Slices of Toast and Family

07 Thursday Oct 2010

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer, Writing

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It felt good to sink into everyday life this morning.

With a beautiful candle lit, a cup of coffee nearby and three snoozing canines around me and my favorite chair, I picked up pencil and journal to write.  These days my journal is filled with short stories of ancestors — some told me by aunts and uncles, while others come from reading old newspaper articles.   At yesterday’s funeral, I invited my mother’s oldest brother to recount tales of his youth and memories of his grandparents; he seemed glad to share that which he could still recall.  Uncle Bob’s stories now fill two pages of my journal.

Having lunch with Aunt Jo — whose funeral we gathered at yesterday — has been hovering at the top of my list since Daddy died.  Just three weeks ago I told her, “I want to get together for lunch with you real soon.”    Unfortunately, I didn’t make it happen; and now the opportunity is gone.   But I’m grateful for the scraps of stories she spoke of Sunday evening, and those, of course, take up a page and a half of my journal.

All this gathering of family history has me realizing —  family is more than sharing common bloodlines.  Two weeks ago, I picked up the phone to talk to a second cousin who I didn’t know existed until running across him in research.  My Greek grandfather’s younger sister, Anna — who died three days after my father was born — left three children.  Neither my father nor grandfather ever mentioned them — but it certainly helps explain those trips my young parents took to Vermont, during their early days of marriage.

Amazingly, all three second cousins — born in the mid-1920s — are still alive.   I called the youngest one, John, who is now 85.  Once John recovered from his surprise, he invited me to send up a copy of my research, with a promise to answer whatever questions he could.   I’m still working on the package I promised to send him — hopefully, it will be gone by week’s end.

After finishing today’s morning pages, I made a slice of toast.   The smell of toast always reminds me of grandparents — either my Greek grandfather or my maternal grandmother.  Today it was both.

As far as I know, Granny always had a piece of toast covered with jelly for breakfast.  ‘Toast and Jell,” she called it.   As a young school girl, it was what I often had myself — not because it was my favorite — but because it’s what my Greek grandfather could make me in a hurry before school.  The toast was always burnt around the edges but generous with butter.  Real butter not margarine —  so the bread was always a little smushed from Papa’s effort to spread cold butter over it.  Papa always served it to me with a cup of strong black coffee.  Greek-style, I suppose.

I don’t know if my new-found cousins from Vermont grew up with toast for breakfast or not.  And if they did, whether it was burnt around the edges or covered with jelly.  And it’s not important for me to know — it certainly won’t make my list of questions that my second cousin John so graciously offered to answer.  But possessing these unimportant facts is something one just owns about family.  And this morning, when my teeth crunched into a bit of crispy slightly black around the edges toast, slathered with soft yogurt margarine but no jell, I remembered my grandparents.  And gave thanks.

Sore Tributes

05 Tuesday Oct 2010

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care, Writing

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My throat burns — my eyes water with unshed tears.  I’d  feel better if I let myself indulge in a good cry.  Or maybe an old-fashioned temper tantrum that would give any toddler a run for their money.

It began with Sunday afternoon’s phone call.  As usual, my husband answered, and yelled up the stairs:   “Christi’s on the phone.”  As I walked to the nightstand that holds the phone, I knew —  in a way I couldn’t really know  — that this would be no ordinary call — no ordinary how-are-you, let’s-catch-up chat.  I sensed the load of my sister’s bad news and with each step bringing me closer to true knowledge, I wondered:  Uncle Bob?  Or Aunt Jo?  Uncle Bob?  Or Aunt Jo? As my hand touched the receiver, the answer came:  It was Aunt Jo. Taking a deep breath, I cautiously answered my sister’s call, to hear Christi’s barely exhaled words.  In a voice scratchy with emotions spent and unspent, I heard,  “It’s Aunt Jo.”  All I could summon up was one word: “Damn.”

Sometimes I get angry with God about our apparent need to suffer and watch helplessly as loved ones slip through our fingers.  On Sunday evening, in spite of her brain bleed, Aunt Jo was mostly coherent and ever gracious.  She inquired about something she and I had talked about last Tuesday and in spite of a scary day spent in two ER’s, she talked about others who had made life meaningful:   Her Aunt Loudell, for one, who had taught her how to make cream pie filling — her worry about not being able to find that baby gifts she had put back for my daughter Kara — and her love of her daughter-in-law Judy, who meant more than words could express.

It was this latter point about Judy where she paused to ask for help.  In all of our long life shared together, I can’t recall my dear aunt ever asking me for help. But ask she did, by wondering if I would bring my son Kyle to visit her this week, because she really needed help gathering her thoughts to give Judy a written tribute.  “She means so much to me and our family,” she said.  “And I need help putting it all down in words.”

Assuring her that Kyle and I would come whenever she was ready to write, I left the hospital in peace.  I dropped my family a quick note expressing my relief that no surgery had been needed and that bleeding had apparently stopped.  But five hours later, peace shattered into pieces, as I rushed into the night to offer love and support where I could — to discover Aunt Jo now laboring toward death.  Thirteen hours later, it was over — as quick as it had begun — in the blink and fluttering of eyes.

Exhausted as I was, I was too agitated to sleep.   My mind bounced around, as I tried to focus on a television show, when the phone preempted everyday life again.  It was my sister, calling on behalf of Judy and the rest of Aunt’ Jo’s family — they wondered if I would help by writing Aunt Jo’s obituary?

Do I have to confess that I wanted to say no?  That I didn’t want this task, that I didn’t feel like I could.  But I agreed to give it my best.  And before going to bed, I expressed everything out and left it to simmer in the computer over night.   And this morning, after making a few edits — then a few more with the help of Jane, my sole maternal aunt — I released it to Judy.

Life holds many lessons.  Even in horrible situations, good shines through.  Maybe it would be more accurate to say God shines through, and  that love saturates our actions to carry the day.  I now understand so much more how Aunt Jo felt Sunday night when she asked for Kyle’s help, because the magnitude of love cannot be spelled on paper.  It’s too much.  I’m reduced with a wish to write gibberish:  No more Aunt Jo.  No more Porcupine Balls.  Or Snowballs.  Or perfect Pecan Pie.  No more of this staple in my life being on the other end of the phone to answer my latest call for help.

This writing down of tributes is work better left to poets and saints.  It is above and beyond me.  My spirit is sore —  my words weighted with sadness, with no hope to soar.  But this morning I let them go anyway.  May God bless my widow’s mite of words.

 

Riches and Beauty

29 Wednesday Sep 2010

Posted by in In the Garden, Life at Home, The Great Outdoors

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That gnarly old Magnolia outside my bedroom window is looking good — for the first time in years.

And I am amazed this should be so, given the trials the tree has endured.  First there was the long drought of 2006 with triple digit temperatures — then the one-two punch it suffered in 2007 — a crippling ice storm preceded by a sewer line replacement that sliced and diced deep roots on its western boundary.  And as if these indignities weren’t enough, I delivered what I later feared to be its down-for-the-count  knock-out when, in 2008, I severed two sides of feeder roots with my new flagstone path.

But today, under a gorgeous blue autumn sky, the Magnolia’s large waxy leaves cup sunshine while its coral seed pods look like Christmas lights shimmering across a full canopy. In a polar-opposite way, my window view reminds me of other trees I saw today, getting spruced up for the holidays.   Uptown on Western Avenue, patient, capable hands of a local landscape crew were busy stringing twinkling lights on a large number of tall trees bordering a large corporate campus.  From tree trunk to limb to branch, the crews worked its way up to the big blue sky, covering each tree in tight ringlets of all shades of light.

Mother had a favorite saying about the life of “the rich,” and if any trees in our neck of the woods are “rich,” it’s these that live on the well-groomed grounds of Chesapeake Energy.  Mom always spoke these words in response to my own observation of how beautiful some rich or famous person was — like Jackie O for instance — that I’d run across in the pages of a glossy magazine.

I’d say my “how pretty” bit.  Then, Mom would look up from her sewing to peek at whoever had garnished my compliment — and without fail —  she’d hmmph her way to a comeback:  “It’s easy to look good when you’re rich.  I’d look good too with her money.”

I never paid these particular words of Mom much mind.  And today was no different — when I sat down to write for the first time in two weeks, Mother’s oft spoken words on the “rich and the beautiful” were the furthest thing from my mind.  But rising out of the big blue yonder, they came home to roost in my Magnolia tree, with a will and life of their own.

As I sat contrasting the natural beauty of my poor Job tree against the gussied up beauty of the well-heeled trees of my rich neighbor, all I could think of was Mother’s same old words.