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It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, No It’s a Gift From God

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, No It’s a Gift From God

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Tomorrow is my wedding anniversary.

Kim and I will be married 21 years tomorrow.

 

I remember a time in my life when I prayed for someone to come into my life.

I prayed that in some detail I might add.

 

Kim was that answered prayer.

 

Yesterday was Kim’s birthday.

I found this birthday card that said “You’re a Special Gift from an incredible God.”

I liked that.

Because it was true.

 

Sunday was my birthday. I turned sixty-five. A big milestone I guess.

 

We had split up for the weekend again, Kim with her mom, and me with my parents.

I had some time to go through a lot of old photos they had packed away in many photo albums.

 

Lots of memories in those photos, I made as many copies as I could.

 

Some nice photos of all the kids, Donny, Savannah, Hayley, and Alexa together and some with extended family we didn’t get to be with too often

 

More gifts from God…my kids.

 

Though one we had to give back.

 

 

Last year on Father’s Day I wrote about a special one from 19 years ago, the last one with all the kids together.

 

This year was another special one in that I was able to spend it with my dad. Not everyone turning sixty-five is lucky enough to be able to say that.

 

Another gift, our parents.

 

Though we had to give one of them back in October.

 

 

But I think for me, especially in the last year or so, I have been able to be good son.

I have been blessed with that opportunity.

 

Though I don’t have any regrets, as a result, however I can’t always say I have been a good father, or a good grandfather.

 

Grandchildren as you may know, are another gift from God.

 

Time, priorities, social distancing, travel restrictions, whatever, all made it difficult to focus on more than our parents it seemed.

 

Of course, we were able to have some grandparent time with Cameron.

 

And some family time with Savannah and Hayley (and Leon and Malcolm of course),

including celebrating Hayley’s birthday on June 7.

 

 

But I still hadn’t seen the Florida kids, Ethan, Christian, Alexa, and Namaan since December of 2019 and that was really starting to get me down.

 

Then a few days before Christian’s sixth birthday on June 13th, some stars aligned and though Kim was scheduled to be with her mom, she encouraged me to book some flights surprise the kids.

 

With vaccines and the world returning to some form of normal, it’s been really nice to hug and kiss my local kids and grandchild.

 

But I must admit it was especially nice to hug and kiss the daughter and grandkids I hadn’t seen in twenty or so months.

 

And I got to attend the birthday party as well.

 

As you can tell, June and July have always been eventful months in our lives.

 

In fact, Monday June 28th was Cameron’s birthday, and we all went out to dinner to celebrate his eleventh birthday.

 

And in July sadly we remember giving Donny back on the 19th.

 

But we celebrate Savannah’s birthday on the 20th and Ethan’s birthday on July 25th.

 

But today sadly, I also remember another gift from God.

My brother Carl.

Because a year ago today we had to give him back.

 

I am grateful for the gifts God has given me.

 

And though I don’t always understand, I accept that there will be those times I don’t understand.

 

It is nice to have memories when you need them.

 

And it is nice to be able to make new ones for when you need those.

 

 

I will share some, some new ones and some old ones:

 

The photo at the top is one of my brother Carl flying through the air in his backyard.  He always had the coolest stuff in his yard. Donny had a soccer tournament in Trenton and we were all able to get over to celebrate my nephew Jason’s graduation from college.

 

These are from another milestone birthday, my 30th.  Hayley was my birthday present that year.

Hayley was about 3 weeks old
That’s my nephew Johnathon on the right and neighbor Laura Marson on the left helping me out
I had to show this one of my niece Chelsea, my dad, and Alexa. Look at Alexa’s face, have you ever seen anything like that?

 

This was my 46th birthday in 2002. My last with Donny.  Savannah is in the refrigerator.

 

Hayley’s 35th birthday this month.

 

Here is me on my birthday this week.

Kim and Cam at his birthday celebration and making a wish.

 

Ethan and Christian packing up after Christian’s party and hugging my kid for the first time in 20 months.

Here are a couple of photos of family in New Jersey. Donny, Savannah, and Hayley in the first one.  And  a rare one of the whole family with all my kids in it.

 

My dad this Father’s Day

 

And here is one more of Carl holding Chelsea and Alexa

 

Memories.

Gifts from God.

Got to have them, got to love them.

 

“Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father…” (James 1:17)

Memorial Day Unmasked

Memorial Day Unmasked

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In my hometown of Oceanport, New Jersey, there is a parade held on Memorial Day each year.  Over the years  I marched in that parade as a Cub Scout, as part of the Maple Place School band, as a Boy Scout, and as an Oceanport Hook & Ladder volunteer fireman.

In my younger years, my neighbor Warren Del Vecchio always played Taps on his trumpet from the hill overlooking the town memorial located on a small island of grass with a monument and a flagpole at the confluence of three streets in the area of town known as Wolf Hill. His trumpet would sound from the hill behind us immediately after the honor guard from Fort Monmouth finished shooting their rifles in the air in salute.  It always brought on chills.  To me as a young person, Warren’s playing of Taps earned him celebrity status and I always felt like I was important because I knew him personally, kind of like “yeah, I know that guy, he is my neighbor.”

Like most events during the pandemic, last year’s Memorial Day parade in Oceanport, as it was in hometowns all over our country, was canceled.

This year, however, due to vaccines and our beginning to return to some state of normalcy, the parade goes on, though sadly in my opinion, since I have moved away, the route no longer terminates at Wolf Hill, with the monument and the flag pole.

The President told us earlier in the year, if we were all good, we could spend the Fourth of July with our families without distancing and even without wearing masks.

We must have been really good because its only Memorial Day and the masks are coming off all over the place and groups are gathering once again.

I am still not sure how to handle the change in mask usage and it’s obvious when you enter a store where masks are not required and everyone is still wearing one, the rest of the world is too.  After a year of socially hiding, I have grown comfortable with being unsocial and putting on my hat, my sunglasses, and my mask and going to the grocery store hoping no one will recognize me.

And then there are the situations like the time I was at the self-checkout and the loaf of rye bread I just waited fifteen minutes to have sliced didn’t show up under the bakery search as a price option and I finally had to get the attendant to assist me, all the while the blood was receding from lips and face as they took on a nice grayish color and tightened up tautly.  Thankfully, all this was happening under the cover of my mask.  As far as the grocery attendant knew, I was smiling even though at that point I was only able to point and grunt at the rye bread and the touch screen.

And I can’t ignore the fact that I can’t remember the last time I had a cold or have been sick.

 

Then just when you think it’s safe to go out of the house, THEY’RE BACK!

Like an old 1950’s science fiction movie, they come crawling out of holes in the ground every seventeen years.  They fly across the sky clumsily like Flash Gordon’s spaceship from the 1930’s serials. And the rhythmic whirring sounds in the air all around might as well be signaling a flying saucer invading Earth from outer space.

They get in your hair, they cancel out your cell phone audio, they just plain creep you out.  Like some prehistoric creature whose ability to naturally evolve has been robbed, they seem out of place in our new world.

Hey Cicadas…it’s the 21st century, we have Africanized Honey Bees and` Murder Hornets now. We drive electric F-150’s, and watch shows like Pooch Perfect and The View  on TV’s that have flat screens!  We have evolved!

You guys need to get to the gym.

 

It is nice to see Memorial Day weekend signaling the unofficial beginning of summer and returning to its traditions.

Oceanport will have its parade.

My brother  Carl’s annual Memorial Day party will go on, as he would have wanted.  He will be there in spirit I am sure.

I am able to kiss my mother and father this weekend without guilt, and most importantly, without a mask.

And I will admit it is nice to have at least the option to be social again.

 

And of course, we can’t forget the real reason for the day that gives us the three day weekend and the  excuse to parade, eat hot dogs, drink beer, and go to the beach:

Those brave men and women who gave their lives defending our freedom.

May God bless each and every one of them and may their families feel proud and appreciated for their sacrifice, in grief and in memory.

Thank you.

 

My brother Carl, Memorial Day 2020. May he be resting in peace, because he deserves to be.

Postscript:

The feature photo is from the Oceanport Memorial Day Parade in May of 1969 when I was in the seventh grade and is courtesy of my friend Kathy MacDonald.  That tall fellow at the end of the saxophone line is me.  That is Kathy’s brother Bob next to me.  Also in that line is Veronica Bradley and David Halpstein (not sure that is correct last name, if you are reading this from Oceanport help me out).

Breakfast With My Grandmother

Breakfast With My Grandmother

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It’s Preakness day.

I am having breakfast.

This day’s breakfast is unique.

I am having breakfast with my grandmother Sophie.

My dad’s mother.

That may not sound unusual except my grandmother Sophie died in 1980 at the age of 82.

This morning however I was honored to be included in my dad’s world as he had coffee with his “Momma” (that’s what they called her) and talked with her as if they were catching up after not seeing each other for a long time.

When my mother placed her waffle on the table my Dad instructed her to cut it up in small pieces for Momma.

As crazy as all that may sound, I felt lucky to be a part of it.

My dad has had a hard week.

 

But that was yesterday and today he is doing much better.

 

It’s been a beautiful week on the water.  The breezes that had their bite felt from the north and east each day, subsided around sunset leaving the water with an eerie calm. Today the wind switched to the south warming up the air, the sun is shining.

 

Last night after everyone got settled I went out on the dock, put a hunk of peeler crab on my hook, and threw out my line straight off the dock in search of that legal rockfish.  The light from the waxing crescent moon was minimal and my vision was limited only to the area around me illuminated by the dock light. I stared intently out to where I thought my line was as in a trance.

All of a sudden out of the darkness a shadowy image appeared coming towards me from out over the water. It quickly got closer as it was headed straight at me.  In the shadows, I pictured a pterodactyl or a dragon maybe as the thing flapped its great wings spanning what seemed to be at least five feet.  Acting as if it was as surprised to see me as I was surprised to see it, the creature stalled in mid-air literally feet in front of me and dipped awkwardly to my right, its long neck and big beak leading the way.

Holy Maleficent! I thought as I said out loud “What the heck was that?”

With that I picked up my stuff and went back inside the house, it was a long day.

A day that started with having breakfast with my grandmother and ended with nearly being attacked by a dragon, now required a glass of wine.

Though I still don’t know what it was, an albatross, a great heron, or a brown pelican maybe, it doesn’t matter.

Makes for a good dragon story though.

And dragon stories are better than fish stories.

Now it’s Sunday afternoon, with that wind out of the south I am sitting with my dad on the deck.  I told him my dragon story and he laughed more than I had seen him laugh in a long time.

That was worth it.

God is good.

Flash Fiction in Five Hundred Words or Less

Flash Fiction in Five Hundred Words or Less

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Wake Up

 

“Wake up, wake up…we’ve got to move, patrols will be out soon, we’ve got to get back on the Trail.”

It’s Sunday.

This morning we attended church with a small group of Patriots. Services are different now, they are held quietly and secretly in basements by candlelight since all church buildings were destroyed by the early anarchists bent on eliminating Christian-Judaic traditions.

But that was before the Socialists gained power, ushered in by the failure of leaders to control their left after years of isolation, a pandemic, and the collapse of the economy.

Chaos ensued, opportunity knocked, and the North Korean missiles rained down.  Smoke and ash still linger in the air of the cities.  But in the mountains, the trail once known as the Appalachia Trail, now serves Patriots who want to travel north and south, staying away from the cities controlled by the Communists and their socialist natives in servitude.

The once majestic skyline of our Capital lies broken, its white stones darkened by fire and ash. Yet, the  statue of Saunders, the hero of the Socialist uprising, ironically still stands intact on the Mall covered in graffiti in a language once foreign to our country, a reminder of what can happen when a country loses its values.

But in the mountains and the rural areas, there is safety.  The new Government chooses not to worry about those who are too hard to control.  Besides, there are plenty of “comrades” falling in line in the cities, no need to care about folks like us.

We are traveling to Western Pennsylvania.  We have people there and it’s far from the metropolitan areas controlled by the invaders.  There we will have food and shelter.  We will follow the trail north through West Virginia and Maryland and into Pennsylvania, then travel at night on the rural highways west to the Laurel Highlands and safety, and some home cooking since the once-bustling free enterprises of “Eat More…” and “Have it Your…” have been converted into distribution kitchens serving those who serve our captors.  The food, mostly rice brought in from the homeland and provided by the Government since the fields within fifty miles no longer support crops or pasturing of livestock.

It’s a different world now. Once worried about the burning of fossil fuels, instead now we choke in the carbon monoxide tainted air left by missiles, fires, and barren tracks of land that one day were green, taking in the carbon dioxide and providing us oxygen.

I am sad. Sad for myself, sad for my family, sad for those who didn’t see it coming.

For now, though, I must concentrate on putting one foot after the other as I walk the ridges of protruding rocks. We have many more miles to travel.

 

“Wake up honey, wake up, you are going to be late for class!”

“I’m up, I’m up…wow Mom…I was dreaming, I mean I had this really weird dream.

“It was scary.”

“But it’s okay…

I am awake now.”

 

 

According to Masterclass.com:

Flash fiction is a favored genre … for its ability to convey deep truths and universal human emotions in just a few short paragraphs.

Flash fiction is a genre of fiction, defined as a very short story. While there is no set word count that separates flash fiction from more traditional short stories, flash fiction stories can be as short as a few words (while short stories typically run for several pages).

 

I don’t like to write fiction, but it was fun to try for a contest.

But I don’t expect I have conveyed deep truths and human emotions as described above.

 

I would prefer to do that with non-fiction.

 

 

 

It’s Palm Sunday.

The day Jesus entered Jerusalem.

I heard an awesome prayer this morning that moved me.

“You come among us in unexpected ways, whoever heard of a king on a donkey, a savior on a cross.  How do we know it is you?  How should we recognize your presence? Will we see you when you stand among us? Will we hear your voice and understand your message?

 Will we wave palms of enthusiasm today, but drop our arms in confusion tomorrow?”

 

The crowd mentality ensued that day.

Hosanna…” save us” they cried.

But that was quickly forgotten and replaced.

“Crucify Him.”

The prayer I heard this morning went on to question our ability to stand on our own beliefs and not to succumb to what may be the popular opinion.

The opinion of the crowd.

 

I guess it’s not so popular to believe in this story anymore.

This story of Jesus riding on the back of a donkey.

It’s certainly not so popular to yell “Hosanna.”

And it’s not so popular to believe Jesus died to save us.

 

But I believe.

And it’s okay.

I am awake now.

 

 

Post Script:

The photo above popped up on my Google memories or Facebook this week.  It’s from a year when we were still able to welcome the community and particularly the children to our church at Easter. We pray that will change again soon.

That’s me under the bunny head.  I get to play many roles in my job.  Even representing the fictional aspects of this season.

Happy Easter!

 

HUMP DAY

HUMP DAY

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THE  WEEKEND.

 

We’ve all had them right?

 

“Hey man, how was your weekend?”

 

“Oh man, it was THE WEEKEND!”

 

“Really? What did you do?”

 

“Man, I don’t even remember, but it was THE WEEKEND!   I tell you what, I can’t take too many more weekends like that!”

 

Ain’t that the truth.

 

After last year’s half time show caused some of us to squirm in the presence of our wives and moms, including me, and had us reaching for the bag of Doritos (“Pass the Doritos Please”), this year’s just created great opportunities to head for the sink and clean up the air fryer after the chicken wings.

Last year, one young writer accused those that felt uncomfortable with the dancing of Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, of being racists.  We were racists for feeling that way.  It had absolutely nothing to do with being a sixteen-year-old boy watching the show with your mom or an old guy like me watching with my wife.

Of course not.

 

This year, however, I will probably be accused of being xenophobic.

 

For this year’s Super Bowl LV halftime show we had The Weeknd (not to be confused with those infamous week-ends discussed earlier.)

And I think it was fitting that the NFL chose “The Weeknd.”

Because in the NFL we have had “The Fridge.”

And in the NFL we have had “The Bus.”

So why not “The Weeknd?”

 

I have to admit I had never heard of the guy.

And hey, I apologize “ ’Nd” because after looking you up, you’ve done alright with big hits and even a being a Grammy Award winner.

But I don’t watch the Grammys and unless you made a cameo appearance on “Maine Cabin Masters” I probably wouldn’t know who you are.

 

But that’s irrelevant because the NFL knew who he was.

Though he is Canadian, he was definitely politically in the right lane, having canceled an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live in May of 2016 because a certain guy was present, and he is a large donor to the Black Lives Matter movement as well as Colin Kaepernick’s organization.  And maybe it was a good bone to throw to Justin Trudeau for killing the pipeline.

 

So really, I think he was the best non-American the NFL could find to represent Americans in the now “Reunited States of America.”

He, and Bruce Springsteen in his Jeep of course, representing “The Middle.”

America’s Middle.

No more red, no more blue, only purple in the middle.

(And Bruce, put the top up man, you’re going to catch cold!)

 

Ah, but it’s just a game, with expensive commercials, with a big production in the middle.

It was all in fun and we needed that.

We laughed, we cheered, we ate, we drank maybe, and we cleaned the air fryers.

And when the clock finally ran out, age, wisdom, and experience prevailed and we had “The Winner.”

 

And now thank goodness, it’s Hump Day!

The Middle of the Work Week.

And I don’t know about you but I can’t wait for The Weeknd…I mean the Week-End.

Weekend.

Well, you know what I mean.

 

Have a good weekend.

Blizzard Blend

Blizzard Blend

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Today’s little snowstorm brought back some memories of snow events from the past and particularly one from eleven years ago.

 

My 2008 Christmas letter started off with this opening:

 A little while back Hayley told us about a conversation she had with another new, young teacher at her work.  This young lady was telling Hayley about her roommates:

 “You know the kind of roommates I am talking about? Do you have those too?”

 (Hayley) “You mean the kind that are older and married?  Yes, I have those kind of roommates too.”

This year Kim and I got roommates…two of them to be exact. You know the kind that I am talking about as well…..the ones that when they are not working, sleep most of the time, watch TV, leave the lights on all night, make sure their dirty dishes stop at the sink instead of going all the way to the dishwasher; the kind that expect dinner on the table and then don’t come home; want their laundry done…that is if ever makes its way off their bedroom floor.

 Sounds strangely a lot like our kids doesn’t it?  Maybe I should ask for some ID.

 Yeah just kidding…Savannah and Hayley have moved in.  But they are now working adults…well… they are working anyway.

 

 

That year, in another of life’s twists and turns, Kim and I, after a shorter than expected time of being empty nesters, got roommates again.

 

I used to joke back then, that I could no longer make my coffee in the nude, an image that even I find vile and revolting today.

 

President Barack Obama dubbed the blizzard of February 5th and 6th 2010 “Snowmaggedon.”  The official snow total for Dulles Airport was the greatest ever recorded, 32.4 inches.

 

As luck would have it, Kim and I still had our roommates that snowy weekend.

 

We had been given a winemaking kit sometime before that and it just so happened that the batch of wine we had made in our little plastic container was ready for bottling on that weekend.  And since we were all nicely trapped together in the house, it was fun to have something we could all do together.

 

In the end, we blended our homemade merlot with a little cabernet sauvignon we had in the house, officially christened our new family winery the “Little Chickens Winery” even though we were short one little chicken, and called our new wine the “Blizzard Blend” in honor of the “Snowmaggedon.”

 

I don’t think we would have won any awards with our “Blizzard Blend” but it was drinkable.

There are still a couple of bottles in circulation, (like the one pictured above) but I think I would rather just look at it than drink it after eleven years.

 

Since we haven’t had much snow around here the last couple of years, any call for snow gets the “Snowmaggedon” treatment by the media. It’s been a nice little snow event, with not much stress, and required just a little shoveling.  Kim and I went for a 4.5-mile walk down along the trails and it was really pretty to walk through.

 

And for just a brief moment this morning as I reflected on the snow and the memory of bottling our wine that snowy February weekend in 2010, I even missed having our roommates just a little.

 

For just a very brief moment.

And just a little.

 

A Void

A Void

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I hadn’t planned on writing anything today.

In fact, I was hoping to avoid it.

Of course the first thing that pops up in the morning, not that I needed it, was the reminder from Facebook.

Then the nice back and forth texts from the siblings “Thinking of all of you today” and the phone calls, “how are you doing today?”

 

Kim still describes her grief after Donny as like having a bowling ball shot through the chest.

There’s  a hole there now, a big one.

The size of bowling ball.

A void.

 

But life doesn’t stop does it?

And that may seem cruel sometimes.

There is no  “Hey, wait a minute, I’m grieving here!  Before you just move on and forget, let’s think about how I am feeling!”

Nah, there’s none of that.

Because life needs to go on, right?

There are others that need to experience their sadness, and maybe I need to experience more.

There are others that need to experience their joys, and maybe I need to realize some of my joys too.

But life doesn’t wait for us to say “okay, I’m ready now, you can proceed, let’s get on with it, I got this.”

 

So I guess the reality is, as much as I might try to…

I can’t avoid the void.

 

But in my sadness and still disbelief, and in spite of the void, I can’t forget what is really important.  I can’t forget all those happy times, the words of encouragement, the support, and maybe most important thing, his example.

I can’t complain, nope I can’t dwell on the negative.

Because as I have said before,  he wouldn’t want that.

 

 

So Happy Birthday to my “Cancer Brother.”

Happy Birthday, Carl.

And like your shirt says, you were very brave.

Brave and so, so much more.

And that is why today, instead of trying to avoid it, I need to celebrate.

So, you would be very proud to know, that for us to celebrate,  I spent more than five bucks on the bottle of wine I plan to open later.

And, I may even drink mine out of a jelly glass.

 

Postscript:

Void, a noun*

  • An opening, a gap, and empty space
  • A feeling of want or hollowness
  • The quality of being without something

 

Or maybe…someone.

 

*Merriam-Webster.com

Lift Me Up

Lift Me Up

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If you lift me up,

Just get me through this night

I know I’ll rest tomorrow,

And I’ll be strong enough to try…

(From Lift Me Up by Christina Aguilera)

 

 

Have you ever looked at your kids and had this conversation with yourself:

“yeah look at them over there laughing and having fun…I’m glad they’re all happy…that’s my boat or cabin in the mountains standing over there all happy with themselves…when’s it going to be my turn?…

 

Oh, you say you never had that kind of conversation with yourself?

 

Yeah of course not, I mean I never have either, I was just saying…

 

You know…kidding around.

 

Say…how about those Nats?

 

 

One of my kids gave me a tee shirt this past year, I think Savannah, that says on the front “You Can’t Scare Me, I Have Three Daughters.”

Actually, I was wearing that shirt in a photo from a previous post.

 

Three daughters.

That pretty much makes me qualified to face just about anything life can throw at me.

 

And life sure threw a lot at us this year.

It’s been a tough year.

But like the song says if we can just get through this night, the year that was will be behind us.

And a new year will be upon us.

A Happy New Year I hope.

We’ll have a day to rest, then we will try it all again.

 

Although I was having a little fun picking on my kids, I once wrote in a post titled My Three Little Chickens:

The truth is my daughters have taken their share of lumps in life but they continue to rise up.

They have had some life experiences probably shared by many daughters.

And then they have had some I hope no child ever has to go through…

Yet they are resilient.

 

They are resilient.

 

A lot has happened in the world this past year.

A lot has happened in the lives of my family and Kim’s family.

A lot has happened in the lives of my friends and their families.

And I am sure in your lives as well.

 

But for me, there is something that is good, something that brings me some peace.

My girls.

Because for the first time since I can remember, I will close my eyes on this New Year’s Eve knowing that all my girls are in a good place.

And that makes me happy.

 

But now I am getting tired.

The champagne is starting to kick in.

I fear I will usher in the New Year in my dreams.

 

Lord, get through this night.

And when I wake up I pray that everything will be all right .

 

And when those times come in the new year when I realize that it’s not.

That it is as it will be.

I am counting on You.

To lift me up.

 

After all that we’ve been through lately

We can be the same again

Lord lift me up, lord lift me up

(from another song titled Lift Me Up by Joe Scarborough and the Independent Counsel of Funk)

 

Postscript:

The photo above is from some years ago, but one of my favorite photos with my daughters.

I hope you find your New Year happy and healthy!

And thanks for letting me share.

Dear Mr. Fantasy…

Dear Mr. Fantasy…

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Dear Mister Fantasy play us a tune
Something to make us all happy
Do anything take us out of this gloom
Sing a song, play guitar
Make it snappy

This week’s nagging song in my head has been Dear Mr. Fantasy, a song from their 1967 album “Mr. Fantasy” by the band Traffic.

I read that Jim Capaldi, the drummer in the band wrote the lyrics to the song one early morning while he was coming down off of LSD.

It seems appropriate in this year of uncertainty to lean on this season of fantasy, with our Mr. Fantasy being Santa Claus with his reindeer and such, to look for something to make us all happy.

Something, anything to take us out of this gloom.

 

Kim and I spent Thanksgiving with my parents.

I recently found the Word file that was our 2012 Christmas letter.  I remember I called my mother and father from a landline I had in my office and recorded these conversations on my cell phone while I talked to them over the speakerphone.

This was my dad speaking:

We were poor then. Times were hard. My father and I used to pick up coal from the railroad bed near our house; we had a coal stove then.  Sometimes we would go down to the beach in Sea Bright or Monmouth Beach and wait for the pound fisherman to come in to the beach.  The pound fishermen would pull in their nets and fill their boats with fish, then ride the surf in to the beach where a team of horses would pull the boats up.  The fishermen would throw us fish they didn’t want and we would bring them home in buckets.  And in the winter the ice fish, the cod fish, would freeze in the waves and land on the where we would pick them up.

We had a Christmas tree…..dinner would be lutefisk (dried cod fish), fiskebollers (Norwegian fish balls) and pickled herring.  My mother would make pies and root beer, and I would put the caps on. 

We would go down to the church in North Long Branch where my mother and father would go every Sunday. My father helped build that church.  It was mostly Scandinavian fishermen from Monmouth Beach and Sea Bright.  They didn’t have Sunday school and they only spoke Norwegian so as kids we didn’t go much at other times of the year.  But on Christmas, there would be chairs lined up on each side of the room.  They had a coal stove and a Christmas tree was in the center of the room and we would march around the Christmas tree and sing songs, which was the Norwegian tradition.  The whole family would get an orange and a box of hard Christmas candy to take home, that was great……

I remember one Christmas I wanted and got a wagon, the kind of wagon that had sides on it that I could take off like a farmer’s truck.  But I guess I did something bad and my father took it away from me.

A big thing for us on Christmas morning was the fire truck; we would all go outside and wait for the fire truck to come. When I saw it   I would leap the hedge.  We would get a box of hard candy and an apple and see Santa Claus…. this was in the thirties, I was born in 1929. (Carl E. Christiansen)

And this was a paragraph from the letter with a story my mom told:

When my mother was a child, her bed was actually in the dining room of their house separated from the living room only by a curtain.  One of the most important parts of Christmas for my mother has always been the Christmas tree.  You see when my grandparents put her to bed in the dining room every Christmas Eve there was no tree up in the living room.  But when she awoke on Christmas morning there was always a beautiful Christmas tree decorated in the living room, put up while she slept soundly in the next room behind the curtain.  One year when times were tough, my grandfather tried to slip in an Arborvitae tree instead (more like a cypress tree than a Christmas tree) that he had cut down on the property.  When my mother woke up she freaked out.  Now, I have seen my mother freak out a couple of times in my life and I can assure you my grandfather never tried to pull that one again.  When I spoke with my dad the other evening he said my mother had five Christmas trees set up in the house and outside.  I apologized to him because I think my wife gave her three of them.  But it’s nice to know my mom still likes her Christmas trees.

 

This Thanksgiving weekend we revisited some of those stories from Christmases past as we sat around the table.  The memories and the words to describe them don’t come as easy as they did in 2012 which is sad because months after I recorded that conversation, I upgraded my cell phone.  The T-Mobile guy did the transfer of my data to my new phone, looked at me and asked “you want to check it before I delete everything?”

“No, I’m good, I trust you,” I told him.

The day I went back to find that audio file and realized it was gone, I was really sad.

Though my mom still loves her Christmas trees, she is keeping them all in the attic this year, with fewer things for my dad to have to navigate around.

But Kim and I plan to put up our tree today, decorate, and take advantage of a little of the fantasy of season in a year that might seem like Mr. Capaldi’s bad acid trip.

And of course, remember the real meaning of the season.

And I wouldn’t suggest you “prosclaiming the Palmist” to find the prophecy of the coming of Jesus, though you will find references in Psalms, better to look to Isaiah:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)

 

And now I am off to find a Christmas tree!

Friday the 13th, 2020 Style

Friday the 13th, 2020 Style

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Hard to believe that it’s Friday, November 13th  in this year of 2020.

Thanksgiving is in less than two weeks and it appears that our end of year holidays, so heavily invested in family, are in jeopardy.

Covid concerns are ramping up again.

 

Thankfully, the election has come and gone.

And lucky for us, all those celebrities we couldn’t have lived without got to stay in America.

I don’t know about you, but I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall in Bruce Springsteen’s house about 12 midnight on November 3 when Trump was posting a comeback.

But seriously, when it got right down to it, I had to remind myself…”Curt… John Legend and Chrissy Teigen are threatening to leave the country if Trump is re-elected…”

I just couldn’t imagine.

The Voice without John Legend?

That did it for me!

 

My Friday the 13th started a little early on the evening of Thursday the 12th.  My wife had got a new gadget to cut up all those ingredients for making her potions, tinctures, and syrups.

In addition to using it for the above, I quickly determined I could use it to cut my cucumbers for my salad.

But it didn’t take me too long to learn that it works really well on fingers too.

Not wanting to waste the cucumbers I had already sliced I tried to find the lost portion of my finger amongst the cucumber slices.

“What are you doing?” my wife asked sternly as she watched me putting pressure on my bleeding finger while using my other hand to go through the cucumbers.

“Looking for my finger, I don’t want to waste my cucumbers,” I responded.

“Throw them out you are not eating them that’s disgusting!” she said loudly.

Disappointed, I threw out my cut cucumbers and the piece of my finger and focused more on controlling the bleeding.

Then I cut up another cucumber.

 

One day many years ago when Kim and I first moved into our house in Herndon, Donny brought home a baby wild rabbit.  We had lots of rabbits in the yard back then.  We don’t see too many anymore, maybe because of the foxes.

But Donny was really happy about his little rabbit and wanted to keep it as a pet.  I, however, in my sometimes to a fault need to do what I think is the right thing, told him he couldn’t.  It wasn’t right to keep an animal from the wild and it should be returned to its habitat I explained so very parentally.

Needless to say Donny was very disappointed and not at all happy with me.

After Donny’s accident whenever I thought about this incident with the rabbit,  I always felt really bad about how I made him feel by not allowing him to keep it. Even now as I reflect back on this memory I think to myself, what a jerk, you could have loosened up a little.

A year and a half or so later, I think it was Martin Luther King’s birthday weekend 2004 when we had no kids because they had extra time off from school and they were off with their friends, I had this great idea that I thought would show I could be spontaneous and selfishly, would make up for some of the guilt I felt over denying Donny that rabbit, even though I couldn’t share it with him.

I marched Kim into a PetSmart that weekend in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia on a mission to adopt a cat.

When it was all said and done we not only adopted one cat, we adopted two.

They were sisters.

Molly and Mona.

We agreed to all the rules and requirements, not to declaw them, and to keep them as house cats.  The house cat thing didn’t last long though because Mona it turned out, was like Mufasa when it came to the kingdom of our backyard.  She would roam the yard and protect us from critters.  Molly on the other hand enjoyed just hanging out on the deck more like her humans.

After about seven years Molly would succumb to cancer and be put down.

That left Mona alone who now could claim the inside of the house has her domain as well.

And she lived a good life.

Until today.

On this Friday the 13th Mona made her last ride to the vet after 17 years.

 

This year continues to be one of challenges and changes, some foreseen some unforeseen.

Like the year Donny died, for Kim and I, we just have to realize that God’s got this.

And though my little guys from Florida won’t be visiting me for Thanksgiving as planned because of the increase in virus cases, I will get through my disappointment.

And I will admit it’s a little weird without the cat meowing at us this evening, it’s nice to know Mona is interred in one of the gardens in the backyard which was her kingdom that she liked to roam so much.

And thinking and writing about elections and celebrities brings back with a smile another memory of the profound and grounding wisdom of a young boy who once reminded his Pop Pop that “Everybody in Hollywood Farts” and who also this very evening demonstrated to me very graphically through video the devastating aftermath that the different categories of hurricanes can have on the toys in his bedroom.

 

But let’s face it, like it or not, this is the year where you won’t find the finger in the cucumbers.

Might as well toss it out and get a new one ready to slice.

But God’s got this.

And we will continue to be held.

We will continue to find reasons to laugh in the face of sadness and turmoil, loss and distancing.

We will continue to adapt.

Because God’s got this.

And we have God.