My Friend Les

Daily writing prompt

List the people you admire and look to for advice…

The person I most admired has been dead for a number of years. He was my friend, surrogate father, and confessor. He got me through some of the most difficult years of my life. He was also the most interesting person I’ve ever met.

Les had a series of experiences that I could only dream of, and he would let them slip in conversation. “When I was in the Navy,” or “When I was in graduate school in Scotland,” or “When I was a pilot” … there were quite a few of these over the years. He was a combustion expert, and one of his sidelines was building controlled explosions in coal mines to burn off dangerous gases. He also studied religion on the side, and held a concert of his original compositions at age 80.

Les gave me a lot of advice over the years. Everything from grad school advice to life advice. I was going through considerable trauma and bad breakups in the time I knew him, so I know I did a certain amount of crying over the phone. Never did Les judge me.

He always held that, if I found the right person to have a relationship with, I would heal. It was scary, but he was correct. He knew I would marry Richard when I had barely met him, and he was (as always) right. I never got him that bottle of Talisker (Scotch) I owed him for that bet.

He died at 95, which is fitting for someone whose life was that full. His memorial service was filled with all the people whose lives he’d touched over the years. We had lost touch with each other, but we reunited for him. It was a fitting send-off.

Redoing the Bathroom

Daily writing prompt

Describe the most ambitious DIY project you’ve ever taken on.

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I don’t do do-it-yourself. Or rather, I do sometimes, but the project often becomes complicated due to human error. My error.

One of the DIY projects I had many years ago was to redo the bathroom in my house. Not even an ambitious project, just painting the room and installing a ceiling vent fan that worked.

First, the ceiling fan. I stood on the rails of the tub with my tools in pocket and the hardware, juggling a phone because my dad was coaching me on installation. My dad, an electrician, told me I didn’t need to throw the breaker and could do the installation as long as I was careful. I was looking for the live wire, and the plethora of wires I was faced with didn’t correspond to what my father told me — there were too many, and what does this black wire mean? My dad told me to test them by tapping them together, so I tapped the black ones together. A big *snap* resounded and a fireball drifted past my face. “That’s the live wire,” Dad said. “Good to know, Dad.”

Then came the part where I was to paint the room. I decided on a gold sponge paint, which would liven up the pale cream of the walls. Sponge painting was very popular at that time. So I painted the walls with the help of a chair to get to the high places. I had gotten to the point where I had to paint the ceiling right over the bathtub/shower. I had one foot on the tub and one on the chair, not realizing that when I put pressure on the chair, it would move. The chair indeed moved, and I ended up doing the splits and then falling off the chair. Nothing much hurt but my pride.

These days, I do not do home renovation projects. No need to wonder why.

Special Foods

Daily writing prompt

Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?

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I taught a lesson in my classes that covered the question “what shapes our tastes and preferences?” The questions asked of my students were as follows:

What did you have for dinner last night?
What did your family typically have for dinner?
What were special holiday foods?
What was the most unusual food you’ve eaten?

The first and second questions covered items like availability and ease of use. Sometimes dinner reflected the cultural exchange of foods into our society (if they said, for example, pizza and spaghetti). The third question, though, hit upon the idea of food as cultural expression.

Holiday foods were typically traditional cultural foods — the typical Thanksgiving dinner for example. US Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing come from the near-legendary first Thanksgiving, but run through a British colonial filter. (The original Thanksgiving dinner featured venison and fish, not turkey. The turkey is the American bird version of the goose served at Christmas in Britain.)

Sometimes students’ special holiday foods included cultural celebrations. Often they weren’t aware until they learned not everyone eats ollebollen (fried round raisin dumplings) at New Year’s. Others were aware that their German or Swedish heritage meant special Christmas cookies.

That being said, what were my holiday foods? I think of my dad’s side of the family, who descended from people who hunted and trapped and fished as their livelihood. Holiday meals had to include foods that could have been procured by my ancestors. For example, my grandfather smoked trout and that would go on the Thanksgiving table. We would have duck or goose — storebought, but something my ancestors would possibly serve. My mother’s family would make the more traditional thanksgiving, but oil and vinegar coleslaw would be on the table. (I don’t know if this was because we had German ancestry or because mom made really good oil and vinegar coleslaw. I have her recipe because it was straight out of the Betty Crocker cookbook.)

This year I’m eating at a restaurant for Thanksgiving because there’s only two of us. This is what happens in the US as the oldest generations die; the grandparents become the nucleus with their children and grandchildren as satellites. We have no children or grandchildren, so my husband and I are a unit of two. This works fine for me.

Storytelling in my Family

Daily writing prompt

What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?

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For an American, this is a tough question to answer. In the US, when someone asks this question, the answer often involves cultural heritage of one of our strains of ancestry rather than dominant American culture. We do not see US culture as culture but as the default against which our ancestors’ cultures play.

For example, people in the US talk in terms of hyphenates. They are Greek-American, Polish-American. African-American. Or they say “I have German ancestry”. The people who say this often experience their cultural heritage at holidays or in public festivals, or they live in an enclave where many people with that ancestry live. They notice differences from their classmates growing up; their classmates didn’t eat olebollen or pickled herring on holiday.

Which brings me to what I like about my cultural heritage. I am, like many Americans, a ‘mutt’. I have German, Dutch, Polish and Irish on Mom’s side and French, German, and probably Welsh on Dad’s (among others), according to Ancestry.com. Of these, I’m most cognizant of the German/Polish on Mom’s side and the French on Dad’s. The German/Polish on Mom’s side was a matriarchy of sorts that tried to ignore the Polish ancestry for bewildering reasons. The French on Dad’s side was what is known as ‘trapper French’, or the Canadian French who lived through hunting, trapping, and trading wild animals.

What I really like about my cultural heritage on both sides is the storytelling. The storytelling techniques of each side of the family are totally different, which is why I feel there’s a cultural component. My father’s side of the family told hunting stories with escapades often fueled by alcohol or naivete. Very often the stories started with “Do you remember when …” and end in an absurdity. For example, “Do you remember the time when Ronnie shot the owl up the tree? He ran up to Larry and said, ‘Hey, can you help me get this rabbit out of the tree?’ Larry looked up and saw a dead owl. ‘Ronnie, that’s an owl.’ ‘I wondered how that rabbit got up the tree.'” It’s funnier in person, honestly.

With my mom’s side of the family, the stories often involved word play or other witticisms, and often featured my grandmother as the ‘straight man’ in the joke. My grandmother was confronted with her seventeen-year-old daughter Marie, who said, “I’m going to marry Wayne.” “You can’t marry Wayne,” Grandma said. “Then I’ll elope.” “You can’t elope.” “You watermelon!”

I tell the stories of my family on occasion. I also tell my stories in their ways. One story, as it spread across my peer group, became a friend’s anthropology project in a class. Others can be evoked by their punchlines.

Cultural heritage is a complicated topic in the US, but I can find mine in the stories I have grown up with and the stories I tell.

Daily writing prompt

What is your favorite holiday? Why is it your favorite?

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Christmas^* is my favorite holiday. It’s strange writing about Christmas in April, but then again, I have a Christmas tree still up in my parlor, and I turn the lights on now and then. And I just got done writing a Christmas romance. (It’s my sixth). No other holiday comes close to me.

Christmas lasts an entire season, and that’s one thing I love about it. I get to celebrate from post-Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. It comes when I need it, toward the end of a very busy Fall semester at the college. It livens things up against the leaden skies and frozen ground waiting for snow that doesn’t come till January.

Christmas also has traditions handed down from many cultures (mostly Western) to give it a rich color and flavor. Red and green, silver and gold, touched by Hanukkah blue and white (it is part of the season), ribbons and blown glass ornaments and Della Robbia wreaths (my mother had a particular fondness for them, as do I) and twinkly lights.

We have special Christmas foods from many cultures as well. Pfeffernuse (ginger cookies) and springerle (anise cookies) from Germany, Mexican wedding cakes/Russian tea cakes, sugar cut-out cookies, Christmas goose, plum pudding, KFC (in Japan) …

Christmas remains my favorite holiday, even though I’m too old for Santa. But given I write about a secret society of Santas, am I really too old?

^*I am talking about the secular parts of Christmas here. I am of a “spiritual but not religious” bent, best described by “omnist“. Or maybe “panentheist”. I’m not sure. My beliefs are very personal, and I don’t want them hijacked by the “one true religion” crowd.

A Conversation with my Family

I spent time with my family for the first time in over two years (longer in a couple of cases). COVID and distance kept me away from them; time passed faster than I noticed. But here I am in my hometown, catching up with my family.

My family, for the most part, talks a lot. Much of our communication manifests itself in storytelling. Seldom does someone ask a leading question like “How was your hotel?”, although those happen, particularly from the men in the family (outnumbered by females.) We tell our business through stories, we relate to each other through stories.

My older niece Robyn pointed out that the meaning and context of words is very important to our family. She’s right; we pay attention to these things and pride ourselves on the use of words. It would be understandable to think we’re a college-educated family, yet I am the only one who has gone to college.

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com

As an illustration, Robyn launched into a discussion of swear words and what they mean in context. In a church-run coffee shop, with judicious use of the F-word. (I thought we would get thrown out of the place because the owners didn’t understand that F*ck meant different things in different contexts.) My niece Rachel expressed her preference for non-swearing creative phrases. As she is an artist, this is not surprising. Nor is it surprising that Robyn, who plays on a co-ed hockey team, dropped an approximate 18 F-bombs. My F-bomb use was limited to six or eight.

The introverts in the family (my dad and sister) ask questions and impart information. I suspect they despair at getting a word in edgewise. My husband is also an introvert, and he sits in the corner and interjects things so that nobody can hear him over the loud conversation. I thought I’d become an introvert in my old age, but if I can hold my own in my family, I figure I must be an extrovert still.

I find myself tired after a conversation with my family. Stretching back into our histories, slipping into challenge, playing with words, putting forth ideas — all that invigoration takes a toll on me. But I’m spoiled with conversation like this, so I have to get it when I can.

Coffee as a Family Ritual

The formative coffee experiences

I dated a guy (to the point that we later got divorced) whose family had a Sunday ritual of strong Gevalia coffee in white Scandinavian porcelain ware, classical music, and the New York Times.

Another boyfriend’s family ritual involved percolator coffee in the cluttered kitchen as the cats drank out of the sink, and his stepfather and I discussed socialism.

My own family would drink coffee out of mismatched mugs in the kitchen on Mom’s good days, and the cats would wander around the table and occasionally stretch up on Dad’s legs. We would plan dinner, which often consisted of tearing apart a recipe and reassembling it again.

Coffee has always been a ritual

Throughout time and place, coffee has been featured in ritual. The Ethiopian coffee ceremony, which involves roasting and grinding the beans at the table; the coffee breaks in an office offering time to talk with colleagues; weekly coffee dates. After-dinner coffee, sometimes spiked with liqueurs. Turkish coffeehouses and coffeehouses in Paris.

There’s something special about the coffee beanthat lends itself to special moments. (I know the same could be said for tea in the British world, but I’ve only had a proper British tea once.) We in the US have very few rituals, but the ones we do have are ingrained and almost impossible to separate from everyday life.

Our Sunday ritual

Right now I sit in the living room typing this with a cup of coffee listening to classical music. The cats are somewhere — they don’t like classical as much as we do. The music du jour is one of Bach’s kids. We have a faux fireplace, which is on for ambience even though it’s summer (don’t ask; it’s a husband thing).

Soon I’ll be working on writing and Richard will be working on a project for the public library; but for now, we have our ritual.

For you, the reader

Do you have any Sunday rituals? Coffee rituals? Let me know in the comments below!

Christmases in My Family

It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m sitting in the cabin at Starved Rock writing this. There’s a small fire in the fireplace, and I’ve just gotten done watching “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.We go to my dad’s at noon today, which almost didn’t happen because Christmas is strange in my family.

Christmas was my mother’s holiday — she decorated the house elaborately with red ribbons and greens and ornaments until it looked like a Victorian fantasy. She chose presents with care and wrapped them in a way Martha Stewart would envy (for my overseas visitors, look up Martha Stewart. She’s a personality whose fame is based on her overly-involved home decor aesthetic). Mom planned menus and created a spread of Christmas buffet (but no cookies; she found those too fussy).

Even on her last Christmas in 2007, she orchestrated Christmas from the hospital bed in her living room when she could no longer make it up and down the stairs. She decided she would wear her grey robe with Christmas jewelry and direct the Christmas action from her bed. My mom died of the tumor in her brain just before Christmas.

I am my mother’s child, and I celebrate Christmas rather vigorously. My husband, luckily, loves Christmas as much as I do, so the house is decorated, Christmas carols play all season, and we have our yearly ritual of Starved Rock because there are few places so welcoming at Christmas as the Lodge there. But there’s still that remembrance of my mother mixed up in there, and all the complex feelings memories of my mother stir up — sorrow, joy, frustration, anger, love.

So my Christmases are strangely textured now. I accept that, and I accept my remembrances of prior Christmases are likely romanticized. It’s all part of life.

Vacation in Horicon

I haven’t written because I am having good family time in Wisconsin, celebrating the Fourth the way I like to: bratwurst and sauerkraut, good cheese and beer.

During summer, my dad lives in a camp trailer at The Playful Goose just outside of Horicon, on the Rock River and not far from Horicon Marsh. It’s a cozy place cluttered with hobbies: woodworking tools, winemaking, a ham and bean soup in the crock pot.

It’s a great time for family stories, with my dad and my Uncle Ron telling their adventures from childhood (and the time Uncle Ron set off illegal fireworks years ago on the lawn of the house on Beloit Avenue). Storytelling is an important part of relating in my family.

It’s much easier to be around my family since I’ve been on my mood management medications. I used to feel so much pressure to talk that it was hard for me to be there. Now I’m relaxed, and I enjoy it a lot more.

I’ll leave on Sunday with more stories and more appreciation for my family.

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I’m in Camp Nano right now, and I’m trying to maintain two hours per day to keep up. My family’s accustomed to me ducking out to write. I’ll keep you posted.

Christmas Eve — a little on the prosaic side

I write this from Ottawa, Illinois, where I am visiting my father and sister and her family for Christmas.

Things I’m thinking about:

1) I wish I could drop Northwest Missouri State (my place of employment) onto Ottawa. This would unite a college town without a college (Ottawa) with a college without a college town (Maryville). I miss the river and the beautiful state parks and the invigorated atmosphere of a town that attracts people from Chicago and the suburbs,.

2) I still have to adjust to being 55. The hardest part is that it’s now unseemly for me to get crushes on younger men (maybe it was before, but I didn’t notice). I’ve gone from being flattering to being an embarassment. This is a major adjustment for me.

3) I can be with my family without talking much. This is a relief.

4) I’m editing Voyageurs, and the big problem is that I have to “fill in” with 34,000 words. I have NO IDEA how to do this. Think good thoughts.

Merry Christmas to all my readers — please keep in touch!