Tag Archives: Halloween

The Last Holidays of the Year

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It always happens, but I always forget.  The night of Halloween starts the cold, and it continues until there is snow on the first night of the new year.  The ice is black and is so dark that it is invisible until the flurries of snow coat it, making skid marks visible.  The only way to travel is to go slowly and carefully, even the buses and the cyclists.  The hard part is  the flying ice pellets because the lake water rose and froze so quickly to become bullets of ice water.

I am counting down the days, and suspiciously guessing that a deep snowfall will happen before Christmas morning, making work fill our holiday.  In some ways I anticipate this, eager to see the men in the shovel machines–the small ones as well as the giant ones.  It is almost as if the snow melts and galls down the sewers just from the weight of the tires.  I feel more hopeful seeing that the city has not died on  Christmas Day.

The Christmas Time means that I see familiar people in a different way.  Sometimes my behavior changes, but I don’t always know what I am doing.  Sometimes if I just promise to make my money useful, helpful, I start seeing opportunity.  Then comes the work of budgeting appropriately as well as saving enough for the things I like.  I try not to act as if I am in Las Vegas, as there is no benefit in that.  Do I want to win hearts, or do I want to win money?  Feeling at home where I am before the new year is sometimes dependent on the feat of promise.

I also like Christmas, just for the food that becomes available when usually food is not so rich.  I like the busy-ness that excuses my absence from the usual things and places, and the sudden filling of my schedule with functions of food and music.  I like that everyone becomes important, not just the people of power and the famous.  I like that my heart knows what all this Christmas is.  That there is time to find an ever-green-tree, time to decorate it, and time to just spend time in places that as close but different.  I like that there is joy, and peace, and merry-ment.  I like that there is happiness and sleeplessness on the new year eve.  I greeting Christmas as well as greeting that first of the year, as early as I can, which makes staying up until midnight on those two nights a treasure.  The excitement of the first minute is a pleasure an joy.

Only a week separates the two most important events of each year.  It is easy to be generous, grateful, and happy, in this continuous way.  The time of a week is just the perfect amount of time, and is a reminder of what the entire time has been about and what the coming of another year will become.  The entire world is aware of these holidays, regardless of creed, religion, ethnicity, or status.  Whether child or grandparent, age is no barrier, no limit, to participating and understanding the one-ness of the world as it looks at itself, and appraises the situation of marking this year-end and year-beginning, as it comes.  December and January are the months the entire world unites, knowing the meaning of these two months, in agreement of this meaning, without malice, disrespect, or dishonor.  And so, in this agreement, the world celebrates existence, and the evidence of this existence.  There is no doubt or hate of it all.

The awareness grows.  And knowing grows too.  Snow, and cold are Christmas staples, which prove that warm hearts will come out.  So, it has been a month, and another month more is here.  Halloween, Christmas and the New Year will have their run, and then, the usual rest of the twelve months will have their turn.  Being old enough to anticipate these events is definitely something I have grown into, and is something that I invest myself in.  I encounter it in other people too….  The need to celebrate what this world we live in has become.

Fromm witches and goblins to Santa Claus and the New Year kiss, it is a glorious time, a precious time, and I have hope for it, because it is where I first had hope and fun.  The last part of the year is always what we will remember, it we remember anything out of an entire twelve months.  Here is to what is, what will become, and what we will change.  A glass of champagne, will be how we hold on to it all, toasting the past, the present and the future.  I toast you, and whatever language it is you use to greet the holidays.  Good health, good fortune, and great wealth!

Making Short Bread Crumble

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On the holiday a couple of years ago, my parents had a Thanksgiving get-together that had not happened in several years–about four or five years–since the last of us had moved ourselves out of their grand old house.  The invites were sent a month hence, and this guaranteed that all of us could make it.  It was terrifying actually.  The reason?  My grandparents had moved into the nursing home only a couple of months before…  The reason?  They were incapable of taking care of themselves.

So, it was a Halloween scare we had for our Thanksgiving dinner.  With special guidance and help, we took them out to the house.  We, the kids, were all feeling that this would be the last time we were seeing our stalwarts.  My grand mother and my grandfather came from the old country, and we always saw them as part of a grand old past.  Great in their day, and great in their time.  So, watching these people face their possible end, on earth, to go, to… perhaps… heaven?…  we felt trepidation and concern and possibly, even, guilt about the whole situation.

Emails were shot out, back and forth, between all of us.  There is nothing to do, in all possibility, when faced with a certain end.  So, we bothered ourselves with industriousness.  None of it was going to benefit us in any monetary way, in fact, we were anticipating a great expenditure of time and space and money, just to get through it all.

I don’t know what was worse about that particular holiday:  all the things that we had to do that was involving us in death, or not knowing what would happen even when we did everything right…  everything that we knew how to do.  We could not have certainty, even if we did our utmost.  Our best.

Now, a couple of years later, our grandparents are still here, in the nursing home, idling (as we do to accuse them of enjoying their time in Club Med.)  And, we are celebrating the coming Thanksgiving on our own.  We will visit, since we are a short drive away, only, and bring them treats that are sweet and savory…  things that we purchase at the Farmers’ Market as we pass by several of these markets on our way in. I know that they like these little gifts and that even in their momentary enjoyment of it all, that they they truly enjoy it all, not regretting not leaving yet,  as we all know, that heaven is absolutely the best, the most perfect, place to ever be.  So, I doubt that they actually do not regret it.

That particular year, the year of the first Thanksgiving that my grandparents had to stay inside the nursing home, we brought everything, all the treats, all the gifts, that would come at Thanksgiving, as well as all of the that that would be had at Christmas.  And why do I remember this, so especially?  The Short Bread Cookies we bought at the Farmers’ Market got crushed and crumbled underneath some heavier groceries.  What could w e do with all this waste?  At that, it is our grandmother’s favorite savory.  Well, because I am not the only foody, I called the other best foody I know; my brother, and we concocted an apple crumble recipe that would have a topping of Short Bread.  It did work.  And now, with our grandmother’s very hard-won approval, we now have an annual tradition of Sort Bread Crumble.

Even if my grandmother will not be here to insist on it, Short Bread Crumble has become a family favorite at each and every fall and winter holiday.  Often, we take turns picking up the ingredients and baking it into the food that we will eat.  Part of the growing joy is giving these baked squares in pretty packages to everyone who is close.  We spend a weekend baking, and the gifts are done for the holidays.  How many toys and how many hundred dollar bills can actually be useful?  How much food will not be contributing to the weight-gain of the nation? Where we found such as tasty and satisfying gift as our Short Bread Crumble, we immediately stored it, filed it, away into our Secrecy File.  It is an official family tradition, and it is as if it is our official, institutionalized, treasure–of our family.

How will the growing joy, grow?  How will my grandchildren eat it?  Will they want more sugar, or, is the savory buttery, weight, satisfying enough?  Is it already perfection?  Or will there be a second recipe by the time my grandchildren are old and married?  As I am now, I cherish the greatness of our crumble, that it is right now.  As the months of the year go by, starting  from the start in January, I find my anticipation growing.  Will there be opportunity for another weekend of baking?  Will my grandmother do another surprising thing, and ask for rainbow sprinkles on the top of the Short Bread Crumble?  Will she insist on this suggestion, insisting that the crunch and the color of the sprinkles is what makes it Short Bread and not just butter and brown sugar?

The greatest value of this family recipe is the accident it was just before it was made into something to cherish.  Each time we remake it, each time we re-cherish it, taste it, , I enjoy it.  So, occupying my time, I feel I am not wasting any of it.

As for the coming holiday, I am wishing that everyone will have wonderful holidays.  That everyone will have joy and merriment.  So, with a bit of earliness, Happy Holidays!

We Will Go on a Cruise

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“We will go on a cruise, when we have the time!”  This pronouncement from my mother made me frustrated and even more impatient than my 18-year-old self could actually handle, which is to say, I began to whine.  i must say that the whining did pay off, as within six months we were on a massive ship in the Caribbean visiting 3 or 4 ports of call, including Jamaica.

At eighteen, this is not only a vacation, but on the best adventures.  I was “officially” graduated from Disney rides, and allowed to sip Bloody Mary’s and have a bottle of Corona.  I almost had a room to myself–I shared a cabin with my sister.

Every day was get up late day…  And because the late I preferred was noon–lunchtime, I missed being in the main dining room, which was only open to any public for breakfast.  For lunch, I often wandered into the buffet, as well as one of the cafes on a few of the other decks.  I welcomed getting up late as the feeling that the sun is always shining is absolutely the one feeling I wan, especially if I am on vacation.  This made it possible to run out to the pool deck for the afternoon, if there wasn’t some show or movie on.  My sister and I would share a cocktail, just before meeting our parents and a couple of other friends who had come with our parents.  Sometimes, it was easier to pay for a bottle of Corona and avoid the late afternoon nagging that would come from Mom and Dad…  especially in one of the several bars and lounges that were open.  This happened a few times in our two week cruise, sine the traffic continually changed, sometimes making the outdoor sundecks too crowded.  My sister and I didn’t have the money to go  to the ones with the dress code, but we made an effort to get together with the grown-ups at one of the karaoke bars anyway.

This was one of the best vacations I had ever been on, and I am young, so, you know that if I had the perspective of a more experienced cruiser, that probably this business is a good one.  To always have a water bed to sleep on is one of the luxuries I always thought belonged to the ultra-rich.  To have an experience that is related to having a lot of money and a lot of taste is like an adventure at Disney Land, for adults who love this feeling.

The fun thing about a cruise is that the fun of Disney Land and Disney World doesn’t end.  If you get bored of gambling onboard ship, you can always disembark and on land at one of the ports and go for something fun and interesting.  There are bars and restaurants and sites to see as well.  And you get to see all those buildings that could only be seen in unreal ways.

After that first trip, I have fallen in love with cruising.  It has a cult following that attracts people who like to travel, which in the past, was not as easy as getting aboard ship.  I’ve also been on the road trip…., which requires nerves of steel, if you have them.  You go and you stop and stay at absolutely any time you wish, going as far as you want, but just get back home within three weeks!

As this summer ends, we are getting ready again fro the regular business of school, and the changing of season, again.  After a break like the two months in the summer, it almost seems fun to get out big coats and sets of boots, and start to think about the fun of Halloween and Christmas.  I feel lucky to have “things” despite those people who are minimalists, who want to have very few interior decoration or things to carry  around with them.  I am not so attuned to having luck or no luck decide my life. I am very focused on having “my things” with me, when I get them.  So, in this pack rat style, I now have to clean my room.  I still have university text books, and my favorite doll from childhood.  Things that I own, and with a growing family, I must now decide, “text books” versus “daughter and son.”

I almost feel as if I am letting people cruise through my life…  Experiencing it through these objects that i have collected.  But where else, what else, can I do with these things?  Sometimes some of the things are still very useful.  My sister, in one of her “cleaning moods,” got together with her friends and made a three week yard sale, and made over  a thousand dollars. “On junk.”  At this point, even if people were to cruise through my life, like this, I am more willing to get rid of the junk than to care about being nakedly exposed.

So, welcome, please, and join the cruise.  It is an adventure of things and experiences.  Welcome!  Come All, Come One!  WE will have fun!