Oached Pish

I hope everyone got as much peace, joy, and good surprises as possible during the year's end festivities!

It was very quiet here; last night son and I watched the third Knives Out film together. Tightly written, really well acted, but there were plot holes, and not nearly the tightness and humor of the first one.

LOVING the rain, so very needed.

Hoping my daughter can visit today--she had to work yesterday.

So! It's Boxing Day, pretty much uncelebrated here in the US (who has servants???) but! Book View Cafe is having its half off sale!

Giant backlist, and lots of new books since last year's sale. Go and look and if you've got some holiday moulaugh, buy some books! We all need the pennies, heh!

I'm not one to welcome the return of long days, because to me that just means summer's heat is due all too soon, when we've barely gotten rid of the worst of it in the last couple weeks. But if it gives you joy, then great!

Ditto, wishing everyone a Happy Hannukah, Joyous Christmas, and if you don't celebrate anything, I wish you a peaceful end of a rather rough year. I hope my apprehensions of the next prove to be unfounded.

Last night, a delicious dinner at son's bio-grandmother's, complete to lovely holiday decorations, after which I drove around with good music playing to look at neighborhood lights. I adore decorative lights.

When I got home, spouse, son and I watched James Stewart's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, which son had never seen.

Today a quiet day with family, once daughter gets here. She and I will walk the dogs, and I'll feed the ducks and if I'm lucky the crows will call to me, and come swooping down for unsalted peanuts in shells. And maybe some of my local dog friends will be out and about. Joy!

Considering what a terrible cook I am, it's a miracle that I managed to bring off a (simple) dinner--spouse did the turkey and the stuffing, and I did the garlic mashed spuds, gravy, green beans, and the chocolate pie. It actually came out good! Dishes are done or in the last run on the dishwasher, and there's delicious leftovers for the next couple days, ha ha.

Now the 50% off sale at Book View Cafe is on. Lots of new books since the last time we ran a half-off sale. *insert exhortations to come, look, and buy here*

Yesterday was the third try to get up north to my sister's to pick up our brother's ashes, and this time it worked--there were still two down sick, but they were youngsters not holding down a house, so the rest of us gathered elsewhere, amid decorations of tiny winking lights, and symbols like reindeer and snowmen. Festival/holiday/gettogether all blended harmoniously, some with religious overtones, others just loving a generic "Yule" atmosphere: with the absence of the Toxic Ex, who always insisted on evangelizing with withering scorn his anti-religious views at the slightest mention of any "holy day" aspect of "holiday", we could feel safe to feel what we feel at this turn of the sky wheel.

I held the four month old baby on my lap as sister and others and I reminisced and caught up with news; the baby wanted to talk to me, his mouth and tongue working so mightily on making sounds to me that his entire body wriggled and stiffened and strained with his effort. But he kept grinning between his chirps and ooos and experimental sounds (such as drawing in a breath and rasping--he seems to relish this mode of expression the most), and so, when he at last gave in to yawns, I wondered if he felt as satisfied as I did with our communication. It certainly was amicable!

Today is the eleventh anniversary of the Christmas Eve that my little brother was found dead. It still hurts, terribly. I guess it always will, for whatever time remains to me. The people who made that day not just grievous but nightmarish are all gone now, two slain by the drink they couldn't part from, and one, the enabler who had been raised to use guilt and gratitude as weapons.

Tonight we'll get together with my son's bio grandmother, who lives a short walk from here, and tomorrow a friend will come for a very small celebration, as everyone else will be dispersing in various directions. It's such a relief that everyone left is willing to compromise, to take what we need of tradition and to amend expectation.

Last night as daughter drove us back down through LA to here, I sat with my brother's ashes between my sandaled feet, aware that I was guarding all that was left of him and as I watched the lights flash by liminal memory of guarding him and playing with him rose and rose: he a baby, me a toddler, and others when we began to be verbal. There is a picture of us sitting in a little red wagon, he barely able to sit up, and me perhaps eighteen months, but I remember distinctly the adults exhorting me, "Don't let go, don't let go!" and I held him with all my strength. You can see the effort in the picture. Yeah, Bruce, I have to let go now.

 Wishing everyone a peaceful day, and wishing those who celebrate Christmas a wonderful day, however you celebrate it.

I do miss going to a midnight mass, holding a candle and hearing gorgeous music, without having to brace for loathsome Giftmas jingles. I'll light candles later on in here, and listen to my carefully curated playlist of classical Christmas music, most of it written before 1900.

Today we're having a very small dinner. Daughter is working. Son invited to his girlfriend's for Vietnamese celebration. We have two friends and us, and lots of food, most of which I'm in the middle of prepping, with breaks for my hands. The pie is in the oven, thanks to a friend making the pie crust for me.

As I was rolling out the pie crust, with the bowl of peeled, cut, and prepped apples next to me, I guess the act of rolling the crust and then pinching the edges brought back memories of childhood, watching my grandmother make apple pie. I said for years she never taught any of us, which is a shame as to my taste no one has ever made as good a pie.

But actually she did. I distinctly remember her dusting her tiny pull-out board with flour, and then later, the expert way she pinched the edges to make that ruffled effect. (My pie, of course, looks like Frankinstein's monster, no fault to my crust-making friend, and due entirely to my ineptness in the kitchen)  

I recollect the crust pinching, and I can hear her voice as she did her version of measuring ("Then you take and put a little...") and her tuneless humming, as she had fancied herself a singer, like her younger sister. She was emphatically not a singer, but that didn't stop her from belting out those hymns at church, with a glutinous vibrato and hitting somewhere within three or four half steps of each note. She couldn't sing, but wow she was a terrific cook.

I reveled in the memory, though I suspect there were no more lessons because I, obnoxious monkey, whined too much about wanting bits, and when will it be done, as I was starving. When I ought to have listened to her directions, and then put in lots of "You're awesome at this, Nana!"

The woman cooked and cleaned from the time she was eight until she fell at 96, and died when they tried to repair her shattered hip. Acres and acres of delicious meals made every holiday, decade after decade, and everyone took her for granted. (Though in later life I did thank her, and tell her how much I appreciated her, but I suspect it was the men she wanted approval from, and never got. They ate it all, then got up, leaving the mess, to go in and smoke while they cursed at the TV and some sports thing or other. Which is what most men in my life did in those days)

Okay, hands rested, now to go peel the spuds, and then all finito until time to mash the spuds, and then make the gravy. Yummmm, gravy.

Though I have always loved this time of year, and still do, it's a love with a sharper poignancy; ever since 2012, Christmas Eve was when we found out that my little brother was dead, under circumstances so profoundly depressing I will spare you the description.

Ever since, I wake up this day aware that he is not with us; the holiday focus seems to unsheathe the emotions that much more intensely. That year I toiled up the freeway to the maternal side family get-together on Christmas Day, which we did for the sake of the younger generation, but I will never forget the helpless misery mirrored in faces, nor the alcohol-fueled anger in those who coped in that way. (Those relatives are gone now, in the intervening years.)

So Brad is only with me in memory, and I spent a lot of this morning while cleaning and dog-walking, etc, cherishing the good ones. How, when he was small (12 years younger than I) and I was a teen, I'd frequently waken in the middle of the night with him standing beside my bed. I'd open the covers without saying a word, and he'd crawl in and huddle up next to me, heave a sigh, and sink into sleep. In later years, if the bulldog was also in the bed, the three of us would find a way to fit together like a puzzle.

We teens traded him off a lot. In those days, things were just different. Though the mom in me shudders, I can still recollect the pleasure of a spring day as I biked to the grocery store and back on errands, Brad riding on my hip and the grocery bag on my other hip. Yeah, my hands never touched the handlebars. But I was in junior high, and it never occurred to me to think that might be dangerous. All I remember is how much Brad loved riding on the bike with me.

He trotted after us like a mascot--he was so sunny and goodnatured. He was also extremely bright. I remember my brother taught him to recognize the makes of cars before he was three. He could spot a '65 Mustang by a glimpse of a quarter-panel blocks away, and he'd shout out "Mustang!" And beam as all the teenagers in the car hooted with pride.

My very best memory was spring of '73, so he would have been nine. When the parents went out we kids sat him, and often enough just took him along on whatever we were doing, if it wasn't a twosome date. He went along with me to quite a few Mythopoeic Society meetings that way--nothing he looked forward to, but I'd bring toys, and promise him ice cream after.

I had managed to score tickets to Hughes Night at Disneyland. In those days it was still those stupid ticket books (you'd get a small number of good rides, the "A" and "B" tickets, and a lot of the boring ones. In our rare family outings, it was one ticket book per kid, so the A and B ones were used up fast. The rest of the time we pretty much spent playing on Tom Sawyer's island, though I remember dutifully going to the Abraham Lincoln exhibit more than once, just to get out of the sun). In contrast, on Hughes Night, every ride was open--only Tom Sawyer's island was closed because of the darkness. But you could go on the fun rides as many times as you wanted, and the lines were never that long.

So anyway, I and my boyfriend at the time said we were going to a Mythopoeic thing, and Brad was resigned. We made it all the way to D-land, and I will never forget his face when he realized where we were. Oh, the amazement and joy!

And he fizzed with joy all that night. We went on his favorite rides over and over. When it was time to leave at last, he didn't even make it to the parking lot, but fell asleep as we carried him to the car.

Darling Brad, one of these Christmas candles is for you.

I have an ambivalent attitude toward Hallmark Holidays (that includes the Giftmas face of Christmas)--I resent the expense and obligatory hoopla, but at the same time recognize that people deserve salutes and respect. I guess I'd rather make gestures when the spirit moves me, and how.

Mothers' Day has until this year been a fairly arduous duty: certain among the elder generation could be quite vociferous about it, so this day involved much driving, cooking and resultant cleaning, cards, calls, etc through the years, to make sure all the grands, exes, steps, halves, and in-laws each got their due attention.

Well, we're down to two, and as both of those are now in that twilight area where most days they have no idea who we are, much less what day it is, for the first time, at almost age sixty-eight, I'm free. It feels . . . weird, mostly I guess because in the quiet I'm hit with the inexorable passage of time. And I'm a bit sad with a new awareness of those for whom the day is a reflection on those they've lost.

I've raised my kids to only do something toward me if they feel like it, and to ignore it they're busy. My love is not going to change. As they were dragged up and down the freeways in the past, and have seen me laboring in the kitchen for the locals, and were put to the phone for the really distant ones to add their voices to mine, they know I mean what I say. I never want to be a duty or a burden--the thought is horrifying.

So today . . . before I get some writing time, I'll sweep the front and the patio, weed my tiny garden, and get the laundrag done, likely working by rote as my mind slips back in memory. Not of Mothers' Days, but of all the other days and good times.

I hope everyone is sailing peacefully toward the New Year. We did very little of the customary stuff for Christmas this year, which was restful. Rest has been sorely needed.

Christmas Eve visited one set as a duty, and my son's bio family as a joy, at which music was made, and my son's g.f. arrived to find that no, she was not the only Asian face there by a long shot: two Japanese first gen: one married to a Caucasian, the other to the second Vietnamese, with their various offspring.

(It hit me that what with the other side of the family--seen two weeks ago--having first gen Spanish speaking, including elders who have no English, we've got a whole lot of California history right here in the family.)

Great food and great jokes as well as music made it a delightful evening. Christmas day was just the four of us, and as I'd made a vast vat of vegetable soup from turkey bone stock and froze it against such an occasion, we had good food.

So now back to regular life, which includes An Announcement" Book View Cafe's 25% sale. Most of the books are already cheap as ebooks go these days, with another quarter off this week.

For the past couple of days I've been mulling posts for this 100th year commemoration. There was so much poetry that came out of WW I, especially from soldiers who never came back, to wrench at the heart.

But I don't feel we're in a position of comfort in looking back. Human beings are still doing destructive and absurd things, as nature goes wild in result.

But this morning my family are back in their homes until the next evacuation. They have homes to come back to. And . . . well, you know the news.

So I wanted something that acknowledges the cost on so many levels, by those who have come after, conveying a sense of hope. I guess I hope that humankind can grow past this fearful destructive phase. Grow up.

I found a post to share, by JRR Tolkien's grandson. He came out with a novel about WW I last year. I haven't read it. WW I is one of those subjects I tend to avoid fiction about, especially written by modern people, ditto Holocaust. There's enough primary source material.

But I really appreciated this post about a man who survived that war, though all his creative friends died around him.

Almost seven, and I promised I'd start the kitchen slog at seven. I took the evening off last night in order to decrease the stress: I had to pick up the apple pie anyway, from a new place in Seal Beach that makes pies from scratch, without any disgusting corn syrup or other shortcuts. I, like apparently everybody else within a thirty mile radius, waited until the sun went down and the horrible heat began to dissipate a tiny bit: the streets were packed with people wanting ice cream and etc.

I picked up Mexican food (the kitchen is crammed with all the dishes readied for today's onslaught of cooking, everything that couldn't be done yesterday) and I sat in my reading chair and ate Mexican food and watched Spiderman: Homecoming, which was delightful.

So, time to get at it: even though I loathe cooking and cleaning, I'm aware at all times of my gratitude for being alive, for having food to cook and a house to cook it in, and for family to share it with. And of course tomorrow, after the fifty billion dishes are washed and put away, I will be super dooper grateful for leftovers that only have to be zapped!

Those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, I wish you a wonderful one, and those who don't, I wish you a terrific day.