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80 Years in Eight Days — Day Number Five: 10 Silly Sayings

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The birthday project continues.  Yesterday’s was a rather heavy topic.  I had to take a nap after writing it!  So today, I’m offering Silly Sayings to lighten things up a bit.  My mom was an English major in college and has always exhibited a droll, rather British wit.  She loves word play and puns and arcane literary allusions.  So here’s a list of some of her rather unique utterances.  We’ll start with terminology and end up with occasional quips.

1) Zans.  This is a kitchen gadget commonly known as a bottle opener, but thanks to Dr. Seuss, my mother refers to it as a Zans.  “Have you a Zans for cans?  You should!” (from One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, of course)zans-for-cans

2) Doo-hickey.  This is a twist-tie for closing a plastic bag.  She saves them in a little dish on top of the oven to re-use. 

3) Cupeliar.  It’s like peculiar, only more so. 

4) Slip-go-down.  This is any food that you can eat without making an effort to swallow it.  It’s served when you are sick with a very sore throat.  An alternative for brand-name gelatin, if you will. 

5) Posbiculate.  Otherwise known as brain-storming, logistic cogitating, or ‘work-shopping’, if you speak Biznish (that one’s mine;  I came up with it when my IT husband would start using computer terms at home).  How it’s used: my brother is now engaged, but there is no wedding date set yet.  We’re still posbiculating. 

From this sampling of terms, we now move into occasions.

6) The one great hour of swearing.  This is when my mother feels an urgency to clean house.  She swoops down on us in a flurry of instructions, frustrations, and activity making everyone uncomfortable…but only for a short time, because it’s all accomplished quickly and efficiently.  Then she can say…

7) “It’s all a merciful blur.”  I get this response a lot when I ask her to recall the details of how she managed something painfully emotional and/or difficult.  She prefers to remain positive. 

8) “I haven’t had this much fun since we nailed the baby to the floor!”  Now, calm down.  Mom’s not got a sadistic bone in her body.  Picture this instead: a baby dressed like Swee’ Pea in a Popeye cartoon with a trailing nightie.  Nail the nightie to the floor, and the baby will crawl forever and not get into any mischief.  So, now you can!

9) “Enuff zis luff-makink.  Let’s eat!”  This is how Mom moves a gathering of chit-chatting guests into the dining room to actually sit down and begin the meal before it gets cold.  I kid you not, she said this as we were standing around in the courtyard of the columbarium at my father’s memorial service, too.  Dutifully, we all burst out laughing and headed in to the Parish Hall to start the reception.

Resting place

10) “Here’s champagne for our real friends, and real pain for our sham friends!”  This toast comes out periodically.  She said it over the phone to me on Christmas just a few days ago.  Now you’ve heard it just in time for New Year’s Eve, her birthday.  I leave it up to you to quote…or not. 

New Year's 2013

© 2014, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

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80 Years in Eight Days — Day Number Four: 10 Parenting Principles

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If you’re just visiting this blog for the first time, you’ve stepped into the fourth day of my birthday project for my mom, who is turning 80 years old on New Year’s Eve.  Today’s list of 10 things is about Parenting Principles.  My mother is, naturally, my primary example of mothering.  She and I both became parents for the first time at the age of 22.  She raised 5 children to adulthood; I raised 4.  Wisdom doesn’t come with numbers or statistics, though.  Wisdom comes in the actual practice of decision-making in love.   It’s not about adopting a “right way”, it’s about living out of your values and making choices that you deem appropriate.  Keeping that in mind, here are 10 ideas of mothering that Mom communicated to me over the years.

1) Your marriage comes first.  This piece of advice she always attributed to her mom.  The simple logic is this: your family starts out with just the two of you and will end up with just the two of you.  That twosome is the foundation for all that happens in the middle.  Obviously, this arrangement isn’t what everyone chooses or how events transpire for all.  But in the throes of child-rearing, it helps to keep a perspective on who you want to be.  If you want to be all about the kids, then it’s likely they will grow up happily at center-stage and leave happily stage left, and you’ll be left standing unhappily onstage with a stranger.  Keep the action going between you, and let the other characters come and go.

1989b

2) Learn to feed yourself before feeding your family.  This is like the airline adage, “Place the mask over your own nose and mouth before assisting other passengers.”  After her wedding, my mother immediately took up the challenge of feeding her new husband “in the manner to which he was accustomed”, meaning that she taught herself how to make recipes handed down from his nurse/nanny, Agnes.  Her time of early experimentation and solid study in the culinary arts led to her success as an accomplished gourmet later.  I had planned to have 5 years of marriage under my belt before attempting motherhood, but  I got pregnant 4 months after the wedding.  I was immediately nauseated by the smell of food before I’d even learned how to cook on my own.  I lost weight in the beginning of the pregnancy and rapidly after the baby was born.  Postpartum depression reduced me to 98 pounds while I was trying to breastfeed.  I was literally struggling for survival.  Bottom line: learn to cook and eat, even if it seems like the last thing you want to do. 

3) Prepare for delivery.  My mother is a model of responsibility in many ways, not the least of which is her health.  She educated herself about her body and her options in childbirth and made her decisions with my father, I’m sure, but not based on his participation.  He was not ready to be one of those Sensitive New Age Dads who goes to Lamaze or presides in the delivery room.  He stayed at home in 1957, 1959, 1960, 1962 and in 1973.  I’m sure he had other options by the last birth, but his choice was to let my mom “carry on”.  For her first four births, she had her labor induced.  Why?  Well, she was living on the Marblehead Neck and could be separated from the mainland by a storm at any time.  She prepared. 

4) Breasts have a clear purpose.  In America in the ’50s, scientists tried to impress society with  ‘modern’ and ‘better’ ways to live.  It was all about innovation and technology and product placement.  Sound familiar?  Mom wasn’t buying.  She was also not washing and sterilizing and mixing formula.  She had the correct equipment already on hand, thank you.  And she intended to use it.  And when she turned 50 and the doctors told her that her equipment was sprinkled with carcinoma in situ, she said, “Well, I’m not going to worry myself into a state while that progresses in any way.  I’m done using them.  Take them away.”  She’s 30 years cancer free.  A survivor, a pragmatist, an example of responsibility to me.

5) Cotton is best.  It’s natural, it breathes, and it doesn’t irritate your skin.  Use cotton diapers, cotton balls and cotton clothing.  No plastic diapers or synthetic wipes or flame-retardant coating.  Following Mom’s advice, I used a diaper service that delivered fresh, clean cotton diapers to my home every week when I was raising babies in California and Illinois in the late ’80s and early ’90s.  I was amazed to find 4 years ago that there are NO diaper services AT ALL in metropolitan Milwaukee any more.

6) There’s always room for one more, especially in your heart.  This is an attitude of abundance and inclusion that is very generous and non-anxious, which I like.  However, with 7 billion people flooding the global eco-system these days, it begs careful examination and consideration.  Make your decisions accordingly.  Mom gave me some “outside of the box” advice when baby number 4 came along while we were still living in 1050 square feet of house in Southern California.  Lacking another bedroom, another crib, or even another bassinet, The Domestic Engineer suggested we could always pull out the bottom dresser drawer and line it with blankets or use the bathtub. 

1985b

7) Don’t think you’re too old for one more, either.  My mother gave birth at 39 to her last child.  The gap between me and my brother is just 3 days short of 11 years.  Everyone was surprised, even Mom, but the pregnancy was never ‘an accident’, and she finally had a son.  You’re never too old for one more plot twist as well.  I became pregnant after my husband had had a vasectomy, when my youngest was 6.  It was certainly unexpected, but I was thrilled.  I had a miscarriage at 10 weeks, which was not entirely anticipated, either.  Stay light on your feet.

8) Never miss a teaching opportunity.  When my brother was borne home from the hospital, I was 11 years old and my sisters were 13, 14, and 16.  We were ripe to learn babysitting skills at least and mothering skills for the future.  It went over well with prospective employers to tell them that I had been helping care for an infant at home for a year before I started babysitting other children.   As my brother grew, I watched my mother’s parenting from a different perspective.  I noted how much time she took with him, reading to him, letting him explore, listening to his talk, getting involved in his schooling, etc.  I saw patience and willingness and diligence and, yes, worry.  Parenting is not easy; it is complicated, and it requires effort.  But it is rewarding on many levels. 

9) Even worst case scenarios are teaching opportunities.  My mother has survived the number one stress on the parenting list.  On any list.  The death of a child.  Alice was technically an adult at 20, but she was still my mother’s child.  She was driving from California to Ohio to begin her senior year at college.  Alice fell asleep at the wheel in Nebraska, going 80 mph on Interstate 80, rolled the car and was killed instantly.  I was her only passenger.  I saw my mother’s grief first hand, also her capability.  She flew out on several connecting flights to reach me the morning after the accident.  She comforted me in my confusion and shock and made all the legal and practical arrangements to get us back to California.  She navigated the complex waters of all of the ripples and storms caused in that one, tragic moment with grace, with authentic grief, and with compassion for everyone affected.  Somehow, she did all this without a therapist, too.  I think she’s always been good at knowing herself, at learning and communicating, and at being patient and allowing healing to arise.  That makes for good parenting, for your children and for your own inner child. 

Mom (photo credit: DKK)

Mom (photo credit: DKK)

10) Trust yourself.  A happy family isn’t beyond you.  Just remember, you have to allow your idea of “happy” to be fluid.  My mother came to the dinner table one night before my sister was killed, and recounted a visit with some door-to-door evangelists.  She had told them proudly that we already had a “happy Christian family”.  Many things changed beginning that night and afterward that challenged that idea, many more than I can go into here.  Nevertheless, my mother remains happy with her family.  That is her, again, taking responsibility.  She is not a complainer.  She is not dogmatic about attachments and expectations.  She allows herself to create, co-create and re-create happiness as life unfolds.  Her progeny goes beyond the children she has produced to a host of other projects.  Parenting is about life-giving and life-nurturing, a worthy work for a lifetime.  I think my mom is doing a great job….still.  

The family

photo credit: Steve

 

 

© 2014, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

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80 Years in Eight Days — Day Number Three: Ten Musical Memories

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Today is Day 3 of my mother’s Birthday Project.  (Happy St. Stephen’s Day as well.  “Come on over; we’ll celebrate getting stoned”…one of my mother’s quips.)  On the docket are 10 musical memories.  My mother began her formal music training at the age of 5 when she started piano lessons.  To this day, she plays and sings for the residents of her senior community quite regularly.  Mom at POP 001

Her musicianship far exceeds mine, even though I have a B.A. in Music/Voice Performance.  She has an M.A. in Church Music.  She can improvise at the piano in various keys as well as play the organ: pedal keyboard and two manuals at once.  I am “keyboard proficient” and can play the pump organ at the museum…meaning, essentially, I can read piano music and ride a bicycle at the same time.  NOT the same skill set.  My favorite arrangement is her at the piano bench and me singing alongside. 

photo credit DKK

photo credit DKK

So here are 10 more musical snapshots of my mother:

1) She is a young girl, her mother calls out proudly, “Anne Louise, play Clair de lune.”  She rolls her eyes.  Not again!  Consequently, I don’t think I’ve ever heard her play it. 

2) I am a young girl, a wee little kindergartener.  Mom tucks me into the bottom bunk bed at night and sings, “Now the day is over/ night is drawing nigh/ shadows of the evening/ steal across the sky.  Jesus gives the weary/calm and sweet repose/ with his tend’rest blessings/ may thine eyelids close.”  She kisses my forehead.  “Ni’ – night, d’good girl!”  All is well.  I hear her voice complete in my memory.  Every note. 

3) Mom is studying at Concordia Teacher’s College.  She needs to do some organ practice, and I’m not in school.  Perhaps I’m sick?  So she takes me with her.  The organ is enormous.  The room is large and institutional.  I sit beside her and watch.  I am fascinated by the pedal keyboard.  Mom lets me crawl around on it, picking out tunes.  I play “Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater” on the black keys, like I do on the piano.  It booms out all over the room.  This is great!!

4) I am about seven years old.  I am the youngest member of our church choir which consists of my parents, my 3 older sisters, and a few others.  I sit in the front row of the loft with the sopranos, leaning out to see the candles in the Christmas Eve procession.  I am singing Midnight Mass with the adult choir, and I am going to stay awake through the whole service!  How exciting to be allowed to sing out like an angel from up here instead of being stuck in the basement in the church nursery!  Anthem’s over.  That sure was fun!  There’s a pile of coats in the corner of the pew….my, I’m feeling sleepy.  I’ll just rest a bit before the next hymn…oh! What?  We’re going home now?  Did I miss the recessional?  Drat!

5) I am about eleven years old.  I’ve been taking piano lessons for 3 years.  I practice before school every morning, while Mom washes the breakfast dishes in the kitchen.  I am out in the living room, struggling away with a new piece.  I hear Mom calling out from behind the swinging kitchen door, “It’s F-sharp, Priscilla!  Look at your key signature.”  I look.  She’s right.  How did she know that from the other room?!  I am trying to play a piano reduction of Dance of the Hours by Amilcare Ponchielli.  I can’t get the stresses right to make the piece dance.  It comes out stiff.  I’m playing what’s written on the page, aren’t I?  Mom comes in, “Think of it this way…try singing in your head… cot-tage cheee-eese, cot-tage cheee-eese…” Suddenly, it clicks!  Oh, this is that piece from Fantasia with the hippos in tutus!!  I’ve got it now!  But cottage cheese?  What made her think of that?!

6) My mother and my piano teacher, Mrs. Lerner from around the corner, are in a community choir called The Village Accents.  They are giving a little concert at the Women’s Club in that Frank Lloyd Wright building in River Forest.  The family must be in attendance.  There they are, this bevvy of ladies in skirts made of green and blue polka dots on white fabric.  Their shirts, and the piano, are chartreuse.  Oh, Lord.  This is embarrassing! (Can you guess I’m in Junior High?  And it’s 1975?)

7) I am in High School.  I am dating a guy whose mother was a concert pianist.  He sings in the community college choir and has a great voice.  My mother highly approves.  She invites him over for dinner.  Afterwards, she sits at the piano and pulls out some sheet music:  Jerome Kern’s “All The Things You Are”.  I’ve never heard it before, but it’s a great fit – the style, the sentiment, the voice.  I am in romantic heaven.  Months later, he invites me to one of his Jazz Choir concerts.  “I have a surprise for you,” he says and puts a piece of paper in my hands.  On the program, I see he has a solo.  Yes, you can guess the song.  He tells me he’s dedicating it to me.  Yes, that was Jim, my husband for 24 years, until his death. 

8) So I go off to college to study, um, music.  I’m 400 miles away from home.  Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my mother and Jim have been singing in church together and have formed, along with some other church music colleagues, a group called Renascense (or some archaic spelling pronounced ren-NAY-sense).  I’ve done an entire blog post on this memory in the past, titled “Christmas 1982” and you can read it here.

9) Finally, I am a junior in college.  I have just been inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa society.  My grandmother purchased the gold PhiBet key as a gift to me, and I went to the awards banquet, alone.  I’m told a bit later that I should come to the annual Senior Awards Ceremony in May, even though I’m not really a senior.  Well, maybe I am.  I have enough credits to be.  I figure it’s related to the Phi Beta Kappa thing and tell my mother about it over the phone.  “Just a bit of news, Mom.  I know you have a 9-year-old at home to take care of, but there’s going to be this other ceremony…”   That sunny morning in Southern California, I am seated in Balch Hall with the choir and all the senior women of Scripps, glowing with promise.  It’s a beautifully festive day.  I scan the crowd…and there’s my mother!  What?!  She came all the way down here for this little ceremony?  The awards are given out.  The next one sounds interesting: The Gladys Pattison Music award, given to “the most deserving student in the field of music for the purpose of enriching her music library”.  Drum roll, please….yes!  It’s me!  I am surprised; I beam.  Afterwards, I find my mother.  She hands me a little gift.  It’s a music box, wrapped in keyboard paper.  I turn the handle and hear the opening notes of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.  Professor Lamkin, the choir master, joins us and suggests that we all go out to lunch…off campus.  What a treat!  I stare in amazement at Mom, who is not the spontaneous type.  “How did you just up and take off to be here?” I ask.  “Oh, honey.  I’ve been planning this for weeks.”  Oh.  Well, that explains it.

10) And in closing, every medley eventually ends up with “My Buddy”.  This is mom’s signature when she’s been at the piano a while.  No matter what key she’s in, no matter where she’s been dabbling, she always figures out how to incorporate this theme.  “Miss your voice, the touch of your hand, just long to know that you understand, my Buddy….my Buddy,  your Buddy misses you.”  I miss you, Mom.  Thanks for all the music!  I look forward to much more in the New Year!

mom and piano

 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Warmth

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How did people in the northern land of Wisconsin stay warm through those hard winters in the 19th century, without electric blankets, natural gas furnaces or radiators?  Wood fires, wool, fur and the sauna…naturally.

Seems pretty simple to me. 

(In response to the Word Press Weekly Photo Challenge.)

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80 Years in 8 Days – Day 2: 10 Family Foods

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10 Family Foods.  10 Fabulously Festive Family Foods!  (Ah, ah, ah…*thunder and lightening*)

Is this a Muppet Count-down?  No, not really.  This is Day #2 of my mother’s birthday present.  Yesterday’s post introduced the project and 10 Background Bits of my mother’s life.  Today being Christmas Day, I want to tell you about my mother’s culinary talents.  This is a day that we would spend feasting and in high spirits.  Christmas Eve Mass having been accomplished and Mom’s choir commitment completed, she’d turn her attention to Christmas dinner.  There’s so much I could write about, but I’ll keep it down to 10 things, and I’ll limit them to things that I have actually made myself.  Except for this first item…

1) Fruitcake —  You may shudder, but wait!  My mother’s fruitcake is a triumph of dark, rum-and-brandy-soaked cake popping with candied fruits and savory nuts.  The recipe is from Julia Child herself.  Mom used to make it weeks ahead of Christmas in a huge, plastic tub (which later served as an infant bathtub for my baby brother), wrap it in cheesecloth, douse it with brandy and let it age.  A dozen foil-wrapped parcels went out to the most appreciative friends and neighbors.  Now my sister Sarah makes it, and if I’ve been good, I may get one in the mail this year, too.  I have NEVER attempted this on my own.  I doubt I could live up to the legacy. 

2) Roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and gravy from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook —  Fannie and I have become good friends, and though my original copy is pretty trashed, I am partner to a bookseller and have a few new editions at my fingertips.  Yes, I can make this…and have!

photo by Steve

photo by Steve

3) Cran-orange relish —  The recipe is on a postcard my mother sent to me when I moved back to the Midwest from California.  It simply says, “1 bag cranberries, 2 navel oranges, 1 cup sugar.  Grind and enjoy!”  I should mention that I’m still using Grandma Marion’s food grinder from the 1940s.  I’ll probably keep using it until that worn out cord and plug start a fire.

pecan pie & cran orange relish

4) Pecan pie (and mince pie) —  Again, from Fannie Farmer. 

5) Lobster — When we lived in Massachusetts where I was born, Mom learned how to cook a live lobster.  I didn’t end up cooking the first one on my own until we were living in California, and I was in college.  My fiance Jim drove home from the fish market with the live lobster on his shoulder just to freak out passing motorists.  I showed him how to hypnotize the lobster by holding it head down and stroking its tail.  When it was limp, dropping it into the pot of boiling water (don’t forget a bit of Vermouth!) was a cinch. 

6) Roast leg of lamb —  Make slits in the outside and insert slivers of garlic cloves before putting it in the oven.  I like rosemary and gravy more than mint sauce with it.  I have a picture of myself one Christmas with a Lambchop puppet on my arm; we’re both looking aghast at the serving platter. 

We can’t feast like Christmas all year long, so here are some samples of every day fare. 

7) Soup —  My mother kept a stock pot in her ‘fridge all week.  On Wednesdays, when she’d be going out to choir practice, she’d make a batch of soup from leftovers and stock that we could eat ‘whenever’ and clean up without her supervision.  To this day, she makes soup every week for the Food Pantry.  Steve and I have dubbed her “Our Lady Of Perpetual Soup”. 

8) Chili —  The family recipe is pretty mild.  Steve adds Tabasco and cheese and oyster crackers, and if I let him really indulge his Milwaukee roots, I’ll serve it on spaghetti noodles.  Texas folk, please avert your eyes!

9) Chicken and rice —  Basic dinner memories: the smell of onions and mushrooms sauteing in butter as the sun goes down.  Add the chicken, rice and liquid to the same pot.  Season with your favorite flavor combinations.

10) Brownies —  Not from a box! Made by melting Baker’s chocolate and butter on a double boiler and adding it to the creamed butter and sugar. Then add the eggs and the flour and dry ingredients.  Memorable mishaps: pouring hot, melted butter and chocolate into the creamed butter and sugar AFTER having added the eggs and watching bits of cooked scrambled eggs emerge.  And my sister putting in half a cup of baking SODA instead of half a TEASPOON of baking POWDER.  The brown, bubbly stuff spilling out of the pan and all over the oven resembled lava!  Cool! 

Tomorrow, for St. Stephen’s Day, 10 Musical Memories…

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80 Years in 8 Days – A Birthday Project for My Mother

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“My sainted mother” (as Gene Kelly used to say of his) is turning 80 on New Year’s Eve.  She is a couple of thousand miles away in California; I am living in Milwaukee missing the sunshine of her warm personality.  How shall I celebrate her life from this distance?  I came upon an idea: post a blog entry every day from Christmas Eve through New Year’s Eve containing 10 things I appreciate about her.  By her birthday, she will have read 80 reasons that I am so grateful for her long life. 

I have decided to start out with “10 Background Bits”, pieces of factual information to set the stage for her “close up”.  First, there is a family history for this kind of project.  When my father turned 60, I presented him with a little typed booklet entitled “60 Memories of My Father”.  The cover was made out of construction paper.  It looked a bit like a school assignment for a 3rd grader, I admit.  But it was made with love.  My father ended up writing his own memoirs 8 years later in response to interview questions I sent him.  2 years after that, he began his mysterious journey into dementia and Alzheimer’s.  For my mother’s 70th birthday, I wrote “!70 Foods 70!”, an anthology of food memories with pictures.  (She is a fabulous gourmet cook.) My mother keeps that in a binder, each page engulfed in a separate plastic sheath.  It looks a lot more professional than my first attempt. (She is also a museum archivist.)  So this birthday project is one of a much-beloved series that has enriched me in the recollection and writing of it and, hopefully, enriched my parents in the receiving.

2) Time: Anne Louise was born December 31, 1934 – a blessed little tax deduction for her folks that year and their first child.  My kids now know her as “Granne Louise”.

3) Place: Fair Lawn, New Jersey. 

4) Mother: Marion Keeffe McFarland.  A tiny spitfire of a personality, ambitious and shrewd, a capable survivor with a twinkle in her step.  My mother and I both wore her long bridal veil when we were married.  The secret she carried to her grave: she never got beyond the 8th grade in school.

grandma Marion5) Father: David Elmer McFarland, Jr.  He was an electrical engineer with Public Service of New Jersey.  His stateside responsibilities kept him home during WWII, keeping the power running, managing 5 Victory Gardens, and being husband and father.  My mother adored her father: he was the calming antidote to her mother’s small furies and mini dramas, a grounding presence with a refreshing sense of humor.  I think I heard once that he played the piano at a nickelodeon… I believe it, anyway.

grandpa David6) Her younger sister, Sandy.  Actually, her name is Marion like her mother, but her nickname distinguishes her.  Her blonde hair, petite frame and bubbly personality came back to my mother’s mind often when I was in her view, since I was the only blonde and the youngest of her 4 daughters.  Sandy was much like her mother: tiny and very social.  My mother was more like her father: lanky and cerebral. 

7) My mother’s natural strengths: precocious and enduring intelligence, musical talent, organization. 

8) Her natural weakness: her eyes.  She was finally diagnosed with myopia and ambliopia at age 5, and wore an eye patch and glasses.  Her walleye makes for poor depth perception, but it gives her the peripheral vision that kept me from sneaking anything past her…ever. 

star9) Growing up: my mother’s stories of growing up sound to me like echoes from an early TV sitcom — pin-setting at the bowling alley for a penny a pin to earn spending money, which was then spent at the movies, often for a double feature; learning to drive on a dirt road around the town’s water tower with her boyfriend, Duff; keeping statistics for the school baseball team and flirting with the players; trips to New York City every year, where her Aunt would buy her a new coat.  Happy days, it would seem. 

10) Becoming an adult: because she skipped a year of school and her birthday’s so late in the year, my mother headed off to college at the tender age of 16.  And not just any college — Radcliffe College.  Her mother had two goals for her: either meet a rich man and marry, or get a first rate education so that you can support yourself.  My mother got both the man and the education.  She graduated in May of 1955, earning a B. A. in English with her thesis on Jane Austen.  She married George William Heigho (Harvard ’55) in September that same year. 

1955bFor a writing class 3 years ago, I was prompted to write my parents’ wedding announcement.  Mom, always a sharp editor, made sure I got it right:

Anne Louise McFarland and George William Heigho II were married September 3, 1955 at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Glen Rock, New Jersey.  The bride is a graduate of Radcliffe College, and the groom is a Harvard graduate.  The couple met at the Canterbury Club on campus during their sophomore year.  Mrs. Heigho is the daughter of Marion Keeffe and David Elmer McFarland, Jr. of Fair Lawn, New Jersey.  Her father is an electrical engineer with Public Service of New Jersey.  The groom is the son of Dorothy Lauver and William Stephens Heigho of Detroit, Michigan.  His grandfather, George William Heigho I, was the president and CEO of Calvert Lithographing company.  The couple will be sailing to England on the Nieuw Amsterdam for their honeymoon, returning in a month to their new home in Boston.  Mr. Heigho will then begin work with IBM.”

This portion of the birthday project also serves as a traditional Christmas Eve ghost story.  The spirits of my Grandpa, Grandma, and father are affectionately internalized in my mother now.  I’m sure she holds many more as well – notably (to me) my sister and my husband.  The lives of friends, family, entertainers, neighbors, writers, thinkers and even fictional characters seem to animate her with exuberant ideas of connection.  Conversation with her is peppered with the anecdotes of a host of souls.  

Tomorrow is Christmas Day, and that chapter of 80 Years in 8 Days is dedicated to “10 Family Foods”.  My mother’s table is the holiday feast I dream of every year.  While visions of it dance in my head, I wish you, Mom, and dear readers, a Good Night.    

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Winter Solstice: “…oh, the night…”

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Yesterday, I lost the sun at 4 p.m.  I arose this morning at 6:30 a.m.  It is still dark.  There is no snow on the ground, but the air hovers at the freezing point.  I wish I were in New Mexico still, where the stars are so close.  Steve read me a poem yesterday, and I’ve been trying to digest it ever since.  There are so many heavy, rich ideas in it: angelic terror, love and death.  And then there are sensual images I recognize immediately and viscerally, like this one: “…the night, when the wind full of outer space gnaws at our faces…”   It made me think of exiting my tent in New Mexico, turning my face upward, and beholding the heavens.  The translation I’m working with is by A. Poulin, Jr.  It is quite long.  Take it in doses.  Meditate on parts that speak directly to you.  Search for your own vibration in the Void.  

Rainer Marie Rilke — The First Elegy from Duino Elegies:

And if I cried, who’d listen to me in those angelic

orders?  Even if one of them suddenly held me

to his heart, I’d vanish in his overwhelming

presence.  Because beauty’s nothing

but the start of terror we can hardly bear,

and we adore it because of the serene scorn

it could kill us with.   Every angel’s terrifying. 

   So I control myself and choke back the lure

of my dark cry.  Ah, who can we turn to,

then?  Neither angels nor men,

and the animals already know by instinct

we’re not comfortably at home

in our translated world.  Maybe what’s left

for us is some tree on a hillside we can look at

day after day, one of yesterday’s streets,

and the perverse affection of a habit

that liked us so much it never let go.

arboretum in winter

     And the night, oh the night when the wind

full of outer space gnaws at our faces; that wished for,

gentle, deceptive one waiting painfully for the lonely

heart — she’d stay on for anyone.  Is she easier on lovers?

But they use each other to hide their fate.

   You still don’t understand?  Throw the emptiness in

your arms out into that space we breathe; maybe birds

will feel the air thinning as they fly deeper into themselves.

Yes.  Springs needed you.  Many stars

waited for you to see them.  A wave

that had broken long ago swelled toward you,

or when you walked by an open window, a violin

gave itself.  All that was your charge.

But could you live up to it?  Weren’t you always

distracted by hope, as if all this promised

you a lover?  (Where would you have hidden her,

with all those strange and heavy thoughts

flowing in and out of you, often staying overnight?)

When longing overcomes you, sing about great lovers;

their famous passions still aren’t immortal enough. 

You found that the deserted, those you almost envied,

could love you so much more than those you loved.

Begin again.  Try out your impotent praise again;

think about the hero who lives on: even his fall

was only an excuse for another life, a final birth. 

But exhausted nature draws all lovers back

into herself, as if there weren’t the energy

to create them twice.  Have you remembered

Gaspara Stampa well enough?  From that greater love’s

example, any girl deserted by her lover

can believe:  “If only I could be like her!”

Shouldn’t our ancient suffering be more

fruitful by now? Isn’t it time our loving freed

us from the one we love and we, trembling, endured:

as the arrow endures the string, and in that gathering momentum

becomes more than itself.  Because to stay is to be nowhere.

ancient sufferingVoices, voices.  My heart, listen as only

saints have listened: until some colossal

sound lifted them right off the ground; yet,

they listened so intently that, impossible

creatures, they kept on kneeling.  Not that you could

endure the voice of God!   But listen to the breathing,

the endless news growing out of silence,

rustling toward you from those who died young.

Whenever you entered a church in Rome or Naples,

didn’t their fate always softly speak to you?

Or an inscription raised itself to reach you,

like that tablet in Santa Maria Formosa recently.

What do they want from me?  That I gently wipe away

the look of suffered injustice sometimes

hindering the pure motion of spirits a little. 

It’s true, it’s strange not living on earth

anymore, not using customs you hardly learned,

not giving the meaning of a human future

to roses and other things that promise so much;

no longer being what you used to be

in hands that were always anxious,

throwing out even your own name like a broken toy.

It’s strange not to wish your wishes anymore.  Strange

to see the old relationships now loosely fluttering

in space.  And it’s hard being dead and straining

to make up for it until you can begin to feel

a trace of eternity.  But the living are wrong

to make distinctions that are too absolute.

Angels (they say) often can’t tell whether

they move among the living or the dead.

The eternal torrent hurls all ages through

both realms forever and drowns out their voices in both.

At last, those who left too soon don’t need us anymore;

we’re weaned from the things of this earth as gently

as we outgrow our mother’s breast.  But we, who need

such great mysteries, whose source of blessed progress

so often is our sadness — could we exist without them?

Is the story meaningless, how once during the lament for Linos,

the first daring music pierced the barren numbness,

and in that stunned space, suddenly abandoned

by an almost godlike youth, the Void first felt

that vibration which charms and comforts and helps us now?

mysteryThe cloudy sky grows lighter.  I wish you peace, my friends, in your night and in your darkened day. 

Unknown's avatar

Weekly Photo Challenge: Yellow

by

I am curious.  Yellow.  What does it mean to me?  (Besides a Swedish film about acting, social justice, sex, non-violence and the 60s aesthetic lifestyle.)  I would think sunshine would figure prominently.  And flowers.  Autumn leaves.  A certain house in California.   Well, I’ll give you a gallery, and then you’ll get the picture.  Literally.

  (in response to Word Press)

Unknown's avatar

Long, dark nights – brief, sunless days

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A poem I wrote many years ago, re-written slightly.  Originally about Advent, it works well with Solstice, too. 

A cold dissatisfaction oozes poison into hours

of solitary boredom that once tasted summer’s warmth

and rejoiced in sensate ponderings of heaven’s languid clime.

 

Now prayers lie frozen on my lips these bitter, ashen afternoons.

 

Glossy catalogs and magazines lie orphaned at my door,

but I will not adopt their cheer

nor bed th’insouciant whoring of our winter holy days.

 

So melancholy punctuates the numbing march of time

into that darkened solstice of medieval isolation —

propelled into the farthest arc, forsaken by the sun.

 

Thus emptied into neediness, to famine and despair,

I search the yawning pitch-smeared void

and there behold a piercing Star!

 

No gaily burning candle nor twinkling hearthside glow,

this is the hard-edged hopefulness forged pure and straight of cosmic might,

arising out of nothingness toward Life’s salvific land.

 

My soul, a silent universe,

lies naked in its beam,

a prayer more fragile and profound

than any summer dream.

For warmth and life, nothing beats baking and eating tasty treats!  Steve made a Pear Rosemary quick bread the other day.  It filled the house with a savory aroma of sweetness, tartness and tangy evergreen. 

May your brief, sunless days be warmed with life, your long, dark nights with be warmed with love!

© 2014, poem and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved