GIVING THANKS TIME

 

’Tis the week to give thanks.

 

Thanks for the people in our lives who are there.

Thanks for all they are, and for them choosing to be present.

Thanks for the ones gone, who left blessings.

 

Thanks for all the things we still have.

Thanks for all the things that aren’t broken.

Thanks for the things these things do for us.

 

Thanks for felines and canines who share our lives.

Thanks for their giving their trust and endless love.

Thanks for being the beauties they are.

 

And most of all, I thank the spirit that blew air into everything.

For returning my soul to me this day--

The day of Mad Reckoning*

*a.k.a. Retunes (or exchanges)

We don’t “do Christmas,” unless you count the general good wishes of Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and homemade cookies. It’s been years since I spent time in department stores scouting for gifts in the month of December.

But what I do hold onto this time of year is to not go anywhere near stores the day after the holiday. I have made that mistake twice, but no more. The first time, long ago, I was lured by promises of uber sales. The second time I did it by mistake. I forgot the madness of the day and thought it might just be the time to look for something that could have waited. I should have.

The day after national gift giving, hoards descend on stores with gift certificates that fell from the trees or were handed in office parties. They make a rather joyful bunch. They were not the problem.

The ones that got to me were the other faction crowding the stores— the people with return receipts to exchange gifts they refuse to use. They never seem joyful. In fact, they seem angry, cantankerous, and garrulous.

That first year I saw a young woman in tears that the bathrobe she got cost so little there was nothing she wanted to get for it in exchange. She had some choice words for the gift-giver who was not present. I saw a child who got a toy he already had, in tears because his mother would not pay for something he wanted as she would have to add too much $$$ after the exchange. The worst was an older woman who refused to take anything other than cash for her return, because she said she hated that store.

It was not pretty. The energy was the most unhappy and unspiritual that I could recall. I vowed to accept gifts from now on and only return them, if I felt an overwhelming inkling, sometime later. From then on, this was the day to NOT go anywhere near stores. It was the day to count one’s blessing that I was here, and not there.

The day after Christmas. That’s today.

Nothing Wasted

When a job application does not result in an offer, when an audition did not yield a part, or when a story failed to find a publisher, many sum up the time and effort as a failure.

Here’s my take, which is also a sort of moto for me:

Nothing wasted if I learned from it.

I have written middle grade novels that have not sold. (Yet. Let’s be positive.) But in the process of research for each my world got richer, fuller, and the purse of riches is still with me and continues to grow.

The only writing failures in my eyes are the stories that came with little inner motivation, such as attempting something that was fashionable, or repeating a variation of a story and setting I have plowed and fully mined before. Those taught me nothing. (Unless I count the “don’t do this again,” so maybe they are not complete failures, either.)

Striving and learning are the most worthwhile of all. Prizes may be the frosting, but striving is the cake.

Eat cake, folks!

My Guarded Hanukah Secret is Out...

Tonight is the first night of Hanukah.

No, that’s not the secret.

In years past, we had a small crowd for our yearly Hanukah party, and that meant making latkes.

I have a trusted recipe for latkes. It’s not hard, and I’ve shared it here. This recipe makes very good latkes for a small family. The grating and squeezing of the potatoes is part of the dues we pay for eating them, and the tears shed grating the onions must stand for any penitential feeling we have about taking in so much oil then, and for eight days to come.

But for a party, (that is, more than twenty latkes gobblers) it’s different. Not only will the cook be grating until there’s no strength left to eat, but the onion-tears will make more than a puddle. You are liable to drawn before anyone arrives.

My kids attended a Jewish preschool, where I volunteered to be part of the latke-making crew. The teacher in charge of the kitchen was a legendary cook. I mean it literally; as the rumor persisted she’d been a real chef in some fancy shmanzy three-star restaurant in France in her younger days. She most certainly had a French accent, so it was not impossible.

She taught us a thing or two about child rearing. She was wise that way. But her lasting contribution for me was her latkes-for-a-crowd secret. I’m paying it forward on to you, which is my Hanukah gift this year.

So here goes: For half the amount, use your favorite traditional “from scratch” latkes recipe. The second half you will make with potato pancake mix. Yup, the kind you buy in small boxes in the “ethnic” section of the supermarket. Then use one half cup less water for each boxed mix. Make the mix first, and add to it the hand grated traditional ingredients as you grate them.

A.    You will not need to squeeze the potato water as much.

B.     You will have more time to play with the dreidel, because you will not need to grate as much

C.    The Monoglycerides and Sulfite to Maintain color in the mix will keep the whole batter nice and yellow before the potatoes oxidize into an unappetizing gray, and you won’t have to hurry as much

D.   This combination absorbs just enough oil to make it the miracle of the oil,  but not quite as much

Finally, this half-and-half recipe actually makes the best large-batch latkes. 

REMEMBRANCE

When my kids were ten and twelve, they had their first real loss to the great beyond. He was not even our cat, but the neighbor’s. But he thought he lived with us, and for as long as he lived, DD was adamant that we take in no other lest he stopped feeling at home. 

When Chester died, there was a period of profound mourning. The neighbors were even kind enough to invite us over for a remembrance, and shared some of his ashes with us. DD erected a memorial where she placed the ashes, and it’s still there today.

What stayed with me was something she said. “I’m so scared I will forget him.”

If we remember, they are not completely gone.

Today is a special day at my house. I remember three of the closest people to me who passed away on the same calendar day. They are gone from the blessings and tribulations of this world, but not forgotten. 

מילים: פניה ברגשטיין
לחן: דוד זהבי
שנת כתיבה: 1944
נִגּוּנִים / פניה ברגשטיין, 1944

שְׁתַלְתֶּם נִגּוּנִים בִּי, אִמִּי וְאָבִי,

נִגּוּנִים מִזְמוֹרִים שְׁכוּחִים.

גַּרְעִינִים; גַּרְעִינִים נְשָׂאָם לְבָבִי –

עַתָּה הֵם עוֹלִים וְצוֹמְחִים.

עַתָּה הֵם שׁוֹלְחִים פֹּארוֹת בְּדָמִי,

שָׁרְשֵׁיהֶם בְּעוֹרְקַי שְׁלוּבִים,

נִגּוּנֶיךָ, אָבִי, וְשִׁירַיִךְ אִמִּי,

בְּדָפְקִי נֵעוֹרִים וְשָׁבִים.

הִנֵּה אַאֲזִין שִׁיר עַרְשִׂי הָרָחוֹק

הִבִּיעַ פִּי אֵם אֱלֵי בַּת.

הִנֵּה לִי תִּזְהַרְנָה בְּדֶמַע וּשְׂחוֹק

"אֵיכָה" וּזְמִירוֹת שֶׁל שַׁבָּת.

כָּל הֶגֶה יִתַּם וְכָל צְלִיל יֵאָלֵם

בִּי קוֹלְכֶם הָרָחוֹק כִּי יֵהוֹם.

עֵינַי אֶעֱצֹם וַהֲרֵינִי אִתְּכֶם

מֵעַל לְחֶשְׁכַת הַתְּהוֹם.

You can hear it sung in this link:

http://www.zemereshet.co.il/song.asp?id=394

This Life is NOW

A few months ago someone I had some virtual contact with, mostly in years back, let her Facebook friends know she had just suffered a calamitous loss. On what should have been a joyous father-son bonding trip, half her family was wiped out. Her husband and older son died while hiking, likely from heatstroke.

In one cruel swoop she was a widow, and the mother of one surviving son.

This horrific event was on the news, local and national. I read the reports over and over, as if re-reading would tell a different story, maybe with a happier ending. I woke up the next day with that feeling most would recognize. It’s that did this really happen thought, and a feeling of reality descending but not quite hitting the ground.

This did not happen to me. I could go on with my day and the days to come with my routine intact. But it did shake me up. The opening words of Joan Didion’s Year of magical Thinking kept echoing—

Life changes in an instant.

It’s still a wake-up call for me. I tell my kitties I’m so happy they’re here. I look at people and places with gratitude. Nothing is permanent and most things are not for later, they are now.

Hugs, everyone.

It’s That Time Again

The thing about traditional holidays is that they come with a regularity. This reminds us of the unrelenting passage of time, and also of times past.

 In this way the repeat celebrations act to sort of stop time.

Because---- there they are.

Again.

Happy Jewish New Year

This Is Called an ANNIVERSARY---

How do we count them?

By one plus one, by five plus five, by ten plus ten, and then...

If we’re lucky, we get old. If we’re very lucky, we get old together.

©1993 By Karen Shapiro

{Best wedding present you can get if your friend is a talented artist}

We get silver anniversaries, and then our hair tells the same. Hair color gives us gold at the golden anniversary.

Black & White photographs make all those colors timeless. They also fade less, and so once a year we can look at them and think---

We weren’t babies. But my, we were young(er). ^

Celebrating INDEPENDENCE

Achieving independence is not a little thing.

 Maintaining independence may even be a bigger thing.

Learning to balance independence with interdependence is the greatest thing of all. 

Countries, like individuals, families and clans, are not lone wolves. We’re at our best when we find and sustain the precious balance of autonomy and interconnectedness. 

This is what I resolve to continue to work on, and celebrate today.

Is This SUMMER?

Not complaining, mind you. I live in the land of eternal Spring. But it’s also the place where Mark Twain famously said, “the coldest winter I ever spent was Summer in San Francisco.”

So while we are not sweating away, nor sipping lemonade on the porch, some things are decidedly summery.

Days are longer…

Dinners are later…

            My kitties wake me up earlier…

And I continue the rhythm of not writing first drafts until the school year resumes.

I no longer have kids at home climbing on my knees as I try to concentrate. Well, DD is home, but she treats me more like a suite-mate than a padded chair. I don’t have the excuse of years past that I will wait until they are back in school during the day and I can count on uninterrupted time.

However, I discovered that re-charging the creative batteries is serious business. For years, I wrote original stories from September to late May, and only revised or polished in summer. I found this rhythm worked for me.  I’ve kept it.

The Gershwin song Summertime casts its spell, magical and wistful as ever.

Summertime,

And the livin' is easy

Fish are jumpin'

And the cotton is high

Your daddy's rich

And your mamma's good lookin'

So hush little baby

Don't you cry

One of these mornings

You're going to rise up singing

Then you'll spread your wings

And you'll take to the sky

But till that morning

There's a'nothing can harm you

With daddy and mamma standing by…

©Shelagh Duffett 

Yup, it’s summer.

The Rich Man’s Omelette

A few days ago I wished my picture book critique group a good summer and sent this as a good omen for getting lots of reading done—

© Summer Reader by SHELAGH DUFFETT

One of my critique buddies  responded with, “I want to be where this gal^ is.”

I thought how I am exactly where this reader is.

I mean, almost.

I do have cats, and one of them will jump on my lap, though never when outdoors. She’s too dignified for that, I think.

I do have a view of the bay if I walk a few blocks up the hill.

I have good books to read. Maybe I would read more if the to-be-read pile by my bedside was not so dauntingly tall.

And when I’m sitting by the blooming plants, it’s not to read, but to weed. I told you it’s an almost.

I do have a tree in the backyard I lean against. I do so when I’m tired of yard work.

All of that got me thinking about the old story of the rich man’s omelette.

A poor man returned home and told his wife he’d had the most amazing meal at a rich man’s house. The wife, eager to replicate it, asked what it was.

“We’ll need some eggs,” the man began.

“We’ve got that!”

“And some butter,” said the man.

“Well, we don’t have butter. But I can use margarine.”

“And some French cheese, such as Boursin or Pont-l'Évêque, ” the man added.

 "We don't have anything like that, " the wife said.
"What do we have? " the husband asked.

“We’ll use Velveeta,” the wife said.

“And we'll need fresh shallots,” the man continued.

“Onion power will do fine,” the wife says.

As they sat to eat, they had to agree that it was, well, almost.

 

This made me resolve to at least now and then try and narrow the gap between the summer reader above, and my life.

Be nice to yourselves, out there.

Magical Mystery Mouse

Long ago DD had a bosom friend that went with her everywhere. She called him Mousie.

 

Here they are, hand in hand, inseparable, in a photo almost a generation old. A friend’s mother embroidered a mouse on a T-shirt for her, and DD became known as the girl with the mouse.

 

 

There was the time in the supermarket when she set Mousie down  in order to help put a jar of peanut butter in the basket. Moments later, she realized she didn’t have him. It was pandemonium. Only when we found him again, resting patiently on top of another jar, was peace restored.

 

 

Then there was the time she had gone to sleep with him, as always, but must have let go in the middle of the night. Mousie was located behind her bed, and the promise of a good day was with us once again.

 

 

These separations became more frequent, but DD’s insistence that life can’t go on without Mousie did not abate. I worried that one day he would indeed leave us for greener pastures. I dreaded that day. Mousie was no longer a transitional object, as the clinical definition goes. He was a full-fledged member of the family.

 

 

One day, I found Mousie on the kitchen floor, all by his lonesome. I picked him up and almost returned him to DD, who was drawing with great concentration in the next room. Then I thought better of it, and put him away in a safe place where I can locate him if she asks for him.

 

 

She never did.

 

 

I forgot about him. Dust settled over many details of those times, and the colors faded as they do in old photos, both in albums and in my mind.

 

 

 

 Two years ago, DD and I were looking through an old box, when out fell Mousie.

 

DD gasped.

 

“Oh, my,”  I said. “Do you remember this?”

 

“Do I remember?” she said. “I thought about him and wondered where he was every day, for years!”

 

“You never asked...” I said.

 

“I didn’t want to upset you,” she said. “I thought I had lost him, and I didn’t want you to feel bad.”

 

 

I don’t know what lesson to take from this. I was thinking about it the other day, when I thought how often we don’t ask and don’t tell because we want to spare others. I wanted to tell DD, who still doesn’t share things when she wants to spare me, that she should have asked.

 

 

But the other side of it was that Mousie had to grow up, and he, as well as DD, had to move on.

 

Spring Has Sprung

The word for spring in Hebrew is Aviv. You may have heard it as a proper name, even more in its feminine form, Aviva. You may have heard of Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city, whose name means Spring Hill. The root  of the word (letters AVV) pertains to a young sprouting plant.

But I so prefer the English word, spring.
It has more energy and connotes active bursting and flowing forward. The sound of it, beginning with constipated consonants jammed together, (SP) and opening to a forward flow, (IN) ending with what feels, to me, a sort of exclamation,(G)-- make it an ingenious sound for what is, really, an idea.

The idea is that we emerge from a bottled up state, a freeze or hibernation of sorts, and like just uncorked champagne we pop, gush and flow, hands stretched in an upward motion that says ---

!

Do you feel it yet? Spring, officially, just got here.

May creativity and life conquer all.

Why Do I Love My Cats?

It’s not a state-secret that I like cats. But I LOVE my cats.

I have some dear friends who do not like cats. One doesn’t like animals, period. A second has always had a dog and just doesn’t care for cats. A third loves dogs, but only English bulldogs for some reason, and cats are “aloof to the point of being appalling,” so sayeth he. A fourth professes to like cats a little, but is allergic. 

I don’t have to explain my admiration for domestic felines to avowed cat-fanciers. But I do find myself justifying my admiration of the species to many of my friends. Why do I like cats? They’re beautiful, graceful, smell good, and, what can I say-- are self-cleaning. Most admirable.

Why do I LOVE mine?

Because in addition to all the above, I take care of them.

It was a revelation to discover that at the root of abiding love is the experience of taking care of the beloved. Not what they did for me, but what I did for them.

That explains a lot. We take care of young and very old humans in diapers. We pick up after them and let them scream at us. And then, when they have worn us out, we love them even more.

It isn’t what is most glorious or glamorous; it’s the care they made us extend.

For once, I have some insight into the divine love for creation.

And before I get too sappy and waaaay too lofty here, I’m heading to clean the litter box.

Thank YOU

It’s that wistful time of year, when I am giving thanks, or trying to.

 Thanks for what I have. That is obvious: a roof over my head, something to eat on my plate, something to cover my nakedness, and something to do.

Thanks for what I don’t have, which would not have been good for me:  various health issues, loss and desolation, and many more things I feared that didn’t materialize.

Thanks for being here, still. Like a wise old man once told me: “They give me a day, I take it.” Last I heard he is over a hundred years old, and just got a birthday greeting from the president.

But most of all—

THANKSGIVING Week, and I feel propelled to thank you.

Thank you for reading this, and thank you for comments you have made in the past. You let me know I was not alone.