Posted tagged ‘family’
July 21, 2013
A cooler day with no sun but lots of humidity is today’s weather. I turned off my air and opened all the windows and doors. The house needed the fresh air after being closed up the whole week. It. looks like it rained for a few minutes earlier this morning. I was expecting thunder showers and am disappointment by the rain’s poor showing. Gracie and I are going to the dump today.
Yesterday I bought some vegetables at a couple of farmer’s markets. I also bought some balsamic vinegar, olive oil and corn chowder base. It was in the early morning, but the heat became too much too quickly so I hurried home to the cool house where I did two loads of laundry. Last night I had dinner at my friends’ and neighbors’ house and got home around ten. It was by far my longest and most productive day in over a month. Today I’m pretty much done in. I see the dump, a shower and a nap in my future.
I remember when I was twelve I had a white visor I wore all the time. It was like a girl’s version of a baseball cap. I have a few pictures of our family vacation that year, and in every picture I’m wearing the visor. In one picture I am leaning against a tree and have a hand in my pocket and one leg bend at the knee resting on the tree trunk. The white visor is, of course, on my head. It was obviously posed, but in it I see the first glimmers of a teenage me. I think it was the pose I chose and the look on my face. I wasn’t a little girl any more, and I knew it, white visor and all.
When I’d meet relatives I hadn’t seen in a long while, usually my parents’ aunts and uncles, each identified me as George’s oldest or Chickie’s oldest (the name my mother was known as since she was a little kid). I don’t think any of them ever knew my name. They identified me by the parent to whom they were related and my birth order. Just after I got out college for the summer, the one before my senior year, a car stopped by the house. In it were Aunty Madeleine and Aunty Clara, two of my mother’s aunts, my grandmother’s sisters. They asked for my mother. I explained she and my father had gone away for the weekend. They stayed in the car, and we conversed through the window. Aunty Clara right away wanted to know who was taking care of us. I told her I was. She was shocked and couldn’t imagine my parents had left us alone. I told her I was nearly twenty-one and quite old enough to babysit for a weekend. She didn’t say anything, just frowned. Aunt Madeleine said good-bye, and they drove away. I don’t think they even knew who I was. No one asked if I were Chickie’s oldest.
Categories: Musings
Tags: aunty, birth order, cooler day, couldy, dinner with friens, family, farmers' market, fesh vegetables, humidity, nap, pre-teen, relatives, tired, visor
Comments: 13 Comments
April 15, 2013
I have always thought of Keep the Coffee Coming as a community, a family. We get to chat with each other, share memories and have a laugh or two sometimes at our own expenses. One of my favorite Coffee experiences is learning about the world from all of you and about your childhoods and your holidays and traditions. Some family members have been with me for years, and I cherish them but I also cherish the newest members of the family. I think of Coffee as a place devoid of criticism or controversy, a place where we can all feel comfortable with each other.
My friend Hedley has decided not to return to Coffee. Though he has been with me for what seems like the best and longest time, he has decided not to visit again. I wrote him an e-mail wondering if he was okay as I hadn’t heard from him in a while. It was then he told me that there were so many anti-British comments made he felt uncomfortable at the very least and pained enough by the comments that he didn’t feel welcome here any more. He is my friend and I will miss him and his wonderful comments.
I decided that I would tell this to all of you so that maybe it won’t happen again and just maybe Hedley will return. We can’t like everything and we don’t always agree, but we should always respect one another.
I do have one story for the day and I’ll call it Gracie, the Possum and Me. Gracie was sleeping and snoring beside me on the couch around 12:30 last night when she jumped up and ran outside. Right away I heard banging and a noise I couldn’t identify so I grabbed my flashlight and went out on the deck. I flashed the light all over the backyard and finally saw Gracie near the right side of the deck. Then I noticed the dead possum at the foot of the deck stairs. It was a huge, adult possum, as ugly as they come. I went down the cellar and couldn’t find my shovel so I grabbed a hoe and a garden fork missing one tine so I could get rid of the deceased. I went out the cellar door which is right near the stairs. It was then the possum got up and started walking. Gracie ran and grabbed it and I ran and screamed so Gracie dropped it. The possum had only been playing dead and had done a great job. I was completely fooled. After Gracie dropped it, the possum looked dead again, but I didn’t go too close and instead stood guard. Gracie kept running the perimeter of the yard and up the other deck stairs to my side stairs trying to get at the possum. I thwarted her every time. Gracie did that at least seven times. I was totally frustrated as I didn’t dare leave the possum and so I couldn’t lock the gates on the deck to catch Gracie. Finally Gracie was on the stairs near me long enough for me to talk to her, and she came right to me. I grabbed her and brought her inside and gave her a treat for coming. I decided to leave the possum until morning. The whole escapade was over at 1:20.
The first thing I did this morning was check for the possum before I let Gracie out. The possum had done it again, superbly played dead, and had gotten away while we were inside the house. I let Gracie out, and she went looking. Sorry, Gracie, the possum is gone!
Categories: Musings
Tags: caring, family, fork, friends, Gracie, hoe, playing dead, possum, respect, yard
Comments: 61 Comments
March 25, 2013
This morning the alarm woke me at 4:30. That’s right, 4:30, the most ungodly of hours, which is a bit of a play on the day as I got that early so I could leave at 5 to go to the 20th anniversary mass for my father. It is nearly beyond belief to realize he has been gone that long. I think of him often, and we still miss him every day. The mass was in a church about an hour and a half from here, close to where he and my mother used to live. My sister from Colorado is here for a few days and came especially for the mass. I left at 5 and arrived at the church about 5 minutes before the mass ended. A traffic accident on the expressway kept me in bumper to bumper traffic. I celebrate birthdays, the Fourth of July and a Christmas or two before the traffic broke, but once I knew I was going to be late, I was patient sitting in the car, so unlike me, but I hadn’t any other choice. I listened to the radio and learned all about the fiscal crisis in Cyprus, the snow coming my way and traffic updates on the 3’s. I’m hoping someone opines about Cyprus so I can jump in with my opinion. The ride home was just as awful. Another accident kept me in bumper to bumper traffic before I even reached the city, but once through the mess, I whizzed my way home. I had an errand which I didn’t care to do and, instead, went straight home and back to bed. I just woke up.
We all went to breakfast after the mass. Three of my cousins took the day off so they could go to mass and breakfast then they’ll spend the rest of the day with my two sisters. I like my family. I am much older, and though they are closer to my two sisters and spend lots of time together, I always get the hug and the kiss when we see each other. We are a family of huggers and kissers, even the guys. That’s a cool thing.
Two inches of snow are coming my way. I swear my sister brought it as she left over a foot of it behind in Colorado. The snow won’t last, according to the six or eight weather forecasts I heard, as it will be warm enough to melt the snow the next two days. I think the words were seasonably warm which didn’t get my heart thumping.
Well, that’s it for today: not much happening when you spend most of the day sitting in a car moving at a snail’s pace and listening to a combination of NPR, WBZ news radio and WEEI sports. Did I mention I found out that a 15th seed has made it to the sweet 16 for the first time?
Categories: Musings
Tags: breakfast, bumper to bumper, Cyprus, family, hugs and kisses, memorial mass, nap, NPR, Snow, traffic, WBZ, WEEI
Comments: 30 Comments
December 22, 2012
The morning is lighter than it has been the last few days, but the sun is still a bit shy. It pokes out every now and then trying to decide whether or not to stay. It’s cold. When I look out my window, I see brown leaves, clouds and bare branches. Even my trees define winter.
I have two batches of cookies left to make, but I’ll only do one today as I’m going to see the new James Bond movie this afternoon. The other batch will be made tomorrow. I’m in no hurry as everything is pretty much on schedule. The only item after the cookies on my to-do list is to decide which appetizers I’ll serve on Christmas Eve. It’s our gingerbread house night.
Santa never left wrapped gifts when I was young. The only wrapped gifts under the tree were from my parents, and it didn’t any guessing to know two of those presents for each of us were new pajamas and slippers to wear on Christmas Eve. My mother would tell us we could open a couple of presents, and we’d plead to pick the Christmas Eve presents but my mother never gave in. She’d hand each of us two of the gifts from under the tree: pajamas and slippers, always pajamas and slippers.
I continued the tradition and always sent my sister’s three kids new pajamas for Christmas Eve. The boys had red-footed ones when they were young then red or green sweats when they were older. My nephew swears I pulled a Ralphie on him and made him wear footed pajamas until he was 12, but that isn’t true. My niece got footed pajamas as well but hers came from the Disney Store. Her Pooh pajamas were such a favorite she’d cry if she didn’t have them to wear to bed. My sister had to cut off the feet of the pajamas so my niece could keep wearing them even after she’d outgrown them. This year my nephew, he of the footed pajamas, bought new pajamas for his 6-year-old son and my niece’s 5 month old son.
We keep the memories of Christmas, the memories of family and tradition, and when the time comes, we pass those memories, those traditions, to the next generation. Every Christmas is a reminder of all the Christmases before it. Pajamas and my mother on Christmas Eve are forever linked, and this year Ryder and Declan will celebrate her tradition, now theirs, at Christmas.
Categories: Musings
Tags: family, traditions
Comments: 8 Comments
November 26, 2012
Today is a pretty day filled with sunlight and a clear blue sky. It’s even warm at 48 degrees. The leaves at the end of the branches are blowing, but the wind is gone. It’s a day to get out and do something.
My dance card for the week is fuller than usual, with usual being empty. Wednesday and Thursday are booked, and Skip will be by to put up my outside Christmas lights on Friday so I’ll have to scurry and get my wreaths. I love that errand: walking among the trees and wreaths and filling my nose with the smell of Christmas.
My father and his sister and Christmas trees are a part of my memories. My father used to go with my mother to pick out and buy the tree. He was always aghast at the prices and would try to convince my mother to go with a sparser, less expensive tree. My mother, at heart a Christmas elf, would never agree. She wanted the fullest of all trees, and my father usually gave in. The tree took up a whole corner of the room and was always beautiful. My aunt, my father’s younger sister, would drop by to visit and always admired the tree. She’d say something about how expensive it must have been which was really a subtle way to get the price. She and my dad had a yearly unacknowledged competition as to which one of them had bought the cheaper but more beautiful tree. My father always lied. We knew it and I think she did too. No matter how expensive the tree had been, my father always said $15 or $20, and my aunt was always amazed. None of us ever said a word about the real cost of the tree. We enjoyed the family ritual, the always rigged tree competition.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Christmas, Dad, family, Real tree, rituals, Shopping, Tree, Wreath
Comments: 30 Comments
November 22, 2012
Thanksgiving
The year has turned its circle,
The seasons come and go.
The harvest all is gathered in
And chilly north winds blow.
Orchards have shared their treasures,
The fields, their yellow grain,
So open wide the doorway —
Thanksgiving comes again!
~~Old Rhyme.~~
Thanksgiving morning my mother woke up very early. She’d make the stuffing, always a sage stuffing, fill the turkey and get it into the oven. Her pan was in a huge oval shape and had a cover, but I don’t remember my mother ever using that cover. The pan was blue with tiny white spots on it, and my mother cooked her turkey in that same pan every year. Now and then my mother would open the oven to baste the turkey with its own pan juices. I remember the whole house was filled with the aroma of that roasting turkey. I can still see the kitchen windows covered in steam.
We’d be in the living room watching the parade and eating the snacks my mother always put out for us. I remember the bowl of mixed nuts, the silver nutcrackers and the silver picks. There were tangerines, and there were M&M’s. They were always special on Thanksgiving.
I wish all of you the most wonderful Thanksgiving Day.
Categories: Musings
Tags: family, home, parade, Stuffing, Thanksgiving, Turkey
Comments: 14 Comments
August 13, 2012
We have sun, that bright orb in the sky which sheds light on the world. It has brought warmth and dispelled the damp so tonight will finally be the oft postponed movie on the deck night. It is supposed to pleasant and cool.
It was a mirror under her nose to see if she’s alive type morning. The dog wanted out. I don’t know when. I heard her bells, went downstairs, opened the door and turned off the AC so I could leave the door opened and she could come in which she wanted. I went back to bed. The phone woke me at 10:30, that’s right, 10:30, but I didn’t let the late morning change my ritual: two papers and two cups of coffee later, here I am.
Now I’m stuck with nothing to day; my mind is a tabula rasa. I write six days a week (it used to be every day) and have been writing this blog for at least six years maybe even seven I’m not sure. I have discussed every aspect of my childhood, my teen years, college years, Peace Corps service and the day-to-day stuff which keeps me busy or idle depending upon my mood. I have excoriated tourists, supermarkets, slow drivers who can’t see over the steering wheel and the weather, can’t forget the weather. I have taken you with me to Morocco, Ghana and South America, though that last one wasn’t live. Soon enough you’ll be going back to Ghana with me. You have been made privy to the number of underwear I’m bringing on my journey, and I’ll be posting my flight times and numbers so you can make sure I arrived safely. I have told countless dad stories. You even know some of my failings as I’ve lamented them a few times, a tin ear being one and impatience being prime. You have essentially become family but don’t expect post cards!
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: blogs, family, friendship, Ghana, Morocco, Peace Corps, south america, underwear
Comments: 19 Comments
June 11, 2012
Today is a perfect morning. The sun is shining, it’s cool and the birds are loudly singing their homage to the day. It’s quiet in the way weekday mornings are when people are at work and kids are in school. Gracie is asleep on the couch and breathing so deeply I know her tongue is probably out the way it always is when she sleeps so soundly. The cats are lying in the sun. Today I need to fill the bird feeders and go grocery shopping, one of my least favorite chores, but I really don’t have much choice. I’m just about out of everything-the list is long.
My niece had her baby yesterday. Declan weighed 9.2 pounds. Sarah, my niece, is a diabetic so the doctor knew the baby would be a big one. He has been watching her closely for the last month or so and knew it was time for Declan to meet the world and his family, all of whom were there. In the picture with his father, Declan is screaming and looks enormous for a newborn. I half expected to see him standing tall and maybe even saying hello. The best picture is of Declan being held by his cousin Ryder who is almost six. On Ryder’s face as he is holding the baby is the most wonderful look of awe and joy at finally meeting his cousin.
I am now the old aunt. I remember my old aunts. They were my grandmother’s sisters and were at most of our family parties. Aunt Madeline played the piano and everyone stood around and sang. My family was always great for singing. My uncle fancies himself a Bing Crosby. When I was in Africa, my sister sent me a tape of music she had recorded from the radio. I was listening to it when right in the middle I heard my uncle’s voice singing to me. He had commandeered the microphone, and I loved hearing his voice. It was a huge piece of home.
My mother always sang while she worked in the kitchen. She’d put on a CD of Tony or Frank and sing along. I have the best picture in my memory drawer of my mother working at the counter and singing as she mixed and stirred her ingredients. That kitchen was always where the singing seem to start at my parents’ parties. People would be sitting on the benches at the table or standing in front of the table their arms sometimes around each other’s shoulders. When I close my eyes, I can still see them all.
I dearly miss those parties and the singing in the kitchen. They are just about my favorite memories of my family, of all my family, of aunts and uncles and most especially Mom and Dad.
Categories: Musings
Tags: family, newborn, old aunts, parties, perfect morning, Singing
Comments: 20 Comments
January 31, 2012
The day is warm by winter’s usual standards. It’s 49°, but there is a little breeze which makes the day feel colder. On days like today I’d love a jacket like the ones I had as a kid. With those, each sleeve had a jersey cuff inside which kept the wind at bay, and all the jackets had hoods attached. Nothing is worse than ears which are red and frozen.
We always walked to school and never thought twice about the weather. Most families had only one car, and it left early to work with the dads. In my neighborhood, the only woman who drove was a widow who had no choice. The other mothers walked to do most of their errands. The only exception was the weekly groceries. It was a Friday tradition in my house for my Dad to drive my mother to the supermarket. I never went, but I’m willing to bet my dad waited in the car. Grocery shopping was a woman’s job.
When I was a kid, there was a clear delineation between household jobs for men and for women. I didn’t know any mother who had an outside job. Every mother in my neighborhood stayed at home and took care of the house and kids. Every morning the fathers, wearing suits and fedoras, drove to work. In the winter they shoveled and switched to snow tires, in the summer they mowed and trimmed the bushes, in the spring they planted and changed tires again and in the fall they raked and burned the leaves. They took down and put up the storm windows. They got the oil in the car changed and picked out every new car. On warm Saturday mornings, they washed those cars. They read the papers on Sunday mornings and watched football on Sunday afternoons. They were the threats our mothers used to keep us in line. Everything else our mothers did.
Categories: Musings
Tags: family, Grocery store, home, Mother, Parent, snowtires
Comments: 21 Comments
November 19, 2011
Streets and backyards are covered with brown oak leaves, recent victims of the last three days of winds. Pine needles in the front yard cover the lawn and garden. My world is drab and messy.
Today Miss Gracie is six years old. After I finish here, we have to go to Agway for dog food so she’ll get to pick a couple of gifts and a treat or two. Gracie won’t think this too special as it happens almost every time we go to Agway. Dogs are meant to be spoiled.
I sent out my Thanksgiving cards today and they got me thinking. Thanksgiving is the least pretentious of all the holidays. No colored lights gleam in the darkness, no special decorations or costumes or new spring clothes are any part of the day. Christmas has Santa and Easter has its bunny, but Thanksgiving just has itself which is more than enough. It is the one holiday without the hustle and bustle of days of preparation. It is a day when we can take time to remember the people we love and the people we have loved. We get to be thankful for being together, and we get to share a sumptuous meal. I think the sharing of food is one of the most intimate moments which brings people together.
When my Ghanaian student, now a woman in her fifties, was here we all sat and ate a Ghanaian dinner. It was the sharing of a culture, of my memories and experiences and of the bond which has held strong between Francisca and me despite the forty years since we last saw each other. It was more than a meal: it was a celebration of friendship and family.
On Thanksgiving, most of us have a turkey at center stage. We cook foods we’ve eaten since childhood, foods which connect the years, strengthen the bonds between family and friends and touch all of our memories. I can’t imagine a Thanksgiving without green bean casserole or Tony’s grandmother’s cole slaw or my mother’s squash dish. This year, as on every Thanksgiving Day, I will be thankful for the years of memories, for the gifts from this one unpretentious day.
Categories: Musings
Tags: family, Food, friends, Holiday, leaves, memories, Thanksgiving
Comments: 14 Comments
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