New Year’s Eve is one of my least favorite holidays. I hate that we Left-Coasters always get a delayed broadcast from Times Square, which makes our celebration nothing more than sloppy seconds. I suppose I also dislike New Year’s Eve because it reminds me of the one I spent at Tahoe, back in 1970.
Back then, my father used to let nurses from Marin General Hospital (where he was Chief of Staff) borrow our ski cabin for weekends with their families. The only requirement was that they provide a ride for me up to Tahoe and then shuttle me to my race training at Squaw Valley in the morning and back at the end of the day. A relatively small inconvenience for free lodging.
December 31st started out well enough and I spent a good six hours practicing giant slalom on the Red Dog run. A forecasted snow storm held off to the end of the day and I waited by the ticket booth for my 5 o’clock ride just as the flakes started to fall. And waited. And waited. It was past six when I gave up and hitched back to Tahoe City in the back of a pickup. Actually, it wasn’t that cold, since you are pretty sheltered riding behind the cab and my helmet kept my head warm (and presumably safer in an accident, I suppose).
I was dropped off a short block from my destination and wished my rescuers a Happy New Year. To my astonishment, my arrival at the Cabin didn’t raise any eyebrows, just a hasty explanation, “Oh, sorry, we forgot.” It turns out they were in a rush to drive down to the South Shore for the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet at Harrah’s. I went upstairs to get out of my race gear and when I came down five minutes later, they were gone.
Now, it seems to me that normal people would have offered to take me along, seeing how I was only fifteen and alone for the evening. I guess they weren’t normal. I decided to make the best of it and foraged in the kitchen, which was pretty bare. I cooked up a can of pork and beans for dinner and toasted marshmallows in the fireplace for dessert. At midnight, I lifted a glass of powdered lemonade drink to the New Year, turned off the lone T.V. station from Reno that broadcast in our area, and turned in.
The kind folks who had ditched me returned noisily at about 2 am and I don’t think I said another word to them the rest of the weekend. Their thoughtlessness put an end to our loaning out the cabin to anyone but family and friends, but that was fine with me, since I had my driver’s license by the next ski season.
In subsequent years, I am sure that I attended many year-end parties, but the fact that I can’t remember most of them is telling. The New Year’s Eve that I do recall fondly took place in 1999. No, we didn’t party like the famous Prince song, but my girlfriend/housemate (now my wife) and I spent a memorable evening together. As the rest of the world hunkered down in anticipation of the technological meltdown that was sure to take place at midnight because of “Y2K” (remember how worked up everyone got over that?), we cuddled in bed.Our love-making began in the last few minutes of 1999 and ended with a bang in 2000. I'm proud to say that there were no glitches and we can claim to have had a romp that lasted over two millennia.
In recent years, we have been going over to our neighbors, the Phelps, to party. We drink too much Limoncello liqueur, crack open heaps of Dungeness crab, dip poppy-seed cake and pineapple into the chocolate fountain and kiss each other as the ball drops in Times Square.
But, even though my New Year’s Eve has gotten more joyous, it is New Year’s Day that I truly celebrate. I say good-bye to the old year - with its Christmas rush, hangovers and bloated bellies - and welcome the newness of starting over.
I go for a quiet bike ride and reflect on how nature doesn’t need any artificial milestones to mark time. The redwing blackbirds flit from cattail to cattail on Rush Creek just the same as they did the day before, and the cinnamon teal and canvasbacks float serenely on the pond as I ride by. For them, every day is a new start, every moment an affirmation of life. I breathe in the cool air and the year stretches out in front of me like untracked snow.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Love Songs and Glass
“Just an old-fashioned love song,
Comin’ down in three-part harmony.
Just on old-fashioned love song,
One I’m sure they wrote for you and me.”
For most people, that Paul Williams pop tune from 1971 is little more than elevator music. For me, however, it still hatches butterflies in my stomach.
The year was 1971, I was sixteen and spending the weekend before Christmas at Tahoe with my older brother, John, and one of his college friends. In between drinking and skiing, their job was to ferry me back and forth each morning and afternoon to Squaw Valley for ski racing practice. It had taken us forever to get up to Tahoe the previous night because a huge snowstorm had hit the area and we were driving in my mother’s 1968 Camaro, whose light rear-end made it notably squirrely on any kind of snowy surface.
The following morning, I was dropped off at Red Dog and boarded the lift, unable to see farther than the next chair. The falling snow was heavy and wet, what we used to call “Sierra Cement.” We packed down the snow between the gates and began "running gates," but the visibility was deteriorating. The only way to survive was to stay on course, no matter what. Skiing off into the foot-deep “crud” was not an option.
After a couple hours of this craziness, our coaches sent us home for the day. John and his buddy had also given up and we climbed into the Camaro for the short ride back to our cabin in Lake Forest. I was in the passenger seat and still had on my ski boots. “Old-Fashioned Love Song” was “playing on the radio” courtesy of station KTHO. We turned south onto the two-lane road that leads from Truckee to Tahoe City and drove slowly along. The wet snow had piled up along the sides of the road and in between the tire tracks, but the pavement was still visible. It was one of those tricky situations where chains didn't improve traction that much.
Somewhere near the Pffeifer House restaurant, we hit a small patch of slushy snow, where the roadway banks slightly. The car swerved a bit and John corrected the skid, which made me realize that I had forgotten to put on my seat belt. I quickly buckled in and looked up just as we suddenly slid sideways down the incline and into the opposite lane.
John struggled with the steering wheel, but the snow was deeper on this side of the road and the Camaro’s light rear-end had lost all traction. I went numb. Another car came around the corner and, seemingly in slow motion, plowed head-on into ours.
A car crash is a remarkable thing. The obscene sounds of breaking glass and loudly crumpling metal are almost instantly followed by relative calm. The radio continued to play “Love Song,” the windshield wipers kept up their now-useless beat, and steam hissed loudly from the broken radiator.
Unfortunately, my seatbelt had not been drawn tight and the slack had allowed me to lurch forward far enough to smash my forehead into the windshield. I was dazed, but not bleeding.
We forced open the doors and got out. The driver of the other car had hurt her leg and was quickly taken to Truckee Hospital. A policeman wrote my brother a ticket for driving on the wrong side of the road (well, duh). And the tow truck driver gave us a ride to the home of another of John’s friends, where we called our parents to tell them we were okay. I really don’t remember the rest of the weekend, or how we got back to Mill Valley; I was still pretty much in shock.
Back home, as I watched T.V. on Christmas morning, I ran my hand through my hair and felt something that shouldn’t be there. To my surprise, I pulled an inch-long needle of glass out of my forehead, just below the skin at the hairline. The crash came back to me in a flash and I shuddered at how close I had come to being launched through the windshield, had I not put my seat belt on at just the right moment.
I grimly wondered: Is this how we pass through life? Is there really a plan? Or are we simply dodging bullets until we finally screw up our timing and a stray shot takes us down? Then I recognized the sliver of glass for what it was – a little reminder of what didn’t happen in Tahoe. It was my favorite gift that year.
Comin’ down in three-part harmony.
Just on old-fashioned love song,
One I’m sure they wrote for you and me.”
For most people, that Paul Williams pop tune from 1971 is little more than elevator music. For me, however, it still hatches butterflies in my stomach.
The year was 1971, I was sixteen and spending the weekend before Christmas at Tahoe with my older brother, John, and one of his college friends. In between drinking and skiing, their job was to ferry me back and forth each morning and afternoon to Squaw Valley for ski racing practice. It had taken us forever to get up to Tahoe the previous night because a huge snowstorm had hit the area and we were driving in my mother’s 1968 Camaro, whose light rear-end made it notably squirrely on any kind of snowy surface.
The following morning, I was dropped off at Red Dog and boarded the lift, unable to see farther than the next chair. The falling snow was heavy and wet, what we used to call “Sierra Cement.” We packed down the snow between the gates and began "running gates," but the visibility was deteriorating. The only way to survive was to stay on course, no matter what. Skiing off into the foot-deep “crud” was not an option.
After a couple hours of this craziness, our coaches sent us home for the day. John and his buddy had also given up and we climbed into the Camaro for the short ride back to our cabin in Lake Forest. I was in the passenger seat and still had on my ski boots. “Old-Fashioned Love Song” was “playing on the radio” courtesy of station KTHO. We turned south onto the two-lane road that leads from Truckee to Tahoe City and drove slowly along. The wet snow had piled up along the sides of the road and in between the tire tracks, but the pavement was still visible. It was one of those tricky situations where chains didn't improve traction that much.
Somewhere near the Pffeifer House restaurant, we hit a small patch of slushy snow, where the roadway banks slightly. The car swerved a bit and John corrected the skid, which made me realize that I had forgotten to put on my seat belt. I quickly buckled in and looked up just as we suddenly slid sideways down the incline and into the opposite lane.
John struggled with the steering wheel, but the snow was deeper on this side of the road and the Camaro’s light rear-end had lost all traction. I went numb. Another car came around the corner and, seemingly in slow motion, plowed head-on into ours.
A car crash is a remarkable thing. The obscene sounds of breaking glass and loudly crumpling metal are almost instantly followed by relative calm. The radio continued to play “Love Song,” the windshield wipers kept up their now-useless beat, and steam hissed loudly from the broken radiator.
Unfortunately, my seatbelt had not been drawn tight and the slack had allowed me to lurch forward far enough to smash my forehead into the windshield. I was dazed, but not bleeding.
We forced open the doors and got out. The driver of the other car had hurt her leg and was quickly taken to Truckee Hospital. A policeman wrote my brother a ticket for driving on the wrong side of the road (well, duh). And the tow truck driver gave us a ride to the home of another of John’s friends, where we called our parents to tell them we were okay. I really don’t remember the rest of the weekend, or how we got back to Mill Valley; I was still pretty much in shock.
Back home, as I watched T.V. on Christmas morning, I ran my hand through my hair and felt something that shouldn’t be there. To my surprise, I pulled an inch-long needle of glass out of my forehead, just below the skin at the hairline. The crash came back to me in a flash and I shuddered at how close I had come to being launched through the windshield, had I not put my seat belt on at just the right moment.
I grimly wondered: Is this how we pass through life? Is there really a plan? Or are we simply dodging bullets until we finally screw up our timing and a stray shot takes us down? Then I recognized the sliver of glass for what it was – a little reminder of what didn’t happen in Tahoe. It was my favorite gift that year.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Martians and Dinosaurs
Parents are sometimes called upon to make incredible sacrifices. I’m not talking about working three jobs to pay for college tuition, or launching yourself in front of a speeding bus to save your child, or even donating both of your lungs. Some sacrifices require much, much more, yet we make them nonetheless.
Last night, still in the afterglow of a postponed Christmas Day celebration, as we lay about the living room burping up bubbles of too many holiday cookies and eggnog, an old Christmas movie came on the television. And when I say old, I mean old, as in something forgotten in the back of the refrigerator since 1964.
I was nine at the time and, as was often the case, my mother was my play pal for the day. She offered to take me to a movie of my choice, probably hoping for some innocuous Disney nature film. Instead, as we arrived at the Sequoia Theatre in Mill Valley on that rainy Saturday in December, she joined a secret society of other parents who were unwittingly subjected to arguably the most awful Christmas movie of all time: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
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| Picture from the comic book version of the film. |
Betty and Billy have the acting chops of a used car dealer’s grandchildren appearing in a low-budget commercial. The space helmets are constructed of flexible gas fittings and upside-down swim masks. The Martian makeup appears to have been applied by a New York bum with a dirty windshield rag. And the stunts are probably the worst ever filmed, worse even than in Batman, The Movie (1966). The only bright spots are the comic antics of Dropo, the Martian goofball who eventually takes over as Santa for the Red Planet; and the real Santa Claus, who plays it straight and actually has a decent costume. (For you trivia nuts, Pia Zadora plays the part of one of the Martian children.) Overall, I would give it a minus ten out of ten.
That my mother sat through it with me is a testimony to both her sacrificial nature and her ability to keep her lunch down. Little did I know that I would be one day be put to the parent test as well, by a purple dinosaur.
My dislike for Barney ran to loathing. I hated his voice, his plagiarized theme song, his platitudes, the fact that he was a commercialized PBS shill, and the saccharine overgrown child actors on his TV show, which exuded a cynical level of cookie-cutter multi-culturalism. For my 40th birthday, the centerpiece of the party was a big Barney piñata, which I gleefully kicked open with my cowboy boots. Barney may have loved me, but I did not love him.
But fate is a fickle friend. Three years later, I became a single father. As I navigated these new waters, I realized that I needed to be, in turns, dad, mom and play pal for my young daughter. I did everything I could to make her happy and that is how I found myself at the Northgate Mall one Friday afternoon in 1998, about to see the very first showing of Barney’s Great Adventure, The Movie.
Fortunately, the theatre wasn’t very crowded and, as the film progressed, I slowly realized there were much worse things I could be doing. To my surprise, Barney seemed to find a tolerable level on the big screen and, instead of being cloying, he was somewhat charming. The story had some interesting and silly twists. And even though the movie wasn't what I would call good, I concluded that if my three-year-old daughter wanted to watch a character whose principal message was to love everybody and follow your dreams, then I was okay with that.
The credits rolled and I applauded myself for having made a memorable cameo as The Devoted Daddy. Just as I rose to put on my jacket, Jessica turned to me and the words she spoke made my blood run cold. She said, “Daddy, can we see it again?” “You mean, right now?” I whimpered. “Yes! Please…” I almost asked her if maybe she wouldn’t prefer to see me throw myself in front of a speeding bus, but thought better of it and sat back down.
We watched the Barney Movie a second time. I survived. And then Santa gave Jessica the video for Christmas and we watched it a couple of dozen times more. Eventually, I made my peace with Barney, though I was relieved when my daughter finally moved on to Sponge Bob Squarepants, a much better role model, in my opinion.
I am not sure what is in store for Jessica as she grows up and becomes a parent, too. No doubt she will one day have her own “Barney Moment.” I just want her to know that when that humbling time comes, her grandmother up in heaven and her father, wherever I may be, will be pulling for her. Just close your eyes, Pumpkin, and keep telling yourself: It’s just a movie, it’s just a movie.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Playtime and Jail Time
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Parents among you will know what I mean. You’re at your wit’s end dealing with unruly children and the time for extreme improvisation is at hand. What you do or say may not be pretty, but if it gets the situation under control, then so be it.
My brother and I shared a room growing up, which also shared a wall with my parents’ bedroom. On Christmas Eve, we were usually sent to bed early and then my parents would wrap all the presents at once. I’m not sure why they waited so long, since it added to their stress level, but wait they did.
Naturally, we kids were not interested in going to sleep any time soon. The tantalizing crinkle of wrapping paper could be clearly heard through the wall as, I am sure, the sounds of us not settling down could be heard as well. My parents frustrated response? “If you don’t go to sleep right now, we’re going to donate your presents to the Goodwill!” Clearly they surmised that our philanthropic instincts would be trumped by our youthful avarice. Of course, they were right.
Jan Baroni, one of the neighbor kids across the street told me a few years ago that her mom had had an ace up her sleeve as well. Whenever the younger Jan had been heading for the Naughty List Hall of Fame, her exasperated mother would pick up the telephone and pretend to dial. “Hello, is the Mill Valley Orphanage? I’ve got a very bad little girl here and I was wondering if you had any room? No? Then will you please give me a call as soon as you do? Thank you!” Sheepishly, Jan admitted that she had resorted to the same ruse with her own kids on at least one occasion, so it must have been effective.
My moment as a parent came when my Jessica was only four. She had just started at the Discovery Children’s Center in Terra Linda and was having some issues moving from home day care to a more structured classroom setting. Picking her up one day, I was informed that she had bitten her teacher, not once, but twice. One look at me and she knew that Daddy was not his usual happy self. She got into her car seat on the verge of tears as I puzzled how to nip this in the bud.
First, I told her how terribly, terribly disappointed I was in her. She started bawling. When she had gotten that out of her system, I asked if she knew what a privilege was. You know, I said, something that you get to do because you’ve been good? Surprisingly, she did. Then I asked her if she knew what consequences were. She didn’t. So I explained that consequences are the result of bad behavior and they mean that privileges may be taken away. There was silence in the back seat of the pickup as she tried to process this new information. Now that I had set the table, how to serve up the appropriate consequences? It came to me in a flash.
I told her that I was going to start something called Toy Jail. As soon as we got home, she was going to pick out her five favorite toys or clothes and they were going into a box in the top of Daddy’s closet, aka Toy Jail. On each day that I got a good report from her pre-school teacher, she could reclaim one item from the box. A bad report would mean another toy back into the slammer. I asked her if she thought that was fair. With no real options, she give me a sniffled “Yes.”
When we got to the house, she went straight to her bedroom and picked out her inmates. I have to admit that I was touched by her lack of subterfuge. She took the punishment to heart and handed me her favorite stuffed bear, her favorite red sparkly “Dorothy” shoes from Target and three other cherished items. I wrote “Toy Jail” on the side of the box and Jessica watched it disappear into the uppermost regions of my closet.
Things improved markedly after that. Over the next three days, Jessica got to spring three of her close friends. But on day four, her carnivorous cravings returned. This time, however, she was more defiant than contrite when I picked her up. I reminded her that another item would have to go into Toy Jail that night.
That was when she coolly informed me that she didn’t care, she had lots of toys. But as she sat there in her car seat, staring daggers at the back of my head, she had little idea of how ruthless her warden could be. I returned her look in the rearview mirror and nonchalantly countered, “Well, remember, Sweetheart, if Toy Jail doesn’t work, there’s always – Blankie Jail.
I’d never seen a hardened scofflaw stop more quickly in her tracks. Her eyes went wide and started to brim over with tears. Nothing had ever separated her from her beloved Blankie. I left it at that, but felt fairly confident that we had had experienced a breakthrough.
Sure enough, that was the last time Jessica ever teethed on a teacher (that I know of). She’s mostly grown-up now and I have to say that her honesty and compassion put me to shame. I hope she continues to be the outstanding person that she has become. But, just in case, I am not afraid of reinstating Blankie Jail. The Supreme Court may one day condemn it as the Cruel and Unusual Punishment it is; but, in the end, a dad’s gotta do what a dad’s gotta do.
My brother and I shared a room growing up, which also shared a wall with my parents’ bedroom. On Christmas Eve, we were usually sent to bed early and then my parents would wrap all the presents at once. I’m not sure why they waited so long, since it added to their stress level, but wait they did.
Naturally, we kids were not interested in going to sleep any time soon. The tantalizing crinkle of wrapping paper could be clearly heard through the wall as, I am sure, the sounds of us not settling down could be heard as well. My parents frustrated response? “If you don’t go to sleep right now, we’re going to donate your presents to the Goodwill!” Clearly they surmised that our philanthropic instincts would be trumped by our youthful avarice. Of course, they were right.
Jan Baroni, one of the neighbor kids across the street told me a few years ago that her mom had had an ace up her sleeve as well. Whenever the younger Jan had been heading for the Naughty List Hall of Fame, her exasperated mother would pick up the telephone and pretend to dial. “Hello, is the Mill Valley Orphanage? I’ve got a very bad little girl here and I was wondering if you had any room? No? Then will you please give me a call as soon as you do? Thank you!” Sheepishly, Jan admitted that she had resorted to the same ruse with her own kids on at least one occasion, so it must have been effective.
My moment as a parent came when my Jessica was only four. She had just started at the Discovery Children’s Center in Terra Linda and was having some issues moving from home day care to a more structured classroom setting. Picking her up one day, I was informed that she had bitten her teacher, not once, but twice. One look at me and she knew that Daddy was not his usual happy self. She got into her car seat on the verge of tears as I puzzled how to nip this in the bud.
First, I told her how terribly, terribly disappointed I was in her. She started bawling. When she had gotten that out of her system, I asked if she knew what a privilege was. You know, I said, something that you get to do because you’ve been good? Surprisingly, she did. Then I asked her if she knew what consequences were. She didn’t. So I explained that consequences are the result of bad behavior and they mean that privileges may be taken away. There was silence in the back seat of the pickup as she tried to process this new information. Now that I had set the table, how to serve up the appropriate consequences? It came to me in a flash.
I told her that I was going to start something called Toy Jail. As soon as we got home, she was going to pick out her five favorite toys or clothes and they were going into a box in the top of Daddy’s closet, aka Toy Jail. On each day that I got a good report from her pre-school teacher, she could reclaim one item from the box. A bad report would mean another toy back into the slammer. I asked her if she thought that was fair. With no real options, she give me a sniffled “Yes.”
When we got to the house, she went straight to her bedroom and picked out her inmates. I have to admit that I was touched by her lack of subterfuge. She took the punishment to heart and handed me her favorite stuffed bear, her favorite red sparkly “Dorothy” shoes from Target and three other cherished items. I wrote “Toy Jail” on the side of the box and Jessica watched it disappear into the uppermost regions of my closet.
Things improved markedly after that. Over the next three days, Jessica got to spring three of her close friends. But on day four, her carnivorous cravings returned. This time, however, she was more defiant than contrite when I picked her up. I reminded her that another item would have to go into Toy Jail that night.
That was when she coolly informed me that she didn’t care, she had lots of toys. But as she sat there in her car seat, staring daggers at the back of my head, she had little idea of how ruthless her warden could be. I returned her look in the rearview mirror and nonchalantly countered, “Well, remember, Sweetheart, if Toy Jail doesn’t work, there’s always – Blankie Jail.
I’d never seen a hardened scofflaw stop more quickly in her tracks. Her eyes went wide and started to brim over with tears. Nothing had ever separated her from her beloved Blankie. I left it at that, but felt fairly confident that we had had experienced a breakthrough.
Sure enough, that was the last time Jessica ever teethed on a teacher (that I know of). She’s mostly grown-up now and I have to say that her honesty and compassion put me to shame. I hope she continues to be the outstanding person that she has become. But, just in case, I am not afraid of reinstating Blankie Jail. The Supreme Court may one day condemn it as the Cruel and Unusual Punishment it is; but, in the end, a dad’s gotta do what a dad’s gotta do.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Grandmas and Keeshonds
I baked all my Christmas sugar cookies on Monday. As I recall, when I made them for the first time I had just been graduated from college, the same year that my Grandma Lola passed away. They were made from her recipe, and had been my father’s favorite. Someone needed to carry on the family tradition, so why shouldn’t it be me? That was thirty-three years ago and I’ve made them every year since.
I can still remember my first attempt, which took place in my sister’s kitchen. The freshly-made dough stuck like glue to the rolling pin and the cutting board. I was getting nowhere and called up family friend Evelyn Gallagher for advice. She suggested lots of flour and perhaps rolling the dough out between sheets of wax paper. The wax paper was a non-starter, but the extra flour helped. I struggled through a couple of batches and then took a break, during which I put the dough in the refrigerator for an hour or so.
That did the trick and the rest of the cookies were a snap. Nowadays, my sugar cookie making is down to an art and more efficient than Santa’s Workshop. I routinely mix, bake and decorate five or six batches in a couple of hours – enough to fill six or seven tins.
Sadly, this is the first Christmas that I am not making cookies for my father, since he is having difficulty with solid food. Back in the day, I would make him a double batch, which he would store either in his bedroom closet or downstairs. He claimed that he rationed himself to one per day, but that would have surprised me, given his sweet tooth.
Grandma also made meringues, which she dolloped onto saltine crackers. It may sound like an odd combination, but the saltiness is a good counterpoint to the sweet. My wife, Pat, makes them for me on occasion and they’re one of my favorites, too.
The third baked item to come out of Grandma’s kitchen was her fudge, my brother John’s favorite. It always disappeared quickly in our house, but there was one occasion when it achieved cross-species educational value. We were spending Christmas in Tahoe and Grandma was with us. We also had a new pet, a Keeshond named L’il Dawg, and Grandma was determined to teach her how to “shake hands.”
Over and over again, a doggie treat was proffered, along with the command “shake.” Then Grandma would pick up L’il Dawg’s paw, shake it, and give her a reward. At first consideration, it appeared that our pooch was slow on the uptake. Or perhaps she was wiser than us all. Maybe she realized that the number of treats she could garner by being a bit “thick” during the training period could be substantial.
It’s like the joke where a group of kids are teasing a foreigner by offering him his choice of either a nickel or a dime. He takes the nickel each time, because it is bigger than the dime, and the kids roll over laughing at how stupid he is. Finally, a passer-by pulls the new kid aside and asks him, “Don’t you know they’re making fun of you?” To which the kid replies, “Sure, I do. But I’ve already got them to give me a dollar in nickels. How much do you think I would have made if I had chosen the dime first?”
Whether or not that was the case, L’il Dawg played her hand (paw?) well, refusing to learn the trick. That is, until Grandma started mixing a batch of fudge, stirring the bowl while sitting down in a chair near the floor heater. She soon had a captive audience and it didn’t take long for L’il Dawg to blow her cover and offer a paw in exchange for a bite of fudge. She didn't get much, because even back then we knew that too much chocolate wasn’t good for dogs.
But L'il Dawg unwittingly sold her soul (or, at least, her stomach) for a fleeting taste of the good stuff. Good girl.
I can still remember my first attempt, which took place in my sister’s kitchen. The freshly-made dough stuck like glue to the rolling pin and the cutting board. I was getting nowhere and called up family friend Evelyn Gallagher for advice. She suggested lots of flour and perhaps rolling the dough out between sheets of wax paper. The wax paper was a non-starter, but the extra flour helped. I struggled through a couple of batches and then took a break, during which I put the dough in the refrigerator for an hour or so.
That did the trick and the rest of the cookies were a snap. Nowadays, my sugar cookie making is down to an art and more efficient than Santa’s Workshop. I routinely mix, bake and decorate five or six batches in a couple of hours – enough to fill six or seven tins.
Sadly, this is the first Christmas that I am not making cookies for my father, since he is having difficulty with solid food. Back in the day, I would make him a double batch, which he would store either in his bedroom closet or downstairs. He claimed that he rationed himself to one per day, but that would have surprised me, given his sweet tooth.
Grandma also made meringues, which she dolloped onto saltine crackers. It may sound like an odd combination, but the saltiness is a good counterpoint to the sweet. My wife, Pat, makes them for me on occasion and they’re one of my favorites, too.
The third baked item to come out of Grandma’s kitchen was her fudge, my brother John’s favorite. It always disappeared quickly in our house, but there was one occasion when it achieved cross-species educational value. We were spending Christmas in Tahoe and Grandma was with us. We also had a new pet, a Keeshond named L’il Dawg, and Grandma was determined to teach her how to “shake hands.”
Over and over again, a doggie treat was proffered, along with the command “shake.” Then Grandma would pick up L’il Dawg’s paw, shake it, and give her a reward. At first consideration, it appeared that our pooch was slow on the uptake. Or perhaps she was wiser than us all. Maybe she realized that the number of treats she could garner by being a bit “thick” during the training period could be substantial.
It’s like the joke where a group of kids are teasing a foreigner by offering him his choice of either a nickel or a dime. He takes the nickel each time, because it is bigger than the dime, and the kids roll over laughing at how stupid he is. Finally, a passer-by pulls the new kid aside and asks him, “Don’t you know they’re making fun of you?” To which the kid replies, “Sure, I do. But I’ve already got them to give me a dollar in nickels. How much do you think I would have made if I had chosen the dime first?”
Whether or not that was the case, L’il Dawg played her hand (paw?) well, refusing to learn the trick. That is, until Grandma started mixing a batch of fudge, stirring the bowl while sitting down in a chair near the floor heater. She soon had a captive audience and it didn’t take long for L’il Dawg to blow her cover and offer a paw in exchange for a bite of fudge. She didn't get much, because even back then we knew that too much chocolate wasn’t good for dogs.
But L'il Dawg unwittingly sold her soul (or, at least, her stomach) for a fleeting taste of the good stuff. Good girl.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Pie Plates and Carpet Sweepers
My Aunt Kathleen finally moved out of the Magowan family home on Hopmeadow Road in Simsbury Connecticut this month. Her house had been built by Ensign-Bickford, the company my grandfather had worked for most of his life, and she had lived in it since high school. I suppose it was a “company house,” but a very attractive one nonetheless, suitable for their head accountant. Kathleen is now comfortably settled in a nice retirement community on the bluff above the town, but another chapter in our family’s history has been shuttered.
I am sending her a photograph that I took during a visit this past summer. That, and the very cold weather we experienced this morning, got me to thinking about the only Christmas my family spent in Simsbury, back in 1960. I have been musing on the subject, trying to decide which Christmas was my all-time favorite, and that is the one that keeps rising to the top.
The next morning, we awoke to a proverbial Winter Wonderland. Being only five, most of what went on around me is forgotten, but certain details remain and the overall memory is as clear as a bell. We went sledding on the hill behind the house, now overgrown with bushes. My dad rode with me and helped me steer. We strung popcorn and cranberry garlands and I learned that they are very hard to thread without the needle splitting them. My father made a beautiful star for the top of the tree out of an aluminum pie plate. (Anyone remember that they used to emboss a star shape on some pie plates for just that purpose?) I got to push around my grandmother’s old fashioned carpet-sweeper. We discovered the secret stairway that leads from the upstairs bedrooms directly to the downstairs kitchen. The only thing I didn’t care for was that we had to go to Aunt Kathleen’s church on Christmas morning, before we were allowed to open any presents.
Ah, presents. I recall two in particular. The first was a picture puzzle of the United States, the same country I had just crossed for the first time. I lay with my cheek to the rough wool carpet and tried to imagine flying over my puzzle. The second was a big picture book of birds. I sat on the couch and poured over drawings of brilliantly-colored hummingbirds and exotic tropical fowl that I would never in my life see in person. Fifty years gone by and I can still remember the joy of those gifts. It was the perfect Christmas.
A couple of years ago, I had a discussion about Christmas with my good friend, Jim Phelps. He was having a hard time getting excited about the season at all and feeling rather cynical. It was then that I had an epiphany: As adults, we spend a great deal of time trying to relive the Christmases of our childhood, like that one in Simsbury. We cook and bake and shop and decorate and throw money at the holiday as if we can bribe it into being magical again. But I think the reason we fail is simple: When you are small, Christmas just happens.
Think about it. Thanksgiving is over and your only task as a kid is to make construction paper Christmas cards for your parents. Then school closes down for winter break and everything gets set in motion. The tree appears and you get to hang ornaments on it. Your dad plays his old Christmas albums on the phonograph and the sound of the Dartmouth college glee club fills the air. There are cookies to eat and candy canes to lick. You go to church on Christmas Eve, watch a Nativity pageant and hold a candle while singing “Silent Night.” When you wake up the next morning, there are stockings to explore, more good things to eat, and an orgy of presents to unwrap and then play with. And whether or not Santa Claus actually contributed to any of the largesse, you have no other responsibility other than to enjoy.
You didn’t pay for the tree (always surprisingly more expensive than the year before), nor did you wrestle it into the impossible tree stand. You didn’t bake the cookies, roast the turkey, or slave over the hors d’oeuvres. You didn’t shop for hours, fill the stockings, or wrap the presents. You didn’t drive everyone around in the slushy snow or build the manger for the church. It all just happened – a Christmas miracle as far as you are concerned.
It’s not surprising that we can’t recapture all that as grown-ups. The best we can do is to go through the preparation, just like our parents, and experience the result vicariously through our children’s eyes. Now that my daughter is in high school, even that aspect is gone.
Someday, I’d like to try an experiment that might seem sacrilegious. I want to travel to a snowy winter resort and spend Christmas there. I won’t hang lights, I won’t cook or clean or entertain or feed the pets or add water to the tree stand each day. I won’t try to unclog the kitchen drain on Christmas morning (a regular tradition at the Clark household). I won’t wrap or tie bows or worry about taking out the trash or taking down the tree.
Instead, I’ll enjoy the decorations in the hotel lobby and the holiday music being piped over the sound system. I’ll go for long walks and watch everyone else bustling to and fro. Then, the day before Christmas, we will each get a hundred dollar bill and go out shopping. No credit cards allowed and nothing remotely practical is to be bought – books, games, scarves, toys only. Everything is to be wrapped by the store clerks.
Then we will sit down to a gourmet dinner in a local restaurant and drink as much as we want before toddling back to our room to dream of sugar plums and Santa Claus. The following morning, we will open presents in bed and, much later, enjoy the hotel’s complimentary breakfast buffet.
That, to me, might go a long way to recapturing the feeling of being five again. Christmas will, once more, just happen around me. And if the hotel staff are kind enough to let me play with their carpet sweeper in the lobby, well, then everything will be perfect.
I am sending her a photograph that I took during a visit this past summer. That, and the very cold weather we experienced this morning, got me to thinking about the only Christmas my family spent in Simsbury, back in 1960. I have been musing on the subject, trying to decide which Christmas was my all-time favorite, and that is the one that keeps rising to the top.
Our trip back East started out auspiciously, aboard a helicopter that took us from the heliport in Sausalito to SFO. It ended less so on a commuter flight from New York to Hartford in a blizzard. Our plane bucked and bumped all the way, as I kept a barf bag at hand. (BTW: Is there any other commonly-used term that sounds as comical as “barf bag”?)
The next morning, we awoke to a proverbial Winter Wonderland. Being only five, most of what went on around me is forgotten, but certain details remain and the overall memory is as clear as a bell. We went sledding on the hill behind the house, now overgrown with bushes. My dad rode with me and helped me steer. We strung popcorn and cranberry garlands and I learned that they are very hard to thread without the needle splitting them. My father made a beautiful star for the top of the tree out of an aluminum pie plate. (Anyone remember that they used to emboss a star shape on some pie plates for just that purpose?) I got to push around my grandmother’s old fashioned carpet-sweeper. We discovered the secret stairway that leads from the upstairs bedrooms directly to the downstairs kitchen. The only thing I didn’t care for was that we had to go to Aunt Kathleen’s church on Christmas morning, before we were allowed to open any presents.
Ah, presents. I recall two in particular. The first was a picture puzzle of the United States, the same country I had just crossed for the first time. I lay with my cheek to the rough wool carpet and tried to imagine flying over my puzzle. The second was a big picture book of birds. I sat on the couch and poured over drawings of brilliantly-colored hummingbirds and exotic tropical fowl that I would never in my life see in person. Fifty years gone by and I can still remember the joy of those gifts. It was the perfect Christmas.
A couple of years ago, I had a discussion about Christmas with my good friend, Jim Phelps. He was having a hard time getting excited about the season at all and feeling rather cynical. It was then that I had an epiphany: As adults, we spend a great deal of time trying to relive the Christmases of our childhood, like that one in Simsbury. We cook and bake and shop and decorate and throw money at the holiday as if we can bribe it into being magical again. But I think the reason we fail is simple: When you are small, Christmas just happens.
Think about it. Thanksgiving is over and your only task as a kid is to make construction paper Christmas cards for your parents. Then school closes down for winter break and everything gets set in motion. The tree appears and you get to hang ornaments on it. Your dad plays his old Christmas albums on the phonograph and the sound of the Dartmouth college glee club fills the air. There are cookies to eat and candy canes to lick. You go to church on Christmas Eve, watch a Nativity pageant and hold a candle while singing “Silent Night.” When you wake up the next morning, there are stockings to explore, more good things to eat, and an orgy of presents to unwrap and then play with. And whether or not Santa Claus actually contributed to any of the largesse, you have no other responsibility other than to enjoy.
You didn’t pay for the tree (always surprisingly more expensive than the year before), nor did you wrestle it into the impossible tree stand. You didn’t bake the cookies, roast the turkey, or slave over the hors d’oeuvres. You didn’t shop for hours, fill the stockings, or wrap the presents. You didn’t drive everyone around in the slushy snow or build the manger for the church. It all just happened – a Christmas miracle as far as you are concerned.
It’s not surprising that we can’t recapture all that as grown-ups. The best we can do is to go through the preparation, just like our parents, and experience the result vicariously through our children’s eyes. Now that my daughter is in high school, even that aspect is gone.
Someday, I’d like to try an experiment that might seem sacrilegious. I want to travel to a snowy winter resort and spend Christmas there. I won’t hang lights, I won’t cook or clean or entertain or feed the pets or add water to the tree stand each day. I won’t try to unclog the kitchen drain on Christmas morning (a regular tradition at the Clark household). I won’t wrap or tie bows or worry about taking out the trash or taking down the tree.
Instead, I’ll enjoy the decorations in the hotel lobby and the holiday music being piped over the sound system. I’ll go for long walks and watch everyone else bustling to and fro. Then, the day before Christmas, we will each get a hundred dollar bill and go out shopping. No credit cards allowed and nothing remotely practical is to be bought – books, games, scarves, toys only. Everything is to be wrapped by the store clerks.
Then we will sit down to a gourmet dinner in a local restaurant and drink as much as we want before toddling back to our room to dream of sugar plums and Santa Claus. The following morning, we will open presents in bed and, much later, enjoy the hotel’s complimentary breakfast buffet.
That, to me, might go a long way to recapturing the feeling of being five again. Christmas will, once more, just happen around me. And if the hotel staff are kind enough to let me play with their carpet sweeper in the lobby, well, then everything will be perfect.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Bows and Arrows
As part of preparing for my role in A Christmas Carol, I did some research on life in early Victorian England. As you might expect, living conditions among the poor were appalling, especially when it concerned child labor. Children were often forced into factory work as young as three years old. They would scuttle about beneath the madly-whirring looms to pick up stray bobbins and push mine carts in dangerous and cramped tunnels. Reading about them, I felt obvious compassion. But I also felt kinship since I, too, lost part of my childhood because of lax child labor laws.
Many who know me also know that I love to organize things. The office supply cabinet is a mess? I’m on it. The prop room at the theatre is a potential super-fund site? I’ll take care of it. But that tendency goes back much further. To my mother’s dismay, I was always re-organizing her spice drawer. Sometimes alphabetically, sometimes, by color, sometimes by – well it doesn’t matter – she never knew where to find anything she needed. The books in my room were arranged by size or shape, never by author; they looked neater that way. This is not to imply that I have OCD. No, I am perfectly comfortable sitting amidst chaos and I can sleep peacefully knowing that the sink is full of dishes. It’s just that, sometimes, a guy’s just gotta organize.
Back to my lost childhood. Early on, I developed a knack for gift-wrapping, which is just another form of organizing. Something about it – the pretty paper, the bows, the geometry of finding an efficient way to cover oddly-shaped items – made it a satisfying challenge. But where I saw amusement, my parents saw opportunity. It started innocently enough, with me helping out in a pinch on Christmas Eve, but it came to a head one year while spending the holiday at our Tahoe cabin. I was only 10, but I was put to work wrapping all of the presents for the entire family.
While my brother and sister threw snowballs outside, my father watched TV in the living room and my mother made Old Fashioned cocktails in the kitchen (see Bourbon and Bitters, September 2010), I sat upstairs on the floor of the unheated master bedroom and wrapped an endless stream of presents. The shiny paper sliced open my delicate forearms. Scotch tape congealed painfully under my fingernails. The curling ribbon twined its tentacles around my wrists and threatened to drag me under the bed, to be eaten alive by dust-bunnies.
But I kept at it, working in a fugue state, surviving on tortillas and jam slid under the closed door by my sympathetic grandmother. Each morning, I could hear my family leave to go skiing; then return in the late afternoon full of laughter. Days and weeks passed. I suppose I could have tried to escape, but I was sure my gaolers would be waiting outside the door in anticipation of just such a mutiny. What had begun as a beguiling hobby had turned into a cruel death march.
I slowly made my way through the bags of unwrapped gifts bearing the names of my mother and father, my brother and sister, my grandma, and even the family dog. I finished wrapping the last chew toy and then reached for the next bag – the one with my name on it. That was when I finally snapped. I had reached a tipping point – I would not wrap my own Christmas presents.
Slipping out of the room quietly, I tiptoed down the hallway, trying to distribute my weight on the outside edges of the floorboards to keep them from creaking. Then I peeked around the corner into the living room. They were all there. Thus trapped, I decided to brazen it out and nonchalantly continued down the staircase. “Where have you been?” asked my sister. I mumbled a reply. “Would you like some eggnog?” asked my mother. “You’ve been up there for over an hour. You must be starved.”
An hour! My time-sense had been altered by hallucinogenic fumes from the Sharpie pens I had used to write out gift tags. I rejoined my family reluctantly, unsure of how to behave in this Brave New Post-Gift-Wrapping World. It would take time to rehabilitate. The eggnog was a start.
That was the last Christmas that I wrapped gifts for the entire family. Like a teenager who has gotten a summer job at an ice cream parlor, I had had my fill of spumoni. The thrill of the bow was gone.
These days, I am getting in the habit of wrapping gifts as soon as I bring them home, to avoid the Christmas Eve rush. But on those rare occasions when I have something wrapped in the department store, it feels like being shot through with an arrow. I watch them work ever so efficiently with their waist-high tables, their wrapping paper and ribbon fed from long metal spools, their razor-sharp shears, and think about what might have been.
Had I not been burned out so early on the Wrapping Game, I might have made it to the pros. I had the talent, I had the initiative. Damn it, I had the moves. It was just a case of too much, too soon. And for that I place the blame firmly where it belongs – my parents.
Many who know me also know that I love to organize things. The office supply cabinet is a mess? I’m on it. The prop room at the theatre is a potential super-fund site? I’ll take care of it. But that tendency goes back much further. To my mother’s dismay, I was always re-organizing her spice drawer. Sometimes alphabetically, sometimes, by color, sometimes by – well it doesn’t matter – she never knew where to find anything she needed. The books in my room were arranged by size or shape, never by author; they looked neater that way. This is not to imply that I have OCD. No, I am perfectly comfortable sitting amidst chaos and I can sleep peacefully knowing that the sink is full of dishes. It’s just that, sometimes, a guy’s just gotta organize.
Back to my lost childhood. Early on, I developed a knack for gift-wrapping, which is just another form of organizing. Something about it – the pretty paper, the bows, the geometry of finding an efficient way to cover oddly-shaped items – made it a satisfying challenge. But where I saw amusement, my parents saw opportunity. It started innocently enough, with me helping out in a pinch on Christmas Eve, but it came to a head one year while spending the holiday at our Tahoe cabin. I was only 10, but I was put to work wrapping all of the presents for the entire family.
While my brother and sister threw snowballs outside, my father watched TV in the living room and my mother made Old Fashioned cocktails in the kitchen (see Bourbon and Bitters, September 2010), I sat upstairs on the floor of the unheated master bedroom and wrapped an endless stream of presents. The shiny paper sliced open my delicate forearms. Scotch tape congealed painfully under my fingernails. The curling ribbon twined its tentacles around my wrists and threatened to drag me under the bed, to be eaten alive by dust-bunnies.
But I kept at it, working in a fugue state, surviving on tortillas and jam slid under the closed door by my sympathetic grandmother. Each morning, I could hear my family leave to go skiing; then return in the late afternoon full of laughter. Days and weeks passed. I suppose I could have tried to escape, but I was sure my gaolers would be waiting outside the door in anticipation of just such a mutiny. What had begun as a beguiling hobby had turned into a cruel death march.
I slowly made my way through the bags of unwrapped gifts bearing the names of my mother and father, my brother and sister, my grandma, and even the family dog. I finished wrapping the last chew toy and then reached for the next bag – the one with my name on it. That was when I finally snapped. I had reached a tipping point – I would not wrap my own Christmas presents.
Slipping out of the room quietly, I tiptoed down the hallway, trying to distribute my weight on the outside edges of the floorboards to keep them from creaking. Then I peeked around the corner into the living room. They were all there. Thus trapped, I decided to brazen it out and nonchalantly continued down the staircase. “Where have you been?” asked my sister. I mumbled a reply. “Would you like some eggnog?” asked my mother. “You’ve been up there for over an hour. You must be starved.”
An hour! My time-sense had been altered by hallucinogenic fumes from the Sharpie pens I had used to write out gift tags. I rejoined my family reluctantly, unsure of how to behave in this Brave New Post-Gift-Wrapping World. It would take time to rehabilitate. The eggnog was a start.
That was the last Christmas that I wrapped gifts for the entire family. Like a teenager who has gotten a summer job at an ice cream parlor, I had had my fill of spumoni. The thrill of the bow was gone.
These days, I am getting in the habit of wrapping gifts as soon as I bring them home, to avoid the Christmas Eve rush. But on those rare occasions when I have something wrapped in the department store, it feels like being shot through with an arrow. I watch them work ever so efficiently with their waist-high tables, their wrapping paper and ribbon fed from long metal spools, their razor-sharp shears, and think about what might have been.
Had I not been burned out so early on the Wrapping Game, I might have made it to the pros. I had the talent, I had the initiative. Damn it, I had the moves. It was just a case of too much, too soon. And for that I place the blame firmly where it belongs – my parents.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Darkness and Lights
We went to see Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice last night, presented by the Ross Valley Players in their Barn theatre. (Excellent production, by the way.) It was the only possible performance that did not overlap with any of Jessica and my appearances in A Christmas Carol at Novato Theater Company. On the way there, she kept asking me where the theatre was located. Despite having been there dozens of times as a little girl, she just couldn’t place it in her mind.
When Jessica was just three, my then-wife Beth returned from a weekend seminar at Esalen Institute with the news that she wanted a divorce. We had been going through a rocky patch, but I still had had hope. Her announcement put an end to that fantasy, and her timing could not have been worse. I was scheduled within the hour to start rehearsals for Dancing at Lughnasa, my directorial debut at RVP.
Written by Brian Friel, Lughnasa is the story of a Irishman, Michael, who takes us back to the ruins of his childhood home in fictional Ballybeg to recount a significant year in his life. It is also the story of a family that is coming apart at the seams – like mine was at that moment.
Arriving at the theatre that evening, I gathered the cast and then felt the need to explain my current emotional state, lest I fail to hold myself together at some point. Then we dug into this amazing script. Sometimes you have to search for meaning in the text of a play, or even supply it where it does not exist, but Friel is on a different level as a playwright. Layer upon layer were revealed to us during rehearsal and we drank it up like nectar.
Within a couple of weeks, Beth moved into her own apartment and I began dealing with the reality of shared custody. I hopefully supposed that Jessica would be able to accompany me to rehearsals and entertain herself with toys and books. Unfortunately, it would be couple of years before she reached that level of independence. While she was content most of the time, I often had to stop proceedings to attend to her needs and wants. The cast was sympathetic for a while, but then let me know gently that they weren’t getting my full attention. Of course they were right, and I arranged for baby-sitting for the remainder of the rehearsal period.
I redoubled my efforts, and I don’t think there is another play that I have directed where I have done half as much work on characterization, historical research, dramaturgy, and collaboration with designers. I poured my broken heart into Lughnasa as if, by stopping, the dam might burst and the reality of my marital disaster would flood in.
Sometimes in theatre you just get everything right. The set works, there isn’t a false note in the cast, and all that you imagined appears magically on stage. Lughnasa was one of those productions. One director friend said that it was the best show she had seen at The Barn “…since, well, forever.” I wish I could take all the credit for its success, but I am happy just to have been a part of such a talented team.
Given my circumstances at home, I found it difficult to watch every single performance. Some evenings, I would take long walks down into the town of Ross and through the Marin Art and Garden center, contemplating my past, my present and my future. Then I would return for some of my favorite scenes, right before intermission. Even still, I loved that production and our wonderful cast and clung to them like a lifeline.
All plays eventually come to an end, as do some marriages. We struck the set and I reluctantly moved on. I decided that what my daughter needed, more than anything, was an amicable divorce and I worked hard to make that happen. I am proud to say that Beth and I have succeeded as parents, where we may have once failed as a couple, and have remained close friends.
Driving home from the play last night, I took the route down the Miracle Mile in San Rafael that I used to take when Jessica and I came home from rehearsals, thirteen years ago. When we turned onto Fourth Street, decorated with holiday lights on all the downtown trees, it all came back for her in a rush.
She remembered how much she used to love the way those strings of white lights combined with the red and green traffic signals to create an unexpectedly beautiful Christmas scene. Then she remembered exploring the backstage at The Barn and the stuffed bear she found upstairs during one rehearsal. The one with the yellow bird on its hat, she recalled. I told her that those are most likely some of her earliest childhood memories.
It’s notable that she should remember almost nothing of her mother’s and my divorce, or of her struggling to get my attention during our long rehearsals. I suppose life is like that – we get to choose whether or not to carry all of life’s pains and disappointments in our hearts. That is what the character of Michael learns in Dancing at Lughnasa, when he goes back to visit his childhood.
How much better to recall the joy of being bundled up in your car seat and watching the pretty lights on main street pass by as your Daddy drives you home in the rain; then pretending to fall asleep, just as you get there, so that he has to carry you in his arms to your bed, where the bear with the bird on his hat awaits. Much, much better.
When Jessica was just three, my then-wife Beth returned from a weekend seminar at Esalen Institute with the news that she wanted a divorce. We had been going through a rocky patch, but I still had had hope. Her announcement put an end to that fantasy, and her timing could not have been worse. I was scheduled within the hour to start rehearsals for Dancing at Lughnasa, my directorial debut at RVP.
Written by Brian Friel, Lughnasa is the story of a Irishman, Michael, who takes us back to the ruins of his childhood home in fictional Ballybeg to recount a significant year in his life. It is also the story of a family that is coming apart at the seams – like mine was at that moment.
Arriving at the theatre that evening, I gathered the cast and then felt the need to explain my current emotional state, lest I fail to hold myself together at some point. Then we dug into this amazing script. Sometimes you have to search for meaning in the text of a play, or even supply it where it does not exist, but Friel is on a different level as a playwright. Layer upon layer were revealed to us during rehearsal and we drank it up like nectar.
Within a couple of weeks, Beth moved into her own apartment and I began dealing with the reality of shared custody. I hopefully supposed that Jessica would be able to accompany me to rehearsals and entertain herself with toys and books. Unfortunately, it would be couple of years before she reached that level of independence. While she was content most of the time, I often had to stop proceedings to attend to her needs and wants. The cast was sympathetic for a while, but then let me know gently that they weren’t getting my full attention. Of course they were right, and I arranged for baby-sitting for the remainder of the rehearsal period.
I redoubled my efforts, and I don’t think there is another play that I have directed where I have done half as much work on characterization, historical research, dramaturgy, and collaboration with designers. I poured my broken heart into Lughnasa as if, by stopping, the dam might burst and the reality of my marital disaster would flood in.
Sometimes in theatre you just get everything right. The set works, there isn’t a false note in the cast, and all that you imagined appears magically on stage. Lughnasa was one of those productions. One director friend said that it was the best show she had seen at The Barn “…since, well, forever.” I wish I could take all the credit for its success, but I am happy just to have been a part of such a talented team.
Given my circumstances at home, I found it difficult to watch every single performance. Some evenings, I would take long walks down into the town of Ross and through the Marin Art and Garden center, contemplating my past, my present and my future. Then I would return for some of my favorite scenes, right before intermission. Even still, I loved that production and our wonderful cast and clung to them like a lifeline.
All plays eventually come to an end, as do some marriages. We struck the set and I reluctantly moved on. I decided that what my daughter needed, more than anything, was an amicable divorce and I worked hard to make that happen. I am proud to say that Beth and I have succeeded as parents, where we may have once failed as a couple, and have remained close friends.
Driving home from the play last night, I took the route down the Miracle Mile in San Rafael that I used to take when Jessica and I came home from rehearsals, thirteen years ago. When we turned onto Fourth Street, decorated with holiday lights on all the downtown trees, it all came back for her in a rush.
She remembered how much she used to love the way those strings of white lights combined with the red and green traffic signals to create an unexpectedly beautiful Christmas scene. Then she remembered exploring the backstage at The Barn and the stuffed bear she found upstairs during one rehearsal. The one with the yellow bird on its hat, she recalled. I told her that those are most likely some of her earliest childhood memories.
It’s notable that she should remember almost nothing of her mother’s and my divorce, or of her struggling to get my attention during our long rehearsals. I suppose life is like that – we get to choose whether or not to carry all of life’s pains and disappointments in our hearts. That is what the character of Michael learns in Dancing at Lughnasa, when he goes back to visit his childhood.
How much better to recall the joy of being bundled up in your car seat and watching the pretty lights on main street pass by as your Daddy drives you home in the rain; then pretending to fall asleep, just as you get there, so that he has to carry you in his arms to your bed, where the bear with the bird on his hat awaits. Much, much better.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Leaves and Lessons
We had a fairly robust rainstorm last night, with plenty of wind. As I drove down Rowland Boulevard this morning, yellow leaves from the mulberry trees made neat circles on the green lawns and lay in runnels along the gutters and between traffic lanes, like snow drifts seen through amber ski goggles. The fallen leaves and the red of the Japanese maple in our front yard both reminded me of one of my favorite experiences at Strawberry Point Elementary.
It’s funny that I remember so little of actual instruction in grammar school. I am sure I must have learned something. But what I do recall is all the stuff in between – dodge ball during P.E., the clamor of children’s voices in the hall, being read to by Mr. Womack, our principal, playing Heads down Seven Up during rainy day recesses, and listening to the National School Broadcast.
I can’t speak for subsequent generations, but when I was in first through fifth grade, back in the 1960s, our teachers would often give us a break from learning. We would draw pictures while classical music, provided by the NSB played over the tinny speaker that was mounted high on the wall in each classroom. Now that I am at the other end of the adult-child spectrum, I realize that it wasn’t just us kids who were getting a break – teachers need some downtime, too.
My favorite thing to draw was autumn leaves, like the ones I saw this morning. I would make a brown tree trunk, add some branches and then spend the rest of my time coloring yellow and orange and red foliage. I sometimes even added a few green ones that hadn’t turned color yet, just to keep it real.
Often, we had a theme to guide our artwork. My favorite was Columbus Day. Spanish caravels with square-rigged masts, lots of rigging and billowing white sails were a specialty of mine. A banner flying atop the highest mast completed the picture.
Wait a minute. Now that I think about it, there was one part of actual instruction that I do remember – the SRA reading program. In our second grade classroom, we had a rainbow library of color-coded booklets, not unlike those multi-colored leaves I loved so well. The competition among the top readers was fierce as we worked our way up from level to level and completed the accompanying, color-coded worksheets. I was a pretty voracious reader, but even I couldn’t keep up with my best friend Janet Sullivan.
The developers of the program were clever to give each level a different hue. You could see at a glance how you were progressing compared to your classmates. I suppose the downside was that if you were mired at a lower level, everyone knew about it. But that didn’t concern me. As I answered the grammar, spelling and vocabulary questions, I kept an eye on Janet. I always seemed to be a shade behind.
I can still remember finally making it to the purple booklets– the highest in the reading set. I gritted my teeth as Janet finished first, but soon after I was done, too. I marked the achievement off in my progress book and looked around. I don’t know what I expected to happen, but a ticker-tape parade with me riding in a presidential convertible seemed the most likely possibility. With the distinctive sound of second graders languidly turning pages in the background, I approached Miss Edson’s desk and asked what I should do next, waiting with bated breath. She pointed to the bookshelf and indicated that I should pick out something and continue reading.
Continue reading? Just any old book? How could I? That would be like telling an Olympic gold medalist to go play on the jungle gym, just for fun. I wasn’t ready to retire from the world of competitive reading. Not yet. Not while I was in top form. I hadn’t even tested positive for comprehension-enhancing substances (though, admittedly, they did find miniscule traces of wax from the milk cartons in my urine sample). In short, I just wasn’t ready for this unexpected hiatus.
Fortunately, a new competition arose within the month. We embarked on a class-wide Let’s-see-how-many-books-you-can-read-this-semester Thingie. It would have to do.
Alas, despite starting strong, I soon lost heart. I couldn’t see the point in just “putting up numbers.” Where was the validation? How could you tell if someone was merely checking books out of the library and pretending to read them? I had my suspicions, though I could never act on them without hard proof, which was nearly impossible to come by in those days. The era of irrefutable out-of-competition Vocab testing was still decades away. Without assurance that I was reading against competitors who were “clean,” I slowly trailed off.
Thankfully, I had an oasis of solace that I had forgotten in the chaos of the Second Grade Reading Scandal, as it would be known in later years. I went back to drawing sailing ships and autumn leaves as I listened to classical music provided by our good friends at the National School Broadcast. I was at peace with my crayons in hand; reading could wait.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Windows and Candles
As Christmas time approaches, my blogging is dredging up scads of childhood memories. That should come as no surprise to me, since Christmas looms pretty large on most children’s calendars. December 1st, today is the day that the Advent Calendar would have been taped onto the window by the dining room table in our home on South Knoll Road. Its arrival always signaled the countdown to the holiest of holies.
I loved the Advent calendar. It kept my avarice at bay, since each newly-opened window revealed a virtual present: a wagon, a bike, a toy soldier, a drum, a ball. It didn’t matter that the gifts couldn’t be played with. I knew that they were only promissory notes, to be held in my imagination until the real things could be unwrapped on Christmas morning.
I favored calendars that showed glittery scenes of old-timey towns or European locales. Not for me the ones where each day revealed a chocolate. We tried that once and one of the candies actually had a worm in it, which quickly ended the experiment. Nope. It had to be glitter, and the more the better. The downside was that it often obscured the little numbers, which were already devilishly hard to decipher.
Naturally, we three children took turns at the important task of prying open the little windows, usually resorting to a dull table knife to lift the corner. It was an important task each day. The morning light would shine through the translucent image like a miniature stained glass window in our cathedral of anticipation. Naturally the big double door for Christmas Day was the most cherished, since it always had a nativity scene – a brief reminder of what the season is supposed to be all about.
We tried to get the tradition started with my daughter, Jessica. But the fact of her being shuttled back and forth weekly as part of our shared custody arrangement took away the day-to-day continuity required to sustain interest. Had I thought of it earlier, I would have created a Harry Potter-themed Advent calendar. That would have captured her loyalty, surely.
After the calendar went up and the tree was installed in the corner of the living room, the decorations had to be brought up from the basement. Everything Christmas-related was kept in one of my father’s old army trunks, beneath the shelves of suitcases. The trunk always smelled of scented candles that my parents had brought back from Germany, where my father had been stationed after World War II. One was striped like a candy cane and as thick as my arm, and the other was cream-colored, with colored insets of wax. They got a little beat-up over the years, and I couldn’t really tell you exactly what they smelled of, but their scent epitomized Christmas and took me on an imaginary journey to a country that was impossibly far away and before my time.
Also before my time, were the decorations that nestled in tissue paper in carefully divided boxes. These had come from Germany, too, and were precious beyond gold. Naturally, they had to be placed high on the tree, above careless play, curious cat paws and swishing dog tails. There were blown-glass figures, intricate beaded stars, globes that enclosed little scenes, and glass birds that flew among the highest branches.
The newer ornaments had been purchased with little hands in mind. Dime-a-dozen glass balls, plastic figures, and metal stars that could be accidentally bent and re-shaped, were hung on the lowest branches. In fact, until we could reach the higher limbs, our tree was decidedly more decorated on the bottom half. My father would always put the delicate German angel on the top.
The scented candles would be set out on little saucers, never to be lit, my father would hang his favorite print of a Christmas elf bringing bowls of food to his cat and dog, and the decoration of our house would be complete. We never went overboard in the festive department.
Our work done, we would celebrate with eggnog, cookies and peppermint ice cream and admire our new tree, which was always the best that we had ever had.
My father sold the family house three years ago, to a nice family with two small children. I wonder if they put their tree in the same living room corner? And I wonder if they also have an Advent calendar on the window and a trunk in the basement for their Christmas things?
It seems funny that someone else should be celebrating Christmas in the house that had been built for us, back in 1954. I hope they appreciate that their new home has a long tradition of holiday cheer. In many ways, and especially at this time of year, I am still there.
I loved the Advent calendar. It kept my avarice at bay, since each newly-opened window revealed a virtual present: a wagon, a bike, a toy soldier, a drum, a ball. It didn’t matter that the gifts couldn’t be played with. I knew that they were only promissory notes, to be held in my imagination until the real things could be unwrapped on Christmas morning.
I favored calendars that showed glittery scenes of old-timey towns or European locales. Not for me the ones where each day revealed a chocolate. We tried that once and one of the candies actually had a worm in it, which quickly ended the experiment. Nope. It had to be glitter, and the more the better. The downside was that it often obscured the little numbers, which were already devilishly hard to decipher.
Naturally, we three children took turns at the important task of prying open the little windows, usually resorting to a dull table knife to lift the corner. It was an important task each day. The morning light would shine through the translucent image like a miniature stained glass window in our cathedral of anticipation. Naturally the big double door for Christmas Day was the most cherished, since it always had a nativity scene – a brief reminder of what the season is supposed to be all about.
We tried to get the tradition started with my daughter, Jessica. But the fact of her being shuttled back and forth weekly as part of our shared custody arrangement took away the day-to-day continuity required to sustain interest. Had I thought of it earlier, I would have created a Harry Potter-themed Advent calendar. That would have captured her loyalty, surely.
After the calendar went up and the tree was installed in the corner of the living room, the decorations had to be brought up from the basement. Everything Christmas-related was kept in one of my father’s old army trunks, beneath the shelves of suitcases. The trunk always smelled of scented candles that my parents had brought back from Germany, where my father had been stationed after World War II. One was striped like a candy cane and as thick as my arm, and the other was cream-colored, with colored insets of wax. They got a little beat-up over the years, and I couldn’t really tell you exactly what they smelled of, but their scent epitomized Christmas and took me on an imaginary journey to a country that was impossibly far away and before my time.
Also before my time, were the decorations that nestled in tissue paper in carefully divided boxes. These had come from Germany, too, and were precious beyond gold. Naturally, they had to be placed high on the tree, above careless play, curious cat paws and swishing dog tails. There were blown-glass figures, intricate beaded stars, globes that enclosed little scenes, and glass birds that flew among the highest branches.
The newer ornaments had been purchased with little hands in mind. Dime-a-dozen glass balls, plastic figures, and metal stars that could be accidentally bent and re-shaped, were hung on the lowest branches. In fact, until we could reach the higher limbs, our tree was decidedly more decorated on the bottom half. My father would always put the delicate German angel on the top.
The scented candles would be set out on little saucers, never to be lit, my father would hang his favorite print of a Christmas elf bringing bowls of food to his cat and dog, and the decoration of our house would be complete. We never went overboard in the festive department.
Our work done, we would celebrate with eggnog, cookies and peppermint ice cream and admire our new tree, which was always the best that we had ever had.
My father sold the family house three years ago, to a nice family with two small children. I wonder if they put their tree in the same living room corner? And I wonder if they also have an Advent calendar on the window and a trunk in the basement for their Christmas things?
It seems funny that someone else should be celebrating Christmas in the house that had been built for us, back in 1954. I hope they appreciate that their new home has a long tradition of holiday cheer. In many ways, and especially at this time of year, I am still there.
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