Today’s little snowstorm brought back some memories of snow events from the past and particularly one from eleven years ago.
My 2008 Christmas letter started off with this opening:
A little while back Hayley told us about a conversation she had with another new, young teacher at her work. This young lady was telling Hayley about her roommates:
“You know the kind of roommates I am talking about? Do you have those too?”
(Hayley) “You mean the kind that are older and married? Yes, I have those kind of roommates too.”
This year Kim and I got roommates…two of them to be exact. You know the kind that I am talking about as well…..the ones that when they are not working, sleep most of the time, watch TV, leave the lights on all night, make sure their dirty dishes stop at the sink instead of going all the way to the dishwasher; the kind that expect dinner on the table and then don’t come home; want their laundry done…that is if ever makes its way off their bedroom floor.
Sounds strangely a lot like our kids doesn’t it? Maybe I should ask for some ID.
Yeah just kidding…Savannah and Hayley have moved in. But they are now working adults…well… they are working anyway.
That year, in another of life’s twists and turns, Kim and I, after a shorter than expected time of being empty nesters, got roommates again.
I used to joke back then, that I could no longer make my coffee in the nude, an image that even I find vile and revolting today.
President Barack Obama dubbed the blizzard of February 5th and 6th 2010 “Snowmaggedon.” The official snow total for Dulles Airport was the greatest ever recorded, 32.4 inches.
As luck would have it, Kim and I still had our roommates that snowy weekend.
We had been given a winemaking kit sometime before that and it just so happened that the batch of wine we had made in our little plastic container was ready for bottling on that weekend. And since we were all nicely trapped together in the house, it was fun to have something we could all do together.
In the end, we blended our homemade merlot with a little cabernet sauvignon we had in the house, officially christened our new family winery the “Little Chickens Winery” even though we were short one little chicken, and called our new wine the “Blizzard Blend” in honor of the “Snowmaggedon.”
I don’t think we would have won any awards with our “Blizzard Blend” but it was drinkable.
There are still a couple of bottles in circulation, (like the one pictured above) but I think I would rather just look at it than drink it after eleven years.
Since we haven’t had much snow around here the last couple of years, any call for snow gets the “Snowmaggedon” treatment by the media. It’s been a nice little snow event, with not much stress, and required just a little shoveling. Kim and I went for a 4.5-mile walk down along the trails and it was really pretty to walk through.
And for just a brief moment this morning as I reflected on the snow and the memory of bottling our wine that snowy February weekend in 2010, I even missed having our roommates just a little.
Of course the first thing that pops up in the morning, not that I needed it, was the reminder from Facebook.
Then the nice back and forth texts from the siblings “Thinking of all of you today” and the phone calls, “how are you doing today?”
Kim still describes her grief after Donny as like having a bowling ball shot through the chest.
There’s a hole there now, a big one.
The size of bowling ball.
A void.
But life doesn’t stop does it?
And that may seem cruel sometimes.
There is no “Hey, wait a minute, I’m grieving here! Before you just move on and forget, let’s think about how I am feeling!”
Nah, there’s none of that.
Because life needs to go on, right?
There are others that need to experience their sadness, and maybe I need to experience more.
There are others that need to experience their joys, and maybe I need to realize some of my joys too.
But life doesn’t wait for us to say “okay, I’m ready now, you can proceed, let’s get on with it, I got this.”
So I guess the reality is, as much as I might try to…
I can’t avoid the void.
But in my sadness and still disbelief, and in spite of the void, I can’t forget what is really important. I can’t forget all those happy times, the words of encouragement, the support, and maybe most important thing, his example.
I can’t complain, nope I can’t dwell on the negative.
Because as I have said before, he wouldn’t want that.
So Happy Birthday to my “Cancer Brother.”
Happy Birthday, Carl.
And like your shirt says, you were very brave.
Brave and so, so much more.
And that is why today, instead of trying to avoid it, I need to celebrate.
So, you would be very proud to know, that for us to celebrate, I spent more than five bucks on the bottle of wine I plan to open later.
Have you ever looked at your kids and had this conversation with yourself:
“yeah look at them over there laughing and having fun…I’m glad they’re all happy…that’s my boat or cabin in the mountains standing over there all happy with themselves…when’s it going to be my turn?…
Oh, you say you never had that kind of conversation with yourself?
Yeah of course not, I mean I never have either, I was just saying…
You know…kidding around.
Say…how about those Nats?
One of my kids gave me a tee shirt this past year, I think Savannah, that says on the front “You Can’t Scare Me, I Have Three Daughters.”
Actually, I was wearing that shirt in a photo from a previous post.
Three daughters.
That pretty much makes me qualified to face just about anything life can throw at me.
And life sure threw a lot at us this year.
It’s been a tough year.
But like the song says if we can just get through this night, the year that was will be behind us.
And a new year will be upon us.
A Happy New Year I hope.
We’ll have a day to rest, then we will try it all again.
Although I was having a little fun picking on my kids, I once wrote in a post titled My Three Little Chickens:
The truth is my daughters have taken their share of lumps in life but they continue to rise up.
They have had some life experiences probably shared by many daughters.
And then they have had some I hope no child ever has to go through…
Yet they are resilient.
They are resilient.
A lot has happened in the world this past year.
A lot has happened in the lives of my family and Kim’s family.
A lot has happened in the lives of my friends and their families.
And I am sure in your lives as well.
But for me, there is something that is good, something that brings me some peace.
My girls.
Because for the first time since I can remember, I will close my eyes on this New Year’s Eve knowing that all my girls are in a good place.
And that makes me happy.
But now I am getting tired.
The champagne is starting to kick in.
I fear I will usher in the New Year in my dreams.
Lord, get through this night.
And when I wake up I pray that everything will be all right .
And when those times come in the new year when I realize that it’s not.
That it is as it will be.
I am counting on You.
To lift me up.
After all that we’ve been through lately
We can be the same again
Lord lift me up, lord lift me up
(from another song titled Lift Me Up by Joe Scarborough and the Independent Counsel of Funk)
Postscript:
The photo above is from some years ago, but one of my favorite photos with my daughters.
Dear Mister Fantasy play us a tune
Something to make us all happy
Do anything take us out of this gloom
Sing a song, play guitar
Make it snappy
This week’s nagging song in my head has been Dear Mr. Fantasy, a song from their 1967 album “Mr. Fantasy” by the band Traffic.
I read that Jim Capaldi, the drummer in the band wrote the lyrics to the song one early morning while he was coming down off of LSD.
It seems appropriate in this year of uncertainty to lean on this season of fantasy, with our Mr. Fantasy being Santa Claus with his reindeer and such, to look for something to make us all happy.
Something, anything to take us out of this gloom.
Kim and I spent Thanksgiving with my parents.
I recently found the Word file that was our 2012 Christmas letter. I remember I called my mother and father from a landline I had in my office and recorded these conversations on my cell phone while I talked to them over the speakerphone.
This was my dad speaking:
We were poor then. Times were hard. My father and I used to pick up coal from the railroad bed near our house; we had a coal stove then. Sometimes we would go down to the beach in Sea Bright or Monmouth Beach and wait for the pound fisherman to come in to the beach. The pound fishermen would pull in their nets and fill their boats with fish, then ride the surf in to the beach where a team of horses would pull the boats up. The fishermen would throw us fish they didn’t want and we would bring them home in buckets. And in the winter the ice fish, the cod fish, would freeze in the waves and land on the where we would pick them up.
We had a Christmas tree…..dinner would be lutefisk (dried cod fish), fiskebollers (Norwegian fish balls) and pickled herring. My mother would make pies and root beer, and I would put the caps on.
We would go down to the church in North Long Branch where my mother and father would go every Sunday. My father helped build that church. It was mostly Scandinavian fishermen from Monmouth Beach and Sea Bright. They didn’t have Sunday school and they only spoke Norwegian so as kids we didn’t go much at other times of the year. But on Christmas, there would be chairs lined up on each side of the room. They had a coal stove and a Christmas tree was in the center of the room and we would march around the Christmas tree and sing songs, which was the Norwegian tradition. The whole family would get an orange and a box of hard Christmas candy to take home, that was great……
I remember one Christmas I wanted and got a wagon, the kind of wagon that had sides on it that I could take off like a farmer’s truck. But I guess I did something bad and my father took it away from me.
A big thing for us on Christmas morning was the fire truck; we would all go outside and wait for the fire truck to come. When I saw it I would leap the hedge. We would get a box of hard candy and an apple and see Santa Claus…. this was in the thirties, I was born in 1929. (Carl E. Christiansen)
And this was a paragraph from the letter with a story my mom told:
When my mother was a child, her bed was actually in the dining room of their house separated from the living room only by a curtain. One of the most important parts of Christmas for my mother has always been the Christmas tree. You see when my grandparents put her to bed in the dining room every Christmas Eve there was no tree up in the living room. But when she awoke on Christmas morning there was always a beautiful Christmas tree decorated in the living room, put up while she slept soundly in the next room behind the curtain. One year when times were tough, my grandfather tried to slip in an Arborvitae tree instead (more like a cypress tree than a Christmas tree) that he had cut down on the property. When my mother woke up she freaked out. Now, I have seen my mother freak out a couple of times in my life and I can assure you my grandfather never tried to pull that one again. When I spoke with my dad the other evening he said my mother had five Christmas trees set up in the house and outside. I apologized to him because I think my wife gave her three of them. But it’s nice to know my mom still likes her Christmas trees.
This Thanksgiving weekend we revisited some of those stories from Christmases past as we sat around the table. The memories and the words to describe them don’t come as easy as they did in 2012 which is sad because months after I recorded that conversation, I upgraded my cell phone. The T-Mobile guy did the transfer of my data to my new phone, looked at me and asked “you want to check it before I delete everything?”
“No, I’m good, I trust you,” I told him.
The day I went back to find that audio file and realized it was gone, I was really sad.
Though my mom still loves her Christmas trees, she is keeping them all in the attic this year, with fewer things for my dad to have to navigate around.
But Kim and I plan to put up our tree today, decorate, and take advantage of a little of the fantasy of season in a year that might seem like Mr. Capaldi’s bad acid trip.
And of course, remember the real meaning of the season.
And I wouldn’t suggest you “prosclaiming the Palmist” to find the prophecy of the coming of Jesus, though you will find references in Psalms, better to look to Isaiah:
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)
Hard to believe that it’s Friday, November 13th in this year of 2020.
Thanksgiving is in less than two weeks and it appears that our end of year holidays, so heavily invested in family, are in jeopardy.
Covid concerns are ramping up again.
Thankfully, the election has come and gone.
And lucky for us, all those celebrities we couldn’t have lived without got to stay in America.
I don’t know about you, but I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall in Bruce Springsteen’s house about 12 midnight on November 3 when Trump was posting a comeback.
But seriously, when it got right down to it, I had to remind myself…”Curt… John Legend and Chrissy Teigen are threatening to leave the country if Trump is re-elected…”
I just couldn’t imagine.
The Voice without John Legend?
That did it for me!
My Friday the 13th started a little early on the evening of Thursday the 12th. My wife had got a new gadget to cut up all those ingredients for making her potions, tinctures, and syrups.
In addition to using it for the above, I quickly determined I could use it to cut my cucumbers for my salad.
But it didn’t take me too long to learn that it works really well on fingers too.
Not wanting to waste the cucumbers I had already sliced I tried to find the lost portion of my finger amongst the cucumber slices.
“What are you doing?” my wife asked sternly as she watched me putting pressure on my bleeding finger while using my other hand to go through the cucumbers.
“Looking for my finger, I don’t want to waste my cucumbers,” I responded.
“Throw them out you are not eating them that’s disgusting!” she said loudly.
Disappointed, I threw out my cut cucumbers and the piece of my finger and focused more on controlling the bleeding.
Then I cut up another cucumber.
One day many years ago when Kim and I first moved into our house in Herndon, Donny brought home a baby wild rabbit. We had lots of rabbits in the yard back then. We don’t see too many anymore, maybe because of the foxes.
But Donny was really happy about his little rabbit and wanted to keep it as a pet. I, however, in my sometimes to a fault need to do what I think is the right thing, told him he couldn’t. It wasn’t right to keep an animal from the wild and it should be returned to its habitat I explained so very parentally.
Needless to say Donny was very disappointed and not at all happy with me.
After Donny’s accident whenever I thought about this incident with the rabbit, I always felt really bad about how I made him feel by not allowing him to keep it. Even now as I reflect back on this memory I think to myself, what a jerk, you could have loosened up a little.
A year and a half or so later, I think it was Martin Luther King’s birthday weekend 2004 when we had no kids because they had extra time off from school and they were off with their friends, I had this great idea that I thought would show I could be spontaneous and selfishly, would make up for some of the guilt I felt over denying Donny that rabbit, even though I couldn’t share it with him.
I marched Kim into a PetSmart that weekend in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia on a mission to adopt a cat.
When it was all said and done we not only adopted one cat, we adopted two.
They were sisters.
Molly and Mona.
We agreed to all the rules and requirements, not to declaw them, and to keep them as house cats. The house cat thing didn’t last long though because Mona it turned out, was like Mufasa when it came to the kingdom of our backyard. She would roam the yard and protect us from critters. Molly on the other hand enjoyed just hanging out on the deck more like her humans.
After about seven years Molly would succumb to cancer and be put down.
That left Mona alone who now could claim the inside of the house has her domain as well.
And she lived a good life.
Until today.
On this Friday the 13th Mona made her last ride to the vet after 17 years.
This year continues to be one of challenges and changes, some foreseen some unforeseen.
Like the year Donny died, for Kim and I, we just have to realize that God’s got this.
And though my little guys from Florida won’t be visiting me for Thanksgiving as planned because of the increase in virus cases, I will get through my disappointment.
And I will admit it’s a little weird without the cat meowing at us this evening, it’s nice to know Mona is interred in one of the gardens in the backyard which was her kingdom that she liked to roam so much.
And thinking and writing about elections and celebrities brings back with a smile another memory of the profound and grounding wisdom of a young boy who once reminded his Pop Pop that “Everybody in Hollywood Farts” and who also this very evening demonstrated to me very graphically through video the devastating aftermath that the different categories of hurricanes can have on the toys in his bedroom.
But let’s face it, like it or not, this is the year where you won’t find the finger in the cucumbers.
Might as well toss it out and get a new one ready to slice.
But God’s got this.
And we will continue to be held.
We will continue to find reasons to laugh in the face of sadness and turmoil, loss and distancing.
I am back from western Pennsylvania and I am home alone again.
My wife stayed to help her mom.
Sunday afternoon I was sitting alone on the couch in my basement watching the Steeler’s play the Titans when a bug literally flew up my nose.
“Seriously?” I said out loud as I snorted and shivered.
“A bug just flew up my nose?”
Ironically with everything that has not gone well this crazy year of 2020, the Steelers began this game 5 and 0 for the season. Though they were winning early in the fourth quarter, they did their best to set up the typical Steelers nail biter finish by pretty much letting the Titans catch up.
But it’s just football in a year when everything that has happened or equally as important, isn’t happening makes it just trivial.
On the way up to Pennsylvania last week I took a break at my usual stopping place, a McDonalds in Clear Springs, Maryland. Returning to my truck I found a nickel on the pavement.
I had to think but don’t remember the last time I saw a nickel.
When I was a kid growing up in Oceanport, New Jersey I lived on a dead-end street. Once my dad finished building our house on property he bought from my mother’s parents, there were seven houses on the street. According to my mother, my great grandparents owned all the property on the street at one time. What was not sold off was left to my grandmother. The street was called Willow Court because of the numerous willow trees that grew on the end closer to the river. Access to my street was via my little town’s bustling business district that we referred to as “downtown” and off one of the main roads called Oceanport Avenue. As you made the turn it did a dog leg right up to where it ended with an apple tree.
Oceanport had a variety of commercial establishments “downtown” and how you remembered them depended on what era you identified with. Art’s liquor store was one, Art was the grandfather of my first friend John who lived in a house on the river behind the liquor store. Our friendship was arranged between our moms since we would soon need each other to walk to school because we were starting kindergarten that year. We remained friends a long time.
There were also three gas stations or service stations as they were known back then; a drug store called Park’s Drug store, and a couple of luncheonettes. Bob and Norma’s was on the river side, and also sold convenience items like cards and razor blades, and deodorant.
I once bought my grandfather some Old Spice deodorant from Bob and Norma’s for his birthday. I am pretty sure that was his best gift ever. My mother even worked there as a “soda jerk” when she was in high school.
Next to Bob and Norma’s was the Village Market run by a guy named Frank Callahan. His son Kenny would join my friend John and I and become good friends from kindergarten.
Being just over the bridge from the Army base at Fort Monmouth, we had three barbershops and three bars that kept busy. In the middle of all these businesses was a large, very old house which was owned and occupied by my great grandparents when they were alive. When I was a kid however, it was then left to my grandmother and had four apartments which she rented out. In my family we referred to it as “The Big House.”
I was very familiar with nickels growing up as a kid in the early 60’s because our kid currency mainly consisted of nickels and pennies. We worked for those nickels and pennies by scouring the properties around those businesses for deposit bottles. You could get two cents for a small size bottle like an eight ounce Coke bottle or a nickel for a larger twenty eight ounce bottle. With those three bars, the liquor store, the three service stations with soda machines, those luncheonettes, and the market, we had the deposit bottle business locked up in that neighborhood.
Throw in a whole lot of GI’s in town with the Vietnam conflict ramping up, and the Monmouth Park Racetrack less than a mile up the road when horse racing was in its heyday in the 60’s and yup, the bottle deposit business could be lucrative.
And this was before there were litter laws.
Bottles were everywhere.
As a result, an enterprising six or seven year old could do pretty well.
We would just go find our days’ work of bottles, take them over to Callahan’s market, plop them on the counter, and wait for our payout.
Then we would take our earnings and head down the street to Park’s Drug store to do our part in helping the local economy. Mr. Park the pharmacist was kind of grouchy and scary but the guy that worked for him, Rios was always happy. We could get our Bazooka Bubble gum for a penny, or maybe some baseball cards and gum, or Beatles cards and gum, or on a good bottle day maybe even an ice cream sandwich.
As I got just a little bit older the bigger money could be made raking leaves. I could actually get a quarter or two out of my grandmother for raking leaves.
I hated raking leaves for my grandmother.
But work was work.
You had to take it when you could get it.
And in the winter, my brother Carl and I would team up and shovel snow.
We would walk the neighborhoods and knock on doors and shovel snowy sidewalks. That was really the big time because a sidewalk in the snow could be worth a buck or two. We split it 50/50, but most times we just ended up in the luncheonette eating our profits.
Life was very different.
A nickel like I found and tossed into the console of my truck maybe never to be seen again, had some value then.
On Sundays we went to church and Sunday School in the morning but because businesses were closed due to Blue Laws we couldn’t do much else on Sunday afternoons.
We had Sunday football on TV but it was in black and white, and baseball was still the big attraction back then so not too many paid attention.
And since blue laws meant the bottle deposit business was shut down too, maybe I raked my grandmother’s leaves, or helped my dad the basement as he built something (I hated that even more).
Now we don’t go to church on Sunday mornings because of COVID, but we can go shopping till we turn blue.
Go figure.
Well that’s my two cents worth or five cents worth, but luckily you don’t have to take it when you can get it.
As expected with 14 seconds left the Titans just needed to make a 46 yard field goal to tie the game and send it in to overtime.
Then the snap… the hold…Gostkowski’s kick was up…
And it passed just right of the uprights.
He missed, and the Steelers went to 6 and 0.
Maybe a bug flew up his nose?
The moral of the story?
Hard work pays off?
We need to return to a life that was simpler?
or
It’s best to be alone when a bug flies up your nose.
“Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”
(Witch’s Brew recipe written in Shakespeare’s Macbeth)
It’s almost Halloween.
I read once that Halloween was second only to Christmas in retail sales. I have since read that is a myth.
But still, it’s a big deal to some, especially kids, and like everything else this year it won’t be the same.
That’s too bad.
Our typical day starts out with Kim and I having our first cup of coffee in bed as we check our email, check the weather, maybe our banking, and of course some social media.
This morning as I opened my Facebook I was greeted with a post reminding me that today is World Mental Health Day.
I might argue that a reminder of World Mental Health on Facebook could be perceived as an oxymoron but I was happy for the heads up.
In a great many cases and to varying degrees, the results of the conditions we currently are living and working and schooling under have taken its toll on our mental health.
Many sought new ways of staying active physically and mentally while social distancing. There was a time earlier in the year when you couldn’t buy a bicycle or a kayak as everyone tried to take on activities that lent themselves more to distancing from others.
If you want to social distance you can’t do that much better than being on a kayak.
Strangely, Kim and I, though we already had kayaks and bicycles, spent only a small amount of time riding our bikes this year and in fact never used our kayaks even once.
For physical activity, we walked a lot.
For fun, we spent a lot of time in our back yard.
And in our back yard, we worked our gardens.
Kim’s garden this year featured lemon balm, elderberries, horseradish, peppers, tomatoes, and herbs.
She even grew a pepper known as the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion!
According to PEPPERHEAD.com the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion will wreak your stomach, burn your intestines and still be smoking on the way out and is considered to be the second hottest pepper in the world.
We found that even just handling them was dangerous.
And as the pandemic focused our attention on building our immunity and trying to keep from getting the virus, Kim developed a new hobby, herbal concoctions that boost immunity, depress symptoms, help you relax and sleep.
I have mentioned our regular consumption of elderberry syrup in a previous post as a good source of boosting our immunity.
Normally we would go out and buy our syrup made locally by the Village Winery in Waterford, Virginia.
This year however my wife decided to fire up the cauldron and make it herself.
And in addition to elderberry syrup to boost our immunity she made elderberry tincture.
And in addition to the elderberry tincture, she made lemon balm tincture. Lemon balm tincture is supposed to reduce our stress and help with our sleep.
Today however was the day she was to prepare the mother of all home remedies.
FIRE CIDER!
Just the sound of it gave me chills.
“For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”
I don’t know if it includes any of those ingredients mentioned by Mr. Shakespeare in Macbeth but I do know it has garlic, turmeric root, ginger root, horseradish root, onions, lemons, apple cider vinegar (with the “mother” in it, you will have to look that one up), peppercorns, and I don’t know that I care to know what else.
And in at least one of those batches she added the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion!
Once you have all this stuff mixed together you keep it in a cool place for six weeks while it does whatever it does until I have to drink it.
One thing is for sure, in addition to my lemon balm tincture and my elderberry tincture before bed, and my elderberry syrup in the morning; once that Fire Cider is ready in six weeks I surely won’t need to worry about social distancing because that should pretty much take care of itself.
Masks will be required.
Last year near this same time I wrote a post titled “Oh Well” that discussed mental illness and former Fleetwood Mac founding member Peter Green’s life of dealing with mental illness. Again this year on my 2020 Guitar Calendar hanging on the wall of my office I am reminded of Peter Green’s October 29th birthday along with other famous guitarists.
However Peter Green died this past July peacefully in his sleep at the age of 73. The cause of death has never been released by the family though some have speculated his mental health problems may have contributed to his death.
So on this World Mental Health Day, I am reminded about how important it is to keep busy, keep physically active, and find a hobby.
Go buy a kayak or a bicycle if you can find one, or get yourself a dehydrator and a large pot.
Find some wacky folks on YouTube living off the grid in the upper Northwest and learn how to start brewing concoctions in your kitchen.
But find something.
And now as we approach the bewitching hour, my beautiful little witch-doctor wife is fast asleep with dreams of other potions dancing in her head, and I am still waiting for my lemon balm tincture to kick in.
It was a good day and I am looking forward to six weeks from now when I might get a chance to say:
“Honey, this Fire Cider is awesome but I think it might need a little more fillet of fenny snake”
“Just sayin'”
She bent down and turned around and gave me a wink She said “I’m gonna make it up right here in the sink” It smelled like turpentine, it looked like Indian ink I held my nose, I closed my eyes… I took a drink*
One of the three brewed batches of FIRE CIDER from today. It doesn’t look so bad today, let’s see how it looks and tastes after six weeks in the cold and dark. Pray for me. And my co-workers.
Post Script:
*“I held my nose, I closed my eyes, I took a drink” is from Love Potion Number Nine a song written by Jed Leiber and recorded by The Searchers back in the 60’s.
On a trip earlier in the week to the grocery store I got to the checkout and transferred my cart to the checker. It was in one of those stores where the checker pulls your cart on his/her side. When all was done I inserted my debit card and paid the bill as he pushed the cart around for me, handed me the receipt, and said:
“Hey, it looks like you got the wobbly cart.”
The “wobbly cart.”
You know, the one where at least one wheel wants to do everything but what you want it to do.
The one that makes the “rrraaattt tat ta tat’ sound all around the store as you push it with one arm or the other acting in overtime to compensate for the pull as you try to act all casual while you know everyone you pass in the store is thinking:
“Look at that poor guy, he got the wobbly cart.”
So on this day when the guy says “Hey, it looks like you got the wobbly cart,” I just laughed and said back,
“Yeah the wobbly cart, that’s the story of my life.”
So then he says “that sounds like a good title for a book, “Life in the Wobbly Cart.”
I thought to myself, man if he only knew the half of it.
I understand, in my family, we call it the Christiansen Curse.
Kim reminded me this morning that tomorrow starts Yom Kippur.
My Jewish friends and family might relate with the expression,
“Ma nishtana!”
This Hebrew saying according to the Urban Dictionary is used to express utter lack of surprise at a supposed piece of news. It’s a way of saying “Tell me something I don’t know” or “What else is new?” with a snarky urban Jewish twist.
Friday was a bad day for me.
I went in early on Friday to get a head start on cutting church grass which is pretty much an all day job.
Immediately I ran into an IT problem that is normally not a big deal but on this day it took extra time to resolve.
Once I got that issue squared away, now having lost an hour, I went out to start working on the property only to find my left rear tire on my lawn mower was flat.
So I went for my air pump but couldn’t find a charged battery or the charger to charge the battery.
After some more lost time I got the flat tire squared away and got to work.
But before I did I texted my wife “Christiansen curse day.”
Then to top it all off while I was mowing, I stepped in dog shhhh…..poo.
Dog Poo.
And I didn’t only just step in it I literally slid through it for about a foot.
“That’s just perfect,” I thought to myself.
Next, I get a text message from Alexa that said “Christian says he is sad because he misses you.”
Finally, as my day was winding down, my wife texted me to ask if I wanted to go to Carrabba’s for dinner.
I was tired and I had such a crummy day the thought of going out and relaxing with my wife sounded awesome.
I wasn’t hungry since I had eaten twice that day and of course, it had to have been leftover spaghetti and meatballs, but hey I thought, I will just have a bowl of soup. And since Carrabba’s gives you that awesome bread and olive oil with spices to dip it in, I would be good.
Yeah okay, I admit it, I am one of those guys who will order a bowl of soup, get the bread, and be happy.
Because I am cheap.
Ry Cooder sings a song written a long time ago by Josh White called One Meatball.
It’s a song about a guy who only has fifteen cents to eat with so he searches restaurants and menus until he finds a place where he can purchase something to eat for fifteen cents, one meatball.
Everyone in the restaurant is aghast as the waiter calls out the order for one meatball and then proceeds to remind him:
“You gets no bread with one meatball.”
With the day I was having as I sheepishly ordered my one bowl of soup, I was half expecting the server to call out loudly:
“You gets no bread with one bowl of soup.”
Finally now relaxing and enjoying my bowl of soup and my bread, I open up my Facebook to find my three daughters, my three little chickens, putting me out on social media for not remembering them on “National Daughters Day.”
My final kick for the day.
Oh well.
“Ma nishtana.”
“You gets no bread with one meatball.”
That’s life in the wobbly cart.
Okay, now maybe I can get back to that book now.
“Life in the Wobbly Cart.”
Chapter One.
Let’s see, how should I start…?
Post Script:
After having basically finished this I dipped out to Lowe’s to pick up a couple of things. I entered the store then realized I might need a cart. I went back out and there, right next to the sterilizing station, was one cart.
I wiped it down and started my shopping.
And guess what kind of cart it was.
Yup.
“That’s just perfect,” I thought.
Happy National Daughters Day to Savannah, Hayley, and Alexa.
An elderly couple decided to go out for breakfast recently at their local diner in Cambridge Maryland.
Though disease had infiltrated his body and mind limiting the activities that energized him and that he once enjoyed in life, going out to eat was still a treat thankfully now that the covid restrictions had been eased. But even the once easy decision to drop into a restaurant, though still enjoyable and special, was now complicated and not just on account of the virus.
Slowly and unsteadily, relying on the aluminum frame and wheels of the walker he has to use now, he navigated his way to the table and backed into the chair to sit.
As is the routine she, his wife, body bent and looking frail but still strong in mind and determination, gets him situated in his chair and inched up to the table.
This is the ritual, whether it’s in a public restaurant or at home, that goes on day after day, multiple times a day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and coffee breaks all take on significant importance, but all require a similar concern, attention, and patience.
On this day the breakfast itself went uneventful.
But when she went to pay the bill something very unexpected and never-before experienced happened.
She wasn’t able to pay the bill.
Not because she couldn’t afford it.
But because there was no bill for her to pay.
Someone had paid their bill already.
In these days of virtual church, Kim and I have discovered another Eastern Shore connection in Father Bill Ortt, the Rector of Christ Church in Easton, Maryland.
In a recent awesome sermon, he referred to these verses in Chapter 12 of Romans.
9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves… 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13 Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
Not a bad reminder for us these days.
In his message, Father Ortt presented a good illustration of how the daily stresses we face as individuals can affect us. His sermon included a personal story of how he witnessed a young mother having a bad start to her day in a Starbucks in Ocean City and sharing her unhappiness quite vocally with all of those around her.
Though it sounded like this person’s behavior was inappropriate for that venue or any venue, I am sure we have all been close to losing it lately.
It’s tough to be a parent right now.
It’s tough to be a kid.
It’s tough to be a grandparent.
And it’s tough to be a great grandparent.
Labor Day Kim and I were driving home. The next day was the first day of school for our area which meant Cameron would be starting the fifth grade and Hayley her thirteenth year of teaching at Broad Run High School. Christian, one of my little guys in Florida had already started his first year of school by starting Kindergarten virtually, a couple of weeks earlier.
On that ride home I thought about my first days of school and particularly my grammar (elementary school) years and me in my fifth grade. Fifth grade was one of my favorite years in school.
And so, as is often the case with me, I started singing a song.
“See You in September” was released by the Happenings in 1966, the year I started the fifth grade.
And while I drove and relived in my mind the memories of my childhood, I sang it over and over again.
At some point on the road trip my wife who had been quietly working on her iPad, looked at me and asked, “are you seriously going to sing that song all day?”
“Sorry” I said.
But I never really answered the question because unfortunately for Kim the answer was…
“Yes!”
But to the best of my ability, at least for the rest of that car ride I tried to sing just to myself as I reminisced about the excitement and that feeling of being reunited with friends and classmates for another school year in 1966.
This year Cameron and Christian and a lot of other kids are not getting to experience the excitement that I remembered about returning to school in September.
And Hayley as a teacher can’t foster mentoring relationships that are so important to the student and the teacher.
And the parents of these students are juggling jobs from offices and homes as they also assume the role of teaching assistant.
And sometimes…they kirk out at Starbucks.
And Kim and I have to weigh the risks against the needs as we struggle to make our decisions to social distance with some of the younger members of the family yet continue to work out ways to provide support to our aging parents.
But thankfully our parents, limited now not just from the virus but by their own physical abilities, can still enjoy a time out having a meal while respecting the necessary social distancing requirements.
And at least on one occasion anyway, experiencing that love still exists in some hearts. Even in the hearts of strangers.
My mother literally sobbed on the phone as she told us the story of her and my father having breakfast at the Cambridge Diner one morning this past week when someone paid their breakfast bill.
Maybe he or she good Samaritan saw that even after all those years, love can still be sincere and patient.
Maybe he or she was sick of the hate that we have to experience on our televisions and social media and wanted to reach back to a better time when we treated others with brotherly love and honored others above ourselves. And through an act of hospitality, spread joy to those who may be afflicted and in need. Even if that need might just be to have a little hope and share in a little joy while having breakfast.
Maybe this person heard Pastor Ortt’s message.
It was a nice gesture.
One that my mom and my dad will never forget.
And me too.
And so whoever you are out there who treated my parents to breakfast recently, I thank you.
And may God bless you.
Bye-bye, so long, farewell…
Have a good time but remember
There is danger in the summer moon above
See you in September
See you when the summer’s through*
Our summer is through.
Hate what is evil.
Cling to what is good.
Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.
And hang in there.
Post Script:
The photos above are of Christian on his first day of school, Cameron on his first day of school, Hayley on her first day of school, and me in the fifth grade.
*Lyrics from See You in September written by Sid Wayne and Sherman Edwards.
Sir Sidney came home to us last night. Me and my three kids drove 5 hours for him. When he was walked out to me he was in tatters…. rain rot, bleached by the sun, deep gash on his withers, shoes look 3 months old, and he only has three of them hanging on by a thread. Large osselet on the left front. He was in a pasture with a sheep out in the middle of nowhere. I took him anyway. I paid for him just to get him out of there. He seems very pleased with himself to be here. Dr. will xray his osselet so we can make sure we keep him comfortable and serviceable, and the farrier will be here tomorrow to give his feet some much needed relief. He’s had 5 homes in the past 12 months, so he is now ours. He will be babied from now on and will never know hard work again. He will be treated as a show horse here. Lots of grass and hunter ponies and his own stall – blanketed when needed and he will have proper vet farrier dental and nutrition. I hope you have a BLESSED day today…
(An email to me from Tiffany M. received Wednesday, August 19)
A couple of weeks ago I was lying in bed on a Friday morning, not wanting to get out from under the covers, not wanting to go to work, just lamenting and feeling the weight of this unusual summer.
On that day it was mid-August and the signs of the summer’s ultimate passing had already begun. Sitting out on the deck the evening before I had commented to Kim on how early the deck light with its darkness sensor was now tripping on. Our unusual summer was showing signs of winding down. Some might think signaling the end of this summer might be a good thing. That might be true if at least some of the reasons this summer has been so traumatic could be changed. But we can’t change God’s plan. We can only change that which we can control. But the thoughts of moving into the fall and the early darkness combining seasonal affective disorder with coronavirus depression could be quite scary for many.
What do you do at 4:45 p.m. in the afternoon when it is dark outside? How do you exercise safely, how do you go out and walk in nature and forget about being socially restricted.
Wouldn’t it be nice if our country’s leaders would consider that and extend Daylight Savings Time through the fall and winter this year to help us cope with our “new normal.”
On that Friday morning when I was feeling down and out, still in bed but now with a cup of coffee, I opened up my email. While I was asleep I had received this email:
It’s way past midnight and I’m sitting here doing Internet search on an 11-year-old off the track thoroughbred by the name of Sir Sidney. He is the now 11-year-old son of Ghostzapper. I found nothing of great interest other than racing stats and equivalent information. But I was craving a nice photograph or video…. Then I happened upon this:
No longer feeling like staying under the covers I was now feeling totally elated.
Since I last wrote about Sidney just before last year’s Kentucky Derby, he ran eight more races running his last race on July 22, 2019, as a ten-year-old.
Born March 6, 2009, Sir Sidney had worked really hard since he ran his first race on New Year’s Day in 2012 as a three-year-old. After three races that year, he would be sidelined until that third Saturday in May of 2014 when I was inadvertently introduced to Sir Sidney as a result of that botched wager. On that day he was five years old winning his first race. Over his career that ended last summer, he had run 68 races and finished in the top three 29 times, twelve of those as the winner earning a total of $269,119.00. This past March he officially turned eleven years old and was now finally retired.
The old guy who last year was still out there working, having to prove himself against the younger fellas, could now relax.
But Sir Sidney’s first year of retirement wasn’t like busting out in the RV and taking that dream trip across the country.
Nope, he got shuffled from one owner to another and had five homes in twelve months and as was evident in Tiffany description of him in her email of August 19, no one was caring for him anymore.
Sidney’s long and proud journey that included all those years of fighting to win was now forgotten. In quite the literal sense, Sidney had been put out to pasture and neglected.
Then Sid’s angel of mercy on a wing and a prayer, this nice lady named Tiffany, made the impetuous decision to drive many hours go get him sight unseen.
She “found her Sir Sidney after all.”
And in doing so she saved Sid.
Now Sidney can really enjoy his retirement.
He is not being asked to win races anymore, but he is still winning hearts.
He is appreciated and being cared for by a wonderful family.
He “will never know hard work again.”
And me?
I am still elated.
Once again we are reacquainted.
Once again he becomes part of my journey.
Once again I got goosebumps.
And I get to follow how happy he is by the photos I can view.
Next Saturday is the 146th running of the Kentucky Derby.
It’s not generating the same amount of excitement and sense of optimistic anticipation of producing a new National Obsession as it would normally do for me on the first Saturday in May, which also serves as my personal unofficial first day of summer.
In fact, it’s being run on Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of summer.
But of course, I will watch.
And I hope you will watch too.
And like I said in “A Sentimental Racetrack Journey” before last year’s Derby:
“I hope you take some time this Saturday and watch the Kentucky Derby. I hope you pay attention to the stories, enjoy the majestic beauty of these animals, get caught up in the drama.
I hope you find something sentimental in the experience that makes you want to return.
I hope you find your Sir Sidney.”
Like I did.
Like Tiffany did.
Sir Sidney, once again, my vote for Horse of the Year.
Post Script:
I would like to thank Tiffany and her family for saving this horse and providing a loving and safe environment for Sidney to enjoy his retirement.
And for sharing the experience with me.
And as for that BLESSED day, it surely was, and not just for me.
