On Being Me

It occurs to me that my biggest challenge as a blogger is going to be writing as me.  Let me explain.  I worked for years for not-for-profit organizations.  As a staff member, especially one with a visable role,  learning to keep it to yourself goes with the territory.

It was something I didn't think about going in.  Shortly after I accepted my first such position, with a local United Way,  a friend came across me after church as I was about to sign my name to a petition.  Its subject was the right to abortion.  This friend, who happened to be the Executive Director of a not-for-profit agency that received United Way funding, grabbed my arm and marched me off to a corner.  "No."  She said very affirmatively.  "You can't do that anymore.  You are now part of the public face of United Way - their position is your position and on this subject you have NO position."

Unfortunately, she was right.  So I regrouped, and although I signed a check towards placing the petition in the local newspaper -- my name would not be on it.  

Over the years I learned well.  I spoke in the organizational voice, and wrote in the organizational voice.  Occasionally I did allow "me" to slip out.  One evening I staffed a United Way Central Allocations Division meeting that was considering additional funding for a program for battered women run by the YWCA - a program I had helped to start.   I casually mentioned that a no vote might result in several flat tires - and it was a cold night.    

But mostly I toed the organizational line.  Years later, in my pre-retirement position,  Director of Organizational Development for a national organization, I wrote and revised resources used by the national organization's management consultants to work with the Board of Directors and Executive staffs of affiliates.   There was an organizational vocabulary and let us not forget political correctness.  In good writing you turn your editor off, right?  Well, my editor took up residence in my brain.

I'll also cop to a social science background.  This means that my writing is fraught with, "perhaps", "I might argue", "possibly", "theoretically", etc.  Get the picture?

So here goes "me".  My favorite blogger recently mentioned her grandmother who just let it rip.  I have that lady's genes - I know I can do this.  I remember a comment she made to me once.  "At my age I can say anything I want.  What are they going to do to me?"

OK mom.  I'll give it a shot.

The Accidental Blogger

I am an accidental blogger.  Having signed onto PNN so I could read the blog of a very special person in my life I found that I’d inadvertently created a page for myself.  I have no idea how I did that, but perhaps it was fate.  So after a few weeks of thinking, “Hmmmm,” I decided to go with the flow.

My first thoughts were all about what I could possibly say anyway, because so much of “it,” whatever it is, has been said in so many ways.  But I do have a few pet peeves and maybe I can start there.

I am a woman of a certain age.  My husband has an even more generous number of experiences behind him.  We are both well educated, have, before our respective retirements, worked in responsible, decision-making positions and, generally speaking, expect to be treated with a bit of respect.  Not necessarily awe and admiration, although that would be nice, - but a little respect please.

Being called, “sweetie, honey, dearie and their like by sweet young things is frankly, irritating and so patronizing that I can barely stand it.  And right up there with the honey/sweetie approach is being called by my first name by medical receptionists and their ilk that I’ve never laid eyes on previously, many of whom are younger than my children.   

That said, I’ll move on to the cloak of invisibility.  Grey hair and wrinkles makes you invisible.  It’s magical. Works like a charm.  There are many young people, clerks in stores for example, who neither see you nor hear you.  A few years ago I started dying my hair and it rent my cloak.  People could see me again.  Amazing.  

Years ago, when I was a kid in Miami, there was an older woman who was a regular downtown when downtown was Flagler Street, pretty much between Biscayne Blvd and Miami Avenue.  We called her “The Orange Lady.”  She habitually wore an orange cloak, orange rouge, orange lipstick – and lots of it.  We thought she was weird.  In my maturity I have come to believe that she was just trying to be visible.

So hello to anyone who happens to show up on this site.  I have no idea how often I’ll be here or what I’ll be talking about.  But anything that encourages me to write regularly is good.

Peace!

Stranger in a strange, but rather wonderful land.

My initial foray into PNN was, I can truly say, an uninformed leap into the world of blogging.  I knew about blogging – it was writing about what was going on in your life and putting it out there and hoping that someone would actually read it.

I’d wandered onto PNN because my daughter was blogging on the site and she encouraged me to read her writing – something I ‘ve always enjoyed. And somehow I hit a key that set me up on a PNN site of my own; a fact that I have written about and which informed my page title; when I finally got brave enough to use the site.  It took awhile.

I was reluctant to use my real name because I had no idea what I would write about and who might be reading it, although I did share the information with some friends and family members, including my grandson, who told me that he liked what I wrote. (Love that guy).

But I had not a clue that I was about to engage in a huge love in, --that lurking behind the avatars was this community of supportive, wonderful women, (and even a few men), --funny, clever, talented and willing to be vulnerable.

I, like Lyn Amber, am old enough to be most of your mothers, but that doesn’t seem to matter.  Sharing the X chromosome (sorry guys) and the life experience that flows from that seems to transcend age, and has created this wonderful band of sisters.

So I’m heisting the very pleasant glass of wine I’m currently sipping to all of you and thanking you for making me a part of PNN in a way I’d never envisioned.  Who knew?

Socialization or Indoctrination

These words were motivated by Good Girl Bad Girl, a recent blog by laurieboris.pnn.com.  Her comments caused me to reflect once again on my own evolution from “good girl” to person; categories which often seemed and perhaps still seem to be mutually exclusive.

I was a good girl.  I was taught to be polite, even to curtsy to adults.  What was right and what was wrong were never in doubt;  and my parents were the supreme authorities.  They weren’t unkind, far from it.  Just omnipotent.  I assumed they knew everything. And it was made clear to me both overtly and covertly, that whatever else I did in life, my role was to be that of wife and mother.  This didn’t sound like a bad thing at all, even though it was a supporting role and not the lead.  I loved to cook and my deep love for my brother, who is eleven years younger than I, and the care I provided for him, had instilled a deep desire to have my own children to nurture.   In short, like most females of my generation, I was handed a role; and it seemed like a good fit. And I had a good role model in my own mother who until her death at age 96, two years ago, continued to be the most nurturing of mothers and very family focused.  That was my micro environment.

But additionally, all around me were the messages of the dominant society and the leit motif: Men were more important and they were in charge and you did what you were supposed to do.  Not that our brothers and husbands weren’t handed their own roles to play that it could be argued were equally confining; it was just that theirs were more valued and they had more options for good parts.  And they usually controlled the resources.

Fortunately for me, certain seeds were sown.  My mother occasionally let slip that she resented how her brothers were put first when she was growing up. She was thwarted in her dream of becoming an English teacher by a younger brother who swore that he would stay in school if given the chance.  He got his chance—he was a male--and dropped out within six months.  She never got to graduate from high school because she’d had to go to work so he could stay in school.  Additionally, my mother also led an active social life, apart from those things that my parents did together, including volunteer activities in which she took a leadership role.  I also got a lot of reinforcement while I was growing up for various talents that I had and my ability to do well academically.  But the primary role I was in training for was the important thing:  The supportive wife and mother who was to train her own children to be “good”.  It was always understood that I was to go to college, ideally to become a teacher.  Of course, in part, that was because that’s where I would meet my future husband. 

So I grew up and got married – at 18.  I was indeed a very good girl.  My mother was delighted.  And I did get to college after my children were born, which was probably a much more valuable experience than it would have been when I was younger. 

But over the years the tension between my need to be more than just what my husband needed me to be and my own need to honor the person that was trying to emerge grew.  I ignored it until it exploded.   As Laurie pointed out, the body will have it’s due.  It wasn’t my heart or my stomach, but I had the most awful rash on my hands that just wouldn’t quit. I needed selfishness lessons.  The “click” experiences that feminists talked about were coming fast and furiously.   There was for example the time my husband refused to attend a faculty party with me and stated that it was because he would be coming as “my husband.”  I reflected on the many professional events I’d attended over the years as his wife and thought:  What’s wrong with this picture?

It is sad that we couldn’t work out those things that needed working out because divorce is Hell and it is totally awful for your children, no matter what age they are.  But we both moved on to really good relationships

After our divorce I was determined that I would not remarry, ever, because I didn’t see how I could resolve the need to be myself with the apparent need to give up the parts of myself that I valued, to stay in a relationship.  And then I met my second husband and found that there are many different kinds of relationships.  Who knew?  I was fortunate.  When I told him early on that he needed to understand that I would never again allow myself to be financially dependent on a man he smiled and said, “Hey, I’m an Economist, I understand about money and power.”

One of my sadnesses is that during my earlier years, before consciousness raising and my academic study of the socialization of women in the United States, and my transition from role player to person,  I was transmitting messages from the 50’s to my own children.  But that’s who I was then.     I hope that my actions and statements over the years since have ameliorated some of that and of course each of my children has grown and evolved in amazing ways, and they continue to do so.  I watch with awe and admiration.  And I think that each of them has learned that being “selfish” at times is a necessary part of honoring who you are and keeping your relationships healthy. 

On Transitioning from Mommy to Mom

My own experience has been that there is a stage in life when making cookies, giving hugs and comfort and having sufficient quantities of peanut butter on hand is a pretty good summary of the basics.

And then there is my mother the car.  A kind of centaur-like being who operates a combined taxi, laundry, calendar coordination and food service; along with making cookies, giving hugs and comfort and having sufficient quantities of peanut butter on hand.

This is followed by the days of quiet terror otherwise known as the teen years. Yikes; they drive! – or their friends do.  They have raging hormones. And they find you mildly annoying.  This feeling is occasionally reciprocated. But you deal with it.

And then there are the college years. Expensive, but it’s mostly quiet in the house and the laundry and food service component is significantly reduced.  Of course you don’t  necessarily know a lot of what is happening on a day to day basis in their lives, although you hope that most of it involves attending classes and studying.  This not knowing is not all bad, considering the possibilities, but disquieting when you let yourself think about it.   When they do drop in during holidays and school breaks, making cookies, giving hugs and comfort and having sufficient quantities of peanut butter on hand is still appreciated.  And there still is some centrality to your role in their lives—at least you’d like to think so.

The hardest part of all is yet to come—it’s called letting go.  (I just surprised myself by feeling my eyes tear up as I wrote those words because I’m trying for the light touch here. But clearly I still have what my grandchildren would call “issues.)”  Anyway, letting go is a good thing to learn because darned if those kids don’t go out and find people who love them, possibly even as much as you do.   They still care where you live and they’ll come for visits and stay in touch; and they really care about you.  But their focus is elsewhere.

The best way to prepare for this stage is to get a life—one that no longer revolves around your children, just as theirs no longer revolves around you.  And you really can’t adopt your grandchildren and take them home with you.  The other grandparents as well as their own parents get really testy about that.  But here’s the kicker:  That deep love for them, those feelings that rip at your heart when you know things are not going well, when they are ill, or sad, -- that wanting to rush in and make it all better -- it never goes away. (Like hot flashes for some of us).  It just is.  It’s one of those “pull up your big girl underpants and deal with it” situations.

If trouble comes for you they will be there, but you need to really, really accept that if they have made a healthy transition to adulthood and are engaged in work and family life, even the illusion of your centrality in their lives has got to go, unless you want to end up with a really bruised heart, and become one of those mothers who sadly intones:  “You never phone, you never email.”

So - having written all this, to my own adult children I could say:  You never phone, you never email,-- but I would be lying. And to that I will add, thank you for being my friends on Facebook. 

Love,

Mom

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

When I drive out and around these days, for the most part I’m surrounded by beauty – especially this time of year.  But truly, year round -- and I do know how fortunate I am.

There is subtle change from season to season but almost always there is lush foliage.  There are graceful palm fronds floating in the breeze,  Spanish Moss drifting from stately Live Oak trees and this time of year especially, brilliant blossoms.  There are sparkling ponds populated by egrets, ducks and herons, and sometimes, as I drive towards my house on Anastasia Island, I’m treated to the sight of roseate spoon bills soaring overhead, or occasionally, a flock of brilliant green parakeets that seem to have made this area in St. Augustine their home.  But this morning, as I drove back onto my street after an early morning errand I saw an even most beautiful sight. 

My heart soared as I saw my very good friend, who just three weeks ago, had major surgery, with an iffy prognosis, for a long term and very painful back problem.  She was strutting along with her six inch incision and brand new nuts and bolts, sporting a supportive waist band, and plugged into her iPod shuffle.  And when I pulled up alongside she flashed an enormous smile.  Her next goal: “… getting myself back on the tennis court –even if I have to play fifth position for awhile.”  Yes!

Her courage, positive thinking and consideration for all things great and small is legend.  How nice when good things happen to good people. 

I’ve been thinking about the different shapes and forms of beauty as we experience it—and how we define it.  For me it is that gorgeous sunset and the magnificent sunrise when you are lucky enough to live near the beach on the eastern shore.  But it’s also a child’s smile, children giggling, hands touching to comfort and express caring.   I guess I’m describing my favorite things.  What are yours?

Childbirth Without Fear - A Memory

My first baby arrived in November, 1957.  I was 21.  As soon as I was aware that I was pregnant I did what I always did, and still do when faced with a new experience.   I gathered information. 

We lived in a fourth floor walk up apartment on the east side of Manhattan.  It was about 12 blocks from the Empire State building where I worked in an office on the 14^th floor.  We were both very excited about the baby, despite the timing.  My husband was a student at NYU Dental School and our entire income was my $75.00 a week salary as a secretary.  But we called just about everyone we could think of in both our families to tell them.  I think a few might have been puzzled by why we thought they would want to know. 

I felt great.  Morning sickness?  What’s that? And each day I traipsed down those four flights of stairs and walked off to my job and then traipsed back up.  My only problem was feeling very sleepy during the first three months, a problem solved by eating my lunch on my morning break and napping through my lunch hour in the employee lounge in the Empire State Building.   

Almost as soon as my pregnancy was confirmed I had high tailed it to the New York Public Library on 5^th Avenue and looked for books on pregnancy.  (At that time you could actually take books from that library).  After searching through the available literature, I found a book by Grantly Dick-Read, a British physician.  It was Childbirth Without Fear.  The premise was that if you were happy and relaxed all would go well and labor would be a natural and easy process; virtually pain free.  I believed him.  And I knew that no one could possibly be more happy and relaxed in her pregnancy than I was. 

In keeping with the times I was asked to leave my job as soon as my pregnancy showed significantly.  After all, male buyers (were there any other kind then?) visiting the showroom of the men’s trouser company I worked for might be traumatized by the presence of a pregnant female.  I worked for the Personnel Director and he asked me to interview applicants and hire my replacement.  When I asked what he thought was most important he replied, (with a twinkle in his eye, but I think he really meant it), “Make sure she’s infertile.”

So, salary gone; we coped.  My husband, in his third year of dental school as opposed to the grueling first two years, became a weekend taxi driver.

I became amazingly huge.  Being short and short-waisted, the baby had nowhere to go but up and out and many people assumed I was having twins.  Not so.  I continued to feel wonderful and enjoy what felt like being part of a miracle; amazed to feel this wonderful life moving inside me.  Granted that it sometimes felt like his foot was in my throat, it was all glorious.

My parents lived in Miami and as the delivery date approached my mom came to be with us to provide support and to help through the early days of the baby’s infancy.  To her I confided my worst fear.  After all, I was so relaxed and comfortable about this pregnancy that I, believing Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, had a grave concern.  What if went into labor in the middle of the night and I was in a deep sleep and didn’t know it.

My mother, bless her, without missing a beat, smiled reassuringly, took my hand, and uttered what was probably among the more outstanding under-statements in human history, “Don’t worry dear, you’ll wake up.”

Boy was she ever right.

Have We Come a Long Way?

I came to maturity, such as it was, in the fifties and sixties when women’s lives were defined by the place we’d been delegated.  And that place in our society was second place.  We were indeed “The Second Sex.” Then, fueled in part by a broader societal examination of civil rights, many of us went through a very painful process of re-examination that led to a seismic upheaval in our lives;  especially in our relationships.  We connected as sisters, saw what we had become and went through the painful and scary but also exhilarating process of  consciousness raising.  We emerged with a sense of empowerment.  “I am woman, hear me roar.”  This was considered a statement for the ages.  Our daughters and granddaughters were to be our beneficiaries.

 Well, maybe. 

 I’ve been reviewing applications for scholarships to be awarded to deserving graduating high school students who are planning to attend a four year college.  These are impressive young people with excellent grades, who are active both in school and in the community.  Indeed, I’ve been greatly impressed.  Each student was required to write essays on life changing events and an essay on what constitutes the characteristics of a leader.  One young woman emerged as a clear ten in every aspect.  But her essay on leadership was cast entirely in male pronouns. Oh no! 

 So perhaps we’ve come a long way, but clearly we aren’t there yet.

On Reducing Costs, Exposure to Chemicals and Shelf Space

Keeping house shouldn’t require a plethora of single use chemicals, unless you really enjoy spending lots of money on items you don’t really need.

These are the things you need to stock:

Rags, white vinegar, baking soda, salt, and vegetable oil.  And if you have copper bottomed pans and like them shinny, schedule a cleaning for when you’ve squeezed a lemon.  Rubbing with the rind (inside not peel) and some salt will disappear the tarnish.

I keep a spray bottle with approximately 2/3 vinegar and 1/3 water handy. I don’t measure – this is not rocket science.  I use it on my glass stovetop, countertops, glass tables, windows, and mirrors.  If my stovetop has a blop that requires more work, I sprinkle on baking soda and go at it with a damp sponge.  The same is true for pots, pans and Corning ware dishes that emerge from the dishwasher needing more work.  Wet the bottom, sprinkle on baking soda and have a go with a sponge or your implement of choice.

Vegetable oil?  Well, when my firstborn was an infant, we procured for him the crib of my dreams.  It was a gorgeous French provincial crib that I’d been eying during my lunch forty five minutes at a nearby department store for months.  It was fruitwood.  He sucked on the bars and all other accessible places with great gusto.  I didn’t want to use anything to clean it that I wouldn’t want him to swallow.  One day the idea of using vegetable oil occurred to me.  I wiped on a small amount and rubbed it off.  Perfect!  Non-toxic furniture cleaner.

An exception to my usual modus operendi is the relatively new on the market Mr. Clean sponges that disappear wall stains (i.e. fingerprints, etc.) in an instant. 

So that’s it for cleaning.  And for everything else in your life there is WD-40 and duct tape.  Enjoy.

Thinking Out Loud

What is it that allows some people to make a decision to move past a painful episode in their lives and prevents others from doing so?  And is it a decision? Perhaps some of you have your own insights on those things that did or didn’t make this possible in your own lives.

I grieved for well over twenty-five years after the death of an infant son in 1960.  When one of my children became ill, and this is into adulthood, I went into panic mode.  Not overtly, but internally.  I was right back there.  I realized how fresh my grief still was when the cover of the newspaper the morning after the Oklahoma City bombing carried that photo of a fire fighter carrying a dead infant.

One of my daughters-in-law suggested a program at her hospital and although I was unable to participate because of distance, it put me in touch with a woman who had made SIDS  and working with SIDS parents her life focus.  We talked several times.  She called my son by name.  She acknowledged him.  It was the beginning of true healing.  And it made me realize that there is both a private and public aspect to loss.  A community to acknowledge the loss is important and that had been denied me.  I was expected to sally forth after a few months.  “You’ll have other children.”  “He was only a small baby.”  “I don’t want to hear about him anymore.” (This last from my “best friend” two weeks after his death).  It was before Kubler-Ross.  Death was a taboo.  We were a nation in denial. 

I believe it was the acknowledgement and understanding of what his loss had meant that allowed true healing to begin.  And perhaps it is most often acknowledgement of pain and loss (however that needs to occur) that allows an emotional healing process to begin.  But then I also know that sometimes in life, it is possible to recognize that the feelings you are harboring, perhaps towards a given individual, are toxic to you, and preventing you from moving on in your own life.  And you can make a decision to give it up.  Maybe the difference is that this is usually anger as opposed to sadness.

I do recognize that a good therapist can be an enormous help at certain times in your life but even therapy takes different forms.  Is it really necessary to revisit pain if you remember it quite well, or are other modalities more life affirming and enabling?  I don’t have the answer to that one.  And I don’t know quite where to put the Truth and Reconciliation Process led by Desmond Tutu in South Africa to try to come to terms with the scars of apartheid.

Perhaps I’m raising this question now because the holidays often bring up all kinds of stuff as family members gather and the ghosts of years past creep out from under the crumpled ribbons and wrapping paper as the dessert crumbs are swept away. So maybe some of this is fresher in your minds right now.  What have been your most successful strategies in dealing with loss or deep anger?  I’m just curious. 

On Love and Life and Stuff Like That

As we come to the close of this year I can only marvel at the resilience of the human spirit and the surprises that fate has in store.

In 2004 my husband of almost 25 years died.  He’d had lung cancer. The love between us was deep and strong.  I felt like everything in me died with him.  People tell me I did very well.  I moved along in my life, went on trips, was blessed with friends who treated me as a person, not as the remnant of a couple, and so continued to include me in activities; and I have wonderful, caring children and stepchildren who called regularly.  But the reality was that I was going through the motions.  At the end of the day I went home to the empty house, and the empty heart.  He wasn’t there.  But then, just like they say, if you are not paying attention, the bluebird of happiness can land on your shoulder when you least expect it.

At the end of 2006, I emailed a message to a friend thanking him for an emailing that he sent out regularly to a cast of hundreds containing among other things a column by the Boston Globe columnist Donald Murray.  I said in my message that I wished I could tell Don Murray what his columns meant to me, particularly since my husband’s death.  It was just wishful thinking.

That afternoon I received an email from a stranger. He was a longtime friend and former neighbor of the friend to whom I’d sent that email – and a lifetime friend of Don Murray’s – and, as it turned out, the source of that column I so enjoyed.  He asked what I wanted to tell Don Murray and I responded.  He said that he would send it along.

Two days later I received another email from him with an attachment:  Don Murray’s obituary notice. 

It was the beginning of a correspondence that increased in frequency as we began to share our individual life journeys.  His wife too had died, a year before my husband, and he knew the pain and the loss.  It was so easy for us to “talk”.  We shared so many perspectives and enjoyed many of the same things.  And so we “talked” via email until we had forged a friendship that was deep and caring.  When we finally met for the first time it was like getting together with an old friend. Things moved rather quickly after that first meeting and this past September we celebrated our first wedding anniversary.

It’s been a year filled with beginnings and endings, during which I faced the thing I dreaded most: selling THE house and dismantling its contents.  Yet, the thing I had dreaded most, and make no mistake, it was painful, became an affirmation of friendship, family, and love.  Albeit I still feel somewhat like a displaced person and occasionally mourn for those things that are no longer “my things” but on the other hand, I can visit them as I travel from Maine to California visiting the homes of various children and stepchildren.  And I will always cherish the support of friends and family. 

I’d flown in from Florida to the Mid Hudson Valley to begin the dismantling process.  It snowed that first night but a few longtime friends who had gathered at the house for what we knew would be our last potluck there helped me put together the cartons I would need and then left in a thickening snowstorm.   One returned a day or so later to help me get the ball rolling and to my amazement I found myself laughing instead of crying as we filled carton after carton with memories.  Another came later in the week to spend hours shredding documents while packing was going on all around her.  Children and stepchildren and grandchildren came to sort, organize and pack, carefully indicating what was being sent or transported to whom.  I’ve heard about families that crashed and burned during a like process.  But all I heard was:  “Well, I’d sort of like the ……. But not if someone else really wants it.”  I felt, and feel truly blessed.

My expanded family now includes another stepson and daughter-in-law, who are special, loving people, and a new extended family that has taken me in with love.

So here’s to life – however it sorts out.  You never know.  

Thanksgiving 2008

This year is different from other years.  I will not be cooking for and with the people I love in a home surrounded by three acres of crisp fallen leaves being raked up by a brigade of children and grandchildren, some of whom, in between rolling round in the piles, are also cleaning the gutters, pruning trees and preparing logs for firewood--or perhaps taking the canoe out on the lake;  or making and decorating the gingerbread cookies, a tradition that started years ago as a method of keeping my then very small children engaged while I prepared Thanksgiving Dinner.

I will not be spending this evening, the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving, cutting up four very large loaves of bread so that they may begin to dry out for my stuffing-which I would begin early Thanksgiving morning.  Nor did I, this afternoon, put away the groceries I would have shopped for this morning:  cranberries, oranges, Brussels sprouts, pumpkin, apple cider, evaporated milk for the pumpkin pies, pecans, Karo Syrup, eggs, celery, onions, heavy cream, condensed milk for the Key Lime pie, sweet potatoes, and of course, butter.  Nor will I be gathering from my herb garden, early Thanksgiving morning; parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme to use in the stuffing - half of which would go into my crock pot, given that any turkey is only so big, but then there is no such thing as too much stuffing.  And then the turkey - in recent years, free range and fresh killed, arriving from Maine with son B....   Not this year.   He called a few weeks ago to check on the source of the pecans for his favorite pie.  This year, he will be making it, and bringing it to his Thanksgiving Dinner with friends.

The house in the Mid Hudson Valley has been sold.  My husband and I will be spending the day with good friends in the Tampa Bay area -- joining in their lively extended family celebration.  My contribution - only two pecan pies.  Our children and grandchildren are scattered throughout the Northeast, Southwest, Midwest and far West.  This year they are creating their own traditions in their own homes, or planning to spend the day with friends or other extended family members.  I will miss us. 

Another family will be celebrating this holiday in our house and I wish them much joy, but hope that they can hear the echo of Thanksgivings past.  The laughter, the camaraderie, the grace with which we began, the clinking of glasses and the political arguments.... the sounds of a diverse family being together.

Daughter L..... asked me earlier this evening, tongue in cheek, during a phone conversation:  "What if we kids just started showing up at the house with offerings of cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, pies and bottles of wine.  Do you think they'd throw us out?  Possibly not and it might be interesting.  And the thought of it makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

Nice Visit

The people of Milan, Italy are just plain nice - at least the ones we met on our recent trip through there on our way to and from a Mediterranean Cruise.  

It was dark, cold and raining when we arrived at Milan's Malpensa Airport.  Floridians that we are, being greeted by this weather after traveling for more than sixteen hours was not a happy experience. Our travel had not been enhanced by the connection we'd made on the flight -a flight that started in Orlando. We learned that the distance between Terminal B and Terminal A in Frankfort can be used for training long distance runners.  For those of you who travel, let me just say that it makes both Atlanta and O'Hare look really good.   

We knew that the hotel we would be staying with had van pick-up but we were both close to exhausted, running on empty, and could not get them on the payphone in the terminal.  So we decided to just forget it and get a cab.  We walked down to the beginning of the queue and the waiting driver put our things into his trunk.  When we told him where we were going he said, "Oh, you don't want to pay for a taxi.  The Hotel Cardano has a pick-up van."  With that he started putting our things back on the sidewalk.  We explained that we could not contact the hotel.  He nodded, held his hand up to let us know that we were to wait a moment. He whipped out his cell phone and called the hotel.  Then he told us where to wait and said that our van would be there in ten minutes.  We were actually in it and on our way in five minutes.  What a nice welcome to Milan.

Then the hotel - a small hotel - not luxurious but really pleasant and quite attractive. Free wifi and warm-all this and breakfast too. The desk manager was very gracious about helping me cut through the packaging of a battery-operated toothbrush that I'd picked up in the Frankfort Airport.  It was quite a job.

We returned to "our" hotel after our cruise.  This time there were quite a number of us that had traveled in the bus from the ship to the hotel and we hit at around 1:00pm.  Given that we'd left the ship at 9:30am lunch was in order. The Cardano is a very small hotel.  They don't do lunch or dinner - just a very pleasant breakfast.   But they had a car come from a local restaurant and shuttle us all over there for some of the best pizza ever.  

We had asked the desk to get us a taxi for 7:45pm because we planned to meet some new friends from our cruise for dinner at their hotel near the airport.  Their hotel had a restaurant. But when we came down to the Cardano lobby we were told that there was no need for a taxi, the van driver would be happy to take us there and then pick us up afterwards.  And he did.  

The next morning as we checked out I mentioned that we had used a bottle of sparkling water from the bar in our room and asked how much we needed to pay, since our room costs were included in the cruise arrangements.  He said, "Forget it.  Nothing."  How amazing is that?  So I thanked him profusely for all their extra efforts, including freeing my toothbrush on our initial visit, and we left for the airport in the hotel van.  That's when we learned that Milan has two airports.  That is because Lufthansa, with what logic we know not, had booked us into one airport when we arrived, and out of the other.  But we didn't know that until we checked in and were told that our flight left from an airport that was a 40-minute drive away.  Ouch!

But the story has a happy ending.  The very nice woman at the Lufthansa ticket counter got us booked on a flight out of Malpensa that left at the same hour and brought us to Frankfort well in time for our connection to Orlando.  And---given the circumstances she waived the significant penalty.  Love those Milanese.

I'm happy to report that the return connection in Frankfort that we'd been dreading was a cakewalk.  A wondrous thing occurred.  We arrived in Terminal A and left from Terminal A.  Life is good.

Small World

In one of her recent blogs, The Embassy Wife http://kellyarmstrong.pnn.com/ discussed her concerns about the trials and tribulations of her small ex-pats, who are currently dealing with their first true immersion experience.

It put me in mind of a young boy I knew only as a grown man and college professor.   His family left the country of his birth when it was invaded during World War II and they came to the United States to live for the duration of the war.   He was ten years old.  He spoke only French and some Flemish at that time.

His mother dropped him, cold turkey, into a Dominican summer camp in Staatsburg, N.Y. near Hyde Park, right after they arrived.   The rest of the family who came with him; his mother and younger brother and sister were staying with a friend on Long Island-about a four or five hour drive from the Dominican camp.  He was well and truly on his own, totally isolated, unable to communicate, and ignorant of baseball.  Although he could have given them a run for their money on a soccer field, they didn't have one.

To say that he was miserable wouldn't begin to touch it.  So he did the only thing an intelligent child could have done under the circumstances.  He ran away - and was picked up by the police and brought to Hyde Park.  I've often thought of how he must have felt and how he must have looked - a tall, skinny, thoroughly miserable kid.  A far cry indeed from the man who, about 30 years later, would be chairing the Hyde Park Planning Board.

Fate works in strange ways.  Although he initially returned home with his family at the end of the war, he was back in six months with his parent's blessing.  By that time he had entered a prep school on Rhode Island and was an American, if not yet legally, in every other sense of the word.  And the Dominican summer camp had become a distant bad memory.

After serving in Korea he took advantage of the G.I. Bill and went to school in the Mid West.  He married his college sweetheart and settled into his first teaching job as a young husband and father - in Vermont.  

The position did not come with tenure and after four years he took another position, this time one with tenure at a community college in Poughkeepsie, New York.  He bought a small house in an area nearby that afforded a very reasonable commute: Hyde Park.  Yes, that Hyde Park - near Staatsburg.

And the rest is history.

I'm Baack!

I haven’t rooted for a baseball team since the Brooklyn Dodgers broke my heart by their dastardly desertion to the West Coast.  Fie on them,--still!  But after years of detachment I’ve given my heart away again.  I just love the Tampa Rays. 

In my usual fashion, I wasn’t paying much attention to baseball, but a visit to us in Tampa in August from 17 year old grandson S… , who is not a theme park kind of guy,  absolutely required a visit to Tropicana Park.  Cool. 

Literally.  It was my first experience ever with watching baseball in air-conditioned splendor.  There is a great deal to be said for comfort as those of us watching on T.V.and especially those in the ballpark experiencing the Rays and Phillies slug it out in Philadelphia couldn’t help but note. 

Anyway, back there in August watching The Rays play their hearts out, I was smitten.  When my husband suggested leaving after the 7th inning for the practical reason of getting home sometime before midnight, I was right there with S… responding, “No way.”  It was a great game.

And then the Series.  I realized I liked the long absent feeling of my heart going pity pat when the batter, with a full count, two runners on base and two outs stood primed for his next pitch.  I really cared – and I haven’t for ever so long.

So as we used to say in Brooklyn:  “Wait til next year.”