Tag Archive | nostalgia

Hark the Herald Angels and Demons

Dec14

The holidays sneaked up on me again this year. When do I have to start getting ready for the holidays to have a handle on things when they arrive? The reality is, I could start putting up decorations in early January and still feel like the holidays were sprung on me the following November.

Christmas is a time of reflection for me. I guess everyone gets nostalgic this time of year, missing times long-passed or even ones that never actually existed. The holidays started for me every fall, when my mother set up a Ping-Pong table in the master bedroom.  That table was ground zero for wrapping Christmas presents. It went up before Thanksgiving and was my signal to start getting excited.

In the days before ready-made bows,  Mama made them herself, twisting flat ribbon into a figure-eight, notching the middle, and tying it off tightly. Then, one at a time, she pulled a loop out, bringing it down and across, until she had a gorgeous, perfect bow. Mama was wonderfully good at this, but I got the impression she hated doing it. She was extra-edgy and short-tempered from the time that Ping-Pong table came out until it went back in the closet under the stairs.

My father was philosophical about Christmas, usually just waiting for it to be over. He enjoyed the once-a-year foods–Mama’s fruit cake, boiled custard, and angel food cake. But no matter how hard we tried, he never seemed to get a gift he really wanted.

“Socks with feet in them,” or “Drawers with seats in them,” followed by, “Just what I wanted,” were his standard comments. Admittedly, buying a gift for him was a nightmare. The man had two of everything he’d ever wanted. Plus, he had an annoying habit of going shopping for himself just before Christmas. It was the only time of the year he did this, and it drove my mother nuts.

Only a couple of times did I please him with my gift. When I was in high school, I managed to find a blacksmith in North San Antonio, no mean feat in the late 1960s, and had him make a wrought-iron sign, “T. W. Wheeler.”  Daddy didn’t say much on Christmas morning, but he did hang it on the ranch gate, an indication of approval. Years later, when he had to sell the ranch, he retrieved the sign and kept it in his home office. Later, as an adult, I gave him a Care Package one Christmas. It contained all his favorites: Marshmallow Circus Peanuts, Saltines to crumble into a glass of cold milk and eat with a spoon, Penguins–chocolate-covered marshmallow cookies– rat cheese (Longhorn style), and chocolate-covered cherries. That gift actually made him grin as he unpacked it.

At least shopping has gotten a lot easier over the years. Bryan is easy to buy for. He likes just about anything I get him. My grown kids want money or gift cards, and my grandchildren cheerfully provide me with detailed lists of EXACTLY what they want and where to get it. And the Internet, bless its little silicon heart, brings everything to my door. No more fighting crowds or doing psycho checks in dark parking lots before getting into my car.

Doing some heavy remembering, letting myself float back through the years, is my way of honoring the season. Instead of turning up at church on the high holy days because I feel I ought to, I use the time to reflect on my behavior on the other 364 days a year. Have I done enough for others? Did I manage to curb my wicked tongue at all this year? Did I hurt someone intentionally or un-? Do I deserve another year of walking this earth? We all have demons to wrestle; mine come decked out in jingle bells and mistletoe.

I hope your holidays are everything you want them to be; I wish for you the ability to determine what that is.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and Happy Holidays, y’all!

 

Aging, American Style

Oct2

Roger & Addie 2Roger & Addie 5

 

Roger & Addie 3

As someone approaching the Medicare Wonder Years, who anxiously awaits catalogs with the latest styles in knee braces, and who has a map of the Nile Delta etched in the skin at the corner of each eye, my recent trip to Georgetown to visit some older friends was profound. These friends, Addie and Roger Busfield, are just about ten or fifteen years older than my husband Bryan and I, and we’ve come to admire, respect, and  love them over the years.

Roger had a long career in theatre and teaching, and he wrote a textbook on writing plays that was translated into several languages.  It is still being used. Addie is a gifted artist, whose works can be seen on display in the Georgetown Public Library and on several friends’ book covers.  Both highly intelligent and interesting people, they mastered the art of being urbane and down-to-earth at the same time. Also, both of them are a hoot!

A few of their friends and Bryan and I joined them for a Dos Salsas food fest at the Wesleyan Nursing Home where Roger now lives. Ann Bell picked up Addie at Estrella Independent Living, and Joan Hall, Carol Menchu, Bryan, and I picked up fajita taco plates for all, Roger having requested that specifically. We ate, talked, ate, and talked some more, seven old friends around a large table, a great way to spend an afternoon.

It impressed me that with an age span of about 20 years around that table, we all were on the same page in life, give or take a page or two. I could easily see myself in five or ten years, an observation common to us all. The disadvantages of getting older are readily apparent, so I tried to think of advantages that will come–basically from here on out–as I approach the place on the highway of life where the pavement ends.

1. Pie will be reclassified as a vegetable, and no one will care if I eat my dessert first.

2. Having forgotten her name and phone number, I will no longer have to deal with my sister.

3. I will no longer care about getting to watch what I want on television; my favorite show will be Progressive commercials with Flo.

4. My grandkids will remain little forever. When they bring their children to visit me , I will assume they are all my grandchildren and be permanently delighted.

5. My mind will eventually migrate to a time and place I was happiest, probably the Sixties when the music was good, and all the deceased ones I’ve missed will come visit me at night–by invitation only.

6. I won’t own any clothes that aren’t comfortable, and I won’t notice whether they match. My dress-up shoes will be socks with non-skid patches on the bottoms.

7. My beloved Bryan will still be with me, although he will n0 longer care about sports and will have developed an interest in true crime programming.

8. My dogs will return from Pet Paradise to visit me but will no longer poop on the floor.

9. My face will have a permanently pleasant expression, carefully cultivated over the years, so people will be nice to me and want to talk to me.

10. I will not “find God,” (not having mislaid Him, as far as I can tell) or be more religious than I was earlier in life when all my screws were countersunk, when I knew exactly what I was doing, and what the cosmic consequences were likely to be. I will not expect amnesty because I am old. Instead, I will count on His having a sense of humor.

I hope I can age as gracefully as Roger and Addie have. I hope my friends will want to throw a shindig for me at the nursing home. I hope I will still be able to make them laugh.

I would also like to get  my order in now for a Dos Salsas Enchilada Plate.  I will tell you where to bring it when I make my final blog entry.

 

A Childhood Memory

Aug14

childhoodLast month I attended the Writers League of Texas annual writer’s retreat in
Alpine, Texas. This was the third year in a row I have participated, and it is
fast becoming a tradition both my husband and I look forward to.

I attended the memoir class taught by Donna Johnson and Christine Wicker. This
class dug up a lot of my past, some sweet, some not-so-much. If you want to get
in touch with yourself, try a memoir-writing clinic. Be prepared, though.
There’s no such thing as free therapy, as the old saying almost goes. Ours was
the only class that came with Kleenex.

I want to share a piece I wrote as one of the class writing exercises. It is one
of my fondest childhood memories, and I’m grateful for the chance to bring it
forward again.

***

My older brother dug holes in our backyard. They were large and deep enough to
sit in undetected by casual passersby. I loved those magnificent holes Tom
shared with me.

Mama allowed him to have only one hole going at a time, lest the backyard become
an unusable No Man’s Land. He always filled one hole in before starting another
one.

I watched for signs Tom was about to start another hole. I tagged along to watch
him choose a site. He was limited to a four-foot radius around the mulberry
tree. Grass wouldn’t grow there anyway, and Mama had given up trying. He walked
around and around, kicking a rock here, prodding a dirt clod there. Finally he
would sink his shovel into the ground, and I’d know he’d found his spot.

And Tom’s holes were always clean. I never got my play clothes dirty sitting in
them, and you could take books and magazines down there without fear of ruining
them. I would run my fingers across the hard-packed walls or floor without
soiling my hands. I always suspected Mama cleaned our holes when we weren’t
looking.

When the hole was finished, we observed a brief dedication ceremony, culminating
in both of us climbing in and sitting down. I was protected, circumscribed, and
unassailable, totally safe. Sitting in that hole with Tom felt like a hug.

Sometimes Dreams Come True

May19

Fab Four #2Last night I achieved a dream I’ve harbored for almost 50 years. I met the Beatles.

I remember so clearly February, 1964, when the Beatles appeared for the first time on the Ed Sullivan Show. The hype preceded them, giving birth to what would become Beatlemania. A month shy of my fifteenth birthday, I knelt on the cold terrazzo tile floor of our den, up close to the television. When the boys finally appeared, I screamed and pounded my hands on the floor, imitating the teenage girls I’d seen on the news. It was a turning point in my life and the beginning of my dream to see the Beatles in concert.

Not that I had a rat’s chance of that, even when they appeared in Dallas and Houston. My father, appalled by their hair, their clothes, and their Britishness in general, thought they had been sent by the Russians to destroy our country and poison our youth. Between him and my mother, who didn’t believe in going anywhere but Disneyland, I would never get to see the Beatles in concert, at least not until I grew up and was on my own.

Of course, by that time the Beatles had broken up and no longer were seen together anywhere. The decades passed and like most fans, somewhere in the depths of my heart, I clung to the hope they would reunite for one last hurrah. Then John Lennon was murdered, and George Harrison died of cancer. That put a damper on my hopes.

Fast forward to 2013. As Bryan and I watched a fundraiser forPBS , there they were–the Beatles–not as they would have been now, even if they were all still alive, but as they were in 1964. The four moptops in tight-fitting suits and Beatle boots, hair unbelievably long for the times, delivered their songs with youthful enthusiasm and cheekiness. After a break to campaign for donations, the boys were back, this time in the ridiculous, wonderful satin costumes of their Sgt. Pepper phase. One more costume change later, they appeared as I remembered them in their final days, John in a white suit with long hair framing his face, Paul well-coifed and heart-stoppingly handsome, George, my secret favorite, thin, dark, and brooding, and Ringo, who changed so little over the years, gazing out past his nose and drumming his little heart out.

It was the tribute band, The Fab Four. They looked like the Beatles, they sounded like them (passing muster by two fans who knew every note of every album), and they had the accents, body language, and gestures down cold. Bryan and I were entranced. Once we learned they were coming to Austin in May, it didn’t take a lot of arm-twisting from PBS to get us on the phone, pledging the amount required to get two free tickets to the performance. We donate every year anyway, and this premium was too intriguing to pass up. Then the host explained that, for an additional donation, we could get two tickets to the Meet and Greet, where we would meet and greet the band members before the show. How could we pass that up?

The day of the concert finally arrived. Aside from trying to figure out what I should wear to meet the Beatles, our plans went smoothly, we arrived at the Paramount and were herded into a corner to wait with the other Meet and Greet people. Watching the less favored come in and head for their seats, I was struck by the parade of former pretty, young girls and sweet, young boys, now shuffling by as senior citizens. A few young people came, and there were even a few children, brought by parents or grandparents wanting to pass the magic on to that generation.

Finally we were led backstage, where we gathered around the drum platform and neatly arranged instruments. Then the boys appeared and greeted each of us politely and warmly, shaking hands, joking, and giving every appearance of being thrilled to meet a group of slightly dazed AARPsters. Then they moved in front of the huge backdrop screen and dutifully posed with us, two at a time, as someone took a picture with our phone camera. It turned out dark, and soon George Harrison had our camera, trying to adjust it. I stood in a totally surreal situation, Bryan and I wedged between the four Beatles, looking straight off the album appropriately named “Meet the Beatles.” That we did!

As we moved quickly to our seats, I automatically threw a “thank you” over my shoulder. I chalked up  another surreal moment as a Liverpudlian accent called, “You’re welcome.” We had hardly sat down when the fun started. They encouraged the audience to scream (mostly at the end of a number so we actually got to hear the music), clap to the beat, dance in the aisles, and sing along anytime we felt like it. The people filling the theatre sang every word in unison, surprisingly on key. I thought of the throngs in Vatican Square, responding to a papal mass as one person.

We got our money’s worth and then some. The show, which started promptly at 8:00 p.m., ended at 10:30, by which time I was screamed out, boogied out, and worn out. I might not be fifteen  anymore, but I’d had the time of my life, and so had Bryan. We got to relive together the youth spent before we knew each other.

So hooray for dreams that finally come true, in a way and 50 years later. It wasn’t the real thing, but dreams aren’t about reality. It sounded like the Beatles, looked like them, felt like them, and I probably appreciated this “meeting” more than I would have when I was fifteen. It may be that dreams come true when they should. This one did.

Candlestick Maker, Indian Chief…Writer?

Apr10

“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief, Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief.” Everyone knows the nursery rhyme. Along with “Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker,” it was the only career counseling I received in my youth. And the fact I was female ruled out most of the above.

At one point it looked like I might turn out to be a thief, one of the few equal opportunity professions back then. At the age of six, I stole a roll of Five Flavored Lifesavers from the Handy Andy grocery store where we “traded.” When my mother discovered them in my sock drawer, she took me back to the store, asked for the manager, and had me confess my crime and beg him not to call the police and have me arrested. That experience pretty well cured me of a life of crime. As an adult, I once went back to HEB in a driving rain storm because the cashier had given me too much change.

My parents made it very clear there were only two occupations open to proper young ladies, my mother’s Number 2 goal for me and my sister. Number 1, of course, was getting married and having babies (in that order). On the off chance we had to work a few years until we could retire to housewifery and be “taken care of” the rest of our lives, we could consider only teaching and nursing. We weren’t choosing a career; we were just killing time while waiting to be taken care of.

It’s not that I was a feminist in those days. Being taken care of didn’t make me nauseous back then. I did wonder if women ever worked at jobs they enjoyed and weren’t ready to ditch at a moment’s notice. I had seen pictures of World War II’s Rosie the Riveter, dressed in pants (!) assembling aircraft and tanks to lick the Axis. I also knew those women left the factories in droves, supposedly happily, to return to the kitchen and nursery when Johnny came marching home.

My choices were further narrowed by my mother’s ban against being in the same room with naked people. Hospitals were full of the naked and near-naked, and were not the kind of places for me. That left teaching, and it was understood that if I wasn’t married within a week of my Senior Prom, I would go to college and double-major in teaching and virginity.

My point is, if I had told my parents I wanted to be a writer, they would have taken me to the family doctor for a penicillin shot. If I had persisted, they would have checked me into one of the places Mama went when she became “nervous.” They could have more readily pictured me as a candelabra-carving Native American.

I tried hard to fit in, to be what they wanted. I refused to become a teacher, mainly because they were so determined to make me one, but I did conform enough to get married, have a baby, and make a stab at caring about dirty yellow wax buildup and collecting recipes involving ground beef.

But writers have little choice in whether they write. Mostly, we have to do it, like fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly. I finally succumbed in my 40s. Both my parents had passed, blissfully unaware of my latest trip down the road to Perdition. I started writing for real in 1997, and I’ve been feeding my writing jones ever since.

Making enough money as a writer to call it a career happens to only a very gifted few. The rest of us have day jobs, night jobs, or sugar-daddies/mamas. And still we soldier on, filling up pages of paper or cyberspace  with words that  will hardly live forever. Mine have the life expectancy of a May fly, not a Hemingway. Not that it will stop me. And I’m grateful I don’t have to convince people to lay out good money to read my words. Getting them to read them for free is hard enough .

Like Popeye, “I yam what I yam.” I’ll continue to write as long as I can stick two thoughts together with super glue. When I can’t write anymore, it will be time to move to a nursing home, and I hope you’ll come visit me. You’ll recognize me. I’ll be the old lady wearing a Cheyenne war bonnet.

Channeling George Gobel

Jan14
Lonesome George Gobel

Lonesome George Gobel

Did you ever have one of those weeks when the last thing you wanted to do was write something funny? Well, actually that was the next-to-last thing. The last was being pregnant. Possibilities and impossibilities aside, I’ve just waded through a very unfunny week and come out the other side.

Author Karleen Koen asked our Writers Retreat class to describe what our writing muse would look like if we had one. George Gobel immediately leapt into my mind and wouldn’t leave. If I had a writer’s muse, he would definitely look like Lonesome George.

For those of you only recently able to drink legally, Gobel was a television comedian during the Golden Age of that medium. His show ran from 1954 to 1960, and after that he was a regular on Hollywood Squares, a game show for quick-witted celebrities. Easy-going to the point of semi-coma, George was short, ordinary-looking, and sported a brush-cut flat-top, out of style even then. His beatific countenance concealed a dry, wicked, and thoroughly skewed sense of humor.

One of his comedic foils was his wife, the never-seen “Spooky Old Alice.” They were married over fifty years, and they died the same year. He liked to pretend he was a hen-pecked husband, but it was clear he was just in love.

Some of his famous quotes are: “If it weren’t for electricity, we’d all be watching television by candlelight.” “If you build a better mousetrap, you will catch better mice.” “I’ve never been drunk, but often I’ve been overserved.” And the classic, “Did you ever get the feeling that the world is a tuxedo and you’re a pair of brown shoes?” George Gobel taught me an appreciation for things that bring a smile to your face fifty years after you hear them the first time. He also taught me ordinary is funny. The harder you have to work to make something funny, the less funny it is.

So Lonesome George and I are out here on this deserted island together. I tell him about my most recent knee surgery, #3. I tell him #4 may be in the near future. He says, “You know, I’m as much of a fan of bi-lateral symmetry as anyone, but it seems to me if you have to have two knees, there should be some way to sync them, like electronics. You get one knee operated on, knock it against the other one, and hey-presto, they’re exactly the same.”

I say, “But then wouldn’t my surgeon be forced to drive a Mercedes with only two wheels?”

“No problem,” he counters. “He just tells his friends it’s a Segway.”

Some women might want to be marooned on a desert island with Hugh Grant or Daniel Craig. I’ll take Lonesome George every time. He’s a-Musing.

 

Happy Holidays and Family Fruitcakes

Dec19

Christmas at the Zach

After my last blog, a plaintive rage against the negative aspects of the holidays, some of you may think I was born with a heart three sizes too small. I have great memories of the family Christmases of my childhood, and this time of year never fails to trigger my nostalgia.

Funny how my sharpest holiday memories revolve around the women in my family. As far as I could tell, the men were mere observers, invited guests who played little part in the preparations. They were generally affable, long-suffering sorts who lived on the outskirts of our lives. They worked hard, hunted, fished, and tried to stay out of the way of their womenfolk.

Likewise, children were expected to watch from a distance, do odd jobs when asked, and keep out from underfoot. The boys usually headed outside to run around and make noise, but for me and the other girls, the kitchen was a finishing school offering everything we needed to know to take over as the next generation of Southern women.

Firstly, everyone either had a nickname or was addressed with multiple names. Uncle Robert Edwin was Pete and Uncle Charlie was Jock. My cousins, John Howard, Merry Lynn and Janice Kay, remain thus to me, even if they prefer John, Merry, and Janice now. And then there was my Great-aunt Pobo. Her real name was Willie Polk, which she hated. As an adult she legally changed it to Pocahontas P., which she considered an improvement. One of the kids dubbed her Pobo and it stuck.

What is it about the southern latitudes that encourage quirkiness? Maybe it’s the heat and humidity, bringing it out in families the way it brings out mildew on bathroom tile. Movie makers and writers usually just perpetuate Southern stereotypes, with few capturing our essence. A transplanted Mid-westerner, who loved “Steel Magnolias,” was flabbergasted when I told her I was related to or went to school with every woman in that movie.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “What about the Shirley MacLaine character, Ouiser. Who do you know like her?”

“My Great-aunt Pobo and my husband’s Aunt Faynelle,” I answered without hesitation. “Every Southern family has one. Matter of fact, you’re lucky if there’s only one.”

I never knew any Tennessee Williams women. We didn’t have a Blanche Dubois or a Maggie the Cat in my family. They never stood around in their slips–that I knew of. Most of them wore corsets or enough Lycra to make their real shapes anyone’s guess. And they never “depended upon the kindness of strangers.” Most were tempered steel, wrapped in velvet. The rest were just plain steel.

Pobo tended to take out her dentures after eating and lay them on the table. My mother believed in parenting through paranoia, inventing terrifying superstitions for every occasion. My grandmother loved watching professional wrestling on television, waving her fists and yelling things she’d whack me for saying.

Women in my family had timidity bred out of them, and those who married in soon learned. You had to fight to get a word in, the noise level intimidating all but the most determined conversationalists. I never knew anyone in my family who was quiet or shy. If such a throwback existed, she would have gone unnoticed and unfed, fading away from starvation.

These women who filled my childhood are gone now, but I clearly see and hear them in my mind. They are bustling around the kitchen like tugboats in a busy harbor. Cackling laughter drifts through the house, following delicious holiday smells—ham, pickled peaches, mincemeat pie, and my mother’s “blonde” fruitcake. Made in a huge bowl I only saw at Christmas, it was chock-full of nuts and candied fruit, but not a drop of whiskey. Mama was raised Hardshell Methodist, a branch rarely found outside the South.

Above all, I hear their voices rising above the kitchen clatter:

“Did you notice how much weight Clarice has gained?”

“Notice? She looks like she’s being followed!”

“Now, y’all be nice. It’s Christmas!”

“I am being nice. Did I say a word about her hair color? Did I ask if she got it from the Ringling Brothers?”

I have a sudden craving for fruitcake.