If Goodbye Were Really Goodbye

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Coming East

This weekend we kicked her out, after two long years of living with her.  We have been meaning to remove her from our lives for some time now, but the prospect seemed too daunting a task.  I have more than disliked her; I have detested her, loathed her, and this weekend we finally ripped her from our lives.  My daughter says when a situation becomes unbearable, you’ll finally do something about it.  At last, the bordello pink-striped bathroom wallpaper is gone, gone, gone.

I wish it were as easy as pulling the wallpaper off the walls and slapping some paint on, but after three days of working on our bathroom, it is far from completed.  We purchased a steamer, since we have many other walls whose paper needs to come off, and removed the last of the dreaded deep Pepto-Bismol pink after working for two days.  Today, since we had a three-day weekend, we sprayed the walls with some blue goo that is supposed to dissolve the residual glue.  We then had to use a rough sponge to wipe down the walls to remove the said glue.  We needed to repeat that procedure as there was still glue after goo.  Next, we had to wash down all the walls, several times, to get the remains of the blue glue goo.  Of course, the floors were a mess by this time, so I had to wash the floors, and by the time we cleaned up all the equipment, the day was pretty much over.

No, we are not even close to putting any paint on the walls.  Next weekend we will need to spackle and caulk and sand. Then comes the primer.  And then, maybe then, we will finally get to put some paint on the walls, though that is several weekends down the road.  When we started this project, we had grand plans to do the guest bathroom next and move on to the kitchen wallpaper, having those two rooms finished before Easter.  I still think that is a workable plan…if we are talking Easter of 2012.

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Daddy, It’s All Your Fault…or Mostly

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Coming East

When the No Hassle Rewards catalogue came in the mail from Capital One Bank, I pretty much ignored it until my husband had me take a look at it with him.

“We have 22,000 points from our unused airline miles.  What should we get?” he asked.  We could redeem our miles for gift cards to Amazon.com or iTunes, Bath and Body Works, Best Buy, and many other worthy sites.

“Honey, I don’t care.  Whatever you want is fine with me,” I said.  Then he made The Big Mistake.  He suggested something I might want, and now I can’t get it out of my head.

“What about getting this Barnes and Noble card?  You could get one of those e-readers.  Wouldn’t you like one of those?”  Well, duh!  Yeah, now I really do want it.  I tried to push the thought out of my head and be noble.

“No, honey, you should get the Best Buy card and put it towards the new computer you want.  Or the Target card.  We could buy a lot of toothpaste and toilet paper with that.”  Alas, my husband’s fate was sealed.  By the time he got home from work the next day, I had researched all I could find about the various e-readers.

My husband isn’t totally to blame.  I get my love for techno-gadgets from my father who was Chief of Structures at Sikorsky Aircraft and was head of the team that designed the airframe of the Blackhawk helicopter. My father was way ahead of his time.  I can’t remember the exact timeline, but I remember when he came home with one of the first personal computers.  I think it was a Commodore, and he had to write programs for it using BASIC or FORTRAN or Pascal.  It was back during a time when all the engineers, including my father, carried slide rules in their breast pockets and wore big horned-rimmed glasses.  When my father told his colleagues about his computer and that it had 1K of memory, they laughed at him, saying, “Who would ever need that much memory?”

The other day, my husband and I were in Best Buy, and a salesman was showing us Google TV.  It’s a great new program which turns your television into a giant computer monitor.  As we left the store, I said to my husband, “Didn’t Dad figure out how to do that years ago?”  Like I said, my father was on the cutting edge.

And here I am now, deciding whether I really want to get an e-reader.  When they first came out, my gut reaction was that I would never want to read a book that way.  I like the feel and look of a real paper book.  But the more I think about them, the more I believe e-readers are the wave of the not-so-distant future.  I have no more room for books on my shelves, they are hard to carry when my hands are weighed down with carry-ons at the airport, I’m constantly putting books on hold at the library and having to wait until they are available, and think of the millions of trees that will be saved.  No, this is not Fahrenheit 451; we are not burning books but actually making them more accessible.

And most important, it’s a new techno-gadget, and I want it!

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Wild Geese

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Coming East
A Canada Goose flying at Burnaby Lake Regional...

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Every day this week, at about the same time in the early afternoon, a flock of Canada geese flies over my house in a perfect V formation, their long necks stretched out, their magnificent honking echoing in the winter air.  I rush out with my camera, but they fly too swiftly for me to get a picture, and the experience can’t be captured in a soundless, still picture anyway.

When I was growing up in Connecticut, the honking of Canada geese flying overhead signaled the approach of the end of autumn as the birds migrated south.  Living here in Virginia near the Chesapeake Bay, the geese no longer migrate but have taken up permanent residence on our shores.  Though they are beautiful birds, they are disdained by many of our citizens because their huge numbers foul the waterways and beaches with gobs of their green goo.

This fall has been an incredibly busy one for us with numerous trips every month since Labor Day.  We traveled to Florida, spent a weekend in the Outer Banks, my husband went to Dallas while I went to Michigan to visit daughter and her family, then we both went to Michigan for Thanksgiving, we drove up to Connecticut and Boston in early November and back again for Christmas week, plus we have gone to Chester, near Richmond, for several weekends with my brother and his family.  I’ve nearly forgotten what our little house looks like.

We are finally going to be able to stay home awhile and put our suitcases away.  I’m actually looking forward to pulling off ancient wallpaper and doing some painting.  I have loved all of our travels and visiting with so many people I love dearly, but I need a few weeks of staying put to regroup, get my house, body, and mind in shape before we start traveling again.  I love this quiet time of winter and staying rooted to this spot.  And yet, when I see those Canada geese flying overhead and hear their joyous honking, my heart soars with them.

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Here I Go Again…

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Coming East

While visiting with two of my best friends in New England this Christmas, I was enchanted by their holiday decorations, specifically the ones they had on their mantlepieces.  One had a collection of Santas; the other had an array of angels.  As I stared at their collections, my eyes glazed over and I felt that old tug again that I thought I had put away once and for all.  You see, I am a stream-of-consciousness collector.  Laurence Sterne would have been proud of me.

I believe my compulsive behavior is rooted in our life in the little rural town of Storrs, Connecticut.  We lived there more than thirty years ago in an old farmhouse.  If we had lived just two houses further up the road, we could have been as clever as the chicken people.  They lived directly across from a hillside dotted with white chicken coops, and attached firmly to their mailbox, in bold red letters, was a sign which read, “Cock-a-doodle View.”  I wanted that sign.  I lusted after that sign.  Instead, our house was across the road from a cow pasture populated with doe-eyed Jerseys.  I gave up trying to best our neighbor’s sign and would have been happy to settle for one that could have at least honorably competed.  But “Moo View” lacked the same luster, and Holstein Hollow and Guernsey Glen were outright lies.

Since I couldn’t live across from the chickens, I started collecting them.  My first piece was a little white chicken with a tiny yellow beak and a blazing red comb.  The next chicken came thirty years later on a trip to Sturbridge.  I am a slow collector.  The first chicken was the size of a thimble, so naturally, I began collecting thimbles.  I have two (or had two; they disappeared in the last move), one with a chickadee painted on it, the other a porcelain lady wearing a lavender hat.  Granted, my collections are small but singular.  The thimbles led to my fascination with buttons because they are loosely connected by a thread.  Buttons were my largest, if not my most spectacular, collection.  All my buttons came from one source—my husband’s dress shirts when they were too frayed to flip the collar and cuffs again.  When my husband pointed out that you couldn’t tell one button from another and wasn’t that one of the nice aspects to a good collection, I got huffy and refused to rip another button off his shirts.  He was actually relieved since he had been disputing that some of those shirts were ready for the rag-bin, or the button box, depending on your point of view.

The buttons naturally led me to collecting egg cups.  Buttons have holes, the holes reminded me of salt and pepper shakers (which of course, I collected on the way), I love salt and pepper on soft-boiled eggs, and voila–my egg cup collection.  And not just any egg cups.  The double-sided ones, hard to come by now.  The egg cups led to lighthouses ( I ate a soft-boiled egg once near a lighthouse).  Oh, well, you get the picture.  As I said, I am a stream-of-consciousness collector.  And now here I am, wondering if I should start a collection of Santas or angels.  Luckily, since the after-Christmas sales are in progress, I might be able to start both…

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A Year’s End Reflection

Posted on December 27, 2010 by Coming East

Every nerve ending was fired with excitement as we left Dunkin Donuts, thermoses full of hot coffee, and crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in the dark.  There is something magical about watching the sunrise on the Eastern Shore, steaming cup of coffee in hand, on a cold winter morning.

This was our first Christmas spent in Boston with our two sons and daughter-in-law and her parents.  The exquisite dinner on Christmas Day, beef bourguignon, was preceded by appetizers fit for a king and followed by dessert, coffee, and conversations late into the night.  No one wanted the evening to end. 

I have been anticipating this time since Labor Day.  Each year seems to begin slowly in January, long, cold, quiet days creeping into the shorter, cold, grey days of February.  By late March, at least in Virginia, you begin to get a promise of spring as the year starts picking up speed until, before you know it, Labor Day comes and you wonder where the year went, but you have the flutter of expectation and excitement the approaching holidays herald.

Our Thanksgiving is somewhat like a Christmas for us as we spend time with our daughter and her family in Michigan.  Then we return to Virginia and prepare for Christmas, the planning, the shopping, the baking, the packing, until we load up the car and head north.

As this year draws to a close, it is an appropriate time to reflect on what new insights it has brought me.  I am like a tree.  If you were to cut me down, you would see the layering of life, the solid rings signaling growth, even in stressful years.  Or am I more like an onion, thin-skinned, delicate layers transparent and peeled away as the years go by?  This I know:  the longer I live, the more I am able to whittle away the chaff to reveal the richness of life.  Amid the wrapping paper and ribbons and the multitude of presents exchanged, the pleasures of the season come down to two things—spending time with those you love, and eating incredible food.  Or, to simplify it even further, eating great food with those you love.  It doesn’t get any better than that!

All through this year, my husband and I have carved out opportunities to spend time with those we love in Virginia, in Michigan, in Connecticut, and Boston.  I am like a glutton; the more I get, the more I want, and it will never be enough.  The weather has given me a gift this year.  A blizzard has delayed our parting, but it won’t be long before the inevitable long journey home begins, heading back to the beginning of the cycle again.  The memories of this season, beginning with Thanksgiving, will keep me through the long winter days until the year begins to pick up speed, hurtling us once more into this most joyous time when we are united with those we love, sharing fabulous food and intimate conversations.

Ultimately, I think my life is like a song, and each year a new verse is written.

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The Gift Everyone Needs

Posted on December 19, 2010 by Coming East
Two New Year's Resolutions postcards

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For his sermon this Sunday morning, our priest James told the story of watching the movie Eat, Pray, Love with his wife this weekend.  One of the characters in the movie tells the main character that what she needs is a champion, and James continued to preach on what it means to be someone’s champion and the notion that we all need a champion.  I thought about what his sermon meant in my life.  I’m quite certain that my husband is my champion and an excellent one at that, and I’m also sure that I’m his champion as well.  I’ve always been my children’s champion, even when they were teenagers and didn’t think so.  They, likewise, have been my champion.

I remember a time many, many years ago when I was playing in the orchestra for the San Antonio Art Festival’s production of Benjamin Britten’s Noah’s Flood .  I played the alto recorder and had never played professionally before.  The conductor was going faster than my fingers could fly, and I fumbled several times, until finally the conductor stopped conducting and yelled at me.  My face was burning and I fought to hold in the tears.  My children had come with me to the rehearsal, and when we were finished for the day and I walked out with them, all three were furious at the conductor for treating me the way he did.  One of the boys (I can’t remember which one it was now, but he couldn’t have been more than eight or nine) offered to go back in and punch the conductor in the face.  It’s easy to be the champion of people you love.

But what about all the people in the world who need a champion and don’t have one?  What about the people in my own community?  There’s an old lady I see every once in awhile sitting on the sidewalk outside the post office.  I don’t know if she’s homeless, but she definitely has issues.  I always say hello to her and ask her how she’s doing, and once I gave her some money to get something to eat, even though she had never asked for anything.  I actually asked her first if she would accept some money from me, and her eyes got wide as she said, “Do you think it’s okay for me to take the money?”  When I assured her it was, she was so appreciative, I wished I had more to give her.  Now when I think about how everyone needs a champion, I realize I didn’t do nearly enough.  If I see her again, I want to do more than just hand her some money and walk away.  I want to invite her to walk across the street to Wendy’s and have lunch with me, and I want to talk to her and really listen.  I hope I get that chance.

I usually make ridiculous New Year’s resolutions I can never keep, and they’re all about me, such as I’m going to get rid of this gut this year by working out five days a week and eating less (ain’t ever going to happen; I love food too much!),  I’m going to get a new string for my violin and start practicing again, I’m going to finish that short story I’ve been working on for the past five years (actually, not working on), etc., etc.  This year I’m only going to make one resolution:  I’m going to look for opportunities to be someone’s champion.  Who will join me?

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Song Without Words

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Coming East
Portrait of Mendelssohn by the English miniatu...

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Mendelssohn is known for his “Song Without Words.”  I feel sure he wrote that for his wife because couples have a certain language between them that requires no speech.  That’s a good thing because for the past few years, I’ve been steadily losing my ability to remember some words, especially difficult ones like table, dishwasher, and phone.  I would worry more if I didn’t witness so many others in my age bracket who are afflicted with this particular brand of aphasia.  I eventually do remember the word, but it takes a concerted effort sometime, an effort that would wear me out if I constantly had to make it.  As I said at the beginning, however, couples who have been married a long time don’t need to use so many words.  Lucky me.

The other night my husband was setting the table, and I said to him, “Honey, use the napkins that are in the thing.”  He went right to the dry sink and pulled out two napkins.  I would have found the words “dry sink” floating around in my brain somewhere, but I didn’t have to bother.  When my husband asks where I put the mail, and I say, “I…uh, I…uh, put it…you know, when you come in and…um,” and he walks over to the entry table and picks up the mail.

I never was good at charades in my youth, but I’ve managed to develop a good communication system by using hand signals.  My husband can tell me where my glasses are after I’ve made the gesture of two circles in front of my eyes.  He knows when to turn the heat up just by looking at me rubbing my arms briskly and sighing loudly.  Oh, wait, that’s more like whining, so that doesn’t count.  Sometimes I have to get more elaborate, nearly putting on an entire skit to get him to understand me, but he’s a truly dependable mind-reader.  His skills have been honed over many years, though, so I wouldn’t recommend newlyweds trying this at home.

There are also times when the shoe is on the other foot, and I’ve had to fill in the blanks my husband exhibits.  He says I’m good at finishing his sentences.  We just heard a staggering statistic last night that 35 percent of all baby boomer couples have split and that generation makes up the majority of all divorced people in America.  My husband and I started thinking about all our friends and reflecting on their marriages.  All of them are still together.  I contend that those baby boomers whose marriages are still intact are excellent at the art of communicating without words.  Either that, or some of them have forgotten the word “divorce.”

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Mildly Miffed Mondays

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Coming East

My daughter, who has the blog Pajama Days (mypajamadays.com), writes a post every Friday entitled Friday Flip-Offs.  Her post is linked to another blog site which actually started this notion of flipping off people, things, and situations which are incredibly annoying.  Rudeness and stupidity often head the list of things needing flipping off.  I wanted to join in and add my own thoughts, but I didn’t for two reasons.  First, I have no idea how to link to another blog site, and I think you sort of need to do that because it started off as someone else’s idea.  And second, as I tried to think of things to flip off, I found that at my age, I’m just not that angry anymore.  When I was younger, I know so many things bothered me; I mean REALLY bothered me.  Maybe when you are going a mile a minute with not a second for yourself, you have less patience.  You also have less time.  So when anything wastes what little time you have, you erupt.  I know I was no exception.  In fact, I really surprised myself when I tried to join in the Friday Flip-Offs and couldn’t think of anything worthy.  So I am going to content myself with Mildly Miffed Mondays.  This may be my only post on this topic because, as I said in the beginning, I’m just not that angry anymore.

So…here goes.  I went to Target to buy some workout pants to wear to the Y.  I have plenty of cropped pants for the warmer weather, but now that it’s getting cold, I wanted long ones, especially because we do our t’ai chi outside.  All I could find were pants that said they were for women 5’3” tall to 5’9” tall.  If you are outside those parameters, apparently you don’t work out, or if you do, you are out of luck.  I used to be 5’3” tall, but I have shrunk to 5’2”.  I have trouble picturing how pants that fit a woman who is 5’3” would also be the right length for women who are 5’9”.  I am mildly miffed about this situation.

Last night my husband strung our evergreen garland on the bannister and then wrapped it with white Christmas lights.  He tested the lights before he used them, of course, and they worked perfectly.  However, after we spent the time untangling them and then wrapping the bannister, they no longer worked.  At first we thought it might be the extension cord we were using, so my husband went out to the garage for the third time and found another extension cord.  Still nothing.  So we unwound the lights and jiggled each one until we found the one light that wasn’t working.  Tonight we will have to get the ladder out again to reach the rest of our Christmas lights in the garage and pull out one that will complete the circuit for our white ones.  Unfortunately, I don’t have anymore white lights, so I will have to use a colored one, but without sticking another light in that socket, the whole string won’t work.  I’m mildly miffed that they make Christmas lights that don’t work if just one is faulty.

Finally, we are about to turn in the rental car we’ve had for a month now since someone hit our car and nearly totaled it and sent it to the collision center.  A couple of days ago, I happened to be looking at the dashboard and recognized a symbol that I was introduced to on my daughter’s car while we were visiting during Thanksgiving.  The symbol means the car has heated seats.  We have had this car for a month, drove it all the way from Virginia Beach to Boston and back a few weeks ago, and never knew it had heated seats!  I am miffed that rental cars do not give you the car’s manual when you rent the car so you would know how everything works and what everything means.

So there you have it.  Not much of a list, I know.  I will try to be more aware of what annoys me so I can share next Monday.  But don’t count on it.

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Lesson in the Leaves

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Coming East

A few weeks ago we drove up to New England for a family wedding.  While we were there, we decided to visit Mount Auburn Cemetery in the Boston area.  Last fall we were there at the peak of the fall foliage, mid-October, and the colors were astounding.  Since this time we would be there mid-November, we weren’t expecting to see anything buy nearly bare trees with a few brown-leafed hangers-on.  We parked the car and walked, the sky overcast and the temperature hovering in the forties.  I rounded a corner and was greeted by two bright little trees, flaming out their colors in an otherwise grey setting.  Their presence was startling and unexpected.  They were not willing to give up their beauty, holding on tenaciously this late in autumn.

I, too, am in the late autumn of my life, and I am not willing to give up it’s beauty.  Indeed, I seem to see things more clearly the older I get.  Maybe it is because I have more time to reflect without the press of a job or a family to raise.  I live with more intensity, every day a precious gift I savor.  It is an intentional living, not a haphazard, come-what-may approach to life, images sharper, emotions on edge.

So many things have changed in my life, and I miss them dearly.  I miss being a young wife and mother most of all.  I miss people and places I shall never see again.  T’ai chi is teaching me to look inward and enjoy the universe inside of me.  Eternity is all around me.  Eternity is now.  I have nothing else to wait for.  And I intend to flame out like those two trees before the coming of winter

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A Guest at the Feast

Posted on November 29, 2010 by Coming East

I remember Thanksgiving mornings waking me up with the savory scent of onions and celery sauteing in an iron skillet while my grandmother made the stuffing and my mother prepared the turkey for the oven.  My brother, sister and I wandered into the kitchen for a peek before heading to the den and plopping ourselves on the sofa to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  It was a scene repeated year after year until I became a young wife and mother.  Because we lived less than two hours away, we traveled to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving, and everything else remained the same, including the menu:  turkey, doctored-up Pepperidge Farm stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, candied yams, stuffed celery, cranberry sauce, rutabaga, and for dessert, a pumpkin pie and a pecan pie.  The main appetizer was always my grandmother’s chopped chicken liver.  Christmas had similar traditions with a different menu, all prepared by my mother with some help from my grandmother.

When we moved to Texas and were too far away to go back to Connecticut for the holidays, I had the pleasure of planning and preparing Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.  I loved to cook and looked forward to putting the feasts together, even though it took a tremendous amount of work.  My Thanksgiving menu looked remarkably like my mother’s, but my Christmas menu was totally different.  Where my mother had baked ham as the highlight, I had prime rib for several years until our guests at dinner became too numerous for that to be practical (I didn’t have a pan big enough) or affordable.  Since we lived in San Antonio, a fiesta theme suited the occasion.  Even after my parents moved to Texas, I continued to host the holiday dinners.

For the past four or five years now, my husband and I have been spending Thanksgiving with my daughter and her family.  She does the planning and gives me a task, the baking of the pies, one pumpkin and one brownie.  And this will be the first Christmas in years and years that I have not hosted Christmas.  We will spend it with our two sons and our daughter-in-law. 

I still look forward to the holidays as much now as when I was a youngster, but I have to admit there is a part of me that misses being the host.  No more planning the menu, trying out new recipes, decorating the house.  I never thought about how my mother must have missed being the host.  I just assumed she would be delighted to not have to go to all that trouble.  She had done it enough over the years.  It was time for her to be pampered for a change.  And, yes, there is also a part of me that is relieved to not have so much work to do.  But with aging comes the list of things that you cannot do anymore, for one reason or another.  Children grow up and move on and want their own traditions.  They deserve the same pleasure I had of being the host, and I must content myself with being a guest at the feast.  But I do miss my rutabaga.

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