmas approached, we knew her time left with us would be measured in days.  She always loved Christmas, but even a scaled-down version of the usual rituals that gave her such joy felt somehow insincere, maybe even disrespectful, as her time drew to an end. Bowed forward and down by unnatural weight, The Grump Tree was the only holiday decoration in the house that seemed appropriate for the season.  Thinking about and praying for my mother, I wondered if my anticipatory grief was obvious to the eye, pitching me in a forward droop from the weight of it.

A friend who worked in palliative care once educated me on their term “good death,” which is not the oxymoron it might seem.  Looking back at the blur of those final days, it feels okay to think that Mom’s passing fits that term. She knew us until just a few days before she died, and as she prepared to leave us, we took turns by the bedside, talking to her, singing (hymns were all I could remember, extemporaneously, and I’m sure there was a reason) and reading out loud.  We did all we could to make sure she was as physically comfortable as possible as her body began its final separation from her soul.  When she alighted with the angels two days after Christmas, we understood that it was truly her time to join them.

I believe that the chance to share in a loved one’s death, to affirm great love with presence, solidarity, and words of comfort, is one of that love’s most profound privileges.  Still, anticipating and sharing in a good and peaceful death does not abbreviate the depth and breadth of the loss.  Wandering the house aimlessly during those first few weeks after the funeral, wishing I could make myself eat and sleep and trying to remember not to call Mom and remind her that the basketball game was on, I piddled at repacking my few Christmas decorations.  It was time to unbind the Grump Tree and do with it I wasn’t sure what.  I wondered idly if he could survive his holiday obligations and maybe take up a new life in the woods just beyond my back windows.  It was dark and foreboding back there as winter waned and days melted into each other.

The instructions included in his little pot made it sound easy (don’t they always?).  With the ribbon removed, and light and a little water, the bright little tag promised that Grump would straighten up, stand tall and grow into a cypress tree 30 feet tall.  Sure—why not?  Grump came into our house at the worst possible time, and something felt distantly unjust about tossing him aside with the renewed promise of spring approaching.

By the time we were soaking in the morning sunlight together with my unread book and cold coffee, about eight weeks after Mom died, Grump wasn’t looking too great.  Still bowed over, he was shedding tiny brown needles, declining to rouse himself and follow the promise on the card still stuck in the dirt at his feet.  What to do?  I was too exhausted to think about it at that moment.  Outside the window, the bright sun teased the possibility of an early spring, but the woods beyond remained colorless, dreary, and unchanged.

Another few weeks crawled slowly by, and as my concentration began to slowly return, a few good days mixed in with the worst ones, I moved Grump to a better window with even more sunlight.  Within Grump’s view, shoots of grass began appearing on the bare ground just in front of the woods, and the smallest, newest, most carefree wild sprouts made their spring debut under the high canopy.  A lone flowering tree, small and solitary, popped out in a few pink blossoms, above the low clusters of the brave young greens and way below the highest points of the overhead canopy.  The oldest and tallest forest occupants held their ground but continued waiting, taking their time in drawing strength up from the dark surface deep below to those highest reaches, a cycle affirmed over steadfast decades of slow, faithful progress.

Now Easter is nearly here, and it is almost time to liberate all the potted plants for the season, migrating them outside to the porch, sidewalk, and various perches.  Mom loved this annual process, along with every part of tending to the well-being of green things.  If I inherited any portion of her green thumb, my garden and porch will be the envy of the neighborhood. That thought is surprisingly comforting, so I began to inspect the indoor green population, pruning here and there, checking for growth, and thinking ahead to the summer that so rapidly follows the short spring in our part of the world.

Sadly, I realized just the other day, looking more closely in the ever-brighter spring light, that Grump looks worse than ever.  One whole side of him is brown, and a touch on that side yields a sprinkling of tiny dead needles that clink down to the table surface just like the ones from Charlie Brown’s tree in the holiday classic. Did I fail him from lack of attention in the darkest, of those hazy, painful first days and weeks?  What else did I forget, or overlook, when bowed down by grief, a journey without an identifiable end point? Would it feel better, like another slow step forward, to finally pitch him and leave behind the terrible winter that he represents?

Leaning toward that last option, I stop for just a moment to look closer and prod a little deeper, and a surprise awaits.  Deeper inside Grump’s brittle and brown outer layer, tiny infantile shoots show strength and flexibility when bent.  I can see he has grown up in two main branches, and one of them remains, defiantly, a bright green. While we wait for the trees outside to draw upward all they require to return to summer glory, completing the green mosaic from ground to sky, Grump deserves more time.  And a little pruning of the brown side, and some plant food, and a bigger pot.  Maybe it’s too late to save him from all that bowed him down.  But maybe it isn’t.  Maybe he won’t ever be what he might have been, after everything, but maybe he will grow into something else.

Stay with me, Grump.  It’s getting a little warmer and brighter every day.  If you can stand up for spring, maybe I can do the same.  I’m pretty sure Mom is rooting for us.

 

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The Last, Best Gift

In a recent interview about an upcoming movie he produced, Oscar winner Denzel Washington was asked about the support he provided early in the career of the brilliant young actor Chadwick Boseman, who died earlier this year.  Boseman, a central character in Washington’s upcoming film release, had openly expressed his gratitude that Washington paid his college tuition, saying “there wouldn’t have been a Black Panther (Boseman’s breakthrough role) without Denzel Washington.”

Washington responded to his interviewer by crediting the great Sidney Poitier for having mentored him early in his own career, then cited a mentor to Poitier in turn.  “It’s our job to pass the baton and share what we know,” the actor said.  “You can’t take it with you.  All you can do is leave it here.”

This reflection lingered in my heart as I remember my father during this week that marks the anniversary of his passing in 2013.  More specifically, it prompted me to recall a quiet conversation between the two of us late on a Saturday afternoon when he thought his time with us was ending. He had something he wanted me to know before he went.

Dad was scheduled for open heart surgery to repair a vessel that was almost completely blocked and severely limiting heart function.  The procedure was less than 48 hours away, early on a Monday morning that we all knew might usher in a new era in our lives.  He was 83 years old, had other health issues, knew the risks in surgery were high, and he was thinking about the story of his life.

He took that weekend for reflection, a time he selected with characteristic self-determination, infuriating some of his doting family.  When the blockage was discovered just two days before, the cardiologist recommended he stay in the hospital for the weekend, where he could be monitored in advance of the procedure.

“I’m going home,” my father said to the physician.  “I’ll see you on Monday.”

“You understand,” the doctor said, sternness overtaking his bedside manner, “that you are at high risk for a heart attack before this procedure.  If you have one between now and then, you almost certainly won’t survive it.”

“I’m going home,” Dad repeated.  “I’ll see you on Monday.”

Receiving this news at home 200 miles away, I didn’t waste any time. I threw a bag in the car and headed up the road to my parents’ house to make sure I got to talk to him before Monday arrived.  I had no idea what, if anything, I needed to say.

But he already knew what he wanted me to hear, when I dashed through the back door into the paneled den, pulling the old maple rocking chair closer to his leather recliner in the corner. He sat where he always sat, with his hands folded, as always, on his belly.  How are you doing?  I asked tentatively, unsure where to begin.

“I’m doing fine,” he answered, more at peace than I could have imagined for this anxious, driven, intense human being.  “You know, no one has had a better life than me.  With your mother all these years, and with you kids….no one.  I’m a very lucky man.”

There were surely other parts to his thoughts that day as he contemplated his eight-plus decades on this planet, but they don’t survive in memory. Still, I took away that simple statement. The thing he most wanted me to know is imprinted in the mind and heart as clearly as if it was tattooed on my forearm for always: He faced death in a spirit of gratitude for the gifts he was given—or, at least, he wanted us to know he did–with no gift more predominant than his family and the love he had cherished in his life. Of course, the fact that my father loved my mother and all his family was not news; he spoke of love often in our house.  What carved this particular declaration so deeply in memory was that he carefully chose it to illustrate the closing chapter of his life.

The morning of the surgery, I was so shaken at the looming prospect that I walked straight into a glass wall separating the surgery waiting room from the hallways leading to the operating suites, drawing hospital staff on the run to check for injuries as I reeled backward and massaged my throbbing forehead.  Stunned but not really hurt, I followed my brother and sister into the long, narrow hallway where we could see him roll by. As we walked alongside his surgery stretcher before the OR doors swung open, he looked up at us and said it again: “No one has had a better life than me.  No one.”

As it turned out, he survived the heart operation and lived several more months.  When the end came, in a different place and for a different reason that none of us saw coming, I don’t know if Dad repeated that affirmation when he said his last words three days before Christmas.  But I remembered his earlier declaration then, and I’ve remembered it every Christmas since.  It was the final step in his legacy, the shared affirmation that no matter what happened in the future or what challenges history had held, he put gratitude first at the end.

Christmas is on the near horizon again, with another anniversary of his passing and, this year, the presence of global tragedy in our troubled world.  As I think of him in the pantheon of emotions that this season holds, it is my job to remember him as he instructed me to, and revisit what he told me, and, as Denzel Washington indicated, to pass the baton.  As I edge inexorably closer to the age he was then, I can see and accept that his life was not as easy as it may have appeared, his family as complicated as all families can be, his own demons at times difficult to banish.  Still, to borrow Denzel’s phrasing: He did all he could do with what he was given.  And at the end, he left it here—with gratitude–for us to remember and share.  It was the last, best gift.

 

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It’s Tea Time

The accomplished hostess knows this fundamental truth of entertaining:  Good parties tend to grow.

A little gathering at my place on a recent weekend morning started with just two guests, with my granddaughter Sis as hostess and me hovering in attendance nearby as kitchen staff.

“Evie, can we get out the tea set?” she had asked, beaming a little jolt of joy into my weary heart that morning.  The tea set is a relic from my parents’ time at the American naval base in the Philippine Islands in the 1950s, an acquisition on a side trip to Hong Kong in those very different post-war times.

My granddaughter was a newborn when my mother downsized to smaller quarters and so many treasures went on to new destinations.  I took the lovely teapot with its enchanting curved spout and the wafer-thin, gold-flowered cups and plates and stuck them in a drawer, wondering if they might appeal to her on some future lazy afternoon.  On a recent day when we needed, shall we say, to redirect her focus, I had unwrapped them and conveyed them as hers, to remain for now in my care. “We’ll get them out soon and have a real tea party,” I offered, unsure if she even knew what that was.

That day was here.

As I reached for the location at the no-kids elevation where I stored the 60-year-old china, she installed the first two guests in their places at the coffee table, on a little bench and in a child’s rocker.  The long, slender stuffed monkey displayed manners questionable for a tea party, his long arms flung behind him wildly as if on a bender, but I let it go.  The raggedy, worn lop-eared bunny who faced him across the table displayed a rather detached expression for a party guest, but I let that go, too.

Shall I make some real tea? I offered, having saved a caffeine-free variety with a hint of cocoa in it for the children, and she answered, “Oh, yes, everyone wants tea.”  I snapped to it in the kitchen, digging out a few of my grandmother’s shiny sterling teaspoons to add to the place settings.  As I worked, more guests arrived. Next came a blue Kentucky Wildcat beanbag, who was never constructed for sitting up, a dark brown squirrel who held his ground rather nicely, another bear, and finally, a striped fish relic of a long-ago Disney movie.  Fish needed an extra pillow to swim level with his teacup.  Meanwhile, the real dog patrolled the perimeter nervously, certain this unauthorized activity required careful monitoring and watching me for instructions.

I held my breath as Sis, at her request, carefully poured the hot brew for each guest into the tiny cups. Not a drop spilled, reminding me again how trust fosters growth.  With more focus on the spirit of the occasion than prudent nutritional practices for six-year-olds, I inquired if the guests preferred honey or sugar for their tea.  What a rookie mistake; Sis is never one to pass up promising options.  “They might want both,” she answered. I paused briefly over my error, then decided, why stop now?

Older Brother Buddy disdained this little charade at first, but as tea was poured and the gathering grew, he could not bear the sidelines.  He came forward with a tiny rubber creature of undetermined species (possibly a video game character?) that was liberated from its small plastic case in time to claim a seat at the table.  “He’s too small to drink from a cup,” Buddy worried about his little pal, about 1.5 inches long.  Could he drink from a spoon? I asked.  This was satisfactory, and soon the miniature creature was perched on a placemat in front of a silver spoon containing just a few drops of the amber liquid. The hostess and her brother sipped over-sweetened tea from different cups and spoons on their guests’ behalf, chatted sociably, and soon the little event wound to a conclusion.

My 89-year-old mother loves knowing when others enjoy her vintage things, so it was fun to tell her the tea-party story soon after.  I shared photos showing the table set with her china, amusing her great-grandchildren more than half a century after she first acquired the tiny, gold-trimmed little pieces. She shook her head, amazed.  “I didn’t know little girls still cared about those things,” she said, a bit wistfully.  Within a few short days, there would be no immediate chances to reminisce with Mom over family photos, as her residence was closed indefinitely to visitors while pandemic rages on.

With such abrupt swiftness, our world has spun into a dark and unpredictable alternative reality in recent weeks.  Everyone seems frightened and unbearably stressed.  With each new dawn, the news continues to worsen, and on some days, hope may elude us.

And yet we press on.  In her brilliant essay collection Late Migrations, author Margaret Renkl explores the intimacies of acute grief, but says that human beings are creatures who are built for joy. We look around, and we see that in defiance of global tragedy, spring still came, and the cherry trees have gracefully bowed down under the weight of their opalescent pink offerings.  Golden daffodils stand forth in triumph to herald the coming of Easter.  Musicians pour out their gifts before cameras instead of crowds, because deep in their marrow they know how music transcends, never more than in the hardest of times.  Birds are boisterously caroling their mating and nesting plans, driving indoor cats mad with frustration through windows everywhere.  From balconies across the ancient cities of Europe, strangers sing opera to the open air and applaud the heroism of healthcare workers who, if they are among the fortunate, they will never encounter.

And little kids still like tea parties.

 

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Old Rabbit, Harry, and Me

It’s a surprisingly moving cinematic moment, when delivered as beautifully as this one is, to see an older man connect to a younger one by asking about his favorite stuffed toy from childhood.  The older man is the legendary Fred Rogers, played by Tom Hanks in the hit movie It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Mr. Rogers is trying, in his quiet, measured manner, to befriend a cynical young journalist named Tom, played by actor Matthew Rhys.  Tom has been assigned, over his angry objections, to write a short magazine profile on Mr. Rogers as an American hero. He is bitterly skeptical that this red-sweater-wearing star of children’s television should be anyone’s hero, anything like the character on the screen, so kind, so gentle, so beloved by so many.

Waving a worn, familiar puppet, a regular character on the show, Mr. Rogers responds to one of Tom’s interview questions with one of his own.  “Did you have a special friend like this when you were a child, Tom?”  Yes, the annoyed writer responds, testily. Now can we get back to the interview?

“What was his name, Tom?” Mr. Rogers persists.  Rabbit, answers Tom.  Suddenly he pauses, struggling with surprise at the catch in his voice when he adds, “Actually, it was Old Rabbit.”

It was one of the quietest moments in the theater during this heartwarmng film.  Nearly every adult present surely was thrown back through misty memory to the warm days of childhood, remembering, maybe even longing for, that most special animal.  The particular one that is so tightly wound to the heart of so many young children.

Everyone except for me. Instead, I was thinking about the time just a few years back when my mom sent me an ape.

Seven or eight years ago—when I was in my fifties, mind you—I had some minor surgery.  It was nothing unusual, but I dreaded it, and I told Mom as much a few days before the procedure.  “You’ll do fine,” she assured me, “and we’ll check on you.”  My sister, a registered nurse, accompanied me to the procedure and hung around a day or two to make sure I was following instructions from the doctor. The next day, the mailman brought a little package showing my parent’s return address.  This produced a smile from the patient.  Ripping into the box, I thought: Chocolate, to sweeten the long post-op hours?  One of my mother’s baubles, to hand down, maybe?

It was a small stuffed ape, a chimpanzee, I guess.  About six or eight inches high, he commands a permanent seated position, his fat, velvety feet pointed ever upward. The plump hands at the end of his long arms feature Velcro strips in the palms, in case you want to walk around with him hugging your wrist, like a designer purse.  Most intriguing of all, his eyes are fixed in a sideways glare that is part surprise, part wariness, and part sarcasm, like he has just rolled them upward at your lame joke.

My sister and I looked at each other, puzzled. My mother’s gift selections have been at times renowned in the family for, shall we call it, creativity.  Still, this was a rather surprising selection for a post-op patient. What on earth?  I said, and my sister just shrugged, unsurprised.  I named him Harry, after my mother’s father, an uncle of the same name, and also because he’s a…well, you get the idea.

Hey, Mom, thanks for the little ape, I chirped the next time she called to check in.  What, um, what made you think to send me this?  “Oh, I just thought he was cute,” she said cheerfully. “Now, when do you get your stitches out?”

It was borne in on me long ago that it would be wise to emulate my mother’s habit of not over-thinking things, so I moved on along to her destinations for the conversation.  Harry soon took up residence on my bed, about four decades after a stuffed animal had last been found there.  He perches in front of the fancy pillow shams, directly facing the corner spot where the cat spends about half her life dozing.  (If she is unsettled by the presence of an ape nearby, she has never mentioned it.)  Sometimes Harry serves as an excellent prop for an open book, his wide feet pointed at just the right angle to boost up the lower edge of the cover.  My grandkids occasionally relocate Harry to the guest room for the night; he serves as an excellent stand-in if they are sleeping over and forgot their own favorite friend.  And if I am fully forthcoming about Harry’s occupation here, I must admit he has been tear-soaked through more than one episode of deep grief, when my sister died a couple of years after that surgery, my father soon after, and my beloved old dog more recently.

My grandkids have never questioned why their grandmother would have a small stuffed ape on her bed and would share him as needed.  Instinct probably tells them what special grownups like Mr. Rogers and my mother also know—that if we are lucky, and open to it, we let the lovelights of childhood continue to illuminate adult hearts.  The tender desires of the very young—for love, comfort, simplicity, friendship, self-respect, encouragement—don’t really change with time. Once in a while, when buffeted by adult-world difficulties, we might need a small symbol to remind us of that. Mr. Rogers knew it.  My mother would never give herself credit for such an insight, but she knows it, too.

Then there’s Harry to remind me, sitting patiently his post, watching carefully out of that side-eye glare.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Empty Box: A Christmas Memory

If you are inclined this time of year to reminiscing about Christmases past, like so many of us of a certain age, you might linger on memories of treasured gifts you received as a child. Perhaps there was a favorite toy, a bicycle, or maybe a special outfit you wanted desperately and never thought your parents could afford.

For me, the most precious memories of Christmas gifts in my youth are tied not to things I received, but to the presents that my father gave to my mother. That’s not to suggest we were deprived as kids; we had much of what we wanted and surely more than we rascals deserved, especially at Christmas. But in our house, there also was magic that didn’t depend on Santa Claus or children.

In some respects—though not all—my parents played the roles of man and wife in the traditional ways of their time. At Christmas, she shopped for everyone else, and he shopped for her. He bragged on his timing (often not until Christmas Eve) and his selections, and he spared no effort in presenting them with theatrical flair.

The gifts ranged from the practical, to the fashionable, to the risque. One year she wanted new pots and pans, and he procured a large set. On Christmas morning she opened a package that contained one pot, with a note announcing that the remaining pieces were hidden around the house. It was a Christmas adventure for our family of six to undertake the search; ultimately, one of the lids never turned up, and whether that joke was his intent, I can’t say to this day. Mom has always loved gardening, and one year he bought her a combination rolling gardener’s seat and tool caddy, with fat wheels enabling the rider to propel herself around the garden. During the height of the Christmas morning chaos, he rode it into the living room, prouder and happier than anyone when my mother howled with unstoppable laughter.

In the era of Jackie Kennedy’s stunning style, Dad loved to buy Mom elegant clothes. He brought home her first mink, a “stole” the color of warm caramel, when we were all very small. It must have been a tremendous stretch on the salary of a salesman supporting four children. I can still hear her high-pitched squeal when she wrapped herself in it.

My parents met as young teens, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her for nearly 70 years. He openly admired her looks whether she was fashionably dressed—or not. One year, in the era when classy sleepwear was just part of a nice wardrobe, she asked for a nightgown. That Christmas morning she opened a beautifully wrapped box that was empty—except for a note that read, “My kind of nightgown.”

Dad didn’t make it to Christmas in the last year of his life, but as he lay in the hospital for weeks in late fall, he dispensed instructions to his daughters about acquiring Mom’s gifts. He sent my sister to the jewelry store with his credit card, while I searched online for a stunning white coat we knew Mom hankered for. Sadly, the coat was out of stock, so I pondered alternatives and brought those ideas to his bedside for direction. I could try this one, I suggested, and here are a couple of other options. Yes, yes, and yes, he said to all of them. The answer to all questions involving your mother is yes.

I’ve thought about that answer many times in the two years since he left us, thought about how it symbolized a bond that had no ceiling or floor, how it illustrated 62 years of marriage in which, even when life’s inevitable deep shadows intruded, the delights of spontaneity and the desire to please never faded. I briefly wondered if we should concoct some outrageous surprise for Mom this year, to try to continue the custom. At heart, I knew it wasn’t something that can be replicated by others. But knowing the intent behind the act, keeping that sentiment alive, the privilege of witnessing love that lasts a lifetime—those were his gifts not just to her, but to all of us.

Some say that Christmas is for children, and of course that’s true, in a way, because it began with the story of a child. But watching my parents, I learned that the simple pleasure of giving, the joy of surprise, the wonder of the unknown, these are treasures that have no age limit.

Merry Christmas. When the question is love, Give us all the faith to answer Yes.

This story first appeared in the Chronicles four Christmases ago.  I’m sharing it again to honor the anniversary of my Dad’s passing, which was six years ago today.  

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Mystery Man

In my family, we tend to keep our history right where we can see it.

That’s not because we are important, or unusually fixated on the past.  We do tend to hold on to things and use them, objects that serve a function—here’s a cast-iron skillet that sizzled a half-century ago under the mastery of a cook long gone, or there’s a cherry bed frame that supported slumber for three previous generations.  These items stand as living reminders of our predecessors, keeping those souls often in the lexicon of our daily lives.  If my grandson asks me what my grandfather was like, I can point to his portrait on my bedroom wall.  If a guest drops into the seat of a simple, carved cherry rocker next to my fireplace and comments on its creaking comfort, I can smile and say it belonged to my grandmother, and so forth.

Like all families, we’ve had our share of characters, and the occasional ne’er-do-well.  But we know their stories, generally, whether or not they occupy in a place of honor on someone’s portrait wall.  They are part of who we are, and who we’ve been.

That’s why a photo that surfaced recently of an attractive, wavy-haired young man with kind eyes and the beginnings of a gentle smile represents such an intriguing puzzle.  A small, sepia-toned print of his portrait was preserved, for several decades, most likely, in a special place used often by a couple of prominent women in our family.

Yet we have no idea who he is.

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Mystery Man, liberated from an old button box

The little print, in the style popular decades before the advent of color film, measures just three by four inches, with a couple of small water stains and ragged corners. The back side of it, where names and dates are so often inscribed on family shots, is completely blank.

My mother is Chief Curator on behalf of several generations, and she delights in pairing old family items with anyone who might actually admire or use them.  Some time back she presented my daughter, a skilled seamstress, with a box of antique buttons that belonged to her own grandmother–Granny, we called this formidable matriarch.  Few things slip by my mother’s sharp eyes, but she hadn’t noticed the little portrait tucked inside the ancient button box.

“Look what I found in that button box, Mom,” said my daughter, handing over the old photograph some time later.  “Who is this?” Without thinking, I answered, “Looks like Uncle “K”—he had a wild head of wavy hair like that.”  My father’s Uncle Kenneth was a distinguished-looking physician born in the 1890s.  But, wait–wrong branch of the family. Why would a photo from my father’s side be stashed inside a button box belonging to my maternal great-grandmother?  Just to be sure, I e-mailed a digital image of the photo my father’s cousin, who replied promptly.  “Dad sure had hair like that,” he agreed, “but it’s not him.” His sister speculated that the photo subject could be a cousin on her grandmother’s side of the family, another interesting possibility, though the route into the button box still makes that seem unlikely.

I sent the digital copy to my mother for examination, wondering if it might be her maternal grandfather, a gentle, well-educated Baptist preacher who served a string of churches in central and Southern Kentucky and died in the 1940s.  “Oh, no,” my mother said flatly, shaking her head.  “That’s not Granddaddy.”

The hiding place of the little image may provide the most important clue.  The button box must tie Mystery Man to my mother’s paternal grandmother, Granny the button collector, or perhaps her daughter, with whom she lived until she died in her early 90s.  Both women sewed and crafted prodigiously, were busy and committed volunteers and activists in the ways open to women of their eras.  They were strong females who, decades before more options opened to women, forged their owns paths, professionally and personally, in part by circumstance, in part by choice.  But neither, as far as we had known, had a man in their lives for their last half-century on this earth.

Or did they?

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Formidable Granny with her daughter and youngest child

If there is a woman in our family history who had a tougher go of it than Granny, I can’t name her.  Born in Central Kentucky in 1870, Granny was forced in mid-life into an almost unimaginable situations for a wife and mother in the early years of the 20thcentury.  Married in her late 20s, she bore six children, five boys and a girl, the last one, her only daughter, arriving when she was 41 years old.  Sadly, her husband did not linger to meet his little girl, leaving the family behind, his wife pregnant, his five sons ranging from teens to toddlers, under circumstances never shared or discussed with subsequent generations.  The story was simply told like this:  He left, and never returned.

Could he be Mystery Man, in the photograph?  Could this little illustration be our only visual record of him, more than a hundred years after he abandoned his family?  My grandfather said that the children were never allowed to visit him, wherever he was, in the years that followed.  The oldest son, 15 when his father vanished and surely inspired by the wrenching dilemma of his mother and siblings with no regular means of support, struck out from his troubled Kentucky home before he was 20.  Early military experience landed him in Texas, where he settled and ascended quickly in the booming days of the early Texas oil business. This uncle amassed the only notable fortune that grew anywhere on my family tree, then became a philanthropist later in his life, with university chapels, veterans’ programs, and scholarship programs bearing his name.  He supported his mother until she died and showered generosity on others in his family.

Even though she raised a successful and generous son and remained close to all her children, it’s impossible to fathom the heartbreak, the shame, the fear Granny must have felt in those early years, alone as a mother of six.  Along with that wide spectrum emotions, did she pine for the man who left her behind after almost 20 years of marriage, maybe hide his photo from her children, underneath all those buttons?

Maybe, but I doubt it. In the language of a later era, Granny became one tough broad, and who wouldn’t, in that situation?  Determined to feed her young family, she took up needle and thread and built a business as a seamstress, designing, mending, altering clothes for men and women of her community.  That would account for a great button collection. She also apparently saved and stored some lifelong resentment, exhibiting bitter disapproval of the wives of all but one of her boys.

None of that sounds like someone who would hide a small portrait of the departed, a tiny love token of happier times.  More likely that she burned any photos or evidence of their life together.  Besides, Mystery Man’s countenance bears no resemblance to the five sons Granny’s husband left behind, of whom plenty of photos are extant.  Their sharp noses, angular chins, and high brows speak of other genetic ties.

With today’s online research tools, of course, one no longer relies on the memories of our elders or copies of old photos to document who we.  All kinds of information, much of it gleaned from archived public records, is available with a very few keystrokes, should the curious care to search. The curious should take care, however, to be prepared for what may be found.

Less than an hour on one ancestry website added a few more elements to the barely faint family image of my errant great-grandfather.  Census records when he was younger show that over the years he toiled as a farm laborer, a tobacco warehouse supervisor, and possibly an auto mechanic. There’s a record of a second marriage, just a few months after his daughter was born to his first wife, but no readily accessible evidence of divorce.  A draft registration recorded late in World War I, when he was in his forties, listed his occupation as bartender. There’s no way to know for certain, but it is possible he lived out his life as a bigamist.   All those details add shadows, brights and darks, to our image of him.  What they can’t show us is his face.

Even so, I am resolved that Mystery Man is not him.  This is a portrait of a young man, his face unlined by years of hard physical labor, or bad decisions or tragedy.  Likely a blonde or redhead with light eyes, he has strong brows, kind eyes, and heavy lips.  Perhaps he was embarking on his profession when this picture was taken—a teacher or professor?  A young lawyer?  You might even speculate he was a bachelor when the camera caught him, with no discerning wife to fulfill her role in those days of supervising his appearance. His tie is askew, his collar slightly untucked, and he needs a barber to trim the wavy mane combed severely back from his forehead.

Long before the mesmerizing ease of ancestry websites made genealogy a virtual sport, as easy as ordering shoes or sheets online, my mother undertook her own family history project.   For painstaking hours over a period of years she carefully accumulated photos, news clippings and letters into carefully organized binders, each focused on one major branch of our family.  Along with those, she added what no website ever could, in the form of page after page of personal stories about family members, gathered in writing from those who remained to tell them and copied for us, the next generation.

The first volume of this project was a Christmas gift back when I was a frantically busy single mother, too vested in my career and daughter to pay a lot of attention as the volumes began to arrive, over the years.  How nice, I thought, predicting the day would come when I’d be really glad to have them.  That part, at least, I got right.  Interestingly, I think she began assembling them when she was about the age I am now, the season when friends begin to pass on, young grandchildren grow quickly, and one’s appreciation for one’s roots may deepen with reflections on the relentless pilgrimage of time.

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Photos from Mom’s family history volumes.

And, of course, there is no sign of Mystery Man in her pages.

A reasonable guess for the identity of Mystery Man may be a fellow whose existence we knew but whose name we did not.  My mother’s Auntie, the daughter born to Granny after her husband left her, stayed with her mother the remainder of Granny’s life and never married.  Many lonely years later, Auntie reminisced about a missed chance at love with a young man who wanted to join his life to hers. Convinced that her first obligation remained to her mother, Auntie turned down his marriage proposal, later calling it the biggest mistake of her life.  Could this little portrait show us the face that she cherished?  And maybe tucked carefully away to remember, after he moved on?  How long did she think of him, after letting a different life slip through her fingers? Did she hide the photo from herself—was she too attached to destroy it, but too saddened to keep it in ready view? All those answers died with her, more than 30 years ago.

So now Mystery Man resides with us, liberated from his button-box captivity to remind us that probably no one really knows everything about their family, even a close-knit bunch like ours.  Part of me hopes we someday discover that he actually was our blood kin.  I like his thoughtful eyes and the humility in his expression.  If he belongs in the fabric of our family, via whatever unknown thread, we should keep him in remembrance.  Whatever the reason he was hidden there, he’s a portrait of bygone days when privacy and discretion were attributes valued and cultivated, when some people really kept only their own counsel and were content to take certain knowledge—call it secrets, if you like– to their graves.

 

 

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Thank You, Villagers

My mother turned 87 a few weeks back, so I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about her legacy—never more, of course, than around Mother’s Day.  And I remembered a time a few months ago when a kind friend told her, in my presence, that she had raised wonderful children.  My mother smiled in gratitude, but responded, “Well, I had a lot of help.”  At the time I assumed she was referring to my late father, her partner in parenting and life for nearly 63 years, a memorable character and strong (to understate it considerably) father figure.  I didn’t ask her to elaborate, but now I would wager that she was acknowledging much more than just the good fortune of marrying a man who became a good father.  There were so many, many more people who helped shape the adults that her children would become.

The same has certainly been the case throughout my own journey as a mother.  My best as a mom was only however good it was because I, too, had a lot of help.  They were the scores of people who stepped onto the path with my daughter and me and walked some portion of it with us. 

I became a single parent before my daughter turned four, and I am grateful that to this day that her father and his family play a vital and major role in her life.  But as custodial parent and, well, her Mom, much was left to me to decide, to evaluate, to do.  I remember so clearly how, over and over again, I turned for help to others who stepped up when we needed them.  Or, in other cases, help was offered when I might not have been smart enough to know I needed it.  Perhaps the smartest thing I did as a mom was learn how to find help, and how to accept it when it was presented to me. 

So many faces and names come to mind.  I hope I thanked them then, but it seems like the right season to do it again, for those I haven’t seen in decades and those who remain part of our lives.  The list I started quickly grew too long to include them all here.  Nevertheless, here are some snapshots of those heroes who performed what often felt like minor miracles, in ways too broad and deep to accurately describe.  They deserve a cut, you might say, of any kind thoughts that come my way on Mother’s Day, and I send them all kudos for teaching me that parenting is perhaps the most fundamental of all team sports.

Starting in those intense early years, thank you to Miss Sheila, one of our first and most fearless daycare angels.  When I choked back tears of stress to admit, pre-enrollment, that potty training was not yet behind us, Miss Sheila patted my shoulder.  “Don’t you worry about that,” she said.  “We’ll take care of it.”  And she was right.

Warm gratitude to Miss Alice, who managed the after-school program and loved my daughter so kindly that she cried on our last day there, as we prepared to move out of state.  How could I possibly have carried on a serious career without knowing those precious after-school hours were so well accounted for?

I can hardly summon sufficient words to thank my parents, for their hands-on help and the lifelong example they set.  And my sisters, Jane and Kate, who (along with their families) took turns hosting her for summer trips, where they took her places she had never been, and enabled her to know her long-distance family so well.

Her stepmother, Lisa, once called to tell me something very difficult had happened, to make sure I could jump on it quickly.  It was not an easy thing to do, I’m sure, and I’m forever grateful to her for it.

I had a time-intensive job when my daughter was in early grade school, in those pre-internet days when you couldn’t easily work at home.  More than once I had to pick her up from after-care and bring her back to the office, with dinner in a sack.  A kind co-worker offered to walk her around, and the next thing I knew, I found her drawing happily in the executive-suite office of the elderly founder of the company.  I was mortified, but he was delighted.  Speaking of that company, thanks to Rick and David for the award that became our first trip to Europe, where my daughter and I toured London and Paris in style.  I could never have managed such a thing in those times without the company’s generosity.

Heavens, there are so many others.  Thank you, Nancy, for running a summer camp where generations of girls learned brilliant outdoor technical skills and the risk-taking and bravery that comes with them.  Nancy had to teach parents, too, and on one panicked phone call (note, it was me that was panicking), she patiently explained how the camp’s excellent safety training prepared my daughter perfectly when she was bucked out of a raft in the rapids of a North Carolina river.

Special thanks to Charla, mom of her high-school best friend, for choosing the tougher option, the hard but right thing, for calling me when you learned that my young teenager was experimenting with things that so many kids do.  Thank you for giving me the opportunity to intervene at such a potentially crucial time. It could have changed so many things; who knows?

To the long series of stellar art teachers who encouraged her, thank you for inspiring skills and creativity that she continues to grow to this day.  Stained glass, ceramics, mixed media, pen and ink, fabric collage, jewelry—she excelled in all those things, thanks to your guidance, and the evidence adorns my house to this day. That’s a particular kind of gratitude from a mom who does well to get the top off of the crayon box.  

A special bouquet of Mother’s Day love to Cassie, a college student I hired years ago to ferry my daughter to sports practice and get her started on homework in those tender junior-high years.  Cassie was (and is) a godsend model of common sense, practicality, and kindness, very happy virtues for a mom who now has four boys of her own.

I’m so grateful to Carol, an early boss in the first years after college, who ran a good, values-based family business that wrapped employees in team spirit and loyalty.  My daughter has long since moved on, but when the business closed recently, the outpouring of good memories from my daughter and her friends spoke volumes about the kind of people who founded and ran it. 

When they say it takes a village to raise a child, it is a profound truth that may be undervalued in our times, where independence and self-direction may often be prioritized above family-style collaboration and support.  Maybe it’s time to re-think that status, as we renew these annual celebrations of parenthood.  For me, this week, I’m celebrating my Mom, of course,  But along with her, I’m raising a glass to all those villagers who helped make my motherhood journey what it was and continues to be.  

I could never, ever have done it without you.   Between us, we raised a fine woman, now a wonderful mother in her own right, but it took every one of us to do it.  Happy Mother’s Day, everybody.

 

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Easter’s Oak Leaf

I saw Death
And I grieved, right then
Stock still, I recalled the you of summers past, at your finest
Suave sentinel, on duty at the front door
Loosely, artistically lounging at your post
Terribly handsome, careless and oblivious to shape or direction, reclining where you pleased
Your blossom deliveries grew more robust every season, mellowing with the summer sun
Until tinged with pink gold dust, though your nearby friends bowed and curled in heat’s surrender
How I’ll miss you, I thought, averting my gaze from your bare limbs, ugly, chicken-bone stalks shedding nasty scales from ragged ends
Guess we’ll have to cut you down.
But a stay was granted, an unseen judge knew more than I
When a few mornings later the cold spring wind coyly waved a branch at me and the dog
Look here look here look here, the wind waved, at these tiny, itty bitty green tips, just two, tentatively emerging from the jagged drumstick end
And I remembered that nature books her own appointments, strictly on her own time, her calendar revealed to none in this life
And I remembered to hope.

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Recycling Holiday Memories

And here we are: The Holiday Aftermath has arrived.

If you are among the fortunate for whom the holidays brought fellowship and giving and celebration, you may hope that memories of those times will sustain you as you face the stark days of winter’s depth and the blank page of the New Year. If you are one of those for whom the holidays mark shadowy times of isolation and unrelenting longing for the departed or the bounty out of reach, you are understandably relieved to emerge on the South end of another holiday season. Either way, up or down, the Aftermath is upon us.

Lucky enough to be in the former category this year, I was wandering around the house a few days after Christmas, swatting weakly at the detritus of celebration. As I puttered, flattening the occasional box here, tossing the ripped ball of tissue paper there, I mused on the times just concluded, on small ones who had grown and others who had aged, on gifts given and received, meals shared, rituals renewed. Pondering the inevitability that future Christmases will be different, I found myself wishing I had stopped to snap a few more photos. There are a few, to be sure, but generally, it was more appealing in to participate in the action at hand than to capture it for history.

When the puttering eventually morphed into a more serious effort to restore order, the time was ripe to load up a trunk full of recycling for deposit at our local collection site. Joining the throngs of Aftermathers clustered around doing the same, I popped open the car hatch and stared into the bags and bins for a moment. There I noticed a rather colorful portrait of the times just concluded, a sort of disorderly burst of concluding holiday color, a bit like the heightened brilliance in the sky just before the sun vanishes, on a day when the clouds are kind of ugly. Here was a more authentic portrait of our holiday, it struck me, than any photo from the scene might have been.

There on top of the bin, a few morsels of brilliant ruby contents still clinging to the sharp tin edges, is the can that held 28 ounces of crushed tomatoes for the slow-cooker beef brisket marinade. There’s a small, wistful sigh at that sight; the Christmas dinner roast mysteriously simmered itself into tough this year, failing to generate the universal acclamation it garnered last time. Ah, well. Nestled next to it, butt side up in the bin, is the empty bottle of that excellent cabernet we poured. It was dang good quality for the price, I recalled, with the estimable side benefit of a label featuring illustrations and a name that fired the holiday imagination: Freakshow. Perhaps that cab was good enough to dull the disappointment in the meat, at least for the adult participants who tried the red.

As usual at this recycling center shortly after Christmas, there was a line of Aftermathers waiting to stuff the bins for discarded cardboard, so I began to break down my boxes while awaiting my turn. Ah, yes, here is the carton that delivered the matching shoes I bought for the family, pink velvet topped with soft bows for three generations of us girls, my daughter, granddaughter Sis, and me, along with smart gray, leather-trimmed canvas for the boys, father and son. That experiment seemed successful and yielded some of the few entertaining photos I did manage to get.

And here is the carton that affirmed my passing into a brave new phase of Grandmother Gifting: This year, I gave our six-year-old Buddy a game I could not define or explain. Really, I had no idea what it was. That applied when I ordered it (trusting his mother’s excellent instincts regarding its priority on his wish list) and remains the case, now that I have seen him and his father play it. Something about spinning tops that joust each other, or something…another sigh. Perhaps G-ma’s task is to rejoice that he loved it, and relinquish my own need to understand. Never easy, but one endeavors to persevere.

Finally, it is time to toss the outer paper wrapper from a box of old-fashioned assorted chocolates, the kind my father always bought my mother, to have treats at hand for the ever-present holiday sweet tooth. Four years after Dad left us, I still couldn’t quite hand it to her and say, ‘This is from Dad.’ Instead, I stumbled awkwardly on my tongue and mumbled, ‘This is from an old friend.’ To which my mother cracked, ‘When you get to be my age, all your friends are old.’ Age may be depriving her of certain things, but crackerjack delivery of a smart line is not one of them.

And so, that was that. Thanks for the memories, Trash. Off you go, to be born again in some other form, maybe as a new can of beans destined for a pot of soup in some far away kitchen. Or recast into another solid cardboard carrier, waiting to land efficiently on some other doorstep, proudly offering a new sweater to warm aging bones on a chilly day. Into that giant green dumpster you went, so that you could rise again, once again useful, in some other place, at some other time, in a future I believe in but likely will never see with my own eyes.

Dispensing with the last bag, I slammed the hatchback, and climbed in to head home—with a welcome, but unforeseen and surely unorthodox, reason to ponder rebirth this season, now that I think of it.

4 Generations visiting New York

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