I’ll Be Home for Christmas

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Coming East

We’re heading up the Eastern Shore yet again.  Didn’t we just do this a week and a half ago for my mother-in-law’s 85th birthday?  Now we are driving up to spend Christmas with our sons and daughter-in-law in Boston.  I have no idea what my daughter-in-law will serve for Christmas dinner, but I know it will be wonderful.  She and my son have taken great pains to get their apartment ready and festive for the holiday.  Her parents will be driving up from New Jersey, so it will be a great family time.  I wish we could have our daughter and her family with us, too, but they are on their way to Texas where they will spend Christmas with my son-in-law’s family.

We are actually seeing traffic on the Eastern Shore.  No, not New York City traffic or even Virginia Beach traffic, but a line of cars in both lanes.  I have no doubt they are headed somewhere to spend Christmas with friends and family.  I used to get teary-eyed when I would hear the song “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” because it made me think of Christmas in Connecticut with my parents and friends, and we were living so far away in Texas.  Then Texas became home and we started new traditions.  Our Christmas feast consisted of fajitas or machacado, King Ranch chicken, fresh flour tortillas still warm when I bought them at Central Market, homemade pico de gallo and guacamole.  Even when the kids grew up, they returned for awhile, my parents came, friends came, and our ranks swelled to twenty-five.

Moving to Virginia brought changes again to our holiday traditions, and once again that old Christmas song made me teary-eyed.  My daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren would no longer be spending Christmas with us.  They would continue to drive down to Texas.  For the first two Christmases, my sons came, but then one got married and we decided we would drive up to Boston instead, as we had more time off than they did. I no longer would host the Christmas feast.  It was time to pass the honors on.

Nothing remains the same in life.  That’s the sadness and the exhilaration of it.  I find that when you let the old things go and embrace the new, you find the real meaning of that song.  As I am driving up to Boston, I am getting closer to home, for home is and always has been, being with those I love.  Home is in my heart.

This will be my last post until the new year.  I want to just enjoy my children and the old friends we will visit after Christmas.  I want to wish all of you a joyous Christmas and a wonderful New Year.  Catch you later!

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The Homemade Bread Diet

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Coming East

“Honey, would you mind making a couple of your coffee cakes for me to take to the office as Christmas presents?” my husband asked me.  I have not made those coffee cakes in years, but they were a staple of my Christmas baking frenzy while the kids were growing up.  In fact, my children didn’t know what store-bought bread tasted like unless they ate it at someone else’s house.  I made all our bread from scratch:  honey whole wheat, onion rye, pumperknickel, whole wheat raisin, and more.  There’s nothing better than a peanut butter sandwich made with homemade peanut butter made in a VitaMix spread on a slab of homemade honey granola bread.  That was the kind of lunches my children grew up with.

Bread is time-consuming to make, and I found it easier to make big batches at one time and freeze the extra loaves than making a loaf or two several times a week.  Kneading five loaves worth of dough was quite a workout for my hands but very satisfying.  Since I made bread on such a regular basis, I was an expert at knowing the feel of water when it was at the right temperature to grow my yeast without killing it.  I knew the feel of the dough when it had enough flour incorporated into it and had sufficient amount of kneading.  I knew the sound of the thump that proclaimed it had baked enough.  These things were like breathing to me.

Then the children grew up and moved away, and making large batches of bread didn’t make sense anymore.  I made a loaf or two a week for awhile, but homemade bread, not having any preservatives, spoils quickly and must be eaten within a few days.  That’s too much bread for two people to eat.  Let me rephrase that.  Two people would have no trouble eating that much bread, but they would be wearing it around their waists, and that’s not an appealing sight.  Believe me, I know.  So I gradually stopped making bread altogether.  Oh, once in a great while, on a cold, wintry day, with the winds howling and a pot of split pea soup simmering on the stove, a loaf of hearty homemade bread sounded like the perfect accompaniment, and I would pull out the ingredients and whip up a loaf.  But those times were few and far between.

When my husband asked me to make two coffeecakes, I worried that I had lost my touch.  The ones he requested were the ones with an apricot filling spread down the middle and the dough cut in strips along the side, then crisscrossed over the filling.  My daughter-in-law had also asked me to make a loaf of challah to bring up to Boston for Christmas, so yesterday I decided to make them all at the same time.  By the time I finished at the end of the day, the kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it, but I had three lovely loaves of bread sitting on my counter.  If I had been worried I had lost my touch, those three loaves told me I didn’t have anything to be concerned about.  I only wish someone would come up with a homemade bread diet because yesterday reminded me just how much I love making bread.  Almost as much as eating it!

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An Unusual Sight

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Coming East

How many times have you seen something unusual or amazing and wish you had a camera with you?  A little over a week ago, as we were driving over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel early in the morning, I was hoping to capture a picture of the sunrise.  I looked off to my right to get a glimpse of that golden orb as it made its appearance at the horizon, but the clouds were too thick to see anything.  Disappointed, I happened to look to my left and was startled by the red ball above the line of the bay.

“What’s the sun doing over there?”  I asked my husband.  “It’s on the wrong side!”
“That’s not the sun.  It’s the moon, and it’s incredible!” remarked my husband.
We pulled over at  the parking lot that surrounds the tunnel, and I took out my camera and walked to the pier to get a picture.  Unfortunately, the wind was so strong, I couldn’t get anything worth keeping.  My husband got out of the car and tried, resting the camera on the railing.  His pictures weren’t much better, but I wanted to show you anyway, because it was an amazing sight.  These pictures don’t do it justice.

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You Need to Care Before You’re There

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Coming East

I went to my general practioner this morning for my yearly check- up, and he and I discussed what would be happening with my healthcare in a couple of years when I turn sixty-five. He said I need to make some decisions next year and not wait until I’m already on Medicare to think about finding another physician, should that be the way I want to go. You see, there are two problems here: He does not accept Medicare, so I would have to pay out-of-pocket, and it’s nearly impossible to be accepted as a new patient once you’re on Medicare. Doctors are losing money on Medicare patients because the government keeps cutting the payments.

I’ve heard many people complain about Obama’s universal healthcare plan. Those who seem to criticize it the loudest are the people who have guaranteed-for-life plans, people like those who’ve been in government for awhile, people who have put their twenty years into working for a municipality or have served in the military. They like things just the way they are because, even when they are eligible for Medicare, their years of employment in those various professions give them a supplemental policy that allows them to keep their same doctors. I understand that, and I wouldn’t want to chance losing that benefit if universal healthcare changed the coverage.

But what about the rest of us? We who have worked just as hard for just as many years, some with dangerous jobs. We’ve paid into Medicare, too. We are no less deserving, yet we will not benefit equally. I have no problem with people wanting to abolish Obamacare. What I have a huge problem with is not having something else to put in its place. I’d rather have an imperfect plan than no plan at all, which is what we’ve had for decades. I’ll tell you what. Just give me the same health plan as those people, like our congressmen and senators, who continually vote down any measure that seeks to see that everyone in this country has adequate coverage and won’t have to lose their life savings if they become ill. I’d be happy with that, and I promise I’ll shut up.

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Christmas Cheer in a Desolate Land

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Coming East

The Eastern Shore of Virginia is particularly desolate in late fall and winter.  On our drive back to Virginia from Connecticut yesterday, the fields were devoid of vegetation, leaving a dry, dusty landscape with a heavy ceiling of grey clouds.

Even in its bleakness, the Eastern Shore has a beauty all its own.

Every time we drive through the Eastern Shore, my husband and I wonder why people would choose to live in such isolation.  There are no cities there, no shopping, upscale restaurants, theaters, or universities.  The only industry we’ve seen there are the chicken farms of Mr. Purdue and Mr. Tyson.  The workers are largely Hispanic, and along Route 13 several iglesias and tiendas can be seen as well as a couple of taquerias.  What other things people find to occupy their time remain a mystery.  It is not a place you would casually go to for the day to explore because there isn’t anything to see and it would cost you $12 for a trip across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel each way, unless you came back the same day and got a discount on the return trip.  My husband said once that the Eastern Shore of Virginia is a place to go if you don’t want to be found. I replied, “That explains why people live here.  They must be in the witness protection program.”

In spite of the lowliness of so many of the houses, I noticed on our drive back on Sunday that nearly every abode, whether it was a farmhouse or a shack, had some sort of Christmas decoration on it.  The most common were wreaths.  I even saw a tractor with a wreath on it.  I wanted to stop and take pictures, but every time I saw a little place with a Christmas decoration on the door, we were already past it.  “You want me to turn around?” my husband would ask.  But I knew he was anxious to get home, so we kept on going.  He did turn down a side road so I could get a few pictures of the landscape, and I managed to take a picture of some Christmas swags by the entrance to a farm.

I thought of how I used to love putting up a tree when the kids were little and decorating the house in preparation for hosting 25 people for Christmas dinner.  Now that the children live far away and nobody comes to see the house decorated anymore, the decorations have dwindled down to nothing.  As we continued down the road, I remarked at how everyone, regardless of their circumstances, took the time to show their holiday spirit and it made me feel all the more Christmasy.  “But not enough to decorate our house, huh?” my husband asked.  “You know my new motto,” I replied.  “If you don’t put it up, you don’t have to take it down.”

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A Star Is Born

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Coming East

George and I have a routine we follow every time we drive up to Connecticut or Boston.  We stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts near our house and fill our thermoses with coffee before we drive across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel.  Saturday, at the start of our trip, George threw in the bonus of a jelly donut for me.  Imagine my delight when I found it was in the shape of a star!

English: Pleiades Star Cluster

Image via Wikipedia

Being a writer, I immediately found my mind rummaging around for all my associations with stars.  I think a star was the first cool thing I learned to draw.  I am so pathetic an artist that once I handed a blank piece of paper to my art teacher in junior high and told her it was a snowstorm.  I got a zero.  But a star?  Ah, I could draw beautiful stars that no one could find fault with.

Of course the star plays a central role in Christmas because of the star of Bethlehem that is believed to have shown over the stable where the Christ Child lay.  So it isn’t a surprise that many Christmas cookies are in the shape of a star, just as my donut was.  I remember cutting out ginger stars with my mother for Christmas every year.  The star was not the most significant aspect of that memory.  It was making Christmas cookies with my mother, but the star is a hook I can hang that memory on.

My freshman year in college, one of my  dearest friends was diagnosed with leukemia.  I wrote to her nearly every day that year to keep her spirits up, though Janet was the one who was giving comfort to all her friends, such was the mettle of this amazing young woman.  The summer after my freshman year, after my family had just returned from two weeks of vacation, I told my mother that I was going to Janet’s house to check in on her.  Before I left the house, the phone rang.  I remember so clearly, as if it had just happened, seeing my mother at the ironing board watching me take the phone call, watching me as my shoulders sagged and then shook, feeling her arms around me, and hearing her voice saying, “There will be another star in heaven tonight.”

The older I get, the more stars I see with names on them, and one day I will have a star, too.  I suppose we have a fascination with stars because they are mysterious and comforting at the same time.  On the blackest of nights, the stars shine brightest, not leaving us in the dark.  I think our faith can be like that, a star for the soul.

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Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Coming East

Her first train ride

Some years ago, when my oldest granddaughter was about six, I had the pleasure of taking her on her first train ride.  It lasted a little over an hour, traveling from Fairfield, Connecticut, into Grand Central Station in Manhattan.  As I watched my granddaughter glued to the window watching the scenery flash by, I thought of the countless train trips I had taken through the years, beginning when I was very small and my mother, brother, and I took the train from New York to Ohio to visit my grandparents.  When I was working as an editor for a small publishing house in Westport, Connecticut, I would take the train into New York to oversee the printing at the publishing house on Varick Street.  I visited my brother in California one year and took our three young children on a train ride along the coast from San Diego to Los Angeles to see my uncle.  The scenery was spectacular!

I love those memories of train travel, but they don’t match the reality of today.  A friend from church was telling me about someone she knew who took the train from Newport News to Washington D.C. recently, a trip that should have taken just four hours but ended up taking nine as the train sat on the tracks in the middle of nowhere for awhile when something went amiss.  A couple of years ago, our sons decided to take a train trip from D.C. to Newport News to spend Christmas with us.  We were expecting them to get in about 2:30 in the afternoon.  They arrived at midnight.  No, train travel is not what it used to be.  What a pity.

In a country this large, in a society where families are scattered all over, we need to do a better job of helping people stay connected.  Years ago, starting when I was a young teenager, my parents would put me on a plane in New York, usually the now defunct Eastern Airlines, and I would fly to Ohio to visit my mother’s parents and my cousins.

A DC3, one of the first commercial airliners. Taken at the Ford Museum in Michigan a few weeks ago.

I would get dressed up for the flight, and everyone else who flew dressed in their Sunday best, too.  The flight attendants were always pleasant and served us hot meals shortly after we reached cruising altitude.  Planes were seldom delayed.  It was a pleasant experience, not like today’s air travel.  Last week on the CBS nightly news I heard Scott Pelley say that when taken as a whole over all the years of commercial air travel since the 1950’s, the airlines have never made a profit.  Stunning!

I wish it were easier to travel long distances.  I would gladly take the train from here to Boston or here to Detroit so I could see my kids more often, but I actually want to know I can get there in less than a day and not be left sitting on the tracks for hours.  I’ve heard that train travel is well accomplished in Europe.  I know the countries are smaller, so the distances are not so grand as here, but surely we can do a better job than we are doing now.

We drive up and back to Connecticut and Boston fairly often, a ride of nine and twelve hours respectively.  I enjoy the ride because I’m not the one driving, and now that my husband has bought me an ipad with 3G, the drive will be even more pleasurable.  But I wish it were possible for my husband to be as relaxed on the trip as I am as he sits in comfort on a fast train, watching the scenery rushing by.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Waiting

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Coming East

Waiting for lobsters in Rockport, Massachusetts

Swan boats in the Boston Public Garden

Waiting for the sunrise

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Built-in Blogging Fodder

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Coming East
Two boys at the beach. One is buried in the sa...

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This morning, as I read Darla’s She’s a Maniac post, I thought, How I envy her because she has small children at home and always has something funny to share. Heck, you don’t even have to write anything if you have children living with you. Just show their pictures and everyone oohs and aahs and writes a ton of comments about how precious they are. I have three children of my own who are quite as precious to me, but I have to admit that adult children are just not that funny.  In fact, I’m sure they think I’m funny in an unintentional sort of way.  So what in my daily life can I find that will give me blog ideas? Well, there’s my husband, but he does more laughing at me than I do at him.  Maybe he should write the blog?

Okay, here are the only funny things I can think of that have been happening around my house lately.

1.  I’ve had a new ipad for a week now, and this old dog is getting very confused because of it.  It’s a touchpad so I have to touch the screen to go where I want to go and do what I want to do on it.  However, for some reason, my brain can’t make the transition between using my ipad and using my computer, so I am constantly touching my computer screen and wondering why nothing is happening.  Meanwhile, my husband points out that I’m always fussing at him when he touches my computer screen and here I am doing it over and over again.  Actually, now that I’m writing this, I don’t see the humor in it.

2.  Last week my Vietnamese friend, Chi, came for tutoring and she brought all the ingredients and made me some pho (a noodle soup) for dinner.  We started talking about food and she asked me what I liked to eat for breakfast.  I told her one of my favorite things was an eggwhite omelette I make with onions, mushrooms, and cheese.  “Oh, cheese.  Americans like a lot of cheese,” she said.   “We do, indeed!” I responded.  Chi added, “That’s why Americans are so fat.”  Again, now that I’m writing this, I don’t find the humor in what my thin little friend said.

3.  The first Tuesday of every month my yoga instructor does ball yoga.  This is yoga done with one of those big, inflatable balls.  The yoga poses are done while sitting atop the ball or leaning against the ball, or holding the ball.  I haven’t been to ball yoga in nearly a year because I’ve been doing t’ai chi at the same time instead.  Yesterday I decided to give up t’ai chi and I was excited to get back to ball yoga.  However, while everyone else was having no trouble balancing, I was spending more time falling off the ball than anything else.  I tried to grab the ball and hang on for dear life, but it would have no part of me…Sigh…okay, I give up.  Nothing funny has happened to me this week.  Absolutely nothing.  Can someone lend me their kids?

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Stop the Blame Game

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Coming East

This morning I was having difficulty trying to come up with a topic for my blog post. As I was reading the op-ed section of the newspaper this morning (yes, a physical paper copy, not an online edition. Some of us old people still read a newsPAPER!), there were six comments from readers responding to an earlier letter about who to blame for students’ poor performance in school. Apparently, on a previous day, many readers blamed teachers. Today, nearly everone blamed parents for not being good parents. As I followed this discussion and got more absorbed into it, I realized I had the topic for my post this morning because this is a topic near and dear to my heart.

I am so very tired of this blame game. Yes, there are some rotten teachers in some classrooms. There are also parents out there who are terrible role models. Many parents don’t help their children with homework because the parents can’t, either because they were poorly educated themselves, or because they are working two jobs and aren’t home to help. Yes, we could maybe get better teachers if we paid them more. Yes, smaller classrooms would help tremendously, and that would mean we would need to put more money into education instead of reducing our spending, which seems to be the case now. Yes, if students were more disciplined and less disruptive in class, so much more could be accomplished. I could go on and on about who is to blame, but there are so many factors that work together to create a big mess, and no amount of blaming this side or that side is going to “fix” the problem.

But what I do know for certain is this: Teaching is a calling, not a job. What I hear from reading the letters in the op-ed page and have heard over and over again from listening to people complain about the education system is that we need parents to raise their children to be responsible and respectful, to do their homework and pay attention in class. Wouldn’t that be loverly! But that is not the reality, and teachers have to take the kids the way they come. That is our calling.

It would be easy to teach perfect kids, kids who come from homes where parents check their homework every night, kids who always turn in their work and study for tests, kids who come to school every day ready to learn and let their classmates learn, too. Instead, we get children who never have breakfast because there isn’t anything to eat at home, children whose parents don’t even get up in the morning to see them off to school because they are hungover or worked the night shift. We have children who miss school because a younger brother or sister is sick at home and a parent can’t miss work to stay home, so it falls to the older sibling. We get kids who live in cars or under bridges. I could go on and on about why we don’t have the “perfect” child in class. And I say this again: Teaching is a calling. If you can’t take the reality, don’t go into teaching, because I also know this:

A teacher who views teaching as a calling can make a difference in the lives of even the toughest children. I have seen a teenager who no other teacher wanted, who was so disruptive in class that he was kicked out of class after class and finally sent to alternative school for several months, return to school and be put in a teacher’s class who saw past all the toughness and anger and awful behavior and made a connection with that youngster. I have seen how that young man blossomed when he finally found someone who believed in him and cheered every little accomplishment, even if it was just that he showed up. I have seen how that young man turned from a belligerant teenager into someone who was a delight to have in class, who wanted to be there, who wanted to learn.

So who cares who is to blame for poor student performance? There is plenty of blame to go around, and blaming just isn’t productive. As teachers, we must take who we get and do everything in our power to show them that education can change their lives. Children are that important. That is the reality of the classroom.

Oh, and by the way, that young man I spoke of? I was the teacher who took him in. I get the reality of the classroom.

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