The Easter Basket and the Melting Pot

BEFORE WE GET TO THE POST BELOW I want to thank everyone in the blog community who posted comments regarding my brother's passing and who contacted me by other means. Your condolences, prayers and shared experiences means a lot to me. I apologize for not replying individually as I normally do with blog comments. (There's been a lot going on.) This community is so supportive and let's admit it, we often know each other better than the people we see off line on a daily basis. I know I share far more here than anywhere else. This past week I've felt the warmth and well wishes you've all sent my way and it's appreciated more than I can express. Jean

Why do all my best ideas for what I want to write about come when I’m doing something without a pen and paper or keyboard near by? This morning in the shower I heard a noise from my upstairs neighbor that triggered a memory about my mom which in turn brought a flood gate’s worth of connected thoughts flowing like the proverbial river. So I used my finger to write on the steam-covered shower door the words, “Labelle Street, old country and genealogy” knowing the words wouldn’t last. I did, however, think they’d last long enough for me to use my squeegee on the glass to wipe them away. Words written on steamy bathroom mirrors in scary movies seems to have a life span longer than it took for them to disappear into unreadable streaks in my bathroom. With the luck of someone who plans ahead for times when I want jot myself a note I had a pad of Post-It Notes and a pen on a small desk near enough into my bedroom that I barely had to step out of the bathroom to grab them. What were those words again? Apartment house, family history and what else? 

On the floor next to the desk where I fetched the pen and paper is basket that was my Easter basket for my entire childhood. I stubbed my toe on it fetching the Post-it Notes. Ouch! My parents practiced recycling before the word was even coined. Year after year that basket was brought out of its hiding place by the notorious Easter Bunny. He filled it with a cellophane covered chocolate bunny and assorted candy and on Easter morning I’d remove the rabbit, bite off his ear and take my basket around the yard or house (depending on the weather) to gather dyed, hard boiled eggs. Then one year no basket was brought down from its hiding place in the attic. There were no eggs to find. No chocolate bunny to eat. Instead, on Easter morning I found a small box made out of cherry wood waiting for me on the kitchen table. Inside was a note that read something like this, “You will be ten in a couple of days and you’re getting too old to still believe in the Easter Bunny. This is his last gift to you.” Also in the box was a necklace nested in a bed of jelly beans. I still have the box but the necklace is gone now. I'm pretty sure my mom heard my brother and me arguing about the Easter Bunnies existence a few days earlier and he was responsible for the dreadful note and the disappointment that followed.

The basket, now, holds a life-sized sleeping cat. Its an aqua, pink and gold gilded porcelain cat adopted from an auction house over a half century ago. Back then I was newly in love with the man I’d later marry. I thought he was crazy to keep bidding that cat up to a whopping twenty bucks just because I admired it when I walked by it before the auction started, but a quick google search of its value today had my eyes bugging out and the word, “Wow! escaping my lips. The cat has never had a name but she’s rests on a pink blanket that kept me warm in my baby’s crib eighty-some years ago.

I’ve walked past the cat-in-the-basket ever since I placed her in it after the auction. Sometimes I ignore it and others times it makes me smile but one thing remains the same: I’m too sentimental for my own good. I worry about what will happen to “my treasures” when I have to move to assisted living or I die. I wonder sometimes if I’m not related to Egyptian Royalty who also felt strongly about taking their treasures with them and they found a way to do it. At least they thought they’d accomplished that goal. Not having a thousand slaves to build me a pyramid I’ll have to be satisfied with the idea that my nieces will arrange to get my stuff into an auction where people who bid on it will treasure what they win. I have a niece who collects white ceramic cats and I briefly thought about giving it to her but like me with my collectibles, it's the thrill of the hunt that she likes about finding her cats plus mine is too old to get along with hers. Look at me personifying hunks of china.

My Easter basket and the porcelain cat have nothing to do with the words I wrote on my shower door. Hearing a loud noise from my upstairs neighbor reminded me that my mom and dad once owned a house that they converted into a two family. It was just after WWII when housing was in short supply for returning soldiers and their new brides and that gave my mom the idea to do some renovations and rent out their upstairs. My mom then saved the rent money for a down payment on a house in the suburbs that would get them out of a declining neighborhood. For their entire married life my mom had my dad building and remodeling one project after another. He always credited her for how far they’d come…both living in poverty as kids, both losing their mothers in grade school, neither one getting much of an education but in their twilight years they were able to enjoy living on a lake in a cottage they converted to a year-around home plus they had lake property up north where they camped. 

Our parent gave my brother and me the conic childhoods that were romanticized on TV shows like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best with their wise fathers and hard working moms and the carefree fun of being a teenager during the ‘50s that were portrayed in the Happy Days sitcom. We weren't exactly spoiled---we did chores and a lot of them---but we were rich in after school activities and opportunities. I've always thought my mom was creating the kind of childhood she wished she'd had or she was she living vicariously though us.

As for the words written in steam. My parents once rented their upstairs apartment (on LaBelle Street) to a deaf couple and they said were the noisiest people who ever lived above them because they couldn’t hear themselves making loud noises. My upstairs neighbor (who had all her brand new carpeting removed) is hard of hearing and I’m about ready to shoot her. I swear she's giving bowling lessons up there.

How does genealogy enter into all this---one of the words written on my shower door? My upstairs neighbor is of German descent and speaks with an accent not often heard in my part of the world. It hit me in the shower that younger people don’t care about family history like many people in my generation do because they are homogenized into society in a way like we never were. People all over my campus are working on genealogy (me and Miss Upstairs included) thinking we are going to connect to the youngest members in our families someday when they are old enough to read what we so carefully created. Giving us a false sense of immortality, a way to be remembered after we're gone.

Many of us born before or because of WWII grew up hearing stories of the Old Country, we knew our families came from some place else. Young people, if they think about their family lines at all, don't care about the Great Melting Pot of immigration or the Salad Bowl of immigration that followed and that lack of homage to our history seems to be leading us to isolationism in our politics. Our American Mosaic which has always been our strength is being judged as a bad thing, a scary thing. But that's a topic for another day, another blog post. In the meantime I'll just say I'm thoroughly disgusted with the MAGA Republicans for tanking the latest, fairest and toughest bipartisan border deal to come along in decades just because it will help Trump's campaign not to implement real solutions to real problems so he can keep on campaigning on the crisis at the border.

Until Next Wednesday! 

 "

Easter In Geriatric Land

The weeks leading up to Easter here at the continuum care complex were slow and boring if you’re not a Christian who took part in all the related activities that goes on between Lent and Easter---Ash Wednesday, the faith movies and book discussions, doing the stations of the cross and the Good Friday service. It’s like there’s an alternate universe and the one I’m living in had only three Easter related things on the schedule: Fat Tuesday, an Easter Buffet and an Easter egg hunt for grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Easter weekend was mostly fun though. Friday my niece brought her three youngest grandkids to the Easter egg hunt that took place inside the fenced garden park in between our assisted living and memory care buildings. It’s a pretty area about the size of a half a football field. It was a warm, sunny day just perfect for the residents to sit outside in the center of the park and watch the kids. The kids from my family made quite the haul, the youngest finding 28 plastic eggs filled with candy. She’s four years old and her mom asked her to go give some of her eggs to the smaller kids in attendance and she did without a whimper or protest. She such a cute little girl. When she was in the car ready to leave she said to me, “It was nice to see you again, Aunt Jean.” I’ve seen this little girl less than a dozen times in her entire life---they live far away---so I was shocked by her words until I realized her mother had said them to me just a few minutes beforehand. Still…

Two days after the hunt my brother was still obsessing that his daughter lost her grandchildren and is trying to cover it up and he was going to call the police on her. We all know you’re not supposed to argue with people with dementia but that’s easier said than done sometimes. The two of them fought over the phone a couple of times, so I went down to his building, hoping I could calm him down and get to the source of his dilution. I did the latter. Apparently when we were all sitting in a circle watching the kids my niece made a comment about not seeing the kids while they were all looking for eggs and that was enough to accuse her of losing the kids and driving off without them. No among of me telling him I saw the kids leaving in the car calmed him down. Me trying to explain there was no way for them to get out of that park to get lost because you need a code to get in or out of the area calmed him down. “I heard her say it with my own ears!” he told me before he accused me of always taking her side. “I’m not taking anyone’s side,” I replied. “I’m trying to explain how you’re taking a grain of sand and building a mountain out of it.” And for the first time since he’s lived in the CCC I felt myself getting mad at him. Breaking things down into logical bites wasn’t working and I knew better than to expect it would. He isn’t capable of nuanced thinking, of understanding my niece's off handed remark in an enclosed garden isn't the same as saying it in downtown Chicago with tears streaming down her cheeks. Still, I've always thought of myself as a peacemaker when things are heating up around me, of the person who could deescalate touchy situations. In this case, I lost my patience and walked out of his room.

I don’t know which is the worst fate of Senior living---losing your mental sharpness or your physical mobility. At the Easter buffet (served on Friday) I was seated across the table from a guy who had an operation on his neck and he was in a clam-shell brace from his neck to his belly. He’s one of my favorite residents here and it was his first time eating in the dining room since the surgery. His wife (I believe) made a mistake bringing him there and an even bigger one feeding him like a baby bird while his friends came over to welcome him back. I could read the growing anger in his eyes as she’d say things like, “How about a carrot? You like carrots.” At one point the kitchen manager came out, stood over him and forked food into his mouth so his wife could eat. After living with a guy who was non-verbal for over twelve years I got pretty good at reading body and facial language and I read “thoroughly embarrassed and extremely angry” sitting across the table that night.

On holidays they never serve any meals here at the CCC and I got an invitation to have dinner with four other ladies here and all I had to bring was a bottle of wine. My kind of invitation since I never did cook well or often enough to have confidence in what I’m doing. (For years, my contribution to holiday meals was a marinated four bean salad. If my mom and sister-in-laws were alive today I’d apologize to them all for me letting them do all the heavy, holiday lifting.) 

All four of these ladies I spent Easter day with are liberal democrats and three of us play Mahjong together so I’m thinking it’s time to start calling them ‘friends’ instead of fellow residents. We had plenty to talk about. Three of the ladies are also in my book club and we are reading The Handmaid's Tale. Given what's going on in our country right now regarding woman's reproductive rights, it should be an interesting discussion. ©

 * Photo at the top is part of the park where the Easter egg took place.

 

Pandemic Easter in the Rear View Window

With the strict stay-at-home orders in our state, I had nowhere to go on Easter, no special plans or even traditional holiday foods in the house or colorful peeps lined up begging, "Bite me!" Under normal circumstances I would have had at least some ham in the refrigerator waiting to attack my blood pressure and a half eaten box of peeps already attacking my ample waste line. So thank you, Pandemic, for small favors.

Feeling like I should do something to treat myself on that aberration of a holiday, I splurged after my first morning pee and used three squares of toilet paper instead of two. Back before the pandemic I never counted squares or cared how much I used and now it’s become a world-wide obsession. The travel bidet I ordered isn’t due to be delivered until later this week. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll write about this oddity that the pandemic is bringing to my elder years. Other countries are gun-ho on the gadgets so who knows if I’ll find humor or frustration in the trials and errors of using it or---gasp, that-water-is-cold!---it leaves me feeling clean and refreshed.

On Easter I did my Sunday morning chores---picked up dog poop, gathered up the trash and put it out for Monday’s pickup. While I was out there I brought in the Sunday Press but this time I put it in a quarantine place I set up in the garage for it and my mail to sit for half the week instead of reading it right away. Then I washed my hands and used a half of a Clorox wipe on the door handles, the faucets and everything else I’d touched after getting the newspaper and finished by washing my hands again. Rounding out my Sunday chores was watering the plants, planing my week of nothingness and checking on my e-Bay auctions that always close on Sundays. Surprisingly, sales weren't too bad, given it was a holiday---$537 for eight items that I prompted packed for the post office to pick up the next day..

On the cu-de-sac where I live I can see ten houses and when I was taking the trash out all but two houses were quiet on the Pandemic Frontier. Two families had company over, one of which had six cars in the driveway and two out front and while I was out there a ninth car pulled up. Three little kids and their parent came tumbling out, carrying food obviously completing ignoring the stay-at-home rules of no one being allowed in our houses if they don’t live there. These neighbors have a huge American flag in their front yard that they proudly hoist most mornings but they aren’t American enough to respect all the health care workers who are begging people to stay home so, we as a nation, can keep the pandemic from overwhelming the hospitals even more than they already are. My state has 27,000 confirmed cases of the Covid-19! It’s a good thing I’m not a block monitor because I hate confrontations.

We don’t have block monitors, or course, but they were a ‘thing’ back during WWII. I don’t actually remember the guys who wore Civil Defense arm bands and went around making sure everyone had their blackout shades pulled down but I remember my parents talking about those days. My older brother probably remembers because he, too, had a job during the war. He’d take his little red wagon around the neighborhood weekly to collect tin cans that were used in the production of ammunition. That wartime chore was repeated all across the nation by boys too young to do anything else. My dad was working practically around the clock at a factory that manufactured airplane propellers and bullet casing and his job was deemed essential thus the Department of Defense wouldn’t let him sign up for the military. No Rosy Riveter could learn to be a die maker/machinist who could build and fix broken dies overnight. 

All my life I’ve heard stories about the Greatest Generation, the generation my folks were a part of. The generation that lived through the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918/19, the Great Depression, WW II and all the wars that came after. On the home front during WWII men, women and children worked together to made a real difference. They did without, they improvised and they made it through to the other side of the darkness. It warms my heart to see glimmers of that same kind of toughness and willingness to do what needs to be done during our current world-wide crisis. The pandemic is testing a new generation and if my little anecdotal story from my block is any indication, only 20% are failing the test and are being careless, selfish jerks who think the rules for the greater good don't apply to them.

I’m not a religious person. Easter has never been about the resurrection of Jesus Christ for me. I’ve only been to church on Easter Sunday once in my entire life, and that was back when I was a chameleon changing my likes and dislike to fit whatever guy I was dating at the time. But I have studied world religions and Catholicism extensively in college so I can rightly claim I know what I’m turning my back on. Easter, for me, was always about family and food. Lot of people missed their traditions this year be it secular or religious which is both sad and at the same time, a symbol of unselfish love. One of the advances of age is we get to look back and see the difficulties of the past and that gives us street cred to say, “This too will pass." Next Easter I suspect will be extra special for everyone, no matter how we each celebrate. This year I'm glad to see it in my rear view window. ©

Doctor Happy and the Bunnies and Butterflies

Easter Sunday was noisy here in Levi-the-Mighty-Schnauzer Land where he spent the entire afternoon in voyeur mode watching and barking at four rabbits trying to mate in the back yard. The lady rabbit/s were playing hard-to-get. Every so often I’d let Levi out on the deck and when the rabbits ran by he’d bark and they’d freeze in place like plastic toys on a cake. It was probably the only rest they got all afternoon, it was a regular rodeo back there. I can’t tell the bucks from the does, so in three weeks we could have one, two or three new mom’s making nests in the neighborhood. Most years I get one under my pine trees just 6-7 feet from the dog’s pen. Crazy momma. She’ll sleep in that nest all night long even when Levi goes out to pee and to bark at her from the other side of his white picket fence. In the daytime she’ll leave the babies on their own so she doesn’t draw the attention of predators. I always have to make sure my lawn care guy doesn’t disturb the nest when he puts down the new Pacific Northwest pine needle mulch in May. I know what you’re thinking: Who buys pine needles to put under their pine trees? I’ll try to remember to take a photo when he’s done. It looks so much better than bark mulch under those three trees and along my near-by cattail bog.  

For Easter dinner I grilled a steak, steamed some asparagus and had strawberry shortcake and, yes, Levi got a little plate of his own of everything. He especially likes strawberries and when I make protein shakes in the mornings, he’ll come running to the kitchen when he hears the blender where he knows he’ll get a few bites of whatever fruit I’m using that day. I expected my big Easter dinner to show up on the scales Monday morning. It didn’t. I’m saving the traditional Easter ham I bought for later in the week because I didn’t want the salt to show up at the doctor’s office in the form of a higher blood pressure reading and added water retention. 

My bi-annual appointment with my internist was Tuesday. The doctor was pleased. I was pleased. Even his young, tag-along student doctor was…well, he couldn’t have cared less. I think he was bored with this old lady with no real problems to solve. I did get permission to go faster on the treadmill as long as I don’t let my heart rate get over 135 on my Fitbit---like I could actually go faster than the 1.35 miles in 30 minutes that I’m already doing. I was glad the doctor thinks doing the treadmill a half hour 2-3 times a week is ideal, that I don’t need to walk longer, just a tad faster, if I can work up to it, using my heart rate as my guide. He also said that strength training and exercise is more important at my age than at any other time in our lives. 

The day before Easter I got to spend time with eleven members of my family---me being the oldest person there and the youngest one is just a few months old. We met at our local sculpture garden to see the Butterflies are Blooming exhibit in the tropical conservatory. We were there all morning and the baby woke up just once to nurse but otherwise slept contentedly in one of those baby slings that keeps babies close to their mother’s stomach and chest. Why did it take so long for those slings to get popular in modern society? Indigenous people all over the world have been using them since way back when the earth was still thought to be flat. The two, two year olds with us took quite an interest in the butterflies. It was fun watching their faces light up and it was heart-warming when Little O held my hand for the first time. Until now, he’s been standoffish to me, the little girl is just the opposite. I don’t know how to interact with children anymore like I did back when my nieces and nephew were young, but I don’t see these kids often enough to re-learn. Big sigh of regret here.

I started going to the butterfly exhibit after my husband died as a life-affirming pilgrimage around all of my April sadiversaries, then last year when my youngest niece heard that I was going she wanted to meet me there. Five of us went last year and that grew to eleven this year. I’m hoping we’ve started a tradition that will last a while. The park is huge with lots of things for kids to do as they grow older. For me, I don’t think I’ll ever lose my fascination of seeing thousands of butterflies all in one place and I still haven’t gone after dark to one of their butterflies and flashlights events. The exhibit has the power to slow us down to pay closer attention to our environment---the sun patterns through the foliage, the kaleidoscope of colored flowers that draws the butterflies to land and the warmth of the conservatory that previews what’s to come outside as April creeps forward into May. And of course, the amazing and mysterious cycle of chrysalises and cocoons that turn into beautiful creatures that live for such a short time but while they’re here they do their work in making sure their species continues. Life affirming. Oh, yes! ©

My great-great nephew and niece. I don't like to post pictures of kids without their parent's permission---adults either---but since no one can see their faces here, I'm making an exception. In the one up above Little O is taking a close-up look at a butterfly and the photo below was taken in the children's garden at the sculpture park.

Pass-Around Widows, Easter Traditions and Other Stuff

 

For a week now my urine smells like fried chicken and I haven’t eaten any in months. But every time I pee lately I want to go to KFC. At first I thought I’d finally contracted some dreaded disease that only effects widows who don’t eat enough fried foods but a quick internet search leaves me believing I either have a urinary tract infection or Maple Syrup Urine Disease. (Yes, that’s a real disease. I’m not making that up for your amusement.) I’m voting for the UTI. MSUD is an inherited disorder and growing up, I don’t recall anyone talking about maple syrup as they came out of the bathroom. Not to worry, tomorrow I’m going to the dentist which means I have to take a heavy round of antibiotics so the germs from cleaning my teeth don’t settle in my artificial knee joints and I’m hoping some of those antibiotics find their way into my bladder. If not, I’ll have to go pee in a cup at the lab and hope they don’t leave it out in the elements this time. Last year when I had a UTI they accidentally froze my specimen and I had to go back and do the pee-in-a-cup trick all over again. I hate that trick. There are some things guys are just better equipped at doing and this is one of them.

My nieces threw a surprise 75^th birthday party for my older brother a few days ago. (He canceled the one he and his girlfriend were going to throw together.) It was so good to see everyone in the family except my brand new great-great nephew and his parents who live out of state. My brother was thoroughly surprised and everyone loved the photo book I made and had printed at Blurb. It’s going to be a good summer for family get-togethers---two showers and a wedding invitation are already filed in the pages of my day planner and I’m working on a cousin’s get-together at the cottage where I spent all the summers of my youth.

Easter was good, too. The night before I got a call from my niece-in law asking me to join her huge family for dinner out in the boondocks. It was her mother’s first Easter without her husband and I think the invitation had something to do with that, but she was fine---seemed to be holding herself together pretty well and enjoying herself with all her kids and grandchildren around. Most of the adults in attendance and I have crossed paths for 42 years of going to weddings, showers and funerals so I didn’t feel entirely out of place.  At one point in the afternoon five of her grandsons packed their babies up in their strollers, grabbed a beer or wine cooler and off they all went for a walk around the lake while we women folk sat in a sun circle talking. If someone 40-50 years age would have told me how much attitudes about fatherhood joys and duties would change I wouldn’t have believed it. But I think all the hands-on stuff is good for guys, their families and society. Why should women get all the fun and bonding time with their kids? Time to share, ladies.

As fellow blogger Belle Rum over at Cul-de-Sac-Chronicles recently wrote: “We make traditions and we keep them for years. Then things change. Kids grow up and move to another city, loved ones die and we are left to celebrate even when it doesn’t feel like a time to celebrate.” My own family’s holiday traditions fell apart years ago when my mom died, new ones were born, then reborn again and again---the last time to fit my husband’s disabilities. (Wheelchairs limit your invitation venues big time.) This is my third Easter without Don and new traditions have not yet been established, so I was grateful to grab a little holiday spirit, even if vicariously through someone else’s family. These past few years since Don died I’ve been the elderly aunt passed around on the holidays, never quite belonging anywhere yet never quite an outcast or third wheel either. Life is full of mystery and sometimes I wish mine was like a book and I could sneak a peek at the last chapter to see if holiday traditions ever find me again. Or is this it, the new normal for me? Am I now officially living in the land Pass-Around Widows, never knowing from one holiday to another where we’ll be next? ©