Oct 30, 2014
I began calling myself old at about sixty-five, but I wanted to claim the title even earlier than that.
My friends in their eighties laugh at the notion that I’m old at sixty-seven. Still, how long can one go on being middle-aged? Middle-aged carries all sorts of responsibilities and burdens – working for a living, saving for retirement, caring for teenagers and parents. Old brings freedom and power.
image:usatoday.com
As an old woman, I’m free from hoping that men will find me sexually attractive. When I was younger I was on an everlasting honey-hunt. I dressed and walked and talked to entice the male of the species.
the honey-hunt image:businessinsider.com
I’m free from trying to be what other people expect me to be. I can’t say I’m free from worrying what other people think – ‘How can she let her daughter dress like that?’ ‘She only reads bits and pieces of the Times’ ‘She doesn’t compost’- but I no longer expect perfection of myself, having long since stopped expecting it of anyone else.
I don’t let her dress like THIS. image: amazon.com
I am aware that when I simply act like myself – blunt, profane, opinionated – some people enjoy it because I don’t fit their notion of sweet old grandma. But as I have told Amanda, who is in middle school and at the painful peak of self-consciousness, the only person who pays much attention to me is me. Everyone else is far too busy worrying about themselves.
As an old woman, I feel powerful despite the crumbling – the whiny joints, hole-y memory and various other ailments. When my hair began to go gray, it was a tweedy pepper and salt. I died it purple for a couple of years, and when I let it grow out it had become a lovely puffy white. Irrationally, I gained confidence from my white hair. I walk into a meeting and believe people think I know what I’m talking about and am worth listening to. This may be delusional; it is contrary to the common notion that old women become invisible.
worth listening to image:nydailynews.com
The world doesn’t want me to call myself old (insofar as it’s paying attention, having rather more pressing matters to attend to.). Huge amounts of internet verbiage are dedicated to avoiding the word. As soon as people find out that one or another synonym means old, and refers to them, they apparently get pissed off and the word becomes verboten in its turn.
I believe people shy away from the word out of fear. Along with freedom and power, aging brings loss. Regardless of what you call it, the last twenty years or so of the journey will have challenges and growth that we never imagined when we were younger.
One of the lesser challenges is how to respond to young people who insist on denying we are old. A waiter recently asked, “And what will the young lady have?” Finally fed up with this sort of thing, I said, “I’m sure you don’t mean to offend, but I’m not a young lady. I’m old.” He actually began to argue. I insisted, “I’m proud to be old,” and he retreated, looking very uncomfortable. I left a good tip to make up for it.
image: huffingtonpost.com
A group of journalists interested in aging issues surveyed 100 journalists about appropriate ways to refer to old people. (They didn’t say whether any of these 100 were nearing 100.) In Words to Age by: a Brief Glossary and Tips on Usage, they came up with guidelines “intended to help journalists represent midlife and older people in socially neutral language that respects their individuality without appending presumptuous labels to them, either directly or indirectly.”
The favorite term was “older.” Than whom, I have to ask? They also approved, with much discussion and many cautions: elder, middle-aged, midlife, boomers, senior. They disapproved of: baby boomers, senior citizen, elderly. After a while of reading all this I stood up and yelled “OLD, OLD, OLD.”
So if I’m rejecting synonyms and euphemisms, and insist on old, is it old lady or old woman?
Hip young men used to refer to a lover as “my old lady.” Though the phrase has a nice musical sound, ‘lady’ belongs to a class system and a set of rules. The concept puts women on a pedestal. It’s a great place to be if you want to be revered, but it restricts travel. I never heard those hip young men call themselves gentlemen.
old lady image:enchantedserenityperiodfilms.blogspot.com
As a young feminist I rejected the sense of ownership, the elitism, and all the strictures that come with the name. My father used to tell me to sit like a lady – ie legs down and closed. A lady doesn’t admit to having genitals, or if she does, she calls them private parts. She doesn’t ever use bad language. Now, as an old feminist, I can’t possibly call myself a lady, since I’ve taken to dressing inappropriately, in warm weather wearing nothing but a caftan all over town, letting my body take the air.
Just half the collection
Old woman. The words come to a full stop. The sound is forceful, not flowery. Woman is strong, generative, sexual. Since I stopped being a girl I’ve been a young woman, middle-aged woman, and now I’m happy to call myself old woman.
Old is a proud title. By the time we are old most of us have walked many miles and climbed many mountains. We have survived our own mistakes. We’ve had lots of sorrow and lots of joy, some triumphs and accomplishments. We may have the wisdom to keep regret and pride in proper proportion. We have a lot to think about: our past is a multi-volume novel, and our future looms close with some of the biggest challenges of our life. I am awed, and yes, scared. I know I may have a very hard journey toward the big End. It will be no easier if I try to deny it.
May 30, 2014
Recently I went to a presentation billed as “Silencing the Inner Critic.” It was very disappointing, and the speaker was very irritating. She teaches all-day workshops on creativity, and her hour-long talk was nothing but an outline of those workshops. It was full of enthusiasm, vivacity and charm, but very little matter. As you can tell, she certainly didn’t silence my inner critic.
image: pathseekerslifecoaching.com
But there’s always a nugget or two to carry away from these things. Nugget #1 was my resolution to resume daily, first-thing-in-the-morning writing in my notebook. And #2 was the gratitude journal.
image:gemrocksauction.com
I’ve kept a notebook for many years, a cheap spiral bound thing, badly battered by the time it is full. Once I tried keeping several – green for gardening plans, blue for my diary, red for writing projects. That was a silly, if elegant scheme – I can’t keep track of three notebooks – and I soon abandoned it. Now my notebook is always red, because I would like to be read. (We seldom-published writers must have our amusement.) My current notebook, a lovely fat one, is extra-special because it was a Christmas gift from Amanda. It was the first time she gave Christmas gifts, and I was delighted by her empathetic selections (Joe got a foam rubber football.)
image:amazon.com
My notebook holds my diary, my free-writing click, first drafts of fiction and blogs, and many shopping and to-do lists. Sometimes in my diary I describe or celebrate a special day, but more often it’s where I focus on my troubles and try to come to terms with them. Sometimes it’s therapy. Sometimes it’s whining.
image:pal.ua.edu
I had heard the term “gratitude journal,” but it never grabbed me. Now I thought I’d give it a try. And I have been surprised at the effect. Here are samples, one from my normal diary, one from my new gratitude journal:
May 16. Friday. Tonight is Amanda’s Honors Chorus Concert. Yesterday I had a gloomy, out-of-sorts day followed by a night of poor sleep due to an upset stomach. Boy, this is writing that cries out for me to stop, and is also putting me to sleep. My life is irksome. I stay irked. I think I look for things to irk me. I am falling asleep.
May 19. Monday. Gratitude: I am thankful that yesterday I could talk with Joe about my misery in this hard time with Amanda. Only he understands what is happening here; only he need know. And yesterday he gently reminded me what Dr. Lynne said about temporarily letting go of the demands we would normally make as parents. That makes it easier for me to try and let go of my demands without feeling I’m being lazy, irresponsible, without feeling the people looking over my shoulder saying I’m a lousy parent.
I’m grateful that he wants so much for this trip to NY to be what I’m hoping for, and that we are going to NY and staying in Chinatown.
image: wikipedia.org
I am grateful – almost breathless with excitement – that I’m driving to Orlando Thursday to meet Sue and Anne, staying in a luxury hotel. I think we’ll drive back to Gainesville on back roads.
I am grateful that yesterday Amanda played in the pool with me – a little hostile, a little aggressive, but still we played.
I am grateful that I took away two precious nuggets from the empty talk yesterday at WAG – the gratitude journal, and the renewal of daily writing, which has disappeared in the chaos and grief. I do indeed, have indeed, focused on my misery instead of my joy, and am/was becoming a negative gloomy glump. Maybe there was something to Dad’s reply to “How are you?” “Oh, I’m always well.” He did live to 98, after all.
Always well: Dad at 90
I am happy that I planted my three gaillardia yesterday, maybe rescued (I hope) the one poorly-planted cleome, THAT A MONARCH BUTTERFLY finally came to my thriving milkweed, and that I have three more milkweeds to plant. Soon, if the monarchs come, I will have six ugly naked stalks. And maybe the ugly nameless plant Bill gave me, with its tubular salmon-colored flowers, will bring me a humming bird.
image:thebutterflysite.com
I am grateful that I am making progress with singing. An die Musik – itself a song of gratitude and perfectly tailored to my situation, about the escape, comfort, release, shelter of music – is coming along. Two techniques – head singing and pushing out my diaphragm through a whole phrase – should solve my range and breathing problems. Though I have trouble executing both of them. Still, my range in warm-ups is already wider than it was – down to Bflat below low C, and up to high E. These music lessons are my salvation. Indeed I have many salvations.
I am grateful that I can talk to Joe, and that he is helping me ease back on Amanda by taking on some of the reminding himself.
I am grateful that I have this morning time. The quiet sleep-breathing of Trisket behind my chair – she always wants to be where I am.
I am late to the party. I googled gratitude journal, and of course I found a long list of links. I could read 8 tips for starting one, or take 11 steps to a powerful one. Berkeley presented research. Oprah weighed in. I found ads for beautiful little notebooks titled Gratitude, prices ranging from $9.99 to $156 for used(!) Amazon offers free two-day shipping if you subscribe to Amazon prime. You can also buy the “Bargain Attitude Changer. The #1 gratitude journal app for over five years. Use it for at least three weeks and your life will never be the same again. See demo.”
available used for $156.19 image:amazon.com
I think I will pass. I’m perfectly content with my red spiral notebook from the dollar store. It makes a big difference to begin my day rejoicing, and it helps me notice small delights throughout the day. I am grateful for my gratitude journal.
Mar 28, 2014
Gainesville, Florida is a most marvelous place. Though we have our share of ill and elderly, hardly anyone dies here.
image:kerli.buzznet.com
Like many boomers approaching seventy, I’ve started reading obituaries. I like the little nuggets of stories they present, though it surprises me that many families write such long ones, considering the cost. (I believe newspapers didn’t used to charge for obituaries, but everything now must be a profit center.)
The obituary page was particularly full today, with fourteen obituaries. But only two of the dear departed had died. Half of them passed away and one passed on. Number 11 took his stroll onto Glory Lane, number 12 went to be with the Lord, Number 13 set sail on her final and greatest journey. And the heavens became brighter as they received Number 14. Considering the subject, the obituaries page is a very lively place.
image:gospelofprovidence.com
Some of my dearest friends have told me that I am very blunt. This is a tactful way of saying that I am tactless. I deny the charge – nobody knows how often I bite my tongue – but I admit that I detest euphemisms.
I often bite my tongue. image:topenglish.sk
Recently some good people in Gainesville organized a service to help homeless people with terminal illnesses. One of my favorite local geniuses, who shall remain nameless, proposed a design for the business card. It was clear and simple: “Croaking? Call (phone number)”. I thought it was just right, but I’m not involved in the project, and nobody asked me.
In idle moments I like to imagine my own obituary. I think about the things I did that mattered to me at the time, and wonder how far back I should go. I feel no need to say where I attended elementary school, that I came in third and last in a swimming race when I was five, or that I earned a sewing badge in Girl Scouts by making an apron. (Gainesville obituaries delve deep.)
images:cnn.com fabricland.com
I know that I wouldn’t want to mention a beloved dog or cat as a survivor, but I fret a bit about which children I would list, and how they should be described, what with steps and fosters. I couldn’t truthfully say they all mourn me.
So I edit and revise, happily dithering. The one statement about which I have no doubt is the description of what happened. I don’t intend to pass on, or away, or into Glory. I’m just gonna die.
image:faithislam.net
I
Nov 15, 2013
Mike Chielens died last Saturday. The many online comments on his obituary noted his love of baseball, beer, and rock and roll. Chielens was director of Legal Aid of Western Michigan, and the comments also spoke of his kindness, his fight for the underdog, his respect for everyone. But I knew Chielens when he was a brand-new legal aid lawyer at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid – JALA. He was a laughing elf of a man, a tiny guy with a huge heart, round face, red hair, freckles.
ROCKING AND ROLLING
Chielens loved to flirt. Though he looked like Howdy Doody, with a little boy’s physique, his charm and intensity could bowl women over. But he was loyal to his fiancée in Michigan, and whenever Van Morrison sang Brown Eyed Girl, Chielens talked about Jan, a warning to us to keep a safe distance.
Mike Chielens and Mike Milito shared an apartment. They were fun-loving wild men, smart, determined, and fierce for justice. I knew them when we were young, when all of us were young, a gang of northerners with law degrees who descended on Jacksonville to be turned into lawyers under the leadership of two slightly older Harvard Law graduates.
SOME OF THE GANG IN 1975
Jacksonville was a blue-collar city, with a large poor black population, a large poor white population, some uppercrust southerners and a whole lot of insurance executives. Lefty lawyers had trouble finding friends outside legal aid, so we became a close-knit group, living in little bungalows in Riverside, near downtown. Some of us lived at Jacksonville Beach, and kept open house on weekends.
RIVERSIDE BUNGALOWS
LAWYERS AT THE BEACH: SUE, SARA, LIZ
When we first came to Jacksonville, my five-year-old son Eric and I stayed with Sara until I found a place, an upstairs apartment with no air-conditioning, but well shaded by thick pine trees. Later, when I was no longer a VISTA volunteer making three thousand a year but a staff attorney making ten, I moved to a house, and new arrivals would stay with us.
On Saturday mornings I’d start my laundry in the laundromat on King Street and Eric and I would walk to visit one friend or another while the clothes dried. Julie and Graddy kept M&M’s on the back of their toilet to encourage their toddler to get up in the night to pee. Sue and Max always had coffee aging in a percolator.
MAX, SUE, AND EMILY – ALWAYS READY TO REHEAT THE COFFEE
In the evenings we often gathered at my house so I wouldn’t need a babysitter. I cooked dinner, Jim brought his guitar, and we sang harmony. I had serial crushes on most of the guys, but generally avoided fishing off the company pier, and instead paired up with quite unsuitable men whom I found elsewhere.
UNSUITABLE MEN
My family came down for Thanksgiving, and legal aid friends joined us. My father was impressed that fourteen people could be so jolly on only two bottles of wine. He didn’t notice some of us sneaking off to the back of the house to smoke dope.
THANKSGIVING FUN
One day our program director came into my office and found me crying. I had discovered that Eric’s after school care was atrocious, and didn’t know where to turn. That night, Paul’s wife Shirley called and said Eric could come to her house after school – she had four daughters from elementary to high school. They lived two blocks from me, and two blocks from Eric’s school.
Shirley and I decided to train for the first Jacksonville River Run, so every morning she knocked on my door at 6:30, and we ran through Riverside and Avondale, on past the huge oaks and houses of Ortega. After the River Run, I drove to the beach and joined a party that lasted well into the night.
LIZ AND SHIRLEY IN THE FIRST JACKSONVILLE RIVER RUN
JALA LIKED TO PARTY
I stayed at Jacksonville five years before I moved to Gainesville. One by one, my friends left JALA for Atlanta, Grand Rapids, Providence, DC, Los Angeles. Most of us stayed connected to poverty law in one way or another.
At every time and place of my life, except one desperately lonely year in Montreal, I have had a group of friends. Happily, in every group there is always one who keeps us all connected after we move on. For the JALA gang it’s Marie, who writes long, chatty Christmas letters, who organized two reunions in Florida, who made an email list of old JALA comrades and told us when first Mike Milito, and then Mike Chielens got terrible cancers.
MARIE (far right) ORGANIZED REUNIONS
Milito and his wife Judy went on Caring Bridge, where we could read the step by step horrors of his treatment, and finally, thank God, his slow recovery. Chielens didn’t use Caring Bridge, but Jan sent emails and Marie forwarded them to us.
MILITO, CHIELENS AND JAN IN HAPPIER DAYS
Mike and Jan put themselves through torture, with the hope that they would have many years on the other side They didn’t; his condition grew worse and worse and after about a year of hell, Chielens died. I got the news from Marie, and cried and cried. It was Marie who sent flowers in all our names, with Dylan lyrics – ‘May you stay forever young.’ And Marie who said, ‘don’t pay me for the flowers,’ and organized a group contribution to Western Michigan Legal Aid.
I hadn’t seen Chielens in over thirty years, and only kept up with him second-hand. But I grieve for him, and for that time, for that community of young people happily misspending our youths together. We played hard, but we also worked hard, certain that our cause was just, hopeful that we could change at least one little corner of the world.
I have reached an age where my friends and famiy will be dying, unless I go first. Many of my friends have survived cancer, some are battling it now. I write this in Miami Beach, where we have come for the unveiling of my late brother-in-law’s tombstone. Adam died suddenly, a few weeks after his fiftieth birthday celebration.
ADAM, JOE, AND FRIEND
Thinking of my own death doesn’t dismay me much, though I hope to hang around long enough to launch Amanda and see her land on her feet, and it would be nice to see my books published and acclaimed before I go. But losing my family, losing my friends – that’s very hard.
SHE’LL LAND ON HER FEET
Young people see old age as boring, or at best, peaceful. They think all the excitement and adventures are theirs. But facing all this loss, facing my own mortality, this is a profound, if difficult, adventure.
Here’s to Chielens. Here’s to all the friends I have lost touch with, and all the friends I will someday lose.
Oct 18, 2013
It’s not funny anymore. It’s frightening.
I’ve just finished Connie Mae Fowler’s five-day writers’ workshop in St Augustine.click The best part was the workshop sessions and new writer friends.The second best part was having the hotel room to myself.
ALL MINE
The farewell dinner was last night. About 6:30 in the morning I wake to a steady rain. I get dressed. I pay attention when I put my cell phone in its holster, because the last five days I’ve kept it silenced in my purse. Methodically, I pack up each area – the bathroom, refrigerator, closet, dresser, desk, bedside table. Nobody distracts me with “Grandma, can I go get a donut?” “Liz, have you seen my glasses?” With everything packed I go through the room one more time, to be sure I haven’t left anything. Then I load the car.
Parking in St Augustine has taken all my cash, so I drive a couple of miles to Publix to get money for a housekeeping tip. I buy a sandwich for the road. I leave the tip, check out, grab a banana from the buffet, and head home through the driving rain.
IMAGE:NEWBYREALTY.COM
The thick, dark clouds are breaking up in the sky to the west, and by the time I reach US 1 the rain is slowing. I leave the town behind, and now I’m on 207, a fast secondary road with trees, egrets, and puddles on both sides. There is little traffic. I am entirely happy; the workshop revived my flagging writer, giving me energy, confidence, determination. I’ve made two decisions. I will put writing first every morning, and make no dates before 11. I will no longer say, “I’m retired,” but “I’m a writer.”
‘O Happy Day’ is playing on the CD player. I think I’ll call Joe, share my happiness. I reach for the phone. It’s not in the zipper pocket of my purse. It’s not anywhere in my purse. I feel my jeans pockets, my shirt pocket. Nope. I review all my packing, and I’m puzzled. I remember turning off the alarm – is it possible I left it on the bedside table?
I pull over on the shoulder, trucks whizzing by as I get out to search. Passenger seat and floor, tote bag with notebooks, books, and magazines, computer case with a zillion compartments, center console, suitcase, under the seats. Nothing. And nothing to do but drive back to the motel. I consider calling to ask, but of course…
I’m proud that I’ve stayed calm, not frantic – it helps that I left early so there’s no worry about getting to my 11:00 therapist appointment in Gainesville.
I LOOKED EVERYWHERE
The worry begins after the friendly desk clerk has given me a new key card, after I’ve methodically searched each area of the room, looked in all the drawers and under all the furniture, after I’ve stripped the bed, after I’ve returned to the buffet and asked the woman who’s making new coffee if she’s seen my phone. Back to the car, a more careful search with no trucks whizzing by two feet from my butt. I empty each bag, check the pockets in all the dirty clothes, move both seats and feel around under them. By now I know I’m repeating myself, hoping magic will put the phone where it wasn’t. I pat my jeans pockets, then my shirt pocket, and my hand bumps the cell phone belt.
Such a rush of relief. Then the real worry begins. By the time I reach the place where I pulled over, an hour after my first departure, I’m near tears. This is no short-term memory loss. This isn’t like the comical incident of dressing a salad in a colander click, or locking my keys in the car.click. I paid attention when I stowed my phone, but with all the searching, all the thinking about what I had done, I didn’t remember it.
The Muumuus and I joke about senior moments and brain farts, cozy and comfortable in our aging together. This wasn’t a moment; it was an hour.
Now my thoughts are flying. Alzheimers. Dementia. Researchers say about 1 out of 8 people over 65 suffers from dementia. I’m afraid to tell Joe, afraid tell Dr. Lynne, my therapist. I have told Joe that when I don’t know him anymore he can put me in a nursing home and divorce me, but he has to visit regularly to make sure I’m well cared for.
IMAGE:WISCONSINWATCH.ORG
I already have a strategy for my keys, and almost always put them in the basket by the door. Now I need a strategy for my glasses and phone too, and a mental checklist whenever I leave the house. I will have to establish compulsive habits. I must be present in every moment, pay attention to the now.
MY KEYS ARE HERE
But if I can’t let my mind wander, how will I write? Half the writing happens in my head when I’m cooking or cleaning house, swimming or walking. Just when my writer has come alive again, my mind starts to melt. It will only get worse. I will call my doctor and have the annual checkup that was due in July, ask for a referral for a neurological workup. There is a drug that can slow the progress of Alzheimers; best catch it early.
Last night I read a New Yorker piece about Phillip Roth and his friends. Roth decided to give up writing fiction at 78. “It’s hard to remember from day to day what you’ve done.” In Iris, the movie about Iris Murdoch, there is a scene where, as Alzheimers advances, she puts down her pen because she cannot remember words.
PHILIP ROTH IMAGE:NYTIMES.COM IRIS MURDOCH IMAGE:TELEGRAPH.CO.UK
I arrive at Dr Lynne’s with ten minutes to spare. We’ve been dealing with an old trauma, so that I can put it behind me. But this is too urgent; my fear is right at the surface. So we plunge in. She has theories about memory loss, information about how it works. My story doesn’t worry her, and so I worry less. That night I tell Joe about it. He understands my fear, but thinks it’s like looking all over the house for his glasses when they are on his head. I see his point and feel better. But I still want an assessment.
This morning in the paper, two items. Glory glory, Alice Munro has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. (In a New Yorker interview a year ago she said she would probably stop writing because “I’m eighty-one, losing names or words in a commonplace way.”) And Julie Samples, a graduate student at the University of Florida, has just published a pilot study in the Journal of Neurological Sciences.
The first deterioration in Alzheimer’s is often in the olfactory nerve, and begins on the left side of the brain. Julie put a dab of peanut butter on the end of a ruler, and brought it closer to each nostril until the person could detect the smell. She and her advisor report, “If they can smell it far away it means that nerve is working. If you have to bring it all the way up to the nose it means it’s not working as well…We were blown away with what we saw…The right nostril was normal, and the left had impairment” in Alzheimers patients but none of the other subjects.
You know I went straight to the peanut butter jar. I put a bit on the end of a knife, blocked each nostril, and sniffed. Both my nostrils (and hence my brain?) worked just fine, smelling the peanut butter from about eight inches away. When I used the whole jar, I could smell it from a couple of feet away. I suppose I will mention this to my doctor when I get around to my so-called annual physical. And maybe I’ll ask for an assessment. But I am greatly reassured.
Jan 18, 2013
For over thirty years, we have celebrated Christmas at my house with visiting family and friends. I love it, but at Christmas my control freak – a bit over-developed from parenting – goes manic. I have to be in charge of everything, and everything has to be right. Like many cooks, I want control of my own kitchen. But my need for control extends beyond that, and I can fuss and worry through the weeks leading up to Christmas, and the few days of house-guests, as if comfort, joy and world peace were all up to me.
worldpeacebefore2021.com
The schedule might change from year to year depending on everybody’s arrival time, but generally we decorate the tree on Christmas Eve. Christmas dinner is either Christmas Eve, or the day after Christmas. With Doris and Luli’s help I prepare a big feast, and gather family and friends around the table. Late breakfast on Christmas morning is followed by a morning of oohing and aahing over opening presents, with single malt, aquavit, Calvados or other delicious sipping drink, Luli’s dundee cake, Don’s famous cookies, and whatever chocolates turn up in the gifting. The afternoon is for lying around, playing with new toys, reading new books, and a long walk. No need to prepare a feast after the morning orgy – we go to our beloved Chinese restaurant for Christmas supper.
Christmas dinner: turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, a green veg and salad, and three pies topped with whipped cream. Don and Doris contribute plenty of wine.
tasteofhome.com
Breakfast? When I think of Christmas breakfast I drift into Italian, though I don’t speak the language – abondanza, mangiare, que piacere – and gesture con brio like an orchestra conductor. A feast of scrambled eggs and sausage, fresh grapefruit, home-squeezed orange juice, herbed mushrooms, bagels and lox, homemade muffins or coffee cake, a plate of fresh pineapple and strawberries, tomato salad, accompanied by coffee and of course, sipping liquor.
This year everything changed. Luli, my kitchen co-conspirator and conciliatrix, visited in October instead of making her annual Christmas trek. And at the last minute Joe had a essential meeting scheduled in South Africa. He would be gone for two weeks, returning December 22nd. All of a sudden I was on my own for Christmas preparations and Amanda’s Christmas break. I was NOT a happy camper. I’ve done children and Christmas alone and with a partner, and the latter is way better.
The first challenge was to gussy up Amanda’s Christmas break. Girls Place does wonderful programs for the school holidays, with lots of expeditions. link My friend Mary Anne and her daughter Ariel took her to the Little Match Girl ballet. But I wanted us to have special treats together. We went to the Hippodrome’s annual production of The Christmas Carol – I’d waited till she was ten because it’s scary – and went clothes-shopping. Alas, Amanda redirected her anger with absent Grandpa to available Grandma, so she was kind of a Scrooge-ette during these treats.
Hippodrome's Christmas Carol. Aaron E. Daye/The Gainesville Sun
I had other cool ideas for fun, but she got the horrible bronchial thing that’s been going around Gainesville. Meanwhile my own rage simmered and became the blues, accompanied by shame that I was struggling so without Joe.
I had planned to buy the Christmas tree with Amanda, but she was so sick we had to postpone it. Six days before Christmas there were no trees anywhere. At Lowe’s they were taking down their big white tent and said they had no trees left. But I saw five in the corner, and bought the least miserable one. Many bare branches, many brown needles. After a few days in the living room, poisoned by Amanda’s scorn and disappointment, it looked even worse. I put it out on the deck, and bought a fake tree. Apparently you have to spend an awful lot to get a nice one; at $70, this one was very straggly. I threw up my hands and decided Joe would have to deal with it when he got home.
The Tree of Despair
My son wasn’t coming. Leah couldn’t make it from New Orleans because her car was iffy. No friends were available for Christmas dinner. With the group so small, no Luli to help, and Joe only here at the last minute, I decided that I would simplify. We’d lighten up the food and add more walks. Don and Doris come from Connecticut and crave walks in our lovely winter weather.
The first change was to lighten up the food. Five Cornish game hens marinated in olive oil, lemon, and rosemary as they thawed. I sauteed beautiful green chard with bright red stems in olive oil and garlic, while Doris was happily in charge of cooking up the brown rice with red peppers and onions. I’d planned a plate of tomato salad – Don and Doris annually rave over our Florida tomatoes – but to my dismay my tomato grower stayed home from the Saturday Farmers’ Market. So in the end the main course was reduced from eight dishes to three.
No wrestling still frozen giblets out of a turkey. No guess work on timing – four, four and a half, five hours till the turkey is done? – and last minute gravy-making. Game hens take barely an hour, pan juices are no trouble at all, and the gluttonous girl in me is as thrilled as Amanda at having a whole bird to myself. Dessert remained excessive, but preparation was easy. Not my two pies – pumpkin seasoned with tangerine zest, pecan with dark rum or maple – and Luli’s winter fruit and berry pie. But Mrs. Smith’s frozen apple pie, though a bit heavy on the cinnamon, was perfectly fine, and her cherry pie was bliss.
Breakfast would be grapefruit, eggs and sausages. Though for days I waffled (waffles? no, too much) over whether I shouldn’t at least make my low-fat blueberry coffee cake, I held fast to simplicity, and asked Joe to buy a pecan coffee ring at Publix. We had coffee and Amarula – a cream liqueur made from the berries of the marula tree, which grows in the miombo woodlands of Southern Africa. Every one loved it but me, and Amanda loved the label about the majestic elephants who feast on the marula fruit. I stuck to Calvados.
Next, I let go of gift-control. When Joe was a child, he and his four brothers each found a laundry basket of presents under the tree, and tore into them all at once. When I was a child, we distributed all the gifts and then, starting with the youngest (always me), we opened them. Over the years I experimented with various approaches to accommodate Doris’ desire for the oohing and aahing and sharing and thanks, and Joe’s increasingly itchy need to be done with the interminable ritual, which went on for hours. This year I asked him to consult with Doris and devise a plan. They did. Amanda distributed the gifts and we opened them one by one, Joe too generous and kind and fond of Doris to deprive her, and probably pleased that I’d let go of one more thing. It didn’t hurt that with fewer people, there were fewer gifts, and of course he had the Amarula.
Don got pajamas
Joe got super-soakers
Doris got a hat and scarf
I couldn’t entirely squelch my Mom-in-Charge, so I turned her attention from food and ritual to planning great walks.
On Christmas Eve, we took a picnic to Kanapaha Botanical Gardens. The weather was lovely, warm and overcast. We walked the labyrinth, Amanda leaping over the low hedges and startling the lizards. Then we took the long walk to the herb garden, sink holes, bamboo grove, lake, hummingbird garden, cactus garden and finally to the broad porch of Summer House, where we rocked and ate our picnic.
Kanapaha's Victoria waterlilies. thegreentree.net
Joe had stayed behind to rest after his trip from Capetown. While resting, he solved the Christmas tree problem. He returned the costly, scraggly tree to Lowe’s, shook down and brought inside the brown and balding fir, found its best angle, and wrapped the lights inside, close to the trunk, where they illuminated rather than hid the ornaments. Like every Christmas tree, it was our loveliest ever.
On Christmas day, after opening presents, I wanted a chance for Amanda try out her new skateboard, the gift she’d been yearning for. The Gainesville-Hawthorne Rails to Trails was just the ticket – paved, and perfect for walkers, bikers, scooters. The trail to Hawthorne is hilly and curvy, so we took the route past Evergreen Cemetery and she began to master balancing, turning, and stopping.
Finally, there was the obligatory trip to the Alachua Sink on Paynes Prairie. Everyone was out in force for the post-Christmas walk: Gainesville natives, visiting families, turkey vultures, limpkins, moorhens, herons of all types, egrets and of course, the alligators, seeking the afternoon sun after a chilly morning. They were huge and numerous. Amanda bet we’d see 25, Joe bet more than. Joe won.
This was such a happy, non-frenzied Christmas. I missed some of the abondanza. But the only missing elements I’d restore are Luli, Joe's daughter Leah, and my son Eric. Maybe I am finally learning to let go.
My new motto: Put it down; someone else will pick it up.
Or not.
