Lunch Plans

One of my quirks that makes Mike shake his head is my habit of eating a variety of snacks over a period of a few hours--sharp cheddar, some almonds, something leftover from supper, carrots with hummus, cucumber salad, a hard-boiled egg, whatever sounds good--as breakfasts and lunches on my days off instead of taking the time to "eat something real."  I don't think one way is better than the other, but it occurred to me this past week as I brainstormed ways to make this winter better for myself that taking the time on one of my days off every week to cook a "proper" dish that has some fondly-remembered significance to me would be a sweet habit to get into this winter.  Similarly, a friend from high school who is a marathoner mentally dedicates every mile of a race to a different loved one to get her through the hardest stretches and to refocus the endeavor for herself in that way.  Yes, yes, yes.  I've long thought the finest thing about my life is the beautiful people who have been in it, so why not honor them in the days ahead by measuring out the same ingredients and performing the same steps of measuring and boiling and baking that they did or do.  Yesterday I kicked off the project by cooking my grandfather's gnocchi and my grandmother's meatballs.  I cried once as I smelled the potato-flour dough and then again when I tasted my first bite.  I make the meatballs often, and I used to cook the gnocchi a few times a year, but neither Mike nor I should have the extra potato or white flour anymore, and I'm not interested in the healthier versions out there--I want Papa's heavy gnocchi or none at all--so it had been at least five years since I'd made these foods together.  I will modestly but honestly say I hadn't lost my touch:  My grandparents would have proudly recognized both their beloved dishes.  :)  Here's to the best of grandparents, here's to memories of Sunday dinners at their house the first 24 years of my life, and here's to all the LOVE.  How blessed am I.   

♥

With Gingham and Gratitude

A few hours after I wrote that last post, my grandmother fell and struck her head and has since passed away, the last of my grandparents and the one who has always been too big for me to be able to write about.  Dear Grammy.  ♥

Unresponsive after the fall, Grammy survived more than another week, while the rest of us waited and wondered if today would be The Day.  Yes, we were told, it will be today, then today would become tomorrow, and Grammy was still with us, but no, now they say certainly sometime tonight, but then a new day would dawn, and now they're sure it will be in the wee hours of the morning, but no, another night and day would pass.  'So touch-and-go, but I took quite a gamble and ordered a teddy bear one afternoon for next-day delivery to the hospital.  My uncle opened the box and quickly placed the bear into her arms, my family texted me, and my aunt rubbed its fur against Gram so she could feel how soft it was.  Grammy passed just a few hours later. 

Just as I felt when Sommer died and when my paternal grandfather died, I remain shocked that such a big personality could somehow no longer be here with us.  Surely, someone larger than life is larger than death too?  Some part of the heart will never understand.

I began writing what would become a eulogy on New Year's Eve--such were the holidays this year--and I was determined from the start to read it at her service, shyness be damned.  And last week, standing in front of everyone at the funeral home wearing a pink gingham skirt Grammy would have raced me across the store in her walker to beat me to, I did just that, my voice only breaking on the very last word.  I was nauseous with dread while waiting for the pastor, my uncle, and my aunt to finish speaking, but as soon as I began walking to the podium, I felt a calm come over me and I knew I'd be okay.  I'm prouder of the fact that I not only managed to do this, but also that I did it well--I received many compliments on both my writing and my delivery--than of anything else I've done so far in my life; it means that much to me and was that hard for me to do.  And Grammy would have understood that and would have been pumping her fists in the air for her quiet granddaughter with every finished sentence and section from me, I know.

This is what I said:

When someone close to me died years ago, Grammy told me, "Write!  Write!  It will help ease the pain of the loss."   I've been taking her advice the past couple weeks, and this is some of what I've written so far. 

My earliest memory is actually of Grammy.  She is in the kitchen with me asking me if I'm excited about turning four.  I've always loved that my first memory is of a grandparent--and of a grandparent asking if I'm excited about something. . .what a celebratory note to begin on, you know?  :)  And how apt that it was Grammy asking me if I was excited, because we all know that Grammy could make things exciting--for better or worse, right?!  :)  Excitement to me as a four-year-old with Grammy meant that when she helped Mom make my breakfast, she'd slice my toast on the diagonal and call it "party toast."  We both liked Nabisco Nilla Wafers and would eat them together.  She made a brown velvet coat and hat set for one of my dolls, and she made a beige shawl for one too.  I still have all the clothes.  

Well, I turned four in the spring of 1981, and as many of you here remember, those were the days of the big family badminton tournaments in my parents' yard.   Grammy loved to tell the story of how during one especially spirited game, she landed badly and broke her ankle, and as my dad and various relatives made a little "arm chair" and carried her off the court--"the court!"  :)--my Italian great-grandmother who lived next door to us at the time muttered as Gram was carried past, "Crazy woman!!"  :)  Grammy loved that story; she thought it was a hoot and told the story with pride.  "Crazy woman!"  :) 

I once showed her a Peanuts cartoon I had clipped from the newspaper.  It depicted Charlie Brown in bed with thought balloons all around him, and the thought balloons were a repeated image of the little red-haired girl--his long-time crush, you know--asking HIM to dance.  The word balloon above Charlie Brown's head read, "Sometimes it's nice just to lie in bed at night and remember something good that's happened to you."  Grammy loved that.  "Oh, VAL!  Isn't that WONDERFUL!"  She loved it.  I think of Grammy and all my grandparents as some of the "something goods" in my own life, but Grammy was one of a kind.  I remember telling my best friend in high school that I couldn't really describe Grammy--She'd just have to meet her.  Grammy was too big to put into words, really, but here are a few I've come up with so far, just bullet points of things about her that make me happy or that instantly say "Grammy" to me:

•  hats, overalls, scarves, denim, and the colors beige, tan, pink, gray, and olive green
• pink legal pad paper
• pink Geraniums
• gifts wrapped in white tissue paper--I never saw Grammy use wrapping paper; It was always white tissue, and her gifts were beautiful.
• her spindly handwriting
• raspberry squares
• chocolate brownies with black walnuts
• baked beans at family picnics
• the smell of strong coffee
• Rod Stewart's song "Forever Young"--because Grammy told me once that a friend of hers once told her that every time he heard it, he thought of her.  Every time I've heard it since she told me that, I've thought of her too.
• the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"--because Mom's always said it was one of Grammy's favorite songs
• Grammy liked pretty things, and especially pretty pink things:  Pink lemonade, pink hard candy, and even pink salad dressing.  I remember one visit as a kid. . .seeing a glass jar on her counter with pale pink watermelon candy in it and thinking, "Wow!  How great to be an adult!  You even get to have pink CANDY!"  It was enchanting to me.  And then I found raspberry vinaigrette dressing in her fridge, pale pink dressing in a bottle, and asked her, "Do you even LIKE all these flavors, or do you just like having pink groceries?!"  :)  (Gram assured me she really liked them all.)  :)  
• She liked Winnie the Pooh.  And like Pooh, when she got hungry, she was known to say, "'Time to get a little smackerel of somethin.'"  
• And finally, in a story I almost can't believe I'm going to share in front of the Reverend. . .Jim Palmer, the hunky baseball player from the 70s and 80s--He used to do ads for Jockey underwear.  As he got older, he did endorsements for mortgages and home equity blah-blah--drier things, right--and one day when one of the more boring Jim Palmer commercials came on TV, Grammy shocked my teenage self by saying, "I like ya a lot, Jim Palmer.  But I like ya a lot better when you're in your underwear!"  :)  She was one of a kind.

My best friend in high school didn't get to meet Grammy.  She died a few months before our high school graduation.   Grammy sent me a card a few days after she learned of Sommer's death--and many of you know how perfect Grammy's cards always were.  She had the knack of finding the PERFECT card with the PERFECT illustration and the PERFECT verse, and this one was no different.  The outside showed a dark-haired girl in a dress, tights, and black Mary Jane shoes with her head bowed, and it read:  "Endure.  Keep yourself for days of happiness."  I'm actually going to wrap up what I want to say here today by sharing with you what Grammy wrote to me inside the card.  I thought of it over New Year's and dug it out, knowing it would be as perfect now as it was back then.  In Grammy's words, then:

"Dear, dear Val--

How I ache for you today, I can think of little else.  Looked so forward to meeting Sommer.  Life is so hard and it's okay to yell, 'It's not fair.'

You know, Val, Nana used to say, 'Just be happy for that part of your life and what this person brought into your life--and you into hers.'  I understand you can't handle the memories now.  Guess I've never understood how a loving God could cause so much heartache and I personally have questioned him many times!

Just remember that every person in the world is a dream of God.  Life is a gift, day in and day out.  There is a quote I like from Golda Meir:  'Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either.'  

Remember that I love you beyond all reason.

Gram."

A fellow granddaughter sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" a cappella to conclude Grammy's funeral.  Unbeknownst to me, she had told her mom the week before that she was going to sing it, and sometime soon after she did, I texted her mom to ask if my cousin would be willing and able to sing, and I suggested "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."  My aunt loved that her daughter had came up with it on her own.  My cousin sang beautifully.  She is a local theater director, so her talent and composure were not surprising, but I think we all were remembering as we watched her how she used to put on pretend concerts on Grammy's front porch as a six-year-old, with Grammy's honey dipper as a microphone.  Just as I had held it together until my voice broke on my last word, she got through the song perfectly but then collapsed into sobs in her mom's arms as soon as she stepped away from the podium.  But we did it.  She and I were also the only ones who decided to wear pink gingham to the service--Grammy also loved pink gingham--so when we first saw each other's outfits, we laughed in surprise and delight.  'So wondrous how these little things align.  "Mom would be so proud of her gingham girls," my mom told us before we left the funeral home.  And she truly would.  I'm sure she IS.  ♥ 

Aunt Laurie and I were roommates at the hotel last week, and before we went to bed the night of the funeral, I sat at the desk writing in my journal while she finished packing her luggage for the return trip home.  One of the things that crossed my mind was that I hadn't seen a heart that day.  I had really thought I would.  I'd found a heart on the floor at work the week before,

had found one reflected in a stack of clean dishes I had put away before heading home for the funeral trip, 

and I had spotted another--a breadcrumb heart--on my plate at the family supper just the evening before,

but none of them were really the best heart, you know, and I was just surprised there hadn't been a more obvious one that day.  I didn't say anything about it, it was just one of a million things on my mind, and soon, I too was getting ready to climb into bed.  As Aunt Laurie folded up her coat to place it on the top of her now-tidy stack of luggage, she pulled something out of one of its pockets and laughed.  "I never know what I'll find in my pockets," she said and walked over to me holding out the whatever-it-was.  "I have no idea where this came from, but you can have it, Valerie."  And into my hand--chills!--she slipped a folded white paper heart.  

I went to bed having been given my heart after all, then--!--and hours later was in the car again heading home--with my pink gingham skirt packed away and Grammy's new bear now tucked in beside me. 

"When you finally fly away," Rod Stewart sings, "I'll be hoping that I served you well."  And Grammy has, and I think I did.   And I am, indeed, grateful for it all.  

Gone from My Sight

My maternal grandfather died this weekend, and the fourth of July holiday-weekend is an appropriate send-off for this Navy veteran, I find myself thinking.  When I once described her dad as "a character," my mom agreed and noted, "Both your grandfathers are characters."  And now both are gone, and I can't come up with the words quite yet to express how jarring that feels.  . . My time as someone's grandkid also passing away.  My grandfather would have turned ninety next month.  This is my ever-present-Yankees-cap grandfather.  The grandfather with the most beautiful, looped, delicate script-handwriting.  The grandfather who's always somehow reminded me of Elton John.  :)  The grandfather who would embarrass my grandmother by loudly and realistically neighing like a horse in the middle of Target to get her attention while she shopped.  :)  The grandfather who would add big-nosed "Kilroy was here"-style drawings to the backs of his letters' envelopes for me.  ♥  

A strict Baptist who had been raised on a large dairy farm, he never cursed; A man he encountered at work one day so angered him, he felt enraged enough to let some baaaaad words fly finally, the story goes, but all my grandfather managed to spit out was, "You--you--you applehead!"   He was always the first to laugh at himself, and no one has ever described him without using some variant of silly, goofball, or ham to do so.  During an Easter 2001 visit, he stood at my mom's side at the kitchen table late at night as she blearily tried to think of a final few rhyming clues for the next morning's egg-hunt before going to bed, and we were soon dissolving in giggles as his suggestions got sillier and sillier.  "How 'bout this, Chris?" he would begin--and she would cry out, "Stop!" and be laughing already before he even continued--"Your next prize might be under the tree.  If it is chocolate, leave it there for me!"  And as we all grew more tired and punchy, his helpful rhymes included gems along the lines of, "You think there's treasure in this yard?  Well, there's not, Kid.  Life is HARD!"  :) 

He served eight years in the Navy and was one of the helmsmen of the USS Wasp.  I'm hoping one of my aunts or uncles remembers to bring his official Navy portrait to the services this week so I can finally see it and take a picture of it.  He looks "just gorgeous" in it, in Aunt Laurie's words, so young and blue-eyed.  (Update:  They remembered.  ↓  ♥)

My grandmother remains, after having had him in her life more than sixty years.  She herself turned ninety this year.  The week ahead for all of us--Mom and Aunt Laurie have three brothers and two other sisters, there are more than twenty grandchildren, and now so many great-grandchildren too--will be heartbreaking.  Aunt Laurie, Mom, and I fondly remember Grammy's shock when my no-dancing-permitted grandfather led her out onto the dance floor at my older brother's wedding.  Life has its sweet surprises too, after all. 

Everyone's stories of  my grandfather are funny and endearing ones, told and retold.  One of Mom's favorites is of how during a family camping trip as a kid, she woke in the middle of the night to the whoops and hollers of my grandfather running around outside the tent chasing raccoons away from the family's food-stash in his underwear.  :) 

Decades later, upon first meeting my dad's Italian-born grandmother, who lived next door to us when I was little, he kindly accepted the glass of homemade wine she offered him since he did not know how to refuse her politely, especially since Great-Grandma spoke no English.  With the intention of getting it over with quickly, he downed the glass and smiled his "thanks" at Great-Grandma, but she misinterpreted his quick drinking and pleasant smile as a sign that he was a big drinker and would like more, so she refilled his glass--and refilled it--and refilled it yet again--and my sweet grandfather ended up near-drunk for the first time in his life (and smiling all the more the longer this went on, of course) before she finally understood that he really had had enough.  :)  That story is still my favorite.  Mom always loved to tease him about it, and he would laugh harder than anybody when she did.  ♥

He loved children and could always be found at reunions and get-togethers wherever they were gathered, much preferring playing like a kid to visiting over coffee with the rest of the adults. "Well, he IS just a big kid," one of my aunts has always added whenever this has been brought up. 

Last year, my uncle Dan arranged for my grandfather to be gifted with an honor flight--Bless!--and accompanied him to Washington, D.C. where he was recognized for his military service.

It is one photo from that trip that keeps making me cry this weekend--one of my always-sweet but almost-always-smiling grandfather standing tall to offer a crisp and quite solemn salute.  

For whatever reason, the salute--just like the homemade pies after my other grandfather died--is what keeps breaking me this weekend.  It comes to mind and I dissolve again.  We're talking about my grandfather, though--he of the applehead-curse and Kilroy drawings--so not to worry:  There is always a reason to smile again soon enough.

♥

Daisy-Henriette :)

One of the highlights of watching the finale of "Downton Abbey" yesterday was being surprised to see Daisy transformed into my grandmother's 1927 high-school-graduation portrait-self.  Even their dresses were so similar.  I started crying as soon as I saw dolled-up Daisy after Anna styled her new haircut. 

For Grandma's high school graduation present, her older brother treated her to a trip to stay with him and his wife in Detroit.  Below is Grandma on that trip, looking like she could be visiting "Downton's" Mary and Henry at the race track. 

Such a dear hairdo.  I tried its once in my mid-twenties and can assure you that it just doesn't happen with naturally curly hair.  :)

But Daisy and Grandma--and certainly posh Mary--more than make it work.  

Those eyes!

That lace collar!

Sweet, sweet Grandma.  And sweet "Downton" too.  I didn't like a lot of this final season, but the finale was solid.  Their "Happy new year" and the home in the snow, and with Grandma on my mind. . .I cried a few times while I watched this yesterday.  "Auld lang syne," indeed. 

June 2015

It is about 90° here and another day and week when sleep is eluding me. 'Not an issue for certain cats who have taken over the dining table as they convalesce.   Ever since Stuffed first jumped up onto the was-intended-to-be-temporarily-fleece-blanket-covered table at the start of last Friday's vet visit, it has been The Place To Be.  Sweet Kit Kat.  ♥  His side looks so much better, and although he still hasn't joined us in bed since this all began, he seems much more himself. 

Has it been two years since I mentioned how Grandma would try to come up with names of flowers--and birds, and who knows what-else--that began with each letter of the alphabet the nights she couldn't sleep?!  I thought I had written that just last summer.  As it was for Grandma, my not being able to sleep seems to be a life-long issue, and it is worse in this humidity.  She would be proud--or bemused, at least, let's get real--to hear that this past week, before giving up and getting up to read--another "Grandma thing," that--I decided to think of Things I Would Have in My Dream Home from A to Z, and although sleep didn't come as a result, I had quite a charming list going:  African Violets, Braided Rugs, Calico, Daffodils, Elementary School Photo, Fresh Flowers, Groundhogs, Hyacinths and Hollyhocks, Ice Maker. . . .Whatever gets you through the night. 

I'm going home to see my family--and to visit my childhood home!!!  ♥--this weekend and could not be more thrilled.  Yet to pack a thing, I've just gathered a few tops to take with me and have made a couple to-do lists.  Always, with the lists. 

♥