Over the last two or three years, I've posted some stories about the Christmases from other times in my life. This December I will no doubt intersperse some of them again with my other blog posts. This one is one of my favorite memories. Please enjoy.

View from our balcony.

Yesterday morning we woke to a snowstorm. It was the kind of snow that is wet, heavy, and comes down in huge quarter-sized flakes. I had to go out to Target to pick up my blood pressure medicine so I pulled on warm clothes and off we went.

As I journeyed to the store and back and then spent the day watching it snow, I pondered on the difference the snow made in my personal attitude about Christmas. Oh, I know Christmas is not dependent on whether or not it snows, but in some indefinable way, it changed my perspective much like the snow scene at the end of that old Bing Crosby movie, Holiday Inn. When the actors fling open the doors at the end of their performance to share the snow falling outdoors, there's a sense of "rightness" in the scene.

In many, many locations around the world, it never snows on Christmas. And I'm sure that has nothing to do with those places having Christmas spirit. But in the north, much of the population grew up with snowy Christmases so that's our norm. When Christmas arrives in the midst of seventy degree weather, somehow it just seems wrong.

We took unashamed advantage of the snow. The girls made a snow man. We played Christmas carols and finished decorating. And dreamed like so many families that all our members would be home for Christmas.

anny

Most people start the holiday season with shopping or decorating. At our home we started with cleaning and rearranging furniture. There were a number of valid reasons for the rearranging and cleaning, but I admit it was not what I planned when I crawled out of bed yesterday.

It all started with the Christmas tree, of course. Apartment dwellers all have the same problem. Where to put the tree? Then if they have limited space to begin with, something must be moved...relocated to another room...thrown out...you get the drift?

My daughter spent eight hours in a car on what should have been a five hour trip. She had plenty of time to work out the rearrangements in her mind. Now the execution was a tad different. We started the day with a LOT of measuring. Part of the rearranging was the moving of hundreds of books when we moved the bookcases.

I have long wanted to move those bookcases out of their dark corner, but freely admit the shifting of so many books was a daunting thought. With the help of my granddaughters, we emptied the double and in places, triple booked shelves, sorted the books and reshelved them after the house hunk and the son-in-law moved the very heavy bookcases. That took most of the day.

But wait! Once they were moved, other stuff had to be moved! Rugs had to be vacuumed, rolled and shifted. Pictures had to be moved. And it all went on and on and on...

By eight o'clock everyone was ready to be finished. And we were. Then it was a matter of feeding the flock, baths or showers and off to bed. I admit I really like the new arrangements. The entire apartment has a lighter, airier feel to it. Not to mention there is now wall space for my framed covers and the few Christmas items we have that have languished in the storage boxes for the last few years.

There's just onnnnnnnnne thing. We still don't know where we're going to put the tree. Sigh.

anny

Well. The FEAST is over. We have enough leftovers to feed us for a couple more days, at least. Aside from the cooking (which I confess I did very little of), we watched a couple movies, talked, read, and generally relaxed.

One of the movies we watched was rather thought provoking for me. Everyone from the five year old to the house hunk watched it quite attentively. It was the Disney movie, Up. It says much that it captured the attention of such a widely varied age group.

The movie was generally about the pursuit of dreams--and how those dreams might change with time. What do we do when we discover the dreams we've pursued so relentlessly aren't really what we want? What do we do about dreams that are beyond our reach? At what point to we accept the fact and move on?

This week, I reached a milestone in my life--one of those milestones where you stop and reflect on your life, what you've accomplished, what you've left undone, what you might still be able to accomplish. So this movie was very timely for me personally. It afforded me a chance to stop and assess my place in life. Where have I been? Where do I want to go from here?

For many families, Thanksgiving is a time of reflection. At dinner, we went around the circle as each member from the youngest to the oldest said something they were thankful for. In a year of lean times and upheaval, it seems we have more to be thankful for. Interesting how that works, isn't it?

Today, while many are out pursuing bargains for Christmas, I'll be back at the computer, working, thankful for the skill and talent that allows me to work at home.

Twenty five years ago we moved into a new house the day before Thanksgiving. Our furniture had been in storage for over four weeks after a move from Houston to upstate New York. At nightfall on Thanksgiving Eve what we had for the most part was beds set up in the bedrooms with bare mattresses and a LOT of boxes.

In an effort to make things easier, we bought several disposable aluminum pans to cook or bake in and a stack of paper plates. Add some sturdy plastic "silverware", plastic glasses and several rolls of paper towels and we were good to go.

Early Thanksgiving morning, there were hints that all was not going well. The first clue was the hot water in the toilets. Nice to have a warm seat, but a profligate use of hot water when we needed it for cleaning, laundry and dishwashing.

The next problem that reared its head was the frozen pipes in the kitchen area. No water--hot or cold. Never the less, we persevered. By eleven a.m. our turkey was in the oven, most of the side dishes were in the process and we were back to unpacking boxes. And boxes. And boxes...

At last the turkey was close to done. The househunk seized the pan with a couple sturdy pot holders and lifted it up (heading for the counter next to the stove) when the unthinkable happened. The pan collapsed, spilling burning turkey drippings all over his hands.

He tossed the turkey pan onto the stove top...where it promptly exploded.

We had turkey, dressing, and greasy drippings everywhere. Floor, ceiling, walls, counters and cabinets, and all over my new stove. All the things we'd cleaned so carefully and set on the counter were covered in bits of dressing and drippings.

After the initial shock and checking the house hunk's hands for damage, we embarked on the massive clean up. I vividly remember crouching on my hands and knees on the kitchen floor, vainly trying to clean the grease ingrained in the textured tiles. "I want to go home!" I wailed.

The house hunk leaned down to pat me on the shoulder. "You forget. We ARE home."

Eventually, we sat down to eat what we salvaged from the turkey and side dishes. Life moved on. Other disasters arrived to shove the memories aside. But every Thanksgiving one of the kids will get a reminiscent expression on their face and ask with a glint of humor in their eyes, "Do you remember?"

In some ways, that Thanksgiving pulled us together, preparing us for the really, really bad year we were going to endure. Triumphing over that single disaster taught us that we could deal with almost anything as long as we stuck together.

Sigh. I have to admit that since then, turkey really isn't on my menu most years.

anny

PS: Happy Birthday to my cousin Molly--who is SIXTY today. Neener, neener. I'm STILL older than you!

 

 

Among the lies my teachers taught over the years was the story of the first Thanksgiving. Back when I was a kid, we learned all about the pilgrims, those stern, black-clad puritans who fled England, sailed on the Mayflower to America, and had a big feast for the Indians.

I think the only fact they had correct was the one about the pilgrims sailing on the Mayflower. The house hunk is descended from six of the original pilgrims, Francis Cooke, John Howland, Elizabeth Tilley, John Tilley, Joan Tilley, and George Soule. Elizabeth Tilley's parents died the first winter leaving Elizabeth, a thirteen year old orphan alone. Two years later she married John Howland.

About half of the passengers were Separatists, the other half signed up for material reasons. Of the 102 original passengers nearly half died the first winter, leaving 53 survivors...mostly men. In the fall of 1621 when the harvest was finally gathered in, William Bradford, governor of Plimoth proposed a harvest feast. It lasted three days. For a wonderful interview with the food historian at Plimoth Plantation, click on Kathleen Curtin.
Other fun facts. They didn't wear black. Black was too hard to keep clean and also was expensive so it was reserved for Sunday services. Generally, they wore colored clothing. Heavy woolen fabrics.

A few years ago we went for a weekend to Plymouth and spent some time at the Plimoth Plantation speaking with the reenactors. Each reenactor picks a specific person to represent. They remain totally in character as they talk about their lives in Plimoth and before traveling to the New World.

So we were talking to Hester Cooke (wife of the Francis Cooke listed above) She did not travel on the Mayflower, electing instead to remain in Leiden (Holland) until later, with their children. One of the other tourists in the tiny Cooke house (see the pictures above) asked her about her clothing and commented that her skirt was wrinkled. "Didn't they iron their clothes?" the tourist inquired.

I've always loved 'Hester's' reply. "But that would be vanity."

I figure if it's good enough for the pilgrims, it's good enough for me.

The houses were tiny. For that matter, the beds were tiny. The bed would be too short for me and I'm only 5'2". When I asked where the kids slept, 'Hester' pointed under the bed and said, "They sleep on pallets."

Hester and Francis had eight children. I just wonder when and where they found privacy to start them! Certainly, there was no bedroom door to shut. Actually, the entire house was only two very small rooms. And one of those was the room with the "kitchen".

The harvest feast had little that we would recognize today. No potatoes (white or sweet)--the pilgrims weren't familiar with the potato as a food at this time. Cranberries might have been added to dishes for flavoring, but certainly there wasn't any cranberry jelly. And pumpkins, though a staple in their diet, were not used for pies. Actually, it's highly unlikely they would have flour or sugar to make pies. Nor did they have ovens.

For that matter, imagine the amount of food you would need for 50 people plus the 90+ guests over a three day period. Nooooo thanks!

I think I'll settle for my modern conveniences and the menu we're planning on. We'd hate to be without our pumpkin pie!

anny

As you make your way through life, you acquire strange little skills and odd bits of experience that you usually never expect to use. And then the day arrives when you need that odd skill in a way you never imagined.

In this day of job shortages and down-sizing and retraining, one of the bits of advice that job coaches are sharing is to think out of the box, look at your skills with an eye toward how those skills are related to new jobs you're applying for.

In the past I worked for a small manufacturing company where I ran a drill press to drill holes in knobs, McDonald's, Friendly's, a Waldenbooks warehouse, and a county-wide school where my position was executive secretary. I also taught adult education vocational classes at that last job. Filling out a resume or a job application can be a challenge. But there are commonalities in all my past jobs.

One of the skills I have in common from every one of my employers was that I was the job trainer for new employees. Nope, that wasn't in my job description when I started, but in some strange way, training became one of my duties every time.

In each job, I also wrote and compiled a manual for the job. Hmmm. That wasn't in my job description, either. But it seems that most jobs need some type of reference manual--whether one done professionally by an outside agency, or one done in-house.

Every one of those employers needed an inventory compiled. In all but one job, I made up the forms and process as I went along. But the job was finished and the counts were accurate.

Along the way, I've picked up other oddments of information that I'll use one day. I'm convinced that nothing we learn is wasted. When the day arrives that I desperately need a skill or information, it will be ready to hand.

What is the strangest skill you have acquired in life?

anny

Not long ago, when my daughter was here for the weekend we looked through pictures. I thought it was interesting through the generations that over and over, we strike the same poses. We stand the same way. The kids always look peeved because they don't want to be there. The adults are solemn and stoic. This picture is my brothers and me in front of the house where we lived in about 1958. Weren't we a charming bunch?
This is the house hunk and I with our brood at Grand Canyon around 1980. It was August, but only about sixty degrees there that day, cloudy, rainy, and the kids were freezing. Naturally since the hunk was holding the little one, he didn't notice that her blanket was down around her tushie.
This is a picture of some ancestors ca 1850. Don't they look like a happy bunch? Two of the girls and the little boy (on dad's lap) married into another branch of my family. I figure that's the way to make sure you don't feel like an in-law.
These two are man and wife, last name Farmer ca 1840. They lived in Arkansas when it was a territorial frontier, long before it was a state. He was a blacksmith. When I look at them, I can readily imagine that they had the perseverance and gumption to stick it out. Times were tough. They had what it took to make it.

I wonder what my descendants will think when they look at my pictures after I'm long gone?

anny