Saturday, December 29, 2012

Frosty the Snowman…


When we first moved here, a church was under construction on the land next to our property. They were holding services in the basement until the interior of the sanctuary upstairs was finished. We visited there a couple of times and decided to attend church elsewhere. But eventually, we did begin going to church there, and did so for many years. It was very easy to be on time for services  

Then the church sort of faded away and the denomination closed it. And then they found another minister to try again, and we resumed attending there. After a few more years, the church petered out once more. Since then, a couple of other groups tried to establish congregations in the building but did not succeed.

Last year the denomination finally sold it to a family with young children. For the first time since 1981, we can say “the neighbors next door.”

He owns his own business, and they said the plan was to live in the basement until they could remodel the upstairs and then use the basement for the business. I saw part of the remodeling project in the basement when they were up to their armpits in drywall dust, but I have not seen it since they finished it and moved in, and I am not sure what they have done with the auditorium. 

They seem to be a nice young couple and they have nice children. We can hear the children playing sometimes – laughing and having a good time outside. I think in her former life Miss Molly belonged to a family that had a child. She gets very excited when she hears them.

At the end of the summer, the father started building a tree house at the edge of the property along our driveway. When Richard came upon this construction project, one of the children was quick to tell Richard. “Don’t worry, we checked. It is not on your property…”

Richard wants to climb up the ladder and sit on the platform, but is afraid he will break it.

They were away from home over Christmas and came back early yesterday, beating the snowfall by several hours. This afternoon when I took Miss Molly for a walk I spotted this cheerful fellow in the yard.


 I couldn’t resist taking his picture.

Monday, December 24, 2012

Twas the night before Christmas…


 
And, to quote Bobbie Burns, 

The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley…

We actually did have some plans for Christmas day, intending to venture a bit out of our comfort zone and have a couple over for snacks later in the afternoon. Except by noon on Friday, I was sneezing and my throat was scratchy… and it sort of went downhill from there.

Today I am not feeling quite as bad as I did yesterday although I am still coughing a lot, but now by beloved is sneezing and has the scratchy throat. Trying to entertain tomorrow is out of the question.

So, we will spend a quite evening at home watching Love Actually and eating food that is normally forbidden for people who are trying to watch their weight, and reflecting on the blessings of Christmas and memories of happier times. The last Christmas we spent with our son was not exactly a happy time. He was in the nursing home, dying, and being cared for by hospice.

I won’t pretend that getting Christmas presents wasn’t an important part of the holiday when I was kid. I most certainly was excited about what Santa was going to bring, and I can even remember some of the presents I got – a chemistry set, a bicycle, and a green snake (yes, a snake)—among them, but what I remember most vividly was the thrill of decorating the tree. The ornaments for the tree were loose in a big cardboard box filled with shredded paper. And it was so exciting: going with Dad to choose the tree and bringing it home, and then Dad would bring in the big box in from the garage and we would carefully fish out the ornaments and put them on.

In the first years after we were married, and then after our boy was born, we spent Christmas with my folks and so did not really develop our own tradition. When we moved here, the annual ritual was for Richard and Nathaniel to go out in the back pasture and cut down a cedar tree. We never had much room for a very big tree, but that became something he enjoyed very much – cutting down the tree with Dad and decorating it.

When Nathaniel moved out, we stopped putting up a tree, and had not had one for quite a few years. And then my brother sent us a “Charlie Brown Christmas tree”—I think he meant it as a joke.




Earlier in December, the town held a Christmas tree decorating contest. I doubt our little tree would have won a prize, but it has a place of honor on the old sewing machine.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

She who shall be named…

After several weeks of “Dog”, “Little Doggie” and other variations, she now has a name. The night I came back from my vacation, Richard was watching a documentary about Little Richard, and when the inevitable happened and he began singing “Good Golly, Miss Molly!,” we sort of looked at each other and said, “that’s it.”

Miss Molly she is.


It fits her. She loves chasing after her ball and she is most definitely a little doggie who loves rockin’ and rollin’.

And getting her to sit still so I can get a decent picture of her is exceedingly difficult.

Saturday, December 08, 2012

The trip....

Cattle cars...

Large trucks often rush noisily pass our house loaded with livestock, usually cattle, sometimes pigs. In the summer, when the windows are open, we notice that the smell lingers in the air long after the truck has barreled down the highway. The animals are crammed in so tightly that they can barely move. This is done for more reasons than just monetary greed to get as many animals as possible on the truck. Animals that are packed tightly together are less likely to fall and break something if the truck comes to a sudden stop or there is a sharp curve in the road.

Let’s make the seats really narrow and the aisle between the seats really narrow, and make the distance between the rows just a little shorter so we can add some more rows and see if we can’t get just a few more people into this tube of metal…

And indeed, they have packed us tightly together, but in this case it is all about money and not for some other more altruistic reason.

And the metal tube hurtles down the runway at the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport and launches itself into the air, and we spend about 3 hours crammed together, feeling like so many cattle in a truck or perhaps sardines in a can, and we head into the West and land in off-and-on drizzle in Los Angeles.

Before it is practical to be standing up, I am in the aisle, as is the woman across from me – a flight attendant who has been given a seat on the flight. She also complains about cramped knees. I do not wish to appear ungrateful. I am very thankful that I have arrived safely – the aching joints will shortly calm down.

Where the heart is…

Home is where the heart is, or so the saying goes. But what if your heart is in two places? What if your heart is here, in this house on a quiet street in a neighborhood of tract homes in south Los Angeles, and also 1500 miles away on 8 acres of land in southern Missouri?

I am so glad to be here. Dramatic changes take place in the life of a young child in an 18-month period, say from 2 years to 3.5 years, and similar dramatic changes can take place in 18 months when a person becomes elderly. I last saw my father in June 2011, and he is now 88.


The changes taking place in his aging body are inevitable and not unexpected, but sad nonetheless. Although he is in extremely good health – heart, lungs, and other organ systems appear to be working well – he has lost the strength in his legs and has become rather feeble. He can still walk around his house, has a walking stick for shorter distances, and needs a wheelchair for lengthy journeys. Fortunately, he still has nearly all of his “wits about him.” He does occasionally get confused and forgets stuff. But he can fix simple food, cook his own breakfast, and take care of himself. He reads the newspaper “cover to cover” and still enjoys working the crossword puzzle. He has not yet been caught in the vice grip of serious dementia or “old timer’s disease,” for which I am very thankful. He is cheerful and happy and still makes faces at me to make me laugh, and he is fun to be around.

Shopping for food…

My brother’s birthday was the day after I arrived. I was about a month into my 4th year when he was born. Funny thing. I am still 4 years older than he is. For his birthday present, he wanted me to cook food with him. We went to an amazing Mexican market and scoured the produce section for fresh “everything”…



several different kinds of chilies, tomatoes, tomatillos, cilantro, onions, avocados, Mexican-style cheese, and freshly made corn tortillas, still warm from the oven (the market makes its own tortillas on the premises).

 
I paid for the groceries, and then we went back to his house and used these fresh ingredients to put together a Mexican-style feast of enchiladas, chile rellano (I neglected to remove the ribs along with the seeds so some of the chili peppers were quite lively), and guacamole, all topped off with cherry pie. Cherry pie? Yep. Cherry pie with a candle in the middle.

On Sunday I went shopping and bought stuff and I cooked for Dad and my brother and his wife… lamb curry, a curried bean dish, gingered carrots, and broccoli with lemon sauce. The difference between almost winter in southern California and almost winter in Missouri is that one can go out the back door and pick a lemon off the tree (if one happens to live in a house with a lemon tree in the back yard).


They ate everything down to the last bite – there were no leftovers. A sight to warm the cockles of the heart of a cook whose food in the past has, on occasion, had a somewhat underwhelming response…

At the other home where my heart is, I actually don’t cook much any more, other than your basic “stick a large piece of meat in the oven at 350 degrees” and various strange things I throw together for my lunch. Richard is the one scouring recipes for interesting ways to fix vegetables and does most of the cooking these days, so it has actually been fun to cook for people, and very gratifying that they actually liked it enough to eat it all and weren’t just being polite.

Bearing witness…

There is a lovely line in the sweet movie Let’s Dance where Beverly, the character played by Susan Sarandon, talks to private detective she has hired to tail her husband, played by Richard Gere. They are discussing marriage…

We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'."

So it was that various family members gathered at the small amphitheater overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Laguna Beach on Saturday


and bore witness to the marriage of my sister’s oldest daughter, who has chosen a life partner to bear witness to her life.

It had been raining more or less constantly for the past 2 days, and rain was forecast for that day as well. God answered many prayers. There was a break in the rain… it was perfect…



no wind coming off the ocean, so that nobody froze, and a light cloud cover with intermittent sunshine, so that nobody roasted…


and it was beautiful.

Remembering…

He directed me with pinpoint accuracy on the trip we took to the harbor to see the battleship USS Iowa, which has been decommissioned and permanently docked in San Pedro.


During his tour of duty in WW II, the supply ship he served on steamed alongside the USS Iowa and sent groceries over to the crew in cargo nets attached to cables that they shot from one deck to the other.


One of the ships my father served on picked up soldiers who had been wounded during the invasions. He saw some horrible things, but he was on a ship and did not have to fire a gun and kill people, and there were enough fun things that happened so that his war experience was not the nightmare from which many young men never recovered. 


He recalled on one tour that they picked up some Marines who had been in one of the invasions, and several of them decided to “go for a swim,” while they were steaming in the open ocean. Some of them were never found. Finally, the captain barred anyone from being topside except those on guard duty.

Mini-reunion…

I graduated in June 1967 and our 45th high school class reunion is happening today. I had to decide whether to extend the trip several more days so I could attend the reunion or come home. I decided to come home. I had one best friend during high school, and she and her husband came to the house on Tuesday. He sat with my father and visited with him. I sat with her, and we visited…

and it was lovely. It was a great reunion.

A bit of culture…

The day before I left to come home, my sweet sister took the day off from her job as an elementary school librarian...

and we went to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and strolled through the various exhibits. Art covering 5000 years of Chinese history and culture…


exhibits of artifacts from the Pacific islands…

 
early California history, and art by California artists.



Pins that Madeleine K. Albright wore during her diplomatic career…. jewelry, and eggs, and other objects created by Peter Carl FabergĂ©…

And a meal at a Greek restaurant. Oh my.

Home again…

My brother picked me up at 5 a.m. to take me to the airport. There were no delays on the freeway. We were there in probably less than 15 minutes. It took less than 10 minutes to check the bag and get my boarding pass. A very kind airline employee helped me press the buttons on the monitor. There was no line at the security checkpoint. I spent a very stress-free couple of hours watching the people. I met a delightful trio of women at Dallas-Ft. Worth who had bought a package deal for Branson and were on their way there.

For the finale to what was one of the less stressful flights I have ever taken was a phalaenopsis orchid peaking over the top of the back seat.



Now, if I can just keep it alive…