Thinking....

My Grandma's Card Tree

What do you think about at this time of year, before Christmas and between Christmas and the New Year beginning?  Do you think of the past?  Do you think of people who aren’t here anymore?  Do you remember sounds and smells?  Do you make resolutions?  Do you reflect on your life or your children’s lives or the future?

This year, especially, I’ve been thinking about the past and those people we’ve lost and those that are still here.  I think of my mother, who, as my brother put it the other day, was our Mrs. Christmas.  She loved Christmas, the presents, the colors, the smell of bourbon in eggnog, Spritz cookies with sprinkles. She always wore red and green during the holidays.  She loved the parties, getting dressed up, wearing a red velvet top with sparkles on it, her black velvet pants, her adored ankle boots.  She always sang in church, from my earliest memories and that was a huge part of the holiday for her.  Choir rehearsals, carols, performances.  Her clear soprano voice soared up to the highest notes with ease and joy.  She loved the acclaim and she loved the music.  And Christmas was the pinnacle for her voice and her joy.

I remember Christmas Eve’s at my Grandma Ammon’s house in Charleston, south of the Navy Yard in Bremerton.  She had a house that seemed big, until you got all the daughters and their kids and their kids’ children in the living room.  We were packed in there, and the piano rang constantly with Christmas music played by Grandma, my Mom and my Aunt Carol.  Grandma bustled around with her housedress and white apron on and the butcher knife in her hand, laughing and running back and forth.  She made fudge with raisins in it.  Who does that?  She made pretty tarts from pie dough; round circles of dough with currant jelly, using a thimble to cut a hole in a circle for the top of each tart.  My daughter remembers the “Neapolitan” candy, pink, white and chocolate striped, she kept in a jar.  I don’t know what she was cutting with the knife, but it was waved for emphasis and sometimes we had to duck.  When she was really laughing hard, she’d throw herself down in a chair and fling her apron up over her head, her wild, white hair flying around her face.  The cacophony was wonderful, laughter, piano, singing, little kids playing, trying to get all the little ones on the couch together for a picture, in their velvet dresses, blue and red, lace and ribbons.  There was a tree, but it was small and on a buffet.  You couldn’t get all of us in there with a big tree in the room.

Stuffed into Grandma's House
my Dad hiding behind pillow
Grandpa Ammons with tie and Mom in pink, singing
Cousins and their kids on couch
1967

From Left:  Cousin Dave's 3 redheads, my Erin and Carolyn and Cousin Gail's Janie and Paula
1967

I think of later years, when Grandma and Grandpa were gone, musicales at Mom’s house.  It was Mom's dream to have her children perform at Christmas, and Dad and her, too.  We resisted at first, for a year or two, but finally gave in.  Dad would sing “Oh Holy Night” in his baritone—you could see he was nervous—Mom would play for him and sometimes they’d have to start over, but it always brought a lump to my throat.  Mom, in red or green, would play by ear, swaying back and forth on the piano bench, and sing something popular, an old standard like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”.  I have so many pictures of her with her back to us, at the piano, obviously in her glory.  I would practice for weeks to sing something unusual, a Spanish folk tune maybe.  One year, after a divorce I performed a Tai Chi routine and my brother accompanied it on the guitar.  I was too fragile to sing that year.  My brothers usually played their guitars; Dan played his sax, too.  Eventually, to Mom’s delight, we got the grandchildren involved.  Erin played her flute, her husband, Kent, played the piano and Christopher, his recorder or the guitar.  Throat lump time again for me.

Lump in throat time: Dad and I singing

Dad, Mom and Dan are all gone now.  There is no more musicale.  There is sometimes a celebration at my house now, with my children here, but that’s rare.  Mostly, it’s gotten quiet.  This year even my brother, Stanley, was absent; he was in jail.  Mom would have been so sad and I was.  We had our Christmas Eve with "Miracle on 34^th Street", the 1939 version, coconut nog for me, bourbon and Coke for my husband, cookies that his Mom had sent in the mail and some gluten free ginger cookies I’d made for me.  My grandchildren were in Oklahoma, Maine, San Diego and London.  My husband’s nieces, nephews, sister and mom were in Utah and his cousins in Greece and England.   It wasn’t sad so much as it was quiet.  Our little chuckles at the hundreds of letters to Santa piling up on the judge’s dais were nearly silent compared to the Christmas din of years past.

Now that Christmas is over for 2013, it’s time for the New Year to come.  No matter what has been going on at Christmas, whether it’s wild and wonderful as in the “old days”, or quiet as it is now, we have been filling out New Year’s Papers since Christopher was about nine—25 or 26 years.  It’s a time to think about the bests of the year, the surprises, the concerns, the goals for the brand new year coming.  I made a sort of a form all those years ago, that with only minor tweaks, we’ve used since then.  Best movie, best book, favorite TV shows, biggest surprise, worry, best present at Christmas, stuff like that.  And always at the end:  hopes for the New Year.  Each of these papers is a tiny time capsule—I love the ones from Christopher in those young, innocent years.  One year he hoped “to reach the place of strong”.  There has always been a worry, sometimes about the health of a loved one, sometimes about a loved one’s lack of wealth, very rarely about ourselves.  I think this year my hope will be that we can make a different Christmas next year, one that is less about old memories, but more about making new ones.  A trip?  A new volunteer activity? A place we can be around more people?  Something that takes us out of our too quiet home.

My last blog post worried a couple of friends enough that they called me on Christmas.  What they don’t know about me is that I think and I think—that’s part of what makes a writer—and then I write and sometimes I’m in a mood when I think and write.  And that mood came across on the page.  But I’m okay.  I’m just thinking on the page.  And those phone calls were wonderful to get, too.  Thank you for thinking and remembering---me.  Happy New Year!

I Don't Care

I think I’ll become a drunk.  My brother got his sentence, his stalking sentence, today.  20 more days in jail after serving 6 months—not out for Christmas.  Michael had his Visa card number stolen and found out about it this morning.  Some scumbag charged an airline ticket on it.  He also fell down while scraping snow off the portable garage roof, and strained his already injured shoulder muscles.  By lunchtime I was ready for a drink, so I added rum to my tea.

Booze is better than drugs or more pills.  I already take an anti-depressant, and even if my brother wasn’t crazy and in jail, while I pay his rent so he can keep his tiny apartment with the low rent, I’d still have to take the pills to keep being married.  My husband’s ranting makes me stiffen my neck muscles, as if each and every word of his rant is a blow to my back.  So the pills have to continue, but I could add liquor.

Liquor makes me mellow, relaxed, and devil-may-care.  The devil cares, I don’t.  My husband is yelling because Obama said something he and Fox News considers stupid?  I don’t care.  My brother stalked a girl for months and then got arrested?  I don’t care.  My Mom died and left me with my brother?  I really don’t care.  My daughter in San Diego is on the edge of being homeless several times a year?  I kind of don’t care.  My dearest grandchildren live in a foreign country that costs $1000 to fly to, a minimum of $25 to send anything to, and $1 to send a card to?  I don’t care.  I’ll be going to a memorial service on Saturday because a woman I’ve known since high school has just died?  And the three old classmates who I’ll see there all have or have had cancer?  If I put brandy in my eggnog when I get home, a lot of brandy, maybe I won’t care.

Dear Dan

August 11, 2013

7:00 a.m. Sunday

Dear Brother Dan,

I have spent a weekend with the class of ’63.  It was fun to see people I used to know a little.  They were the class below me and the class right ahead of you.  I saw them at school, on the bus, some were active and so I knew of them more than others.  I watched them at the social hours they had on Friday night, dipping down to read the nametag before approaching someone—I remember that from our 45^th reunion—I hadn’t been to a reunion for 25 years and I didn’t recognize anyone except Richard Morton and Vickie C. Holt.  I went to this stuff because Kay wanted someone to go with her.  Her husband, Jim died in 2007, I think it was and her boyfriend of 2 years bailed on her for good, so I was it.  I think she needed the moral support and I figured I could be a designated driver.  So that’s why I was there.

But I’m writing to you because I was moved to hear people talking about you.  When they had figured out who I was so many of them said, “I knew Dan!”  Most of them knew you had died in 2003.  Jerry Campana remembered you from sports (and riding the school bus together), Tom Demick was the same.  A guy named Mike Haugen told me he had a pretty messy alcoholic childhood and you were the person he wanted to be.  You had lots of friends, were smart, good at sports, funny.  He thought you were the person that had it all together.  He was so sad that you weren’t here anymore.  He’d gone through some really tough times, met a good woman who helped him turn his life around.  We both wondered if that could have happened for you.

 

Last night at the big reunion at the Kitsap Gold and Country Club Jerry Green was the one who was stunned by your death.  He almost went white after I told him.  He loved you, Dan.  He was astounded that you could have gone so young.  When I told him you’d used drugs over the years and struggled with mental health he remembered another mutual friend of yours that had also died young from the same kind of thing that took you—heart disease.  When he had his meal, he bowed his head for a while—I wonder if he was remembering you in his prayers.

And you know who else I saw and had a good time with?  Jack Gray!  He told me he has a print of the “urchin” boys picture you took, dirty faces, tattered t-shirts—a photo I have, too.  He said he’d been meaning to give it to me, but when I told him I have a copy he seemed happy to keep the one he has.  I think he misses you.  Jack and his partner, Dale, live up at Chimicum—Jack grows a garden, like you did and like I do.  It sounds like he has a nice piece of land with good sunlight.  His partner is nice and was friendly to me.  They might have had a conversation about you later and what you meant to Jack.  I have Jack’s email and want to keep in touch with him—maybe it’s a way of keeping in touch with you a little bit.

David Walworth was there, too.  You would not believe how exactly the same he looks.  He is very involved with his church along with his wife, Ginger.  I liked Ginger.  She’s as easy to talk to as David.  She showed me a picture with David, Roy, Rupert and Lloyd.  Leonard wasn’t there that day.  David told me a story about you and all the boys putting their swimming suits on in the middle of the Walworth house, when their Mom came walking through the room.  The Walworth boys thought nothing of it and neither did their Mom, but you pulled your pants up fast and panicked!  I told David that at our house Mom and Dad were so modest that we all dressed in our own rooms and we always closed the bathroom door.  He remembers thinking your reaction was so funny.

Do you remember Janet Cavallaro?  She is full of energy still and happens to be reading my blog.  She’s been married 45 years to a sweet man she met while they were in high school.  I wish I could recall his name, but it’s not in there, sorry.  You probably knew him, too. 

I so wish you could have heard all the positive things people said about you.  It filled my heart.  I doubt if you knew all the people who cared about you and who have happy memories of you.  Do any of us know that?  You should have been able to attend your own 50^th class reunion, which will be next year.  But as you said at Dad’s memorial service, you never reached the level of his success, you never had a family or children, you might have felt that you failed in life.  That might have kept you away from a reunion.  But it would have been a mistake not to go.  So many, many people cared.

I promised lots of people I’d let you know they think about you.

I love and miss you,

Your Big Sister, Chris

Yikes!

Life has its ups….and it has its downs….We spent a wonderful month in Greece.  That was an up.  Then we came home and found my brother was in jail.  That was a real down.  Does life have to have these checks and balances, as if it were a scale—no up without a down?  Getting laid off, in 1996, from my job of ten years at Northstar Sportswear, followed a trip to England.  It seemed like a punishment.  When we went to England earlier this year we came home to find my brother had totaled his car.  Maybe I am superstitious.  That’s probably it.  But, cripes, it makes me nervous.  We’ll be going on other trips in the future.  Should I take Xanax before we get home next time, to prepare myself for what catastrophe is in store?  Should we buy extra insurance against water heaters blowing up, or trees falling, or brothers ending up in worse places than jail?

Laugh

A few friends and I have been talking about aging lately, about meaning and shortness of time and so forth.  And then I ran into this quote in a magazine that seems appropriate to what we've been feeling.

    To laugh often and much; to win the respect
of intelligent people and the affection of children;
    to earn the appreciation of honest critics, and
endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate
    beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the
world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, 
    a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier because
    you lived.  That is to have succeeded.

                                        Ralph Waldo Emerson

Kind of a sad day

This morning is sad.  We lost a friend to breast cancer yesterday, after a battle of 2 1/2 years.  It's the one year anniversary of my daughter-in-law's loss of her Dad and it's 3 years, as of May 22, since my Mom died.  Memorial Day will mean much more in the years to come.

I am not all sad, though.  Our trip to London and Paris makes me feel good.  We (my husband, son, daughter-in-law and granddaughters) saw and did so much that I can scarcely wrap my mind around it.  I was very excited to see and experience Paris and I wasn't disappointed.  It was as beautiful as I expected it to be and filled with energy unlike any city, other than New York, I'd ever been in.  It is true that Parisians go to the patisseries in the morning and walk home with a baguette under their arms.  It is true that the pastry in Paris and probably the whole of France, tastes better.  It must be the butter.  It is true that the Parisians, both men and women, have great style.  They have a love affair with the neck scarf right now and for some reason know how to tie it better than anyone.  They have car showrooms on the Champs Elysees (the Rodeo Drive of Paris) for Astin Martin, Mercedes Benz, Audi.  The Mercedes showroom used couture clad mannequins next to and inside their cars. I had to take pictures it was so interesting and bizarre.

Mannequin in car, husband behind it drooling.

The Eiffel Tower is huge, spectacular, surrounded by lovely park land.  The Arch d' Triumph is triumphant in it's splendidness and it's tribute to fallen soldiers and is in the center of the biggest round-about in the world.  We went to The Jardin d'Acclimatation, a park that was incredible with kid stuff to do--real ponies to ride on and fake ones that went through the park on tracks, bobbing up and down.  Peacocks strode around, posing for pictures.  There were two big carousels and a couple of roller coasters.  We only saw a small portion of the park.  You'd have to go back over and over to see the whole thing.

There is so much more to say about Paris but I won't right now.  England was terrific, too.  I bought a book that was a children's history of The Kings and Queens of Britain and read it the whole time we were there, learning in a simple way just how all those guys got royal.  Speaking of Royal, all of London and the surrounding area is very Royal.  There was gold on gates and streets called by royal names and castles everywhere.  We rode the train and the tube and we minded the gap.  I am such a mimic that I had a very hard time not imitating all the accents I heard.  I hope they didn't think I was making fun of them--I  just can't help myself.  Michael ate many meat pies and I ate scones with jam and clotted cream (cream whipped just short of butter).  It turns out that England has good gluten-free products, better than I've found here.  Good for them.  Generally, though, their food is not as tasty as ours is, though Ralph would argue that fish and chips "over there" is better than here.

Westminster Abbey was awe inspiring.  I stood right above Charles Darwin's grave and in front of Handel's.  I touched the tombs of Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, and Mary Queen of Scots. I walked in the aisle where William and Catherine got married 3 years ago. I'm still trying to fathom all of that.

We weren't allowed to take pictures in the cathedral proper but here is one

 from a room off of the main abbey.

  There is so much more that we saw I could bore you with it for days.  It was a wonderful trip.  I will go back to both England and Paris next May, hopefully with my daughter, Erin.  I can't wait to be in Paris again.  And next time I'm going to Stonehenge, too!

Feedback

Okay, so....I have a few people who read this blog and I'd like some feedback on this new"dynamic" style of blog site that I've opted for.  I happen to really like it because in "flip" mode it shows all the pictures I've used and I can see posts from long ago and read them again.  I could always do that but rarely did because of the way it was set up before.

So try it out and see what you think.  You can always choose the "classic" tab to see it the old-fashioned way.  Let me know.

Poetry Instead of Me

Too busy to write myself, today, so I'm going to put in a poem by Dorothy Parker that I particularly like:

INSCRIPTION FOR THE CEILING

 OF A BEDROOM

Daily dawns another day;
I must up, to make my way.
Though I dress and drink and eat,
Move my fingers and my feet,
Learn a little, here and there,
Weep and laugh and sweat and swear,
Hear a song, or watch a stage,
Leave some words upon a page,
Claim a foe, or hail a friend--
Bed awaits me at the end.

Though I go in pride and strength,
I'll come back to bed at length.
Though I walk in blinded woe,
Back to bed I'm bound to go.
High my heart, or bowed my head,
All my days but lead to bed.
Up, and out, and on; and then
Ever back to bed again,
Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall--
I'm a fool to rise at all!

Calgon, Take Me Away!

Just when I thought it was safe to go back into the water.....

I got a call yesterday afternoon from that guy who calls himself my brother.  He had totaled his car, the old Plymouth Breeze he'd inherited from Mom two years ago.  He thinks a magazine fell down under his feet and jammed the gas and brake pedals while he was next to the Bremerton Safeway.  He ran into their sign. Chico Towing was there and taking the car to their lot.  The police were there.  He was okay and his passenger, an old friend, was okay.  Nobody hurt.  He has car insurance, which he didn't have about 3 months ago.  I was laying on the guest bed reading when I got the phone call.  I listened to my brother telling me what he thought happened, what was happening right then, his voice was high and "excited", adrenaline was coursing through his viens, I'm sure.  I wondered when the question would come--"Can you come to pick me up?"  or "Will you help me with the insurance claim?" or  "What am I going to do?"  But I deflected those potential questions with my own directives:  "Call Geiko right away!" and "Are you getting a ride home with Tom"?  Finally, he had to get off the cell phone he was using, probably his friend's, to finalize the police report.

I lay there, tried to read again, but couldn't.  I just kept thinking about how it's only been 1 year since he's truly been on his own.  It was last April that I found the Bremerton Garden Apartments place for him and my  husband and I moved all his stuff in there, cursing at each other and bickering, because his stuff was covered in cat hair and deep dust and falling apart and his paintings were huge and heavy and there were so many of them.  He didn't want to throw anything away--there were heavy boxes of magazines, books, old broken motorcycle models.  He was so out of it he didn't help us at all.  It took forever and I was 68 and not that strong and my husband is 11 years younger, but didn't want to be doing it.  It was awful, harrowing even.

Because the apartment was too expensive for him I had to put Estate money aside to help him with the rent.  I didn't know how to find apartments then, so it came down to whatever we could do quickly after Mom's house closed.  For a year I went to his dirty apartment every month and wrote him a check to cover part of the rent.  When the lease was close to running out I found him a new, studio apartment, because the Estate money had run out.  This time I was more savvy but there were still only 3 studios in Kitsap that he could just barely afford.  And this time his Special Needs Trust administrator, the miracle worker, Jenifer, agreed to move him, charging him a more than fair amount out of his trust.  She arranged it all, even to the point of getting a company to come in and move away the dilapidated furniture that he couldn't fit into the studio.  I helped him get "organized", taped boxes for him, advised, etc., but I didn't have to move him at all.  And when he was all moved out, she hired Scrubbles to clean, something I was thinking I'd have to do.

In the year that he'd been there he had a restraining order filed against him because he was obsessed with a young woman at the coffee shop he went to.  He got stopped by the police twice for a broken tail light.  He'd gone to the emergency room twice, once for a deep cut on his hand.  He had no doctor because his old one wouldn't take the new Medicaid insurance. He had neglected to get car insurance.  His coffee pot broke and his microwave, too.  His cat was limping and too fat.  He stopped taking all his meds because of no doctor.  But he felt and looked better, had more energy, was not sleeping all day.  All in one year.

So I thought I was out of the woods with a move to a place where he'd have less interaction with people he might annoy.  A place that was already rustic and that he couldn't really wreck.  His trust administrator was doing a good job.  He was reconnecting with some old friends.  I was feeling almost carefree.  I knew I'd be getting phone calls occasionally about small stuff, like he asked me last month:  "Who played the female role in Spartacus?"  I had a feeling that he might try to get money from me and I was prepared to say no.  But I didn't think I'd get this phone call just 2 weeks after he'd moved.  All I can say is "ACK"!!!!!!  He has learned some things, but he is woefully unequipped to live in the real world.  Sometimes I am angry with my folks for not throwing him out years and years ago.

But on the other hand, I must be doing better emotionally and mentally.  I did sleep soundly last night.  I did not think about my brother or his accident until I woke up.  I am having to write about it now to get it down and out of my head.  Funny thing is, yesterday I was saying to my husband that I should probably call my brother to see how he was doing in his new apartment.  I didn't want to call him for fear he would want me to do something for him--take him somewhere or bring him something or show him how to do something.  I wanted to stay off his radar.  And then he called.  Remember the old Saturday Night Live skits with the Land Shark?  I can hear the music now--dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum--knock, knock.  Who's there?  Candygram.......

It's about time!

Well, a friend and fellow class of 1962 graduate of CK High school, wants to know why I'm not posting in my blog or blogging in my post or whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing on this page.  I gave him all kinds of excuses--writing for my writer's group, answering emails, posting and reading Facebook, reading the newspaper--I didn't talk about the floors, the laundry, the garden and all the stuff a person does in their week.  He actually excused me and said, "I guess you need to wait for inspiration."  But that's not true.  No matter how much there is to do, no matter what seems to take precedence to writing, the fact is that a person who calls herself a writer must write every day.  If she waits for inspiration she will rarely write. This is what I've learned from reading many writer's words of advice about writing.  It's simple:  write every day.

So in that spirit, I will write something here.

We had a lovely alumni lunch today at a diner in Bremerton that used to be Pat's Cookie Jar.  Now it's got car posters on the walls and motorcycle models in the case that used to hold yummy baked things.  Lots more of us geezers showed up than have come to the last few lunches.  Maybe we were all fed up with the gray skies and cold temperatures and wanted to see some sunny faces to warm us up.  What ever the reasons, it was a big, jolly group.  I saw other people in the diner looking over at our long table of laughing people, probably wondering what we all had in common besides our white hair.  Well, we know what we have in common--it's age and common experience in life and that's a marvelous, consoling commonness. I love the fact that we know each other better and we talk about our current lives now, rather than about our former, high school lives, though we still go down memory lane sometimes, too.

Another friend asked me last week if I think about age all the time.  She says she thinks about it all day, every day.  She is one year younger than me.  I don't think about it much at all.  Not even when I look in the mirror.  My husband still thinks I'm pretty nice to look at, which helps.  I don't feel terribly achey or unsteady.  I seem to have quite a bit of energy.  I don't take any medicine, which means I am fortunate to have good genes.  But it's more than outward appearance that keeps me from thinking about it.  It's my innards, my brain, my philosophy or my outlook, something like that, that allows me to forget about it.  I have to admit to noticing my memory is crappy and getting crappier.  Usually, I can blame that on having too much on my mind, but other times it's obviously that age thing.  I hope I can keep from worrying about age until the day I die.

I'm so sad about Boston, but encouraged by the way people there reacted, helping, aiding, being positive.  And by the speed at which the law enforcement people are finding clues--that's impressive.  Terrorism is a fact, but the way we react to it is our choice.

That's all, Dean.  Better than nothing, huh?

Mom's Spring

This is a piece I found recently that Mom probably wrote for her church writing group, in 2003 or 2004, at the age of 82.

Spring

The Spring of the  year is so joyous!  Spring in Washington is lovely, but the greenness has been there all winter, so it is not as dramatic as spring in my home state of Wisconsin.  There, one day it was winter, then the next day it was spring!  I remember how it felt to have spring come.  We children in grade school would get excited at the new season!  We would run home and demand to get our long winter underwear off!  The way my mother handled that, she simply snipped off the legs and arms of the despised garment.  She knew there would be cold days ahead and it would feel good to me on chilly days.

I remember suddenly the water running in the gutters beside the school.  Instead of snowbanks, the melted snow had it's way.

We girls excitedly got out our light weight clothes.  We left off the heavy woolen scarves and the clumsy rubber galoshes.  It felt so light to skip along the sidewalks in our leather shoes.  We left off our woolen caps, too.

The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and we were all looking forward to summer, to long, lazy days of swimming and hiking, exploring the woods nearby, roller skating on my brand new skates!

The first day of spring was unofficial, it was the first day in March that the sun came out and stayed out all day.  Sometimes we had a very late spring, but that made it all the sweeter when it finally arrived.  The things that I remember about spring as a child were robins chirping, beautiful purple, velvety violets, growing along the railroad tracks. Our Spirea bush, the prettiest and largest one in the town of Mukwonago, was glorious in its white plumage.  We always used it as a back drop for family photographs.

That's my Mom's remembrance of spring in Wisconsin, which she left when she was 12 years old.  70 years later the memories were still vivid and sweet.

Sliding

My husband and I have been sliding.  Not on ice, but that’s also possible up here on “the mountain”, where we still have snow on the ground.  No, our sliding is sorting, scanning and naming hundreds of slides my Dad took between 1957 and the mid-eighties.  We have a huge bag full of rejects.  I hate to throw any of them away, but I decided not to scan those that are landscapes, sunrises, sunsets or are of people who aren’t relatives.  There were lots of those.  There were 50 slides marked “PeeWees”.  I couldn’t identify a single person in them.  Out they went. 

My Mom and her sister, Carol

Mom and Dad

But there are also hundreds, 600 plus so far, that we’ve scanned.  It has been a real journey down memory lane looking at this memoir on film, showing what my Dad felt was important to chronicle.  He took pictures of his dogs, all trained to hunt, and of the fish he caught, big salmon and good-sized Rainbow trout.  He took pictures of the flowers he planted, red, yellow and pink rhododendrons and pink dogwood.   There were uncountable images of beautiful sunsets and sunrises, of the rivers he fished and mountains he hiked.  But his most photographed subject was Mom.  We see her in beautiful pink, red and sapphire blue dresses, dressed for special occasions.  She stands in pastel pants and sun hats in front of the Capitol Building in D.C., in front of the Lincoln Memorial, standing with Mount Rushmore in the distance.  She is seen next to rivers, next to campfires, in Disneyland, in Hawaii, on the golf course.  She emerges from a lake in a brilliantly red swimming suit.  She stands with her cousin “Abe” in numerous shots, always wearing a jaunty hat.  She poses in her “daffodil” hat and orange and yellow print dress on Easter.  She sings, with her hair piled on her head, in The Puget Soundsters.  She is caught sleeping on the couch and sunning on a lawn chair.  Dad obviously loved and wanted to capture the image of his wife.  

Chris dressed up for a dance

My memories spark when I see the pictures of me and my brother, Dan, as young kids and teenagers.  We were sitting in front of the Christmas Tree cozy and warm, and then around a campfire, watching our shoes and socks dry, hypnotized by the flames, our eyes watering from the smoke.  There are pictures of us in fancy Easter outfits, graduation gowns, dressed formally for proms.  As the years passed I appeared with my two daughters, pictures of Dan with a huge beard, my little brother Stanley growing up, from baby in a walker to gawky teenager to a young man heading off to the Army.  My first and second husbands appear, as do many pictures of my third child, Christopher, as a baby.  All my kids are babies again, in pictures I forgot were taken.  I have long hair for a long time, then short hair.  I look tired or energetic, happy or moody—moments in time, mere seconds in a history.

I’ve also gotten to see my Aunts and Uncles and my Grandmas and Grandpas again.  All of them are gone now and Mom and Dad, too. It’s wonderful to see my parents again in their forties and fifties when they were traveling and camping and had tons of energy for fishing and swimming.  My grandparents were old already in these pictures, but I can feel the sweet affection I had for them when I look at their worn faces in these photos. 

My Grandma and Grandpa Ammons

I’m so glad for all these pictures my Dad took.  Mom took photos, too, but she printed hers and they are in the albums that I’ve pored over for years.  The ones from Dad were hidden away for decades.  He’d show them to us, via the slide projector and the screen, the canisters jamming sometimes and Dad narrating in detail. Then they’d be put back in a box in the closet.  I unearthed them when I cleaned Mom’s house out after she died.  They are a treasure, one that will be my most prized gift of the Christmas of 2012.

Changes

It’s inevitable that things change year by year.  In 2011 the big change was my mother dying.  2012 hasn’t been that dramatic, but nevertheless, there have been changes.  We are older and our bodies are beginning to show that.  Michael decided to eat less sugar and to try to exercise more and I was diagnosed gluten intolerant.  I have always loved to bake, but baking is now a whole new game of alternate flours and xanthan gum and avoiding eggs. I had been putting it off but after Thanksgiving I embarked on baking my first batch of gluten-free cookies.  I turned the radio to 106.9, All Christmas Music All The Time Starting the Day After Thanksgiving, setting the cookie baking mood.  

I got out all my baking tools, put the parchment paper on the cookie sheets, gathered the unfamiliar ingredients, the brown rice flour and the garbonzo bean flour, the familiar sugar, baking soda and baking powder, the chocolate chips and walnuts. I had been warned that GF baking is “different”. I followed the recipe from the gluten-free recipe book, the normal steps of creaming the sugar and oil (I'll use butter next time), then adding the dry ingredients and milk. I tasted the batter. It was grainy.  I hoped the graininess would retreat to the background when the chips and nuts were added.  I dropped the batter from a teaspoon onto the cookie sheet and put the first pan in the oven.  The time suggested for baking was 17 minutes.  When the timer went off the cookies were still pale.  I added 2 more minutes.  Still no browning.  2 more minutes and then 2 minutes more.  After adding 10 minutes to the baking time, 2 minutes at a time, I finally got a slightly browned cookie.  On the next batch I jacked up the heat and got browned cookies in a shorter amount of time and made a note on the recipe to use butter next time and to start with a higher heat.  

I think it's going to be like America's Test Kitchen around here for awhile, until I get the hang of this kind of baking.  In the meantime, the music was nice and the cookies aren't bad--I like them (Michael doesn't)--I'm used to gluten-free eating after several months of it and everything tastes less sweet and less flaky and let's face it, less good.  Who knew gluten was so important in mouth-watering concoctions?  I'll keep at it  until I have something I would be willing to serve to gluten-eating-people, something that feels and tastes less like cattle feed. Wish me luck!

A Voyage to Remember

In Tracy Arm

Where do I begin?  How about with the first day?  We started to see other CK alumni on the ferry out of Bremerton.  We saw Tracy and Marie Junell and got a fleeting glimpse of Ed and Judy (I think).  We saw Tracy again in the check-in line at Pier 91 and again in line at the buffet when we all got on the ship, the Star Princess.  I spotted Trude and Elaine Gillman in the long, long buffet line, too, and then later Jack and Karen Archer not paying attention during the lifeboat drill.  The first thing I did after unpacking was to call Larry McConnell to find out which bar we were meeting at on Deck 7 at 6:00.  It was called Crooners.  I called everybody on the list.  My plan was to discuss how we wanted to organize the rest of the cruise.

The best laid plans—we didn’t really get to that.  We were more interested in ordering drinks, learning everybody’s names and getting some history.  Ask Wayne Swenson how I am at ordering drinks.  I had to look some up on Michael’s iTouch in order to figure out what to drink.  I decided on a Tom Collins.  Sounds pretty sophisticated and ‘60s, no? It was delicious!

Larry McConnell

Everybody came to the party:  Tracy and Marie Junell; Trude and Elaine Gillman; Larry McConnell; Stevie Kemp and her daughter, Sherrie-Ann; Jack and Karen Archer; Ed and Judy Lively; Marty McLaren and me and my husband, Michael.  We had the waiter running and we were a noisy bunch, laughing and yelling back and forth. This was a new adventure.  Many of us had been on cruises before, but none of us had been on a cruise with alumni from our high schools.  What a trip back and forward in time. 

We did decide to troop off to dinner together and ended up at two tables far from each other.  I think they were having as much fun at their table as we were having at ours. We talked non-stop, barely noticing what we were eating—kind of like we do at our alumni lunches.  Ignoring the food on a cruise ship is extraordinary, because the meals are exquisite.  Since most of us are all at least 68, we petered out at around 9:00 and found our way back to our cabins, with promises to meet for lunch on Monday.

That’s how it went for the rest of the cruise.  We met at what we dubbed Larry’s Bar between 5 and 6 every evening and discussed the day and what we were doing for dinner.  We were a family of 16.  “What did you do today, Christine?”  “We went into Ketchikan and over to the Creek and watched the seals catching the poor salmon that were trying to spawn.”  “Are you going to the show tonight, Jack?”  “Want to eat at the Capri dining room?”   “We saw some whales today!” “What are you going to do in Juneau?” “Who wants to help me finish this bottle of wine?”

Some nights one or another of us was missing from the party at Larry’s Bar and sometimes a couple or two would opt out of the dining room and decide to go to the buffet.  One night we all sat together having our evening cocktail, worrying about whether Marty was going to make it back from her solo ride on the White Pass train before the ship departed Skagway.  (She made it back just in time.) Another night we managed to get two tables of eight right next to each other and one night we got a huge table for twelve.  The waiters earned a tip that night.  We were the last ones to leave the dining room.  At each dinner together it was the same.  Talk, eat, laugh, talk, eat, laugh, eat, talk.  And there was never an awkward pause in conversation as there sometimes is when you are sitting with strangers at a cruise ship dinner.  Even though we were together off and on for a week, there never seemed to be enough time to chat. Marty and I had to make a date for some time together and Jack kept saying, “Christine, you and Michael haven’t eaten with Karen and me yet.”  I wonder if some alumni thought they’d get tired of their old school friends if they went on a cruise with them.  I can’t imagine that.

Michael and Marty discuss politics

We all saw different things, we all did different things.  Some went into town, some didn’t.  Some went on excursions, some just walked around in Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway.  And then we’d come together and tell each other what we’d seen and done.  Remember The Big Chill movie?  It was like that except there was no kitchen.  It was the dinner table where we teased each other and found out more about each other, made toasts and compared notes.  I think Ralph might have thought we would stay on the boat and talk 24/7, but we did it differently, coming together for our evening cocktail and making plans for dinner.  It became a pleasant habit and a great regular addition to each day.  (We made a decision toward the end.  If we do a cruise again with many alumni, we will choose fixed dining so we can have a huge table for all of us and not have to worry about reservations.)

Judy and Ed Lively and Michael in the Atrium of Star Princess

Here are some things I’m not going to forget:

            Jack’s big grin and wine bottles and Karen’s huge, colorful drinks. (no, she’s not a lush but I’m not so sure about Jack!)

            Marty looking very relaxed.

            Larry talking about his grandkids with love splashed all over his face.

            Ed’s formal attire—black pants and jacket, an orange t-shirt, and orange breast pocket handkerchief and orange Converse tennis shoes. Go Cougars!

            Trude Junior “Gil” Gillman in a suit, looking good!

            Elaine Gillman’s pretty fingernails.

            Trude saying, after an excursion in Ketchikan, “I didn’t see anything I couldn’t have seen at Chico Creek”.

            Tracy’s hilarious stories about being in Mr. Huey’s office all the time.

            Jack, Karen, Ed and Judy dancing.

           

Of course, I won’t forget the seals in Ketchikan Creek corralling spawning Coho salmon or the beautiful green mountains and aqua water of Tracy Arm or the fact we could walk up so close to Mendenhall Glacier.  I won’t forget that on this fourth time my husband and I have cruised to Alaska our weather Karma finally ran out.  It rained.  I’ll always remember how quirky Skagway is, even if it does have too many “gold stores”.  I won’t forget the porcupine up a tree in Juneau or the young boy who said, “We’ve seen lots of bears.  It’s much rarer to see a porcupine.”  I won’t forget our Alaskan driver on the Blue Bus in Juneau who had such an odd accent I could barely understand him. I’ll always be thankful to our steward, Rakesh (East Indian), who was so attentive to us and made us clever towel animals when he turned down our beds at night.

Love Birds by Rakesh

What I’ll always remember about this cruise, unlike all the others we’ve taken, or will take, is the people we were with, the dear old friends and new ones, like Sherrie-Ann, Judy Lively, Elaine Gillman and Marie Junell.  Thank you, Ralph.  We toasted you and thought of you every day, wishing you were there.  And we talked about the future and another cruise, or trek, mountain lodge or ocean cabin—some other place to gather for a week—and you with us next time. 

Gluten-Almost Free

Yeah, it's been a long time. And my "readers" are probably not even checking anymore. I wouldn't be checking regularly if I was them. Oh bother, same old post as last time. I've been pretty busy though because I have just been diagnosed as Gluten Intolerant. First reaction? Anger!!!! Grrrrr!!! Can't bake anymore--have to start reading those doggone impossible- to-read-because-my- eyes-blur ingredients on the backs of boxes and jars. Have to buy SPECIAL food. Dang, dang and double-dang. But then, as always when presented with a problem, I threw a book at it. I went to the lovely, local Barnes and Noble and found Gluten-Free Recipes for Dummies and, more importantly, a recipe book for Gluten and Egg Free Baking (did I mention I also tested positive for egg intolerance?). The recipe book is called Flying Apron's Gluten-Free & Vegan Baking Book and is written by a woman who owns a bakery in Seattle--www.flyingapron.com .  I'm not going to become a Vegan but they don't eat eggs (among other things I find very delicious) so this will work for me.

Okay....so....I've been reading and researching and buying expensive gluten-free things.  My husband is flinching at the grocery costs (we have a grocery budget and he keeps track of it).  I flinch, too, when I buy a loaf of gluten-free bread and it costs nearly $5!!  But I love bread and it's one of the things I just can't live without.  I'm learning, though, that there are things I will have to live without.  I won't be able to eat Ralph's donuts anymore--maybe one, but not one everyday like I was doing when he brought me a bag full at one of our 50th alumni reunion planning meetings.  And his potato salad is incredible partly because he puts so many eggs in it--another dish I will have to avoid.  Then there are all those things I love to made--cookies, bars, muffins--that I'll have to re-invent.  Sounds like I'm not going to be any fun anymore, doesn't it?  That's part of why I don't much like this diagnosis.  I should not drink regular beer anymore, either....and that hurts.  I have found gluten-free beers, but they aren't Gary's Irish Death or Silver City Brewery's Panther Lake Porter, my two favorites.  Even a pretty light beer like Corona is now off my list.  Did I mention I turned the air blue with cursing when I got the word about the gluten?

The thing is, I have suffered from intestinal stuff for almost my entire life, and now I have arthritis that is progressing fast and I have to take anti-depressants for my moodiness.  And from December to April 2011-12 I had three bad colds.  So instead of going to a regular doctor who would have had nothing but pills in their arsenal of remedies, I went to a naturopath.  I happened to know Jane already--she's in my writing group--and I trust her.  She is the one who had me tested and she is the one who had to tell me about my intolerances.  She was afraid I might say, "Screw it!" and never come back to see her again, but I did go back and she gave me all kinds of ideas and resources.  I'm getting used to the idea, sort of.  It's only been a couple of weeks since the tests came back.  I found out right before we went to Gary Parker's Iron Horse Brewery in Ellensburg ( www.ironhorsebrewery.com ) for a tour of his tiny brewing building.  He gave us a taste of every beer he had on tap.  They were delicious, cold, refreshing and I knew with each gulp that they might be some of the last tastes of real beer I'd have in a long time, if ever again.  That made them doubly wonderful and I felt wicked and intoxicated.  We had a great 24 hours with Gary, and I ate all kinds of things I wasn't supposed to--it was a wheat binge--flour tortillas, bread and waffles.

The upside to all this "intolerance" is that without wheat gluten (which includes barley and rye) I feel more energetic, my stomach isn't rebelling, I'm less moody.  My fingers are still aching--we'll have to give it more time to see if the new diet helps that condition.

That's one of the reasons I haven't been blogging--the others are that it's summer (yahoo!!) and I can work in my garden, I'm taking an online writing class for several weeks and it's intensive writing, and my writing group demands something new every two weeks.  Reasons, reasons.  If only I could be satisfied with a one paragraph blog post....I'll work on that.  I hope this post satisfies some of my readers, if they're still out there.  If you have any gluten-free, egg-free advice, let me know.

One Year

Dear Mom,

It’s been an entire year since that May 22 that you died.  I’ve gotten pretty much past the vision of you gasping for air when I got back to your house after taking a two-hour break that morning.  It was not a sight I ever wanted to see, and it stayed in my head for a long time.  Now, 12 months later, it isn’t the paramount picture I have of your last few hours.  What I remember now is sitting on the bed by your side, stroking your head, while your granddaughter, Carolyn, laid on the other side of you, curled around your head and your great-grandson Alex laid next to you.  Stanley was at the foot of the bed.  He seemed to need a little more distance.  We talked to you and waited for your last breath to come.  We knew you were leaving us very soon.  As you took that last breathe Stanley and I said, nearly at the same instant, “Poor little Mama.”  Carolyn and I began to cry and I took your rings off your finger—I didn’t want them to be there when the people came to take you away.  I put them on my finger and they stayed there for days.  Alex put the picture he’d drawn of a rose on your chest.  He did it so sweetly, with so much sensitivity.  He really cared about you, even though he’d not known you very well.  I guess he knew that you saw the artist in him that very few others had seen yet.

Your skin turned the most gorgeous ivory just after you died.  You looked like a beautiful angelic marble statue.  I will never forget how you looked at that moment and I hope it will one day replace the gasping-for-air picture that floats in every now and then.  Strangely, Carolyn and I had the same impulse—to go through your jewelry to find a token, something to hold of yours in the days to come.  Alex wanted a large pin, Carolyn looked for a pendant she remembered you wearing.  I only remember the act of looking, not what I took.  All of the practical things that had to be done came after that.  We had to call Hospice and Michael.  Eventually the funeral home people showed up—one guy who looked like a plumber with another guy who looked like a ghoul!  We went into the kitchen when they took you out of the house, turning our backs, not looking.  There was paperwork to do, pills to destroy, decisions to make.  I remember very little of that.  I was relieved and devastated at the same time.  I had known you were dying for several months, I suppose you knew it too, though you kept promising me you were going to get better.

I’ve dreamed about you many times in the year since you left.  In the dreams you are younger, not sick.  Dad is there, too.  You are together and healthy.  I love those dreams—they are like a visit from both of you.  You would be happy to know that Stanley finally ended up in a nice apartment.  It took a long time—he didn’t move until April—but he is at Bremerton Garden Apartments with a view of the Manette and Warren Ave bridges—where Aunt Carol lived for awhile, way back in the sixties or seventies.  He is happy there and says his kitty is, too.  I am reading your diaries.  I know that you left them for me to read and I am thankful you did.  I am learning so much about you that I didn’t know and they keep me connected to you in a wonderful way.  I just wish I had the earlier ones from the 50s and 60s.  What happened to them?  Did you get rid of them?  Did they burn in the fire in 2002?  I’m in the seventies with you right now.  Your diaries are like novels to me, real page-turners, more fascinating than I ever thought they’d be.  It will take me a long time to read through them, but that’s okay—you’ll be with me longer that way.

We sold your house, Mom.  I don’t think you’d be very happy to see what they’ve done to it so far, but they have great plans, so in the end it will be okay.  The mother of the lady across the street bought it.  She wants to “bring it back to its origins, the Twenties”, she told me.  But in preparation for that they’ve cut down the lilacs, the magnolia, the pink dogwood, even the huge camellia bush.  I think they left the wisteria bush, but they also got rid of all that awful ivy and cut down one of the big fir trees that was threatening the house.  The yard looks huge now, bigger than I ever knew it was.  I’m going to have to let go of it pretty soon, but I keep going by there to see what else they’re going to do and if I approve.  The year of getting the house ready to sell caused me to have a possessiveness about it that’s hard to get over now.

I think that’s all I wanted to tell you.  It’s Memorial Day weekend and I’ll take some flowers to your and Dad’s crypt up on Cemetery Hill, like I’ve done every year since Dad died.  I should go more often, but you guys aren’t really there.  It’s only your ashes.  Stanley has some of your ashes in a heart I got for him and I kept some, too.  You are with us every day. I hope you approve of how things are going.  We miss you.

                                    Love, Chris