family

50-45 – Chanukah

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Plastic dreidl that can be filled with gelt, chocolate coins for Chanukah. When I was a kid, we got new ones each year, but I try to save them for my kids to reuse each year. (c)2016

When I was a kid growing up in Queens, we lived in a two bedroom apartment. There was a tiny vestibule where you could either go upstairs to our neightbors or turn left and walk into our place. There was a window and a radiator (where on Passover we would put a wine glass for Elijah). The living room had a sofa, a television on a wheeled TV cart, a dresser, my baby dresser that my daughter now uses, and possibly a chair, but I don’t recall that detail. It flowed into the dining room which had a doorway to the kitchen.

At Chanukah, we never had an electric menorah when we lived here. It was a brass one with a lion at the back and the shamas way up on top with a row of eight candle holders below. We would set this menorah up on the dining room table on a piece of tin foil for the wax to melt onto. Each day, we’d add another candle and watch them burn brightly until they flickered out.

We’d eat latkes and play dreidl with pennies for the pot.

Along the bottom of my baby dresser, my parents set up three piles of wrapped presents, eight gifts in each pile, and every night after we lit the candles we could choose a gift. Just one.

There was a lot of shaking and feeling of shapes going on every night. I have a very clear memory of wondering if I should open the Barbie doll or her clothes first, so distinctive was their packaging.

For our interfaith family now, we usually have done one large gift for the first night of Chanukah. Only once did we do eight gifts. It just gets too expensive. We do light the candles and use an electric menorah, the candle menorah in the dining room and the electric menorah in the living room. I always get my kids a new dreidl and a mesh baggie of gelt which they devour pretty quickly.

These are the traditions that make a holiday memorable and worth celebrating year after year.

I’m posting this a bit early because Chanukah isn’t until Christmas Eve this year, but that just gives us more to celebrate all throughout the month from Thanksgiving to the New Year.

Happy Chanukah to all.

50-43 – Why Are The Lights Out?

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In my family, everyone got a cake on their birthday.

It was always a surprise.

No one knew it was coming until they entered a darkened room and the family starting singing Happy Birthday.

That was how it was supposed to go, and how it went for my entire life; at least five times a year, probably more with Mother’s and Father’s Day and my parents’ anniversary.

We’d go out to dinner and come home.

There was a bit of awkward talking, waiting for the surprise moment.

At some point, my mother asked the birthday person to do her a favor so they would leave the room. When we were older, we’d fake going to the bathroom.

Once the candles were lit and the lights turned out, my mom would call the bitthday person back down to the dining room.

The singing would start and then we’d blow out the candles, turning the lights back on. Plates and forks. Cake and frosting. I love frosting.

We never saw it coming.

Surprise family cakes were the best.

World Toilet Day

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​Today is World Toilet Day.

Part of me wonders who comes up with these commemorative “holidays”, but another part of me wonders what we’d do without toilets.

In my first child care job in the very early 90s, we had a plumbing problem, and we needed to use porta-johns, for us and the children, ages 3-5. Not only did we have to use the porta-johns, they were outside the front door, so every time anyone needed to use the toilet, we’d have to go outside and wait until they were finished. It is a horrible memory. I think it might have lasted a few weeks, maybe a month, but it feels like much longer.

When my siblings and I were kids, we did quite a bit of traveling with our family. My parents believed in the family vacation. I wish things were less expensive and I could give that to my own kids. It was a brilliant childhood and fostered my love of history and other cultures, including those regional differences just along the East Coast where we typically went. We drove everywhere, even to Florida. No planes for my mother. Driving had its own charm; sometimes. Every trip began at around 4am and we drove into the sunrise. Sometimes we left in our pajamas and got dressed at the first rest stop, hours later. Many hours later.

Although, sometimes, those long, lovely travels trapped in the backseat fighting over the windows or who didn’t want to sit on the middle hump, were punctuated by bathroom requests beginning from whenever the first one woke up.

My father used to ask if we were writing a book on the bathrooms across the country for the amount of times we asked to stop. We just had to see every bathroom. Three kids and we never needed to use the bathroom at the same time. As a parent now, it is pretty ridiculous, but such is life. In fact, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

When my oldest son was young and began to use the toilet, we’d stop on the way to Grandma’s (who lived far away). For some of those long trips we carried a portable potty with us so he didn’t have to use the dirty public ones on the road. First time parents; what can I say?

As a joke we decided to take photos of my son in front of the places where he used the bathroom (outside), like McDonald’s, the thruway rest area, etc, and we made a picture book for my Dad. He loved it! He thought it was the best thing in the world! He had a great sense of humor.

I have a recurring nightmare that takes place in a toilet. It’s horrific. I won’t even describe it here; it leaves shivers on my spine. Suffice it to say, it has to do with not finding a clean toilet, wet floors, and I’m the only one bothered by it. I’m not even a germophobe; this dream really is the stuff of nightmares.

We are a very spoiled people here in the United States. You can go into any bathroom, assuming there is indoor plumbing, which more than likely there is, and there is no way to make a mistake. None. It’s almost relaxing how easy our toilet flushing systems are. Even using a port-a-potty at an outdoor event or in an emergency, it’s all pretty obvious where everything goes or how to get rid of the “evidence”.

My travels in the United Kingdom, especially in 1987 still pump terror through my veins if I think too long about it.

Before England, I’d never seen a pay toilet before. Or a paid shower for that matter. Nothing was automatic like it is today. You had to pump your own soap, turn on your water, turn it off, and find the paper towels. I can’t remember, but I don’t think there were any hot air dryers back then. Most water faucets had a hot knob and a cold one, but it wasn’t always standard which was which. 

For one pub toilet, you had to slip past the first stall while someone was using it to get to the end stall. My friend and I went in together and out the same way. I don’t even remember if it was single gender.

There were no second glances using the men’s room, or pretty much anything else as long as whatever it was was finished with, “Sorry, I’m American.” Shrug and smile, and a college student on holiday could get away with almost anything. After all, the men’s toilet lines were much shorter than the women’s, especially on New Year’s Eve.

To the toilets themselves, because as most of us know, the English bathroom doesn’t contain the toilet but the tub. No showers unless you were in a hostel or had an updated loo. Usually no sink either, but sometimes there was one alongside the toilet. Saved time and grime to wash before you left the stall.

Toilets.

I never put much thought into flushing a toilet before. I don’t think I spent this much time on the topic since my kids were potty training and even then it wasn’t rocket science.

Like ours, most are the typical seat with the tank right there. Almost none of them had a flushing lever attached to the tank, though. Once in a while, but it was never guaranteed.

It was a scavenger hunt every time I used the bathroom.

There were push buttons on top of the tank, on the side of the tank, on the floor to the left, right and back of the tank, on the wall behind the tank, and quite possibly near the door for on your way out. I personally liked that one because if there’s a problem with the plumbing you’re long gone before your shoes are wet.

But wait, that is a mere sampling of the flushing techniques on display in jolly old England.

Some had chains. Chains from the ceiling, chains on the side of the tank.

One had a tank about eight feet high attached to the wall with the chain hanging down like a light chain. The chain was the only way I noticed the tank in the first place, and I’m sure I did a double take.

I remember one had a metal rod sticking out of the tank that you had to push down, maybe like part of the thing you’d use at an old-fashioned water pump.

Toilet paper was scratchy, and there was never enough.

There wasn’t anything really in the way of latches. It was really a hope for the best that no one walked in on you.

Bathrooms were also very cold. No central heat, but they did have towel warmers which sadly hasn’t made it across the pond, at least not in a middle class home way.

There were big changes when I returned in 2009. I didn’t have quite the toileting adventures that I had twenty-two years earlier. There was central heat in most places. I stayed in mostly hostels, so those loos were dormitory style, all shared, with showers in another room. There were, however also bathrooms with weird blue lights. Apparently studies found that this put people off, particularly teenagers, so they didn’t loiter in the bathrooms doing whatever it is that teenagers loiter in the bathroom for. Smoking, drugs, sex. And this wasn’t even the pub; this was in the grocery store.

As much as I complain about our plumbing and antiquated septic system at my house, I know that when I flush ninety-nine times out of a hundred it leaves and doesn’t come back. I know exactly where it goes, in fact, so no matter how you flush it, I can spend my adventures on something simpler, like which plunger to buy next.

I was excited to learn that Japan has a museum dedicated to toilets.

For further reading, please click:

A Brief History of Toilets

Is it Time to Kill Off the Flush Toilet?

50-38 – Chinese Food

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While I love a good macaroni and cheese (Kraft blue box original), probably my next best comfort food is Chinese. It could be take-out, eat in, buffet, I don’t care. It is the best food in the world. It might even be my first go-to comfort food.

When I was a kid, we used to go to this place near our apartment. I don’t remember the name of it, but it was on Horace Harding Blvd. in Queens. It wasn’t brightly lit. That’s how we kids knew it was a fancy restaurant. My one vivid memory is being dressed up, so it may have been for some kind of school congratulatory meal. I remember the owner knew my parents. He’d greet us at the door and show us to our table, talking to my parents the whole time. My Dad was a friendly guy, and everyone loved him. It was like going to Cheers. 

We would sit at a large round table, covered with a white linen tablecloth. My parents would order: two from column A, one from column B, duck sauce and mustard. My mother put a dab of hot mustard in her wonton soup. I have never dared. Everything was put in the center and we shared, serving ourselves. This was the one place that no one ordered soda. We had a glass of water and of course, the hot tea. I loved those small tea cups, and I would put in more sugar than I should have. I think that was where I got my love for drinking tea. For dessert it was always either vanilla ice cream or pineapples with a fortune cookie. I would get the pineapples, but I think I only got them because they came with a toothpick that I used to pick up the small chunks of pineapple.

We used to bring Chinese take-out to my grandmother’s house sometimes. My grandmother’s house was kosher, so she never ate any of the food, and she made us eat on paper plates because we couldn’t put the non-kosher food on hers. We had to sit in the dining room and eat, and then clean up and take all of our leftovers with us.

As an adult, it took us a couple of years to find our perfect Chinese take-out place in our new town. My barometer is the fried rice, the egg rolls, and the spare ribs.I like really fried rice, brown in color with nice chunks of pork. My egg rolls also need to have little bits of pork in it and a nice crunchy shell. Spare ribs – the more burned, the better.

There is something warm and comforting about the smells and tastes of Chinese food. I really don’t know what it is.

My husband’s family has a tradition of eating Chinese take-out on Christmas Eve, and so we’ve adopted that for our family. We even have a Chinese take-out box ornament for our tree. Our kids know it, and look forward to it each year. It is a really nice tradition and ritual for them. They get a new pair of pajamas; we eat Chinese take-out, and we bake cookies for Santa.

It’s warm and wonderful.

50-36 – Memorial Cardinal

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​My mother-in-law loved her backyard. She worked harder than anyone I know on her flowers. No special mixes or soil. Her fertilizer was some compost – egg shells and fruit peels. Every spring, bags and bags of dirt, but as I said, nothing special. 

The front of the house looked nice, and inside she had a Christmas cactus that was pretty for the one week it bloomed, but the backyard was her special place. Gorgeous giant sunflowers grew along the back fence. She couldn’t wait to get rid of the mulberry tree that ruined everything around it. There was a crabapple tree that she hung windchimes and the occasional birdhouse on. It looked like a fairy playland.

When we visited in the spring, usually around Easter, we drove her to Home Depot for dirt. Pounds and pounds of dirt, and before we knew it, it was gone and she needed more, so off we’d go for a second trip to Home Depot. She didn’t drive, and she couldn’t carry that much on the bus.

She grew herbs and tomatoes, and we were sent home with dozens of them every spring.

After a while, the full garden became too much, and she began container gardening. It was unbelievable how nice the containers flourished. I’ve never seen containers grow so well. She had a green thumb, and passed it on to my husband who’s really great in our garden. He grew two pumpkins or gourds and we were all excited when we brought them into the house.

When we were visiting in June, she asked about her garden, so I took some pictures on my cell phone and brought them into the hospital to show her. She still hadn’t gotten the hang of any kind of technology; she got an air conditioner for the first summer in 2014 or ’15, but she was excited to see the pictures of the bright yellows and purples of her perennials that never disappointed her.

She died unexpectedly a few days later.

We drove down the following weekend for the memorial service. We had planned to take a few of the roots to bring some of her garden home with us. We’ll have to wait for spring to see how they’re doing. We might have to go back and retrieve a few more roots in the spring.

While I was in the bathroom getting ready for the service I noticed a bright, red bird through the window, outside in the backyard. A cardinal. He sat there long enough for me to get my cell phone and take a bunch of pictures including one that was mid-flight when it took off.

it seemed like an odd time for a single bird to show up.

Cardinals were my mother-in-law’s favorite bird.

50-27 – Ice Storms

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When we first moved into our house in 1977, we had a ridiculously big ice storm. All the trees were weighed down from the crystal encompassing branches and whatever leaves were left on the trees. We lost power, and at some point we piled into our car and drove to my Grandmother’s house. She wasn’t too far, about twenty to thirty minutes, and I don’t recall how the roads were other than my usually wild anxiety of we shouldn’t be going out in this weather.

But Grandma had power and we didn’t and so we went to use her heat and to visit her and my uncle and my great-grandmother.It stayed in my mind, and after she moved and we continued to have bad winter weather over the years, I wondered where we would go to warm up when we inevitably lost power again.

Fast forward to the winter of 2008. It was our second year in our new house. The ice landed on the roof, froze, and got so heavy that it slid off onto our front stoop. We discovered that we could not use our front door throughout the winters. The danger of getting an ice concussion was too great. In fact, it was so heavy and fell so hard that it broke our wrought iron handrail, making it more or less useless.

We lost power early in the day, and everyone, including our three children, aged two, four, and eleven were bundled up as if we were going sledding or building a snowman. We were sitting in our living room under the covers, waiting for the power to come back on.

We waited all day.

We waited most of the evening, and then, after much discussion and argument found out that there was a Red Cross shelter at the high school in the village near our town.

Despite the ice covering every conceivable surface, taking down trees and power lines, the roads were remarkably clear.They would be dry from the bright sunshine the next morning although we still would not have power.

We gathered the diaper bag, a fanny pack for my stuff, and found ourselves in a new situation, waiting in line at the shelter, signing in, getting supplies from the volunteers who didn’t know how their own homes were faring.

They were kind and managed to entertain the kids when I had reached my limit. It was the most stressful experience I think I’d ever had in my life. It was surreal. There were a few other kids there, but not many. My oldest son and middle guy went to the game room and played with them while my baby girl alternated from running around in circles, crying, and being the nuisance that new walkers do, but that seems so much worse when you’re stuck in a place.

When it was time to sleep, there were cots and pillows and blankets, but my daughter wouldn’t sleep. She cried, and I had to leave the gym to rock her to sleep even though she wouldn’t go to sleep. If I sat in a chair and rocked her, she stayed quiet for short bursts.

We stayed there for two nights and moved to a new shelter at a local college for most of the next night. We were able to go home. Our gas was working so we were able to take hot showers and change our clothes. We also cleared out our refridgerator, throwing all the food away. Our house was freezing but still not cold enough to keep the food sustained. We had just gone grocery shopping in anticpation of the storm and it was two weeks before Christmas. It was a trying time.

The little ones were given stuffed animals – Mickey Mouse’s to help them feel comfortable. They were also given Red Cross fleece blankets that we still have and pull out on those really cold nights.

The Red Cross people were amazing.

My friend started a collection and gave us a Walmart gift card for almost $450 to get groceries at their supermarket.

As difficult as that weekend was for all of us, it showed us what was important, and how kind and supportive our friends could be as well as the kindness of strangers who uprooted their lives to help all of us.

We see it with tornados in the Midwest, hurricanes in Florida, and winter storms in the northerrn states, but never did I expect to receive Red Cross aid in my own town.

I know that the Red Cross has its problems – all places do, but they are boots on the ground and they ask nothing in return for the victims of disaster. They kept me sane and kept my kids warm and fed when staying in our own house would not have.

In looking back, we knew we were lucky, but we were also blessed and I try to remember that when I see people struggling with everyday issues that are sometimes too much.

50-24 – Green Candy Dish

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Top of the dish, closed. (c)2016


That candy dish came to our house when my grandmother moved in with us. I thought it was the most hideous thing ever. There was a mosaic tiled tray that didn’t go with it but managed to fit into the hideous theme that apparently my mother was going for. The green on it was the same color as my grandmother’s green velvet couch, two pieces that separated. When she moved in one half of it went into the basement where I wouold lie down on it, legs over the arm watching baseball and eventually the US hockey team beat the Russians.
Looking at the dish now, I don’t know what it was that I didn’t like. I love the shine of the green even under the specks of dust. The colored tiles seem like painted slate. Someone worked very hard on that art. When I pulled it out of the bookkshelf, I started thnking about where I might put it in my office instead of keeping it safe behind glass. Perhaps put it in my mother’s curio with her rabbi and upside down ashtray that makes him taller.

I also wonder how my grandmother came to have this piece. Was it a wedding gift? It’s proably not old enough for that. I don’t recall her ever going to Israel like other family members did on my mother’s side. 

Maybe it was her new authority in our house that I transferred to her stuff. She lived with us now. She became mean, like a third parent, telling us when to be home, to wash our hands before dinner, you know, usual kid complaining stuff. I could have been better.

Maybe it’s true that we mature as we age, and despite not liking this candy dish as a kid, now that I’m older, I appreciate the fine work that went into it; the distance it traveled to come into my household, and wanting and asking for it when my mother died.

Dish, open. (c)2016



Detail of bottom. Made in Israel. (c)2016

My kids have a better appreciation for their grandparents’ things. They appreciate where they came from and the lives that they lived as kids and young adults. They’ve each had the opportunity to interview my mother-in-law for biographical reports for school and so they talk about her and her experirences often. I wish I was more like them when I was a kid.

50-16 – Grandma’s Basement

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Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Mystery of the 99 Steps, 1966


My grandmother’s basement was perfect for reading Nancy Drew mysteries. It was the kind of basement you’d expect to find a body buried in. It was scary and exciting, and inviting all at the same time. There was a window that you couldn’t see out of because of all the overgrowth in the yard just above the window line.

It was a finished basement with a floor and paneled walls. Between the brush shadows and the paneling, it made for a very dim space. Dampness hung in the air, but that didn’t dimish its charm to a preteen girl reading mystery stories.

There were built in shelves filled with dusty books for all age ranges. I remember a lot of different blue hued books. Blue seemed to be a popular color for a book cover. None of them had book jackets that I recall.

There was a couch and a round coffee table in the center of the seating area.

There was another side to the basement that I don’t remember as well. I don’t think we went on that side or if we did it was rare. That is probably where the washing machine was and the furnace – those important things that keep the house going, but remain invisible to visitors.

There was also a door leading to the garage. It was a one car garage at the bottom of a steep driveway. It smelled of oil and gasoline, and every time we drove into the dreiveway, I thought for sure we were going to slide right through the closed garage door.

But the other side, with the books and shelves and seats, that was where we played and read and pretended. Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and whatever else came to mind.

When I think of my grandmother’s house, this is invariably what I picture in my mind.

Google Image, 2016. This is the outside of my grandmother’s house. It is a little different than when I visited her there in the ’70s.

 

50-14 – MahJong

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​When my mother died a few years ago, I asked for her mah jong set. No one else cared; no one else wanted it. I was probably the only one who had any real memories of it in action. In our childhood neighborhood, and at aunts’ and uncles’ houses in the Bronx and Queens there were weekly games.

Bubbly hair that was so full of hairspray it could withstand tornado, nuclear blast or the annual wedding dress sale at Filene’s. The cat’s eye glasses that is so central to the 1970s vintage look that then was merely in its infancy.

Four folding chairs, unfolded and set around a card table taken from the hall closet. No tablecover that I remember, but four different colored tile racks, the top for showing your play and the tilted one (like Scrabble) that no one could see what still remained in your hand.

I didn’t know how to play. I still don’t,but when I was a kid, I thought I did. I’d move the tiles around. My mother’s set has jewel toned racks, and I brought out the green one to display on top of the case – it is very much like a briefcase with two latches on the side that keep it closed, but doesn’t require a key to open. The rest of the set is housed inside the case.

I keep it on the bottom of my barrister bookcase. That’s one of those bookcases with a glass front so you can see what’s inside. It fits perfectly on that bottom display.

Whenever I look at it I think about the card table and the food we weren’t allowed to touch. We were sent outside with the other kids.

I don’t remember if everyone shared one set to play on, but everyone had their own set. Maybe the host provided the playing set.

Even now, I can hear the clattering of the tiles on the racks. They look like marble but from their weight, I’d guess that they’re not.

I can hear the bam, and the dot, and the joker and dragon.

Wine flowed, crudite crunched, and tiles clattered while we kids ran around outside, and then through the living room being chastised and sent once again on our way and our of our parents’ ways.


50 – 11 – Five Dollars

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When I was a child, we traveled to Canada often; more often than most kids living in NYC and on Long Island. Our grandfather was born and raised there, so we would visit his sisters and their families as well as going on a summer vacation before returning to school in the fall. Not every year, but almost every other.

Every visit always included dinner at Old Ed’s Warehouse in Toronto. We’d all meet there – aunts, uncles, cousins. It was a fancy restaurant, and men had to wear jackets and ties. It was a steakhouse, and it was misery for my brother, sister, and I. Steaks. No hamburgers, even less chance of cheeseburgers, and absolutely no ketchup. I can still see my sister’s face when we found that out.

My husband and I continued that tradition when we visited Toronto before we got married. We visited my Aunt Goldie, and had dinner at Old Ed’s. It was different since I was ten – they had several sections of the restaurant – steaks, pasta, casual dining, etc. No jackets either. They are closed now, but they were a place that was part of my childhood traditions.

When I was a kid, everyone would gather on the street outside the restaurant in front of Ed’s. You needed reservations. We parked and waited for the rest of the family to arrive.

My aunts, Goldie and Janet were my grandfather’s sisters. He also had a brother, but we didn’t see him very often. I can only remember one time distinctly. Both of them had husbands named Joe. We found this funny. Two Uncle Joe’s. We also had two Aunt Shirleys, two cousin Sharons and more Davids than you could shake a stick at.
When Uncle Joe (Goldie’s husband) arrived he took each of us kids aside, gave us $5 in Canadian money for our own and told us not to tell our parents.

About five minutes later, Uncle Joe (Janet’s husband) took each of us aside, gave us $5 in Canadian money for our own and told us not to tell our parents.

The two of them shared a look and a wink, and the three of us each got $10 to spend on our vacation. I don’t know if my parents ever knew. We were Gerry’s kids, and he was there so often he was a favorite of the family and in addition to all the other ways, we reaped the reward of having a great Dad.

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The current $5 bill. Front. 2016

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The current $5. Back. 2016