A Gift of Memories

How brilliant the sun shown on the snow that covered the branches of the pine trees from top to bottom, as if the latest winter storm had wrapped them in a thick winter coat. The newly fallen snow under my feet was deep—so deep that if I had not bloused my pants with rubber bands, the snow would have packed the open crevices of my boots. The woods—with its clean, crisp cold smell; its holly berries clinging to bushes, splashing red against the snow; its chickadees and blue jays pleasantly scolding each other and flying here and there, knocking snow to the ground—was thick with the pine trees. Their scent filled the air with Christmas as my sisters, my brother, my foster parents, and I tromped through the woods looking for that perfect Christmas tree.

Almost everyone has that one Christmas memory that is held close to the heart, the one carefully put away and unwrapped only for special occasions. I’ve unwrapped this memory more often lately; I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because I’m getting older and am becoming more sentimental (or just plain sappy, I suppose), or perhaps it’s simply because it was the last Christmas I spent with my siblings before our lives were forced in different directions. In three short months, we would be torn apart and placed in different foster homes. So that last Christmas together was the best gift I could receive.

When we had arrived at this foster home after being taken from our mother three months earlier, Betty and Harry opened their home to all five of us children with ease. It was the grandest house that I had and have ever seen. Well over 100 years old, its two-story massive wooden structure, nicknamed the “Club House,” sat well off the road at the edge of the wood line on the lake. Outside were several outbuildings; I can only guess what their purposes once were. Nearby were various sized cottages that were houses themselves—probably for guests or even servants of long ago. We slept in the largest of these cottages, along with Betty and Harry. I never did know why they didn’t sleep in the Club House.

The Club House was stately. The entry opened into a large foyer, and to the left of the foyer was a great wooden staircase that curved as it reached the second floor. Upstairs were fourteen bedrooms and several bathrooms. Downstairs, the formal dining room held a table that sat twenty-two people comfortably. This room led into another huge room that could have been the setting of a sports lodge: fox, bob cats, deer, and a variety of birds and other animals were mounted to the walls as if ready to pounce, spring, or fly away. Bear rugs (with heads) and zebra skins were scattered about. It was fittingly called the Club room. Several windows on the right offered a clear view of the beach and lake waters. At the far end, a stone fireplace seemed to span the length of the room. This room was my favorite—it offered a quieting comfort I craved.

Christmas at the Club House was one that could only be imagined. Betty and Harry— particularly Betty (a born craftswoman)—brought such spirit to decorating the house. Tromping through the woods that bright wintery afternoon, we found the perfect Christmas tree, and when we arrived home from school the next day, Betty had spray painted the tree a gleaming gold and stood it next to the fireplace in the Club room.

In the days that followed, the Club House was transformed into a Christmas House. Betty adorned the banister with a mixture of pine and holly from the woods, adding red ribbon and white lights. With the leftover sprigs, she fashioned centerpieces for the tables, doors, and mantel. She taught us to make 10-point stars in various sizes from colored strips of paper, dipped in wax and sprinkled with glitter. These we hung on the tree, along with paper chains, cranberries, and colored popcorn. Betty crafted a partridge in a pear tree from a tree branch with handmade ornaments representing the 12 days of Christmas. As we helped cut and glue the pieces, she taught us to sing the 12 days of Christmas. Glistening garland and sparkling lights were strung everywhere.

The kitchen was warm with the smells of Christmas—cookies, cakes, and breads always seemed to be baking. One evening, Betty had us in the kitchen helping her make hard candy. She brought each batch of the sugary concoction to a boil, added a flavor of cherry, orange, mint, root beer, or anise (a licorice flavor), and poured it onto the table over powdered sugar. Then everyone, armed with scissors, cut the rapidly hardening candy into bite-sized pieces until our hands and fingers hurt.

Betty and Harry filled our last Christmas together with such spirit and love. Their kindness was a gift beyond compare. They gave us a Christmas memory that I treasure—one that I can unwrap and rewrap for all Christmases to come.

Rachel, I have to pee

Twenty-something females visit public bathrooms together and share the same stalls when they’re at bars. They just do. Ask any girl you see at the bar but don’t ask why. I’m not excluded from this statistic. After all, I am a girl. And so, whilst sharing a stall in the bathroom, my friends have noticed my fear of public stalls. They have also noticed my routine:


The Preparation:

(1) Survey the area.

(2) Pull up legs of jeans if needed and balance gingerly on toes of heels if area flooded by sewage and/or spilled drinks.

(3) Hold breath.

(4) Wad an extreme amount of toilet paper in hand. Wipe down toilet seat and make sure wad of paper is thick enough so nothing can, or ever will, seep through and touch said hand.

(5) Layer several sheets on left side of toilet with care so that no portion of the seat is exposed.

(6) Repeat step five but apply layers of toilet paper to right side of seat.

(7) Sit down.

The Act:

(1) Pee.

The Aftermath:

(1) Kick toilet paper in toilet with point of right heel while balancing on left.

(2) Flush toilet.

(3) Get upset when someone is standing in front of the sink fixing her hair or makeup when, clearly, I need to use the sink.

(4) Scrub hands with soap and hot, hot water.

(5) Use paper towel to get out of door.


* * *


One night at the bar, I realized that nature was calling. Or, maybe the three glasses of wine and the Dirty Girl Scout Slut were calling (that’s a shot, my friends).

“Rachel, I have to pee,” I flatly stated.

She rolled her eyes. She knew the routine. She ended her conversation with another friend and we briskly walked to bathroom at the back of the bar.

The line to the two stalls (one handicapped, one non) was approximately ten people deep. I tried to pull my thoughts away from the fact that I was about to release the equivalent of Niagara Falls into my jeans and tried to focus on other things, like how my heels were suddenly shooting searing pains up through the balls of my feet.

What if I were to just cut in line? Would anyone have the nerve to ask me to wait my turn? What if I offered each person a dollar so that I could stand at the front of the line? Do you think that would work?

Fifteen minutes later, the line barely seemed to budge. Meanwhile, my urge to pee was almost unbearable. My stomach was cramping and I was starting to hunch over. I began wiggling my knees back and forth out of anxiety. Girls slowly exited in and out of the bathroom stalls in pairs. While they were in the stalls, I heard giggling and talking. I saw cameras flash and drinks spill from underneath the stall doors.

Are you kidding me?

Before I had a chance to lose my cool and my bladder, it was my turn. Rachel and I entered the handicap stall, and I was in the midst of commencing step one of The Preparation. But to my dismay, I realized that I could not go through with the said Preparation. There was not enough time.

I did what any rationale-minded person would do in fear of peeing herself:

I skipped The Preparation and (gasp) squatted over the toilet seat.

The Act was going fine and the squat was staying balanced. But I noticed Rachel began moving towards me, closer, closer.

Suddenly, she stretched out her right arm and with the palm of her hand, forcefully pushed me on the seat.

The unprotected seat.

“RACHEL!” My initial gasp of horror soon turned into a maddening shriek.

She began cackling and fell with her back against the wall. Stunned, I stood up mid-pee. I slowly regained my balanced, back to the squat. I finished and mentally evaluated the damage: Clamydia? Gonorrhea? Swine flu? I couldn’t even fathom.

“Shut up! Get over it!” she said and laughed harder. Then, she added, “Hurry up! There are people waiting!”

As I stumbled out of the stall, my routine now thrown in shambles, the girls waiting in line began glaring at me.

They thought that I was socializing! That I was one of those in-the-bathroom-camera-snapping-girls!

I walked up to the sink and quietly waited for a girl to finish applying her make-up. By then, Rachel realized my face was washed of all pleasant expression.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“Cladmydia’s what’s wrong!” I snapped.

I suddenly noticed that girls began staring and snickering at me. I glared around, tossed my hair over my shoulder at them, and left.

* * *

Later that night, Rachel asked to use some of my hand gel. Out came the Vera Bradley cosmetic bag stuffed with alcohol wipes, burn gel, band aids, and hand wipes. I dug past these items and pulled out a mini-sized hand gel.

“Just don’t say anything. You know how I am,” I stated.

“Oh, I know.”

Before she could squeeze a dollop of that germ-fighting miracle gel into her hand, sensory alarms began ringing in my head.

“Rachel…”

“What?”

I could feel those four words edging their way out of the pit of my bladder, up against the back of my throat, until...

I spilled out: “I have to pee.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, let’s go.”

* * *

Bonsai!

I came home late one Monday night to find a package at my front door. The package was pleasantly large and heavy; bigger than a box of shoes and heavier than a bag of groceries. It wasn’t Christmas, or my birthday, so I was taken aback. No matter the reason; I knew I wanted whatever unexpected contents lay within. I brought it indoors and quickly shut the door behind me, herding the cat back inside with my leg. In the kitchen I started at the top of the box, ripping back the packing tape and peering beyond the carton’s flaps. Inside, Styrofoam packing peanuts lie in waiting, and as I plunged both hands into the box they made their escape, scattering about the linoleum floor in a great static-charged flurry. Strewn in the minor explosion was a gift card, printed in cursive to replicate the hand of a person, which read:

Congrats on the house. Enjoy all the projects you will know have.

Before I even read the name, Dan’s face flashed in my head. The worst speller I knew. He was mid-way through a six-month assignment in Afghanistan. Dan, who I had known since adolescence, had volunteered to go as a civilian. And he was being paid a sum; so much, in fact, that he’d be nearly able to pay off the house he’d bought a few months before his departure. Before Dan left, I asked my Father, who had retired after 20 years in the army, whether he would jump at the opportunity like Dan had. I was surprised by his answer.
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Battle is an admirable mission. I don’t see any other reason to go.”

I suppose I didn't fully understand. But Dan had placed himself in some degree of danger, and an even greater deal of discomfort. He’d vowed to stay on the Army base he was assigned to the entire time he was in Afghanistan so his options were few. “But how is the food?” I asked him the first time I spoke to him on the phone since he flew out of Baltimore. “It’s ok,” he said. “It’s a mess-hall, pretty take-it-or-leave-it.” Looking through the pictures he would send a month later I would realize the gravity of that understatement; the curves of Dan’s once youthfully rounded face had sharpened, and I’d later find out that he’d lost ten pounds. Ten pounds seems like nothing when someone else loses it. But if I lost ten pounds I’d be out celebrating and buying new pants.

Now, burrowing my fingers through the Styrofoam bits, my hands met something rough; asymmetrical. Spiny even. I poured some more of the peanuts out and saw… foliage. There was a tree inside. In miniature. The technical term, bonsai, doesn’t quite get across the full meaning of its embodiment. For the bonsai contained in that box was nothing like the bonsais I had seen for sale anywhere. Those impostors were houseplants carved down into the shape of trees in miniature. They were like pineapples fashioned into colada cups, or fruit baskets made of melons. Novelties.

I set the bonsai on the kitchen table and sat down, transfixed. The trunk had a serpentine twist to it, like the trees you might see on a safari in the African savannah. I wondered how long it had taken its trainer to cultivate such a shape. Green moss grew up one side of the tree’s trunk (ah, so this was the side that faced North), and sprouting from it grew gnarled branches, some thinner than bits of straw. Looking closely, I was startled to find a tiny white flower, no larger than a pinky fingernail, perched among glossy deciduous leaves.

The trunk’s base was surrounded by rice-sized grains of gravel. I narrowed my eyes and I could picture a tiny man walking among the rocks up to the tree for its shade. He was ancient, dressed in the clothes of a Chinese peasant, and he carried a wooden cane that perhaps he’d carved himself. I sat for a quarter of an hour, playing with perspective, when it dawned on me. The bonsai – it was here in front of me, a houseplant. Change the perspective – it was far away from me, a tree out on the horizon. Here. There. It was both, all at once.

My Claims to Fame

When I was 11 years old, my mother decided she wanted a Himalayan cat. My sister and I went along with her to meet a breeder in Maryland who told us she had a new batch of Himalayan kittens, all balls of gray and white fluff with pink noses.

They were so adorable that my mother decided we'd get two. As we were picking out which kittens we wanted, the breeder happened to mention, between "They are strictly indoor cats," and "If they jump on counters, you can spray they with a little water," that their great grandfather cat was a movie star.

He had appeared in the 1971 James Bond Film, Diamonds Are Forever, as Blofeld's cat - the one with the diamond collar.

* * *

When I was 15 years old, I sailed aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2, or "QE2," on a 6-day transatlantic crossing from New York to Southampton in June 2001 with my parents, my two siblings, and my grandparents on my dad's side.

I can still vividly recall the QE2's elegance - the ice sculptures in the middle of the midnight dessert buffet, the spas with the ultimate pampering, and the tea room with the white-gloved servers and tiny sandwiches. But I digress...

One evening, after indulging in lobsters, my siblings and I decided we'd take the elevator to our deck with our grandparents, who were beginning to have a difficult time getting around, especially on a rocky boat. As we stepped into the elevator, we were greeted by Julia Child.

At the time, I didn't realize how famous she was, but I'll always remember her tall height and the sound of her high-pitched voice as she cracked jokes with my grandfather. I wish I could remember what she said.

We later learned there was a theme to the cruise - "Chef's Palate," - and we got to see her again while on board, though when we did, she was speaking in front of an audience as a chef prepared some of her favorite dishes.

* * *

About a year ago, my grandfather was reunited with his sister who lives in Louisiana. They were never very close growing up, and they hadn't spoken in years, so they had much catching up to do.

They traded stories of their family, and she mentioned a relative named Marguerite Clark, who had passed away in 1940. My grandpa learned that she was a famous silent movie star who had appeared in many Broadway shows and films from a young age, winning numerous awards.

Turns out, she starred in the first film version of Snow White in 1916, and she made such an impression on Walt Disney, he chose to base his classic version, the one we all know so well, on Marguerite, my great aunt's sister's child - a distant cousin of mine.

I'm related to Snow White.

Sleigh Ride

My favorite time of year has arrived. I’ve strung my lights, decked my hall, surrounded my windows with garland. I’ve hung red glass ornaments from red organza ribbons. I’ve eaten two bags of colorful foil-wrapped Kisses, minus the foil. Someone’s nestled my mother’s sculpture of a banana-eating orangutan into the angel hair of our nativity scene, where he squats reverently between the sheep and the camel. And why not? Let him visit the Holy Child, too.

My mother also has a nativity scene, which she displays year round, and for well over a decade, my son has been swiping the baby Jesus from his comfy cradle and stashing him beneath the removable blanket that covers the hollowed-out camel’s back. The first time he did this, he was too small to tell us what he’d done with the tiny figure; my niece thought he’d swallowed it. We looked everywhere, and he watched our efforts, likely detecting our concern. When someone finally found Jesus, safe beneath the camel’s blanket, we laughed and praised his cleverness. We retold the story. All the attention surrounding his simple child’s act bestowed it with something he hadn’t intended: meaning. And out of that meaning, my son shaped a tradition. One of many traditions to be gathered like kindling for a fire.

Part of the beauty of this season lies, for my family, in its many traditions, because these are the things we take comfort in remembering and look forward to perpetuating. Traditions are connectors, grounders, knowns. They mean “always” in our changing lives. Intuitively, we know when to discard traditions that lose their meaning or cause us pain. We keep the customs that bond us to people we love and to our histories, and we pass them like torches.

My friend Ingrid and I were born a day apart the week before Christmas. As girls, we shared delight in the happy circumstances of our friendship and our good fortune to have a ready-made celebration occurring all around us on our special days. The decorations, the lights, the music, the bustle of the holidays made our birthdays extra joyous, and we often celebrated by buying pints of ice cream at the convenience store near our homes, driving up to the top of the mountain where we lived, and watching the city lights blink below us while we spooned French vanilla against our palates and talked.

Our tradition lapsed when we each left home. We live far apart now, with kids, dogs, husbands, and responsibilities unlike any we could have imagined then. A special birthday – one of those milestone numbers – awaits Ingrid and me this year, and I have thought about driving the distance to see her, showing up at her door with a pint of vanilla, grabbing her by the arm and saying, “Let’s go. The mountain awaits our recollections.” But I know that true traditions seldom fit comfortably into spontaneity’s gay apparel.

With each passing birthday, I’ve grown used to change, and find that tradition – always accommodating – morphs with me. I may gather different tinder, but the fire still warms the hearth. What I do this year for my birthday will be forged from things I’ve always done and loved, and things I’ve never tried. I’ll still shower a white cake with a sweet snowfall of coconut and eat a slice late at night. But since I can’t have ice cream with Ingrid, I may do something new, something I’ve always wanted to do. I want to ride in a big sleigh, with fuzzy mittens on my hands and a warm yarn scarf knotted around my neck. I want to smell the wet horses harnessed in front of me and see the icicles in their ropy tails. I want to hear the bells shake out their music when the horses trot through cold, deep snow, and I want to feel the icy wind chap my skin.

I know that sleigh rides are touristy things now, that they probably carry some of the artifice of a carnival ride. But I want to go anyway, close my eyes, and transcend the anachronism. I’m hoping for a small adventure to mark the year, a thrill far short of the terror experienced by Willa Cather’s doomed bride and groom in My Antonia, whose sledge horses make a futile attempt to outrun ravenous wolves. And whether or not my safe and gentle sleigh ride becomes a tradition depends on what it ends up meaning to me.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Losing Ruthie

Last Thursday night, cotton towels tumbled out of our upstairs hall closet as I tried to stuff in a set of flannel bed sheets. The towels’ domino action roused a memory from December ’95, when my father-in-law, Albert, had just died of congestive heart failure. The day before the funeral, I sat refolding towels on my in-laws’ family-room floor, while my mother-in-law, Ruthie, sat dazed in Albert’s rattan armchair. She looked down at me and said hoarsely “I fold the towels into thirds so they’ll fit in the closet.” I was comforted by her attention to something so mundane. It gave me hope that despite her heartbreak, she would eventually move on.


Now, I’m hoping I can move on when the expected happens. Ruthie is in hospice care, bleeding from an unknown source, her energy leeching out with her blood. She’s too frail for anything heroic to be done anymore; all the do-not-resuscitate papers have been signed.


The impending mourning period, however, may be shorter than the one we’ve experienced these last few years.


Seven years ago, we started losing Ruthie to Alzheimer’s. Sometimes she forgot places where she’d been a million times: “What a lovely home you have. How come you’ve never invited me here?” Or, after everyone had eaten dinner and we’d picked up their plates, seeing the now-empty setting in front of her, Ruthie would ask, “Aren’t you going to give me something to eat? You’re feeding them.” I often detected that undertone of hurt.


In the 27 years I’d known her, I’d never seen any reason why Ruthie should hurt. In fact, I’d always been a little jealous of her. Her four children and their spouses (including me) and her seven grandchildren had loved and pampered her. We filled her closets with stylish clothes and dressed her like a Barbie doll for special occasions. We framed her family photos and mowed her lawn. We funded shingles for her roof, the Nutcracker at the Kennedy Center, and her trip to California. We drove her to the drug store, grocery store, ophthalmologist, and cardiologist.


Over time, Ruthie sank deeper into Alzheimer’s, forgetting her husband of 54 years, our names, and her age. We welcomed her into our homes and gave her books that she’d read over and over and over. We bought her medicines and new underclothes. We took her for wheelchair rides among azaleas, treated her to decaffeinated coffee at a diner, and escorted her to all the family dinners and parties.


Thanksgiving last year, I was sitting next to Ruthie on my brother-in-law’s sectional sofa, my hand on her shoulder. I had just served her a plate of turkey and potatoes and a decaf coffee the way she always drank it: black with one-and-a-half packets of Sweet and Low™. She said, “You didn’t have to do that, but I really appreciate it. I don’t even know you, and look how well you’re treating me.” Then, she leaned over conspiratorially and, stabbing the air with her index finger, said, “You see those people?”


“Yes.”


“They’ve known me since I was a little girl, and they won’t even give me the time of day. I don’t care what they think of my parents.” I looked up at the room full of everyone who loved Ruthie most: her children and spouses, her grandchildren, her great grandchildren—generations of a family all originated with her. “By the way,” she said, “are my parents coming?”



“Who are these people?”
Ruthie, front and center, surrounded by family,
Thanksgiving 2008

Home-base

More people need a Greek mom like mine that can home-cook her ass off. I’m not joking either; she puts everything into it and must lose some weight doing it. From a pumpkin spice roll to dover sole, from that clean white fish to an assortment dish—this woman does it all and it’s always amazing, always alluring, always….awesome. That’s my mom—she’s sen-sational!

I believe that garbage food has inundated our lives, that there are truly horrible things that people are putting into their bodies, and that there are waaaay too many fallacies out there concerning the things we eat. We are constantly bombarded with messages that recommend we eat this or that for whatever effect. “Use splenda,” buy “fat free,” make sure it’s “sugarless.” It never ends! I grew up eating organic without even knowing it, before it was the latest fad, and during the time of McDonald-mania. And yet, I never appreciated the goodness that exists in a meal that is made with love and from scratch. I appreciate it today, mostly because I can’t cook anything like my mom, but also because I’m realizing the sudden urgency to want to know how to cook….exactly like her.

When I was around seven or eight, I went to Greece to visit my maternal grandmother. It wasn’t my first or last time but I do remember this time in particular when considering cuisine. My yaya (grandmother) lives a couple of hours outside of Athens in a small town, the type where everyone knows everyone and eachothers business. Anyway, I remember her asking what we (my mom and sister) wanted to eat and chicken being the unanimous answer. Well, imagine my surprise when I walked to the back of the house and witnessed yaya beheading a live chicken! I was horrified. I won’t ever forget seeing the headless chicken’s body aimlessly walking around for a few seconds before collapsing. I could not believe my eyes. I had always eaten chicken, was aware that it was an animal, but didn’t quite put it all together quite like my grandmother did for me that day. But the point it is—it was organic, straight from her home farm to the kitchen table—no antioxidants, no pesticides, no toxins—just right, just the way it should be. Try that one on for size in a commercial, Mr. Perdue.

Today, some twenty years later, I realize that my eighty year-old grandmother is living proof of what eating healthy farm fresh food can do: she is not fat but fit; she is not weak but wild; she is not run-down but radiant; she is healthy, she is old and she is still kicking with a strong foot forward! And she’s not the only one, the Greeks in her town who didn’t smoke, like my papou (grandfather), are also the same way; it’s a way of life and one that I want to embrace. Greeks are passionate people who are centered around their kitchen tables—it’s where they bond while filling their bellies. Eating is not done in front of a TV or in a hurry.

The older I get the more I realize how special it is to have good food. I love food, I love eating it and I want to love making it just as much. My beautiful Greek mom doesn’t behead chickens in our backyard but she does the best she can to always have home-cooked meals prepared for us. The funny thing is that we own an American steakhouse—ah, the irony! So this is where I stand on my beliefs:

1. Cook from scratch. Home cooked meals are healthy, hearty, and irreplaceable. Canned soup pales in comparison to the kind that is made over a stove. And, the aroma of cooking food can excite the memories or create new ones that can last a lifetime.

2. Food heals. Whether they’re labeled cancer-fighters, prevent aging, or can cure common ailments, food has unbelievable properties that we can all stand to benefit from—and the kind of food I’m talking about are foods that are farm fresh and natural.

3. TV dinners are a sin. I could vomit thinking about them. Processed foods gross me out and I regret their conception. I know people don’t have time and this shit is supposed to make things easier, but get real. They’re not that good, not good for you, and don’t hold a match when compared to the real thing. There are several alternatives for those who are faced with time or money constraints.

4. When you can’t cook, eat at a good restaurant. This coming from someone that owns one, but still, hear me out. I have witnessed people’s eating behavior and habits on a regular basis and am appalled to think that eating has become a task. When I eat out, I take my time and relax and ENJOY myself and my food; I can’t be bothered, take my time, and relish in every delicious moment. Follow suit. Our lives are busy busy busy, separate the time you eat and when you eat out from that mentality, and allow yourself to have fun with your friends or family while breaking bread.

I’m so blessed to have a mother that has cooked such exceptional meals for me my entire life. I’m saying this as a daughter who wants to emulate that talent; I’m saying it as a girlfriend who wants to dazzle her boyfriend with amazing cuisine; and I’m saying it as a person who believes that eating and home-cooked meals don’t get the credit they absolutely deserve.